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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Consquences of self-identification

1000 replies

MrsKCastle · 17/09/2016 14:37

Sorry if this has already been done. I've been doing a lot of thinking about current trans thinking in the media.

As far as I understand it, this is the predominant view:
Anyone can be man or woman, male, female or neither. It doesn't depend on your genes, appearance or potential ability to hear young. What's important is how you identify. We should always treat people as they identify, with regard to how we speak about and treat them, and what spaces/roles we allow them to access.

What I'm interested in, is how this self-identification will or could change society. I'd love to hear your thoughts as I think it will help me to get things straight in my head.

So far I'm thinking:
No more single-sex schools
No more single-sex hospital wards
No more single-sex clubs, whether that's Brownies or exclusive golf clubs
Anyone can apply for any scholarship or award, regardless of sex

What else?

OP posts:
MisDescamisados · 20/09/2016 18:53

Completely concur with the OP.

Look at this insistence we accept the term "ciswoman"?

IMO it's clearly designed to coopt the term "woman" and replace "woman" and "transwoman " with "woman" and "ciswoman".

This will semantically erase the biological foundation of womanhood and , as a bonus , render invisible the biological foundation of women's oppression .

It's intended to replace us adjucncts , us "breeders" , and render us a second class - as adjunct as said - to "true " women.

When the genocide comes , it will be epistemological.

SomeDyke · 20/09/2016 20:12

"I'm non-binary and always have been, because I've never felt female, and gender is a load of nonsense............................"
Of course (as most of you will have understood), what I meant here is that by the BBC definition I am non-binary! But actually, I just am female, but I never felt female (or male, for that matter!). Yep, a lot of the time I didn't seem to feel the same way as many of the other girls.....Some of it was just cos I turned out to be a dyke, but for the rest, it's called 'personality', I think............

MrsKCastle · 20/09/2016 21:02

SomeDyke according to the BBC definition I must be non-binary as well. I certainly don't feel male or female. In my younger years I hated and was ashamed of my body, hated being female. I saw 'woman' as equal to 'weak' or 'inferior' and wanted no part of it. From what I've seen on here, many of us have felt similar. I'm ok with being female now, but I still don't feel female any more than I feel like a brunette or a person with brown eyes. It's not a feeling, it's a fact. And it's a fact that I can't change.

I have always felt that we should be telling kids, all kids, 'You can wear what you want, be what you want, like what you want, love who you want and that's cool because you, as a person, have value. It doesn't matter what genitalia you were born with.'

OP posts:
MrsKCastle · 20/09/2016 21:11

Missed out a bit:

It doesn't matter what genitalia you've got, or what colour your eyes are or [insert random physical attribute here] but you should try to accept your body as it is because you can only change surface details, you can't change the fundamentals.

I know it's not that simple. I know that trans people often travel an incredibly difficult path. But I can't help but think we'd all be better off, especially the most conflicted trans people, if society was willing to accept that all choices should be open to all people. (Usual disclaimer about doing no harm to others)

OP posts:
WankingMonkey · 20/09/2016 22:32

SomeDyke

I am definitely 'non-binary'. Very very rarely do anything gender sterotypical. Was a tomboy growing up, etc. Never really thought about it before all of this trans stuff. I have always just been...me. Not defined by some silly little box.

The SAGE test (used to decide if one is eligible for transition apparently) became confused by me and asked if I was actually intersexed but concluded I would be good to go...turning into a male. This would be because I am good at maths and not touchy feely but do not get 'turned on' by household chores nor do I own a french maids outfit Hmm

AltheaThoon · 21/09/2016 00:11

I worry about the future of women's sports. If males self-identify as women and compete against women we won't stand much of a chance. We'll be beaten to a pulp (already happened - Fallon Fox), kicked off the football pitch, run off the racetrack. Women's sports will be a thing of the past

AltheaThoon · 21/09/2016 00:12

Thst SAGE test is awful,

GarlicMist · 21/09/2016 04:15

No meaningful data about any sex inequality. Which I suspect is the end goal of all of this. (Can something be this insidious without being planned? Perhaps I should wear a tinfoil hat.)

The only tinfoil you need is to recognise that we do live under patriarchy, and that the patriarchal male is our societal default. Some people still reckon that's a paranoid fantasy: let's assume you're smarter than them.

The tacit understanding is that men (humans with a Y chromosome) are people. Women are kind of an annoying necessity. We* dislike it when they get too loud or get in the way. When this happens, we remind them how kind we're being by not just killing them all or something - we have millions of ways to do this; one is to plaster the world with images of violent rapes, often ending in murder or at least social & financial exclusion. Since the women have been getting in the way lately, we've ramped this up hugely. They moan about it, but it's quite effective.

When a bunch of men came along saying they were women, we were tempted to laugh. But the thing is, they weren't asking us for anything except to be treated as women! Piss easy, we already treated them like that. An interesting thing happened: we found that, when we said these chaps are women, everyone said OK then, women can forget about all those pesky legal protections and safer places they've built up. Now men are women too, there's no need to encourage girls into STEM or hold special sporting events for them. It's a bloody miracle. Women can't get in the way any more, because they can't claim any special status. Women are literally just like men.

These chaps in frocks have managed to do the seemingly impossible. For generations we've asked "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" The answer was staring us in the face all along: she can! We can basically forget about dickless women now. There are bigger, stronger women who think like a man and will never get pregnant. We'll still need the dickless ones for children, but we're working on that - and anyway, the little woman at home has never been the problem. It's the ambitious ones that get in the way. Good luck to them now - their sex equality laws are going out the window as soon as we get the wording changed to gender equality, though that might not even be necessary now: the new women have convinced everyone there's no difference. Those laws will protect women with dicks. Fine, we'll just repeal them down the line.

  • I'm attempting a 'voice of the patriarchy' but there is no such entity. Patriarchy's a mindset; a common purpose. Also, most women think patriarchally so 'we' doesn't mean 'men'. It means the vast majority of people of both sexes.

There's no need for a deliberate plot, it just happens because the end goals have always been there, commonly understood.

Fantastic post last night, Winchester.

Kr1stina - How can the gender of the assailant be largely irrelevant? It's almost exclusively men who perpetrate such crimes. The point is that the crimes aren't perpetrated by gender but by sex. Once we decide that gender's the only thing that matters, then there is no difference. Some women are big and muscular with high testosterone and angry cocks. That's all there is to it.

Miffer · 21/09/2016 07:37

Winchester
Here are some other gems in the speech you quoted -

"White males are responsible for everything that the left have advocated for in the past: gay rights, women’s rights, civil rights, tolerance, the abolition of slavery, the establishment of the welfare state, and so on and so on."

“Systemic racism and “white privilege” are bullshit, unfalsifiable and bonkers pseudoscientific concepts designed to disempower white men in the societies and civilization they’re primarily responsible for creating."

He isn't just a feminist hater, he is a figurehead for a hoard of pathetic whiners who harass women. That quote's only purpose is to lend legitimacy to a hate group.

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 21/09/2016 08:27

In my younger years I hated and was ashamed of my body, hated being female. I saw 'woman' as equal to 'weak' or 'inferior' and wanted no part of it. From what I've seen on here, many of us have felt similar. I'm ok with being female now

This is where I part company with most of you. I find these comments extraordinary. There is a comment also the thread about the non-binary child saying at great length that the child in question is choosing not to be a girl because it's so awful being a girl. Such negativity. How can you inspire confidence in girls if that is your own attitude?

Beachcomber · 21/09/2016 08:52

It's all about context Lass.

Trans ideology tries to work within a bubble but we all know that society exists and that socialization is powerful.

Girls and women are constantly sent messages about our sexed bodies and the vast majority of those messages are negative and nearly all of them are sexist. We are constantly send messages about our assigned sex role and sex caste - weak, emotional, inferior, other, base, incomplete. Some of these messages are coded and some of them spelt out in capital letters. They are a constant background noise in our lives and so pervasive that they have become invisible / normal.

Now that's great if you, as an individual, are immune to these messages and unaffected by them - I think that makes you unusual.

This is where feminists talk about "the personal is political" - by which they mean that our personal lives and feelings about ourselves do not occur within a bubble, they occur within and as a consequence of the political context and order we live in. So whilst you as an individual may not have negative feelings about your femaleness, lots of girls and women do because society. Hence feminism. And feminism isn't about individuals, it is about all girls and women.

WinchesterWoman · 21/09/2016 08:58

Miffer: Yes I know - don't worry I'm not corralling him for support. It was his idea about the 'underton' window that I liked and that I thought could be co-opted, stolen. Do you see?

That is, women, on Mumsnet and elsewhere, can use the underton window to widen and widen the overton window by talking about it endlessly. Every time we get an urban outfitters, or a STEM thread like Hermione started, it can be brought to everyone's attention and every time there are two, three, more people thinking 'what IS this' and joining the 'underton'. Thus the overton window widens and people of greater and greater prominence and reach speak up until it changes the mood of the public sphere.

That was my point.

ChocChocPorridge · 21/09/2016 09:08

I think that it's because there's a difference between how I want society to be, and where we are now, and I don't think that lying to kids, telling them that society doesn't care if you're a boy or girl helps a girl.

In fact, if you tell a girl that it's all fine and dandy, then she grows up getting groped, being asked to take notes and make tea etc. then she's surely going to think that the problem is with her? Because everyone else is doing fine - they told her so!

Personally, I'm generally realistic to my kids. If they're having an injection, then I tell them it will hurt a bit, if they're having medicine, then I tell them it might taste bad. Then I tell them that it'll only be for a moment, that they can have a drink straight after, and that it's to make them better, or stop them getting ill, and they're fine. They are in control, they know what to expect and can deal with it.

I would prefer to empower girls in that way - rather than tell them that the battle is won and hope that they live a charmed life, tell them about what sexism is still out there, make sure they are prepared to fight their corner.

WinchesterWoman · 21/09/2016 09:13

These chaps in frocks have managed to do the seemingly impossible. For generations we've asked "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" The answer was staring us in the face all along: she can! We can basically forget about dickless women now. There are bigger, stronger women who think like a man and will never get pregnant. We'll still need the dickless ones for children, but we're working on that - and anyway, the little woman at home has never been the problem. It's the ambitious ones that get in the way. Good luck to them now - their sex equality laws are going out the window as soon as we get the wording changed to gender equality, though that might not even be necessary now: the new women have convinced everyone there's no difference. Those laws will protect women with dicks.

So true and so very depressing

NotAnotherTransThread · 21/09/2016 11:03

#5

albertcampionscat · 21/09/2016 11:25

There's some valid stuff here - it's troubling to think that if DS grows up to like pink and dancing he might be told 'you're really a girl' rather that 'great - let's go see a ballet'. There's also a fuckton of raging paranoia and silly nastiness.

I define (ha!) very strongly as a feminist, but if this had been my first encounter with feminism I'd have been repulsed.

Ach well, back to the circle jerk. I just like to pop up on these threads every now and then to signal that not everyone on mumsnet thinks the same way.

IBelieveTheEarthIsFlat · 21/09/2016 11:41

Oh thank you albert. Sooo appreciate your popping on. Many of us wouldn't have known what to think otherwise.

albertcampionscat · 21/09/2016 11:43

It did come across a bit mansplainy, didn't it? I'm not angry with you lot just disappointed.

albertcampionscat · 21/09/2016 11:45

But c'mon, don't you feel a little daft with your lurid predictions of dooooom?

ChocChocPorridge · 21/09/2016 11:55

raging paranoia and silly nastiness

Thanks for your input.

This was a thought experiment, a chat, a little bit of dystopian imagining riffing off where we are now, with us hoping that the world comes to its senses before women are chucked right back to where we came into the last century.

IBelieveTheEarthIsFlat · 21/09/2016 12:04

Ha ha ha "I'm not angry with you lot just disappointed." is MUCH better albert

What can we do to improve your opinion of us, please please do tell us?

albertcampionscat · 21/09/2016 12:14

I suspect that on this issue we're too far apart to change each other's minds, which is a shame. My (serious) worry is that the virulence of the trans-sceptical rhetoric coming from radfems will discredit feminist arguments more broadly.

But I don't matter much.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 21/09/2016 13:38

Hence feminism. And feminism isn't about individuals, it is about all girls and women

I can't think of any women of my acquaintance who has the sort of negativity and low expectations of what being a woman is as is taken as the norm on here. I'm so glad no one told me this when I was 18 and setting out in life. I can't imagine what effect it would have had on my confidence.

I sort of agree with the comment if this had been my first encounter with feminism I'd have been repulsed.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 21/09/2016 13:44

In fact, if you tell a girl that it's all fine and dandy, then she grows up getting groped, being asked to take notes and make tea etc.

Why would you tell her it's fine? My point is telling her it's inevitable, that's what your destined for is so negative. Setting her up to assume life will be crap.

The being asked to take notes and make tea- why do you assume that gets assigned to women? In reality in any business meeting I've ever attended it gets assigned to the most junior person there.

venusinscorpio · 21/09/2016 14:02

Stop trying to marginalise women and feminists who are concerned about the effect of these issues on women as awful shrieking radfems, Albert. I don't see that as a particularly feminist thing to do, you being such an awesomely great feminist and all.

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