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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Just when you thought Everyday Transactivism could no longer surprise * title edited by MNHQ*

743 replies

mirrorisnotmyfriend · 12/02/2017 11:20

They come up with this.

First post - Why Transwomen Aren't Biologically Male.
www.facebook.com/everydayfeminism/

The comments are encouraging though, that is, the ones that haven't been deleted. Lots of people questioning and calling this out.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
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ErrolTheDragon · 13/02/2017 00:31

What's the betting that the one that says how the site is nicknamed Everyday Transactivism will be next to go?

Maybe someone should add that as a definition for EF in the Urban Dictionary?

shins · 13/02/2017 07:13

And it sickens me to see privileged twits like these flourishing, dominating the public narrative when a working class lesbian like Julie Bindel is given the full "Crucible" treatment on campuses.

BeyondUnderthinking · 13/02/2017 08:14

Ah, I fondly remember the thread in FWR where we wrote an EF bio for ourselves :)

It was a blizzard of snowflakes ❄️❄️❄️

Bambambini · 13/02/2017 10:09

Jesus, what an obnoxious site! Lets just ban and censure everyone who doesn't tell us how fabulous we are. Have they no idea how rediculous they are. And the smug repeat posters will be glorying in how they out argued and saw off the evil terfs and bigots - by bloody deleting them. Smug fuckers.

venusinscorpio · 13/02/2017 10:11

I know, it's such a cunty site.

Datun · 13/02/2017 10:12

It really shouldn't have 'feminism' in the title.

They're like a bunch of insecure school girls who are petrified of not being in the cool gang.

venusinscorpio · 13/02/2017 10:17

Oh but they are "standing up against oppression".

ErrolTheDragon · 13/02/2017 10:18

Possibly biologically inaccurate there, venus.

It occurred to me after reading this, plus the thread on guidance to male posters in fwr and some stuff on bloody 'safe spaces' in The Times, that annoying though our trolls and GFs are, heck I'm glad MN is a site where deletions and bans are rare and considered. Of course, this is primarily a site for grownups with real responsibilities, by grownups with real responsibilities which helps.

Datun · 13/02/2017 10:21

There were some comments about trans-women in sports along the lines of yes of course transwomen are women and yes absolutely they should be able to compete in female sport, it's sooo transphobic say otherwise, um...er, yes, some might have a biological advantage, but that shouldn't mean anything. Should it? Um. No, of course not. Anyway competitive sport is silly.

And then tied themselves up in tighter knots because the article had said if you level out the testosterone it should be fair and someone accused them of being transphobic because - are you saying you're only really a woman if you take the hormones? So they were stuck with having to decide whether or not it was fair for a man to compete against women with taking no hormones whatsoever. Otherwise they were terfs.

Idiots.

DianaMemorialJam · 13/02/2017 10:26

Well that video cheered me up on this quiet Monday morning!

What a crock of shite eh.

BenLinusatemyhomework · 13/02/2017 10:33

"Stand up against oppression"?!

They couldn't stand up against a brick wall.

DianaMemorialJam · 13/02/2017 10:34

The Facebook comments have made me so fucking angry

Even the spokesperson for the Facebook group is giving it the old 'oh yes lots of TERF comments we are trying our best to delete and ban'

Yes. Because instead of engaging in discussion and trying to explain yourself to people that, quite frankly thing you've got a screw loose, just ban them so they have no retort. Very clever.

venusinscorpio · 13/02/2017 10:40

Don't any of them stop to think that if their arguments were any good they wouldn't need to ban people who were not trolling, but politely putting forward a differing view, like Rebecca? Their arguments would stand on their own merits. But they only way they can keep up the level of cognitive dissonance is to censor, delete and ban any hint of an opposing view. They are dangerously stupid.

DianaMemorialJam · 13/02/2017 10:43

^^YES!!

They don't have any interest in engaging in the conversation, it's like a fucking cult.

BenLinusatemyhomework · 13/02/2017 11:04

Some numb nut on there is arguing that people with CAIS are completely female and can even have their own children, just so they can argue that xy chromosomes don't equal male. They really are just aok with throwing people with intersex conditions under a bus - wow!

venusinscorpio · 13/02/2017 11:22

Yes, it's all just collateral damage. Some monumental bellend was claiming that intersex includes PCOS so 1 in 40 people were intersex. And by extension all those people were transgender.

shins · 13/02/2017 11:29

And appropriating their experience for their own ends, same as they misappropriate the experiences of women and gay people. In her fabulous takedown of Riley J Dennis's appalling "if lesbians won't sleep with me they are like racists" screed, Magdalen Berns notes that if Riley and his "cis girlfriend" travelled to one of the many countries where homosexuality is illegal, no harm would come to them because they are a heterosexual couple, no matter what stupid pronouns they use. They have no right to appropriate the real experiences of gay people who are disgraced and imprisoned and even executed throughout the world. Jesus, I find all this shit bad enough as a straight woman, I can't imagine how beyond livid I would be if I were gay.

ErrolTheDragon · 13/02/2017 11:30

Oooh, maybe I should join in then as a legit trans person?

Oh wait. No. I got treatment for my PCOS so that my woman's body functioned better as a woman's body. Having pcos made no difference whatever to my 'gender'; it wasn't something in my head it was in my ovaries - PCOS is all about biology.

HeyRoly · 13/02/2017 11:39

I've never understood "but you just don't know which chromosomes a person has!" argument.

Is it because, and I'm guessing this is most likely, there are a subset of transwomen who wish they were an undiagnosed intersex person, because it would give credence to their assertion that they aren't biological males?

Thing is, I'm not sure how common it is to be an undiagnosed intersex person. Usually there are markers and symptoms that make it fairly obvious at birth, or at least by puberty?

I know the athletics world seems to have an unusually high number of intersex women who weren't diagnosed until their unnaturally fast performances were investigated (like Caster Semenya) but I'm guessing this is not the norm.

Bambambini · 13/02/2017 11:40

"I'm starting to think that some of these trans women are actually men just having a laugh at the whole thing? I'm thinking of doing it myself actually! Telling everyone I'm now a trans woman and seeing the reaction I get. After all, if bio women and trans women look the same, how will anyone know?!?"

A woman on twitter did this. Put AFAB transwoman on her profile. It was driving folk crazy with them seriously trying to engage with her and explain the whole thing to her. Very funny.

Bambambini · 13/02/2017 11:44

"I've never understood "but you just don't know which chromosomes a person has!" argument."

I think it's mostly young kids who haven't really had to deal with the whole messy reality that biology brings - basically, like pregnancy, birth, bf, infertility, ivf,menopause etc. Some transwomen also as they haven't had to deal with messy biology stuff us females do.

M0stlyBowlingHedgehog · 13/02/2017 11:48

Yes I've come across the "PCOS is intersex" bollocks before now - I too suffer from PCOS, and like Errol, I experienced it as something wrong with the female parts of my female-sexed body.

My DS has a minor birth defect, hypospadias, which should be as unimportant as having a tongue tie. For me as a parent a lot of the challenges in dealing with it have been round normalising it - making him feel it is just part of the normal range of difference within the male sex, rather than a big deal. (This matters because the big issue is bullying in school and psycho-sexual issues when he's an adult - I don't want him to have body hangups). I am dreading the day some transwhacktivist numpty tries to undo all the work I've put in to assuring him that male bodies come in all shapes and sizes and it is no big deal, by instead telling him he's actually intersex (he's not) or trans (well, he might decide at some later date that he is, but if he is it won't be because of a minor birth defect).

And the tragic thing is that these people are the Westboro baptists of trans issues, or the sort of way-out-in-the-wilderness Muslim preacher who preaches in defence of domestic violence. At a time when the majority of trans people quietly going about their own business genuinely need their civil rights defended (and I view this by analogy with religious freedom - I may not believe what they believe, but they're at liberty to hold those beliefs without threat to freedom, livelihood, housing rights, employment rights and without the threat of violence), transwhacktivists are driving wedges through the liberal community.

And we live in a time when we desperately need to be free to talk about biology - attacks on Roe vs Wade, or the law in Arkansas proposing that men would have to sign off on women's abortion decisions, or the fact that Trump's pick for Supreme Court supported Holly Lobby's attempt to allow employers to remove contraceptive coverage from company healthcare schemes - these aren't attacks on gender identity, they are attacks on women through our biology and because of our biology.

Everyday Feminism is throwing women under the bus, it's throwing the majority of trans people under the bus, it's throwing intersexed people under the bus - it's a fucking disgrace.

M0stlyBowlingHedgehog · 13/02/2017 11:50

Roly: "Is it because, and I'm guessing this is most likely, there are a subset of transwomen who wish they were an undiagnosed intersex person, because it would give credence to their assertion that they aren't biological males?"

There was an MTT who came on a thread and attempted at great length to convince us that they were almost certainly intersex, just had never been diagnosed as such - despite having fathered 3 children before transition.

DianaMemorialJam · 13/02/2017 11:57

Is there a link for a place where they try and explain how pcos makes a woman intersex? I'm struggling to see what on earth that has got to do with anything Confused

M0stlyBowlingHedgehog · 13/02/2017 12:02

Diane, I think the argument goes something along the lines of "PCOS can take levels of testosterone from about 0.5nmol/ml up to about 2 (normal male range is 10 to 30, for reference), and it can give you a hairy chin - so clearly this makes you part male."

To which my response is, "Um, I'll see you slightly hair chin and raise you pregnancy and breastfeeding."

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