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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Owen Jones article

84 replies

WiseUpJanetWeiss · 15/12/2017 07:30

Not open to comments yet. If it does, maybe an opportunity to state the case?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/15/trans-backlash-anti-gay-zealotry-section-28-homophobia

OP posts:
BatShite · 15/12/2017 12:32

Owen is just a fucking parody these days. I can't believe how much I used to love this little twonk.

PrincePooPoo · 15/12/2017 12:44

Opponents of trans rights are losing, and they know it, hence the viciousness. There are brilliant trans voices emerging – like Shon Faye, Paris Lees and Munroe Bergdorf – but the media surely have a responsibility to provide a greater platform. And just as gay rights was once seen as the preserve of the “loony left”, trans people are desperately lacking in influential media allies.

Sorry I haven't read the whole thread yet, so this has probably been mentioned already, but FFS all the 'brilliant voices emerging' are male. He can see that? No trans men? He doesn't give a shit about Trevor infiltrating la leche league, does he. Vaginas and milky breasts, doesn't care about that..

Ereshkigal · 15/12/2017 12:45

What's "brilliant" about them exactly?

PrincePooPoo · 15/12/2017 12:47

They have penises and also eyeliner.

media.giphy.com/media/75ZaxapnyMp2w/giphy.gif

BatShite · 15/12/2017 12:53

I hate how its always put across as 'opponents of trans rights' as if we do not want trans people to have human rights. 'We' just disagree that men should have womens rights. Its quite different.

Thehairthebod · 15/12/2017 12:55

So would Owen Jones be attracted to transwomen because they have penis, or transmen because they present as men? Or both? In which case he is not gay then is he? Or is he?

I am not saying he should be attracted to this or that, but am just a bit confused.

Thehairthebod · 15/12/2017 13:05

PrincePooPoo your posts are 👌

OlennasWimple · 15/12/2017 13:13

Yy ellaoldie. How short our collective memories are that we make the same mistakes over and over

Hands up here who has never been called an idiot? Or a plonker? Dickhead? Anyone?

Collidascope · 15/12/2017 13:51

He and Jeni Harvey have been arguing on Twitter. The basis of his argument seems to be "you're on the same side as right-wing men so must be wrong." You have to wonder, at what point do people who can't actually defend their position logically and who are forced to resort to childish crap like this, start to consider that maybe their position is the wrong one? She's trounced him so far.

PrincePooPoo · 15/12/2017 13:52

So would Owen Jones be attracted to transwomen because they have penis, or transmen because they present as men? Or both? In which case he is not gay then is he? Or is he?

No, it's erasing him as a gay man, I believe were his words, to ask him he would have sex with a transman.

But transwomen are women and he's definitely a gay man.

PrincePooPoo · 15/12/2017 13:57

you're on the same side as right-wing men so must be wrong.

What like the tories he means? They support self ID.

Or does he mean fundamentalist Christians who think women should be women and men should be men and gender is real and god's way. and people have "souls".

Or does he mean conservative like Iran who force gay men to transition because being a woman is shit but at least better than being a man who sex with other men?

Trans ideology is totally at home with conservatives.

nauticant · 15/12/2017 17:21

The Guardian are being pretty spineless with their have-their-cake-and-eat-it approach. Mainly they're publishing trans-supporting articles by the likes of Owen Jones but are too afraid to open comments in case they get push-back on what they've published.

Every now and then they test the water with an ever so slightly non-trans-supporting article and again avoid opening comments even when they say in the article that they will.

They want to virtue signal that they're pro-trans, they want to, in the most tentative manner possible, suggest that they've not completely bought into that narrative, and they're terrified to be associated with any gender critical views.

They are bloody useless at the moment. In fact, that's been the case for years.

irretating · 15/12/2017 17:29

No, it's erasing him as a gay man, I believe were his words, to ask him he would have sex with a transman.

Goodness, did he actually say that?

According to Rapey Riley, this would mean that OJ is a penis fetishist, transphobic and cis-sexist.

CaptainBrickbeard · 15/12/2017 17:32

I would be really interested to see Owen Jones respond to catgirl’s post. It makes far more sense to draw an analogy with race than sexuality.

QuentinSummers · 15/12/2017 19:17

Great Twitter thread here and I'm particularly pleased one of my favourite authors liked it

mobile.twitter.com/make_trouble/status/941689637260709888

hackmum · 16/12/2017 12:24

Lily Maynard has written an excellent response to Owen:

lilymaynard.wordpress.com/2017/12/16/i-know-whos-going-to-be-on-the-wrong-side-of-history-and-it-isnt-me/

Worriedrose · 16/12/2017 13:59

@catgirl1976
Brilliant
Please post in on his twitter account

BarrackerBarmer · 16/12/2017 14:07

I can't shove both feet into one shoe. 'Woman' can be worn by females, or by males-with-beliefs.

If male people who use the word w o m a n to label themselves are correct, as Owen thinks they are, then the other, female, 3.7 billion humans suddenly are nameless. I'm not a male-with-beliefs so I'm not a woman.

Because if woman means XY, testicles and an innate brain type deemed to be shared by that group, it excludes us.

Which leaves us with
*50% men,
*

SlowlyShrinking · 16/12/2017 14:23

A brilliant article indeed hackmum
Paris Lees and Pete burns: separated at birth. An uncanny likeness!

irretating · 16/12/2017 14:25

''Can I be a transwoman? No. Why not? Because I am not a man.''

This, just this.

Ereshkigal · 16/12/2017 14:29

Barracker Thanks great post.

bananasaregood · 16/12/2017 14:30

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

bananasaregood · 16/12/2017 14:31

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Worriedrose · 16/12/2017 14:35

But @BarrackerBarmer
We are cis women now. Don't you know.
So trans women ARE REAL women, ergo they've taken our name which (wether we like it or not) have had for millennia.

And we get to have the new name they have given us

IcedCocoa · 16/12/2017 23:21

We do not call women in the past cis-women because that would be anachronistic. So why should we call them that now?

Our reproductive systems- whether they work or not - have not changed. So there is no biological difference between women now and in the past. You can argue that better nutrition and health has led to some changes (earlier menarche, fewer cases of contracted pelvis) but the basic reproductive system remains for female humans, as the system which has eggs, ovaries, uteri and XX chromosomes - however well these things work or not. So nothing about biological women has changed.

So we are left with the things adult human females are allowed to do, the ways they can dress, the options open to them - in other words, gender characteristics. Gender based ideas are still based on some understanding of sexed reproductive biology.

Moving away from dress and make up to reproduction, gendered ideas of women’s place in the home were based on has babies = caring and nurturing = female, for example. However, we recognise that men can be caring and nurturing, even if it is seen as a feminine gender trait. So understanding that men can care for babies too is progressive.

Staying with this example, we do not need to argue that the nurturing man is then a woman. It is sufficient to acknowledge the progression in gender roles that child-rearing is not solely based on the sex of the parent. That is progressive.

For a long time, men with babies had a problem because change tables were in the ladies. So we now have change tables in the men’s or separate baby rooms.

Now I get confused. If the same man was told that he was a woman because he was looking after a baby, that would be regressive. Very few men with babies tried to argue their way into the ladies to use the change tables; society rightly recognised the need for a different solution.

But if this man self-ID’d as a woman, because he is doing something long associated with the feminine, we are going to hail it as progressive? Nothing else changes apart from him adhering to a social gender-based role as a main carer. And he wishes to identify as a woman as a result. He says he is a woman, and his wife is a cis-woman (although maybe she should be a trans man because she is the main breadwinner, and that is a stereotypically masculine role).

I mean, it is nonsense, isn’t it? It is perfectly possible to seek solutions which don’t impinge on female space or erase women. Men looking after babies (historically female) challenged this stereotype without suggesting women could not do it and should not have Mother & Baby magazine anymore, and should give up their change tables or let men to use them and so on. And yet men looking after babies (SAHDs) must be as much of the population as trans people.

I don’t know if the analogy works, but it is helpful maybe to look at other instances where gender-based social change has been affected without impinging on same-sex space.

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