The "Transwomen are women" thing

[Battleax]

Bear with me for a moment.

( @Ekphrasis said something interesting on another thread about what closes ears to what we're saying and I've been thinking about closed ears more generally.)

Would it work better to sidestep the whole "Transwomen are women" mantra instead of taking it on?

Just talk about "natal women" having different needs to "transwomen". Every single time.

Because I think "no they're not" stops the brainwashed from listening.

Previously someone tweeted 'this is pure genius'
and Hattie tweeted a thank you, then Stella tweeted about it being pure fiction.

Ah thanks.

The way to combat this is to turn it around.
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Trans women are trans women. Why are they ashamed of this to the point of lying about it? They should embrace it. Being a trans woman is a unique status. It should be celebrated and supported.

Are trans women so ashamed of their trans identity that they need to lie to themselves and others about it? It’s very sad that they can’t embrace their own unique identities and experiences and feel the need to lump themselves in with women.
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I think this is the way to approach changing the narrative.

I'm 100% in agreement with this. TIM's and TIF's have walked a painful path and I recognise that/I am respectful of that. It needs embracing and owning.

It's certainly a worthy approach to try as all other approaches cause animosity and fall under the TERF term that's so handily chucked our way when we refuse to acknowledge them as women.

Miranda Yardley for instance - she speaks amazingly and is very compelling to listen to - in fact I've learnt an awful lot from listening to Miranda talk - I rather think I love her a bit . Miranda is extremely protective of women's rights and will not declare herself to be one. She said in a podcast I've recently listened to, that transition is brutal and harrowing and the surgery is not the answer to transsexuals prayers; she firmly advocates lots and lots of counselling from someone who challenges your 'trans' feelings instead of instantly validating them.

I'm unable to think of another way to get my opinion seen as actually recognising and embracing the trans community, because merely saying "trans women aren't women" makes you a person of hate. Apparently.

And on the back of that, their medical status has to be recognised in a medical setting as their bodies have different stressors. They're still vulnerable to male cancers yet the surgery some have may require/may make them susceptible to different infections.

To deny this and have TIM's demand validation by being requested for smear testing for example is a monumental waste of time, money and is simply not a biological reality.

Sorry - my first post should have been in bold (the first 4 paragraphs) as I was quoting Nanny's post.

Hi Smarties Always nice to be quoted.

I agree that the denial of medical reality is so dangerous and really odd. The mental gymnastics to achieve it must be quite amazing.

But you are also right about embracing the main trans community. A lot of this stuff is student politics. There are quite obviously many trans people who don’t feel comfortable with the TA narrative. We should go out of our way to embrace them. This is the biggest demonstration we can make that we are not transphobic. We just don’t believe, as most people (even trans people) don’t that trans women are women.

That position is not trans phobic. It is based on our understanding of trans biology and their specific needs and how different those are from that of women.

I normally reply that I respect their religious belief that transwomen are women, but I don't share it. Same as I respect my christian friend's belief but don't share it.

Magical thinking innit. In any discussion stay on track, state issues and concerns, if you don't convince the person you are talking too you might convince a lurker.

I know one of the councillors on the letter regarding the getting rid of transphobia within the Labour Party. He's, quite frankly, a hypocrite, and has always voiced negative opinions regarding AWS.

Magical thinking innit.

I like "I respect your belief."

I prefer, “I respect your right to hold your belief”.

For me it’s more honest, if less snappy.

Or even, “I don’t share your belief but respect your right to hold it”.

But all women have different needs. I think it's better to point out that transwomen don't face the same disadvantages that some natal women do as a result of their female bodies. Our bodies are the things that make us most vulnerable especially re childbirth and the aftermath, PND, pressure to breastfeed, likelihood of staying home to raise the child and therefore become financially dependant on your husband/wife etc.

Women - stitched at birth by people who recognise our biology, or stitched up in life by those who don't.

But all women have different needs. I think it's better to point out that transwomen don't face the same disadvantages that some natal women do as a result of their female bodies. Our bodies are the things that make us most vulnerable especially re childbirth and the aftermath, PND, pressure to breastfeed, likelihood of staying home to raise the child and therefore become financially dependant on your husband/wife etc.

I've seen feminists try to make these softly-softly arguments, and it ALWAYS goes badly. The TRAs just retort 'not all women have children, are you saying childless women aren't women, you are reducing women to breeders, how regressive and misogynist of you.'

Saying that 'transwomen' (aka men) have 'different needs' to 'natal women' (aka women) never works. Because it is disingenuous and skirts the main issue, which is that the world is hierarchically organised according to sex, and all women, whether they have children or not, are born into the female sex caste, and this impacts every aspect of our lives, even though we are otherwise a very broad group with different life experiences.

Femme-presenting men are not female, they are never treated as female, and if they are discriminated against it is because of homophobia, not sexism. Further, just because a man presents in a feminine manner, it does not mean that he has rejected masculinity; indeed anyone with enough exposure to trans-identified males can see that many are aggressively male dominant and virulently misogynistic.

So saying that our needs are different is misleading, and hides the fact that the needs of women and TIMs are not just 'different' but antithetical. Women need to get rid of femininity for our liberation, TIMs need to shore it up otherwise they'd have nothing with which to signal their 'womanhood'. Women want an end to the portrayal of us as objects for sexual use, many TIMs get off on being portrayed as helpless fuck objects and this is where their cross-dressing fetish started (google sissy porn if you dare). Women need to be recognised as a distinct class of persons in order for sexism to be tackled, TIMs need to obliterate the meaning of 'woman' so that it can include them. And so on.

MaidOfStars - succinct and unfortunately very true.

I've seen feminists try to make these softly-softly arguments, and it ALWAYS goes badly. The TRAs just retort 'not all women have children, are you saying childless women aren't women, you are reducing women to breeders, how regressive and misogynist of you.'

But those objections are easily dealt with by pointing out that ALL women who suffer birth injuries have given birth; ALL women sacked on maternity leave have given birth; ALL women thrown out of cafes for breastfeeding have lactated (and 99.999% of them have given birth; ALL victims of FGM are girls; and so on.

If they then want to go back to screaming about "the centring of biology being transphobic" let them. It's very revealing.

I think the "lurker" that Damn talks about and the 'floating' majority are paramount in all of this.

I've seen feminists try to make these softly-softly arguments, and it ALWAYS goes badly. The TRAs just retort 'not all women have children, are you saying childless women aren't women, you are reducing women to breeders, how regressive and misogynist of you.'

Yes, I agree with this. It has to be more basic 'Do you have or have you ever had a penis?'.

because, despite what the TRAs say- there is NO SUCH THING as a female penis.

Battleax, why do you think lurkers are more likely to be persuaded by timid arguments that are based on lies, rather than strong, clear-headed, factual ones?

When I first started reading about this issue, some five years ago, I was on the fence for a long time, in large part because all the obfuscatory rhetoric around it meant I was unable to get a proper handle on what was going on. When I discovered bold, unapologetic radical feminist analyses of gender identity politics, it was like diving into a cool clean pool after wading through sludge. It was a feeling of sheer relief, that someone was finally making sense here. It was a relief to abandon the double-think that men could be 'women', and the guilty feeling that I was a bad, mean woman for doubting it. And more than that, it was so galvanising to see women unafraid to speak the truth, in the face of the insane gaslighting being done to us in the name of 'gender identity'.

I'm not interested in further gaslighting women by pretending that TIMs are another type of 'woman', and as mentioned above I've never seen that argument work to persuade anyone that TIMs should cede ground to women on anything, because somehow, you'll find, everyone who has swallowed the TWAW mantra invariably believes that the needs of the penis-bearing 'women' should always take precedence over those of the old fashioned, cunty kind (TY to whichever Mumsnetter came up with that one).

One thing I do agree with you on is that sometimes different approaches are needed depending on audience. Sometimes rather than outright stating that TIMs are men, it's better to pose a question (How can someone 'feel' like a woman?) that gets people thinking. And no one will be persuaded by women getting angry and appearing to 'pick on' TIMs (because almost everyone sees them as very vulnerable men, and everyone finds women's anger unseemly anyway). We need to stay calm when presenting our arguments and always attack the sexist and incoherent ideology itself, rather than individuals. It's actually very easy to do this: trans ideology falls apart under rigorous questioning, that's why TRAs are so focused on shutting down debate.

I feel like I’ve just had a breakthrough.

I’ve been in a bit of a Twitter hole and I’ve noticed the same thing happening again and again, that people don’t understand that self id is happening. That people don’t know what it is and what it means.

I think we need to be like. ‘I know that as a trans person you get a lot of abuse from people who don’t want you to wear certain clothes and behave in a certain way, but that is not our position.
We think that trans people should get the medical treatment they need and we fully support them living a full life without harrasement.
We do not however support the proposed changes in the law to move to self id. Keeping the 2 years to transition and a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is vital to keep women and trans people safe.
We also believe that women should be allowed to remain the right to classify on sex and therefore retain the right to have single sex services.’

Battleax, why do you think lurkers are more likely to be persuaded by timid arguments that are based on lies, rather than strong, clear-headed, factual ones?

I don't.

That's interesting Deadly.

If people don't realise, it's not really surprising given all the all-purpose wail of "transphobia/bigot/hate crime" that's constantly being thrown up. It's very effective as a smokescreen.

Yeah I noticed it on one of the threads we had here yesterday where the trans woman came on ‘to show us we had nothing to fear from people like her’ and it turned out she had no idea about self id and was actually horrified by it.
Looking at twitter I’ve seen loads of ‘no one is going to go through the rigmoral of transition if they aren’t serious’ and asking what ‘self id’ is. I really think this is where we need to put our attention, in actually saying clearly what self id is and what t means.

I’ve been in a bit of a Twitter hole and I’ve noticed the same thing happening again and again, that people don’t understand that self id is happening. That people don’t know what it is and what it means.

Yes, absolutely. In the UK Reddit thread about the AWS petition, the top-voted comment said something like, 'Why on earth would a man go through surgery to have his penis removed, take hormones, change his name and dress and turn his whole life upside down, just to get on a Labour all-women shortlist?' Which just shows how confused the general public is about what is actually going on here.

I think this confusion is largely due to the term 'transwoman', which most people think is a synonym for transsexual, when 'transwoman' actually means 'literally any man who identifies as such'. It's another reason why feminists need to use trans-identified male, or TIM, rather than the Orwellian 'transwoman'. Clarity of language is paramount when making our case.

Okay then. That's a plan.