Defining a woman by her sex is not reducing her to her biology

[MagnificentDelurker]

Hi mumsnet
Long term lurker here. First started reading mumsnet for education boards and then got addicted. I always avoided feminist boards. The reasons need another thread. Then I came across trans threads and I clicked on them as I did not have strong views on trans rights and it seemed a safe topic to explore feminist chats. I was off course supportive of said rights in an inactive let live way. IN fact I had to avoid these threads as well because I found the anti trans opinions too strong. But a seed of discomfort stayed with me and I braved the boards every once in a while and then I got hooked. I joked to my DP that I am being radicalised.

I finally registered today to comment because of the thread telling women here that defining a woman by biology is reductionist. This phrase really gets to me. Biology is the only way to define women that can accommodate all women regardless of personality or particular experience. This is the starting point of telling women that they can be anything. The other option is defining by degree of femininity or just expanding the term. So unless we make the term woman meaningless we are reducing women to feminist. I can understand many people meaning this when they say transwomen are women. But experting feminists to do so is beyond pale.

I have nothing new to add as everything I have said has been said thousands of times but needed to rant.

Failed men are not women and women most certainly are not failed men. Aristotle was a misogynist.
I had that same sort of dissociated feeling about my body for about a year after having spent a few month in hospital on dialysis. I am sorry you went through that trauma.
While your experience is not unique it is also not universal.

Women who participated in what is called the second wave of Feminism such as myself were perfectly aware that trans identified males are a subset of males. More recently Kimberle Crenshaw has had to explain that her work on intersectionality never intersected with males.
Trans advocates have been selling snake oil.

Perhaps we need to get girls to celebrate their biology, so that they see that they are not reduced as women. Periods can be reframed as the circle of life, breasts as what gives sustenance.

More recently Kimberle Crenshaw has had to explain that her work on intersectionality never intersected with males.

Is this online? I am in the middle of an argument with a male 'intersectional feminist' on another site who is telling me to go read/listen to Crenshaw and I will understand how me excluding males from the category woman is anti-feminist and the exact same thing as saying black women are not women The racist bit I can do on my own (and have, already put a rant to that, instictively without thinking through the reply) but it would be great to turn his ;educate yourself' nonsense right back on him

Here she is saying that intersectionality is NOT about identity politics:

If being female isn't a bad thing (and it's not) then it's not something to be "reduced" to.

And

Periods can be reframed as the circle of life, breasts as what gives sustenance.

The female body is amazing. It brings forth life. It can, all by itself, sustain a child.

Women have borne every single person on the planet, and every single person who has ever lived.

And I know, not everyone can, which is often source of pain. Which I genuinely do not mean to cause.

But that aside, it's a nerve that anyone can imagine women can be reduced by thier biology.

Women, and the whole human race, are elevated by it.

Thank you.

So many (usually male) 'intersectional feminists' seem to think that its literally just about saying male people are female. I have only ever seen it used in this context..if your feminism does not include transwomen, it is not intersectional, therefor it is bollocks kind of thing.

Its new to me though, this addition of blatant racism. I saw someone do it on twitter yesterday (maybe the day before) and now this guy..I wonder if theres been a new TRA memo or something. Seems odd that they woiuld all sltart basically saying that black women are the same as male women and if you accept black women you must accept males

Its new to me though, this addition of blatant racism.

New to me also until a few weeks ago.

People on social media asserting that a black woman's relationship to womanhood is the same as a transwoman's relationship to womanhood. I've never seen anything so blatantly offensive and racist in my life.

I mentioned this on another thread, but I personally saw three black women called "white feminists" for sticking up for Rose McGowan on Twitter in one single day this week.

They all started doing it at once, too, the "well if you don't think trans women are women then you must not think black women are women" thing.

Mate, everyone knows that black women are women (except TRAs, apparently). The specific ways in which black women have been oppressed are a result of experiencing both sexism and racism, and the way the two overlap and intertwine is what intersectionality was meant to focus on. Not on how everything intersects with penis.

I think it may have started with the argument that black women were excluded from white women's spaces in the USA prior to the civil rights movement.

TIMs are now excluded from women's spaces - but transwomen are women ( ) ergo - transwomen are like black women in pre-1960s America and we're all nasty. Or something.

It's not an argument that holds water at all (particularly not in the UK) - it is not a comparison to draw parallels with racial segregation in the US and women refusing to say that a man can be a woman.

It's highly offensive to call black women "a subset of women" - I can't believe anyone has dared to say this. I've even heard someone say that black women are not biologically the same as white women as a way of furthering the trans argument.

But I think it's indicative that this TRA movement has large white male supremacist component. It's just another stick to beat us with.