I tried to post a long reply on the Are You A Feminist Yes Or No thread, and it closed before I could post it.
But this bit here is relevant to this thread so I'll post it here.
Then lets look at all women short lists for things like employment or politics.
Somewhere on here is a comment along the lines of "it should be the best person for the job, even if that person is a man not a woman."
That sounds fine, until you look at those photo's of Donald Trump and his all male meeting in the White House, deciding the fate of women's healthcare and all the things that go with it.
Do we really believe that that room full of men are "the best people" to decide what happens to women when it comes to our health?
That there's not even one women in America who can match them in terms of education and political experience?
And that even if there isn't a woman who can match them in terms of education and political experience, there's not anything about being a woman that might make women better placed to talk about what they want and need in terms of healthcare?
Not one man in that room has ever given birth or had a period or needed treatment for an illness or ailment that mostly or only affects women, or had to lie about needed contraception because of bad period cramps rather than for birth control, or had a termination.
Yet apparently they're still somehow 'more qualified' than any women who has ever done any of those things, to make decisions in women's best interests. Really?
Because we know that Women's healthcare (and that includes contraception and access to on demand terminations) is about more than our health. It's about our safety, our economic stability, our right to choose when and how we have sex, and who with, and how often. It's about our families, the children we have, the jobs we do, the places we live. It's about our right to represent ourselves.
And that's just as important when it comes to women as it is for people of colour, people who have disabilities, any group of people who are not self-represented but should be.
Women have been kept out of politics, denied the vote, and told that men know better for years. That's why we have and need all women short lists or 'positive' discrimination now. Because historically we've been excluded and we are still, as the Trump photo proves, being excluded now.
In 1917 a woman called Margaret Sanger was put on trial for advocating birth control in America. She was told by the judge that "no woman has the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no conception; if a woman isn't willing to die in childbirth she shouldn't have sex."
That still seems to be an opinion held by too many people in power in the USA right now. Do you know when rape in marriage finally became a crime in all the states? 1993. So women in 1917 had no right to refuse sex if they were married but didn't want to die in childbirth. It's still relevant now, because women are being denied contraception or insurance by men in power. Employers can decide for their employees if they can have birth control or not on their insurance.
Look up what Ruth Bader Ginsburg has to say about women making reproductive choices for themselves rather than have the government do it for her.
As the government will be involved to some extent, we need to ensure that woman have roles in that government that allow them to speak for themselves and from experience a man will never have had.
So when Labour are opening up all women short lists to men, that's a problem for me too. Women are again being silenced, because someone else's 'feelings' are somehow more important than everything women experience as women. And again, I don't believe saying so makes me transphobic, it's just a convenient way of saying shut up to women.
If feeling angry about any of this, if feeling like women are being overlooked and excluded once again, if thinking that my body does actually make me more of a woman than someone else's make up or outfit or feelings, also makes me a transphobic TERF, then okay. But it really doesn't.