“You’re reducing women to their genitalia!”

[53rdWay]

Have seen this kind of thing a lot on Twitter etc recently. Argument seems to go: “by linking vaginas/wombs with womanhood, you are reducing women to their genitals, and this is awful.”

Am confused. Because while I as a person am of course more than my genitals, my sexed body is what defines me as a woman. My “womanness” resides entirely in my body and the sex class of that body.

So if I can’t say “my sexed body is what makes me a woman”, then what DOES make me a woman?

My brain isn’t what makes me a woman.
My soul isn’t what makes me a woman.
My hobbies aren’t what makes me a woman.
My tastes in film and TV aren’t what makes me a woman.
My clothes aren’t what makes me a woman.
My ability to apply makeup isn’t what makes me a woman (and is also nonexistent).

So if it’s not my body, what is it? And why is it “exclusionary” of me to say that it’s my body, and not something else that I can’t define and don’t know about?

Anyone managed to have an actual conversation about this where there was an answer to that? I would genuinely like to know.

This drives me up the wall.
The joy of language is that there are lots of words. "Woman" does refer to genitals, chromosomes, etc. Thankfully, most of us are more than that. And there are other words to describe those other traits.
I've said it before but Donald Trump isn't limited to merely being an elected head of state when we call him a president. He also manages to be annoying, racist, sexist, unfaithful, narcissistic etc.

It's so stupid but particularly upsetting to hear it from feminists who would have been discussing abortion and women's health 5 years ago.

''Biology is what defines us as men or women'' is the only rational answer. There's no debate possible with people who are acting in bad faith. Just stick to the facts & dont bother trying to convert them.

It is interesting that they constantly try to use shame as a counter argument.

It's a complete straw man. Woman is a biological fact: it isn't just genitals its pelvis formation, orbital bone, ovaries, uterus (dont forget the wail at this point of 'so are people with removed ovaries/menopausal not women then?! - a: no doofus, they are women with a medical issue) and female chromosomes. Born of the sex that provides ova, gestates and gives birth. It's not complicated.

At this point the script prescribes a snarled: 'biological essentialist Terfy terf terf bigot terf dieinafire terfing terf!'

To which the answer is: theres no such thing as a 'terf' you tedious fool Yep.

Ask them to read this (and I had to stop half way through it was so difficult and haven't quite got round to continuing) and then ask them why we mustn't define woman by their sexed body. And it still occurs today.

reneejg.net/2017/02/07/a-call-to-feminists-to-remember-the-history-and-sex-based-nature-of-womens-oppression/

This is quite a good takedown of that premise.

Basically, if you take the wheel off a bike, is it no longer a bike?

No, it's a bike without a wheel.

Plus: if an archaologist digs you up in a thousand years from now they will have no difficulty categorising you to either male or female. How you identify in your head is relevant only to you and your immediate and current social context.

(Howl of 'Intersex')

At which point you open the script on 'Intersex is a medical problem affecting a tiny number of people; people born without legs due to a medical problem do not disprove the human race being bipedal'

To me I guess the only times we need to say woman as distinct from person is when referring to something that is related to their chromosomal difference to men. so the person is not being reduced by saying that the person is a woman, they are being more clearly defined. To be reduced would mean that the other aspects of being a person were somehow lost. But since women is subset of person they are not. They inherit all the features of person with the additional features of women. Object oriented programming anyone?

You have two X chromosomes.

Woman is a biological identifier. It’s in pretty much every cell in your body, regardless of hysterectomies, mastectomies or ridiculous TRA loopholes.

I think women face two types of oppression. One is due to how the gender is seen and reacted to... and that doesnt really have to do with genitals but just with more external markers. So that type of oppression would also apply to transwomen.
However women are also very much or have been historically very much controlled via their reproductive system and their actual bodies. So they DO need to be able to discuss and campaign about that. Sadly that doesnt apply to transwomen.
I support the rights of trans people but I do wish trans activists would acknowledge that it is important that the experience of being born with female genitalia is able to be campaigned about and discussed under the label of feminism because it is actually a very important issue. Its not a case of people with vaginas insisting they get to use the word woman exclusively, its a case of society having for hundreds of years labelled people with vaginas as women and controlling and oppressing them using that label and so we have to campaign using that label. Its not our choice for Gods sake! We didnt choose the word woman to be associated with vagina but you cant deny that it is and that people are discriminated against using the combination of having a female reproductive system and also female gender characteristics. That DOES need to be discussed and that isnt transphobic. Its not our bloody fault. And if we stop talking about it in those terms that leaves people with female productive systems who have been assumed female by society since birth at great risk.

I do think that people with a penis can live as women but I do also think that it is essential to acknowledge that the experience is different from living as a woman when you have a vagina and also from being born with a vagina and living as a woman.
We cant all be forced to use the same language and labels because then some peoples experiences are left without description and hence their oppression is left without description hence they are left vulnerable to it.

Humans being a sexually dimorphic species just is what it is... women have ovaries, a uterus, vagina, can (barring infertility) bear children, have breasts which can lactate (without industrial quantities of artificial hormones or an underlying endocrine disorder).

None of this should have any bearing on our humanity - our political, moral, economic, intellectual and social value as human beings. It is a (subset of) men who insist that our female bodies determine our status as (in their eyes) lesser beings who are the ones practising determinism/essentialism (and a completely spurious and eroneous form of essentialism at that).

However, we do need to be able to talk about our biology, because that is (a) the reason why men choose to oppress us (men as a class stand to gain materially from our reproductive ability) and is (b) the reason why they are able to oppress us (because we are on average smaller and physically weaker and uniquely vulnerable to being forced into pregnancy, then doubly vulnerable once we are pregnant/looking after small children).

It's means, motive, opportunity. The biological fact of sexual dimorphism provides the means and motive for our oppression. The patriarchal societies men build provide the opportunity.

Yy Hairy

I agree Midgebabe. I think they way forward with all of this is to keep highlighting that for the vast majority of instances people are just people and it is unhelpful to bring the categories males and females into things.
I think the only reason to draw a distinction is for reasons relating to biology.
Can anybody think of reasons for drawing the distinction other than those relating to biology? I might be overlooking some important things.

Excellent Peachyoghurt video! And holycheeseplant’s link is amazingly written but I’m finding it really hard going too given the subject matter. Valuable though, I will save that link.

Does the non-vagina kind of feminism have a word for the class of biologically female people?

One is due to how the gender is seen and reacted to... and that doesnt really have to do with genitals but just with more external markers. So that type of oppression would also apply to transwomen.

This might have been somewhat true in the days when TW=post-SRS HSTS transsexual.

But it really doesn't cut the mustard today when 80% of TV are AGP men.

Approximately 000000001% of them "pass" when you're up close and personal. And approximately 000001% of them "pass" from a distance. I mean, only about 10% of them even pass with a gazillion Snapchat filters brushing up the selfies.

Only a tiny proportion of TIMs experience sexism or misogyny. What they experience is mostly homophobia, from homophobic men (not feminists) who don't see much of a difference between a TIM and a gay man. Both failed men. Both, to use an old fashioned term popular with homophobes, inverts.

Conceding that TIMs experience sexism is just validating them as women. Which is what they want. So I won't be doing it.

I probably should have said that article is quite triggering. Apologies. I was quite affected by it and I have had no past history of sexual assault or abuse.

"If you say all vetebrates have spines, you are reducing them to their spines!"

It's a bit of a tricky one to spot because it relies heavily on nuances of language but in a nutshell:

The argument uses the verb 'to reduce' in two separate ways but without actually repeating it (thereby making it multifunctional, so to speak).

'Reduce' #1 is meant to convey a reduction in numbers, i.e. the argument is 'you're only counting as women individuals with a certain type of genitalia' and implying 'reduced down by a range of further legitimate candidates for womanhood'.

'Reduce' #2 is metaphorical and borrowed from classical feminist rhetoric. It means 'you're failing to acknowledge the personhood of [already accepted as such] women as opposed to pieces of meat/objects'.

Quite insidious, actually, in that it misdirects sympathy for objections to #2 to the implied accusation in #1.

Just one of the many straw men used. They also try to use intersex to show there is a natural variation in sex and thus sex doesn’t really exist. I’m getting so sick of their deceit, hypocrisy, bigotry and outright stupidity.

straw men

I hope you aren't assuming the gender of the straw person? That's literal violence

I think if someone said to me “You’re reducing women to their genitalia!” I'd respond "Oh no, you're the one calling attention to that, but it's far more, it's the chromosomes that do it. People can have their bodies rearranged to make some better or worse imitations of the other sex's genitals, but the biggest differences are the things you need a microscope to see." Like fingerprints, except every cell in your body knows whether it's male or female.

Am wondering if a big part of the issue here is that gender identity doctrine is so very very focused on the individual. No concept of class. Therefore, no concept of something being used to define women as a class, rather than being used to reflect positively or negatively on an individual.

Oleanna

I'm a sea lion! Talking to me is violence!

Just light strokes on the belly please.

I might tell them not to be so prissy. None of us would be here if it weren't for genitals.

This absurdity is pretty obviously the accusation aspect of DARVO.
Are all trans identified males abusive?