“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.

langcleg but isnt homophobia based somewhat in misogyny? I do think that men who are aggressive towards trans women and indeed gay men or even just effeminate straight men do it because of a hatred and mistrust of all things feminine.

I've seen this argument on Twitter too and I think it's a but difficult to put into 240 characters how much it infuriates me, because invariable what follows is 'Not all women have a cervix / uterus / ovaries etc. I think that this is just another way to shut us down and stop us talking about our biology. A way of making us second guess ourselves because we dont't want to cause offence.

FGM used to be seen as taboo and only now women are feeling comfortable to talk about it, but now survivors are told the term FGM is hurtful to those who've had bottom surgery. So they get shut down.

Periods were once seen as dirty so women felt ashamed to discuss whats normal and what's not, what's treatable and what is manageable. But some transwomen find it 'triggering' so we get shut down.

Menopause is still a dark secret, but transwomen don't experience female menopause and so please don't discuss it.

Transactivists hijack the experiences of infertile women and women who have had hysterectomies etc and say 'They're just like us' but don't give a shit about women who have experienced these things and certainly don't want us discussing it.

It's mysogynistic and divisive. An old tactic with new words.

The heath and happiness of womens' genitalia are really quite important to them. When there is an issue of any sort, from illness, dysfunction or abuse, it's quite awful. So yes I'm going to keep talking about womens' genitalia till no woman ever has to fear the illness of, dysfunction of or abuse of her genitalia.

did I get the apostrophes right?!

It's about as sensible as saying that by saying that human beings have 2 legs and 2 arms, you're reducing them to their limbs.

It makes fuck all sense, like their whole mad ideology.

isnt homophobia based somewhat in misogyny

Homophobia and misogyny have patriarchy in common but otherwise, no. Women's oppression under patriarchy is a result of men controlling the reproductive capacity of women (to ensure paternity and allow capitalism to have free care labour).

If you conflate the two, you are diluting the nature of women's oppression and playing into the hands of transactivists. That's what they want you to do.

In my experience, if you talk to a homophobe long enough to get a handle on what's actually driving them, it's fear of male violence. They know how shitty men can be - the idea that a man might be a rapist is far from being an alien concept to most men (the la la la la la fingers in ears NAMALT brigade aside - most men actually know that a fair percentage among them are violent, and often sexually violent). Homophobia tends to be driven by the fear of finding oneself the victim of male-on-male rape (of course, still statistically less at risk than a woman, and I suspect many of those rapes are actually perpetrated by men who would describe themselves as straight, because rape is about power, not sex or sexual orientation, but homophobes don't realise this).

Homophobia is a side-effect of misogyny. Patriarchy requires that the gender categories 'masculine' and 'feminine' are kept distinct from each other and specific to their designated sex classes. Therefore gender-nonconforming men must be disqualified from the category 'men' (and gnc women from the category 'women) lest they disprove the identity of gender and sex and overturn the conceptual basis of patriarchy itself. Gay men must therefore be treated as if they are not men, i.e., not really people.

(Pretending that sex doesn't exist doesn't affect these relations, it just makes them harder to talk about)