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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

WTAF?

44 replies

changemymindabouttrump · 11/06/2018 18:13

Men have uteruses??

I really feel for the kids growing up today. I'm 34 and I'm bloody confused 🤷‍♀️

WTAF?
OP posts:
AncientLights · 11/06/2018 20:41

If a 'trans man' gets pregnant unintentionally or whatever and decides to terminate, no abortion provider is going to say 'you may still have your female reproductive tract, which currently contains the products of conception, but because you call yourself a man we aren't going to let you have an abortion'. What world do these people live in? Oh scrap that daft question, it's obviously some alternative universe.

Baroquehavoc · 11/06/2018 21:49

According to the government 4850 GRC have been granted, if half of those are TM, that's 2425 TM. Even if all of those TM require a termination, thats a tiny percentage of the total number of procedures. Do we pretend that it's not women who use the services of these clinics?

Women and, unfortunately girls need to terminate pregnancies. Pretending otherwise is denying biology.

OrchidInTheSun · 11/06/2018 21:57

Given the tenuous grasp on biology so many young people seem to have, I think it's crucial to make it crystal clear that only women can get pregnant and so may want an abortion

NotTerfNorCis · 11/06/2018 21:58

Synonyms:

Transwoman, man, male.

Transman, woman, female.

A transman is a woman and a transwoman is a man. Otherwise they would not be 'trans'.

ErrolTheDragon · 11/06/2018 22:05

I've just checked a lot of dictionaries for the definition of 'uterus':
'The organ in the lower body of a woman or female mammal where offspring are conceived and in which they gestate before birth; the womb.'

SameTerfDifferentUserName · 11/06/2018 22:30

Millie’s parents need to do a much better job of supervising her internet use!

BarrackerBarmer · 11/06/2018 23:33

There is one word for the people with uteruses. It's a really useful word, because it's a pure descriptor of that single type of bodily anatomy. It makes no reference to personality, colour or creed, or 'identity'.
It allows people to refer to this group which possesses this characteristic body type. Without having to further qualify it.

One word. For one body.

Which fuckwits decided to take a perfectly useful objective word for a body type, try to imbue it unnecessarily with personality traits and feelings, and then behave outraged that the word they spoiled no longer fits?

How strongly do you resist the idea of a single word for a single body type, genderists? And was there ever a more obvious demonstration that this movement is about erasing mention of WOMEN?

One word for one type of body.

Female.

SupermatchGame · 11/06/2018 23:44

Can't any legislation apply to those who were assigned female at birth regardless of how they may choose to present in later life?

I think it's more about being inclusive, and respectful to those trans men who have the right under law to identify as men if that is who they feel they are. They have the right to have that identity acknowledged.

MyRelationshipIsWeird · 11/06/2018 23:50

I would desperately love for hoards of teenage boys to turn up at their GP after having unprotected sex and ask for the morning after pill now that they’ve been taught that it’s not just women who get pregnant. Might make them a bit more careful to be fair!

Pratchet · 11/06/2018 23:50

My grandfather in law thought he was the Duke of Wellington. Funnily enough no one gave him a state funeral.

NoSquirrels · 11/06/2018 23:51

The whole thing really does make you feel kind of old, though, doesn't it?

Non-binary or gender queer people getting pregnant - OK, I can understand this. Do not associate with any gender, so no need to be labelled one way or another, do what you like sexually and socially.

But trans men who get pregnant means they have been having sex with a male, presumably, to be exposed to sperm somewhere near their female reproductive organs? Of course I see that there might be cases where this is from coerced sex or rape, and that would be awful. But if we are to consider generally that a trans man might need an abortion, then we are back to the weird position of where really honestly and truly surely it is just ridiculous to say that it's a valid choice for a trans man to be having 'gay sex' with another man who was happy to put his penis in a 'male vagina'? That's just a sex fetish and nothing to do with gender, surely?

It's like the lady penis thing for the trans women who are 'lesbians'.

I feel very old indeed.

And of course no abortion service will turn anyone with female reproductive organs who needs an abortion away because of their gender status in legal terms!

Alwaysfrank · 11/06/2018 23:58

"I think it's more about being inclusive, and respectful to those trans men who have the right under law to identify as men if that is who they feel they are. They have the right to have that identity acknowledged."

Surely that would be the least of worries for a transman presenting for a termination which is what I thought this thread was about? The male identity at that point is completely at odds with the matter at hand.

Ereshkigal · 12/06/2018 00:27

How strongly do you resist the idea of a single word for a single body type, genderists? And was there ever a more obvious demonstration that this movement is about erasing mention of WOMEN?

Quite telling, isn't it?

mancheeze · 12/06/2018 02:37

Maybe I should get some snacks and munch while this thread devolves into explaining biological sex class, YET AGAIN.

Cake
DancelikeEmmaGoldman · 12/06/2018 03:43

The one thing, the one single thing, the female body is designed to do is produce young. Millions of years of evolution created sexual dimorphism as the most efficient way of reproducing vertebrates.

The rest of it; clothing, mannerisms, bodily decoration, segregation, is down to culture and politics.

While not all women express their biological destiny, all women are biologically designed to do so. That's an objective reality. Everything humans do beyond that is about society.

So I am bewildered that someone, who's body is enacting the biological function of woman, can at the same time, believe they are biologically male.

You might say, "as a woman, I choose to express myself as culturally masculine", and that's a valid position, I suppose. But the whole pregnant man thing is cognitive fantasy.

Even the non-binary idea is strange. It's not as if society is composed of GI Joe on one side and Barbie on the other. The only measure of a binary person would be that they identify completely with whatever society considers 100% feminine, and not only does such an unsaturated ideal exist, nobody, nobody, is such a thing.

I suspect this whole issue is an expression of extraordinary cultural anxiety. We know that under stress humans flock to the familiar, to people like them. When the definition of "people like us" becomes so rigid, people seem forced to choose a side.

Over the last couple of decades, as the world is getting more precarious, we seem to have narrowed the definitions of what it means to be female or male. In the 80s, an era of relative prosperity in the Western world, it was much more acceptable to present with a fluid gender performance.

Now we sexualise little girls, demand even more complex presentations of femininity (eyebrows/nails/waxing/debriefing/designer handbags/fashion etc), while at the same time idealising some forms of masculinity (worship of the armed forces, super heroes and the like).

Is it any wonder that girls who don't feel they can or want to, fit into the hyper sexual femininity demanded of them by society, retreat into a version of masculinity? Or that men, unable to be anything other than vulnerable human beings, take one look at the aggressive expectations of masculinity and decide that they'd be better off in a dress?

The ultra-fearless hero who society exemplifies as the ideal of masculinity does exist. He has a genetic mutation which interferes with the physiological stress feedback loop - so they feel less fear. On the other hand, they tend to die younger from heart disease.

It is no more possible for the rest of us to be that genetic mutation than it is for us to change sex. But choosing the way we express our personalities, personal beliefs and values is entirely within our capacity, and we all do it every day without having to create some fiction of biological transformation.

We have a social problem, not a biological one. Even animals, driven by biological determism, have personalities and culture. I wonder why humans, with so much greater capacity for self-expression, seem so bent on constructing such rigid frameworks to contain us.

Perhaps Marxist analysis would come in useful here, and the question we need to ask is how this construct benefits capitalism? Who benefits?

changemymindabouttrump · 12/06/2018 08:06

Twitter restored my nerves this morning when I came across this fb post being shared Grin altogether now...

WTAF?
OP posts:
Bowlofbabelfish · 12/06/2018 08:16

Excellent post dance - heartily agree.

SophoclesTheFox · 12/06/2018 08:25

got that as an ear worm now, changed Grin

AngryAttackKittens · 12/06/2018 08:33

Gin for Connie!

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