A woman is an adult female human

[Pratchet]

Of the sex whose reproductive role is to gestate and bear young.

Let's just say this while we still can. Because it's true, and however many people try to make us lie about it, or remain silent, it will always be true.

In times of universal deceit, speaking the truth is a revolutionary act.

It hurts MY feelings to see 'transwomen are women'. It damages MY mental health to see that, it makes ME feel erased and MY identity feel destroyed. I have a voice and I deserve that voice. WE deserve it.

I am Spartacus. A woman is an adult female human. Sex is binary, immutable and defined by reproductive role.

If you report me, or get me banned you shoot the messenger. Because this is true and will always be true. And this day, this day of a lie, I WILL say it.

#Spartacus

Reading these threads with dismay again.

Why is anyone surprised at MN's stated policy on the transgender issue? This site is a commercial venture and the forums are a vehicle for advertising placement. Opposing the tide of the transgender lobby by giving equal voice to those who disagree would be commercial suicide for MN bearing in mind the ferocity and stamina of the lobbyists.

This won't change, those lobbyists won't change and the oppression of women carries on relentlessly. Support, if any, will have to come from elsewhere.

All this is going to do is to internalise discontent.

I studied history, including classical history, and the call for women to be liberated from the shackles of their biology is peppered in large amounts throughout recorded time amidst the cream of misogyny that still exists. Nobody who is erudite likes it, and no one who is erudite has pretended to be a woman until now.

@Glitched - thank you (genuinely) for sticking around. I hope you can see that we are not transphobic, we are trying to protect our definitions.

I understand that you're trying to be inclusive but it is at the cost of the very word that can define us adult human females. If you 'alter' it, it means something else, completely. After hundreds of years of fighting for something approaching equal rights, it simply isn't acceptable to then have to re-define the very word WOMAN as c i s woman.

Thrice I'm surprised because this is a basic truth. This thread title doesn't even say 'trans'women' aren't women' which in my view would be a more appropriate response to Mordaunt's claim. So I am quite surprised at this level of criticism. But yes I agree we will be protesting on the streets in the end. We'll have to. I think there'll be hunger strikes if the GRA goes through.

@quizteam

But you don't speak for all women. Many women are perfectly happy and able to expand our definition to include trans women.

There are a minority of very vocal women here that are determined to deluded another group of women because they don't look like them on the outside.

*exclude

Not deluded

Glitched what is your new expanded definition then?

Can you please explain what someone with female biology and no gender has in common with someone with male biology and believes they have a "woman" gender?

I believe them when they say they are trans.

So do I, for heaven's sake. Gender dysphoria is a real and recognised illness and can be devastating.

What it doesn't mean is that all women's rights, scant as they are, should be automatically ceded to men who suffer from it.

It's really quite bizarre that anyone thinks they should. I have no idea how we got to this stage.

Fucking hell! We've hit a whole new level of Orwellian insanity here.

Someone up thread asked if we can extend the definition of woman to include men who say they are women. The answer is NO.

Many women are perfectly happy and able to expand our definition to include trans women.

According to Pink News, hardly a GC source, that many amounts to 18% of women. According to Panelbase, that many amounts to 25% of women agreeing that a change of legal sex should be based on self-ID.

You are articulating an extremist, minority position.

"every human alive knows what a woman is"

This is true. But for some reason, we are slowly being moulded and pushed around into pretending we don't know. Or if we do know, we mustn't speak about it.

How can it be 'weaponising' to state the truth? on any day at all, not just this day, when there's special reason to, when Penny Mordaunt,on the opening day of the debate, says that the starting-point is that a man is a woman if he says he is?

But you don't speak for all women. Many women are perfectly happy and able to expand our definition to include trans women.

Okay glitched, in order to reassure women that the definition of woman isn't going to change to mean feminine, because let's face it, even you have to concede that will put women's rights back 50 years, what is the new definition?

I agree to a certain extent Glitched

But I see MRAs upping the ante and getting both trans and women excluded from society. You accord 'feminists' with a lot of power, that feminists do not have.

YET!

Amen op!!

Biology matters not surface similarity.

Women are oppressed, defined and systematically excluded from power due to their biology.

TWAW ignores biology and in so doing ignores women.

And a NO from me, too.

But for some reason, we are slowly being moulded and pushed around into pretending we don't know. Or if we do know, we mustn't speak about it.

Exactly.
What is happening is wrong.
Emperor's new clothes - we can all see but we daren't say.
Wake up. Wake up before it's too late for your daughters, your granddaughters to own their biological identity.

Haven't yet RTFT but will after work so apologies if this point has been made - but we've already to some extent lost the battle around the word 'women' as I keep seeing 'natal women' on here and in the press. So it's already lost its meaning without qualification. Which I think is very sad and requires efforts to reclaim it - hence the need for threads like this?

Bold fail above. Try again. But for some reason, we are slowly being moulded and pushed around into pretending we don't know. Or if we do know, we mustn't speak about it

Words aren't being weaponised by us, our words are being appropriated and used against us. If we let them take our words we have nothing left to describe ourselves. That's not ok.

But woman isn't "your" word. Trans women are women and it is their word too and they have been using it for decades. You are trying to take it from them and that is very different. Maybe 30 years ago, it could have been done, but for a generation now trans women have been women.

Glitched, it's fine. Just give us the expanded definition of 'woman'. Do you support unisex services and spaces always and everywhere? If not, can you see why accurate definitions are important?

Or define 'men' if that's easier and less contentious.

OK i understand why nobody would PM me info on the other place. I'm new here I didn't realise I didn't have a public profile! I do now. I'm sorry. So can someone PM me please

Glitched Can anyone be trans then? What do you have to be to be trans?