Are we arguing about the wrong thing?

[DonkeySkin]

Inspired by a Glinner Twitter thread...

In which Graham Linehan stated that Stonewall advisor Alex Drummond was not female, and that anyone who believes otherwise is 'nuts'. He was inundated with people arguing this point, including some accusing him of 'defining women by gender stereotypes'. Someone else tweeted separately in another thread (paraphrasing), 'I had no idea this many people were this crazy.'

But the thing is... they're not crazy, are they? All the people who espouse the ideology of 'gender identity', which that holds that male and female are a feeling-state, rather than a physical fact.

GC feminists often describe such people as 'delusional', but this is ascribing a level of good faith to them that is undeserved. People who are willing to state outright that a male person can be female if he says so aren't delusional. THEY ARE LIARS. They are lying when they say that sex is a social construct, and no one can tell the difference between male and female human beings, and they need to be called on this lie, not indulged with esoteric arguments about linguistics, metaphysics and (inevitably) intersex conditions.

Every single person on that thread arguing with Linehan knows as well as he does that Alex Drummond isn't female. So even arguing the point with them is attributing a weird legitimacy to this lie, by assuming that the people repeating it are making a good-faith argument.

Let me reiterate: nobody actually believes this. Every politician and high-profile person who smugly intones: 'Trans women are women' is perfectly aware that male human beings aren't female human beings. No one is truly confused about the difference between the class of persons who have the potential to impregnate, and the class of persons who have the potential to get pregnant. Nobody has lost their ability to tell the two sexes apart, and there is no way anyone can cognitively trick themselves into perceiving an obviously male-looking person as a woman.

So the disagreement about whether 'trans women are women' isn't a real disagreement. It's a cover for a different argument altogether.

This isn't a dispute between people who believe that male human beings are really female if they say so, and people who don't believe it. Because NOBODY believes that. What we are actually arguing about is whether female human beings should be permitted to define ourselves separately from males.

When people say 'trans women are women', they are not expressing a sincere belief that adult human males can become adult human females. They are asserting men's right to claim membership of the same ontological category as women, on their terms whenever they so wish. Conversely, and just as importantly, they are also denying the right of human females to have a separate ontological category to ourselves.

Feminists should not be reduced to arguing that women and girls exist as a real material thing in the world. Everyone already knows this. We need to stop arguing about whether 'trans women are women' and move the argument onto its true ground, by putting the case that women have the right to define ourselves – in language and in law – separately from males. Female human beings have the right to an ontological category to ourselves, a name to ourselves and the language to define our physical and social reality. And let the trans ideologues and their 'feminist' supporters argue the opposite, in all its stark brazen misogyny, if they wish.

Re 'delusional' - in the context of this discussion, 'deluded' is probably nearly always more accurate.

Oh dear, I went to check who snappity was, because Lastgirl mentioned her... And I was already deep into the Search function to hear the warning calls from others..., sorry...
Ok, there are people we will probably never be able to convince, because they need to hold on to their belief system for their own personal reasons.

But why do people not understand that people who hate their bodies, who dissociate themselves from their own bodies to the extent that they want to cut parts of it off and mould it to their imagination (like those who want to chop off one of their legs - sorry I don‘t remember who mentioned it further above) do, indeed, need our kindness and empathy. But a real kindness to see them as the troubled persons who need help to find a way to either accept themselves in their bodies, or (where the first is not possible) be allowed to make the desired changes to enable them to live their lives, but all the while being clear that this only addresses the symptoms of an underlying problem.

I think that the transgender-solution is so widely accepted, because it‘s easier to make changes on the level of individual gender status than tackle the big structural changes to address sex inequalities and sexism that is ingrained in so many institutions and processes. I.e. if you feel unhappy, go ahead and change yourself, but the socio-economic system that might actually be the original source of many of your problems won‘t change.

Great post Human

if you feel unhappy, go ahead and change yourself, but the socio-economic system that might actually be the original source of many of your problems won‘t change.

Oh my goodness, yes! I couldn’t work out why sex rather than gender was being defined as fluid or changeable and why the ‘easier’ option of eradicating gender wasn’t being used. But this makes perfect, awful sense.

I'm not on here every day and have only now seen this. The op is the clearest statement on transactivist ideology I have seen so far. Thank goodness some people can think, and thank you so much for posting it (following the spirit of the recent 'lurkers unite' thread).

Thank you for that wonderful post DonkeySkin.

I've been called a bigot by three women all of whom regard themselves as feminists but I can't be a feminist in their eyes because I take the same view as you Donkey and many others here.

I defend women's rights and especially gay women's rights.

As someone who's been a feminist since I read The Female Eunuch aged 16 I find this endorsement of TRAs by so-called feminists very troubling. Aren't they, in fact, endorsing men's rights over women's?

Long ago, in an early edition of the magazine Spare Rib, a reader's letter appeared seeking support for an organisation called P.I.E.

I didn't really understand the letter and forgot about it until the next issue, where another reader's letter made clear what exactly this was about and that the organisation was the Paedophile Information Exchange.

This is a similar situation, involving obfuscation and doublespeak to confuse the well-meaning, but it has gone much much further.

Ultimately, politicians need to be challenged on the absurdity of extinguishing a material category ('sex') and replacing it with a subjective belief ('gender identity').

This is what is missing from so many of the discussions about this issue elsewhere. Sex is real and objective, and protections and rights have been based around the differences in our sexed bodies. 'Gender identity' is a belief similar to religious belief, and should be protected in the same way, but it makes no sense to separate facilities on the basis of 'gender identity', which even the proponents of the ideology recognise is just in their heads.

The GRA reform is designed to do just as you say, and effectively replace the protected characteristic of sex in the Equality Act with 'gender identity'. If any man can declare himself to be a woman, and be legally recognised as a woman, there will no longer be any protections for women and girls.

As someone who's been a feminist since I read The Female Eunuch aged 16 I find this endorsement of TRAs by so-called feminists very troubling. Aren't they, in fact, endorsing men's rights over women's?

I think some older feminists still think of transwomen as the gentle fey boys of their youth - refugees from toxic masculinity. They are not aware that we are now dealing not with refugees but with invaders and colonisers.

Unfortunately I think there are also women, who call themselves feminists, who value actual women so little and men so highly that they are somehow flattered that men are willing to call themselves women.

I think some older feminists still think of transwomen as the gentle fey boys of their youth - refugees from toxic masculinity. They are not aware that we are now dealing not with refugees but with invaders and colonisers.

Unfortunately I think there are also women, who call themselves feminists, who value actual women so little and men so highly that they are somehow flattered that men are willing to call themselves women.

Agree with all of that.

I've been called a bigot by three women all of whom regard themselves as feminists but I can't be a feminist in their eyes because I take the same view as you Donkey and many others here.

It's good to see you here. I used to be on another forum I'm pretty sure you were on.

Wonderful post, Human.

I just wanted to add a link to a twitter post that suddenly made things very clear for me:

twitter.com/RadfemJana/status/1019981180110819328

"If you buy into "gender identity" and believe people are oppressed because of gender and not sex you spit in the faces of all the women who have been forced into child marriages, who have been brutalized because of FGM and women who have aborted because the fetus was female."

I think the last point, especially, hit me. Foetuses and babies don't have a 'gender identity'. They don't have any kind of identity at all. They can't 'think'. Yet millions of female foetuses are aborted and even girl babies murdered/left to die BECAUSE OF THEIR BIOLOGICAL SEX.

It is our biological sex that has required women/girls to be disadvantaged/discriminated against, NOT our identity. Transpeople can identify as chickens for all I care, it has zero relevance to the fact the women are discriminated against because of our biology and need extra support to deal with that discrimination.

Women have been fighting against discrimination based on our female biology for thousands of years and we will keep fighting.

I think some older feminists still think of transwomen as the gentle fey boys of their youth - refugees from toxic masculinity

Yes definitely but I would add that this perception is not limited to older feminists. This is definitely what the vast majority of the public thinks - that trans women are all former femme gay men who have had surgery and who usually pass reasonably well.

I told a friend the other day that there are trans women now who don’t have surgery or even necessarily any treatment, who were straight men before they transitioned and now identify as lesbians, and she literally didn’t believe me. She just laughed and accused me of being ridiculous.

I read somewhere, I can’t remember where, “if female is about identity not sex, how do they know which unborn babies to kill?”

I honestly thought that was it; nobody could argue gender over sex when faced with that question. I totally underestimated the fuckery some people are capable of - now I’m shocked but no longer surprised that people will argue that a man who raped a baby is female.

I told a friend the other day that there are trans women now who don’t have surgery or even necessarily any treatment, who were straight men before they transitioned and now identify as lesbians, and she literally didn’t believe me. She just laughed and accused me of being ridiculous.

Show her that recent news segment with Jess whatsisname the "non-binary woman" being indistinguishable from any other random male on the street while banging on about how scared they are of women holding meetings.

Sloth - that is the problem I have too. Everyone I talk to assumes we are talking about transsexuals, eg former gay men who now present in a very feminine way. I think this is why Paris Lees and Munroe are wheeled out constantly as the voice of trans, because they fit into this image, roughly. No-one believes me that the huge problem is with people who are attracted sexually to women, who may be AGP, and who have not had, and will never have, have surgery to remove their sex organs. So demonstrably no different from any other male, other than that they are stating that they are women. No one I know can get their head round this. Everyone equates it with gay rights and thinks of hyper-feminine gay men.

How do you work that out garden

Trying to make fetch happen.

Fetch meant cool in the mean girls films

Unfortunately I think there are also women, who call themselves feminists, who value actual women so little and men so highly that they are somehow flattered that men are willing to call themselves women.

This is a HUGE part of the reason some women are so passionate about advocating for the inclusion of males as 'women'. It's an unexamined misogynist belief and it also needs to be pointed out, because the women who hold it are likely unaware of it.

They make that misogyny explicit when they say that people who stick to the biological definition of woman 'reduce women to vaginas and wombs. How insulting.' What they are expressing here is the belief that is there is something reductive and insulting about being a human being with female reproductive biology, such that any category which contains ONLY those persons must necessarily be a degraded and inferior one. It is only by including by including people with male biology in the definition of 'woman', they believe, that women can achieve full humanity. They actually argue this openly.

there is something reductive and insulting about being a human being with female reproductive biology, such that any category which contains ONLY those persons must necessarily be a degraded and inferior one

It's exactly the same impulse which is causing female people to identify 'out' of womanhood.

If you assume that possession of a female body and reproductive system renders you intrinsically inferior it's no surprise you might want to believe that sex is a social construct that will wither away when everybody attains enlightenment.

I said this in another thread. People, including some women, talk about expanding or broadening the definition of “woman” as if it is a waste of a good word for it to mean only “adult human female”.

Very well said. I can confirm that even diehard trans activists, in calmer moments, say ‘of course we aren’t arguing that’ - you correctly state that it is an ideological position. How we are to best meet that position is a question in and of itself. You are probably right that the correct counter-argument is that women have a right to define ourselves.

The obvious test case for the argument might actually be ethnicity. And if we are to accept that a self-proclaimed gender is legally binding, then it follows that whites people should be able to claim that they’re are black, and be received as such by the black community, and vice versa. You would, in practical terms, make it illegal to ‘see race’.

The kickback from the black community against whites who claimed to ‘not see colour’, with the latter from a privileged position initially being unable to see the problem with that stance is a good case study. It is also an argument that has been largely won by the black community - it is now mostly accepted that it is daft to claim to not see colour, and that it diminishes and invalidates the structural inequalities ensured by PoC.

There are also other useful symmetries. In academic terms, neither gender nor race are ‘real’ but social constructs, while the same cannot be said for sex or ethnicity, which are indisputable facts.

We should take this as the template, perhaps. The two cases are mostly parallel. Those who start from the structurally more privileged position and argue that they have the right to impose ‘not seeing gender’ on those who have to live with hegemonic social constructs are the dominant voices in the debate.

And, just like in the US many white people feel that PoC have more privileges (a.k.a. when you’re used to privilege, equality feels like oppression, whether the numbers support your position or not), so many dissatisfied men argue that women have more privileges ‘these days’.

If we allow ourselves to step back from the often infuriating arguments in the heat of the moment, this picture is really quite clear.

White people who used to say (like the GOP pretty much did 100%) that racism was over and that they ‘didn’t see colour’ are now revealed as precisely privileged and rather clueless. Hiding racism to yourself doesn’t make you a less racist person, and black people never bought it.

Can not precisely the same be said and seen now, albeit with sexism in place of racism? Neither value is necessarily visible to the person holding it; in fact, outright racists and sexists are usually easier to deal with (albeit more explicitly unpleasant). We cannot rely on men seeing their own sexism, even when they ‘identity as women’. While I would not make this judgment of those who transition medically, those who choose to retain intact male bodies are quite obviously comparable to DJ Westwood.

Yep, Oscarino. Why waste a perfectly good word like 'woman' on lowly creatures with cunts, when it could be so much nobler, imbued with the humanity that only penis-havers can bestow?