Why do TRAs keep using black women when defending TWAW?

[ScienceIsTruth]

I saw this tweet the other day, and it never fails to shock me when they keep using this argument.

They've been asked not to, and been told why it's offensive, so why do they persist?

Do they honestly think it will endear others to their cause?

I really don't get how they even thought it made sense, or was relevant. To me it makes no sense at all as the 2 subjects have absolutely nothing in common.

They also don't seem to be worried about it alienating people.

It's a bit like saying seahorses are the same as black horses, when they're so obviously not.

"That was when the civilized white men wrote law that defined white women as sub human and the women and men of races other than white as animals."

Yeah, that's true but they questioned black womens' humanity not womanhood. They knew we were women when they raped us to breed more slaves.

They knew we were women when we were forced to undergone torture in the name of gynecology. Hell the female body was based on enslaved black women.

The Rachel Dolezal case is always dismissed as a 'false equivalence'.

And here black women and trans women are the same.

Someone's having their cake and eating it.

Bollocks is it.

And identity around race/ ethnicity, while obviously totally fraught. Is way less defined than biological sex. FFS. The thing that all mammals know. The thing that is the most basic thing. To procreate. We are animals fgs. Mammals. The idea that sex is irrelevant is just ludicrous.

And the people who say it is are unusually very pro porn and prostitution. Sex isn't so irrelevant in those things is it. In fact. Zero leeway.

I find it weird how this US centric logic gets plopped into the UK and beyond.

Do they think being a black women is outside the norm in, say, Ghana?

It really gets my goat when some blue haired lass from Newcastle is tweeting y'all and folks and going on about US issues and laws. Do you know where you live pet? Do you not have anything to say about your own backyard in your own words?

Yeah it pisses me off as well.

I don't understand how anyone can take their own countries history values language etc and so casually extrapolate it to the whole world.

That's another topic. But it's happening more and more on mn and. They won't back down even when there's a horde of posters saying we are from the UK it doesn't mean that here etc.

It's so daft. 😂 I always think of the fact that there are loads of types of cats but none of them are dogs.

It's funny how it's always white people - and usually white men - making this argument. Never seen a POC use it, even if they're fully on the TWAW train. Funny that.

It really gets my goat when some blue haired lass from Newcastle is tweeting y'all and folks and going on about US issues and laws. Do you know where you live pet? Do you not have anything to say about your own backyard in your own words?

Exactly, or when British people or organisations are waxing lyrical on 'bathrooms'. Generally, trans people only share your bathroom if you live with one or invite them over. I've never heard a British person refer to the toilets as bathrooms outside of the TWAW argument, which shows that they're just repeating stock phrases without even so much as going to the trouble of localising it. Which says a lot tbh.

Has there ever been a rights movement so selfish, lacking in empathy and respect for other oppressed groups hard fought for boundaries? That’s without getting into the fact that here in the UK they don’t actually lack any rights, but just want extra ones...

It just shows the white male privilege of trans activism.

The argument that had been made to me is that black women were historically excluded on the grounds they would make spaces unsafe for white women, due to their inherently more violent nature. Now we know better. It is therefore obviously wrong to exclude trans women because of the risks of male violence, and TRAs are on the right side of history.

Any argument about male violence is met with ‘even if that’s true, and it probably is just a myth based on prejudice, then it’s still wrong to exclude’.

I think it’s belief based and therefore impossible to counter. If you truly believe TWAW due to having female brains, then the risk to adult human females from male violence doesn’t exist and there is no reason to exclude trans women.

Confused thinking that relies on being able, only, to identify specific social groupings in the 'hierarchy of oppression' intersectionality tables. And in so doing displaying profoundly racist, and sexist, thinking - without understanding the basis of either.

@despairenting

It really gets my goat when some blue haired lass from Newcastle is tweeting y'all and folks and going on about US issues and laws. Do you know where you live pet? Do you not have anything to say about your own backyard in your own words?

Exactly, or when British people or organisations are waxing lyrical on 'bathrooms'. Generally, trans people only share your bathroom if you live with one or invite them over. I've never heard a British person refer to the toilets as bathrooms outside of the TWAW argument, which shows that they're just repeating stock phrases without even so much as going to the trouble of localising it. Which says a lot tbh.

Spot on posts. And it's always another white person who points out that one is white ffs. Which is a bit redundant here in Ireland. People outside Dublin still use the correct plural of you in conversation : ye. But online it's "y'all" and ' white ppl be like' . Oh grow up lads. Ye are not straight outta Compton. But then the whole TRA thing is mostly happening in their heads.

I remember quite a few American racists on social media claiming that Michelle Obama was a man and that her DH was secretly in a gay relationship. Some even compared her to a monkey. It made me wonder if they were blind given that she's such a beautiful woman.

I don't recall ever seeing these slurs from people who weren't American. Quite the opposite. The Obamas had the highest approval rating here in the UK of any POTUS and First Lady in recent history.

So the comparison is only made by the most extreme American racists.

It's so they can accuse you of being racist, make your lady-doubt kick in so you shut up.

Maybe it's my ASD but I'm not affected by any of these routine slurs. Being called a TERF, accused of racism or transphobia? Water off the proverbial.

I know these are meaningless insults. I know I'm not a bigot. My feminism includes women who identify as men. Means I'm a PERF - penis exclusionary radical feminist - and I have no problem saying so.

Claims of transphobia are never directed at the men who might threaten or assault men who identify as women. No, it's always women. Women with opinions no less. Accusations of transphobia mean nothing when saying that people can't change sex qualifies. So, like I said, none of it makes me break stride any more.

I love perf. Can we make it a thing?
Kinda sounds like puuurr. Divine.

It's related to the 'white feminism' insult which came out of the intersectionalist view that the feminist movement was focused too much on the interests of middle-class white woman. That's been twisted into arguing that feminism excludes black women and finally into this idea that feminism - second wave feminism - is explicitly racist. The fact that it serves TRAs to claim this is no coincidence.

TRAs (and their less glitter Sparkly MRAs) ALWAYS have a touch of racism about them. Always.

SilenceIsNoLongerSuspicious Fri 01-Jan-21 11:33:18

The argument that had been made to me is that black women were historically excluded on the grounds they would make spaces unsafe for white women, due to their inherently more violent nature. Now we know better.

BUT THEY WEREN'T. There was never a justification for racial segregation based on black women being dangerous to white women. Am I wrong? Can someone find me a real source on this that's older than the trans debate? In all my studies of racial segregation, I never came across it, and I haven't found any sources when I searched. As far as I can tell, this was made up by trans activists circa 2016-17 during the South Carolina trans bathroom debate.

This is inevitably what happens when trying to engage with an ideology that feelings create reality, not facts. And facts are something you selectively take from to back up your chosen reality while setting aside the ones you don't like or which impede you in your pursuit of your own personal truth, including re writing history if its what you feel probably happened.

SetYourselfOnFire
BUT THEY WEREN'T. There was never a justification for racial segregation based on black women being dangerous to white women. Am I wrong? Can someone find me a real source on this that's older than the trans debate? In all my studies of racial segregation, I never came across it, and I haven't found any sources when I searched. As far as I can tell, this was made up by trans activists circa 2016-17 during the South Carolina trans bathroom debate.

I don’t know - its the argument that was made to me. I couldn’t counter it except by saying that men are overall more of a risk to women than other women. They argued that black women were historically excluded because racism meant they were seen as a risk, as not important, as not deserving of protection due to something they can’t change, and that that’s exactly what is happening to trans women. Given the history of black women, I agree that that is how they were seen and appallingly treated (and still today, though in less obvious ways).

That is where I got stuck. If you see trans women as a subset of women, then that argument works. If you see them as men who wish to identify as women, then that argument works as long as you assume that all men who identify as women do so in good faith. The person I was arguing with made both those assumptions (which isn’t logically consistent, I know). So they were left thinking I was a bigot, equivalent to a racist.

I wasn’t able to counter their argument. Which is why I’ve raised it on this thread - it has bothered me for over a year.

It's not historically accurate. White women weren't scared of black women. It was about status, in the same way the upper classes in the UK used to have servants' entrances and front doors for their fellow gentry.

If, in the era of segregation, white women had been scared of black women, not a single one would have employed a black woman as her cleaner, or her cook, while she was alone in the house. White women would have treated the prospect of being alone in the house with a black woman in the same way as they treated being alone in the house with a strange white man.

And finally, black women would never have been trusted to nanny for white children.

Now we know none of that is true. In America, black women have been trusted to look after white children and to cook and clean for white people since forever. It wasn't a white man taking care of Scout and Jem in To Kill A Mockingbird.

Pothole - thanks! That makes sense to me on the threat argument. But I can also see the counter-argument, which is that white women did not treat black women as equals because of their lower status. That lower status was based upon something about them that they couldn’t change. We now all agree that’s not OK.

So why is OK to treat trans women differently (based on status, rather than perceived threat)? You could argue that its a status which is not lesser but different, but that just leads to how ‘different but equal’ is discrimination by another name (which I agree with). Which takes me right back to what I think was the basis of the original argument - whether you see trans women as a type of woman or a type of man, and the logic that it’s not OK to exclude any type of woman. This view is often backed up by the argument that sex segregation is old-fashioned and mostly unnecessary anyway, which is easier to counter (religious women, women who have been victims of violence). But the core point remains, and I think is the crux of it - anyone who believes trans women are a type of woman will see any exclusion of them as equivalent to racism, and given that starting position, I can’t make a logical argument for why it is not.

The lessons on the history of racism and race relations have been fascinating, and I definitely need to do more reading.

No type of female is excluded from female single sex facilities. No type of male is included in female single sex spaces.

Juggling semantics does nothing to change this.

The juggling incidentally is based on destroying female boundaries: essentially to make it plain there is no way female people can keep male people out who want to be there.

The power play and oppression and sheer sexism involved then becomes immediately apparent. This is about total lack of respect for female people to have boundaries around their own bodies that inconveniences male agendas. There's nothing inclusive or progressive or intersectional about it. Hence the death threats, rape threats, pictures of male people with swords for the threatened murder of females who dare to question the right of a male to be in a room where they are undressed if that male chooses to.... these are not the actions of a poor little oppressed and downtrodden underclass is it?

Don't get confused about the reality of sex and you won't be confused by any of the rest of it.