Can TWAW be compared to being "colour blind"

[ABitCrapper]

Please bare with me on this as I'm not sociologically educated, or as academic or literate as lots of you on here.
But I remember a time when lots of people used to say they didn't "see colour" and explain that racism didn't really exist in our culture any more.
And now people don't say that as actually we need to recognise that BAME people experience racism, microagressions, discrimination and unconscious prejudice.

So people currently are saying TWAW, or not "seeing sex" but gender. When actually we need to acknowledge the differences in order to protect against discrimination etc. Against transwomen and women in various situations.

So could TWAW be seen as a meaning-well but ultimately unhelpful message to profess.

And if we take this tack, rather than a more confrontational approach (speaking for both TRAs and GC here) then there might be a better chance of meaningful dialogue.

Or am I just niaive and hopelessly optimistic?

But if this approach - make it a bit passe and actually not very woke - can swing some people, open up communication with others, then actually it not be worth a try? Especially as it is true that you need to acknowledge differences to be truly intersectional and deal with discrimination.

Rat - your position is fairly close to mine, I think.
In most social circumstances, I would treat trans women as women. I'm no more worried about being assaulted than I am around anyone else. There's some occasions when I think risk assessments are required - we've seen today the consequences of not doing that, headlines about trans rapists in a women's prison don't help the majority of trans people who just want to get on with their lives.

Problem comes when I'm not allowed to organise around things which only affect people born with female bodies as women's issues. I've literally been told, repeatedly, that abortion isn't a women's issue, when it seems obvious to me that it's about the place of women in society.

I can't organise groups around the shared realities and linked oppression of being born into and living in a female body. My life would have been very different had I been born with a penis, I want to talk to other people who share these experiences, and I can't. I'm not even allowed 'no cis men' as the basis for a meeting. Seriously.

I'm not allowed to talk about my own experiences of gender identity. I was born into a female body, which leads people to treat me as a girl or woman. I identify as a woman on the basis of a lifelong history of facing shared systematic oppression, which has shaped me in significant ways. I genuinely don't have an internal sense of gender identity. I've been disbelieved and told that it's transphobic even to say this, over and over again, by so many TRAs, but it is genuinely my internal sense of self.

The term 'woman' has a particular meaning that I need to talk about my own lived experience. I don't object to trans women talking about their experiences as trans women, or as currently living in a social role as women. But I need a word for people like me, and I keep being told that I can't have 'woman' any more. I'm being constantly redefined as 'menstruator' or 'cervix haver'.

I've spent most of my adult life around some of the extreme TRAs who are discussed on here. The moment I started to get uncomfortable was when I wasn't allowed to use the term 'female' or 'female-bodied'. Yes, biological sex is complicated, but almost everyone ends up with a body which is clearly either phenotypically female or male, and intersex organisations have put out statements asking TRAs to stop appropriating intersex struggles.

I want a world where people can do what they want with their bodies, without being limited by social roles. But we still need words to talk about bodies.

I grew up being told that I was a failure at being a girl or woman, and therefore failed at being human at all, because I didn't conform to shitty social norms, I loved sports and science and didn't care about my appearance. I work in an otherwise all male team, with male dominated hobbies. This doesn't mean I stop being a woman, if anything it foregrounds it, because I'm more subject to patriarchal bullshit based on shitty stereotypes of womanhood.

My body was never wrong. My body didn't need changing. My female body was not the problem. The whole concept of gender was the problem.

I need words and space to talk about this, and extreme TRAs keep telling me to shut up.

I don't want to stop other people wearing what they want, using the names and pronouns they choose. I don't want to stop them doing what they want or going where they want, except a very few circumstances which need risk assessments, like rapists in women's prisons.

I just need a bit of space and language for me, and to be able to talk about my life to people who share my experiences. That's all. But having spent most of my adult life around extreme TRAs, I'm not allowed that.

Please bare with me on this as I'm not sociologically educated, or as academic or literate as lots of you on here.

I have a PhD in STEM (Biochemistry) and I am telling you, this postmodernist gender shite is totally over my head. I frankly doubt the problem here is my or your lack of education or intellect.

So could TWAW be seen as a meaning-well but ultimately unhelpful message to profess.

Initially, there might have been some truth to it, but at this point anyone who wants to understand does understand there are differences in socialization and - who would have thought - biology. And in fact a number of outspoken transpeople, particularly transsexuals, are allies of women and are 'on record', getting it.
Others, however, are too caught up in their narcissism and mysogyny to concede the obvious. They want 100% validation. And not just as 'equal' but as 'the better women'. The comments on how they are more 'woman' you and me because of their pornified outfits and bodies are legion (I haven't seen the analogue in transmen. Maybe there is, but I bet it is very rare.)

I don't think we can ever have common ground or dialogue with that type of transpeople, unless women accept being subordinated. (Which surprisingly many, even within the elite, apparently do.).

ABitCrapper I think you're right. How about;

'Its not nuanced enough. Its not intersectional, and doesn't eliminate discrimination''.

To say
TWAW but only sometimes. Sometimes they are not
Means TWAW is false. It's a lie. So it opens up a whole shitshow of problems. This is what's happening right now in our legal and cultural systems.

GC women are not all man hating get out of the same room as me in all situations women. These women don't actually exist. The people who do exist who are shaping policy and influencing schools and government policy are those who believe TWAW in every circumstance and our male biology is in fact female. I can name at least 5 immediately. LM SF JF PL AC.

Mostly to Rat but generally aimed if you have never heared these ppl talking about women and trans issues you really really need to listen to them.

I do agree with OP that this is an effective argument to make. I think many people who think of themselves as 'woke' would be more likely to pause for thought if asked whether their understanding of intersectionality includes a recognition of having female reproductive biology as an axis of oppression? And if so, isn't it problematic that women who face oppression both for being women and for having female reproductive biology (I know, I know...) are silenced and shamed as bigots if they raise concerns about sharing space with or competing physically against those who have male reproductive biology?

Especially as it is true that you need to acknowledge differences to be truly intersectional and deal with discrimination.

Yes. And of course being trans intersects with feminism - that's where trans men are. Feminism is about all females regardless of their personal identities.

GNCQ it's not that I think TW=W only sometimes, it's that for me (and please don't make me define it, I've done that before and it was a loooong thread!) "woman" has different meanings in different contexts. Like the word "adult". You can be a legal adult but socially you may still be seen as a child. Biologically speaking an adult is an organism that has reached sexual maturity, but demonstrably that isn't the same thing as an adult in the eyes of the law, OR in the eyes of society!

So for me, TWAW all the time, in a social and societal sense. But there are instances in law and in society where different types of women can be legally segregated, like in sports or potentially in rape refuges etc. That's when the biology thing comes in, and you say "yeah, people with this biology need to do things a bit differently from people with different biology". And I think that's absolutely right and valid.

Like I say, where I come to blows with people is over what those circumstances should be, what approaches should be taken to achieve it, and who should be in charge of making that decision.

Hope that makes sense.

I agree OP, let’s face it, only men can become trans women, therefore their health needs are very different to women’s & it is rediculous to assume they can be called women.
I have sympathy that they do need a 3rd space, ie sending a trans woman to a male prison could put them in danger-but the current practice of putting trans women in women’s prisons will not last forever. (I hope)

I agree OP

But there are instances in law and in society where different types of women can be legally segregated
Forgive me, but that doesn't sound terribly positive.
We've been segregated by class, by marital status, by race already, for centuries. I thought the whole idea of feminism was strength in numbers, and some solidarity on the basis of all being the same sex?
On a practical level, any legal division within the category is subject to legal challenge. We've seen some big money thrown at the trans agenda and I have no reason to believe it would dry up if the GRA changes passed. Malicious litigation to tie up organisations that don't have the money to fight it already happens.

People who say TWAW can be grouped into two groups: the well-meaning 'colourblind' woke types, and the aggressive, misogynistic TRAs. For the first group you might say TWAW is a meaning-well but ultimately unhelpful message to profess. For the second it is an announcement of their determination to erase womens' sex-based needs and rights, and, ultimately, women as a class.

TWAW is wrong. It is wrong in every way possible. It is both a mistake and a lie.

I find it particularly interesting that transsexuals - post-operative, living-'as women', GRC'd, etc - don't appear to subscribe to this belief, either.

But there are instances in law and in society where different types of women can be legally segregated

What, like black women, disabled women, Jewish women, dead women?

There is only one type of woman. There is only one thing that all those women have in common, and they do not have it in common with men. Transwomen are not a 'different type of woman', because transwomen are men.

So let me correct that statement for you:

But there are instances in law and in society where the two different types of human - females and males - can be legally segregated

We've been segregated by class, by marital status, by race already, for centuries. I thought the whole idea of feminism was strength in numbers, and some solidarity on the basis of all being the same sex?

I think I was a bit confusing with that bit; I mean simply things like Muslim women are allowed to do things separately from non-Muslim women when it is a proportionate means to a legitimate aim.

In the same way women without the protected characteristic of gender reassignment can do the same when it is a proportionate means to a legitimate aim. And of course women with that protected characteristic can do the same.

That's the only form of legal discrimination where protected characteristics are concerned.

I find it particularly interesting that transsexuals - post-operative, living-'as women', GRC'd, etc - don't appear to subscribe to this belief, either.
Do you think that is because they are living their lives as they want to and are less concerned with "gender" (as many posters here have never considered their own gender, and have posited questions on what "feeling like a woman really is" outside the generally accepted Shania Twain definition of men's shirts, short skirts, colour my hair, do what I dare )?
Or maybe because people tend to accept them more (in the spirit of fairness and live and let live)? (Not sure how true that is unless they pass well)
Or maybe, having put all that effort in, they finally see things from our perspective? Or is it just that they recognise they have a lot to lose if there is a backlash?
Genuine question, Twainisms excluded. Why are the supportive transsexuals supportive?

TWAW is more akin to religious belief in something provably wrong, such as transubstantiation. For some people, transubstantiation is a real actual thing that they believe really happens, for others, they maintain a social belief in it because it makes other people happy and for yet others it's a fiction, completely untrue and in some cases harmful.

I mean simply things like Muslim women are allowed to do things separately from non-Muslim women when it is a proportionate means to a legitimate aim.
Such as what?

RatRolyPoly do you mean separate to men?

Such as what?

For example, have private social groups or members clubs.

I don't think saying "some people will never accept it" is a good enough argument to not try tbh.
Because if it just makes a few people stop and rethink, then it's good?

I mean simply things like Muslim women are allowed to do things separately from non-Muslim women when it is a proportionate means to a legitimate aim.

"Allowed" to do what?

I mean separate from anyone with they like, even if it is a protected characteristic covered in the Equality Act, so long as it is a proportionate means to a legitimate aim.

"Allowed" to do what?

Allowed as in there can be facilities and groups which are "allowed" (legally speaking - i.e. it's not illegal) to discriminate against people with a protected characteristic when it's a reasonable measure to take to achieve a legitimate purpose. Sorry, my wording may have been misleading.

Good grief.
TWAW is just simply a lie. No one would think that Muslim women are "a different type of woman" to non muslim women. They are women of a specific religion. Not a different type of woman. People simply don't repeat in mantra "black women are women black women are women" because there isn't any brainwashing needed to know that black women are women.

Oh I see. Instead of saying that women from conservative cultures need privacy away from men, Rat says Muslim/Sikh/Jewish/Romany women have to segregate themselves do their religious stuff away from other women.

So thats a no from me. We don't need to separate all the women off into separate groups. Just one space for women is fine. Like we already have now.