Obsession with transwomen fetishises sex difference

[spannablue]

Just read on Twitter:

'The problem with patriarchy is not due to men having penises, it's due to the lie that this random feature of birth confers & signifies rank, power & domination. We must not collude in that by fetishising sex difference & aggrandizing genitals that happen to be on the outside.'

What do you think?

I agree with FloralBunting about the importance of not having a hair-trigger for perceived goadiness. However difficult it may be, I think it's good for the cause in general.

And I try to keep reminding myself that people's intentions don't necessarily come across well online, without facial and vocal expressions - it's too easy to "read" them as aggressive.

Deepwatersolo

Personally, I am so exasperated by the apparent inability of some folks to understand straightforward, provable facts that I am not great at engaging.

I am very interested in psychology, and this is a subject that fascinates me. I can remember behaving like this regarding some subjects in my late teens/early twenties, and I am embarrassed by it now. There is a really excellent book by Carol Tarvis called "Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me" which I found very illuminating. She focuses on one aspect of it, which is the need for professionals to protect their own self-image, and discusses some cases in the light of that, but there is also a more general discussion of reasons. This is the book:

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ERAQN64/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1&tag=mumsnetforum-21

I think it can also be about needing to belong to a tribe, and of course for younger people, just still not having completed their brain development (which finishes around age 25, I think).

Trans scientists do exist- www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/remembering-the-transgender-scientist-who-changed-our-understanding-of-the-brain/549458/

I hadn't realised Barnes had died - I'm sorry to hear that. He always came across in his writing (and note that I am happy to call him "he") as a thoughtful, sensitive person as well as a very good scientist. And he totally "got" the issue of male privilege - he famously mentioned an incident when he overheard someone praising his work, before adding "but I don't think much of his sister's [Barnes pre-transition] work".

Until both sexes carry 50% of young and do 50% of infant feeding etc, then we will need sex based protections.

‘Fetishing sex difference’ has fuck all to do with it.

Yeah, spannablue, but they usually understand that they cannot change reality by changing the language used to describe it. They also understand that you can statistically evaluate the two groups from a dimorphic species, in order to describe, differences in, say, strength and violence patterns, and that such differences do impact the structural social organization of such a species.
They also understand that they cannot change sex.

Maybe most importantly they are forced by their research to scrutinize their own arguments, instead of avoiding critical thought and posting links that demonstrate nothing, as you just did.

Oh, did I mention? 50% of the founding document of queer theory is an apologia of paedophilia.

Postmodernism has been very useful for feminism. The theory is that some ideas which were called 'natural', 'obvious', or 'biological' might actually just be dominant discourses (this is Foucault). For example, it used to be said that women are naturally nurturing, and so should stay at home with the children. This was thought to be rooted in biology. Heck, we still have to fight the idea that being potential childbearers makes us less reliable workers. So the postmodern approach has allowed us to deconstruct these ideas and to say they are ptriarchal constructions.

The trouble is, we can't choose what to deconstruct- it's an all or nothing thing. This can end up feeling really nihilistic, so when the very idea of 'woman' is deconstructed, it shakes our foundations.

Judith Butler (don't freak out) notes the value of strategic categorisation (eg as a woman) but warns against what or who we risk excluding. I can't unthink this, or reject it. Through history there are loads of examples of the construction of who's a human (or a man, or a woman, or a Muslim, or a Jew, or a priest) and who isn't. It's so dangerous- dehumanizing can lead to horrible results. Just look at the GC bedfellows. David Davies! Sarah Vine! I'd be concerned.

I know my point of view annoys or upsets many here but I'm not trying to do that- I really do want to hear people's responses. The appallingly rude, bullying responses of some from behind their keyboards does nothing to help the conversation. I've been told I'm not a woman or a lesbian, and that I must be influenced by a man. This in itself is an example of dehumanization.

Yes let me deconstruct this wrecked uterus and the two solid years I've spent being pregnant and then the further year spent dedicated to breastfeeding. Let's deconstruct my abortion, miscarriages, my periods, my menopause. Let's also deconstruct my smaller frame and significantly lower muscle mass. Let's deconstruct the fact that men ,legally owned women for their reproductive capacity and were able, as a result of their physical strength and ability to keep women physically incapacitated through pregnancy for decades at a time, to render women powerless.

I look forward to reading your excellent undergraduate essay on this.

PoMo is great for the arts (I’m a Goldsmiths’ Fine Art graduate) but shit for basing laws on.

Women’s sex based oppression isn’t because they are perceived to be nurturing (that’s a gender construct) but because only female mammals can actually gestate offspring.

Until science brings us to the point where babies are birthed out by male and female people 50/50 WORLDWIDE (ie never) female people need sex based protections.

The theory is that some ideas which were called 'natural', 'obvious', or 'biological' might actually just be dominant discourses

This theory predates Foucault by a couple of hundred years. A quick skim of Wollstonecraft should set you right on when and how women rejected the concept of male dominance and female submission as being the natural estate of men and women.

And that's what pisses me off about post-modernism. When I can make out what it's saying, then either it's been said before, and more clearly, it's blindingly fecking obvious, or it's neither use nor ornament.

Im not denying the existence of trans scientists, not an i denying the individual beliefs of any individual (heck I did my PhD in a lab next door to someone who believed the literal truth of genesis..)

I’m denying the existence of any coherent body of work, or even the beginnings of one, that supports what transactivists claim.

The PoMo view of the world, and your opinions, don’t upset me or make me angry. I just think they’re wrong, and damaging. And I base that opinion on factual, scientific evidence (you can’t change sex, sex is not a spectrum, males are physiologically different in some ways to females, males are as a class more violent) as much as my personal POV.

Ok. So as you're all saying, there's the real world stuff. In my work I deal with a lot of women survivors of domestic violence. I don't ignore the fact that most perpetrators are men. But there are always outliers. Some perpetrators are women. Some survivors are men or transpeople. They all need the same level of support and acceptance.

Things sometimes go wrong. So then we have these horrible stories about eg transwoman commotting a sexual offence in a women's prison. Whoever decided that person should be in that place made a bad judgment call. But that means we improve decision making systems and decision maker training. Excluding a whole category of people is discriminatory.

Not if you are making the decisions on sex. Everyone falls into one category or the other (yes, even people with disorders of sexual development).

Male bodied people simply don’t need the legal protections that are in place for female people, because they are there due to biological difference.

Wow, so it wasn‘t Simone de Beauvoir who wrote about how ‚women are made‘ and pressed into the nurturing woman role, but Foucault?
Way to erase a woman and give the credit to a man. Or did Fucault identify as a woman at some point, and so it all remains within the family.
Or do you try to erase Simone, because she is not Pomo, and your argument falls flat?

If excluding a whole category of people is discriminatory and therefore must be rejected, feminism must be rejected. Please do not call yourself a feminist, you open yourself up to ridicule spanna.

Whoever decided that person should be in that place made a bad judgment call.

No, absolutely not. It was not an error, it was the inevitable consequence of executing an ideological position. Sex self-ID enables every Karen White in waiting. There is no way to tell if someone is "genuinely" trans or not.

And even if they are ‘genuine’ it doesn’t change anything about their physical reality as Rachel McKinnon illustrates.

Yes, I agree, Foucault is rightly criticised for ommitting feminist approaches from his analyses. De Beauvoir is also a good reference, but I like Foucault's toolkit. This is not a fully referenced essay.

I don't reject the strategic categorisation needed for feminism. Feminism is needed to protect and support women. We need a concerted focus on women's health and women's safety. But I agree with Butler- we need to have pur eyes open on what we lose by strategic categorisation.

So I act from a feminist point of view, but not an excluding one. There is room in my kind of feminism for outliers. This doesn't mean I'm not also focussing on the majority.

If I was in charge of deciding who could go into a woman's prison, I would have looked at Karen White's history and absolutely not placed her in with the general population.

There is ideology and there is pragmatism, and one is useless and damaging without the other. It's not the easy approach, but then life and people are complicated.

I've been told I'm not a woman or a lesbian, and that I must be influenced by a man. This in itself is an example of dehumanization.

dehumanize: : to deprive of human qualities, personality, or spirit
infantilize: to treat as if infantile

Are you sure you did not mean infantilization?

I like Foucault's toolkit.

So, attributing the thoughts and merits of others to Pomo is 'Foucault's toolkit'. Okay.

It very much looks like Foucault was a paedophile who built a whole edifice of thought around the justification of fucking young boys.

So much for the question of how far some men will go in order to get access to children.

Whatever. It's still a way to say 'you don't get to claim a valid voice'. Maybe defeminisation would be a better word.

Foucault is very open about magpieing others' ideas. So what? All ideas have a genealogy. Further, as George Box says, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

...another way to think abput this os to say that Foucault solves some of de Beauvoir's problems. This is a good thesis on this openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/48206?mode=full

I've been told I'm not a woman or a lesbian, and that I must be influenced by a man. This in itself is an example of dehumanization

No it isn't. It can be very irritating and I have seen a couple of occasions on here where it has morphed into a bullying pile-on- but "dehumanisation" is an exaggeration. I agree it is used to invalidate posters and those who do it should take a look at themselves and their own prejudices.

As for Simone de Beauvoir given all the crap she put up with from Sartre I've never taken her as any role model or that statement as anything more than a finely honed bon mot.

Whatever. It's still a way to say 'you don't get to claim a valid voice'.

Which just means that voices that say stuff that isn't rooted in reality are not treated as if they were rooted in reality. Oh calamity!
I think the idea that every whim needs to be validated was born in nurseries and kindergartens, where staff is too overworked to really talk to kids and instead nods to everything.

Maybe defeminisation would be a better word.

See, the beauty of reality is that we are born female, and words cannot take it away, just as feelz can't make anyone female.

Foucault is very open about magpieing others' ideas. So what?

It wouldn't be a problem if there weren't man-centric people like you afterwards, who erase female thinkers in order to attribute their ideas to a paedophile man.