A new race of non-feminist superwomen

[thatdamnwoman]

I'm heading rapidly for 60 but I'm meeting more and more women who are the product of feminism's fights but not, it would seem to me, feminist.

In their late 30s and 40s, they're hospital consultants heading up large departments, they're heading council departments, they're aiming for political office, they're CEOs or they run their own businesses. They all, every single one I can think of, either run marathons or are triathletes or, at the very least, seriously competitive cyclists. Some of them are lesbians, few of them have children. Most of those I know are politically left-leaning. They are fiercely intelligent and driven and terrifyingly confident and accomplished. There's nowhere in the world they haven't been: most have worked abroad and they're globally connected. And this is just in my small and unremarkable city.

I was out last night with a group that included two of these superwomen. I sat there, the oldest in the group, watching and listening and acknowledging that they are the fruit of feminism: confident, intelligent women achieving their potential and helping to change the world.

And yet... Both of them talked several times about their transgender friends without any apparent questioning of the way some of them slip in and out of various identities. They believe gender is a 'thing' rather than a social construct. They think sex is irrelevant, just a random outcome to be ignored. Our evening of conversation covered homelessness, poverty, earnings — but never in the context of women. Women, men, all apparently equal.

One of them has funded a project in a deprived area to support transgender children and talked about how awful it was that a 13-year-old girl had found help too late to be prescribed puberty blockers and would have to undergo mastectomy at a later date. I and a couple of other women just looked at our plates and said nothing: it really wasn't the place to start talking about it.

I gave three women a lift home afterwards. All of us are old-fashioned feminists. We sat in the car till gone midnight, with the windows fogged up, wondering what happened to feminism that so many of the women who've benefitted from the struggles of their mothers and grandmothers are now what someone described as 'amazing men with vaginas'.

thatdamnwomen

It’s always ultimately comes down to class.

Society judges. It’s a given. You can try work your way up and someone is always waiting to smack you back down. My experience OZ is obviously different. I actually get quite confused with the British class system.

In some ways it seems a different culture. I’m actually descended from convicts (mums side).

We have worked godamn hard to give our kids opportunities we never had. I’ve gone from housos (your equivalent of council housing) to being a SAHM with kids attending private school. I never judge people for what they have, but who they are. “You can take the girl out of the housos etc...”sometimes the “no filter” kicks in” and sometimes it needs to.

I would say that anyone who really believes that TWAW is not a feminist. So I'm not sure quite what you mean by being strongly and unequivocally feminist.

I would say that anyone who really believes that TWAW is not a feminist.

I disagree. Some of most radical feminists I know include trans women in their definition of women.

Controversially I think most women in straight relationships are supporting the patriarchy.

It is a personal journey for everyone and I believe it's healthy to challenge one another along the way to ensure we don't lose sight of feminism's main goals.

Many, if not most people (cynical head on here) don’t care about stuff until it impacts them.

When it begins to impact women en masse- your friend is assaulted in the toilets, your daughter is photographed in topshop changing rooms, your mum is in a ward with an elderly demented gent who is sexually disinhibited... then women will notice.

And when safeguarding has been demolished and the inevitable awful case involving children happens, which it will, everyone will notice.

By then it will be too late.

Anyone believing Twaw is in denial of reality.

Humans cannot change sex.

Anyone believing TWAW has failed to think through the consequences - unintended or not.

Am with you on that Babel
I can’t believe that anyone believes ppl can chang3 their sex
It’s not logical
No one I know either thinks that ppl can change their sex
In fact I am bewildered that anyone can believe it and whish that these that do can tell us how it happens

A radical feminist believing TWAW is like a socialist believing in privatization of public assets — it’s an internal contradiction that refutes one’s own politics.

Only if you believe a patriarchal society oppresses just the female sex rather than the female sex and the gender of women.
Personally I see it oppressing both.

I think a radical feminist believing TWAW makes much more sense than say a SAHM who relies on her husband's income claiming to be a radical feminist.

I think suggesting that no one who believes TWAW can be a feminist is like saying no one who supports the legalisation of prostitution can be a feminist, or no one who waxes her minge can be a feminist. Such thinking is divisive and unhelpful IMO.

Cross post with Materialist - point taken and I did say my view was controversial.

On the subject of division the trans debate is the most divisive I've come across. As per the OP, feminists are very split on the issue.

Radical feminists use class analysis - you can't identify out of your class or into another. They also dont support appropriating other peoples movements, experiences, spaces or services.

Radical feminism understands that ending VAWG is incompatible with supporting the sex industry or prostituting women.

Yet if one considers gender to be a fundamental part of who a person is, like sexual orientation, that an individual is born with and has no control over, it begins to muddy the water.

I can completely see why feminists are divided.

Does anybody believe that?

As feminism is a political movement for the liberation of women & girls from patriarchal dominance and sexual assault and harassment forced on us because of how our biology makes us vulnerable then supporting that or being active within that or identifying as a feminism would be incompatible with believing twaw. FEMinism as in for FEMales.

There are plenty of women all round the world have no choice but to rely on a husbands income and stay at home. Some because their countries laws mean they are property of their husband, some because the economy in their country pays traditional women’s roles as less than so when children need cared for or disabled relatives need cared for it automatically becomes the woman whose paid work outside of the home that is the one to get sacrificed. That isn’t at all incompatible with believing in the political movement of feminism, in fact it’s a big part of where it started.

Yes, many people do believe exactly that. And many feminists believe transphobia to be as abhorrent as homophobia or racism or whatever. When I talk to some of my friends about being gender critical they're genuinely appalled that I hold such hateful views 😰 So it's an issue we just don't discuss. It's very sad actually. These aren't women who are just, "I'm all right Jack," or who need a wake up call to be "peak transed " - they've thought about it a lot, some of them have daughters, and they believe that being trans is an innate state that leads to oppression and poor mental health and can only be alleviated through affirmation. That doesn't make them bad feminists or not feminists IMO.

Yes, exactly what IShouldBeSoLurky said. I don't tend to post my views on here as this board is very GC. In RL the radical feminists I know consider gender identify and sexual orientation to be on a par.

What Materialist said. Your friends may think they're radical feminists but they're not, they're liberal feminists — as the superwomen in the OP may be.

I never said they claimed to be radical feminists.

My understanding may be flawed but AFAIK radical feminism is a school of thought within feminism, not some kind of gold standard.

A new race of non-feminist superwomen

I don't think your friends are a new race. There have always been women who have been allowed positions of power, and their power has been shown to be an illusion when it is removed from them.

Yes, I'm aware that there have always been a few women who've reached those levels. I think it's great that more and more of them are doing so. What I do see is a certain homogeneity — like the emphasis on extreme sporting achievement — between those I encounter. I'm not saying that those I meet are typical, just that they seem hugely removed in their confidence and certainty (and their ability to run long distances) from most of the wide variety of women I encounter. And that they are not particularly interested in women and girls as a class, while I think quite a lot of my everyday feminist friends would consider themselves very woman-focussed.