Sally Hines is writing female out of feminism- I'm terrified

[CrazyToast]

I've just seen this on twitter. 'Female' is only something anti trans people say and is not relevant to feminism. What if feminism becomes undermined too? Are they trying to take our only weapon and safe place? Why try to take away the biological needs of women rather than add those of trans women? How can this person think they are qualified and justified in re-defining feminism to exclude something fundamental to the majority of women?

My blood ran cold when I saw it because Sally Hines is an academic receiving a lot of funding to do this research.

Oh dear is right. I really struggle to understand how someone, particularly an academic, can become so divorced from reality.

'Female' is only something anti trans people say

And farmers, biologists, medics, scientists...

Of course they’re trying to zap feminism. This whole movement is a men’s rights movement. Feminism is the biggest threat to it.

And professors of sociology and gender identities, apparently.

“The female of the species is more deadly than the Male.”

So we don't need to campaign against FGM any more

Remember the attempted amendments to the Green Party constitution to use only gender neutral, inclusive language?

At the same Spring 18 conference Aimee #Challenor (with Molly Arthurs, NB, and Teresa Ravenshaw, trans) put forward motions to remove the word 'female' from Green Party constitution, turning mechanisms created to tackle sexism into trans promoting mechanisms

mobile.twitter.com/Justloo79304166/status/1036605561104728064

And at same Spring 18 conference the words 'women and girls' were removed from text about female genital mutilation and changed to 'a person maybe subject to FGM', to hide the fact that this is crime that happens to women and girls because of our SEX.

mobile.twitter.com/Justloo79304166/status/1036607053308067841

Fucking hell. They really hate women and girls, don't they? It is all about male domination and male entitlement.

Anyone who has a phd, however dubiously, and over a million pounds in research grants, holding the opinions she holds, is dangerous.

But I am honestly surprised she got into university in the first place. I certainly would not recommend Leeds University to anyone studying social sciences, if she is the best it can produce.

I am bumping this thread to post this.

There seems to be a weird underlying racism, ableism and classism here... I.e. having brown skin (etc) qualifies your womanhood the same way that... being male does?

She seems to be trying to prove that if you put a word before the word woman, that results in a 'type' of woman, when all you have done is put a word before the word woman.

Hines is a useful idiot to the agenda and a representative of all that's currently wrong with an academia in the UK that is now so far up its own bottom that no one in the real world can hear them any more.

However whatever garbage Hines claims, and however Hines tries to reframe reality in Hines' own view, it does not make it true, or real. Or even comprehensible to the average person in the street, who will just dismiss Hines as a twit.

It just exposes the fence sitting position of ‘transwomen are transwomen’ for what it is-people need to stop trying to be nice, this is too important

Transwomen are men

That’s not an insult for heavens sake, it’s just a fact

Wasn’t it Hines that said women had no spines before 12th century or some century

Lols that was a joy that twitter feed

Well they can try but it is part of who I am and it won't go away not matter how much they attempt to change language and denounce it. I know that is a fact, not just for me but a lot of women on this forum and in other groups I belong to. Feminism won't go away that easily, there will always be women standing up for themselves.

Some of the things people on Twitter come out with just make them sound uneducated and stupid - I know that's a bit blunt but it IS how they sound to me when they trot out this wordy nonsense and purple woke prose.

There was a twitter hashtag a few months ago

#writelikeSallyHines

To write like Sally Hines was to write bollocks and sound weird. People were very good at imitating the style, tone and nonsensical shite that SH has become notorious for.

How does academia work?

Does she have a supervisor, or a governing body?

Because, this is sheer incompetence. Who'd want to study under someone who comes up with this gobbledegook?

SH is riding the gravy train. Nothing more. She has a limited amount of time to cash in, and so she’s making hay while the sun shines.

Because we all know what sunlight brings eventually. She doesn’t fair that well in open discussions.

How easy is it to become a professor? I quite fancy the idea..

I know I can write drivel.

How does academia work?

It can be a pretty arduous process in the UK especially to become a Professor. That said - as someone who worked in academia - it isn't always a guarantee of common sense or even rounded knowledge. It can often produce a blinkered academically over-processed view which seems to currently be bogged down by post-modernism. In theory it should be a free flow of ideas, constantly challenged and evolving these days that doesn't seem to apply. I no longer work in that environment (and one of the reasons was the politics in that world) but it still seems to have become less fluid and critical than my experiences of academic thought, which is a shame because that was the bit I liked about it. I'm sure current academics will have a more relevant view though and I think there are quite a few of them on this forum.

2BthatUnnoticed

I haven't seen Hines' full Twitter post, but do I take it she's saying "Coloured women are women, disabled women are women, therefore trans women are women", as if all prefixes work the same way?

Because that's the equivalent of saying "brown horses are horses, grey horses are horses, therefore rocking horses are horses, the Trojan horses was a horse, seahorses are horses".

Having a maths degree I often am amazed that some academics in arts subjects make the most glaring logical errors and/or fallacies as if they were completely ignorant of the basic rules of logic.

We’ve seen this before in relation to the position of black women, we’ve seen it before in relation to the position of working class women. As feminists we’ve got to move away from a politics which is based around perceptions of realness.

Is she saying that working class and/or Black women could be perceived by some as not "real" women if trans women aren't?
I'm not professor, but that s horrifically racist and fascist! Saying men can't be women is not the same as saying poor women or black women are not women!
Or have I read that wrong?
She's not terrifying she's just never had a proper job. She wants to get out more.

That TRA invocation of 'black women are women, so..' 'argument' is so fucking racist it makes me boke.

They think it's a 'gotcha', when - in fact - the gotcha is the depths to which they're willing to stoop to make people believe their woo woo.

Posted this before wrt SH, but it sums up her and her ilk...

‘Trans women are trans women. Women of colour are women of colour. Disabled women are disabled women. Working class women are working class women. Older women are older women. Young women are young women.’

Reminds me of the old Sesame Street song, ‘one of these words is not like the other’.

I bet most children could spot which it is.

It just exposes the fence sitting position of ‘transwomen are transwomen’ for what it is-people need to stop trying to be nice, this is too important

Transwomen are men

That’s not an insult for heavens sake, it’s just a fact

This.

The logic of Hines' argument is implicit in the neologism 'transwoman/ trans woman', which takes the word 'woman' and adds an adjective. That's why the 'they're just another type of woman' claim seems reasonable to so many people.

I am constantly amazed at feminists who will argue tirelessly that men cannot be women, yet at the same time refer to those men as 'transwomen/ trans women'. Thereby implying that they are indeed a type of woman.

However whatever garbage Hines claims, and however Hines tries to reframe reality in Hines' own view, it does not make it true, or real. Or even comprehensible to the average person in the street, who will just dismiss Hines as a twit.

I think that the central point here for anyone feeling scared by Hines. Whatever she or anyone else believe, material reality just is what it is. Yes this nonsense threatens us in terms of policy influence, but we can campaign against that (and slowly we are actually having an effect in that area). The underlying facts will never change regardless of how you label them. Even if everyone else in the world agrees that TWAW, and that Feminism (TM) must include them, we (the GC not-real-feminists and anyone else with a brain) will still continue to organise and fight for the rights of "cis" women and trans men (washes out mouth with soap and water). Even if they win the language battle we can still use that language to fight our cause. Even if we have to call ourselves "XX liberationists" or some nonsense, we'll still exist, as will the XX people we're liberating. Biological reality hasn't changed, and neither has the need for a feminism that centres it and as long as those things are those two things are true that feminism will continue to exist. You cannot actually redefine things in or out of existence (see the Ontologial argument for the existence of God, for example). This shit has been debunked in different forms for centuries now.

ADropOfReality your post is absolutely spot on, especially "I often am amazed that some academics in arts subjects make the most glaring logical errors and/or fallacies as if they were completely ignorant of the basic rules of logic." I'm often amazed by this about people in general. The inability of people in this debate to spot even the most evident logical fallacy is extraordinary.