Excellent article by Holly Lawford-Smith

[DancelikeEmmaGoldman]

Hitching Glitterbeard Carts to Transsexual Wagons

“In Philosophy, there’s a well-known problem called the “Sorites paradox”. The usual example given to explain it is a heap of sand. We start with a single grain of sand. Is this a heap? Clearly not. We add another grain of sand. Is this a heap? Clearly not. And so on… and so on… until what we have clearly is a heap, and yet it wasn’t clear at what point the accumulated grains turned from a non-heap into a heap. The part of this paradox that will be interesting for us is the side-by-side comparisons, say, six grains of sand compared against seven grains of sand. It’s clear that either both of these are a heap, or neither of these is a heap. The side-by-side cases are similar enough that we should treat them as the same.
I think this kind of logic also shows up in discussions about who counts as a woman.

The reasoning goes like this: clearly this type of person should be treated as a woman (say, a fully-passing transsexual woman); there is not enough difference between this person and the next (say, a fully-passing transwoman who isn’t able to have sex reassignment surgery because of its prohibitive expense), so she should be treated as a woman too; and so on… until we reach a person who clearly should not be treated as a woman (say, a male-bodied male-appearing person who merely asserts that ‘she’ is a woman, such as US trans activist Danielle Muscato or UK advisor to Stonewall Alex Drummond).”

medium.com/@aytchellis/clockwise-from-top-transgender-youtuber-kat-blaque-transgender-model-munroe-bergdorf-8ef1b27c1610

I consider being labeled transphobic by TRAs a badge of honour, and I already made clear that the compromise would never involve vulnerable women (prisons, refuges etc). I just wrote a complaint to Stonewall for their failure to respond to the FOVAS letter and to address the issues raised in that letter. I could not care less about woke points and I have been thrown off Twitter for not compromising, and using my own name (as I do here). I have been blocked by woke academics and chided for not having read Butler (I have, I just think she is a lunatic). I hope this is clear enough

AlessandraAsteriti - I know your history and am glad of your voice here. However, we're just pointing out that treating women's rights as a philosophical exercise as per Holly's article leads to women saying what you said on the first page:

Ultimately, the question is not whether they are women, they never are, but whether they have the right to be treated socially as women or to access certain rights, and these rights are on a spectrum (finally something that is on a spectrum).

This is the ultimate in slippery slopes. It's often posited by relatively privileged women and it always works to the detriment of the women at the bottom of the pile.

@AlessandraAsteriti

Could you please give me an example of what you consider to be a reasonable compromise ? One that involves XY people being treated as women and accessing certain women's rights ?

I’m struggling to think of something that doesn’t adversely affect other women and girls.

I think theoretical reflections are important and they have their place. I also think sometimes it is fair to recognise socially individuals in the identity they prefer (unless you are arguing we should refuse to use female names in addressing trans directly to make the point we do not believe them to be females). Yes maybe I was trying to be 'too nice' (it is so hard to leave this behind). Outside academia, I would not accept any compromise that affects women, especially when they are in vulnerable conditions, as I said. I wrote specifically on the hypocrisy of woke academics demanding gender neutral bathrooms in the West and sex segregated bathrooms in the developing world. And obviously, I stand firmly on the 'sex segregated bathrooms for all women everywhere' side.

@Rosemary46 Addressing trans by their chosen name when talking to them.

Women’s rights were created in the first place as a response to millennia of oppression women endured, which TW never experienced.

If they never experienced the millennia of oppression, were never considered property as women were, for example, by what rights are they entitled to the remedy?

I don’t doubt that many experience discrimination as trans, just as many other minorities do. The remedy must be crafted specific to THAT experience, not taken from women and women’s remedies.

By the way, oppression is NOT the same as discrimination. Oppression has traditionally, on the left, meant exploitation — a system enforced by law and culture enabling the TAKING of the fruits of labour (economically productive, domestic, sexual, or reproductive) from one class by a more powerful class. There is NO system enforced by law or culture specifically to exploit trans people.

That is of course, the entire problem with the word “privilege”: it conflates multiple and different forms of hierarchical power into one. Oppression is not the same as discrimination, and neither is the same as disadvantage. Conflating the three creates muddled policy.

Suggested remedies should be clear about what is being remedied: oppression, discrimination, or disadvantage.

I only skimmed the article.
But I'm very much with OvaHere

It starts with such mangled contorted language and a massive false premise that it was destined to go nowhere.

Pronouns are Rohypnol.

Re-translate the article consistently using the word man instead of 'transwoman'.
And instead of considering woman to be continuous series where we can't quite discern the magical change between man or woman let's just get factual - it's the clearest, most obvious biological distinction ever, not a continuum, not a spectrum, not a series, not an ever increasing pile of sandgrains with more/less values.

There isn't a 'Sorites series of transwomen'. That's a false assumption. They're all men, identical biologically. So what characteristic is being plotted on this series to differentiate them exactly? Makeup quantity? Penis length? And what has this to do with 'woman'?

Philosophy is about communication, words, definitions, mutual understanding, logic and reasoning.

If you can't define your terms you have nothing to argue.

The gymnastics required to choose your favourite subset of men and render them the special exceptions who should be 'treated as female' involves lying to yourself and others about what being female actually is.

What a huge amount of wasted pointless effort, and for what? Arguing to destroy the factual recognition of a category of female humans that contains BILLIONS in order to shoehorn in a subset of men who will never menstruate, never be pregnant, never experience a lifetime's female conditioning, never suffer ovarian cancer, never fear FGM, never risk imprisonment for an abortion.
Oh, but they look a bit like women. With the right makeup. And hair. And heels. If they've shaved. And with a corset. And fake breasts. And if their penis is tucked. With a prevailing wind. But not really.

None of these men put together could possibly be of such utmost importance that anyone could justify pretending a lie is true, and dissolving proper recognition of what a female is for their benefit.
We are billions. We are enough in our own rights. There is no need to add men to us and pretend not to know what we are.

Holly argues that you come to a different conclusion if you start from the opposite end of the 'series'.

She herself might come to a different conclusion if she undertook to understand the fundamental nature of what female means.
She would find there is no series, no bridge to inch across between female and male.

@AlessandraAsteriti
I think that most GC feminists are willing to address people by their chosen name. Many people change their name - acknowledging this is not the same as treating them socially as women and allowing them to access certain women’s rights.

I’m sorry to go on about this, but I’m genuinely finding it hard to envisage which women’s rights you think some XY people should be allows to access. And how we would decide which XY people this applies to.

I think it’s very easy to say these things in theory and a lot more difficult in practice , unless we are simply talking about third spaces. I don’t know any GC feminists who disagree in principles with third spaces / sporting events etc , as long as these are proportionate.

I wrote specifically on the hypocrisy of woke academics demanding gender neutral bathrooms in the West and sex segregated bathrooms in the developing world.

^^ oh goodness yes, hypocrisy indeed.

I'm delighted to recognise and wholeheartedly support TW as TW. However with the clear line in society that sex is a fixed, unchanging fact and that single sex provisions are protected with additional and trans specific resources available where trans people prefer not to access the resources for their biological sex.

If I'm faced with the discourtesy of trying to force me to accept that a male can be a woman and women as a sex class should accept this with the destruction of women's rights and entrenched misogyny that comes with it, then I am forced to the equal discourtesy of having to state, clearly, what a male is and who is one, and not to share in the polite illusions of language that disguise those harms.

Respect is a two way thing.

You asked me for an example of a compromise, and my example was that, addressing trans by their chosen name. As I said, I would never accept a compromise that has any effect on any of the rights women have as women. I have been plenty clear about this, even blunt, as I have been accused of (and of course of being worse than a TERF, which baffles me a bit, as I though TERFs were already the lowest of the low...)

it is so hard to leave this behind

It might not sound like it, but I do sympathise!

And yes, third spaces too, as trans are also affected by discrimination, as trans, and they need appropriate protection against that. No use pretending they are women and granting them women's rights they do not need or deserve.

Brilliant post Barracker

Great analogy.

The creeping of the boundaries has been so insidious.

To summarise (and I have said this before) gender expression should be protected as a form of freedom of expression. Women's rights and sex as a protected category for the purpose of non discrimination are already recognised in law and those rights and protections cannot be extended to males (just like rights and protections for disabled people, migrants, children, minorities cannot be extended to those not belonging to those categories).

For me, obviously! Not laying down rules or anything. It seems to me that to the extent one believes in gender (I do not, not as an innate identity) one should be free to express his/her belief. As any other beliefs, this is not an absolute right and has to be balanced against the rights of others and public interest, morality etc.

Women were NEVER asked if they would accept transwomen in their spaces.....men just decided they would have to. That is why I take an absolute view that no male bodied people should have access to womens sex segregated spaces-no matter how nice they are, how attractive they are, and even if they can get away with it, they are intruding.

Every one of her articles leaves me unsatisfied. She somehow always leaves me feeling that she believes that there are some males who should be treated as females.

And I can't accept that. I can't accept that even the loveliest and gentlest person who identifies as a transwoman should be in women's spaces.

There was an article a few weeks ago that argued that we are talking at cross purposes because we have different ideas about what a transwoman looks like. link.medium.com/UtrIvZiSjY

I promise.
If you substitute the word men for transwomen throughout her article the whole thing reads much more clearly for what it is.

The heterogeneity of men, and which men women should and shouldn't pretend are women too.

Deep down within all arguments like this is the kernel that women are not to be allowed to exist as just female humans, because that excludes all men. It's as if Holly dare not face the unadulterated truth.

We can't change reality.
And if we care about women we damn well need to accurately reflect and recognise it.
Not contort language to hide it.

The problem I have with public philosophising on this issue is that the whole point is to invite rebuttals. There is no point in the history of women's liberation that opening the door to rebuttals has been helpful for us.

It's a disembodiment of the situation on the ground. And it invites the disembodiment of womanhood itself even when our oppression is based upon our very bodies and the partial liberation of our bodies is under sustained attack - not just from genderism but from third wave choice crap, the push for surrogacy and all the rest of it.

Compare this Marxist feminist perspective:

redresurgence.wordpress.com/2019/04/24/the-gender-debate-a-marxist-feminist-perspective/

I'm not a Marxist but it needs no sophistry, is blunt, frank and accessible. And it doesn't give an inch of ground.

I am totally in line with the Marxist perspective on this.

Yes I agree Barracker, I think naming men as men is the most powerful thing we can do to blow away the smoke and mirrors so that the penny drops and people see this for what it is; men pushing women around. Same as it ever was.

But at the same time I do think this argument is useful, because some people's shutters go down as soon as you say "transwomen are men" and it's useful for people who have been told that to admit this truth makes them mean and bigotted to have a framework and some handholds for their thoughts if they are willing to grapple around .

I do think if people are willing to be intellectually honest (that's a big IF) the only stable places to end up is hard-line (the dividing line is sex) or self ID (and this is only a stable place to land if you are willing to discount womens welfare completely).

I think Holly's spectrum is useful because it means we are talking about Alex Drummond and Danielle not as freaks or gotchas but as illustrations of the spectrum of people who need to be able to be accomadated in public spaces and services. Everyone needs somewhere to pee and there is a good case for third spaces.

I do wish she was tougher with her language. "Not born female" = not female =male !

Bickerin: Oppression has traditionally, on the left, meant exploitation — a system enforced by law and culture enabling the TAKING of the fruits of labour (economically productive, domestic, sexual, or reproductive) from one class by a more powerful class. There is NO system enforced by law or culture specifically to exploit trans people.

Yip. That is one of these obvious points I had not really noticed. Thank you.

One of the most stupid tweets I've seen in a long while was perfect for illustrating the language problem.

I can't find just now but it was an elected female MSP arguing about sport and she said something along the lines of

'yes we all know men are stronger and faster than women but we are talking about transwomen and women here'

I despair sometimes.

A couple of the responses are a bit eye-rolling. One is the same length as the article! Another responder is claiming that transsexual people are 'entitled' to access women's spaces because they're not a threat. What, none of them, you know them all? Such sweeping claims.