Are feminists getting played?

[Maniak]

It makes me sad that feminists are spending so much time banging on about bathrooms in a world that has women still working for no pay, old women still more likely to be poor, surrogacy, underfunded maternity care, and poor support for carers. And other stuff.

Yes, the trans thing is annoying, but have you noticed how it always fires up before major elections? It's like Afghanistan in the 80s when the US provided just enough weapons to keep the war going so Russia would use all it's energy and get weak.

I feel like feminism is getting distracted with the trans stuff. At most, it should take up 10 percent of our feminist attention. But I rarely see feminism these days that isn't all about trans. Seriously. Do you think we're getting played here? Is trans really such a big deal?

I wonder if we need to be a class

Women simply are a class whether they have children or not. Or whether you feel they need to be or not.

Semantics are not irrelevant. Semantics are fundamental to the way that people are viewed. Nothing is " just" semantics.

Datun, I didn't say it wasn't an important fight. I enjoy the trans threads very much. I peruse them. I just put my own energy on other issues.

I will say, though, that quite a few women who seem to understand Trans issues are apparently unaware of the underlying class analysis.
Why I am I having so many namalt discussions on here, so that when you say "men are destroying the environment" you don't necessarily mean all men, and why does it even matter if that's what you do mean? It's still men doing it.

If you don't understand what is meant by men as a class, on what basis can you exclude men from the bathrooms?

Yes but for reasons of gender perhaps rather than reasons of sex?

What does that even mean?

Women are disadvantaged because of their sex, whether they have children or not; whether they are gay or straight; whether they are young or old; whether they are black or white......

Nothing to do with 'gender'.

I think what it is, is that I refuse to put any more of my energy in what is essentially men enjoying a cat and mouse game with us.

Trans activism, the GRA, is an expression of men's utter contempt of women and they love it that we are running round like headless chickens trying to put everything in order. It's gross.
There has to be another way.

This is evidence of the two sex classes:

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/no-girls-born-india-villages-female-foeticide-sex-selective-abortions-a9015541.html

This is your periodic reminder that on FWR, the focus of topics is the rights and protections of women and girls, andthe only reasontrans anything is discussed here is when it intersects with those rights and protections negatively.

If a law about trans people provides a wedge by which predatory men may access female victims, it is relevant to discuss it here. If the requirement to 'live as a woman' feeds into all sorts of harmful stereotypes about women's lives, it is relevant to discuss it here.

The fact that there are people who believe themselves to be trans is not something any of us deny, and all of us have been quite happy in the past to acknowledge that trans anyone should be free from unfair discrimination such as losing their job or not getting housing because they are trans. But those issues are not feminist issues, and they don't find a home here because Feminism is not about solving all the issues of everyone ever.

This board centres women and girls, and that is an exclusive designation of those who were born into it. There are many, many places where the desires of the male born are focused upon. This isn't one of them.

"If being a woman is nothing real; if there is no material reality to being a woman - then women's issues cannot be properly addressed."

I disagree on the grounds that there is something real to being a woman, and no amount of semantics or shifting of bathroom signs will change that.

It's like redtoothbrush said. They're exposing our hypocrisies and that's not necessarily a bad thing if we can use that to be stronger. It's like in science, learning from criticism. Womanhood was a vague idea. Too romantic perhaps and not exactly what we meant.

No. Feminists are not getting played. It's foundational. HTH.

^Mama Mia, here we go again.
^
I'm a feminist because I support the rights of women and girls. We are discriminated against on the basis of our sex and it matters to me that I can define and articulate what I am campaigning for.

I recently went to a trendy place on a works night out with just one set of toilets. They were non-conforming with regards to building regs as well as gender. As a menopausal old baggage, the lack of sanitary bins no longer affects me. Strangely though I am capable of empathising with my younger colleagues.

It's not about the toilets. It's about the women who use them.

Well maybe we have different ideas about what sex and gender are. For me, anything to do with external presentation is gender, and so that includes all male perception of women, including sexual harassment, discrimination and so on

It's called sexual harassment and not gender harassment for a reason.

Female sexed bodies are not 'gender presentations', unless they've been glued on to someone's T-shirt or chest.....

Littlebrowndog was very succinct.

maniak

If your post gets reported, it will be deleted.

You are allowed to refer to Yaniv as a male. Because we got special dispensation over this particular case. But not the others.

It will be deleted, but it has to be reported first. None of us will report it, but if this is being watched, and someone else does, that it will be gone. It's up to the moderators at HQ as to whether or not it constitutes a strike. It may not, but if you did it again, it would. Three of those and you will be banned.

I disagree on the grounds that there is something real to being a woman, and no amount of semantics or shifting of bathroom signs will change that

Well we are in agreement then. Being a woman is the reality of living in a female sexed body; going through female puberty etc

"they love it that we are running round like headless chickens trying to put everything in order. It's gross.
There has to be another way."

Yes exactly. There has to be. We're smarter than this.

I don't care if they love or hate us running around like headless chickens.

It's working. So fuck 'em.

"If being a woman is nothing real; if there is no material reality to being a woman - then women's issues cannot be properly addressed."

I disagree on the grounds that there is something real to being a woman, and no amount of semantics or shifting of bathroom signs will change that.

Here we have someone who fails to understand boundaries, I think.

It is exactly those 'semantics' that are used to express those boundaries. Those 'semantics' state "this is a boundary across which anyone to whom that boundary does not apply must not transgress".

We're smarter than this

Smarter than what? I'm confused.

Objecting to the radical trans agenda is not 'running around like a headless chicken'. The Radical trans agenda is having major and life changing consequences for children too.

Laws are made of words. Words matter.

^ This.

Since gender is being used more and more frequently by scientists, health professionals, politicians and others when what they actually mean is sex, it's only a matter of time before people propose that the Equality Act be updated to change sex protections to gender protections to reflect how language has changed and is currently understood.

Then where will protections for biological women be?

You're wrong, OP - language is everything and in civil society, it's what protects the vulnerable.

The Radical trans agenda is having major and life changing consequences for children too.

Heterosexual AGP men are using children as their human shield. Their mantra is "born this way".

The section about AGP in this analysis exposes and refutes that mantra:

4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/

This essay is one of the best explanations for what is happening:

www.openculture.com/2017/01/hannah-arendt-explains-how-propaganda-uses-lies-to-erode-all-truth-morality.html

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end---is being destroyed.

Like, concede women's rights bit keep reproductive rights.
Because all we are is baby machines? Because that's what is most important to all women? Which of my rights are you planning on conceding?

It infuriates me that we have to deal with all the ways trans issues affect women on top of all the other shit we had to deal with before. But we can't pretend it's not happening.

The change in the meaning of the word "gay" is nothing like changing the meaning of "woman".

The word gay, meaning homosexual, came from gay people themselves. They called themselves gay. They defined the new meaning of gay. They owned the new meaning of the word gay. It gave homosexual people another way to describe thrmselves. As an oppressed group this was a powerful statement.

If the word woman is changed that will be imposed on women. Women have not chosen a word and claimed it for themselves. Instead the word woman will be changed from its current meaning from under our noses. There is no other way to describe ourselves. As an oppressed group women lose the opportunity to make any kind of statement.

OP's mum might regret that the word gay is no longer primarily used to mean "happy'. But it does still mean that, and in the right context could still be used to mean "happy".

Words have meanings. Of course language changes, and on the whole I embrace that. But this is not about a natural evolution of language, it is about taking a word from the people it describes and giving it another meaning without the consent of those people.

If the word woman is changed that will be imposed on women. Women have not chosen a word and claimed it for themselves.

Exactly so. Another violation of women by men against the consent of women.

Rape Culture yet again.

I disagree on the grounds that there is something real to being a woman, and no amount of semantics or shifting of bathroom signs will change that.

I think there is something in this.

it's almost like: while it's important to state reality and boundaries, if you give the trans too much credence and too much energy their reality starts to take on a kind of force of being "the" reality.

And yet at the same time it can't ever become "the"reality, because it's not just words that mean something, it's also true that reality itself means something.

So women are sort of trying harder than they really need to. There's an argument to be had for withdrawing feminist energy when needed.

Like women discussing the different types of transwomen. While it is interesting to do so, and it's bringing a lot of paraphilias out of the woodwork that our mothers and grandmothers had no idea about, ( just how weird and creepy men actually are) they're all just men as far as I'm concerned. I don't see any distinction at all between TW and men. I mean there isn't is there?

It's working. So fuck 'em.

I think mumsnet is pissing people off, yes. A major thorn in the side.