New article by Michael Biggs that I imagine will be controversial - how feminism paved the way for transgenderism

[AnotherLass]

quillette.com/2019/08/01/how-feminism-paved-the-way-for-transgenderism/

Rough summary: it is largely females who have pushed gender ID ideology and some of the reason for it may be "blank slate" feminism

I think that this is an interesting article, although I am not sure if I agree with him or not. I found it uncomfortable reading and I imagined that it would be controversial here, so I'm interested to hear what people have to say.

I also think men have more awareness and understanding of male fetishism than women do, especially younger women from privileged backgrounds

Why
Why do females (generally) not see the male fetish for what it is until we are older?

There must be some kind of subtle (and not so subtle) protection of young females that suits men.
A veil of secrecy that we are not privy to as teens.

Maybe It's about protecting our young and in particular, females from predators at a really basic level.

if it is just down to that, then patriarchy is just a tool to distance mankind from the animal kingdom in the way that religion does.

Male predatory behaviour is socially unacknowledged therefore there is nothing to see.
No words to describe it, no language allowed.
Very similar to No debate

The article says “radical feminism has disappeared from universities”. The reason for that is because men do not like it, only so called “feminism” that is pleasing to men is permitted to exist, radical feminism was never taken seriously in male dominated institutions like universities for that very reason. Along comes so called liberal/queer theory/postmodern “feminism” and it is immediately embraced by the establishment, such as universities, and written into policy etc., hardly difficult to understand why.

Why do “ambitious and successful politicians and their counterparts in charities, public services, and universities” support transgenderism?

The are several reasons:

1. Some do want to be perceived as being “nice”, “progressive” etc.
2. They have been lobbied by powerful transgender orgs.
3. Many are being strong armed into admit males, by the disingenuous use of the equality act provisions, e.g. claims that it is discrimination to refuse males who claim to be females.

“...young people with a university degree are the most likely demographic to embrace transgenderism; young women with degrees are also most likely to call themselves feminists.”

University students are effectively being indoctrinated into transgender ideology through some of their courses, and also through the wider alphabet soup orgs that exist in universities.

“Why are some sex differences remarkably uniform across different cultures?”

Males are generally larger and stronger than females and so can physically impose their will onto smaller females, due to their size and strength difference, even the threat of violence is often enough, that is before even getting into them imposing socialisation onto us. Would females dominate males if we were the larger sex? Who knows, it can never be known.

“If parents raise their son as a girl from the age of three, on what grounds can biology-denying feminists assert that this child is being socialized as male?”

Those that deny biology would be happy for such males to be included their spaces, so there wouldn’t be a conflict with them.

Radical feminists have never denied biology: males do not change their sex even if they are socialised as “feminine”: feminine males are still males. Men need to accommodate feminine males in their own spaces and not push such males into female spaces. Females should have the right to spaces away from all males, even males who have feminine roles imposed on them. The question should be why do males not accept feminine males in their spaces?

“There is some evidence that an individual’s proclivity towards masculinity or femininity has a biological basis.”

Radical feminists are regularly accused of being essentialists, (which is of course a nonsense) because we acknowledge that biological sex cannot be changed. The types of arguments used in the article are the real essentialist arguments, that there is a male/female behaviour hardwired into the brain, or caused by genes, hormones etc, and only a few escape that. These same arguments were said about race and class, that the differences in social position were caused by inherent differences, natural preferences, etc., and environment had little if any influence.

The article uses the following to explain these difference. “The evidence that sexual orientation has a biological basis is well-established.”

That is not proven as fact at all. There is no such thing as a homosexual/heterosexual/bisexual gene or brain, and the idea that exposure to hormones in the womb makes one het/homo/bi is frankly laughable, and similar to the arguments TRA’s use to claim they are women.

The fact is we have men who claim that biological sex doesn’t exist on one side, who are prepared to accept a kind of “feminism” that allows men more freedom to pursue whatever sexual fetishes they want. On the other we have men who claim that women’s oppression is natural and innate, and are prepared to accept a kind of “feminism” that touts that. Both are two sides of the same coin. This article is just an appeal to women to take on more essentialists arguments.

To which I'd say: not all feminists.

I think he acknowledges that right at the beginning of the essay though., he specifically differentiates radical feminism, I think really from pop feminism which is not quite liberal feminism, more a mash up of theories that become widely accepted by sectors of the public, often not in in organised way.

That being said, I think even many rad fems have been very inclined toward this idea that biological differences between men and women are very limited in scope, and for ideological reasons more than any others. The idea that someone mentioned that they "stop at the neck" being very common.

Why do females (generally) not see the male fetish for what it is until we are older?

My experience would be that part of it is that men may be more open with other men, but also this kind of thing is more alien to young women. Many men, younger women from less sheltered backgrounds, or those young women who have a sex drive that's a little more like a typical man's, are better able to see it for what it is.

The fact is we have men who claim that biological sex doesn’t exist on one side, who are prepared to accept a kind of “feminism” that allows men more freedom to pursue whatever sexual fetishes they want. On the other we have men who claim that women’s oppression is natural and innate, and are prepared to accept a kind of “feminism” that touts that. Both are two sides of the same coin. This article is just an appeal to women to take on more essentialists arguments.
Exactly. The blank slate argument is a straw man no one belives that in the way he's implying. Evolutionary psychology has always been the province of white men who are incapable of seeing their own biases.
I think the developments in neuroscience are much more interesting.
The replacement of womens studies with gender has been a disaster.
But I cannot come up with any coherent theory for why young women have been so taken in or more to the point politicians. Does this say something about what makes a woman electable in the first place, an unwillingness to be seen as only representing women. Or is this just the dire calibre of all politicians. It is totally beyond me.

FWIW I don't think you can separate the existence of Queer theory and gender taking over women's studies from the general takeover of humanities departments by deconstructionists.

I also have doubts about whether women's studies should ever have been an undergraduate program, I think it became vulnerable in part because of that.

Interesting nature/nurture example. Saw a doc yrs ago where British children were compared to Aborigine children on visual/spatial skills. Aborigines children were far ahead including the girls.
Recently I read about an aborigines tribe whose language used geographic coordinates instead of egocentric ones. Go north to the old tree then West for 10mins. All children learned this way of thinking about direction and could read from environment. The language is now extinct.
But my take is if your life or fitting into your community is a matter of life and death you can do it. The human brain is plastic, there is no blueprint for a typical man or woman without reference to context and culture.

I personally think women are more tolerant of genderist arguments because the sort of reasoning which debunks them - very concrete, logical, direct - is something which people are still very uncomfortable with, when women do it. So women don’t, because it alienates people.
I speak from experience. I am a very concrete, logical thinker. I speak and argue accordingly. When ds was diagnosed with ASD, I investigated and found I also scored highly for ASD traits. Many pennies dropped. For years I had sat in professional situations explaining what I saw as the logical position and seen how people can really react badly to “if this, then this, then that must logically be the case” from a young woman. From men in the same profession they accepted and indeed appreciated it.

I think the blank state theory took off because people don’t understand maths. They think if you say that men are statistically better at X then you are saying every man is better at X than every woman.

The height analogy is one I’ve used too. There’s about 4’’ difference between the average male and female height but if Game of Thrones taught us nothing else, it’s that some women are not only taller than some men, they are taller than most men; and some men are not only shorter than most women, they are shorter than most women.

If it turns out that men are statistically better at some things and women are statistically better at others it tells us nothing about individual performances, but it might explain statistical differences in outcomes. In physical tasks (eg sport) this differences might require some way to address the outcomes (different competitions) but if there are more men in IT and more women teaching languages, would that matter?

I am astonished that anybody thinks this article has validity.

Which feminists have every argued there is no biological difference.

It is the bilogical differnce between the two sexes that feminism / women's liberation base their analysis and campaigns against the sex based discrimination of women by a patriarchal society.

What is going on in Universities that they produce people who seem unable to do proper research.

Finding a few women that the media have promoted as feminists saying things that support your twisted analysis doesn't validate anything.

He shuld know that the women that men chose are rarely the women that women chose. The mere fact they are well known in mainstream media is virtually a sure sign that they are about as representative of feminism as sliced white bread is as nutrious as home baked bread.

If he is part of the university structure (sociology?) then he cant but be aware of the role that universities have played in the male back lash against women's liberation that create gender studies rather than women's studies. FFS. Cant he get his male gaze to recognise that the products of these universities who are now "influential" feminists (ie the feminism men approve of) have nothing to do with grass roots feminism let alone women's liberation.

All his pathetic article proves is that men used their infuence to groom and coherce women into accepting an analysis of how "gender" works that suits MRAs.

He is about as enlightened as a male judge who accepts a man saying it wasn't my fault m'lud "she" made me do it.

All he has proved is how effective the male backlash was and still is.

Women who spout this gender conforming nonsense are not different from the women who are brainwashed into thinking they need to wear shoes that are actually instruments of torture ie 5" heels.

They have nothing whatsoever to do with feminism and it his innate presumed superiority that makes him think he can categorise them as such.

I despair. If this is the level of intellectual ability in this country is it any wonder we are in the never ending conumdrum of Brexit.

And some of us thought it strange that the ERSC was funding biased "gender" studies.

He should try and find a historian who could maybe try and permeate his self absorbed notions to learn about what is really going on.

Or listen to Serena Todd's s[eech

What a numpty

I personally think women are more tolerant of genderist arguments because the sort of reasoning which debunks them - very concrete, logical, direct - is something which people are still very uncomfortable with, when women do it. So women don’t, because it alienates people.

I think this might be why so many Wokebeards support transgenderism. They think expressing a belief in it in defiance of all logic and common sense puts them in touch with their ‘feminine’ side.

A question. If transwomen are women, how come so many are in male-dominated professions like IT rather than female-dominated professions like nursing?

I thought that might be an interesting article but I only got as far as the paragraph where he starts name-checking female political leaders for supporting Transgenderism. Sorry my phone is capitalising that.

Take Nicola Sturgeon - we know that lobby groups have been in the door, colonising policy before any consultations are done. The issue is the way the Scottish government create policy, not the fact that a female leader professes to be a feminist (because I am not aware that she is a feminist thought-leader, rather than a woman in power who self-IDs as a feminist).

Oh, do you know what? I do not have time to be told that Transgenderism is all women’s fault and we need to debate if that is that is true.

If the article gets on to a critique of how women’s studies became gender by (male) theorists of masculinity needing to be included and de-politicising women’s studies, at the same time as male scholars deconstructed material reality, then I might come back and engage.

stumbledin - are you sure you've read the article? He provides plenty of evidence that more women than men support gender ID, not just a few women promoted by the media. Saying they're brainwashed is just begging the question - so why are women more open to brainwashing on this than men?

Through history and across places, women as a population have been abused, threatened, murdered for not being nice enough, for not having the shirts ironed, for questioning rules and regulations, for speaking out.
Not necessarily on this subject but others.

How long did it take for coercive control to be recognised in law? Many people still do not understand how it works.

You cannot write about the women leaders espousing TWAW without mentioning the lack of debate and entirely toxic atmosphere around the subject.

Men have nothing to lose by speaking out.

Less to lose, maybe not nothing

I enjoyed reading the article, but he seems to strongly imply that we need to reject ‘blank slatism’ in order to have a rational basis for sex-segregated spaces.

Surely even if you accept the blank slate idea, the fact that men and women have different bodies is often enough of a reason for sex-segregation?

It seems to me that Transgenderism relies on a belief that there are innate differences of psyche between men and women (ie the exact opposite of blank slatism). Thus the ‘woman’s brain in a man’s body’ idea.

I'm not sure I agree with all of the article but I do agree with his thesis that the increasing representation of women in public life has enabled the rise of trans ideology.

Women are socialised to be kind and look out for other marginalised individuals and groups. Female socialisation has been weaponised against us whether by politicians, the media or 'feminist' groups.

There was a podcast a year ago by the Scottish 'feminist' group Engender about GRA reform (which they support uncritically, of course) and the director ended the podcast saying there was a need for "radical kindness". Basically, she was telling women who object to self-ID to "be kind". You could not make it up: the director of a 'feminist' group telling fellow women to 'be kind'.

Being kind is what got us into the mess.

He doesn't say anything about the psychologists who have declared that GID is no longer a mental disorders which is the real open door to transgenderism. It is them who have tacitly with no real evidence declared it an objective reality comparable to intersex conditions. I really think he should be questioning the psychologists.

How does he explain the situation in Iran. Or Malta. Or Ireland. Or Canada, or any one of the other non feminist and conservative countries?

The insistence that there are no biological differences in attitudes and behavior between the sexes is no longer a radical dissenting view; it is established orthodoxy.

If society denies biological differences and does not rigidly enforce gender roles, then the way is cleared for transgenderism.

I don't see how this follows at all. If gender roles are not enforced, and there are no biological differences in behaviour between the sexes, then surely there is no need for transgenderism, because there's nothing to 'trans' from and to.

Interesting article, and interesting responses on this thread.

But I really do not agree with his thesis that: "Feminism Paved the Way for Transgenderism".

He might just as well have written, "Women are responsible for what men do."

I can see something of what he's saying. When I was a young woman, and left school and went to university, I was being told, from some quarters, that there was nothing I couldn't do, and that me being born a woman meant nothing! And I thought, yey! Equality!

It took me a few years to realise that men were in control, and had always been in control, all that time. And that I'd been patronised, spoken over, lied to, even abused, but that I was expected to take it, because I was now an !!!equal female!!! ("and make me a cuppa while you're at it!)

Also, it is my opinion that transgenderism is just another branch of men's rights activism.

Transgendersim comes from men, not women.