How can I argue this: female without ovaries etc

[omikron]

If the dictionary definition of female is:

1
Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.

Then when a TRA says 'well what about women that don't have ovaries?'

Excerpts from Maya Forstater's witness statement which might be useful:

Males are people with the type of body which, if all things are working, are able to produce male gametes (sperm). Females have the type of body which, if all things are working, is able to produce female gametes (ova), and gestate a pregnancy.

Some women have conditions which mean that they do not produce ova or cannot conceive or sustain a pregnancy. Similarly, some men are unable to produce viable sperm. These people are still women and men.

People have potential to be either large gamete producers, or small gamete producers. No one produces both; no one produces something else.

Then when a TRA says 'well what about women that don't have ovaries?'

Surely they’ve answered their own question? A woman without ovaries is a woman without ovaries.

I think this argument points to a basic lack of education, really.

How can you even study any scientific topic if you can't make groupings and categories based on some kind of real and relevant class? You can't. This is basic to the possibility not only of science, but rationality altogether. You can challenge the validity of a certain category, but not just by saying physical characteristics don't make up a grouping at all.

I'll never understand the bizarre TRA logic that seems to think you have to have absolute physiological perfection on an individual level to classify a group. That's not how biology and biological classification works.

All human beings are born with two eyes, two arms, two legs etc. That some small percentage of humans are born with rare defects that mean they might be blind or missing an arm or have no legs doesn't mean they cannot be classified as human or that they should be viewed as a completely different type of human being.
They are simply human beings with physiological issues.

All females have the reproductive / gestational ability coded in their DNA. Males don't. There might be defects or problems that lead to some of these reproductive organs to not develop properly or function properly in individual women, but that doesn't stop them from being female.

On the other hand, transwomen are males with fully functional male sexual organs.
There's nothing female about them. Every single cell in their body is coded as male.

Women without ovaries being counted as women doesn't mean that men without ovaries can be women.

These men have the corresponding male reproductive systems in place.

The important bit is "OF...THE SEX THAT", i.e. if your body is the type of body that can (all being well) make eggs/babies you are female. If your body is of the type that normally makes sperm, guess what - male.

The Maya Forstater summary above is very good, as is this:

Came here to repeat what Maya said in her brilliant witness statement and see that TheShoesa has already beaten me to it.I love how simple it is.

Came here to repeat what Maya said in her brilliant witness statement and see that TheShoesa has already beaten me to it.
I love how simple it is.

People have potential to be either large gamete producers, or small gamete producers. No one produces both; no one produces something else.

If testing a person's fertility requires them to ejaculate into a sample bottle, that person is male. Transwomen fall into this category.

The reason why sex matters to feminists is because males as a class can force females as a class to be pregnant and our sex-based rights to female spaces and services exist to mitigate that risk that males pose fo use as a class. Individuals who are infertile don't invalidate this class analysis.

that risk that males pose fo use as a class

pose to us as

“How can I argue this”

Why not try stopping arguing with people who will never, ever, agree with you and invest that energy in appealing to the middle ground and the uninformed that we need to make this a national issue and get nationwide support for it.

You won’t of course. I’ve said this a hundred times in here and nobody listens, all far too happy to stay in your little echo chamber arguing about twitter users with 100 followers.

Stop arguing directly with Trans Activists, stop making both sides of the debate look as bad as each other and try making some actual progress.

@Usernumbers1234 So you've read one post of mine and assumed a whole person? Get to fuck.

It is bad to say that women and girls exist as a distinct class of human beings?

Interesting.

@omikron

Yep I had. And your response shows how right I was.

That’s cool though, you get back to arguing semantics with someone who won’t listen anyway. God forbid you should do anything useful when instead you can split your time evenly between pointlessly arguing with people and then popping in here to claim your pat on the back from the echo chamber.

Go you you wonderful person, what a productive life.

And what the fuck does “assumed a whole person mean”

Female = woman girl is pointless arguing semantics is it?

Well that says it all tbh

This is a particularly aggressive example of telling a woman to stfu about something of fundamental importance.

There may be several characteristics that denote membership of a class; ovaries are only part of the entire female reproductive system.
Girls and post menopausal woman don't produce mature, ripe eggs; they are still female.

'What if they don't have ovaries' isn't a clever or sensible argument. Its a goady, bullying statement made by people who are not acting in good faith. Call them out on it.
Their inability to deal with reality isn't our problem, women don't have that luxury. We are the ones dealing with all the risk of pregnancy, lack of reproductive rights, and male violence.

Why not try stopping arguing with people who will never, ever, agree with you and invest that energy in appealing to the middle ground and the uninformed that we need to make this a national issue and get nationwide support for it. What, like all the many and varied things women have been doing or the last few years? Yep! Slowly things are changing, but many women are still being targeted at home and at work. It is hardly surprosign that some women choose not to stand up and be counted

You won’t of course. I’ve said this a hundred times in here and nobody listens, all far too happy to stay in your little echo chamber arguing about twitter users with 100 followers. Ah! Now, as I am not ATwitter user does that mean I am also not a GC feminist? (Using the TRA gender argument as my model, of ocurse)

Stop arguing directly with Trans Activists, stop making both sides of the debate look as bad as each other and try making some actual progress. Would you like to expand on that? Maybe show some GC women being physically violent, threatening children, carers etc....

The truth is that there is, at last, some shift in public understanding. Some are becoming more aware, some organisations are starting to have a second look. Those still having a first look are being challenged directly. Just this week I have written to M+S, BBC and Lewis/Waitrose, based on posts here. My awareness is constantly beingf raised and I am constantly communicating with a range of organisations about the matter.

"as bad as each other"? Eh? Receipts please.

@CuriousaboutSamphire
I think we are actually in agreement..... Challenging the big corporates, encouraging others to challenge them (which they can do without putting their heads over the parapet to be targeted) and increasing awareness is exactly what this board should be doing, and happily increasingly is.

What isn’t productive is having direct arguments with Trans activists. Just like this OP which basically says “help me win this argument” why? What’s it going to do to help? Is that TRA going to hear some of the responses suggested and say “my goodness, I’ve got this all wrong, you are quite right, please send me details of all your GC groups, I want to join them all” ? It’s not going to happen is it?

And that’s my problem with how these boards are going about it. Just like OP here, she just wants to win an argument with someone who will never listen. What a waste of time and effort, if she could have persuaded 3 people to write to John Lewis in the time she’s spent stewing on this pointless little exchange she would actually be doing some benefit.

But to too many people, much like politics, this has all become a “them and us” argument. But just like politics, the important ones aren’t them or us, it’s the people in between. Stop arguing with them and start helping us.

Not all arguments are with diehard TRAs. Sometime people just put forward the ideas they have picked up through for example workplace training. I’d like a good answer to ‘don’t you believe that everyone deserves respect’ in the context of pronouns and self-ID. Not to ‘win an argument’ but to challenge the woolly thinking that says we can fix the problem of rapists identifying into women’s spaces by being nicer people.

Well, badgers are four-legged mammals but if a badger was born with three legs I'm pretty sure it would still be a badger. A human is supposed to have the ability to vocalise, but if you are born mute, do you stop being a human?

I think there is a valid reason for practicing on these little arguments/online spats. Honing am argument, distilling it to the most salient points, is a skill. I personally don't spend a lot of time arguing with tra's but I do personally benefit from practicing on them. Ignoring the sealions, the trolls - seeing through strawmen and cutting through the schools of clownfish. It takes practice. Talking about this with people in real life who haven't thought through the arguments, but you already have? It is beneficial.

Fundamentally, we all know we won't convince a tra (although who knows; some tra's have actually turned around), but it's not necessarily about them at all. It's about the lurkers and it's about improving our own debate skills.