“We risk imposing a singular idea of what a woman is”

[Areyouactuallyseriousrightnow]

If we judge people not according to their behaviour, but according to what some third party perceives as their sex and gender, we risk imposing a singular idea of what a “woman” is..

In the Guardian today. Yes how unthinkable that we might risk there being only one clear definition of what a woman is... one as simplistic as for example ‘adult female’?

You know what's an unacceptably "singular idea of what a woman is"? That a woman is a person who performs femininity.

Indeed, kittens

It's funny how we had a singular idea of what a woman was for millennia and it worked fine but now it is something that is being imposed.

I’m getting sick of all this ‘masculine woman will be excluded’ bollocks - masculine women don’t look like men, I’ve never in my life mistaken a woman for a man. I don’t doubt that there is the odd occasion that a woman has been mistaken for a man but these must be so infrequent and easily cleared up with the words ‘I’m a woman, actually’ that it is just not relevant.

They’re being deliberately obtuse, they know that at the minute if a man goes into a women’s single sex space women can kick up a fuss and expect to be listened to but if any man can identify as a woman then any man can access a single sex space and women will to too afraid to ask them to leave for fear of being labelled transphobic and staff will be too afraid to ask them to leave for fear of being sacked.

The question that has to be answered by the people peddling this crap is how many women and girls are you prepared to sacrifice for your agenda? How many lives are you prepared to ruin?

Some people really don’t like being told no by women.

That whole article is truly dreadful - incoherent, full of of holes and assumptions and meaningless rhetoric.

Utterly batshit

The writer asks whether masculine looking women would be banned from women only spaces.

This reminded me of an embarassing time when I saw a man strolling into the Hampstead women's pond in a nonchalant and somewhat confident and entitled manner.

This did happen from time to time so I confronted him and asked him whetehr he knew that it was a women only space.

Turns out it wasn't a man after all, just a very butch lesbian.

As soon as she opened her mouth to tell me I could tell it was a woman. She also was extremely flattered and appreciative that I thought she was a man.

How we did laugh.

Cue a few years later, people with penises appear at the pond, I attempt to discuss it with a lifeguard and it was like the Stepford Wives. A robotic parroting of TWAW and if you're not with the programme it's the gulag for you.

How times change

Who exactly is the 'third party'?

"trans women have been safely accessing these spaces for years" - is that safely referring to the transwomen who've not got any grief from women who react to their presence by keeping our heads down and trying not to make a fuss or attract attention? Did the adulthumanfemales feel safe when we encountered unexpected adulthumanmales in our facilities?

If we're to "judge people [to be women or men] according to their behaviour" then we're judging noncompliant adulthumanfemales to be non-women.

I really wish these dicks would stop trying to chuck me out of my own sex class. The definition Woman: adult human female actually helps females with issues around our sexed bodies and the gender imposed on us to cope, psychologically, without crumbling.

Why are they attempting to rob us of a mechanism by which young women are able to resolve feelings of dysphoria?

I’ve never in my life mistaken a woman for a man

Same. There have been people whose sex I couldn't immediately determine, whom I was usually able to work out were women after some careful assessment of various features, but that's as far as it goes.

And before anyone mentions Buck Angel: I learned of Buck Angel through Bizarre magazine ~20 years ago. They made rather a large point of the fact that Buck has female genitalia. It was a bit grim, to be honest - the whole magazine was a bit of a modern freakshow and Buck's inclusion in that seemed distasteful. But I was never under the impression that he wasn't female.

I’ve just been sent this which is part of RCN recruitment process.
I wasn’t assigned a gender at birth. My biological sex was identified, as defined by every cell in my body.

The royal college of nursing should know better!

It's the rank hypocrisy that gets me.

They are promoting an ideology where people go out of their way to look like the opposite sex. And then use, as a counter argument to that, people who might naturally look like the opposite sex!

I think this echoes a fear of have about being questioned about my own womanhood. The younger trans women, ultra feminine, much more so than me but much more like other young women (makeup, uplift bras etc). Am I less of a woman? It feels like that to me recently.

@AllWashedOut

I think this echoes a fear of have about being questioned about my own womanhood. The younger trans women, ultra feminine, much more so than me but much more like other young women (makeup, uplift bras etc). Am I less of a woman? It feels like that to me recently.

It's not possible to be less of a woman. A woman is an adult human female. It's not on a sliding scale.

Oh ffs. A woman is a woman.

In transgenderism the definition veers from sexist stereotypes to the batshit extreme where literally anyone can be a woman just by uttering the words 'I am a woman'.
Butch women might occasionally be mistaken for men. So what? It doesn't mean that men with paraphilic interests or dysphoria are women.

It's never about what a bloody man is, is it?

ALWAYS with the 'a woman is feckin' anybody who says they are one, even that fat bearded bloke wearing a bikini and holding a gun I saw on Twitter yesterday.

FFS.

Ask a gay man if they will have sex with a transman.
Ask s straight man if they will have sex with a transwoman.

THAT shows what they really think about who is who.

Dread that question should be asked of every man who wades into this debate. Genuinely want to hear how they would get out of it.

Or ask for examples of transwomen who claim to lesbians going on to have a relationship with another transwoman.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/01/trans-people-prejudice-gender-recognition-act

These are the authors:
Jayne Ozanne is a member of the government’s LGBT Advisory Panel and Church of England’s General Synod. Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah is rabbi of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

This is what they say about themselves:
For our part, we write as lesbian feminists. One of us identifies as cis-gendered, the other gender queer.

I still have no idea whether they are women or male 'women'. It's that phrase 'identifies as'. If a man can identify as a woman, then a transwoman can identify as a 'cis woman'. And WTF does 'gender queer' mean?

Of course, people should always be free to say what they think and free to live according to their conscience. But freedom of speech must not impinge on a person’s protected characteristics, as defined by the Equality Act.

They seem to have forgotten that SEX is a protected characteristic.

What’s more, if freedom of speech is to be just and fair, people must have an equal opportunity to be heard, particularly by those in power. Few trans people have access to national news platforms to counter the views laid against them.

Don't they read the Guardian?

If we listen only to the loudest voices, or worse, silence those we don’t wish to hear, things can quickly turn toxic.

Yes, and that's what's happening. But it's not the TRAs who are being silenced.

A while ago there was a post being shared far and wide on twitter about a butch lesbian (or maybe they were a butch lesbian couple?) who had been challenged in women's toilets, and it was being used as a giant self righteously outraged gotcha by the TRAs against pearl-clutching middle class women.

A few of my wooer-than-woke friends retweeted it with finger-wagging 'do better, be kind' messages, and I had to shove my hands into my pockets to stop myself replying that it only happens because in the brave new rainbow world women feel the need to police their own fucking spaces from any man who might feel entitled to come in.

It's THAT ideology that has put gender non-conforming women under more scrutiny, not women's prejudice against other women. (In other words, the L being shat on by the T AGAIN.)

Who exactly is the 'third party'?

God knows.

I think it's a threat - if we don't accept tra definition of women, someone more sinister will step in with a different definition? One that even women will not always meet?

My head hurts from banging against metaphorical brick fucking walls recently.

Gender assigned at birth, from the Royal College of Nursing?! Aaaargh.

Kittens nails it, first post.

A woman is an adult human female who may look, behave, show likes and personality, choices, emotional skills, behaviours and lifestyle of any type she chooses. A woman comes in infinite variety. The only thing that every single one of them has in common is the biology.

That this is a very sad, hurtful, exclusive thing to some biological male people's perception is cause for sympathy, but this is the reality of the matter.

If in an attempt to be kind, we cover up and pretend that it isn't just that one fact of biology but some amorphous cloud of behaviours and choices and hairstyles and colour preferences so that males can be women too, (and completely women, transwoman as a phrase apparently isn't sufficient) then instantly a lot of women stop being classifiable as women, and yes, we very definitely risk imposing a singular, sexist and limiting idea of what a woman is, that harms biological females and throws their rights back about a century.

Is it really important to do this to all females so that a small percentage of males can have the exact, precise and unfortunately fictional label they would like?

Or would it be rational to expect those males to show some care and interest in the needs of the class of people they identify as and would like to be included in?

I still don't understand why TW isn't in itself an identity and classification of a group to be proud of. What is wrong with it? Biological female people cannot be TW. It would be beyond rude, inappropriate, assuming and disrespectful of biological females to identify as TW, which in reality they can never be. Why is it not recognised as equally disrespectful the other way around?

Should TW never be allowed support groups or specialist services that meet the needs specific to that group because it excludes female people or non trans males? Of course not.

The end game of trying to find a definition that removes biology however is to remove all single sex provisions from females specific to their group. Whether or not they need them, whether or not this leaves women without services, whether or not this makes things worse for 51% of the human race: this has to happen because males want it. Shared services, differentiated services, services that work for everyone and accept that 'woman' has different strands of need? No. Not allowed.

And there you see the intrinsic, toddler selfishness inherent in this misogynistic movement. Not inclusion but colonisation.