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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

The Guardian here we go agan

30 replies

Kit19 · 09/07/2020 16:36

more handwringing and why cant we just be nice??

Im so bored of this shit

OP posts:
ThatsHowWeRowl · 11/07/2020 12:14

Are there experiences that make a woman real, anyway? Periods? Giving birth? Many women don’t experience the latter, some don’t experience the former.

Argh!

Most women have periods at some point in their life. If a woman gets to her 40s and has never had a period then there will be a specific reason for that which will have required fairly invasive medical investigation, probably heartache somewhere along the way and possibly other medical issues. If a transwoman gets to their 40s and has never had a period then they know the exact reason for this and it requires precisely zero investigation. There is a single very specific reason why no transwoman has ever had a period.

If a woman gets to her 40s and has never given birth, then it is either highly likely that she has spent most of her adult life actively avoiding getting pregnant, involving probably multiple types of contraception along the way, enduring all of the stress that comes with that OR she has spent a number of years trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, and enduring all of the stress that comes with that. Or she has some sort of medical issue which means that she knows that will never get pregnant, and has endured the stress that comes with that. There will be a very small number of women who will never get pregnant for medical reasons and are totally happy about that fact. A transwoman has never experienced any of these things. There is a single very specific reason why no transwoman has ever given birth.

Pregnancy and periods, whether its experiencing them, lack of them, actively avoiding them, not knowing why they haven't experienced them etc are something that all women have had some kind of relative experience of.

ThatsHowWeRowl · 11/07/2020 12:26

When we teach young girls about periods, we know that a very small number of them might not experience them for various reasons, but we tell them about it anyway because we know that females have periods, and if it doesn't happen for them they will need an understanding that this is not normal. When we teach boys about periods we don't say to boys 'and you might experience this too' because we know for an absolute fact that they won't.

I know a girl who had ovarian cancer as a baby and had that ovary removed. When she was about 9 her cancer came back in the other ovary and had a full hysterectomy. She will never have a period, she will never get pregnant or give birth or breastfeed, she will have to be on certain hormonal medication for the rest of her life to try and ensure that she develops normally. As she got older, learnt more and more about reproduction, she had to develop an understanding and come to terms with what has happened to her. All of those experiences are uniquely female and directly relate to her female body and there will be other females who have been through the same thing - no male, however they identify, will ever have experienced that.

The whole 'some women don't have periods so males are women too' argument is just so lazy and ill thought out.

GCAcademic · 11/07/2020 12:39

To be honest, I am only surprised on those rare days when I go onto the Guardian website and there isn't a trans propaganda piece or an opinion piece attacking free speech.

Wondersense · 11/07/2020 23:55

@RoyalCorgi The Indie is not the same newspaper as it was years ago. As soon as it went online, there seemed to be more articles about violent female criminals (not sure why, do the readership find that titillating?), a lot more articles about Islam and Muslim faith matters, more far left opinion pieces, and far more articles with glaring grammar or spelling errors in them. I stopped reading it mostly for the seemingly rushed articles and click bait titled, poorly written pieces,

NotBadConsidering · 12/07/2020 01:27

after publishing a broadside in June on transgender issues

“Broadside”

This means a fierce verbal attack. Historically from firing of all the guns from one side of a warship.

Clearly another one who hasn’t read it. Another slur of Rowling. Just unbelievable.

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