Transinclusive feminists, please help me understand.

[thinkingaboutLangCleg]

Genuine question. I recognise that some men suffer from gender dysphoria or truly believe they were meant to be women, and some want to live out their fantasies. So I understand why they want access to women’s single-sex spaces and facilities, to validate themselves.

I understand why they want language and culture changed to include them in the category of women.

Some men will take advantage for personal gain (eg taking ‘women’s officer’ roles or sports prizes), or to harass women and girls in intimate spaces eg toilets, or to be transferred from a male to a female prison. Women and girls lose out, obviously, with no corresponding gains to compensate.

I can understand that women who aren’t feminists may not be concerned about the effects on women and girls.

But how does a feminist reconcile her feminism — centring women’s rights and needs, including the right to privacy and safety —with supporting transwomen’s actions that necessarily impinge on these?

This is a genuine question, as I wonder if I’m missing or misunderstanding something.

Jj how does achieving the feminist goals of being treated and fully human lead to an entrenching of gender roles? How does achieving the feminist goal of being treated on merit and not as a stereotype enforce gender roles? How does an acceptance that women are smaller, give birth and experience different heart attack symptoms enforce gender roles?

UN women are in favour of prisons based on gender ID rather than sex then?

Or is it just a nice sounding thing that no one is actually supposed to think about?

And JJ you've got a standard error there.

The idea that on the one hand, woman/girl/female can be anyone who says they are, to be kind. But on the other hand, everyone still knows what women and men are and so nothing will really change except a bit of kindness.

That's a really naive take but I think one that is very very common.

You see it with all sorts of orgs and media outlets and charities.

On the one hand. Girl/woman is a matter of internal ID unlinked to physical sex. Then next article. Girls in X country are being married too young and being injured in childbirth. Or whatever the story is.

Words as fundamental as these cannot have two simultaneous definitions that are decided based on... Context? Which country it is?

But I think at the moment that's what lots of people want to do.

The end point though is obvious given half a thought and looking at what has already happened. Which I'm not going to go into in depth but stats are already knackered and male rapists have been locked in prison with women.

The words are being lost. At the moment eg plan say support a girl. They will at some point need to decide. Do they change it to support a young vagina person (or similar) or change it to support a child (and lose focus, girls lose specific support that they need due to their situation wherever it is). They will go for the latter as the former sounds grim...

Philomena's story.

Her interview with Graham Linehan I still can't finish it's so horrific.,

www.transwidowsvoices.org/post/philomena-s-story-there-and-back-again

I want to chew over for another minute the very important point that my feminism, which is gender critical is also trans inclusive. It includes trans men, and non binary female sexed people. That they don’t want to be included is neither here nor there. It includes them the same as it includes very religious women who believe that their husbands rule over them, and that I am going to hell. It includes anti feminist women who support MRAs, even though they think I’m a bitter bitch who hates men. It includes very conservative women who think womens rights have gone quite far enough, thank you. It includes all the women who don’t like me, and who I don’t like.

It includes all of these women, whether they want it to or not. I am fighting for us all. It just doesn’t include anyone male, because that’s not what it’s for.

No jj, I didn't say that at all, nor do I think it. I'm well aware that sexual violence is nothing to do with attraction and all about power. Which is why I didn't say perceived physical attractiveness, I said perceived femaleness. If a passing Transwoman experiences sexual violence from someone who doesn't know she is trans, it's because she has been mistaken for someone with female biology. It doesn't matter how attractive she is, the attack is still based on the perception of her biological sex. If a non passing Transwoman, or a passing Transwoman who has disclosed her trans status, experiences sexual violence, its because her attacker is motivated by homophibia or transphobia or any of the other things you said. Both may be based on a desire by males to domainte and terrorise vulnerable groups, but the motivation for choosing the victim is different, just as its different again for gay men who experience male sexual violence. It's not the same as sexual violence against women and neither group is served by pretending it is.

@NeurotrashWarrior

the results of policies GC feminists call for will serve to socially enforce gender conformity.

How? Examples?

Because people's perception of someone's physical sex is based on a usually quite cursory glance. So any attempt to segregate spaces based on born sex will lead to those who don't look like their sex being excluded or harassed. And increased hostility towards trans people, which is already happening, will force trans people back into the closet and make people think twice about being gender nonconforming. You can see that already happening with the moral panic about whether drag queens should be allowed around children or not. An association is now being made between being gender nonconforming and sexual predation. If that continues then it will not be safe to be gender nonconforming, just as it wasn't safe to be gay when the same trick was pulled in the 80's and people got queerbashed on their way home from a night out.

It will also of course lead to trans people, and especially trans kids, doing everything they can to get medical intervention as young as possible in the knwoledge that they leave it too late they will never be accepted as their aquired sex. And the claims of the damage done by 'gender ideology' will ultimately be used to attack LGB people and women, just as is happening in Hungary and Poland right now.

Precisely Soph.

Why on earth must women also campaign on behalf of men?

@SophocIestheFox

Now that pap from the UN definitely isn’t feminism. Requiring women to be kind is the literal antithesis of feminism. So I’m still not further forward.

I understand the urge to refugee out of imposed gender roles, tinof- I don’t just get it, I actively endorse it, for everyone, trans or not. It’s the colonising of the opposite sex gender roles that I oppose, because that just sets them even more solidly for all of us.

On the "be kind" stuff, I'm not really in favour of being kind, but some males just find that the gender role imposed on female people is comfier to them than the gender role of man imposed on male people, and thats fine with me. But they are still male even tho they are women. No amount of hormones, surgery, makeup or pretty dresses is going to change their sex.

My problem I guess is that everyone tends to witter on about gender equality when talking about feminism. Fuck gender, fuck equality. Females are clearly superior, the entire species would die out without us, we can do amazing things with our bodies, and what can males do? Nothing useful that a sperm bank cant.

The problem with female people is that we have bought the male lie that we are women, a lie designed to stop us achieving our full potential. If some males want to be women, let them, the better for female people to operate in stealth mode

People can judge sex very accurately and very quickly so sex separation works very well indeed. It's based on movement and smell rather than face or clothes apparently

I don't think twice about being gender none conforming because I recognised years ago that hiding away won't solve this crap situation. If we didn't have gender we wouldn't need to be gender none conforming after all

You can't acquire a sex unfortunately. That's a myth peddled by pharmaceutical companies to make money out of people for life

@Conniethesensible

Gonna leave this here bye.

"It is our role as feminists to always be there..."

Women do not have to be everyone else's support human. They are people, unto themselves. Just fuck off with your "gonna leave this here bye".

Oh, tinof, I was nodding along to it all, until that very last paragraph!

The lie isn't that we're a word that means female people. The lie is that because we're female we must be feminine.

You've done some excellent scissor word but you've done it in ever so slightly the wrong place.

They say: female -> woman -> feminine. You've snipped it at the first point. You've cut off the word that means female human person. Babies and bathwater spring to mind.

Feminism makes the cut at the second point, not the first.

I and many disagree with that jj.

Bullying based on appearance and violence is not confined by feminists and must be tackled by all.

That also ignores and glosses over the potential risks and bending of boundaries for women and girls.

And I today read a fb thread where a woman was so vehemently attacked for questioning why a trans woman won a female beauty pageant that some were genuinely concerned she'd be beaten up by people she knew who had commented.

An association is now being made between being gender nonconforming and sexual predation. no it isn't, but the fact that it exists cannot be ignored and brushed under the carpet.

I would fight for people's rights to be gender non conforming, outside of and within feminism, but that's not what's being discussed

doing everything they can to get medical intervention as young as possible in the knwoledge that they leave it too late they will never be accepted as their aquired sex.

No the opposite. Radical feminism supports entirely the idea that gender is a removable cloak and non conformity is anti patriarchal.

I sense straw man arguments being set up.

@ByGrabtharsHammerWhatASavings

No jj, I didn't say that at all, nor do I think it. I'm well aware that sexual violence is nothing to do with attraction and all about power. Which is why I didn't say perceived physical attractiveness, I said perceived femaleness. If a passing Transwoman experiences sexual violence from someone who doesn't know she is trans, it's because she has been mistaken for someone with female biology. It doesn't matter how attractive she is, the attack is still based on the perception of her biological sex. If a non passing Transwoman, or a passing Transwoman who has disclosed her trans status, experiences sexual violence, its because her attacker is motivated by homophibia or transphobia or any of the other things you said. Both may be based on a desire by males to domainte and terrorise vulnerable groups, but the motivation for choosing the victim is different, just as its different again for gay men who experience male sexual violence. It's not the same as sexual violence against women and neither group is served by pretending it is.

I think they are much closer than you think. Pretty much every study ever done shows trans women face sexual assault at pretty much the same rate as non trans women. And it's not predatory gay men doing it.

The unpleasantly named shemale porn industry sells almost as much as mainstream porn and you won't find it on gay sites. There are huge numbers of trans sex workers and they are not being used by gay men. There are trans dating sites full of straight married men chasing, dating and having sex with trans women and then going back to their families who have no idea. Anyone trans, even on dating sites like okcupid, will get bombarded with straight men, who's first or second message will usually be 'r u discreet?', and not uncommonly accompanied by a helpful dick pic to help you decide.

Now much of this is hidden because men lie. But the truth is there is a huge number of men, who identify as and consider themselves straight who are sexually interested in trans women to the point that ladyboys and shemales were a point of both obsession and hilarity within 'lad' culture and even the 4channers and incels go on about 'traps' and post trans porn to each other.

I really don't think this is something a lot of GC feminists either believe or understand, but it's very, very true.

is not condoned** by feminist

@CaraDuneRedux

Exactly. It seems that some feminists think a woman is defined by her biology. I thought we fought against that? Well, I did. I'm older than a lot of you.

I remember suffering from this confusion about biological essentialism when I was a young woman (probably same age as you, at a guess) so I think I can answer you.

I am a woman, insofar as I have female reproductive biology. So far, so definitional.

However, it's a contingent fact about my identity as a person. I am first and foremost a person, who just happens to have female biology.

However, others have, historically and currently, weaponised this contingent fact about me to deny me and people like me rights. Having female reproductive biology is the marker societies use to spot one group of people they feel like shitting on from a great height. Therefore to try to strip away reference to my femaleness from the discussion strips me of the language I need to identify myself as a member of a group historically and currently shat upon politically.

Additionally, there are facets of my reproductive function which need to be taken into account in offering me equal access to society on a fair basis.

Take for e.g. the equal pay claim I fought a few years back. This didn't happen because my employer decided (evil capitalist cackle) to deliberately pay all those expressing a "feminine gender identity" less because... Instead, it was a classic case of cock up rather than conspiracy. Long pay scales, plus automatic annual marks of "doing okay" while on maternity leave, plus performance related pay meant that 10 years into the job, doing it just as efficiently as the man next to you, if you'd had a couple of periods of maternity leave, you'd be paid less than him.

Now of course one can argue about shared maternity/paternity leave as a route to fixing this, and I think that's a good one in an ideal society. But even then, it remains a fact that women need maternity leave in a way that men do not need paternity leave. Women need maternity leave because giving birth places a huge demand on a woman's body and she needs time to recover.

Biology.

It matters.

The trick is to recognise biology doesn't determine our worth as human beings, but does impact on our lives in ways that have to be taken into account if women (the sort of human being that produces the large immobile gametes, that gestates the young, that gives birth to them, that is capable of breast feeding them) are to be enabled to take a fair and equal role in society.

This is a great answer.

An association is now being made?

Really? This is not a new thing. Observably male people who embrace feminine attire have long been viewed with suspicion, because men with multiple paraphilias including crossdressing have been around for a long time; and the thing that women have always known about males who like to transgress boundaries is they need to be treated with caution in case they decide to transgress any more.

The idea that males who don't do the full macho performance are viewed as potential predators is bullshit though. In fact I'd say the opposite is true.

I think also we need to be careful here as the transwomen sex trade is I think very different in uk and the Americas. This site is predominantly British, so most people are looking at British rules and culture. Bringing in American prostitution clouds things. I think this also highlights how cultural trangendrism really is

As for the porn jj mentions - the defining feature of Woman is not 'sexually victimised by men'. Ffs.

JJ that might be very true and is disgusting.

But why must women sort that out?

If we want to be on the subject of porn (I really don't) there's as much if not more violent porn toward women. And a group of men who are turned on by playing out how the women are abused and dominated (and killed) by being the woman. As philomena's painfully describes.

butterer