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.

Gay bashers didn't usually rape their victims

Where is this happening? In the UK?

Whoops, crosspost.

I think there a place for blabbering about gender too, but without meaningful behaviour backing it up - without walking the walk - it's all just talk. Fiddling while the bodies formerly known as women burn, to mangle a metaphor.

Well clearly men like that can be pandered to by the Women's Institute. It's in their Diversity statement.

It seems like there is nothing in inclusive feminism that will deal with the challenge of impingement so I can honestly say it's all about the cuck from the testimony here.

@tinofshortbread thanks for response. I am pondering it. I think your word female and my word woman are inter changeable then. Interesting perspective nevertheless :)

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.

Any attempt? What about prisons and hospital wards? Where people go is based on much more than a 'cursory glance'. Do you agree with these spaces being sex segregated?

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.

Gender nonconforming people have been around forever. And what is causing hostility towards trans people is the entitled actions of some of them, such as male people wanting access to female only spaces. If they were content to accept that they can't change sex, most of the problems would disappear.

You can see that already happening with the moral panic about whether drag queens should be allowed around children or not.

Drag queens aren't gender nonconforming people. They are male entertainers and performers who make a living out of portraying themselves as a grotesque caricature of a woman. This misogynistic portrayal of women is unsuitable as children's entertainment. I'm sure you understand why.

An association is now being made between being gender nonconforming and sexual predation.

Well, if you equate 'gender nonconformity' with a sexualised and misogynistic portrayal of a woman by a man, you are making this association yourself.

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.

Male violence. It's a problem. But men need to sort that one out. Women aren't causing it, so how do you expect us to stop it?

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.

Well, maybe it's time for people to face the reality that they can't change sex. Stop telling children that they can. And it's testosterone that causes the irreversible changes, so there's no excuse for giving girls medication at a young age. And for boys who don't go through puberty, genital surgery is more complex. So there are downsides to early medication for them as well. And that's even without mentioning the 80% desistance post puberty if children aren't medicated.

Escape, agree.

The focus on who men want to fuck is a peculiar sidetrack.

@NeurotrashWarrior

At the same time, lesbians get those
messages from TW and verbally abuse when rejected. (Male pattern behaviour.)

I know this is a very common GC trope but I don't know a single trans women who would verbally abuse a lesbian who rejected her or even have a problem with it and I'd certainly call out anyone I saw do it. I'm not denying there have been some clumsy and at times ill thought conversations, mostly amongst young queer kids about genital preferences and suchlike although I;m not sure that discussion should be out of bounds - how we perceive bodies, sex, gender, attractiveness and how society/patriarchy influences that is obviously a potentially rich discussion if it were to be handled with more care.

But no, anyone who calls a lesbian a transphobe for not wanting to date someone with a penis can fuck off, and I think most trans people, and in fact most of those you call TRAs would say the same. In fact theres quite a few ex GC lesbians who quite openly say they wouldn't date trans women who've been welcomed by trans people. I think it's been very unfair that trans activism is often characterised by the most extreme fringe positions, a bit like if someone tried to characterise feminism purely based on lesbian separatism or the scum manifesto.

Anyway night.

Anyone that call feminists here transphobes can fuck off.

Still catching up sorry. Keep having to do stuff with the kids.

Anyway.

'Gay men by and large don't get this shit.'

This is the second time I've seen this sort of statement recently on MN on trans threads.

So this must be the next thing or something?

The idea that gay men by and large don't get shit.... Really?

That claim feels spurious to me.

So we're not to worry about gay men any more because they're aok. I mean yes things are better but hardly done! And that's before you segment it down.

"In fact theres quite a few ex GC lesbians who quite openly say they wouldn't date trans women who've been welcomed by trans people"

If they are lesbians of course they won't date transwomen. Lesbians are not attracted to males. Nice to know some transwomen realise that they havens really changed sex.

@NiceGerbil

Still catching up sorry. Keep having to do stuff with the kids.

Anyway.

'Gay men by and large don't get this shit.'

This is the second time I've seen this sort of statement recently on MN on trans threads.

So this must be the next thing or something?

The idea that gay men by and large don't get shit.... Really?

That claim feels spurious to me.

So we're not to worry about gay men any more because they're aok. I mean yes things are better but hardly done! And that's before you segment it down.

Gay men do get shit. But they are not generally vulnerable to sexual violence from straight men in the way trans women are. Most gay men are not visibly gay for a start. And if a camp or effeminate gay man was nervous about getting in a minicab on his own with a bloke its because of fears of homophobic, not sexual, violence or harassment.

I think your word female and my word woman are inter changeable then

Just wanted to jump in and point out that female isn’t quite interchangeable with woman, because female and male are used to describe reproductive function throughout the animal and botanical world (and are even used to describe innie and outie cable connectors).

Woman specifically means adult human female. To call women ‘females’ literally removes the ‘human’ ie, it’s very clearly dehumanising.

Girl means minor human female. It’s important that girls (and boys) have a specific word because while age perhaps matters less to non-human females, minor humans absolutely need different, protective human rights to adult humans. Minor human rights are often affected by sex (as adult ones are) so ‘child’ isn’t specific enough.

Gay men don't get shit? I missed that (assume it was jj).

I see the logic.

And by that I mean I can see how the belief feeds into one's own intellectual interpretation of self and affects identity development.

Interesting.

Whether homosexual males who identify as men get more or less shit than homosexual males who don't identify as men is a valid question but it's not within feminism's remit.

Whether homosexual males who identify as men get more or less shit than homosexual males who don't identify as men is a valid question but it's not within feminism's remit.

☝️
Exactly

I think someone just won a bet. Derail a transinclusive feminist questioning thread with male porn fantasies---

Yes, it definitely falls under impingement as per the original question. Derailing into issues of no relevance to women's rights and creating divisive conflict is a common experience of "inclusive" feminist groups.

Gay men do get shit. But they are not generally vulnerable to sexual violence from straight men in the way trans women are. Most gay men are not visibly gay for a start. And if a camp or effeminate gay man was nervous about getting in a minicab on his own with a bloke its because of fears of homophobic, not sexual, violence or harassment.

Most male on male sexual violence happens in prison. It’s absolutely bonkers to suggest that gay (and straight) men are not at risk of sexual violence from straight (or gay) men.

Britain’s most prolific serial rapist raped men, mostly young, gay men.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50688975

There is no evidence to assert that transwomen are at more risk of male violence or male sexual violence than other males.
Perhaps because all the statistics are fucked up due to sex data being self reported and gender reassignment rarely being collected as a separate characteristic? You’ll have to take the lack of evidence up with the Transactivists, it’s what they’ve been working for for decades now.

Even in the US where black transwomen have been identified as a specific vulnerable group, other black males of similar age and socio economic status are still more likely to be murdered.

Feminism has not yet solved male violence against women. We really do not have the resources to solve male on male violence at this time:

In this video Magdalen Berns will present a critique of "Everyday Feminism"’s neoliberal re-branding of feminism as a "movement to end all oppression" rather than a movement for women’s liberation

My point is that "woman" isnt something to be embraced, its a cage that female people are kept in

You're mixing up sex and gender again @tinofshortbread

Woman is an adult human female.

You are talking about femininity.

One of the things that makes me unspeakably angry about transactivism is that it's a group of men deciding - once again - that they have the right to define what it is to be female. They can fuck right off. It didn't work in the Book of Genesis, and it's not working now.

I care about women's rights.

At the same time, I care both about LGBTQ+ rights as a queer woman, and as a person who is friends with a number of trans people and am personally privy to the hardships they're going through.

Oh a listen to Magdalen is a good idea at this point in the thread, thanks.

Men are responsible for most of the oppression in the world so why is it women's job to sort it out before they are allowed to fight against the discrimination that they face as a sex. Time for men to get intersectional and fight for the rights of other men in oppressed groups.

"I care about women's rights.

At the same time, I care both about LGBTQ+ rights as a queer woman, and as a person who is friends with a number of trans people and am personally privy to the hardships they're going through."

So do you think that there could possibly be a conflict of rights between these two disparate groups? If so how can this conflict be resolved?

Grabthar: demanding access to someone else's liberation movement because you are choosing to impersonate their protected characteristic, which you can at any point shrug off if it gets too hard and go back to your life of privaledge, is unbelievably offensive.
When you state it so clearly, it's undeniable.

Kit19: I'm baffled that instead of sayng to boys "its fine to wear a dress and make up and like dolls" and to girls "of course wearing trousers and liking football and climbing trees doesnt make you a boy", our society seems determined to tell these children that they are in fact the opposite sex
Yes, that's what gets me too. The trans movement has to revive and enforce those old outdated stereotypes, otherwise they wouldn't have even that weak foundation. But they're straitjacketing themselves, as well as putting oppressive restrictions on children.

Tyroterf: Anyway, to the OP: your title betrays a bias. It uses the usual linguistic flip common to the topic of transgenderism. The behaviour MN feminists are infamous for is trans inclusive. Our feminism is for all people born as female bodies, regardless of later declarations of identity.
You're right of course. I was using 'transinclusive' as it's used by the women whose views I didn't understand.

@TyroTerf

Tinof to me that reads like giving up and running away because we can't win.

You know the next step to this is the snip at point zero, right?

You're saying we reject the word woman and embrace ourselves as female people in order to make headway. Meanwhile, male people are redefining female to be male-inclusive, and we're intimidated and harassed if we dare to self define as female people.

Your way doesn't work better than ours. The world tried your way, and what we've seen is that whatever word is used to demarcate us from the male of the species becomes the label for the derided and exploited stereotype that's forced upon us to keep us down.

I confess to curiosity about which word we'll flee to next.

I have noticed male people attempting to redefine female, moreover, I've noticed university educated trans-allied woke men claiming that they dont even know what female is...and you know, I;m kindof starting to roll with it.

Feminism has always been far too cautious for my liking. Not nearly enough Solanas.

"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex."

So maybe we need to get back on track and start eliminating the male sex. The psychological condition of being female involves the assumption that you are potentially capable of gestating and birthing, of course not all female people do have this capacity, but the only people that do are female.

The psychological state of being male is the certain knowledge that they are unable to gestate. Males seek to control females precisely because female people have the power to create babies that they can only have vicariously through marriage or surrogacy.

Denying male people the knowledge that they do not have this capability (men have babies too, you know!) leads everyone to become psychologically female - in that they do not know whether they are capable of gestation.

Male people would no longer exist psychologically.

@MissMarplesGlove

My point is that "woman" isnt something to be embraced, its a cage that female people are kept in

You're mixing up sex and gender again @tinofshortbread

Woman is an adult human female.

You are talking about femininity.

One of the things that makes me unspeakably angry about transactivism is that it's a group of men deciding - once again - that they have the right to define what it is to be female. They can fuck right off. It didn't work in the Book of Genesis, and it's not working now.

I'm not mixing up gender and sex in the slightest, it is yourself that is doing that through a circular definition.

You are defining woman as "adult human female". I am saying that female is a material and psychological state of being, whereas woman is a social construct.

When you tell a story in which a woman dropped her purse and you handed it back to her, you actually have no knowledge of her reproductive functionality, she could easily be a trans woman or a person with DSD who is primarily male but who has selected to live as a woman.

But still you gender her, based on appearance, gait, demenour etc. And thats where gender lies, not in the body, like sex, but in social interactions. Because the gender of woman is imposed on female people, you assume she is female, but you have no actual knowledge of that....but still you gender her.