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.

As a PP says my biology affects how I am treated by certain people. It affects the actions I take eg walking through a park at night and how my actions are judged (if I got attacked walking through a park at night i would be seen as culpable by some). It affects my health, my job opportunities, my salary etc.
It shapes the place people try to allocate me in the world.
This is why I need to be able to use the word woman to describe myself and others with similar biology. If I cannot distinguish those things that happen due to the societal view of my biology I cannot fight them.
Trans people must have rights and protections but they cannot have my rights and protections.
I need my legal rights and the right to describe myself as part of a group that is defined by society by our biology.
This is why TWAW bothers me. Not toilets but the ability to describe the biological class to which I belong and which society judges me by.

@TyroTerf

What do you mean by defined in that sentence?

This is an excellent question.

Determined? Yes, the fact of being a woman is determined by biology.

I would guess that what Joswis fought against was biology as destiny; biology predetermining a life of drudgery and ritualised submission and sexual performance.

We fight against that too.

Not just that. Determining what female is. Feminine behaviour. What a female should look like, as if femininity is a natural occurence only in one sex, what body parts one has to have to be regarded as female.

OldCrone: 'I know better than you silly girls. Stop talking.' Your words, not mine. What I meant was I actually took part in feminist activism before the move away from feminism in the 1980s.

Female biology can be determinant. In the sense that a female body is typically less physically strong than a male body. Also in the sense that a female body has the potential to become pregnant. Before the advent of easy contraception (in my lifetime), it was obvious that a female body could be a determinant of lifestyle, insofar as becoming pregnant would affect future life opportunities. This regardless of whether or not the female wanted to become pregnant. The feminists of the late 1900s argued against the inevitability of this quite rightly. However, there is STILL that vulnerability for anyone with a body of reproductive age. I am astounded that this fact is so often overlooked.

@Escapeplanning

We cannot empower ourselves when there's "one" way to be a woman.

What do you mean by "one" in this sentence?

Are you saying females can't empower themselves unless males are also empowered?

There are sections of society where men and boys are struggling with low incomes and social mobility and and a sister to men in that category that is absolutely a problem that affects my family. A feminism that strives for equal shares of opportunity will create less empowerment for men, very simplistically, and that is fair. But the feminist work is on growing the female share.

What is happening though is an insistance that females are indefinable. It's such a cul de sac and dead end that I am astonished women buy into it at all. What does it do for women other than give you a temporary warm feeling about inclusive virtue?

I'm honestly not bothered if you want to be inclusive of steak and eggs in your proud veganism identity, or inclusive of Labour voting in your Conservative identity, or to self identify as a Catholic while being a practicing Orthodox Jew. Crack on. I might think in the privacy of my head that your definitions are a bit unusual, but whatever floats your boat.

It doesn't matter until you bring your personal religion to other people and attempt to force them to genuflect to your particular altar. That's where the problem is. When you start forcibly inflicting your beliefs to remove words, rights, spaces and identities from others, this is a huge problem. Particularly when you do it in an obviously superior way using the word 'kind' and 'inclusive' a lot while being vigorously unkind and uninclusive and non intersectional to female humans and this is supposed in some way to be virtuous and to make you a better person than everyone else.

For women who really feel strongly about including oppressed males among them, let's have gender neutral spaces added to everything, hospital wards, prisons, you name it, and you can get undressed with males to your hearts content. Just leave other female people alone.

If you think the feminists round here think femininity determines whether we're female, I can only assume you're very new to the board!

Some feminists are pushing the idea that adhering to femininity = woman. Hang around, and you'll notice it gets right up our noses.

Round here the position is: if you're female, you're a woman with full human rights and worth, regardless of whether you do the femininity shiz or not.

Why aren't we endlessly debating that TM should go to a Male prison or are an issue in male toilets?

Well yeah, exactly.

Was watching the new series of Wentworth the other day, and it struck me how unfair the system is. In the first few seasons, there was a prisoner who was a transwoman. Great character. The TW left because they had to get treated for breast cancer.

This season, a transman is in the female prison.

Now I do know how dangerous it would be for a transman to be in the mens (most likely much more dangerous than having a transwoman in the womens, as..well theres more males involved in the TM situation), but..if you think TWAW and TMAM, how can both belong in the female estate?!

We cannot empower ourselves when there's "one" way to be a woman.

Also I have absolutely no idea what could be meant by this^

Acknowledging that being an adult human female makes you a woman..means we cannot 'empower ourselves'? Unless this was hinting at 'feminine' being the standard? Which is absolutely not what feminists say/want.

Not just that. Determining what female is. Feminine behaviour. What a female should look like, as if femininity is a natural occurence only in one sex, what body parts one has to have to be regarded as female.

This is very muddled. Are you suggesting that I think any of this? You would be 100 percent wrong.

These are all the thoughts assigned to so called *erfs to discredit us.

Acknowedging that being an adult human female makes you a woman..means we cannot 'empower ourselves'?

It's just so bloody back-to-front it makes me want to scream.

That little three word definition so many of us have on a t-shirt? That empowers us. That definition, that understanding, gives us the wherewithal to understand and fight for ourselves as fully human people, in the face of a world which tells us femininity is intrinsic to being a fully human female person.

What we reject is the idea that feminity makes a male a woman and female.

We cannot empower ourselves when there's "one" way to be a woman.

What ways are you suggesting there are to be a woman, other than by being biologically female?

Preferring dresses and skirts? Liking pink? Being empathetic/kind? Doing a job traditionally associated with women? Liking hobbies traditionally associated with women? Having bits chopped off or grafted onto your body? Or maybe just having some ineffable sense of femaleness?

Are those the kinds of things you meant what you mean by other 'ways of being a woman'? Because... those are not things which make anyone a woman.

I really don’t get the biological essentialism argument at all.

Nope. I would say describing people as cervix havers and sch is the actual biological essentialism? Unless I have misunderstood the word but I don't think so..

Not just that. Determining what female is. Feminine behaviour. What a female should look like, as if femininity is a natural occurence only in one sex, what body parts one has to have to be regarded as female

Ah, had a feeling thats where this was going. Its not feminists who place such value on stereotypes, and no feminist would tell you the only way to be a woman was to be feminine, thats those arguing AGAINST feminists I would be very shocked if any feminist thought this..though it IS the prevailing thought with ant-woman activists.

Nope. I would say describing people as cervix havers and sch is the actual biological essentialism?

I agree.

*feminist on here. I meant to say, plenty of the more flaky libfems found on twitter may say that

Also not calling all libfems flakey, incase that starts. Its the..penis centric 'liberal sex positive feminists' that I mean, who spend their days abusing actual feminists on twitter or other SM.

Not just that. Determining what female is. Feminine behaviour. What a female should look like, as if femininity is a natural occurence only in one sex, what body parts one has to have to be regarded as female

It is usually men who define women by their femininity (either because they want women to look pretty, or because they think that mem, by aping an exaggerated level of femininity which few real women aspire to, can actually become women).

I've never met an actual woman who thinks that clothes or mannerisms make you a woman. And yes, you do have to have particular body parts (or at least to have had them, or be of the right sex to have them) to be regarded as female. Because that is literally what female means. Look it up.

If you have change the definition of a category to shoe-horn yourself into it, it is no longer the same category. 'Female' has always had the same meaning, whatever stereotypes have been temporarily associated with it through history.

graziadaily.co.uk/life/opinion/munroe-bergdorf-women-getting-feminism-wrong/

Here we are being told what to think about feminism. It does seem that this stuff has been deferred to despite it failing to identify a single benefit for women unless you count approval from modifying your thinking and behaviour this way as a benefit in general to women?

I won't be redefining feminism along these lines, it's a red herring.

Someone up thread just claimed that transwomen are a more marginalised group than women and therefore their rights should supercede ours. To that poster, please please please give me any metric by which TW are more oppressed than women. Literally any example will do.

Someone up thread just claimed that transwomen are a more marginalised group than women and therefore their rights should supercede ours.

Ah. The help the desperately at risk population of orcas by defunding and oppressing giraffes argument.

I'm still also waiting for a single example of transinclusive feminism to be presented BTW, by which I mean an issue which is relevent to feminism by virtue of it having gender identity and not sex as its root cause, and which affects women and transwomen but not men or transmen.

@Escapeplanning

graziadaily.co.uk/life/opinion/munroe-bergdorf-women-getting-feminism-wrong/

Here we are being told what to think about feminism. It does seem that this stuff has been deferred to despite it failing to identify a single benefit for women unless you count approval from modifying your thinking and behaviour this way as a benefit in general to women?

I won't be redefining feminism along these lines, it's a red herring.

I’ve just read that article. Don’t agree with it. Some very brief thoughts; quotes in bold taken from article.

What makes a woman ‘a woman’ has no definitive answer, nor does it need one

This is incredible problematic. How are women supposed to fight against the oppression they face when they aren’t a clearly defined group? And why can’t it be the definition of “adult human female” that is always has been? Presumably because it doesn’t validate her identity.

I want trans people to feel validated and included but not at the expense of being able to define those being oppressed by female biology.

I felt it seemed reductive to summarise women as walking vaginas – isn’t that a similar approach to that of misogynists?

This is Munroe’s objection to the pink pussy hat. It isn’t defining women as walking vaginas. It’s recognising that having a vagina (and other female biology) is the basis of the oppression we face.

Ultimately, this demonstrated to me a lack of interest about what we as trans people go through emotionally – it seems that that’s not quite as exciting as what we may choose to do with our bodies in a medical sense

I absolutely care about what trans people go through and the discrimination they face. I just think that in general, that discrimination is different to the discrimination natal women face based on their biology.

This is 2018 and if the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that nothing is simple any more – especially when it comes to matters of equality and identity

Equality and what constitutes it is certainly not simple. I would welcome a constructive discussion about this as regards trans women - however the stonewall position seems to be that to have equality, trans women must be treated the same as natal women. That is, in my opinion, adverse to the interests of natal women, who need to be able to focus on sex based oppression (not faced by trans women) to fight against it.

It’s also nonsense. Plenty of forms of equality do not rely on identical treatment. For example, age equality laws recognised that it may be necessary to treat people of different ages differently, why is it so objectionable to suggest this may be true when it comes to trans women and sex based oppression?

Munroe in that article has analysed the news for all women to be included and stick up for each other but ducked the question of what a woman is by saying we don’t need to know. This failing means the rest of her article makes no sense. When she talks about women needing to stick up for each other and include all women, “woman” is an open category and the entire exercise becomes meaningless. It’s basically a glorified way of saying let’s all be nice to each other. Really weak article.

ByGrabtharsHammer tw are more oppressed in terms of access to cosmetics. Burly blokes will beat them up if they go for them, whereas we get to frolic in the lipstick aisle with gay abandon.

Obviously this involves stretching the definition of 'oppressed' a bit.

Quite why 'being expected not to wear facepaint' is so much worse than 'being expected to wear facepaint', I don't know. 'Having facepaint expectations foisted on you' is a bit of an equal-opportunity pisser, really. Except that the group expected to wear it pays a price in both time and resources.

Male women are privileged over female women. Anyone with eyes can see it.

Haha Tyro I actually got half way through your post before I realised it was a joke. Poe's law in action.

@ByGrabtharsHammerWhatASavings I definitely did not say their rights supersede women's rights. I just prefer that in fighting for my rights i also respect other people's rights. Do you think your rights after more important than a trans womans rights?