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 De Bouvoir said "women are made, not born" - society forces female children into becoming women and society forces them to stay women, praises them when they conform to the womanly idea of that time and culture - which is always the role that men most need women to play at the time. So when entertainment is a priority, women should be sexy and fun, when population growth is a priority, women should be nurturing and homely

But what is the criterion that "society" uses to determine which human beings should play which roles???

PS de Beauvoir didn't mean what you think she means - well, not in the original French ...

Trans people want to experience life with the set of expectations imposed upon the opposite sex.

I think this is one reason why there is so often a lack of understanding between feminists and trans people - even those who are willing to have a civil discussion. The idea that we should just get rid of the gendered expectations altogether seems to be utterly incomprehensible to them.

Where the fuck anyone gets that idea is ??? as far as I'm concerned.

It's what mimmymum keeps telling people. Which is a suprise as she reads every word here and so must struggle to follow the thread. Twitter has less words so I expect she skips posts that are more than a line or two.

The real brilliance of patriarchy… it doesn’t just naturalise oppression. It sexualises acts of oppression. It eroticises domination and subordination. It institutionalises them as masculinity and femininity. So, it naturalises, it eroticises and it institutionalises domination and subordination. The brilliance of feminism is that we figured that out.
– Lierre Keith

Aw where's my post gone?

Was saying I find it funny that a bunch of women who have been traditionally mocked for not performing femininity (short hair, no makeup, shapeless dungarees, not smiling, Millie tant etc) are now being told they're upset and angry because 'ownership' (if you like) of femininity is being taken away from them

I've come across this idea that GC feminists are wed to gender role. Stereotypes. Hair and dresses. Femininity.

Where the fuck anyone gets that idea is ??? as far as I'm concerned.

It's because they can't conceive of a world without gendered expectations. So either you can allow people to swap gender boxes (the trans option) or you can force them into the one they have been assigned according to their sex. Smashing the gender boxes to bits and living how you want is inconceivable to them, so they don't understand feminist arguments because it's so far removed from anything they can imagine.

Honestly anyone who wants femininity, whether in terms of looks, attire or behaviours is welcome to it. Men or women can be feminine and makeup is fun. Some people are more passive than others and that is fine. Not sure why we need sex based labels and in fact that's the whole problem. Let people dress and behave how they want.

The idea that biological sex is neither here nor there and there are no words needed to describe the two categories in mammals is. Well it's just silly.

A common gender stereotype is that women shouldn't have overly strong opinions. Shouldn't be obtuse and should be kind.

To be transinclusive of transwomen is to quell any opinion in yourself and other women that they shouldn't be included as a woman, and that you should be kind at all costs.

These stereotypes evolved for a reason; to keep women in their place without questioning the status quo of the patriarchy.

But in real life oldcrone everyone knows that pretty much everyone doesn't fit all the things that their gender box says they should.

Of course that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. But hardly anyone actually thinks that men are all actually GI Joe and women are all Barbie. I mean you'd have to have never met any actual people to think that.

Neuro we always questioned it behind their backs which is why so many men have an instinctive discomfort of women talking unsupervised or being in all female situations.

EG in the pub. Why do you always go to the toilet together? What are you doing in there? Why do you take so long?

I think they have a deep insecurity that what we are doing is laughing at them.

It doesn't occur to them that we might be talking about things other than men, of course

Sounds like a case of different groups using the same acronym to mean completely opposite things.

Is GC gender critical or gender conforming? It would seem some think we're the latter. In fairness it was the latter first, back in the days when criticism of gender was understood to be inherent to feminism and so didn't need spelling out.

But if we're going by that acronym then strictly speaking we'd be gnc feminists.

Personally I prefer gender resistant feminism, as a label. But if we go down that road it's a hop and a skip to being shamed for being gender-negative by people who read 'gender' as 'sex, but politer'. Back to the drawing board!

Nice, and thus why MN get sooooo much hate!

How very dare we talk about anything that affects women!

Sorry OP. Everyone left instead of providing any clarity.

Plopping the WI as an explanation of how inclusion benefits women's rights was a comedy moment though.

I don't think it's the labels that are the problem.

It's the wilful misunderstanding that's the problem. And the demands that we, essentially. Stop getting above ourselves and get back in our gender boxes. Smile prettily, keep our gobs shut and nod agreeably when asked to give men whatever they want.

OK cool, finally something concrete to discuss. I'll do them one at a time. First Connie and the WI link.

What I was hoping for was some specific activism, and all your link points to is a diversity statement with some waffle about kindness and inclusion, but I did eventually manage to extract this paragraph so I'll give it my most charitable interpretation:

"The WI provides women with educational opportunities and the platform to campaign on issues that matter to them and their communities whilst always celebrating what it means to be a woman."

OK so trans inclusive feminism, as per the WI, is about giving both transwomen and women educational opportunities, a campaigning platform, and celebrating what it means to be a woman. Now, the first 2 are of course not specific to feminism - most social justice groups seek to empower their members through education and campaigning platforms. It becomes feminist activism when it is exclusively done for the benefit of women, so if you are defining women as a gender group and offering these services to exclusively to both women and transwomen but not to men or transmen, then yes that would be an example of transinclusive feminism in practice. Of course until the world "woman" is based on something concrete then you could make feminism inclusive of almost anything just by relabelling it "woman". You could make it inclusive of dogs and daffodils and race cars if you wanted to and this definition of "inclusive feminism" would still hold. You can define literally anything into the set of "woman" and still call it feminism. But that wasn't what I asked you, so I'm happy to accept this as an example.

As for "celebrating what it means to be a woman", given that no one can answer the question "what does it mean to be a woman" I'm inclined to think that this is the weakest of the 3 from a practical POV, but I did say I'd accept bad answers so I'll give you this one as well.

OK, so, so far transinclusive feminism is:

• education for anyone who self identifies as having the gender identity "woman".
• campaigning platforms for anyone who self identifies as having the gender identity "woman" on any subject that's important to them.
• celebrating what it means to have the gender identity "woman".

Cool. Give me a minute to find the next person's post.

Jesus, why does the app always remove my paragraphs?!

@FWRLurker: When trans-inclusive feminists imagine a trans woman they imagine the most well-passing trans woman who has had all the surgeries. Not at all. Both the nicest, most right-on-feminist t woman and the most unpleasant t women I have met have been very butch. The nicest one, despite all the surgery still was very masculine. When I first saw her, I assumed she was a bloke. The other one, I supported through a gay helpline I worked on, and while she was genuinely trans, I really disliked her. We just didn't get on. She hadn't had any surgery, was in a totally different socioeconomic bracket to the first t woman I reference, and as a result found it very hard to access any support services.

Neither were 'well-passing'. They didn't really pass at all.

But they were both women as far as you're concerned, I think?

I see paragraphs, grabthars

*- education for anyone who self identifies as having the gender identity "woman".

• campaigning platforms for anyone who self identifies as having the gender identity "woman" on any subject that's important to them.*

The irony being that actual women in the past (and still in some parts of the world today) can't access education due to their sex and can't campaign about subjects important to them.

Which is why the WI was set up...

[quote JoodyBlue]@tinofshortbread thanks for replying. But on what basis does a person have

"the gender of woman imposed on them by others" ?

And if that person refuses the gender role, is that person no longer a woman?

I have read De Beauvoir too. I don't think she was arguing that woman was only social construct and expectation and role. She laments the imposition of role for sure, but I don't interpret that she denied the materiality of the "second sex".[/quote]
Because gender is an imposition. The gender of "woman " is imposed on female people. A female person is a real material entity, women only exists because the ideal of woman is contructed and then imposed upon real existing female people, but the ideal exists in the abstract.

Take Betty Boo. BettyBoo is a woman, but she isnt female. Yes, she has large breasts, slim hips etc, but she isnt female because female is a material thing, and Betty Boo is a cartoon character, she has no material existence. But we know that she is a woman because dress, mannerisms, hair all the signifiers that signal that this cartoon character is to be gendered "woman", ...then back-extrapolate of "women = female" happens therefore Betty Boo is given female anatomy signifiers.

As to "refusing the gender role" - thats pretty much what trans and nb people are attempting, sometimes but not always sucessfully. I dont think people (any people) are women, I think they are gendered as women.

Gender is one of those "one hand clapping in a forest" type things: you are only a woman because others gender you as "woman", so female people can avoid gender signifiers to discourage people from gendering them as woman, but because in mainstream society you have a gender imperative - you must be a man or you must be a woman, there is no opting out, they are likely to be turned into a woman anyway unless they work very hard at cultivating a gender of man against all the cultural conditioning that has been working to keep them gendered as woman.

Beautiful paragraphs visible here too.

I think it's the labels and the wilful misunderstanding that are the problems. Because the wilful misapplication of labels comes from the same place as the wilful misunderstanding.

Neuro makes an excellent point: male-inclusive feminism, in which the needs and wants and identities of males are championed and prioritised over female needs, is inherently gender-conforming.

The demand that we submit to males' redefining of our language and identities to suit them, that's gender-conforming.

The insistence that other women may not centre females, that's gender-conforming.

And denying women the language to point this out, that's gender-conforming too.

I see refusing a gender stereotypes as a very different thing to needing to physically transition.

And I'm sure a lot of transwomen and men would say it's not about that.

I know that sevenhex has written a lot about how she wasn't remotely into one sort of gendered activity than another. This was a deeper level of need to alter her body and only after she'd explored many other options. Interestingly seven describes a lot of homophobic bullying at home and from others due to the way seven walked and acted as a male child.

Refusing a gender role is something anyone can do. Harder for men as femininity is so extremely tied into culture, capitalism and visual ideals, but certainly possible.