I'm a young feminist; I cannot understand your Gender Critical positions

[borandukht]

Hello all, I'm writing this because I'm at the end of my tether with my mother, who has become engulfed in the gender critical discourse mainly thanks to this website (cheer or weep for that depending on your view). She had originally been very comfortable with transgender rights, and given we have a closeish relative who is transgender too, I've never felt put out or uncomforted by what the trans-rights movement was all about.

After absorbing what you lot have to say about the matter (in general, I know there are some pro-trans feminists on here) she's completely changed her tune and frankly it's becoming exhausting and absurd. I had never really listened to the arguments of GC feminists before the last year or so, and frankly after listening to them I have become ever more convinced that you are unfortunately gravely misinformed on a variety of topics regarding transgender individuals, the goals of the rights movement, and the resultant society that values trans-lives. Some of the repugnant transphobia I've seen online further makes it hard for me to value this movement's "genuine concerns" as truly genuine. What made me snap was yesterday seeing a comment on here stating that the Daily Mail was more feminist than the Guardian. I read neither, because they're both toilet paper, but anyone who says anything so blatantly obtuse to reality clearly has a very specific, narrow view of feminism predicated entirely on not liking GNC people - I don't see how anyone who's read any Daily Mail article ever could say that without laughing.

So, I'm here to listen. GC people always say they just want an open discussion, and I am happy to oblige. There will be no hate, nothing like that. I will try and engage you directly, and respond to why you have these positions as fairly and equitably as I can. Hitherto the arguments I have read/heard from GC's online and in print have been unconvincing, but here at least I can respond directly and try and start this discussion that is so desirable.

If you want specific starter questions (god I sound like my lecturers), think about stuff like:

1. Why do transwomen represent such a threat to you in women's spaces, in your mind?
2. Where do intersex women fit into your feminism?
3. What makes a woman? If it is genitals, does a transwoman with bottom surgery count in your mind? If it's chromosomes is Caster Semenya a man?

I hope to read your answers soon. In the meantime, merry post-Christmas!

I accept that many people with DSDs have been asked to be kept out of it, but the Semenya CAS ruling had the potential to set a precedent that it was ok for males to be allowed to compete in women’s sport provided their socialisation meant they wanted to. It’s no coincidence that TRAs like McKinnon/Ivy want it to be overturned; it suits their goal.

People with DSDs want to be kept out of the false discussion around how sex is a “spectrum” but when it comes to sport, the importance of biology remains the same. Many of the strategies used by Semenya in defence are carbon copies of trans activists:

• feels like a woman, so should compete as such
• shouldn’t have to alter body to compete
• how dare anyone challenge someone’s lived experience
• if women just trained harder they wouldn’t have anything to complain about

Etc etc. The only thing TRAs don’t like is pointing out that someone’s birth certificate can be wrong. They want trans athletes’ birth certificates to be disregarded, but Semenya’s (incorrect) birth certificate to be honoured, two ideas diametrically opposed.

Rio Olympics 2016
Women's 800m final

Gold - Caster Semenya - 46 XY DSD
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya

Silver - Francine Niyonsaba - 46 XY DSD
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francine_Niyonsaba

Bronze - Margaret Wambui - 46 XY DSD
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Wambui

Semenya’s sex was truly wrongly assigned at birth (due to ambiguous genitalia). This will happen less and less frequently as doctors become more aware that ambiguous genitalia indicates follow up testing (and those tests become cheaper and easier to access). Sadly, some parts of the world have superstitions that mean infants with DSD are treated with suspicion and stigma though, so parents might decide not to seek medical help out if a desire to protect their child.

This is quite different to trans people whose sex was initially correctly observed and recorded, and later they conclude they’d rather have been born the opposite/be happier if they were perceived to be the opposite sex.

(Some DSDs are only discovered at pubertal age, of course, but these are diagnosable due to observable symptoms and objective testing, unlike trans-ness).

It would be helpful if the terms AFAB and AMAB were used exclusively as they were intended, for those with DSDs, but current trans ideology loves to appropriate terms from elsewhere, so I suppose people with DSDs are as shit out of luck on that as the rest of us!

I remember reading an article that said that if Caster had been born in say the US. tests would have been done Very early on and the outcome would have seen different. Of course who knows what they would do in today’s climate?

@AnyOldPrion I thought the legal definition of rape was "penetration with a penis"? Has that changed now? Penis was definitely in the definition somewhere.

This is the definition of rape in UK law:

(1) A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a) he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis,
(b) B does not consent to the penetration, and
(c) A does not reasonably believe that B consents.

OP you may be young. But you’re not a feminist. You are centring the rights of male bodied people over that of female bodied people.

I think it’s really difficult to discuss Semenya without detailed knowledge of the case, but it’s largely irrelevant to trans issues. The concept of classification depends on class boundaries. Wherever you set those boundaries somebody will be excluded. Sometimes it’s difficult to agree where those boundaries are (e.g. how much should use of potentially performance enhancing drugs be allowed to treat existing medical conditions), but the nature of sport is that there are rules and restrictions and more often than not they exclude.

There are clear reasons to classify by sex in some sports. There is no reason to classify by gender.

@testing987654321

I do still think that the OP brought up Semenya as a distraction. Semenya has a DSD.

People with DSDs have requested that they are not used in arguments about trans issues.

I just prefer to keep the issues separate.

Totally agree and this was pointed out to the OP in one of the early answers but she’s chosen to ignore this and carried on pulling intersex people into the debate.

Which suggests one of two things;

She’s either not reading others opinions/posts which would demonstrate she’s not open to a debate like she said she was. She’s not open to growth and learning.

Or she’s read it and chose to ignore it because it doesn’t suit her agenda. Which would demonstrate again that she has no interest in debate and learning and that she’s prepared to throw others under the bus to try to further her own agenda.

Both options are very sad, though sadly not a surprise as it seems typical of most unintelligent, poorly educated TRAs.

Or she’s read it and chose to ignore it because it doesn’t suit her agenda. Which would demonstrate again that she has no interest in debate and learning and that she’s prepared to throw others under the bus to try to further her own agenda.

Or that she is in a state of denial. Who wants to hear that the world doesn’t divide easily into goodies and baddies? Who wants to hear that some people aren’t completely honest about their intentions? Who wants to hear that ‘women’s problems’ can’t be swept away with a bit of sparkly girl power and team spirit.

I sympathise. The OP sounds very young.

What young woman wants to believe she has been manipulated by older men into acting against her own best interests?

Especially when the base idea seems worthy at first. Like communism, free love, religious sects or polygamy.

A young woman will be drawn in then will resist seeing the corruption, resist seeing her manipulation for men's base reasons. All because then she would have to confront (a) her own naivety and (b) how irrecoverably illogically misogynistically grim many people are.

I expect plenty of us have been through it and have come out the other side harder, wiser and way more cynical. OP's mum certainly has.

I'm a young terrible feminist; I cannot understand your Gender Critical position.

Fixed it. You're welcome.

@NotBadConsidering

I accept that many people with DSDs have been asked to be kept out of it, but the Semenya CAS ruling had the potential to set a precedent that it was ok for males to be allowed to compete in women’s sport provided their socialisation meant they wanted to. It’s no coincidence that TRAs like McKinnon/Ivy want it to be overturned; it suits their goal.

People with DSDs want to be kept out of the false discussion around how sex is a “spectrum” but when it comes to sport, the importance of biology remains the same. Many of the strategies used by Semenya in defence are carbon copies of trans activists:

• feels like a woman, so should compete as such
• shouldn’t have to alter body to compete
• how dare anyone challenge someone’s lived experience
• if women just trained harder they wouldn’t have anything to complain about

Etc etc. The only thing TRAs don’t like is pointing out that someone’s birth certificate can be wrong. They want trans athletes’ birth certificates to be disregarded, but Semenya’s (incorrect) birth certificate to be honoured, two ideas diametrically opposed.

Yeah, while I appreciate that it is very annoying to people with DSDs, to some extent the issues are related and when you are trying to hash out how to deal with unusual situations, decisions that affect one will affect the other.

If CS "feels" like a woman and that is enough to compete in elite sports as a woman, despite being biologically male, that impacts what peple see as fair for a transwoman athlete too.

There is also the question of the content of that feeling. It's fairly normal now that when someone is unexpectedly revealed as having a DSD as an adult or even teen (which is of course quite rare), we allow them to "identify" as they feel is right - we don't insist they change their birth certificate, etc, even if they are biologically the other sex. I don't think many people would say they were using the pronouns inappropriately or anything like that.

That sets a kind of precedent that biological sex is not the only thing we consider when "assigning" sex.

Personally I think that's probably the right approach in those cases, but it requires some unpicking to say how far it goes (could such a person compete in the Olympics as a woman? Win a scholarship or book award?) and why other instances might be treated differently.

@Sparklfairy

I thought the legal definition of rape was "penetration with a penis"? Has that changed now? Penis was definitely in the definition somewhere.

Penis is indeed involved, however very occasionally, women are convicted under joint enterprise laws.

As I mused earlier, it would be interesting to see a graph of women convicted of rape over time, and whether there was a significant jump when men were allowed by the police to claim they were women.

Anyone think a FOI could work?

@EttaG

Why do transwomen represent such a threat to you in women's spaces, in your mind? I actually don’t have a problem with genuine transwomen. I do have a problem with how easy it is to identify as a transwoman, because it means that offenders and fetishists can do it very easily. Previously the complexity of the process and the involvement of medical professionals generally ensured that transwomen were genuine. But it’s become too easy and unregulated, and self ID is what introduces the risk imo.

Exactly. A male friend is part of a men’s walking group, and said I couldn’t go as I am a woman.

I said “ I could identify as a man, and you’d have to accept it”

He said “ But you’re a woman!
He absolutely thought it was absurd.

Men REALLY don’t want women in men only spaces, even if it is just a walk in the Cotswolds.

As far as equestrian sports go, being as it is the horse doing most of the work of physically jumping and galloping, the gender of the rider is far less important.

A male born “ female” I’d ing boxer hit a woman boxer, and she said she’d never been hit so hard in her life.
Even a puny male has a lot of strength compared to an XX woman.

@oakleaffy I think that's Fallon Fox you might be thinking of, an MMA fighter who fractured the skull of Taminkka Brents

@AnyOldPrion I think FOIs on this already exist. If I can find them I will share here.

This thread is TL:DR but I hope the OPs mother is reading it all and enjoying her Christmas.

As I mused earlier, it would be interesting to see a graph of women convicted of rape over time, and whether there was a significant jump when men were allowed by the police to claim they were women.

Even better would be to see how many cases there were where a woman was the sole defendant in a rape case. Because 'she' would have to be in possession of a penis.

There's a link to a spreadsheet on this page with figures for female defendants in rape cases up until 2018. The numbers seem quite steady at around 50-65 each year (slightly higher for 2017-18 at 83). Figures for male defendants are in the thousands.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/sexualoffendingcrownprosecutionserviceappendixtables

These are prosecutions not convictions.

@ReadyFreddy

I thought the legal definition of rape was "penetration with a penis"? Has that changed now? Penis was definitely in the definition somewhere.

Legally, only men can rape, similar to how only women can commit infanticide.

Only men can rape because only men have penises.

Anyone can commit infanticide.

@ReadyFreddy

I thought the legal definition of rape was "penetration with a penis"? Has that changed now? Penis was definitely in the definition somewhere.

Legally, only men can rape, similar to how only women can commit infanticide.

What? Infanticide is "the killing of infants" - anyone can do it!

No, only a woman can commit infanticide according to the definition used in UK law.

The Infanticide Act is the name of two 20th-century acts in English law that started treating the killing of an infant child by its mother during the early months of life as a lesser crime than murder.

The ONS notes accompanying homicide data say:

Notes for: How is homicide defined and measured?
The manslaughter category includes the offence of corporate manslaughter which was created by the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 which came into force on 6 April 2008.

Infanticide is defined as the killing of a baby under 1-year-old by their mother while the balance of her mind was disturbed as a result of giving birth.

OldCrone interesting figures there, but I am bemused by the category of unknown in relation to sex of perpetrators particularly . What can this mean?

@StrippedFridge

No, only a woman can commit infanticide according to the definition used in UK law.

The Infanticide Act is the name of two 20th-century acts in English law that started treating the killing of an infant child by its mother during the early months of life as a lesser crime than murder.

The ONS notes accompanying homicide data say:

Notes for: How is homicide defined and measured?
The manslaughter category includes the offence of corporate manslaughter which was created by the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 which came into force on 6 April 2008.

Infanticide is defined as the killing of a baby under 1-year-old by their mother while the balance of her mind was disturbed as a result of giving birth.

I'm shocked

Well, post-partum psychosis is unique to women, isn't it?