Are we going to have to start using people with vaginas

[itispersonal]

As much as I hate this term, with the war on 'women' as it is with the sports, changing rooms, swimming pools, women's aid etc. The swimming pool in Sydney being the latest place to backtrack and allow all trans women in the women's pool.

Do we actually need places to start saying these spaces are only for people with vaginas? As surely this can't be argued against, men can't them claim to have one, unlike them being able to claim to be a 'woman'.

Obviously I am hopeful this wouldn't be for long, but for long enough for this identity politics (bullshit) to pass and people referring to women and men back in the biological/ common sense terms.

Have you seen the job Joe Biden has to do to try and bring the country together? If he starts to employ a totally woke agenda, he is going to find the split even greater. I wonder about his cabinet too, it strikes me as fairly conservative. I think you may find he would prefer to bring the fight to his own party rather than take it to the American voters.

Trans women are not waging a war on women.

There's a possibility this is true. It's MRAs who are waging a war on women - and it's a war that irrefutably exists - under the banner of TRAs. And it's often as detrimental to the interests of trans people - the ones who live quietly and don't attempt to stampede over the rights and wellbeing of others - as it is to women.

Two things do seem to be the case. Trans people/activists are not actively standing up and saying 'enough, you don't speak for me' (the same sort of way as DSD people ask for their condition not to be used to further someone else's largely irrelevant politics). And trans MEN are not waging a war on women as a rule.

Both things say much. Not least, each problematises the idea that every reasoned objection and discussion of these issues can be dismissed as simplistic 'transphobia'.

This conversation reminds me slightly of those threads in chat and AIBU that goes along the lines of "My MiL has burned down the house, eaten the children and driven off in my car with my last bottle of gin. AIBU to be pissed off about this?"

And some bright spark, within minutes, will say accusingly, "You don't like her!"

Well no. When an individual or group insist on doing things that are hurtful and harmful to you, are thoroughly unpleasant and uncaring to you when you try to explain your side of things and that mutual respect and co operation is needed, (you know, the death threats, barbed wire wrapped baseball bats, go out and f*k up a t**, every day poured out all over Twitter), make it very clear your issues are of no interest and you must shut up, suffer and be excluded because they say so....? And that it's fine to treat you in ways you never descend to treating them, and they would never tolerate from you?

You start to feel a bit disliked, yes. Because unless you're a raging masochist, who would be having fun at this point, or wanting to continue in what is an unequal and abusive relationship with absolutely nothing in it for one side?

And yes, when there are no voices from that whole community saying "this is wrong, this is not speaking for us, I don't agree this is acceptable or that women's issues with this should just be trampled into submission and women excluded who can't?" You do start to wonder if there really are any.

@sweetaffaj

Trans women are not waging a war on women.

Isn't it great then that neither the OP nor anyone else on this thread has claimed they are?

The war on women we refer to is the result of the coming together of various movements - some organised, some not - and developments - some intended, some not - that a whole range of different people are involved in - some intentionally and some not.

One of these groupings is an extreme fringe of trans rights activists, many of whom are not, in fact, identifying as trans at all. Of course, there are some people who do identify as trans who actively engage in campaigns designed to undermine and eventually abolish women's sex-based rights. But we cannot claim that all males who identify as trans have this goal, because this simply isn't true.

It's a small number of people who actively fight against women's sex-based rights, but there are always many more people who, when fighting for the rights of one group, are indifferent to the knowledge that their actions may or do result in harm to another group. They prioritise the needs of the group they consider to be more in want of rights and don't waste any energy on worrying about groups they think are already well protected.

Add to that the large number of men who continue to deny that women and girls are disadvantaged, discriminated against or oppressed anywhere on this planet, and all those who think women's rights have swung too far already, and who will use any and all means to roll back these gone-too-far women's rights and the result is what we are witnessing now. What we call a war on women. Not merely on our rights, but on who we are as a group - the sex class capable of bearing young, with all that entails in our world.

And in answer to the OP, no, women and girls is enough. Anything else concedes ground. If I have to use something different for clarity, I use female people or female plus the noun that relates to what is being discussed. So on sport, I would say female athletes.

If you observe this process, also called female erasure, for long enough, you will notice that every time ground is ceded, a new battlefield is created. Sometimes this plays out in public in a way that demonstrates this beautifully, as with companies selling menstrual products. One was attacked on social media for talking about women and girls, scolded for not being inclusive, most of the activists suggesting they could always use female if they needed to and another set of activists then attacked the use of female when referring to female biology.

I've seen companies who have abandoned the use of women and girls altogether apologise for using the words "female reproductive system" and promising to find a more inclusive term.

You will have to fight to defend your words anyway, whatever they are, as long as they seek to differentiate between the sexes. So stand your ground here, on women and girls. These are our words and our lives, so draw that line in the sand here.

@sweetaffaj I was interested in your claim that transwomen "are more likely to face a bunch of violence in various forms" and the Guardian article you linked to as evidence of this www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/17/trans-people-twice-as-likely-to-be-victims-of-in-england-and-wales

Few points that jumped out at me when I looked at the data:

1. the data is about 'trans people' not trans women and it isn't broken down any further so we don't know how many of these crimes are against trans men or non binary people who are included in this category
2. It doesn't tell you what type of crimes they were so you cannot conclude anything about violence. It includes for example crimes like like 'bicycle theft'
3. Notes on the data state the gender identity figures were for just 6 months of data based on a small base size of 63 and are therefore subject to 'lower reliability'. No figures on gender identity seem to have been included in the latest release (Oct 2020)

1. Most importantly, these are not police recorded crimes - they are self reported figures provided by people interviewed by a telephone survey.

So this doesn't tell you anything about violence towards trans women.

What it does perhaps tell you is that trans people are more likely to perceive themselves as being victims of crime. Interesting.

In answer to the OP - no, we stick with women. As soon as we give in on that there will be something else.

What it does perhaps tell you is that trans people are more likely to perceive themselves as being victims of crime.

I have seen this in effect on other social media platforms. It is like people wheel out the 'hate crime' stats without realising it may be one person misgendering someone on twitter, or it might be someone being harassed walking down the street for a week. There is no visibility.

And if misogyny was allowed, then there would be such a huge rise in hate crime against women that I think people would be very very hesitant to keep using those hate crime stats.

But yes, that article was not even talking about recorded crime. I am not sure why it was posted.

I would never use that term. Nothing wrong with the word woman, as in adult human female. Anything else is giving in to the madness.