What can we do?

[BrandineDelRoy]

I felt empowered tonight (by some wine) to challenge what Biden's done this week. I (in the US) approached two law school friends, one former boyfriend, my best friend from high school, and my sister in law on the trans women in sport issue.

None of them seemed to know what I was talking about. And when I tried to explain it, they didn't care because TW are so few.

How can we fight this?

Is there a hard break between the tail end of Gen X and the Millenials?

Looks like it. Could be in part age-related; gen x statistically more likely to a) have kids and b) have experienced the resulting ramping up of sexism that disabuses us of the lie that women have achieved equality now.

The millennials I know tend to be in favour of kindness&inclusion etc because we grew up with male-born trans people around. That position became normal and entrenched long before the reality of sexism is made apparent. The exceptions have had either children or gynaecological issues or both.

Yup, BabyBee3, what is your definition of 'woman'?

Hi Babybee, a woman is an adult human female, that’s always been the case. No one has ever contradicted it in the past. So if someone wants to replace that with a different definition, it’s up to them to explain why the definition should be changed.

The only explanation trans people give is that they feel like women. But no one has ever explained what being a woman feels like. And no one has explained why a man’s feeling that he’s a woman should be considered differently from, say, a slim person with anorexia believing that s/he is obese.

How would you explain these things?

I'm in my 30s and feel distressed at the number of women around my age who are more concerned with 'being woke & nice' than the threat to their rights. I only speak about these issues with friends I know agree with me and it definitely feels like we are in the minority. Can't speak out publicly for fear of being jumped on these days and called a TERF.

None of them seemed to know what I was talking about. And when I tried to explain it, they didn't care because TW are so few.

How can we fight this?

In a number of ways, BrandineDelRoy. Something that I've found useful and time-saving is to establish who you are both talking about and what you both understand the slogan TWAW to mean. Very often you'll not be talking about the same people and also have a different interpretation of that slogan. Sometimes as soon as you have explored that and reached a common understanding of the terms, you'll find agreement is not far behind that those who identify as trans should not be discriminated against for doing so and at the same time that any protection you put in place for such individuals should not abolish protections we have put in place for other vulnerable groups.

It's not necessary to undermine women's sex-based rights to afford those who identify as trans protection against discrimination. So, it maybe worth asking the person you're talking to what they know about women's needs, including the needs of various subgroups of women. I've had lengthy conversations with libfems that made it clear to me that they knew very little (or nothing at all) of the reality of these needs, where they come from, how they can be met and why we want to do so.

And I found out that their personal experience with very vulnerable males who identify as trans meant that they honestly perceived them to need more protection than women. I might not have changed their minds, but I did clear up a number of misconceptions they had about our position, and about the needs of women. Eventually, for some of them, this contributed to the penny dropping at a later point. (There was a great thread on the old gender critical reddit board where you could read countless stories of women talking about their journey from thinking TWAW to thinking that women need to keep their sex-based rights which showed how they reached that conclusion. Inevitably, along that journey were conversations like the ones I had with those libfems.)

But most of the time I don't talk about males who identify as trans at all. I focus only on women and girls, our needs and what legal protections we have and why they are necessary to meet our needs. The US is obviously different to the UK in regard to the law, but Title IX gives you one good example to focus on. Why was this specific protection necessary, how does it work, what did it achieve, why is it still necessary etc.

In terms of where the “generational break” appears then early education and schooling where you grew up might well have a part to play.

Since the 1990’s in some parts of the UK there have been programmes from Primary Schools upwards introducing children to “queer sexuality”, fetish, kink, BDSM, transgenderism, etc.

Depending where you lived in the UK, if you were at Primary and Junior School from the mid to late 90’s onwards then you would have been subjected to indoctrination that included such delights as role playing a transvestite visiting The Ladies toilets.

These programmes, the Local Authorities and some of the content are recorded in Hansard, raised by Baroness Blatch during the 2003 debate on the repeal of Section 28:

”Some local authorities are pushing unsuitable sex education materials into our schools and they are praying in aid government's guidance. I shall give an example of what is happening in one area; namely, Brighton. Brighton and Hove Council and East Sussex County Council have a joint personal, social and health education advisory team. These PSHE advisors—eight part-timers in total—are using their powers to influence sex education to the full.

In the year 2000 the council's advisory team published its own handbook for teachers. The council claims that the handbook is in accordance with government guidance. So what does the handbook say? It "strongly recommends" that schools buy a particular "essential" resource pack entitled, Taking Sex Seriously. A more unsuitable resource it is difficult to imagine. One lesson suggests that pupils are asked to buy condoms for homework. Another lesson has the aim of getting pupils to think about the full range of sexual activities. Teachers are told to, “give a few examples to get the group thinking along the right lines".” The suggested examples include dressing up, tying up, sadism and/or masochism, partner swapping, anal intercourse or multiple partner at one time. Those are just the milder examples. Decency prevents me from reading out the rest.

api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/2003/apr/03/local-government-bill#column_1538

it's easy to assume that "woman" means "vagina"

Babybee, if you’re being serious, I have to say I’ve never heard of anyone, female or male, saying that woman = vagina. Our sex is decided at the moment of conception. Our genital organs are just a small part of the differences between the two sexes.

Adding basic human rights to one demographic of people cannot remove the basic human rights of another

Absolutely correct. What basic human rights are men lacking? Privacy among members of one’s own sex, for certain functions, is a right that most cultures don’t question. Deciding to be a member of the other sex has never been a basic human right.

BabyBee, what are your thoughts about all the lesbians under pressure from men who say they are women (and who are fully physically male) looking for sex?

If people can change sex at will, how about race? Where would you stand on white people saying they are black? Would you support the right of a white person who identifies as black to apply for a bursary intended for people of colour? Do you believe that black people could identify out of oppression merely by identifying as white? Could we end racism this way? If not, why not?

Is there a hard break between the tail end of Gen X and the Millenials?

I suspect part of it has to do with growing up online. They live in a very constructed reality already. They tend to have poor connections to their body, nature, and other people. They often are more isolated from other people who aren't like them.

Education is also a factor. Lots of younger people have been subject to a type of education that tells us inclusivity is the highest moral good. They have no real historical knowledge but have learned all kinds of ideas about 20th century activism as if they are facts - this is a group of people who will believe almost anything you tell them if it fits a certain kind of narrative about power. They believe they have superior critical thinking skills but meltdown if anyone challenges the slogans they have learned as first principles of though. And they truly believe the goal of those making such challenges is to hurt other people.

These are all things that come from a certain kind of education, that was common by the early 90s, well before trans issues were big. It was encouraged by many leftist groups, and I'm sorry to say we are now seeing the results of that kind of encouragement.

Hi Babybee, a woman is an adult human female, that’s always been the case. No one has ever contradicted it in the past.

They absolutely have. Feminists from Firestone to Dworkin to Wittig to Butler have written widely about how under patriarchy a woman is a socially constructed role as well as a physical reality. A huge amount of feminist literature discusses the nature of what a woman is, even going as far as in Dworkin and Firestone's case calling for the category of woman to be destroyed.

When people say trans women are women it's not because they are stupid and don't understand basic biology, but because they recognise in a highly gendered society then what a woman is has a political and social dimension whether we want it to or not. Trans women are by and large treated as (often a highly sexualised sub class of) women by patriarchy and as such deserve and need that recognition - and feminism is made stronger by that alliance, whilst it is weakened by reducing women's oppression to an inevitable result of possessing female biology.

I know you don't agree with a word of that, but to claim that people can only possibly acknowledge trans people as the gender they say they are because they are stupid, brainwashed or too scared to say what they really believe is both insulting and incorrect. The truth is they just have a more nuanced view of how sex, gender and hierarchy plays out in patriarchal societies and their analysis is one many many feminists agree with.

jj, that seems insane to me!

woman is not a socially defined term. The term woman is not gendered. I had a discussion with my 10 year old daughter 2 days ago, she has a friend who has told her he is a girl. This has greatly confused DD so we started chatting about what is a boy, what is a girl.

DD astutely said being a girl doesn't mean being girly, you don't have to like lipstick and dresses to be a girl. She likes sports, mud, climbing trees and is still a girl. Her friend who is a boy is only interested in being a feminine girl, nail polish, long hair, dresses. This is a gendered perception of being a girl, this is not being an actual girl. Even DD understands this.

We discussed how everyone has a right to wear what they want, behave how they want, love who they want and that is the freedom our society now affords us. What we don't have the ability to do is magically change sex, we can manipulate our bodies but that will never change our sex. It's not fair to tell people they can change sex, we are setting them up for failure. Being trans should be a worn as a badge of honour, the challenges faced, the hurdles overcome. However being a transwoman isn't being an adult human female and they should have no right to our spaces.

I am quite new to my thinking on this topic however am increasingly scared for our future daughters. (Am 40 so also on the cusp generationally)

Sadly I have had to caution DD about discussing this subject as am certain her peers are already on the TWAW bandwagon. I am determined to raise a confident, questioning GC feminist! And that goes for ds too!

Without biology to identify the group in question there wouldn't be the basis on which to stand a whole lot of pontification, academics, noticing gendered stereotypes and social constructs as relevant.

If it was a case of live and let live, no one would care. See woman as a nebulous, complicated amorphous shifting constellation and have a ball, write papers about it.

Just stop telling me you're confiscating my biological reality and my identity, and my language, and the reality of womanhood and the sex based issues it entails for half the human race, because it limits the freedoms and wishes of the other biological sex.

Who incidentally have historically always controlled and limited women on the basis of their biological sex.

And have the power to achieve this over the protests of women, because as this thread and many others shows, there is not unlimited joyful acceptance of how male people would like to change female people's definitions, words, spaces, etc, and there are major issues for some females in this that male people are refusing to acknowledge, never mind work with.

The experience is a very familiar one of sex based oppression. Telling me I'm imagining it/my lived experience as a woman is irrelevant to your new and wonderful male centred definition is not helping convince me otherwise.

Tolerate atheists in your genderism, make it intersectional so it accepts that some females need sex based spaces or will suffer as a result, be kind, stop taking things forcibly from females while telling them their protests are stupid/wrong/irrelevant, and you may find a much more relaxed and enthusiastic ear.

Even DD understands this.

To be fair if a six year old had a deep understanding of the complex ways patriarchy impacts on our understanding of sex, self and bodily diversity and how social categorisation and hierarchy flows from that I would be mightily impressed.

Trans women are by and large treated as (often a highly sexualised sub class of) women by patriarchy

You can't be serious.

Simple example of how this is obviously false:

You turn up on women's boards to lecture them on how they're womaning/feminisming wrong. You wouldn't dare do the same on transwomen's boards.

@jj1968

Even DD understands this.

To be fair if a six year old had a deep understanding of the complex ways patriarchy impacts on our understanding of sex, self and bodily diversity and how social categorisation and hierarchy flows from that I would be mightily impressed.

Don't be ridiculous, it's not that difficult a concept to grasp that being a girl does not equal having to like lipstick, nail polish and dresses.

For info DD is 10 (but am certain could understand at 6).

I think we need to start from the perspective that anyone who is asserting that a person born male is a 'woman' need to offer some explination for that belief, as it seems to fall well outside scientific theory and practice. And as we nowadays see reality in terms of scientific logic then the onus of explination lies with anyone asserting twaw.

You turn up on women's boards to lecture them on how they're womaning/feminisming wrong. You wouldn't dare do the same on transwomen's boards.

To be fair I'm not aware of any trans forum equivalent to this one where 90% of posts of post are about gender critical activists. You get the odd thread or two but the truth is we're just not that into you. Gender critical activists are just one of many hurdles trans people have to navigate to try and achieve lives with some kind of fulfillment.

But that doesn't stop gender critical activists turning up on them, just like it doesn't stop gender critical activists turning up at events like Pride and the Anarchist Bookfair which are explicitly trans welcoming, or invading events for trans children and refusing to leave to the point the police had to be called to remove them.

Mumsnet have been quite clear this forum is open to trans people and they welcome the debate. They run this website and set the rules, not you.

Women are oppressed as a class because of their female biology. Attempting to get society to unrecognise sexual biology is an attempt to make it impossible to fight this oppression.

Hi Babybee, a woman is an adult human female, that’s always been the case. No one has ever contradicted it in the past. — They absolutely have. Feminists from Firestone to Dworkin to Wittig to Butler have written widely about how under patriarchy a woman is a socially constructed role as well as a physical reality.

jj1968, you have misunderstood the work of feminists who pointed out that women have a socially constructed role, the feminine sex stereotype, and in the time they were writing most women were constrained to live in those limited roles.

(I can’t speak for Judith Butler, who isn’t what I’d recognise as a feminist, ie someone whose priority is women.)

The triumph of feminism was in breaking out of those sex stereotypes. The gender-identity movement relies on re-establishing them.

Women are oppressed because of their biology.

And the 'gender' is the tool that is used against women.

Don't be ridiculous, it's not that difficult a concept to grasp that being a girl does not equal having to like lipstick, nail polish and dresses.

And you'd be hard pushed to find a trans person who disagrees. Being trans is about your sense of self and where you fit in a rigidly gendered and complex environment.

If you said to your daughter (probably when she's a bit older), well what about someone born male but who now has a vagina, and breasts, and estrogen not testosterone regulating their body - someone who is treated as a woman and faces much if not all of the oppression women face, is that a woman? Is it a man? Is it something else? Is someone like Castor Semanya a man, as many here state? Does that mean she has male privilege and has never faced oppression based on being perceived as a woman? Why would we prioritise chromosones over genitalia, or reproductive ability over how someone is seen and treated by others, or indeed sees themself? What happens to the people who don't fit? What happens to the people who live in the opposite gender to their birth sex, and who in some cases no-one may even know what their birth sex was? Are they still treated as men by society? How best can people fit in and attempt to thrive within the context of a rigidly gendered society whilst trying to also dismantle it? How much of womanhood (and manhood) is socially constructed, in terms of the experiences women/men have, and how much of that is socially enforced rather than a natural product of biology? Where does the self end and the body begin and which should take precedence in defining ourselves? Is a lesbian a woman in the context of a patriarchal society where women are expected to be sexually reproductive partners/property of men - Wittig famously declared herself not to be a woman on these grounds. Should feminists be aiming to eradicate the sex difference completely, or at least as much as is possible, so we just become humans and our genitals are irrelevent (as Firestone argued).

These are deep and complex questions and it's little wonder feminism has spent so much time discussing them. Of course biology is part of the picture, but how we categorise things, how we are socially formed, how we live and seek to live within patriarchy - these are all up for debate. And as I say you might not agree, but I'm just pointing out that those who thinks differently to the GC position are not automatically misogynist idiots who doesn't understand biology but people who are looking at it in a different, more nuanced, and I would argue more whole and humane way.

Being trans is about your sense of self and where you fit in a rigidly gendered and complex environment.

Well, then being trans has nothing to do with being a woman.

Regardless of my sense of self and regardless of what environment I find myself in, I remain a woman. I was born female and as I am over 18, I will die a woman. If, for some reason, I lose my sense of self (let's pretend I have a brain injury, dementia, severe mental illness where I believe I'm a teapot), I am still a woman because it is my physical reality.

For info DD is 10 (but am certain could understand at 6).

I'll add weight to this and say mine's seven and grasps the basics. She didn't at six, because she hadn't really fallen foul of her peers' expectations then, but then in year two there was the "they're not boys' shoes, they're mine" saga, followed by the great "can girls like Pokemon?" playground debate in year three.

Guessing jj has limited knowledge of child development; it's around seven they really start noticing the gendered crap and policing one another.

Gender critical activists are just one of many hurdles trans people have to navigate to try and achieve lives with some kind of fulfillment.

If gender ideology activism didn't stamp all over female people and their rights, spaces, language et al, there wouldn't need to be a place or groups for women to be able to defend and stand up for the rights under attack from that ideology.

That's like blaming someone for complaining that you're trampling on them. Stop attacking women's rights and they won't need to stand up for them.

But that doesn't stop gender critical activists turning up on them, just like it doesn't stop gender critical activists turning up at events like Pride and the Anarchist Bookfair which are explicitly trans welcoming,

Anti woman

or invading events for trans children and refusing to leave to the point the police had to be called to remove them.

Defending and explaining about women's rights and the way the activism/agenda damages them. Again, the blame that women won't just shut up and accept males doing what they want without protest. You couldn't really make it clearer that they're some kind of subspecies to you.

Mumsnet have been quite clear this forum is open to trans people and they welcome the debate. They run this website and set the rules, not you.

You've totally missed the point of the post you were responding to.