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?

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

Apologies for that btw, I don't know where I got six from, I thought thats what you said.

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

Where of course the activists in question have been absolutely respectful of female people's rights to things like female health groups or lesbian groups and permitted that space? Have allowed female groups to meet and discuss the law and women's rights?

I think there's been kettling involved, kicking on windows, screaming, threats, the punching of a sixty year old, calling the police and getting them arrested (for quietly handing out leaflets), bomb threats and things let off by the Grenfell Tower for fucks sake -

lead by frigging example if you believe that invading other people's spaces is wrong.

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.

In Woman Hating, published in 1974, Dworkin does indeed call for the category of woman to be destroyed. Because she is deeply pessimistic about women ever being allowed to be truly equal to men, she imagines a world of androgynous humans, both male and female in one body, where women cannot be oppressed on the basis of their sex anymore, because the traditional human hierarchy that allows the male to oppress the female cannot exist without separate, mutually exclusive and distinct sex classes.

Her writing and reasoning in chapters 8 "Androgyny: The Mythological Model" and 9 "Androgyny: Androgyny, Fucking and Community" reflect much of the scientific knowledge of the time about people with Differences in Sex Development (DSDs) - an outdated view nonetheless prevalent in much of the arguments made by proponents of transgender ideology today. Dworkin argues that the existence of people with DSDs proves that there is really no such thing as male and female and therefore, so goes her thinking, there ought not to be any patriarchy and thus there ought not to be any oppression of the female sex. Dworkin even goes so far as to claim that our species started out as hermaphrodites, only splitting into the two sexes much later in its history. (She also posits that in her brave new world of hermaphrodites transsexual people would either not exist or be so thoroughly assimilated into the hermaphrodite masses as to be non-existent. But that is by the by.)

She does not, however, go so far as to actually deny that the two sexes exist.

I should also add, of course, that it would have been counterproductive for Dworkin to do so as the other 80% of the book are about how Eastern and Western civilisations have not only been built on oppressing women on a foundational level but have also demonised women to such an extent that they turned woman hating into an art form. And that, she grounds entirely in our oppression being rooted in our sex.

Correction to my previous. This sentence should read:

Dworkin argues that the existence of people with DSDs proves that there is really no such thing as only male or female

She does not, however, go so far as to actually deny that the two sexes exist.

I don't think any (or many) trans people argue that, I think it's a complete strawman. Believe me trans people are well aware physical sex exists. The arguments are more that sex isn't quite as neatly defined as XX/XY, that elements of physical sex can be changed, that our internal sense of ourselves is also relevent as is how we live our lives and how we are treated by others in a hierarchical society in which gender and all the social expectations and internal ingrained processes that come from it is very firmly based on how our bodies are, and how are bodies are perceived by others. And most importantly that we should be transcending this because patriarchy is not a 'natural' or inevitable state. I think that leans closer to Dworkin's ideas than a lot of the rigid gender critical ideology - and I do not believe that under patriarchy you can reinforce sex without reinforcing gender. They won't let us, which is why patriarchal institutions are quite happily supporting gender critical ideas - because they are confident they can use any victories to reinforce the status quo and strengthen traditional gender roles based on sex at birth. And sadly I suspect they are right.

It seems to me that breaking the link between physical sex and gender role/behaviour is a necessary and important first step in dismantling it. And that the fracturing of gender roles into 100 different genders or whatever only further weakens an oppresive gender binary, not least because it is no longer a binary. Does that mean in the future people will not still face oppression because of sex at birth, or even that more feminine type people will not face oppression from more masculine type people - I don't know, but I think it's worth a try. Perhaps the strangest thing about this conflict is that the more politicised groups on both sides want to smash patriarchy and the system of gender and it;s really just an argument about how to get there.

I understand why you might not agree with any of this. My objection is really to people who assert that anyone who doesn't support gender critical thought is automatically misogynist, or stupid, or brainwashed or too young to understand. A lot of people, who regard themselves as feminists, have thought very deeply about these things and just drawn different conclusions - possibly because of how the nature of gender roles have changed and so younger generations have different experiences and priorities.

I wonder how else we can explain it in a way that might make it clear to people who are not women, but women are discriminated against because of our biology.

I know companies who hesitate to employ too many newly married late-20 something women because of the likelihood that they will get pregnant and need maternity leave. It is not legal to discriminate against them for that reason but it happens because in small companies, having half of one team off on maternity leave creates a problem.

Transgender people might get discriminated against illegally in employment but it could not be for that reason.

Women have babies and that takes them out of the workplace for a period of time which in general sets their career progression back and they often never regain lost ground.

Representation of women in politics or STEM is still low, largely because there is still an unconscious socialisation that tells girls they are rubbish at maths/science etc. Unobservant boys may not be aware of this. One way of combating this is to put in place quotas or targets to ensure that companies encourage women into these areas.
A number of high profile politicians have said that they would find it acceptable if all the quota places to encourage women were taken up by transwomen who will have had a completely different experience growing up to the women and will have faced none of the barriers to participation constantly experienced by girls.

They may have faced their own challenges but these will be different challenges and will generally need to be addressed in different ways.

There are many late transitioners that have spent many years benefiting from male socialisation and career progression. What life experiences could these people possibly have had that equates in any way to women's lives? How can these people, some of whom are already taking up reserved spaces for women have any real understanding of the issues facing women and several have openly confirmed that they have no interest in the issues facing women, they are using their position to further trans issues.

There is much talk from some quarters about how feminists are stronger when they team with the trans feminists (for want of a better term) but I am yet to see any action whatsoever from trans activists that benefit women. I have seen some high profile transgender people who acknowledge their situation and birth sex and respect women's spaces and are getting more vocal about that, that is to our benefit but they are few in number.

@BabyBee93

Totally baffled by these responses! I think it's shocking to think womanhood is so easily threatened by transwomen. It's not "men putting their rights before women" because transwomen are...women?

Adding basic human rights to one demographic of people cannot remove the basic human rights of another? Would you argue that the BLM movement infringes on the rights of white people?

Question - for those who have sons, what would your genuine response be if they sat you down and told you that they identified as a girl?

So what is this "womanhood" of which you speak? What is the common factor that defines it?

I don't think any (or many) trans people argue that, I think it's a complete strawman.

A strawman is a misrepresentation of the opponent's argument. A large number of both activists, trans rights organisations and others however have adopted a position that argues either that sex is socially constructed and not material reality (this is indeed an argument that sex does not exist) and therefore inferior to an innate gender identity which is not socially constructed or one that argues outright that there is no such thing as male or female people, biologically female bodies etc. It's not us misrepresenting the argument. There are countless examples, many discussed on previous threads here on FWR.

Most importantly, the aim of much of the activism in support of the doctrine of gender identity is to erase protection on the basis of sex from all legislation, policies and practice worldwide. Not the addition of new protections on the basis of gender identity in addition to sex. Erasure of sex. Complete removal. We do not have to argue whether campaigner A, B and C or organisations X, Y and Z are really denying that sex exists when their policy aim is to completely erase sex as the basis of any protection in law.

It seems to me that breaking the link between physical sex and gender role/behaviour is a necessary and important first step in dismantling it.

That's not what the doctrine of gender identity does. On the contrary, it reinforces sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes by claiming that membership of a sex class depends on an individual's preference for one set of stereotypes over the other and not on that individual's actual sex.

And that the fracturing of gender roles into 100 different genders or whatever only further weakens an oppresive gender binary, not least because it is no longer a binary.

It doesn't do that either, because most of these identities are unknown and unknowable to the vast majority of people, thanks in part to their ever expanding number and endlessly changing nature. In order to address and remedy the oppressive nature of sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes, society needs far more than trendy identity creation based on mere personality traits. Especially since the genesis of those identities arises for the most part and rather firmly from those very stereotypes.

Does that mean in the future people will not still face oppression because of sex at birth, or even that more feminine type people will not face oppression from more masculine type people - I don't know, but I think it's worth a try.

We've danced this dance before, jj1968 and I understand that although sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes have harmed both of us, your experience and mine are profoundly different. I do also understand why you put so much faith in this doctrine and what you hope it might achieve for those males who do not conform to the stereotypes associated with their sex.

Like many others, I have been disadvantaged and discriminated against on the basis of various characteristics - my parents' socio-economic status, my nationality and immigration status and my sex. I have been able to escape or mitigate the effects of the others, but most of the inequality I have suffered on the basis of my sex remains inescapable. Even though I did not comply with the stereotypes imposed on my sex from early childhood and have actively resisted them since teen age, the specific issues that arise from my sex being female cannot be resolved by my gender-non-compliance. Because stereotypes are not the root cause of those issues. My sex is.

When we say that sex is the root of our oppression and gender the tool, that doesn't mean that we can end that oppression by destroying the tool. It's a way to say that in a male-dominated world the stereotypes associated with the female sex serve a specific function that the stereotypes associated with the male sex do not. Can we improve the lives of female people by eliminating stereotypes? Absolutely. Can we eliminate our oppression by eliminating stereotypes? No.

So no, it's not "feminine type people" who are oppressed by "masculine type people". If that was the case we could all just identify out of being oppressed by adopting masculine stereotypes. Believe me, I've tried. That is an axis of discrimination specific to males who do not conform to the stereotypes associated with the male sex. The same axis exists for us, of course, but it isn't the main one.

I've come to understand that no matter how much they may have suffered themselves and no matter how empathetic they are to our suffering and how willing they may therefore be to fight for my rights, no male person can ever truly comprehend what it is like to be born female in a male-dominated world. And that stereotypes are only part of the problem we need to overcome. So I certainly don't expect you to accept or even understand why transgender ideology and legislation is something that I find it necessary to resist as yet another expression of the patriarchy that harms all female people. But I would like you to consider whether those you seek to protect really will benefit from destroying women's sex-based rights.

(And a side note on "oppression". That word has a specific meaning - systematic abuse, exploitation and injustice - which is in my view applicable only to inequality suffered on the basis of race, sex and class. So I do not accept that when feminine males are discriminated against this amounts to oppression.)

Good post CharleyParley.

I'm about off to bed again. Thank y'all all who contributed. I'll read them tomorrow. And I can say "y'all" because I'm from Texas. 🙂

I meant I'm not doing it for woke points.

My daughter, son, son-in-law, aged 30, 35, 33, all get it and are 100% GC. My daughter says many of her friends are, too.

Sleep well, Brandine.

'Femininity' is a funny thing, isn't it? 120 years ago, a woman who worked for money outside the home would have been considered either very poor or unfeminine.

A woman who wished to delay motherhood entirely, or not be a mother at all would have been seen as unnatural (this still holds true in some cultures).

What makes a woman feminine? My good friend eschews dresses and makeup and prefers short hair. She has, however, given birth and is raising that child. On the other hand, I wear makeup, have long hair and tend to wear skirts more than trousers. I don't have children. I am more physically active than she is. We are both the breadwinners in our relationships and take our careers seriously. She is in a more traditionally 'female' profession than I am, but for a while her partner was a sahd.

So what on earth do we have in common? Our femininity? Our masculinity? What does a mtf transitioner have in common with us both?

The thing that unites us is that we are biologically female. That's it. Ideas of masculinity and femininity are completely, utterly irrelevant.

Women used to be denied the vote, unable to hold money in their own names, needed a husband's signature to get a mortgage and had no control over their reproductive rights. Over the years, women have made gains in all these areas. Suddenly, womanhood is seen as something to be identified into. I wonder whether so many male-born people would feel the need to publicly identify as women if the old, blindingly obvious disadvantages of being female were still in place.

jj1968

Your reasoning here is a bit clearer and, dare I say, less belligerent than usual. Nonetheless, there are some issues with your arguments.

sex isn't quite as neatly defined as XX/XY

Yes, every biologist knows this. But there are only two pathways, this is how we as a species reproduce. You either make sperm and are able to impregnate, or you make eggs and are able to carry a baby (barring medical conditions).

elements of physical sex can be changed

Not really. No male has ever given birth. No female has ever impregnated another female. This is what sex is about. What humans have made of this basic category is another matter.

our internal sense of ourselves is also relevent as is how we live our lives

true but banal

how we are treated by others in a hierarchical society in which gender and all the social expectations and internal ingrained processes that come from it is very firmly based on how our bodies are, and how are bodies are perceived by others

It is true that some transpeople who pass are treated as the sex they are perceived as. This, however, stops as soon as someone is 'out' or does not pass. We can see this very clearly in the deferential treatment that some transwomen are granted by women and also men.

breaking the link between physical sex and gender role/behaviour is a necessary and important first step in dismantling [patriarchy]. ... Does that mean in the future people will not still face oppression because of sex at birth, or even that more feminine type people will not face oppression from more masculine type people - I don't know, but I think it's worth a try.

'It is worth a try.' Well. With any form of social engineering you have to ask who is paying for it. In this case it has become very clear that females are paying most of the bill for this social experiment. It has only been about half a decade after pro-gender ID policies have been brought in, and the damage (to women in prison, sports, detransitioners, accurate statistics ...) is palpable across several countries. You have been asked by others on this board how much collateral damage you are willing to accept before admitting that the experiment has not worked. How much?

@jj1968 I don't disagree with some of what you say, but in the end it doesn't really matter what's in your head, or how you feel, you cannot escape your biology. I never felt particularly feminine, I liked a lot of things boys like, I acted in pretty masculine ways, as defined by society, and often got stick for it. As a young woman, I assumed I could compete with men equally in life, and that my sex needn't hold me back.

All that held together until I got pregnant. Suddenly, and incessantly, my biology asserted itself and my body followed its own agenda. I felt sick all day and every day, so brain-numbingly tired I could hardly move. The birth was long and so painful I literally wanted to die. Breastfeeding was often painful and difficult. I kept getting mastitis. My career suffered from having to have time off work. I was passed up for promotions, and treated like I was no longer taking my job seriously. Pregnancy and breastfeeding permanently changed my body in ways I frankly didn't welcome.

So all those ideas I had about myself, how I felt inside, were insignificant compared with the impact of my biology on my life. That is why women know that the root of their oppression is rooted in their sex, and it's not something you can identify in or out of. That is why no one who feels like a woman will ever face the same challenges that women routinely face, in just living their lives. That is why we need our own spaces, our own sports, our own protections.

I am also a woman and have also given birth. I am proud of my body and what it has done. Every single day. And that is not principally because of the love I feel for my child.

The physical changes brought on by pregnancy and birth can be debilitating, I feel for all my sisters who went through this. But it wasn't like this for me or only temporary, my sex life actually improved afterwards, and I feel more connected to my body.

breaking the link between physical sex and gender role/behaviour is a necessary and important first step in dismantling [patriarchy]

The fact people think it's possible to break that link demonstrates they do not understand what gender is and, more impo, how it comes to be.

For as long as sexual dimorphism endures, there will be stereotypes associated with each sex. If you could thoroughly decouple the current local batch, new stereotypes attached to each sex will arise.

You could outlaw makeup and force everyone to wear the same old sacks, and you would find young people customising their sacks to indicate their sex class - because humans have a need to differentiate in order to attract mates - and before long we'd have feminine and masculine ways of wearing your old sack.

But that's an aside. The idea that you can decouple gender from sex is the idea that you can decouple sex stereotypes from sex - if you do this those stereotypes cease to be sex stereotypes and thus cease to be gender.

If it's just a fashion and not associated with one sex or the other, it's not gender.

it doesn't really matter what's in your head, or how you feel, you cannot escape your biology.

In a nutshell, this is why females need sex based rights. To not understand that is to not understand the sex based differences and realities of being born in a biological that is permanently subordinated to the needs and wishes and control of the other sex.

No more than infant girls can identify out of being murdered for being girls, no more than little girls in some countries can identify out of being married and impregnated at an age that is going to kill them, no more than female people here can identify out of being told by males that they can no longer have their own sports, spaces, privacy, dignity, identity, language, hospital wards, anything - because it no longer suits male interests and needs and wishes for males to continue to grant this to the female sex.

Look at this thread: you have female people asking you what your limit is for what collateral damage you expect females to absorb so that male people may be enabled to have greater self realisation and a lot of other high faluting stuff.

Some of us are still stuck in the ruddy biology. Some of us do not have the freedom to identify into something nebulous, wonderful and better self realising. You can easily spot us, we all have something in common, and its the reality of biological sex.

I don't entirely buy the generational bit. In my family - parents in late 70s early 80s; me, my siblings and all our partners, 44-54; and the children, 10-17 are all agreed: human's can't change sex, and arguments and thought systems that claim they can are just nonsense. Perhaps we have the advantage that my SIL is a medic and has been active in her professional circle against medical treatment for trans children (how right she has been proven!!) and so has been raising our awareness of all this very intelligently for a while. But really, once somebody points out the pitfalls and dangers of the 'be kind' position, you just can't go back.

To the person upthread who talked about explaining it to their 10 year old - I had just the same experience. My daughter was that age and she was simply gobsmacked to think that anybody could think for a single moment that it was our taste in clothes, hair, and nail polish that made us female! She knows her beliefs make her a bit of an outlier at school and that she needs to keep quiet in some contexts. She was annoyed with me for a while because she was in disagreement with another girl about this and said if we'd never talked about it she could have just gone along with the flow, but that passed and her annoyance is now with those who hold absurd beliefs. She started her period recently and gets more than ever that she is female and that there's something very special and valuable about that. It really makes me quite sad that her grasp of reality and self-respect for her own body are at odds with this pernicious ideology that is being taught to her generation.

There is something in the idea that it's generational. I've been on mumsnet since my very early 20s. Previously to that, I was hanging out on other forums, and in retrospect, I am dubious about the motives and mindsets of some of the people I was talking to online between 16-19. I think there was a bit of indoctrination going on there.

So no, it's not "feminine type people" who are oppressed by "masculine type people". If that was the case we could all just identify out of being oppressed by adopting masculine stereotypes.

What I was really talking about here is if gender did fracture into a thousand pieces then would hierachy still emerge both based on sex at birth and gender - I think it would, the Hijra for example often see themselves as a third gender (although some see themselves as trans and some as both). They are clearly discriminated against on the basis of their gender, often forced into survival sex work for example. I don't really think it's either or, but that people can be discriminated against on the basis of both sex and gender. Obviously women are discriminated against on the basis of reproductive potential, but women are also oppressed based on gender, as are trans woman - there is a shared struggle there, primarily against male violence and male sexual violence which is undeniable I think.

@RadandMad

I don't disagree that no-one born male can fully understand the discrimination women go through relating to child birth (and other physical aspects), but that experience is not univeral to all women - roughly around 25% of women in the UK never have children - some women can't, many don't want to - I don't think this makes them imperfect women (which some in society do hence Wittig's comments about not being a woman because she is a lesbian), or women who don't experience discrimination. There are other forms of oppression based on gender, such as sexual abuse, which can be life shattering for example and in our day to day existence sexism plays out in insidious ways even down to people making assumptions based on our names when they may have never even met us or know what sex we were born.

There is no universal experience of womanhood, or manhood for that matter. No white woman in the west can know what it's like for a woman in Saudi Arabia, no middle class white man can truly understand what it like for a black kid growing up in the ghettos on the US, there are commonalities between both but also massive differences which are just as life defining as a shared experience of our physically sexed bodies.

I wonder whether so many male-born people would feel the need to publicly identify as women if the old, blindingly obvious disadvantages of being female were still in place.

They did, trans people have always existed but often in the shadows because being publically trans might result in violence or arrest. But there is a huge trans community in Pakistan for example, where women's rights have a long way to go. It's not something people choose to be, it's something that people are - why that is I do not know, I suspect a range of both biological and social forces, but trans people have existed in some form in all kinds of diverse societies from the Hijra in India, to the Travesti in South America, the Khatoey of Thailand, the two-spirit people of native american descent, - there are ample historical and cultural expressions of gender which go beyond the western patriarchal norms of men acting as men and women acting as women.

(And a side note on "oppression". That word has a specific meaning - systematic abuse, exploitation and injustice - which is in my view applicable only to inequality suffered on the basis of race, sex and class. So I do not accept that when feminine males are discriminated against this amounts to oppression.)

I note you only consider oppression applies to the characteristics that apply to you but I'm sorry, if you don't think oppression can exist based on sexuality, gender identity, disability, or religion, then I don't really know what to say except you're simply wrong. It was illegal to be gay for many years, and by de facto virtually illegal to be trans - it still is in some parts of the world, to the point of being punishable by death, if thats not oppression then I dont really know what is.

jj1968

You talk about "feminists", but do you really know what a feminist is? Did you know that little Owen Jones "identifies" as a "feminist" according to his Wiki page? I only say this because IMHO it would be hard to find a more misogynistic person.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Jones

How do you view transgender people who identify as a man on certain days and a woman on others, such as Pippa/Phillip Bunce?

Whether you are able to have children or not, whether you want to have children or not, pregnancy - whether it's trying to achieve it or to avoid it - dominates womens' lives up until middle age. I have yet to meet a man who shows any understanding, or quite frankly any interest, in what it's like.