Q&A thread for New Posters

[CharlieParley]

Welcome to the FWR board and welcome to the debate. If you're new here and have been told your questions might be better on their own thread, but you're not comfortable starting your own, then please feel free to ask your question here.

I'll try my best to answer and some of our other regulars might pop in too.

As far as I am aware, the state pension does not require any earlier qualification whatever, either of education or of employment.

But most people do not rely solely on the state pension.

Not most is still a lot of people, disproportionately women.

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/21/uk-retirees-state-pension-financial-future

About 15 million people have no pension savings and face a bleak future in retirement, according to a major survey of Britain’s personal finances published this week by the Financial Conduct Authority.

The Financial Lives survey of 13,000 consumers by the FCA, the biggest of its kind, found that 31% of UK adults have no private pension provision and will have to rely entirely on the state in their retirement.

The figures reveal a big gap between men and women: 33% of men expect to retire with just the state pension, but that rises to 53% among women.

Retirement age is not equal- equality means make it the same (push women's up and there's been a million threads and articles etc about the warning and so on).

33% men Vs 53% women with no pension- that's fine because it's about personal choice.

I'm not sure why we're talking about pensions but anyway. There is plenty of feminist analysis to do around them!

Many women are not able to access the same levels of pension contributions due to breaks or interruptions in employment for childbearing. Some choices do not affect the sexes equally.

Also the lower pay affects pension conts.

Another area where people tend to say that's a personal choice.

@NiceGerbil

I'm not sure why we're talking about pensions but anyway. There is plenty of feminist analysis to do around them!

Because I made the point that past inequality e.g. less access to higher education because of gendered expectations, affects inequality now e.g. pensions. We are still living with the impact of the way people lived 60, 70, 80 years ago.

And maternity leave and taking time off for childcare.

I have some questions about the SWIW mantra.
Sex work is work, what does that mean exactly?
Why is it often tied to the TWAW brigade?
Are they in favour of women who lose their jobs (in whatever sector) to have to legitimately consider sex work as employment or risk forfeiting benefits, for example?

I have some questions about the SWIW mantra.
Sex work is work, what does that mean exactly?
Why is it often tied to the TWAW brigade?

Men’s rights

I see sex work referenced by transwomen on Twitter quite often.

It seems to be split between two sentiments.

1. I can't get a normal job because of discrimination, I need money for transition, I have to do sex work.
2. I am so happy I get to do sex work, it's great.

In both cases they want it decriminalised.

Much reference to horrid T**f's also being horrid swerfs (not to be confused with smurfs).

@Datun

“Yes, it can be viewed as masculinity and femininity, but if you limit it to things like hair, dress, mannerisms, etc, you're not seeing the full picture and might be missing the implications.

The way gender was explained to me was a bit of an eye-opener.

It was quite simply that women are oppressed on the basis of their sex, and gender is the means by which it's done.....”

I agree with almost everything you say here. I think we mostly disagree on how we get from where we are to where we should be (a society where people are not limited in terms of how they can appear, live, work etc just because they were born with male or female biology).

My view is that the concepts of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are too thoroughly infected with gender (as evidenced by the fact people are almost invariably referred to using gendered pronouns which make it very difficult to enter into social interactions without adopting a gender) to be re-claimed as denoting only biological sex. To deny that ‘woman’ means more than biologically female is to deny inescapable reality.

So the only way to get to a place where people are truly free from gendered norms and expectations (or at least, free to adopt them or reject them as they wish) is to detach the concepts of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ from biological sex and allow people to inhabit them as they wish.

So the only way to get to a place where people are truly free from gendered norms and expectations (or at least, free to adopt them or reject them as they wish) is to detach the concepts of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ from biological sex and allow people to inhabit them as they wish.

You are missing the other side of the oppression coin - structural discrimination.

Women face unfair discrimination because it is assumed that they will get pregnant. However most women do get pregnant and they get pregnant between the ages of about 25 and 35.

To enable equality - equal participation in public life, access to work etc. - you also need to create structures that support women, like maternity rights.

You can’t just chop this up into maternity rights/period rights/menopause rights/breastfeeding rights etc. etc. Because everyone knows these things only affect women (Such a shame we don’t employ any of these people who need these minority rights...) and the impact of not providing these rights only affects women.

To deny that ‘woman’ means more than biologically female is to deny inescapable reality.

That is just accepting sexism. No more reason to accept sexism than there is to accept any other form of prejudice.

Yes, it was explained to me that way too, Helen.

I went along with it for years but eventually the cognitive dissonance built up too much.

Let's take the bored board through some of my ramblings.

First, so does this apply to horses and deer? We have stallions, and mares, stags and does. A doe is famously defined as a deer, a female deer.

I always refer to animals as he or she. How do I do that? Do I do it on gender presentation? No.

So why are people telling me English pronouns are traditionally determined by gender when I talk about humans?

In fact, pronouns have only started being determined by "gender" in the last 25 years. Why? Trans rights! Society has started slowly changing to accommodate the idea that if you see someone like Lily Madigan, you should ignore their physiology, clock that they were wearing clothes from the women's section, and remember it for later, in case you need to use pronouns.

@9toenails

“You are right; being complicated does not entail it is not real. However, it could still be that it is not real, no?

This looks likely to be the case here.

"I feel like a ... " has the same sense as "I have a sense of myself as ... ". And 'female' is a cognate of 'woman'. So your purported explanation, though indeed a little more complicated, suffers from the same defect as the original: it is circular and so completely non-explanatory.

We are trying to get an explanation of what X is. It is clear that 'an X is anyone who feels like X' offers nothing towards understanding what X is. Equally, 'an X is anyone who has a sense of themselves as a defining-character-of-X ' suffers the same fate.

If that is the best on offer then it surely is not real.

And no, pointing out logico-semantic errors is not sea-lioning.”

My problem with a purely biologically-based definition of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ (eg a woman is any person with xx chromosomes and a vagina” is that it fails to capture the huge social significance that attaches to the terms. When we interact with a person in most everyday contexts we don’t need to know about their chromosomes or genitals, and yet we are almost universally expected to publicly declare whether we are a man or woman (via our name, in the first instance) before we enter into any interaction with another person. If saying that I am a woman was simply conveying information about my chromosomes and genitals, why would this need to be such a central part of how I engage with the world?

@merrymouse

“You are missing the other side of the oppression coin - structural discrimination.

Women face unfair discrimination because it is assumed that they will get pregnant. However most women do get pregnant and they get pregnant between the ages of about 25 and 35.

To enable equality - equal participation in public life, access to work etc. - you also need to create structures that support women, like maternity rights.

You can’t just chop this up into maternity rights/period rights/menopause rights/breastfeeding rights etc. etc. Because everyone knows these things only affect women (Such a shame we don’t employ any of these people who need these minority rights...) and the impact of not providing these rights only affects women.

To deny that ‘woman’ means more than biologically female is to deny inescapable reality.

That is just accepting sexism. No more reason to accept sexism than there is to accept any other form of prejudice.”

I do take your point about women disproportionately carrying the burden of childcare, and being disadvantaged economically as a result. Rights to parental leave are clearly essential both from a point of view of protecting women as the group currently disproportionately affected, and also morally more generally to allow people of either sex to take time off to raise a child. I think shared parental leave is a huge step forward, and hopefully we will eventually reach a point where women and men take time out from work equally for childcare purposes.

I am all for fighting against the stereotype that women are inherently more nurturing or suited to being a primary child carer than men.

Right, I'm going to need a separate post for this.

My view is that the concepts of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are too thoroughly infected with gender

You mean the terms man and woman come with centuries of sexist, patriarchal baggage in the form of sexist stereotyping? (Note word sexist- prejudice about who another person is and what they can do on the basis of their sex.)

Let me ask you a question. Does the man in management who proudly declares that he "can't see colour" do anything positive to end racial discrimination with that statement?

I say he doesn't. He congratulates himself on how wonderful he is, and wends his way through life, never noticing that he is more likely to chuck CVs in the bin if they have a name at the top that suggests the applicant isn't white. He never notices that he never promotes people who aren't white. He never notices that the only department that does employ Asian people in a ratio typical of the town's population demographics is the cleaning one.

Now I ask, what happens when someone says "I can't see sex"?

If you call men and women something else, people will still joke about one sex not being able to parallel park. And they will still assume that a female HCP is a nurse, and that the male one is the doctor.

If I switch into French, in which the words for men and women are totally different, do I drop my conditioning about the roles that men and women play in society?

@PotholeParadies

“Yes, it was explained to me that way too, Helen.

I went along with it for years but eventually the cognitive dissonance built up too much.

Let's take the bored board through some of my ramblings.

First, so does this apply to horses and deer? We have stallions, and mares, stags and does. A doe is famously defined as a deer, a female deer.

I always refer to animals as he or she. How do I do that? Do I do it on gender presentation? No.

So why are people telling me English pronouns are traditionally determined by gender when I talk about humans?

In fact, pronouns have only started being determined by "gender" in the last 25 years. Why? Trans rights! Society has started slowly changing to accommodate the idea that if you see someone like Lily Madigan, you should ignore their physiology, clock that they were wearing clothes from the women's section, and remember it for later, in case you need to use pronouns.”

I think I normally refer to animals as ‘it’.

My point isn’t about whether pronouns are or should refer to sex or gender. My point is, why on earth do we need gendered pronouns if they purely refer to sex? When I interact with another person (except in some specific contexts - medical, sexual etc) I don’t need to know what their chromosomes or genitals are

"When I interact with another person (except in some specific contexts - medical, sexual etc) I don’t need to know what their chromosomes or genitals are"

That's nice for you, Helen.

If I'm physically present with someone, I need to know their sex. If they are male I'm extremely careful about knowing where the door is, who else is present etc.

@PotholeParadies

“Right, I'm going to need a separate post for this.....”

I take your point about the analogy with a person claiming to be colour-blind, and I agree that that stance does nothing to address structural racism. I have thought a lot about how and why my views on issues of sex and gender differ from my views on race and my conclusion is that the issues have some similarities but also some important differences which make it difficult to draw direct comparisons.

I know that changing terminology or concepts wouldn’t stop sexism overnight, but I also think a blurring of the boundaries between ‘man’ and ‘woman’ over time will help to erode sexist stereotypes

@picklemewalnuts

“That's nice for you, Helen.

If I'm physically present with someone, I need to know their sex. If they are male I'm extremely careful about knowing where the door is, who else is present etc.”

I’m sorry to hear that, that must make life very difficult. I don’t think I can really get into a discussion about your personal situation or feelings without risking causing offence.

In German, there are three grammatical genders, male, female and neuter and the words Mädchen (girl), Fräulein (young lady- note, not a PC word these days, don't use it in a cafe) are both neuter.

Mysteriously, everyone knew and continues to know what a girl is and whether she should help her mother with the housework, and historic Germany was not a sexism-free utopia.

I think I normally refer to animals as ‘it’.

I don't think we'd get on in RL.then.

My point isn’t about whether pronouns are or should refer to sex or gender. My point is, why on earth do we need gendered pronouns if they purely refer to sex? When I interact with another person (except in some specific contexts - medical, sexual etc) I don’t need to know what their chromosomes or genitals are

I am a trifle confused about this. When you interact with someone in RL, while using the medium of English, you will be using the unsexed, ungendered pronouns of you. The only thing telling you their sex will be your eyes.

If you interact with people in exactly the same way, whatever their sex, good for you.

The pronouns will only come up if you want to tell other people about your interaction. If you think sex is irrelevant, deliberately avoid using pronouns in those later conversations and see if other people complain.

@Helen8220 it's not unusual- I think it's fairly typical of women, to be honest, even if they haven't explicitly thought it through.

I know very few women who wouldn't hesitate at being in a confined space with an unknown male.

As a teacher, you take care to avoid being alone with a child unless it's somewhere open and visible.
As a woman I take care to avoid being alone with unfamiliar men, ditto.

The first is for the protection of both the child and teacher, the second for my own protection.

Vicars also have safeguarding awareness.

It's really not unusual.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Women's state pension provision has been altered to match that of males. Women used to get a better deal through their pensionable age being five years sooner in their lives, now they don't. That's an inequality which was sorted out, isn't it.

I have huge gaps in my pension because I’ve had to leave the workforce to care for my disabled mother and sister. My brother hasn’t, my father hasn’t. I’m not looking for a pat on the back, but carers don’t have pension contributions made. I know that Carers UK find that caring roles of disabled family/friends is near enough equally-split between the sexes, but I would be very interested in the breakdown by age, as in, whether it’s equally split amongst working-age people, not just retired people.

I should clarify, the breakdown by age and sex. So, are more working-age women losing out on pension contributions because of caring roles than working-age men.