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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

The TWAW debate for beginners

68 replies

Sugarintheplum · 21/02/2021 00:21

Hi All,

I don't know how to describe my position, but here goes. I am a black woman. I consider myself to be a woman. I respect trans women's decisions to think of themselves as women. I don't think of trans women as men, I don't think of them as women; I think of them as trans women. I'm not being 'goody' I'm being sincere.

I feel really stuck because so many of my friends take other positions and consider mine transphobic. I agree I haven't read or watched as much as I could to understand any side of the debate to be honest. Please point me in the direction of literature, videos, podcasts, any type of resource that will help me to feel improve my knowledge.

OP posts:
2020iscancelled · 23/02/2021 18:59

@ifitpleasesandsparkles

My black friends do say that the category women could do with some disruption and dismantling given black women were and are often excluded from it.

What does this mean? Or what are they attempting to mean?

I would suggest it means parts of feminism has historically excluded women of colour. It has focused on white women and their fight for, white women. So when we say ‘woman’, we mean white woman - or that we think of white woman.

(When I say we, I just mean society as a whole)

Therefore a degree of breaking the word down, to expand it outside of the white experience is welcome.

But I am not black, this is purely from discussion I’ve heard and read.

ifitpleasesandsparkles · 23/02/2021 19:17

@2020iscancelled

That makes sense if you say that historically perhaps feminism as a movement has focused more on white women's rights than black women's rights, if that is indeed true.

But saying that the category "women" needs some rethinking and widening to include previously excluded back women seems to me to be a strange thing to say. A woman is simply a woman. But then, I despise all forms of intersectionality and identity politics. Seems to me to play right into the hands of those who are trying to complicate the term "woman".

NecessaryScene1 · 23/02/2021 19:46

So when we say ‘woman’, we mean white woman - or that we think of white woman.

Right, but none of that makes any sense, because none of it was about "womanhood". It was about "personhood". (And even then, it's a very US-culturally specific view?)

In that environment black X's were excluded from a group of X's for many values of X, but X was not relevant.

You no more need to redefine "woman" by substituting for X than you do "academic", "president", "atheist", "athlete", "vegan", ...

"I would suggest it means parts of veganism has historically excluded vegans of colour. It has focused on white vegans and their fight for, white vegans. So when we say ‘vegan’, we mean white vegan - or that we think of white vegan"

"Therefore a degree of breaking the word down, to expand it outside of the white experience is welcome."

"So we should accept that meat-eaters can be vegans too?".

Um... No, black non-meat eaters can be vegans too. But they still have to actually not eat meat. And black women can be women too. But they still have to actually be female.

NiceGerbil · 23/02/2021 20:11

What about the women and feminism around the world?

This conversation is incredibly Western (and USA at that) centric.

Sugarintheplum · 23/02/2021 22:00

@ifitpleasesandsparkles

My black friends do say that the category women could do with some disruption and dismantling given black women were and are often excluded from it.

What does this mean? Or what are they attempting to mean?

As I say, I don't fully understand it. But of course, our womanhood never seems to mean as much, so for example the Zambrano Women. It's clear that the government is penalising them for not being white (British). I've personally known black women with no recourse to public finds go out and work the streets in order to feed their children. The government doesn't recognise their right to motherhood. And we all gasped at Trump separating parents and children. Really?

I think ultimately they also mean they have far less purchase in the concept of women. Again, black women are 4 to 5 times more likely to die in childbirth at least in part because of erroneous beliefs that we can tolerate more pain. That kind of thinking originated in the enslavement of black people and it's impacting today.

Oh, there are so many examples. Everywhere. So you know, feed em to the lions maybe?

OP posts:
Sugarintheplum · 23/02/2021 22:11

@NecessaryScene1

On intersectionality. It is not really just a 'thing' - your post sounds dismissive to me. I might be wrong. But can you tell me more about how it is used to advance the campaign for TWAW?

OP posts:
Sugarintheplum · 23/02/2021 22:15

@2020iscancelled

yes, said much more eloquently than me. This feels like a very white space and so I'm pitching my posts differently than I would otherwise. A shame. I have think more about what is driving me to do that.

OP posts:
ArabellaScott · 23/02/2021 22:32

pleas also direct me to where I can be exposed to the most compelling arguments from the other side of the debate!

Yes, if anyone finds some compelling arguments, please direct me there, also. I have looked ...

Ereshkigalangcleg · 23/02/2021 22:35

Yet in this one, solitary case, they work against that idea.

They're trying to insist that the axis of "sex" does not exist, or at least must not be acknowledged. They would deny that male "women" would have any different experiences from female "women". Or that male "nonbinaries" would have any different experiences from female "nonbinaries".

Where is your "intersectionality" now? How is this coherent?

I agree, and have been raising this for a while. Pretending biological sex isn't a valid axis of oppression is about as unintersectional as you can get.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 23/02/2021 22:36

On intersectionality. It is not really just a 'thing' - your post sounds dismissive to me. I might be wrong.

I think you have misunderstood the point being made by the pp.

Sugarintheplum · 23/02/2021 22:46

like I said, maybe.

OP posts:
NiceGerbil · 24/02/2021 00:43

'I would suggest it means parts of feminism has historically excluded women of colour. It has focused on white women and their fight for, white women. So when we say ‘woman’, we mean white woman - or that we think of white woman.

(When I say we, I just mean society as a whole)

Therefore a degree of breaking the word down, to expand it outside of the white experience is welcome.'

You've not heard of feminist activism around the world? I don't get the comment above.

Before the word feminist was coined there have been women who kicked against their role, fought for girls and women, took massive risks to do so.

When was the word coined? Not sure. But the ideas. The approach. The refusal to submit. There have been women like that forever. All over the world.

The idea that the word women meant anything other than white women in the USA /West? What now?

Woman = adult human female

Women all over the globe. From Russia to China to Iran to South Africa to Iceland to Rwanda have said NO. Women through history have said NO.

WOMEN. Not one skin colour or religion or virginity level or social class or caste or... Anything. Every country in every world for all time will have had a word for woman. Male and female are the most basic things there are, in humans and most other mammals.

Who exactly historically excluded women who weren't white from the word? In the sense that is being talked about so much at they moment?

It's about the USA and their history.
The USA is not the whole world. Or the whole of history.

The way to address the appalling treatment of black women in the USA is NOT to say the word is obsolete, or a costume that a man can don.

The way I'd have thought. Is to say. We are women and women globally and historically for as long as anyone can remember have been and continue to be oppressed. So fuck off. You don't get to say who is what. We're not submitting. You racist bastards said we were not women. In this country in this small piece of time. In fact for women in all countries through time and now who are treated as less than. Less than human. Less than men. Less in a hierarchy built to meet what men wanted.

No. Women are a thing. Everyone knows what one is. All over the world. All through history. You do not get to divide us. We know who we are.

And if that's too long.

Shut up and fuck off.

NecessaryScene1 · 24/02/2021 06:54

On intersectionality. It is not really just a 'thing' - your post sounds dismissive to me. I might be wrong. But can you tell me more about how it is used to advance the campaign for TWAW?

Yes, I could feel I was being dismissive as I wrote that, but my charity has been depleted somewhat over the last few years.

I'm dismissive of it because while a I can see why it is a valid viewpoint to think about as one part of an academic framework, when it hits the real world, it goes bad, like post-modernism does. It's like a virus escaping the lab.

When you get down to it, it boils down to one of two things:

a) applied correctly, it's just saying "someone can be more than one thing at once", which doesn't seem like a very deep concept;
b) applied incorrectly - as it seems to be a lot now - it's "count how many things apply to you, add them up/net them off, and compare totals". So you've just gone back to a single axis. And then you decide to consciously treat people worse/better based on the total. Sad

So it's either not that deep, or it leads to dumb thinking and bad behaviour. The upside does not outweigh the downside. And people tend towards (b) just because (a) is so obvious - it's an attempt to "make more of it".

But that wasn't really my point - my real point was that no matter how much you value the concept, it makes no sense for "sex" to not be the one of the most significant axes.

The only other axis I can think of as underplayed is "wealth" (or "family wealth"), which is generally even more important than "sex" for most purposes.

And even if, as some point out, and it's true, that "perceived sex" (or race, or whatever) is what matters, rather than "actual sex", then, still, neither "gender identity" nor "gender presentation" are "perceived sex". Very few trans people are truly perceived as the opposite sex - especially males. Females can pass more due to the effects of testosterone - it's not symmetrical.

But now you just can't say to someone "no, you clearly aren't being treated like a woman, because everyone can tell you're male, and everyone is walking on eggshells around you - so no way are you in the same position on the 'gender' axis".

You have to pretend they're treated like women. (And the fact that you expected to pretend for them is an example of how they're not treated like women. It's paradoxical.)

Sometimes this is almost comical - it's been repeatedly observed how James O'Brian (UK radio host) speaks very brusquely and dismissively to real women callers and yet fawns over transwomen callers...

A realistic set of intersectionality axes up would certainly incorporate being gender non-conforming into a transwoman's "male+straight". GNC people - males in particular - are looked at a little askance.

But I believe the current view is that they're the most oppressed ever - even more than women - by flipping the "male+straight" to "female+lesbian" and adding the "trans". But that doesn't match societal or biological reality. You're feeding the wrong inputs into the algorithm.

GNCcentric and others have talked about how various LGBTQ communities use this to basically shit on transmen - telling them to "know their place" because of their male privilege and defer to transwomen. So now you're at a double whammy - doing the bad thing of deliberately mistreating people via "intersectionality (b)" but with incorrect totals on top, so your mistreating the wrong people.

haggistramp · 24/02/2021 07:12

I know a woman who whilst agreeing it was dangerous for women and girls to let males (however they identify) into womens spaces, she argued we should because its kind. When asked to justify that, the ol chestnut I dont know enough/I'm not that bothered about it/I know someone who is queer and he wouldn't hurt me. This is a supposedly intelligent woman with a msc. I pretty much lost all respect for her. I dont think anything would change her mindset although I believe it's more moral cowardice rather than an ardent belief of TWAW.

NecessaryScene1 · 24/02/2021 07:20

Shut up and fuck off.

Well said :) Everyone - go back and read NiceGerbil's post. It's better than my long one.

I think there is some sort of historical baggage specifically in the US about feminism? Their first-wave early 20th-century feminists are somehow associated with racism in a concrete way?

I think that's where the "white feminism" thing comes from - to UK ears it sounds totally random, and to non-Western ears it must be totally idiotic - but it's possibly meaningful within specifically US history.

But to claim that this history is in some way universal, and to weaponise it against women now fighting for women worldwide?

"Our US forebears didn't properly acknowledge some women, so now we're going to use that to justify not acknowledging women's existence at all. And we're going to try to impose that 'logic' on the rest of the world."

Fuck the fuck off and fuck off some more when you get there.

NecessaryScene1 · 24/02/2021 07:26

I believe it's more moral cowardice rather than an ardent belief of TWAW.

I think this is generally true for most who go along with it. It's always awkward to say "no" to an individual.

And a hell of a lot harder when society or peers won't support you in the "no".

But, on the positive side, this TWAW stuff (and Woke stuff more generally) turns out to be an excellent way of assessing someone's character. You find people who you thought were trustworthy actually are made of jelly, and you find individuals who have hitherto been unremarkable turning out to have spines of steel.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 24/02/2021 07:29

As I say, I don't fully understand it. But of course, our womanhood never seems to mean as much, so for example the Zambrano Women

I'm curious OP re whether there are two things happening here? One is about womanhood and this intersects with black (and skin colours other than white) people in many different parts of the world, mainly the global south and in colonised nations, not being seen as fully human (?). Hence, they could be tortured, worked to death, were considered not to feel pain, and family ties were not considered important (i.e. they were not seen to feel the same emotion re having children removed and so on). What happened and continues to happen to black women is a subset of this (maybe)?

NonnyMouse1337 · 24/02/2021 09:28

Sugarintheplum maybe the title of the thread could be updated to make it clear you are seeking answers from those who believe in the TWAW idea as well? I don't know how many of them frequent this board, but it might not be obvious from the thread title that they might be interested in engaging with the discussion.

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