Are women discriminated against due to their biology?

[Mumofgirlswholiketoplaywithmud]

Kirsty Blackman MP doesn't think that there is much discrimination occuring to women due to biological differences. Do women ever get discriminated against due to issues such as pregnancy?

Can't imagine anyone aborting a foetus simply because it's female. They always wait until they know how the child will be perceived before they cast it off, right?

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that the evidence from several thousand years of human history, involving over half the world’s population, vs the word of maybe 1% of the population in a movement maybe 20 years old, would convince her. But no.

@ChakaDakotaRegina

A friend had to reprimand a group of men as they didn’t want to offer a pregnant woman a promotion that was open and ready for her as they didn’t want to ‘stress her out’. They were annoyed as they thought they were being kind!

Uuurgh. That sounds unfortunately not that unusual.

I have known someone get a promotion only after it became known at work that they had been unable to get pregnant despite IVF.

I can't get my head around her thinking? Is she saying people trafficking girls for FGM don't know that they are female?

No idea- there's a few stabs at it on Twitter and I think the closest might be that a "perceived girl" is a child with a vulva who is "perceived" to be a girl but identifies as a boy. Ergo FGM affects (trans) boys and men too.

Oh yes and the women around the world who are forced to bear children because of anti-abortion laws. We don't force the men who deposited their sperm to financially and emotionally support the child until they reach adulthood, why are women held to a different standard?

@MissBarbary

I can't get my head around her thinking? Is she saying people trafficking girls for FGM don't know that they are female?

No idea- there's a few stabs at it on Twitter and I think the closest might be that a "perceived girl" is a child with a vulva who is "perceived" to be a girl but identifies as a boy. Ergo FGM affects (trans) boys and men too.

Ah, so she is now suggesting that girls are discriminated against because of biology. That was a 90 degree swivel.

@EmpressWitchDoesntBurn

What really makes me sad here is that Kirsty Blackman was the OP on this lovely Classics thread back in 2016: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_classics/2679290-Found-a-toy-bunny-outside-the-House-of-Commons

And now she’s saying stuff like this.

Aww, that is such a lovely thread!

Discrimination based on perception is already covered by the Equality Act. If you discriminate against someone because you perceive them to have a protected characteristic then that is prohibted discrimination even though they do not in fact possess that characteristic. So, for example, if I refuse to hire someone because I think they are gay then that is prohibited discrimination even if I am mistaken and they are in fact straight.

We don't need to change the definition of the protected characteristic to protect people who are wrongly perceived to have that characteristic.

It's playground nonsense.

How do sex selective abortions work? No one knows the 'gender' of the foetus.

@TheRabbitOfCaerbannog

I can't imagine an employer ever overlooking a woman for a job or a promotion because she's of an age when she might want to have a baby. Can't imagine female workers at a major supermarket chain having to fight for back pay because the work that men do for the organisation is considered to be of greater value. If only they'd "presented" differently, silly women. And it certainly hasn't been the case that I've witnessed older women being pushed out of organisations because they're not considered to be as valuable as certain other members of staff. No discrimination on the basis of sex to see here.

I was offered a job which I took and was in for ten years

I found out Recently that they took me on because I wasn't the type to want kids.

Got pregnant 9 months into said job.

Makes me feel sad about how they took me on.

Is she actually as thick as shit or am I just perceiving her to be?
Dear god give me fucking strength.
No matter what I do I will always actually be female and I will always be perceived to be female because I am and I'm 5" and 8 stone.
What point is she even trying to make?

I know a company didn't offer a job to a female applicant because "shes in her early 30's and gas one kid, so she'll probably want another one".

Not pregnant.
Not even in a relationship AFAIK
Her presumed potential to have another child was enough.

It happens all the time Groggy. It's even more common I suspect to overlook women for promotion because they've taken time off to have kids, or when they come back they're viewed as "part-timers" if they want any kind of flexibility.

Someone should recommend she gives "Invisible Women" a read too

Ah, so sheisnow suggesting that girls are discriminated against because of biology. That was a 90 degree swivel

Again, no idea. I don't want to put words in her mouth- it was just an attempt to make some sense of it.

@MissBarbary

Her follow up is even more awesome.

I was already struggling to comprehend the base idiocy of that first tweet, and you had to hit me with this?

What is happening to these people? Is there a peg by the door they hang their common sense up on? This is such a unsavoury combination of ignorance and stupidity, it really is painful to see.

And so many levels of stupid packed into just one tweet! I marvel at her talent there - I don't think I could match this if I tried.

Is she making some deep philosophical point that we only have mediated access to reality so don’t ever discriminate based on how things really are but only on our perceptions? Seriously though, the equality act covers direct and indirect discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sex. Direct discrimination due to sex is where you are discriminated against because you are female. Perceived discrimination is where you are discriminated against because you are perceived to be female. And then there is pregnancy discrimination, a separate category and very much based on a biological function of the female sex. I don’t really know what point she’s making.

Only a privileged women with her ears and eyes impaired - probably from having her head up her oen arse - could think that women arent discriminated against because of their sex.

What is rape all about? Control of women and reproduction.

And the staggering truth underlying her assuming that girls are trafficked for the purpose of FGM is that girls being trafficked and girls being subjected to FGM are two distinct and separate issues always, always discussed together when various practices of oppression faced by female people is discussed. So because they are listed together, she's now under the impression the trafficking is done to facilitate the FGM? Instead of realising the common denominator between these two issues is that the person suffering them is female, she's thrown them together as one issue suffered by those perceived to be girls on the basis of what? Looking sufficiently girly? Wearing what clothes? I mean FGM happens in cultures with vastly different modes of dress and appearance. Some of which would not be considered stereotypically feminine in the UK. How does she think these cultures still all arrived at subjecting just female children to the horror of FGM?

No one bothers checking the gender in Holbeck...

It’s a real head-scratcher.

What the actual fuck?

A woman said this?

And wants evidence?

And her oh that's not discrimination it's abuse is.. weird.

Does she read the news?

How does she explain what is being done to the Uighar women in China?

I mean...

What????

She wants EVIDENCE?

women are in prison for having miscarriages right now in el Salvador

I mean.

WHAT?????

she wants RESEARCH?

to confirm the oppression of women and girls on the basis of their sex around the world and for as long as we know.

I'm really very angry.

Anyone got a link to the thread she tweeted on?

I'm not on Twitter and not very good at it.

Everyone agrees women are discriminated against, if it's not because of biology, what does she think is it caused by?