Terrified of regressive modern feminism

[TRHR]

By saying "you can't be a woman if you're born without a vagina, and if you're born with a vagina you must be a woman" you're making reproductive organs the defining and most important characteristic of being a woman. This attitude was used to oppress women for centuries. We were baby makers only, and hormonal and chromosomal differences were used to say that we were too "emotional " for public life, education and jobs. Only over the last 100 or so years have our minds and emotions been rightfully recognised as just as important as our vaginas. GC is now going back to seeing our sex organs as our most important identifier and as a feminist and a young woman this really scares me. It is playing right into the traditional patriarchy, is sexist, regressive and oppressive. The fact its being done in the name of 'feminism ' terrifies me. The recent historic implications of insisting women are defined by their bodies scares me. These views are still held by conservative (often religion based) communities and we've all seen how easy it is for these groups to gain power - feminists shouldn't be helping them justify their attitudes or behaviour.

If you've seen/read the Handmaid's Tale you'll know what attitudes I'm afraid of. GCs ironically tell TRAs they are 'handmaids' when actually it is their attitude that has historically led to the oppression that Attwood (who is trans inclusive) bases her books on.

Gender is not a set of stereotypes - it's an identity based on culture, history, society , psychology and often (but not always) sex. It's far more freeing than "vagina = woman" and takes account of each of us as individuals not just bodies, which is what feminism up until now has fought for.
As an example, many trans women don't wear "girly " clothes, they identify as "masculine/butch" lesbians. Many trans men still like wearing make up and dresses e.g. in drag.
Many people would say the world shouldn't be defined as 'male / female' at all. But it always has done, that won't be changed in our lifetime. So seen as that is our social structure, it's oppressive to police how people choose to move through life under this structure based on bodies.
Thanks for reading this far and if I get one extra person to consider the harm that GC is doing, especially to young women of child bearing age, it'll be worth the condescension and vitriol that this post will inevitably receive.

As an example, many trans women don't wear "girly " clothes, they identify as "masculine/butch" lesbians. Many trans men still like wearing make up and dresses e.g. in drag.

Personally I don't think this is true. Or if it is, it's very rare.

It's my experience that this is in response to a lot of feminists pointing out that being a transwoman appears to be about adopting stereotypes that are harmful to women.

And of course, this is exactly where it started. The idea was to 'not look male'. And the only way to do that, was to adopt visual stereotypes.

When the sexism became perfectly obvious as soon as you started to describe what it is made you a woman, the narrative changed. It changed to one of an indefinable, unidentifiable, unverifiable thing called identity.

With no description, whatsoever. Of course. Because you can't describe being a woman as a feeling. Because being a woman isn't a feeling.

The fact that society (male oriented) has forever sought to make womanhood etc a matter for discussion is playing into all this massively.

She's a real lady
She's no lady
This is what real women are made of
She looks like a man!
She acts like a man!
Women were xyz back in my day

And on and on.

Men have always sought to define us as what they want and discard all the women who don't meet x as not real women/ not good women/ women who have no worth etc etc

It's all just so dull. Men need to leave us alone.

As an example, many trans women don't wear "girly " clothes, they identify as "masculine/butch" lesbians.

I'm not sure this is the case either. At risk of sounding mean I think many just look butch because this is a look associated with masculinity and they're male. If a man dresses in a masculine way, how would we even know he's a transwoman?

@NiceGerbil

The fact that society (male oriented) has forever sought to make womanhood etc a matter for discussion is playing into all this massively.

She's a real lady
She's no lady
This is what real women are made of
She looks like a man!
She acts like a man!
Women were xyz back in my day

And on and on.

Men have always sought to define us as what they want and discard all the women who don't meet x as not real women/ not good women/ women who have no worth etc etc

It's all just so dull. Men need to leave us alone.

I agree with you but I think both sexes do this.

It's proven that men often prioritise sexual attraction and women often prioritise status with partners, and you can see this in the way that unattractive/older women are often said to be 'invisible' to men (a common complaint on here) and how the men at the bottom are also invisible to many women.

I mean, when women say they want equality with men they usually mean the successful men. They don't want more women working on the bins and down the sewers.

Sewerage workers earn 45,000 in the UK.
Bin collection is about on par with carers and teaching assistants, who are overwhelmingly female.
And equality starts in the classroom and continues from there. Women deserve equal opportunities in education and employment. Why shouldn't we want the top roles.

Mrs troutfire you won't get any arguments from me about the harm caused by strict enforcement of what's seen as how a real man should be! It's awful.

A bloke at work who I really like. And is married to a lovely woman who is v political and has feminist views. (We've only spoken a couple of times but had very similar views). He's always saying that he's worried his son (tiny) is 'soft'. Crying when falls over. Doesn't like risks. Hundreds of snaps of all the men in the family with their football tops on. Etc etc.

Sex role enforcement is oppressive to everyone. The way it manifests is different for men and women. Part of mainstream male sex role is looking down on women. Objectifying them. Signalling that they are other. Inferior. Men and boys bond over this. For some men and boys this involves sharing 'porn' which is not porn at all but simply women being humiliated or abused. Doing revolting things or having them done to them. For some it's worse - shouting abuse from a car, intimidating a girl walking home alone. Laughing at her distress. That sort of thing. And gang rape.

Yes of course the narrow sex roles we are expected to adhere to are damaging.

They of course impact on men and boys who have caring personalities. Are gay (heterosexuality being a massive gender norm). Aren't interested in football. Don't find making girls scared funny. Etc etc.

Loads of men don't like it - I see little real effort to change it though. And yet on the telly we have chefs, gardeners, artists, jewellery makers etc who are male and loads of different ways to be a man are in films etc.

In the end though while lots of men understandably feel it's shit. It's not as shit as for women. Around the world through history. In different ways to the ones men know about or even seem to care about.

'It's proven that men often prioritise sexual attraction and women often prioritise status with partners, and you can see this in the way that unattractive/older women are often said to be 'invisible' to men (a common complaint on here) and how the men at the bottom are also invisible to many women.'

I find this sort of thing really annoying tbh.

In real life I don't know any women who have pursued men with 'status' (even if they are bastards and ugly as fuck).

You've noticed that attractive male singers and actors are quite popular with women and girls? It's not like we don't care what men look like.

What do you mean by invisible low status men? What jobs? Do you mean unemployed? Or what?

I would be interested in your definition of 'low status' men.

And which women are these men invisible to? All of them? Everywhere?

It's a very generalised statement that I don't recognise from real life.

Where's the analysis around why in the past/ around the world now it might be important to find a man who has. Not status even. Just a job.

Systems generally keep women economically dependent on men. This benefits men obv. At the extreme end you have things like. In Afghanistan under the taleban women were not allowed to work. So if they had no men to support them then... What then?

By the way you left 'mining' off the list of jobs men do that women get out of because we're very privileged.

Much of this seems to be that it is forced on those defending single sex spaces / rights - to defend and explain why.

Rather than the onus on those wanting to end single sex spaces / rights - to argue and explain why this is OK and they this won’t cause harm. I think it is trans women who need to argue successfully that whatever action they want won’t cause harm and for me it is that simple. I have no need to defend myself or change, and nor have any other organisation like the prison service. Why are they just changing when the argument has not been successfully made?

Because. And I'm no conspiracy theorist! Have seen stuff from people involved.

The strategy to get things changed quietly behind the scenes started years ago. Policies were changed on the quiet. There was no transparency. No opportunity for anyone to say hold on. Quietly it was done through lobbying, forging relationships, etc etc.

EG you remember maybe all the stuff years ago about ending mixed sex wards in the NHS (apart from ICU etc obv).

It was a big political promise etc.

There are threads on here with docs from all the way back then saying it should be single gender, not sex. There's a doc from NHS to DOH I think it was saying are you sure? And shouldn't we make this clear in the documentation etc. And DOH saying no. Say sex in the policies as otherwise it will confuse the public.

Similarly a FOI request about police recording of male/ female offender turns out was on self id. Question put to all forces. Do you do gender rather than sex. When was this change implemented. Why.

The forces that answered all said yes we record self declared gender. We have no records of when this changed or why.

......

It's not good.

So the public/ women/ feminists start to find out once the policies are embedded and have been operating for ages.

And that really is pretty scary.

There's a thing from a transman who has been doing this for years saying we need to get into the areas that make policy and have power. Gain trust. Get changes made. Behind the scenes.

So that's why. As far as prisons etc are concerned it's normal, a done deal, happened ages ago. Why all this fuss all of a sudden?

*Much of this seems to be that it is forced on those defending single sex spaces / rights - to defend and explain why.

Rather than the onus on those wanting to end single sex spaces / rights - to argue and explain why this is OK and they this won’t cause harm.*

This is an excellent point and we have seen time and time again that women's needs are not considered when changes are made to provision. Take the Welsh government and their action plan for transgender equality. It seems their impact assessment - looking at how this might affect women's provision and spaces - vanished 🤔

“A Freedom of Information request was issued on March 2019 asking to see the impact assessment. The Impact assessment appears to have been lost. No trace of it anywhere — even though the Action Plan to Advance Equality for Transgender people mentions the importance of Impact Assessments.”

Welsh Assembly and the lost equality impact assessment
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3652524-Welsh-Assembly-and-the-lost-equality-impact-assessment

Ah. The dog ate my homework. Total obvious lies.

As was pointed out at the time. It would have been back and forth on email. Or a shared server or in the cloud using standard packages which tend to have versioning as standard.

Nothing? Anywhere?

They never did one. So the worrying thing here is yes that they didn't think of it but more even. Rather than saying shit sorry. A government office in the UK lied to the public about it. That's fucking massive.

So the public/ women/ feminists start to find out once the policies are embedded and have been operating for ages.

I don’t like that at all. That is worrying on many levels. It shows that our infrastructure must be weak to allow fundamental change without transparency and robust debate.

I think the impact assessment for one of the Scottish policies - prisons IIRC- just had 'n/a' against the 'sex' category. Ie there apparently wasn't any impact on that protected characteristic.

Thank you @NiceGerbil and @Rejoiningperson for being so welcoming, and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come back - work is hectic at the moment.

You asked what my views are, so here are a few thoughts to try and explain where I’m coming from - though it’s not a single argument aimed at responding to any one point (and apologies to NiceGerbil as I know you’ve heard me say much of this before elsewhere on here). I should also say, when I use terms like ‘men’ and ‘women’, ‘sex’, ‘gender’, that is not because I believe they have a single, concrete definition that is always clear in every context and every case - it’s that I think they are useful terms that can be meaningfully used in the contexts I am using them, and that you will understand broadly the categories of people I am talking about.

• like many people on here, I believe that the vast majority of perceived differences in behaviour and personality between men and women are the result of socialisation rather than biology. There may be some population-wide, average differences that relate to biological factors, but we can’t know for sure, given the pervasive and powerful nature of gender norms.

• I think generalisations about men and women based on observation or statistics should be treated with caution - they may be important and useful in some contexts (eg medical) but unhelpful and damaging in others (eg in making assumptions about a given person you are interacting with socially, or in deciding policy about what activities or interests children should be offered or encouraged to participate in).

• as a starting point, I think people should not be treated differently or discriminated against due to their sex or gender, and that includes not excluding men or women from public places or services - including not having sex segregated spaces or provision. There may be reasons to depart from that to accommodate the feelings or preferences of specific individuals, but it shouldn’t be the starting pointing, and it should always require justification.

• the question of where exactly the boundaries of the concepts of ‘man’ or ‘woman’ lie is philosophically interesting, but it’s of limited helpfulness in discussing real world situations and issues. There are of course many specific contexts (in particular, when collecting data on health matters, or for the purpose of researching how sex or gender impact people’s lives and their experiences of discrimination) in which we have to decide where to draw the boundary. That can and should be decided by reference to the particular context and purposes for which the data are needed.

• when I interact with other people - socially, or in a work context - I don’t need to know what genitals or chromosomes they have, or what genitals they were born with. I just need to know what to call them and how to refer to them. I may be able to work out their biological sex with more or less certainty (eg if they are pregnant), but I don’t have a right to know, unless they choose to disclose it to me.

As I’m saying this, I know what many of the objections and responses will be - many women have had traumatic experiences involving men which mean they feel very differently from me. Statistics show that women are much more likely than men to experience violence in a domestic relationship, usually at the hands of men. Women need specific services and protections because of our capacity to get pregnant.

It’s not that I don’t think these things are important, and I’m aware that my life experiences and privileged position affect my viewpoint. Acknowledging the gendered nature of domestic violence is essential to trying to understand why it happens, and how to prevent it. Acknowledging the impact of getting pregnant and the importance of access to birth control and abortion, and the impact of giving birth and breastfeeding - for those people who are able to and choose to do so - is essential to creating appropriate and fair healthcare services and social policies. And part of that is acknowledging that the patriarchy and social power structures have meant that those things have historically been (and in many places still are) controlled and managed in ways that have been/are seriously detrimentally to people affected by them. I can agree with and acknowledge the importance of those issues, and campaign for birth control and abortion to be freely available and well funded without having been personally affected (as a woman) by any of those things any more than any man has. The crucial thing is that those services are available to the people who need them, regardless of how we categorise them or how they identify.

Sorry, I know that was a very long ramble. Fire away.

Thanks for your input @Helen8220

Can I ask do you think that male bodies should be housed in the same cells as female bodies in the prison estate?

Particularly as the % of sex offenders amongst the trans women in prison is even higher than in male prisoners.

You seem to cast doubt on the genetic differences in strength, height, lung capacity between male and female bodies despite that being proven fact. Do you think these physical differences should be ignored in segregation of sports?

Of course in the work place we are polite to each other and call each other by name etc. But we aren't vulnerable, incarcerated and undressed in the work place

Men and women are biologically different and sometimes that really matters e.g sport

@Helen8220 Thanks for coming back. I too have a few questions regarding this:

that includes not excluding men or women from public places or services - including not having sex segregated spaces or provision. There may be reasons to depart from that to accommodate the feelings or preferences of specific individuals, but it shouldn’t be the starting pointing, and it should always require justification.

Why do you think we have had single sex bathrooms/changing rooms/hospital wards anyway? It's not because we are discriminating against men. We know that the majority of men are not rapists but we cannot interview each one individually. Sex segregation is a broad brush approach - it makes it harder, although not impossible obviously, to attack women in a single sex space. We know that mixed sex spaces are more dangerous for women. We know that most women (and a lot of men!) also do not feel happy at being asked to get unchanged or sleep in the company of people of the opposite sex they do not know. We know that many, many women from different religious backgrounds will be penalized by mixed sex spaces - they simply will not be able to use them and they will be excluded. For these reasons and more, I really don't understand why any woman is so happy to give away single sex spaces which have been fought for and campaigned for by women to give women the same opportunities as men have to participate in community life. Even if you have never experienced sexual harrassment or worse (and if that is the case you are in the minority) can you not see how no single sex spaces impact so many women, far more than could possibly be "helped" by creating mix-sexed spaces. Do we not count?

Thanks @Helen8220

the question of where exactly the boundaries of the concepts of ‘man’ or ‘woman’ lie is philosophically interesting, but it’s of limited helpfulness in discussing real world situations and issues. There are of course many specific contexts (in particular, when collecting data on health matters, or for the purpose of researching how sex or gender impact people’s lives and their experiences of discrimination) in which we have to decide where to draw the boundary. That can and should be decided by reference to the particular context and purposes for which the data are needed

Curious why anyone would think men and women are concepts rather than definitions for concrete humans with specific material differences. Have you encountered philosophical arguments that say men and women are concepts, and if so, what do they argue?

If you agree we should draw some boundaries based on sex (so do I!) would you agree that one very key difference is in sports?

‘ when I interact with other people - socially, or in a work context - I don’t need to know what genitals or chromosomes they have, or what genitals they were born with. I just need to know what to call them and how to refer to them.’

Well maybe, if you are prepared for discussing anything related to biological sex to become a taboo topic. I mean, there’s always a reason in every generation why women must not talk about their bodies to each other, and this trans thing is our generations reason to taboo the topic.

But I would rather still assume that people claiming to be women actually are women so we can casually talk about our lives including our bodies.

Otherwise it is just odd, like never mentioning feet or anything to do with things you do with your feet just in case someone secretly has no feet.

You aren't talking about modern feminism op. You're talking about original feminist ideas. Modern feminism is sex positive, choking is totally fine, sex work is empowering, dicks must be centred.

I prefer my feminism to centre biological females.

@Helen8220 You say that sex segregated spaces should not be the starting point but that is where we are.

In some cases, sex segregation has been reassessed and deemed not to be helpful, eg most schools used to be segregated by sex but this is no longer the case. We should review on a case by case basis, the historical reasons for the segregation, assess the continued validity of that segregation and perform a risk assessment on removing it.

Have women benefited overall from the removal of sex segregated schooling? Yes, I believe they have.. there is a good discussion on a case relating to a faith based school..
"Only the dissenting judge, however, concluded that gender segregation in mixed schools is disproportionately discriminatory against girls in that it creates more harmful practical and symbolic consequences for girls in a society in which women have been and remain the group with minority power. Lady Justice Gloster agreed with Ofsted that an educational system which preserves segregation between the sexes within co-educational schools, so that both groups – from an impressionable age – find it more natural to form exclusive and different social and professional networks with those of their own sex, has the result that women lose out in later life more than men, because women are still disproportionately excluded from networks of power and influence. In other words, sex segregation endorses gender stereotypes about the inferiority of women or their perceived place in a society where predominantly men exercise power."

As an aside, it is interesting that this case was brought and eventually found against the school despite the 128,000 children that are privately educated in single sex establishments.. I suspect some racist bias here..

But.. where toilets, prisons, hospitals and sports are concerned, there is plenty of world wide evidence that this is important for women to be safe.

In addition for sports, there is plenty of evidence that women will no longer be setting records, will find themselves behind male bodied people in races, facing male bodied opponents and the very nature if female only sports will change fundamentally. Women fight for a smaller share of funds, facilities, marketing. They will now have to share those already limited resources with men when there are many many more opportunities for men already. My favourite statistic is that the top 1,000 women playing in the top leagues in the USA, UK, France, Sweden, Germany and Brazil are paid in total, the amount received in salary by one single male player. These are the best in the world for their sex. Should they now share that paltry stage with male bodies who by nature if having gone through male puberty, have greater lung capacity, muscle mass, bone density, strength, speed.. Should the fastest women on earth be out run by mediocre teenage males? Do we go back to ... what's the point of women in sport? Can you not see why this is a problem?

- when I interact with other people - socially, or in a work context - I don’t need to know what genitals or chromosomes they have, or what genitals they were born with.

What a weird statement to make.

People trying to persuade the world that men are women have to say some crazy weird crap to explain it.

Thing is that people do notice or presume and proceed accordingly.

If the idea is no one notices whether people are male or female. Isn't that like saying you're 'colour blind' with racism? Of course people notice. Anyone who says they don't is lying. We notice a load of info about everyone we meet, we can't help it. Height, sex, age, dress sense, hair colour, skin colour, build etc etc.

All of these things can lead to discrimination or bias by the observer. And they often don't even realise they're making these automatic classifications. We also notice if people are obviously disabled, what their accent is, their manner towards us and others, whether they seem happy or sad, and judgements on sexuality are often subconsciously hazarded as well. If you're looking for a partner then your brain is sizing up on that basis as well. Also are they a child, are they elderly, do they look strong or weak, are they a potential threat. Loads of stuff.

No we don't need to know but the idea that anyone doesn't notice stuff is to ignore the most basic aspects of human behaviour.