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.

Being defined by something is not the same thing as reducing someone to that something. It's a requirement, not a judgment. The fact that you don't understand this, or do but choose to pretend otherwise, speaks volumes.

Moreover, it is an objective definition. Your definition, an 'identity' on the other hand, is subjective. And it requires that every woman 'identifies' in the same. This is far more oppressive and restrictive than acknowledging biology.

Also interested in what a list of the cultural, historical and psychological factors that determine gender identity as one poster asked for.

Many of us have no sense of having a gender identity, which makes it very hard to be told how important it is, indeed more important than our biological sex, which I see and feel very keenly every day (v heavy period today plus long zoom equals wrecked chair grrrrrr)

Any light that could be shone on what gender identity is, something a bit more enlightening than its complicated, would be helpful.

@R0wantrees

I think it's far clearer to refer to things like a 'cervical smear for people who have a cervix.

Its clearer not for the many women who don't know they have a cervix and for any men who might think they do.

If you take a few minutes to do some research then you will realise the significant numbers of women who are excluded by such inaccessible statements.

I think this potential for confusion is particularly relevant for issues involving the cervix since everyone has a cervical spine. I doubt either of my grandmothers would have recognized the term. English was their second language to German, but I don't think this issue is limited to people facing a language barrier.

I'm also curious to know what makes one a woman, specifically, if it doesn't have anything to do with biology.

What characteristics are shared by all women and transwomen that are not shared by any men or transmen?

Further, can a 'women' have any shared characteristics that transcend time and space, or is it entirely dependent on the here and now (so a 'woman' in Ancient Egypt has absolutely no unifying characteristics with a 'woman' in 21st Century Britain?)

Also there was zero disrespect in my post for people who've suffered terrifying things (although none of you know what I may or may not have gone through so don't make assumptions that I don't know terror). We can't police what scares people or how they're allowed to express themselves.

OP: "There was no disrespect because I didn't intend any disrespect"
OP: "We can't police how people are allowed to express themselves"
OP: "We can't police what scares people"

Do you believe these apply equally in all circumstances or only when they work to your favour? These have all been used as reasons for correctly describing people's sex and having concerns about the trauma of allowing the sex class that - as a class, remember, a class, not every single individual - are proven to be of higher risk for violence, into close spaces with vulnerable and scared women. These are all things that have been 'policed' by trans rights activists.

I think it's far clearer to refer to things like a 'cervical smear for people who have a cervix. Partly because not all cis women (and intersex people) have exactly the same organs and needs. It's actually safer to talk about the relevant body parts than 'woman'.

It is not and there is plenty of data to prove it. Just under half of all women do not know what a cervix is and would therefore not be reached by material using those words. This included me at one point, as I am not a native speaker of English, it includes a learning disabled friend and a whole range of other women. I also had an auntie with a serious cervical disease (an issue of the neck region of the spine), which is what I understood "cervical" to refer to.

As I lost family members to cancers of the womb and smear tests are therefore important to me, in a previous thread I even calculated how many more women would die due to incomprehensible language like that vs addressing them as women and not specifically addressing female transgender individuals. I also suggested a remedy for that ommission, which is already used to reach other groups of female patients in need of a smear test who are missed by general women's health campaigns.

There is no remedy however when the general health campaign that targets the majority of women goes wrong because it uses language that doesn't speak to them.

___

Also, please refrain from labelling other women as "cis" as a matter of course. I do not and never have felt that the gender imposed on my by society sits easy with my sex and I consider the assumption offensive that a woman who does not identify as trans must therefore acquiesce or even embrace the straitjacket of sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes imposed on us because we are female.

But for me this is not merely an offensive term, it is an abusive term that mocks my experiences of discrimination, disadvantage and oppression as a female born into a male dominated society.

By all means, label yourself. I shan't object to you willingly submitting to patriarchal expectations by hugging that straitjacket of stereotypes you call gender identity close. But leave me out of it.

@NecessaryScene1

as a feminist and a young woman this really scares me

Just stop being a woman then, and you'll be fine.

Totally.

It's actually safer to talk about the relevant body parts than 'woman'. It should be a medically relevant descriptor, not an identifier.

Its actually very definitely not safer OP. The majority of people do not have full knowledge of their anatomy. HCPs make differential diagnosis based on key information eg sex, age, current medication, previous illness/operations.
As suggested previously by PPs, reading 'Invisible Women' by Caroline Criado-Perez will widen awareness of the significance of sex in health care and the risks to women when male-as-norm remains entrenched.

"We can't police how people are allowed to express themselves"
I mean, you must know - you're on the internet right now - you must know that this is untrue? "How people express themselves" can be, and is, policed all the time. Even by the actual police!

Not that I am asserting an opinion on whether this is a good thing, but to state that it can't happen is bizarre.

Partly because not all cis women

Cis woman is far more worrying than anything else you’ve posted.

Please stop using it

Women don’t want to be identified as baby makers.

If a woman and a transwoman both are interviewing for the same position at a small company, both just turned 30... will the employer worry about both getting pregnant and take maternity leave...?

Or will the employer only worry about one of them doing that?

Does this assessment vary depending on what they wear? Or how they present? Or which pronouns they use...?

A useful little meme.

TRHR, I'm glad that you were able to return. I see that you wrote that "we can't police what scares people," and I'm in complete agreement with this. But I find that this type of policing is central to much of what gender-focused ideology is (e.g., pronouns causing distress).

It's a terrible shame so many books have resulted in so little understanding.

Might I recommend Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex, it may help you understand the feminist idea that biology is not destiny, no matter what Freud said.

I think it's far clearer to refer to things like a 'cervical smear for people who have a cervix.

Personally I think it’s far clearer that women are referred to as women, as in adult female human beings, rather than referred to by our body parts?

I’m sure that people who have a cervix that don’t identify as women are very well aware of their biology.

@TRHR

Do you think biological women who have been raped are allowed to ask for a rape counsellor/police officer that is biologically female? Yes or no?

@TRHR

To the people asking why I hadn't responded yet, did it occur that I posted at lunch and then actually have a job I had to do? The child bearing point I'm surprised caused confusion. My point was about women being defined as baby makers, therefore being of childbearing age is of concern that my identity would be pigeonholed as such under such a simplistic definition of being a woman. I also appear to have read far more feminist literature than most of the posters asking me. More than Invisible Women, or K Stock. May I also recommend reading Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville West, the Pankhursts, Gloria Steinam, Judith Butler (please read and understand the difference between 'performative' and 'performance '), Deborah Frances White, Lyndal Roper. There's also a confusion about definition of 'stereotypes ' - what I listed was a huge range of complex intersecting aspects of our lives - how can that be a stereotype? I fear that for some, 'organs = woman' is just easier to engage with than these considerations. I don't disagree that different sex organs have different medical concerns. I think it's far clearer to refer to things like a 'cervical smear for people who have a cervix. Partly because not all cis women (and intersex people) have exactly the same organs and needs. It's actually safer to talk about the relevant body parts than 'woman'. It should be a medically relevant descriptor, not an identifier. Also there was zero disrespect in my post for people who've suffered terrifying things (although none of you know what I may or may not have gone through so don't make assumptions that I don't know terror). We can't police what scares people or how they're allowed to express themselves. This thread has shown me how much gatekeeping there is in the GC community. Thank you to those who responded thoughtfully, without putting words in my mouth.

OP I think you will find most of us also have jobs to do...but many also have read all the things you mention and much much more - and teach it too, in some cases.

When I say read some GC feminism, for example - those texts you mention aren't it. Why not try instead:

bell hooks
Adrienne Rich
Audre Lorde
Angela Davis
Andrew Dworkin
Julia Kristeva
Helene Cixous
Shulamith Firestone
Lilian Faderman
The Marxist-Feminist Collective
Monique Wittig
Chimananda Ngozi Adichie
...and many, many others?

GC feminism was, and still is, written by women of all races, backgrounds, sexualities, with children and without. It's a varied and heterogenous movement that challenges all the stereotypes you have of it, and is a serious, philosophically complex, far-reaching movement which has spent decades addressing and disproving the points you make.

[By the way, Judith Butler's work on gender performativity is both slight and tendentious compared to some of her better work. She is essentially a Foucaldian-Hegelian whose work in Gender Trouble is a bit of speculation on Austinian performatives in analytic philosophy, and much less philosophically acute than her work elsewhere; in fact her own argument in that text deliberately makes play with a confusion between 'performance' and 'performative': that's part of her point.

Until recently Gender Trouble was thought of as rather out of date and old fashioned in critical theory, in fact. Basing a whole edifice of gender identity theory on it was always going to be a stretch. Monique Wittig is a much more interesting thinker on similar aspects of sex/gender/sexuality.]

If this whole debate was about whether women could or should be referred to as cervix-havers or something I really couldn't give a toss. Don't care; clearly it's ableist but I'm sure we could work around it.

I'm more concerned with whether we're allowed to believe there are two sexes that can't change and that in some very important situations this needs to be recognised if we want to stop oppressing women.

Again, please explain what gender is without using stereotypes. You've addressed stereotypes in a very general way but haven't actually stated what gender is.

For the record, I've read Invisible Women, thought it excellent and found nothing in there that is incompatible with being trans inclusive. There are lots which is unfair to women (in terms of sex organs and social standards). That doesn't mean that sex should be the ONLY indicator of female identity. For those asking for a more thorough explanation of gender, I basically gave some suggestions earlier, please read if your request was genuine. I'd also like to recommend Roxanne Gay, Reni Eddo Lodge and Galdem as modern feminist lit. I've seen lots of GC sneering (not confined to this thread) at the texts I listed and read (many at uni) and of concepts discussed at universities generally. Mocking other women for learning, university education and discussing ideas seems profoundly anti feminist / 'get back in the kitchen dear ' which brings me back to my first post of concerns. Re cervix screening, OF COURSE everyone who needs one should have that clearly communicated - but on my NHS letter it directly tells me I need one because I have a cervix - it never mentions being a 'woman' . Also the twitter thread posted earlier is not me . I actually never came across those women before. But isn't it interesting that we independently came to the same conclusions - maybe use as food for thought, rather than instinctive scathing?

Lol

Women on mumsnet don't have jobs (stereotyping much).
Women in fwr don't really know much about feminism (??!!) Random assumption there!

'GC is now going back to seeing our sex organs as our most important identifier'

But calling us menstruators or people with vaginas isn't at all

And I see OP has defended that approach.

Who calls us names related to our body parts? Gash, hole, the one with the big tits etc. Oh yes, that would be men. So progressive to codify this into everyday language.

Is OP now arguing that when The GCs define women by their body parts it is reductive a bad but when they do so it is enlightened and forward thinking?

My oh my!

I also appear to have read far more feminist literature than most of the posters asking me. More than Invisible Women, or K Stock. May I also recommend reading Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville West, the Pankhursts, Gloria Steinam, Judith Butler (please read and understand the difference between 'performative' and 'performance '), Deborah Frances White, Lyndal Roper.

I think the Pankhursts would take issue with your feminism OP, not least because when they were around lots of people with penises already had the vote and owned most of the things, including from a societal perspective - their wives and children. Indeed, Emmeline was most put out that her parents initially placed more emphasis on their sons' education than hers. I imagine Emmeline might have known that the only reason her brothers took precedence is because they were males and she was a female and that she was just able as them, because the point is she was a human too, not categorised by her preference for a nice smock and hat. Simply a human female who had the same potential, and then (because her parents acquiesced over her demands for a better education by allowing her to go to a school for women in Paris which had a greater focus on education over domestic skills than her boarding school) demonstrated that she was just as capable, if not more so, than her brothers.

'Mocking other women for learning, university education and discussing ideas seems profoundly anti feminist / 'get back in the kitchen dear ' which brings me back to my first post of concerns'

So many many mysoginist ageist stereotypes about the sort of women who post on MN!

You might want to examine your biases OP.

*Lol

Women on mumsnet don't have jobs (stereotyping much).
Women in fwr don't really know much about feminism (??!!) Random assumption there!*

All together now:

🎼 Everyone's a little bit sexist... 🎼