Why aren't transactivists gender-critical?

[oxcat1]

Please go easy on me if this is a stupid question.

If gender is simply the socially constructed expectations of how people should behave and dress, why isn't the trans movement gender critical? Surely to break down these societal expectations is in their interests (just as it is in the interest of women, feminists argue)?

Instead, the trans movement seeks to enshrine in law the very structure that makes living their own lives as they wish, free from constraints of societal expectations, so very difficult.

Why is that? Or have I totally misunderstood?

@Barheim

Can you name one single dating app, club, bar, women's group, etc, that is not targeted by transwomen?

None of them are 'targeted' by trans women. Women should be able to use any dating app, club, bar, women's group etcetera that they want to use, but unfortunately many don't feel welcome due to discrimination towards them on the basis of them being trans.

You're kidding. Mitch fest was shut down, burnt down.

The giggle app, had to use facial recognition software to remain female only, and had a tw try something like 40 times to change their appearance to get on.

There is not a lesbian only space to be had. They've all gone. They've had to go underground.

Where have you been living??

Women (and all people) as individuals should be allowed to discriminate against Willie they like for any reason in terms of who they date/sleep with etc. It’s called freedom of choice. Hopefully this will never become illegal.

Does being trans have anything to do with the body you inhabit or not? I honestly can't work out your viewpoint Barheim with these kinds of answers. I feel like I'm losing understanding instead of gaining it!

*whoever

So what would be the correct way of rewriting these statements?

Uighar women subjected to systematic rape in Chinese camps

Around 7 million women are admitted to hospitals every year in developing countries, as a result of unsafe abortion

There are 130 million girls who are completely missing out on school

@Barheim

Imagine if they'd left man as the noun for male bodies and woman as the one for female bodies and instead defined brand new words for the genders, then focused the fight for trans awareness and trans rights into having those genders recognised as more important than sex for most people. That would have left the sex words as simply body descriptors for use in the medical, social and legal contexts where sex is relevant, which would hopefully become less and less over time.

What you're describing is the exact opposite of removing the trans label and instead slapping it as a tattoo on our forehead.

In what way? The words for gender would be totally independent of body type, so there would be no concept of cis or trans at all. It would have been a journey taken side by side as everyone came to understand their gender, rather than one group (today trans) being deeply conscious of it and another (today cis) having been unaware until trans identities become more well known.

Because we don’t think there is much to gender apart from roles and outward performances and the cultural narratives people tell about what gender means.

The key is that “gender critical” theory doesn’t think the the learned habits, stories, performances and narratives we tell other people about masculinity or femininity (through language, gestures, clothes etc.) are much different to the narratives we tell ourselves about these things.

To be gender critical is to recognise that our cultural constructions act both outwardly and inwardly. There is no “internal sense” of gender that isn’t also a socially produced narrative or construction.

We can’t know what it is to “feel masculine” or “feel feminine” because we never can know what other people feel like inside, so how can we know what it is to feel like them apart from inferring narratives about how they might feel? And these are just constructions we infer from other people’s social “outsides”, behaviour, stories.

To believe in an essence of internal gender that is separate from roles, stories or stereotypes, you’d need to believe in something like Jung’s collective unconscious, Platonic idealism or a dualist theology, in which gender has a soul or spiritual essence that is transcendental or shared. And most people in the modern world aren’t dualists or Jungians. They’re critical of “gender” as a concept because it relies on an idea of “identity” which is fundamentally religious or mystical in character.

@Helen8220

I am enjoying this discussion immensely. Please continue.

I wouldn't call it a conversation 🤣

It's a series of fairly incoherent statements, which refuse to acknowledge the implications or even existence of sex. Whilst transitioning from one to the other.

It's always the same.

I don't know why it's so complicated. As we know, a woman is a 'shifting constellation of ethereal essences'.

Easy.

I'm two beers in and I'm not in the right place to follow this.
And I'm too old for pot.
It does take me back to 'philosophical' talks in my travelling days though. I feel like I'm in an episode of Peep Show.

"While we're at it, there are systems for a reason in this world: economic stability, interest rates, growth. It's not all a conspiracy to keep you in little boxes, alright? It's only the miracle of consumer capitalism that means you're not lying in your own shit, dying at 43 with rotten teeth, and a little pill with a chicken on it is not going to change that. Now come on, fuck off."

"Well, listen, I'm sorry if I didn't do it right and I'm sorry if you assume that I eat red meat and don't necessarily think money or Tony Blair are a bad thing, but if there isn't room here for people who stand against everything you believe in, then what sort of a hippy free-for-all is this?"

"Listen, Jeremy. You don't seem to understand. Nothing you want is ever going to happen. That's the real world. Your hair isn't red. People don't walk around on stilts. Maybe somewhere you can earn a living sitting around drinking margaritas through a curly plastic straw, but in this world you've go to turn up, log on and grind out."

I'm sure they'll make about as much sense as some of the stuff on here.
Incidentally, anyone's baby refused to sleep through the night from 3-16 months? Because I am really, really tired now.

I'm interested in how the new language is to be used in practice.

Currently I see that

It's only used for certain issues/ stories in the news
It's not used much for men at all in the media
Globally I suspect it's very rarely used

I want to know in practice how the new language works.

If the words woman man boy female male refer to internal gender id then that's a massive change.

There have not been satisfactory replacements IMO

I love Jungian theory.
They go better with pot than Orangeboom though.

It's always the same.

It is. Really not hearing anything new, I'm not sure why someone would make an account just to tell us stuff we have all heard before and doesn't actually mean a lot.

Does some of this stem from an idea that women and girls don't need words to group us? Half the world's population?

Why has the need for there to be words for the female global population gone away?

Incidentally, anyone's baby refused to sleep through the night from 3-16 months? Because I am really, really tired now.

Yep, possibly a bit longer than that, then everything was brilliant for years, then the late teen stage you get back to being woken up in the night again 😭

@MouseyTheVampireSlayer

I'm two beers in and I'm not in the right place to follow this. And I'm too old for pot. It does take me back to 'philosophical' talks in my travelling days though. I feel like I'm in an episode of Peep Show.

"While we're at it, there are systems for a reason in this world: economic stability, interest rates, growth. It's not all a conspiracy to keep you in little boxes, alright? It's only the miracle of consumer capitalism that means you're not lying in your own shit, dying at 43 with rotten teeth, and a little pill with a chicken on it is not going to change that. Now come on, fuck off."

"Well, listen, I'm sorry if I didn't do it right and I'm sorry if you assume that I eat red meat and don't necessarily think money or Tony Blair are a bad thing, but if there isn't room here for people who stand against everything you believe in, then what sort of a hippy free-for-all is this?"

"Listen, Jeremy. You don't seem to understand. Nothing you want is ever going to happen. That's the real world. Your hair isn't red. People don't walk around on stilts. Maybe somewhere you can earn a living sitting around drinking margaritas through a curly plastic straw, but in this world you've go to turn up, log on and grind out."

I'm sure they'll make about as much sense as some of the stuff on here.
Incidentally, anyone's baby refused to sleep through the night from 3-16 months? Because I am really, really tired now.

Oh yes. Been there. Some time ago, mind you.

It will pass.

None of them are 'targeted' by trans women. Women should be able to use any dating app, club, bar, women's group etcetera that they want to use, but unfortunately many don't feel welcome due to discrimination towards them on the basis of them being trans.

Can we make a female sex group which excludes them if we don't want male people there because we want to discuss female issues in privacy? Are trans people ok to have groups just for them?

@Ereshkigalangcleg

It's always the same.

It is. Really not hearing anything new, I'm not sure why someone would make an account just to tell us stuff we have all heard before and doesn't actually mean a lot.

I wouldn't mind if there was even the smallest attempt at a definition. Man, woman, any of it.

That TRA was right, it's all about pronouns and names.

I don't know about you, but I can't think of a more worthy reason to change all the laws.

MouseyTheVampireSlayer

"Listen, Jeremy. You don't seem to understand. Nothing you want is ever going to happen. That's the real world. Your hair isn't red. People don't walk around on stilts. Maybe somewhere you can earn a living sitting around drinking margaritas through a curly plastic straw, but in this world you've go to turn up, log on and grind out."

thank you for reminding me of this pure genius

@MouseyTheVampireSlayer

I love Jungian theory. They go better with pot than Orangeboom though.

I guess it would be two different Jungian collective unconsciouses though - the girl mode one and the boy mode one. In some mystical way some people might be born connected to the wrong one, for example, than their biological body ought to be.

Incidentally, anyone's baby refused to sleep through the night from 3-16 months? Because I am really, really tired now.

I honestly can't remember when mine started sleeping through the night but it was after she was old enough not to wake me up as well.

@MouseyTheVampireSlayer

I'm two beers in and I'm not in the right place to follow this. And I'm too old for pot. It does take me back to 'philosophical' talks in my travelling days though. I feel like I'm in an episode of Peep Show.

"While we're at it, there are systems for a reason in this world: economic stability, interest rates, growth. It's not all a conspiracy to keep you in little boxes, alright? It's only the miracle of consumer capitalism that means you're not lying in your own shit, dying at 43 with rotten teeth, and a little pill with a chicken on it is not going to change that. Now come on, fuck off."

"Well, listen, I'm sorry if I didn't do it right and I'm sorry if you assume that I eat red meat and don't necessarily think money or Tony Blair are a bad thing, but if there isn't room here for people who stand against everything you believe in, then what sort of a hippy free-for-all is this?"

"Listen, Jeremy. You don't seem to understand. Nothing you want is ever going to happen. That's the real world. Your hair isn't red. People don't walk around on stilts. Maybe somewhere you can earn a living sitting around drinking margaritas through a curly plastic straw, but in this world you've go to turn up, log on and grind out."

I'm sure they'll make about as much sense as some of the stuff on here.
Incidentally, anyone's baby refused to sleep through the night from 3-16 months? Because I am really, really tired now.

You're on the edge now and you need to pick the right way. Because one way's heaven and the other... well, probably best not to think about that right now, but it's fucking horrible yeah!

I wouldn't mind if there was even the smallest attempt at a definition. Man, woman, any of it.

There can't be, can there? How could there be, without pinning it down in a way that other trans people would disagree with and which would expose the house of cards to a stiff breeze?

Incidentally, anyone's baby refused to sleep through the night from 3-16 monthsBecause I am really, really tired now.

I'm not sure that DS2 ever slept through the night. All that happened was he became big enough to get in my bed without disturbing me. And then stopped getting in my bed although I often hear him get up for a wee/drink. Sorry.

I think the important question that no-one has yet answered is...
..
... Have you ever tried washing up without using washing-up liquid?
Could you clean a pot or a pan without using a scrubbing brush, a sponge or a scouring pad?

Incidentally, anyone's baby refused to sleep through the night from 3-16 months? Because I am really, really tired now.

Ah you poor thing. My DD was like this - it ended as soon as she dropped her nap, just before she turned 2, and then as soon as she refused to nap any more she suddenly slept 12 hours a night without waking! Sleep returned! You will sleep again!