Is this a woman lead movement?

[dyslek]

I have been wondering this for a while.

Is the current 'Trans' movement, and therefore all its, lets say, issues, a woman lead movement?

From the initial inovators to the current youthful enforcers, have and do women play a critical role in our own subjugation?

Anyway I think your statements about religion benefitting women are simplistic and not well informed.

Has anything I've said made you think hmmm that's a point?

Or if not, happy to continue discussing!

Possibly but the consequences of supporting a baby with no partner or social welfare would be difficult.

Existing religions grew up because of fear and uncertainty and a need for communal rules.

This new religion doesn't have the same root cause.

You seem to think I am advocating for religion. I am not. I am pointing out that some religions had something to offer everyone including women. This current ideology offers us nothing other then belonging.

@TheHandmadeTails

But basically the dynamic of any group which seeks to exploit women (or indeed any class, tbh, on a wider scale) will need to have women in positions of authority as enforcers. They will serve to keep the other women in line.

Great post Floral. This aspect of it all makes it so baffling that Margaret Atwood isn’t GC.

I wonder if this is because Atwood researched misogynistic religious and cult practices, but kept herself detached from them. An interesting irony when you consider the postscript of the book serves to frame the women's story as of no importance compared to the histories of the men in the tale.

She sought to benefit from women's suffering, but she didn't really concern herself with how to alleviate it.

Incidentally that's why I can't watch the adaptation. Without the postscript making the point that women's lives and stories matter and are dismissed and forgotten, it's just torture porn.

@elgreco

Possibly but the consequences of supporting a baby with no partner or social welfare would be difficult.

Existing religions grew up because of fear and uncertainty and a need for communal rules.

This new religion doesn't have the same root cause.

How come so many decided that women were property, chattel, needed to be controlled etc then?

'I am pointing out that some religions had something to offer everyone including women.'

Which religions are you thinking of?

In 2020

Christianity 31.11%
Islam 24.90%

The four largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church (1.3 billion/50.1%), Protestantism (920 million/36.7%), the Eastern Orthodox Church (230 million), and the Oriental Orthodox churches (62 million).

'
Over half of all estimated unsafe abortions globally were in Asia, most of them in south and central Asia. (2)
3 out of 4 abortions that occurred in Africa and Latin America were unsafe.(2)
The risk of dying from an unsafe abortion was the highest in Africa.(2)
Each year between 4.7% – 13.2% of maternal deaths can be attributed to unsafe abortion (3).
Estimates from 2010 to 2014 showed that around 45% of all abortions were unsafe. Almost all of these unsafe abortions took place in developing countries (2)
Around 7 million women are admitted to hospitals every year in developing countries, as a result of unsafe abortion (4).'

I can't see how the major religions have in general, overall, been beneficial for women, at all.

I don't know why you believe this?

'Possibly but the consequences of supporting a baby with no partner or social welfare would be difficult.'

Women and girls were always raped though and pregnancy resulted.

There are countries that
See this as a crime- sex before marriage
Marry the victim to the rapist to make it ok
Force children to give birth at high risk to them, when they are pregnant due to sexual abuse

Etc etc

The mainstream religions have done fuck all for women and girls except justify our treatment. And many are really oppressive for men as well.

Not buying it at all.

I can't understand why you feel the dominant religions have been beneficial for women at all.

Or why you see women enforcing harmful things against other women, to be an ally to men

Is any different from women with this issue enforcing harmful things against other women, to be an ally to men....

There are some really interesting responses on this thread.

Basically the dynamic of any group which seeks to exploit women (or indeed any class, tbh, on a wider scale) will need to have women in positions of authority as enforcers.

FloralBunting you have really made me think about how persecution and power works in general.

It also made me think of that phrase "when the axe came into the forest, the trees all said, at least the handle is one of us".

@Miskirsky If you don't understand, start with sport.

@elgreco

Possibly but the consequences of supporting a baby with no partner or social welfare would be difficult.

Existing religions grew up because of fear and uncertainty and a need for communal rules.

This new religion doesn't have the same root cause.

I think elgreco is right and feminism has always been complicated by the fact that different women have different perspectives on the rights they need.

I can see why, if you are 29 and trying to get ahead in a profession dominated by men, the idea that pregnancy/menstruation/menopause etc. could happen to anyone is attractive.

Before the campaign for self ID (back in the 00s and early 10s) I think most contentious debate on this board was about whether feminism helped women.

There is not unanimous agreement in whether e.g. single sex education helps or hinders women.

I think this is an ongoing debate that will never be resolved. However, we can’t even have the debate in the first place if we don’t have language to describe women.

I'm genuinely interested in why there is a sense that trans people are subjugating cis women?

What is trans? What is Cis? I can think of at least two local politicians who present as their birth sex but claim trans status to attack women with the full force of male privilege.

Definitions used by Stonewall include anyone who is uncomfortable with gender expectations (all feminists?) and people who occasionally like to cross dress.

You can’t protect the rights of any group that you can’t define.

(Local as in engaged in local politics - not local to me.)

Great reading all the perspectives on this thread. May I ask that we don't get derailed by the TWAW posters please. A separate thread can be created to discuss those arguments.

@NonnyMouse1337

Great reading all the perspectives on this thread. May I ask that we don't get derailed by the TWAW posters please. A separate thread can be created to discuss those arguments.

I completely concur. If new posters want to discuss the thread topic, that's obviously welcome. Otherwise, anyone is free to start a new thread on a different topic.

Yes and no. Transphobes are doing the work of the Religious Right and the patriarchy, but some of the leaders of the RR and patriarchy are female.

You know who else hates gay people? The religious right.

Adam was tasked with naming all the animals. And Eve. God named Adam, and Adam named Eve.
Eve doesn't figure anywhere in this.

The church gives men power over women. Women must be submissive to men, not speak out of turn (especially in a holy place); woman must cover her hair and her body in case it offends a man or leads him astray.

I have a confession here. We do actually raise our children as Christians. I tell our children that the bible needs to be interpreted in the light of its times. And that the chance of an omniscient being being able to explain details that goes against their culture to mere humans is low.

I do think that Christianity was friendly to women in the light of the contemporary environment. I believe that it was competing with the Mithras cult in Rome but that it spread wider than the Mithras cult as Christianity also allowed women and slaves to take part.

I think any religion were the scrips were written thousands of years ago and where some muppets interpret it literally had the potential to be hostile to women.

And for the record, I don’t think any benign good could judge people for whom they love (homosexuals).

There have been loads of thought provoking post, facinating points that I never would have thought of (and a couple of laughs too).

The religion thing I think is very complex. For a start you have to factor in time and place.
For instance I believe in many cases in the UK now a girl growing up in a moderate muslim family is actually better protected from current fashionable misogny than a middle class girl from a 'progressive' home.
At the very begining of Christianaty in ancient times it was a religion of women and slaves, but once adopted by the Roman empire it obviously adopted male supremacy, and then in middle ages Euroope it achieved queer theory/incel levels of misogny that were quite mad.

Generally in the UK now Christianity is pritty benign.

Sorry for the spelling everyone. My ability does not match my ambition

I agree with you OP, it is women led. I was thinking about this very same thing recently.

Whilst the prominent figures are trans identifying male, at the grass roots it is mostly women pushing this for some strange reason.

For example, the men at work either don’t know what’s happening, or if they do they think it’s nonsense. Whereas the women, OMG, it’s all ‘let’s be kind’ and ‘let’s be inclusive’ , especially those in HR and diversity roles. And I can not fathom whether they are stupid or if they really believe it.

Jostling for position in what they perceive, correctly or incorrectly, as the new order is one way women behave.
I've done it in the past. Now I'm older, I adopt the two fingered salute and fight back model. YMMV.

I also think the economic argument of 'woke' is really true and I never put together that obviously women are in a more precarious position via proffessional status, so a new hoop to keep out the prols would be instantly adopted by any young woman wanting to make it or they'd have no chance.

I also though the point of how the men will move on unscathed, but prominent women pushing this are over socially when the drugs wear of, as it were.