Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

How is it "gender critical" to impose rigid binary social categories based on sex?

999 replies

CuriousPanda · 13/07/2021 21:07

For most of history, the whole point of feminism was to oppse sex-based segregation and restrictions that were imposed by patriarchal society.

So I don't see how supporting strict gender categories, and simply calling them "sex-based" instead, in any way leans itself to "gender abolition".

One might get impression that "gender" is simply being used to mean trans people existing, and "gender abolition" simply means restricting trans people from being able to transition and use different gender labels. And basically nothing else.

With "sex-based rules and restrictions" being basically just gender roles but trans-proofed.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
11
Blibbyblobby · 14/07/2021 16:08

No one is saying anything about trucks or dolls. That has always been, and continues to be, nothing but a strawman.

So give us something better.

What are these differentiating characteristics of the gender Man and the gender Woman which are not aligned at a population level to physical sex, not even through socialisation, and are so strong and significant that it's more important to separate by self-identified gender than by biological sex?

CuriousPanda · 14/07/2021 16:12

@RedDogsBeg

Trans women do not deny the reality of sex, they are well aware of the fact they were born with a penis, that their physiology is what it is. The point is that they do not wish to be referred to as "men" because of that.

No one is trying to restrict how people can dress or feel, but you are trying to restrict how people are allowed to identify themselves.

They are transwomen, they are members of the male sex not the female sex, a woman is an adult human female it is not an identity.

And for as long as you maintain that stance, people will continue to call it out and oppose it as anti-trans discrimination.
OP posts:
Wildgarlicpesto · 14/07/2021 16:13

"GC feminists frequently label perceived males as perverted fetishists for the mere act of wearing a dress.*

The problem you have there is that cross dressing fetishism is a thing!
www.crossdressers.com/forums/showthread.php?149091-Fetlife

midgemagneto · 14/07/2021 16:14

If you see transphobic discrimination please report

Beowulfa · 14/07/2021 16:15

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

midgemagneto · 14/07/2021 16:16

We are not trying to restrict how people identify themselves

We are trying to prevent their stated identity over riding safeguards

PhiRhoSigma · 14/07/2021 16:17

I'd be happy to ditch the idea of 'gender' altogether. All it does is label people and put them into boxes. Anyone should be free to look like whatever they want, wear a dress or makeup, shave their hair off, whatever. I'll happily use whatever pronouns they choose too, it's no big deal. Although, I've been 'misgendered' more times than I can remember, really, so what, I think taking offence is pathetic.

Sex is immutable of course, humans are sexual dimorphic, that is not going to change. So only females can be mothers, for instance. We need to keep legal definitions based on biological fact.

Bambooshoot · 14/07/2021 16:17

How can you be so keen to disapply labels to yourself, and yet so insistent that the social construct of gender is absolutely immutable and a real decider of what a person is inside, when it is just a whole pile of reductive judgements and labels based on old fashioned stereotypes (eg that “girls wear dresses and make up” “boys like cars and do weights”) Why try and change sex (which we know is biologically impossible) and language instead of just challenging the silly gender roles?

What’s in it for you to take the harder route?

RedDogsBeg · 14/07/2021 16:17

GC feminists frequently label perceived males as perverted fetishists for the mere act of wearing a dress.

There are men who achieve a sexual thrill from wearing clothes usually associated with women, this is not new it has been around for a long time.

I'm only seeing GC people enforce gender stereotypes.

No, GC Feminists have been clear that anyone can wear what they want whatever sex they are the crucial point being that the wearing of any particular garment does not render the wearer as having changed sex and thus allow them access to spaces and services segregated on the basis of sex.

CuriousPanda · 14/07/2021 16:18

[quote Wildgarlicpesto]"GC feminists frequently label perceived males as perverted fetishists for the mere act of wearing a dress.*

The problem you have there is that cross dressing fetishism is a thing!
www.crossdressers.com/forums/showthread.php?149091-Fetlife[/quote]
I thought you wouldn't have a problem with crossdressing, since people are supposedly free to dress however they want regardless of their sex?

OP posts:
suggestionsplease1 · 14/07/2021 16:18

@RedDogsBeg

However, when it comes to things like access to spaces, GC feminists DO believe in gender over and above sex and whatever is between the legs, because they note that there IS more to it than genitals actually; there are characteristics and behaviours that seems to be associated with particular sexes, and it is important to recognise that and maintain separate spaces and treatment at times.

No, GC Feminists believe in SEX not gender delineating access to spaces. Spaces and services are segregated on the basis of sex for damn good reasons. Sex segregation is what it says on the tin, segregation on the basis of the biological, immutable reality of sex not on the basis of gender, stereotypes, characteristics, what clothes are worn, how tall they are, how short they are, their hairstyle, how they vote, what interests they have, etc.

Ok, I'm still confused. So we had that diagram that a lot of people were quite happy with noting that the only clear difference between males and females is genitals. Everything else is shared; aggression was in the middle as were all the other characteristics, behaviours that any gender might express.

So if sex is the only difference, and 'sex' that only refers to genitals, and not stereotypes, characteristics, interests and behaviours - why is there the need to delineate access to spaces on that basis?

What is so scary about a penis and balls? There's nothing inherently scary about them. I thought the argument would be that the potential behaviours of the people having the penis and balls was what the problem was - and a behaviour associated along sex lines is to do with gender.

WhoNeedsaManOfTheWorld · 14/07/2021 16:19

It's all a straw man. The only way to be a woman is to be born female. It is the only fact based reason
Everything else is subjective.
Even if someone proved a male has some female traits, whatever they are, their sex doesn't change

chickenyhead · 14/07/2021 16:19

@suggestionsplease1

^I think I'm beginning to get some clarification on the possible mindset here.

So, for trans - related issues, especially those situations where a person is considering transitioning, then sex is the only thing that is relevant to GC feminists - because after all, gendered behaviour is not really a thing - after all, what is it to be a man or a woman - either sex is perfectly capable of any characteristics and stereotypically feminine or masculine behaviour? Which is why GC feminists consider there is such a problem with identifying as the opposite sex or transitioning - because what's the point in swapping genitals when there absolutely nothing else that distinguishes a sense of what it is to be a man or a woman?^

-However, when it comes to things like access to spaces, GC feminists DO believe in gender over and above sex and whatever is between the legs, because they note that there IS more to it than genitals actually;- there are characteristics and behaviours that seems to be associated with particular sexes, and it is important to recognise that and maintain separate spaces and treatment at times.

-I think there's a bit of a consistency failure between the positions.-

Fixed that for you.

As for monkeys, human beings are not monkeys. Social structures and interaction are entirely different.

CuriousPanda · 14/07/2021 16:20

@RedDogsBeg

GC feminists frequently label perceived males as perverted fetishists for the mere act of wearing a dress.

There are men who achieve a sexual thrill from wearing clothes usually associated with women, this is not new it has been around for a long time.

I'm only seeing GC people enforce gender stereotypes.

No, GC Feminists have been clear that anyone can wear what they want whatever sex they are the crucial point being that the wearing of any particular garment does not render the wearer as having changed sex and thus allow them access to spaces and services segregated on the basis of sex.

I'm frequently seeing GC feminists applaud statements like "dresses are for girls, not for men", actively shaming perceived males over feminine clothing,

i.imgur.com/1eVZ2Qn.png

OP posts:
chickenyhead · 14/07/2021 16:20

Complete fail at deletes so here:

suggestionsplease1

I think I'm beginning to get some clarification on the possible mindset here.

So, for trans - related issues, especially those situations where a person is considering transitioning, then sex is the only thing that is relevant to GC feminists - because after all, gendered behaviour is not really a thing - after all, what is it to be a man or a woman - either sex is perfectly capable of any characteristics and stereotypically feminine or masculine behaviour? Which is why GC feminists consider there is such a problem with identifying as the opposite sex or transitioning - because what's the point in swapping genitals when there absolutely nothing else that distinguishes a sense of what it is to be a man or a woman?

there are characteristics and behaviours that seems to be associated with particular sexes, and it is important to recognise that and maintain separate spaces and treatment at times.

RedDogsBeg · 14/07/2021 16:21

And for as long as you maintain that stance, people will continue to call it out and oppose it as anti-trans discrimination.

Why is it anti-trans discrimination? Transwomen are transwomen, members of the male sex class, that is fact and reality.

Women are adult human females, that is fact and reality.

Beowulfa · 14/07/2021 16:21

I'm relatively new to this site; is the quality of the opposing argument always this poor?

Grumblemonster · 14/07/2021 16:22

So, for trans - related issues, especially those situations where a person is considering transitioning, then sex is the only thing that is relevant to GC feminists - because after all, gendered behaviour is not really a thing - after all, what is it to be a man or a woman - either sex is perfectly capable of any characteristics and stereotypically feminine or masculine behaviour? Which is why GC feminists consider there is such a problem with identifying as the opposite sex or transitioning - because what's the point in swapping genitals when there absolutely nothing else that distinguishes a sense of what it is to be a man or a woman?

However, when it comes to things like access to spaces, GC feminists DO believe in gender over and above sex and whatever is between the legs, because they note that there IS more to it than genitals actually; there are characteristics and behaviours that seems to be associated with particular sexes, and it is important to recognise that and maintain separate spaces and treatment at times.

I think there's a bit of a consistency failure between the positions.

Again, you are failing to differentiate between statistical difference and determinitive difference.

There are statistical differences between men and women as a group. The sole determinitive difference is sex. So men are more likely to be violent, tall, brusque, interested in team sports. Some of those are biological differences which will persist regardless of culture, some may be wholly or partly socially produced. For the purposes of this argument it doesn't matter. Regardless of whether it is innate or socially produced it is still not determinitive. It is a mistake to try to apply statistical information about a group to an individual.

Suppose I have a factory that runs a thousand machines. The annual failure rate for the machines is 5%. I can expect approximately 50 failures a year. So I should budget for that. Now suppose I look at one machine individually and I say, "This machine has a 5% probability of failure, therefore it is 19 times more likely to not fail than to fail. Therefore it is unnecessary to plan for replacement or outages" Then I look at each of the other 99 machines and say the same. Now I'm failing at engineering management. Alternatively I could look at a single machine and say, "This machine has a 5% chance of failure". This could be true but only if the chance of failure is uniform. Suppose that in fact the machine has a damaged part. Failure in the next year for this particular machine could be a certainty. That doesn't mean that it isn't part of the group of my one hundred machines for which the probability of failure is 5%. It just means that there is variation across the group.

In the instance of safeguarding and single sex spaces we are excluding all men because as a group they show a higher propensity to sexual violence. That does not imply that to be male is to be sexually violent or that to be sexually violent is to be male. Ideally we would just exclude sexually violent people but there is no practical mechanism to enable that.

Now let's look at your monkeys and just take the study at face value. We see a statistical trend where male monkeys are more likely to be interested in wheeled toys. This does not mean that the 9% of male monkeys who preferred plush toys, or the 18% with no preference are not really male. Both male and female monkeys might prefer either toy or neither. If we had to guess the sex of a monkey based only on it's toy preference we could make use of the information that of the monkeys that preferred wheeled toys 65% were male, whereas for the monkeys that preferred soft toys only 22.5% were, but we cannot infer that a monkey that likes soft toys that monkey is 22.5% male and 77.5% female. It is still either male or female and that is not determined by it's toy preference.

CuriousPanda · 14/07/2021 16:22

@RedDogsBeg

And for as long as you maintain that stance, people will continue to call it out and oppose it as anti-trans discrimination.

Why is it anti-trans discrimination? Transwomen are transwomen, members of the male sex class, that is fact and reality.

Women are adult human females, that is fact and reality.

Trans women are adult human females. Smile
OP posts:
merrymouse · 14/07/2021 16:23

And for as long as you maintain that stance, people will continue to call it out and oppose it as anti-trans discrimination

Sometimes it is unavoidably necessary to correctly identify sex (analysing data, medical treatment) just as it is sometimes necessary to identify any other protected characteristic.

For as long as you continue to deny that, your arguments can only seem spurious.

Radio4ordie · 14/07/2021 16:23

I only support sex based separation for very specific reasons such as medical care, prisons, sports and women and children who need to be separated from men for their well-being, such as in a refuge.

In general (including 99% of most workplace situations) I support us all being ourselves, free from gender stereotypes whilst respecting a few sex segregations. I have no issue with trans women dressing in a dress, changing their name or having a trans networking group for example.

InspiralCoalescenceRingdown · 14/07/2021 16:24

It is true that not all seagulls can fly. For instance, a seagull that has sustained a wing injury cannot. Learn not make uniformed universal generalizations, and what "all" means

I think you need to learn some basic logic, before lecturing others on what they need to learn.

No one is saying anything about trucks or dolls. That has always been, and continues to be, nothing but a strawman.

PP were talking about a study of toy preference in rhesus monkeys, which is what I was responding to.

Maybe some remedial English lessons would be a good accompaniment to the logic lessons?

merrymouse · 14/07/2021 16:24

Trans women are adult human females.

If you don’t care whether they live or die when receiving medical treatment. Maybe you don’t?

ScreamingMeMe · 14/07/2021 16:25

@Beowulfa

I'm relatively new to this site; is the quality of the opposing argument always this poor?
Sometimes they're even worse.
RedDogsBeg · 14/07/2021 16:25

So if sex is the only difference, and 'sex' that only refers to genitals, and not stereotypes, characteristics, interests and behaviours - why is there the need to delineate access to spaces on that basis?

If you don't know or understand why after the hundreds of years and counting of evidence as to why then you are either being totally disingenuous or lacking in intelligence.