I’m confused: ‘The Spark Company’

[OhDear2200]

The Spark Company keeps popping up on my Facebook feed so thought I would have a look. Found lots of posts interesting until I got to a post about how their feminism includes trans women as they are women.

This is within many posts about women rising against the patriarchy.

I’m confused. Do trans women suffer from the patriarchy being biologically men?

Can transwomen suffer from sexism?

This is a genuine question I’m worried I’m being naive. I don’t want anyone (however they identify) to suffer discrimination or abuse. But I can’t help feeling (possibly irrationally) a bit peeved that trans women get to claim to be on the receiving end of the ‘patriarchy’.

Apparently this is progressive feminism.

Am I backwards?

And i'm tapping out, assumed rapist, explain why that's a problem because no one in this sphere ever brings it up, assumed perv. I don't know why i bother...

@lexxi87

And i'm tapping out, assumed rapist, explain why that's a problem because no one in this sphere ever brings it up, assumed perv. I don't know why i bother...

You are leaving because you don’t have a credible point to make. You have only accused people of trolling or have made points irrelevant to the OP, and have not answered anyone’s questions.

No one has accused you of being a rapist or a perv.

No one has accused you of being a rapist or a perv

This

We don't believe that all men are rapists or all men are pervs, but there is no identifying features to separate the rapists and pervs out from the crowd, and beside we are entitled to our privacy just from men. Simple things like the fact that Muslim women cannot adjust their scarves in a washroom when there are men about.

[quote lexxi87]@Enough4me

Aside from the impracticality and enormous drain of public resources that would cost and private businesses for compliance it would be a difficult thing to police and is not necessary. If I'm just going to get trolled all night then I'm signing off because it's a waste of time.[/quote]
Not necessary?

You are here, on a forum where women are discussing this matter and the conclusion most of us have drawn is that it IS necessary, because when men use women’s spaces, some women cannot use them.

As a society, we are moving past the time you are clinging to, where a few men were accepted into women’s spaces (though nobody asked the women first). And the reason we are moving past that time is because men who claim they are women are now insisting that they are literally women and must be able to use women’s spaces, and that they should be able to do so without making any bodily changes whatsoever.

So the comfort you have found is not being taken from you because women are mean. It’s because the situation for women is changing and it’s changing for you too. Women are now fighting for spaces to return to being single sex and I think, eventually we will be successful, because it’s obviously not an unreasonable request in a sexist world.

So the status quo is not an option, however much you would like it to be. So if you want to remain comfortable, another solution must be found. Yet you dismiss, out of hand, women’s suggestions that a third space might offer a solution.

Toilets have been provided for disabled people through legal changes. The trans lobby has way more power and money than disabled people ever had. It isn’t impossible. My personal suspicion is that men who don’t care about women are driving the rhetoric. And while they continue, more and more women will begin to object. Something has to give. Your posts here suggest you believe that something has to be women. But it doesn’t have to be. Third spaces are a viable response to a complex and difficult situation. Those who refuse to consider it, or search for other solutions than “Well I know you are distressed, but I’m going to use your spaces anyway because it suits me” are a major part of the problem.

Further to that, imagine a world where third spaces were the norm. Women are no longer objecting as they don’t have to fight back.

You don’t have to worry about going to hospital because you have fought for a solution that’s acceptable for all and society at large accepts the situation, just as they’ve mostly come to accept that lesbian and gay relationships are rightly equal to heterosexual relationships.

You could stop fighting to be seen as a woman, and have a valid identity as a transwoman. Everyone will understand that transwomen have days when they are too ill to make the effort with make-up, just as women who choose to use make-up do.

Having a real and fully accepted societal identity as a transwoman could surely be a better solution than the continuation of a life where you are trying to fit into a space where you don’t fit?

I wonder whether you might consider starting your own thread lexxi. This discussion has become rather focused on you and your experiences rather than the general questions posed by the OP.

Apologies, OhDear2200.

With regard to sexism, most of the sexism I have experienced in my life has been related to my body and the perception of me as being female, alongside assumptions about the effects my being female might have.

The first is to do with women being seen as lesser beings in general. So in my job, which required a degree of physical strength, but which women can do because there were ways around that issue, I was still seen as less valuable than a man. In addition, my career path was one that required huge flexibility in working hours. Again, women were affected more than men, because our sexist society still works with the expectation and assumption that women have more responsibility for children than men, and thus even if I chose not to have a child, or was willing/able to work those hours, there was still an assumption that it would be less troublesome to employ a man, thus sidestepping any potential problems.

So men who claim they are women would only be affected by those things if they were wholly read as female during the employment process and remained indistinguishable from women. There are possibly a tiny number of men who would be affected that way, but the vast majority would benefit from the sexist assumptions in the same way as other men.

There are other assumptions about women that might affect men who claim they are women. Some men assume women are weak-minded or more prone to unreasonable emotions. The men that see women that way might apply similar thinking to men who claim they are women, but I believe they might apply it to other groups of men, for example men who have mental health problems. So again, not truly sexist, as for true sexism, it would have to be based on the fact that someone is truly perceived as female. Being considered lesser isn’t the definition of womanhood.

As for “the patriarchy” well I’m never sure what that is exactly, but I think men and women are both affected by the expectations put upon us. Some men might benefit more than others. Patriarchy might be one of the things driving those who think women are lesser to also despise men who they see as weaker, who might all be seen to be “unmanly” and perhaps in the most extreme cases “non-men”. But “non-men” is not an acceptable definition of “woman” either. So this is pressure against femininity or effeminacy and not sexism. Because sexism is about sex.

My sex drive is utterly shot and it's not i can't get it up kinda thing (that is a problem too) but i cannot get aroused, it's exceptionally difficult and masturbation is not an option anymore

The only reason trans women in porn look like they can get hard is because they inject themselves with a drug called alprostadil (caverject) into the penis before shooting a scene, it forces an erection for 1-3 hours because viagra etc.. do not work

This is what should be being told to children, not the rainbow glitter happy bullshit.
The truth about what the drugs they are being pushed to take actually do.

Not interested in BS stats counting sex offenders pretending to be trans to game the system and skewing numbers. They don't mean anything and I've probably seen them all before

Nice of you not to give a shit that these males and their skewing of stats and being put into to female prisons to access more victims are harming women but that is the reality of what TRA's are demanding.

There is no way to separate one group of males who claim to be women from other males, when the ideology is now based entirely on subjective feelings that no one is allowed to question.

So we can either legally discriminate against ALL males, or non, and because of the feelings of a tiny minority of males the protections, based on sex, of 50% of the population are removed. Thanks for that.