Anti trans for asking not to conflate sex with gender?

[OatALot]

On a menopause event at work and in the comments section they are being asked to use inclusive language such as 'people who menstrate'. These are being challenged and those who challenged are being called terf and accusssd of making others feel unsafe.

The people doing the presentation therefore have taken the stance anyone can go through the menopause.

I'd love to feedback that they should not conflate sex and gender. Surely if we just talk in term of sex and a biological function it can't be challenged? It takes the discussion away from a condition impacting females.

That is an interesting point shedmistress. So transmen do have very different needs around this, and would require a completely different approach anyway. So removing the word woman isn't going to benefit women or transmen.

I don't think this is a good example to focus on if you are painting the problem as male persons requiring female persons to accommodate their demands, because this is about female persons (transmen) being accommodated and not feeling excluded.

No, it's really not. If you dig down into it and read around it then you rapidly find that TM are used as the most justifiable shield and excuse. However this 'people' and 'menstruators' and 'cervix havers' and other dehumanising stuff for women comes with the comment earlier about 'ok, you may say some women'. It's about the need to separate the word 'woman' from 'female biology' and it is male born people who drive this and wish to benefit from it.

It is this need of male people to make 'woman' something that someone of either sex can be, with no links to biology, that is causing female born humans such major issues. And it is why this cannot be allowed. It's also why I tend to use the word 'female' a lot on these boards. The word 'woman' is now interpreted by some as 'someone of either sex'. Which is not helpful when seeking to deal with sex based needs and disadvantages for female humans, without tripping over male needs which others wish you to put first.

Hence this kind of discussion all over a women's rights forum which really shouldn't have to be preoccupied with untangling male people's needs in order to be able to (or frequently allowed to) see and meet the sex based inequalities and issues. Such as menopause. Which is not about the issues faced, the medical care, the challenges and symptoms and barriers female people often encounter in the workplace with their reproductive system etc etc - but first and foremost are they using language to talk about it that does not offend male people ?

Sex based issues. Wholly sex based.

@Beckert

I don't think this is a good example to focus on if you are painting the problem as male persons requiring female persons to accommodate their demands, because this is about female persons (transmen) being accommodated and not feeling excluded.

Yet transmen deliberately leave womanhood behind. Or at least try to. I don't think it's reasonable to turn your back on womanhood and exclude yourself from it, whilst at the same time expect the language that women use to then be changed to include transmen.

Exactly Beckert. You leave the group (for want of a better word) you don't get to dictate a change to the language used by that group. Remarkable how transmen are not dictating language changes to the group they are joining, isn't it?

I have not seen any mandate that women just accept being addressed in a way which they find objectionable. Any individual woman (who wants to be) must be addressed as a woman.

I am an individual woman. I can tell you that there is no way whatsoever a way can be found that complies with gender ideology which is not offensive to me as long as the ideology itself rejects any recognition of female people as a single contiguous group.

This ideology insists that in every circumstance, even female biology, the diversity of gender identity is prioritised above the singularity of the sex class, and in doing so obscures the reality of sex-based disadvantage and oppression.

So the second someone includes me in any construction of the type “women and…” or “people who…” I am being addressed in a way I find objectionable, because it tells me the person using the word Woman does not mean it as a simple fact of body, but as a genderist concept of mind.

Genderist so-called “inclusive” language actually encodes the belief that womanhood, the reason that half of humanity suffers sex-based oppression and disempowerment to a greater or lesser extent, is simply a state of mind and I utterly reject that. It denies the real challenges female people deal with and reasserts the outmoded and damaging belief that women’s mind are innately suited to different things than different to men’s.

I am happy to accept gender states of mind as a separate and co-existing human attribute that allows for a different classification to sex, but cannot accept it as a wholesale replacement for sex classification in every circumstance.

I'm just thinking this through the other way round. There doesn't seem to be a requirement for men to change their language in order to accommodate transwomen. I haven't seen anything anyway. Yet there are things that only impact on biological males. Prostate cancer springs to mind. How is this approached in order to, for want of a better word, include transwomen?

@Artichokeleaves

I don't think this is a good example to focus on if you are painting the problem as male persons requiring female persons to accommodate their demands, because this is about female persons (transmen) being accommodated and not feeling excluded.

No, it's really not. If you dig down into it and read around it then you rapidly find that TM are used as the most justifiable shield and excuse. However this 'people' and 'menstruators' and 'cervix havers' and other dehumanising stuff for women comes with the comment earlier about 'ok, you may say some women'. It's about the need to separate the word 'woman' from 'female biology' and it is male born people who drive this and wish to benefit from it.

It is this need of male people to make 'woman' something that someone of either sex can be, with no links to biology, that is causing female born humans such major issues. And it is why this cannot be allowed. It's also why I tend to use the word 'female' a lot on these boards. The word 'woman' is now interpreted by some as 'someone of either sex'. Which is not helpful when seeking to deal with sex based needs and disadvantages for female humans, without tripping over male needs which others wish you to put first.

Hence this kind of discussion all over a women's rights forum which really shouldn't have to be preoccupied with untangling male people's needs in order to be able to (or frequently allowed to) see and meet the sex based inequalities and issues. Such as menopause. Which is not about the issues faced, the medical care, the challenges and symptoms and barriers female people often encounter in the workplace with their reproductive system etc etc - but first and foremost are they using language to talk about it that does not offend male people ?

Sex based issues. Wholly sex based.

As always, Artichokeleaves you get to the nub of the issue.

This is to pacify males, transmen are little more than a smokescreen to hide it behind.

@Beckert

I don't think this is a good example to focus on if you are painting the problem as male persons requiring female persons to accommodate their demands, because this is about female persons (transmen) being accommodated and not feeling excluded.

Yet transmen deliberately leave womanhood behind. Or at least try to. I don't think it's reasonable to turn your back on womanhood and exclude yourself from it, whilst at the same time expect the language that women use to then be changed to include transmen.

That sums it up well.

Why should we be trying so hard to be inclusive to a group of people who have chosen to exclude themselves?

Using terms such as 'women and transmen' is pandering to the idea that women who reject womanhood are special individuals who can be both included and excluded from the class of people formerly known as women according to what suits them best in different circumstances.

@Beckert

I'm just thinking this through the other way round. There doesn't seem to be a requirement for men to change their language in order to accommodate transwomen. I haven't seen anything anyway. Yet there are things that only impact on biological males. Prostate cancer springs to mind. How is this approached in order to, for want of a better word, include transwomen?

Of course there isn't and that tells you all you need to know about what's behind this and who is driving it.

Not a murmur about the recent campaign on prostate cancer aimed squarely and unequivocally at men.

No male politician has been hounded relentlessly for liking a tweet saying only men have a prostate.

No male politician has had to say on a radio show that men do have a penis, Nick.

Men are referred to as men, biological things that only impact them accommodate only them, there is no and or people who used in anything to do with men's health issues.

Why would that be?

Why do men feel the need to mansplain and assume women need them to do this. What makes them like this. Is it nature? Born to dominate and explain even if they know nothing about a topic. Or is it how they're brought up.
I have even observed very young male, (children) doing this, I just wonder what exactly it is that makes them behave in this manner.

It's quite striking, isn't it?

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Why do men feel the need to mansplain and assume women need them to do this. What makes them like this. Is it nature? Born to dominate and explain even if they know nothing about a topic. Or is it how they're brought up. I have even observed very young male, (children) doing this, I just wonder what exactly it is that makes them behave in this manner.

It's quite striking, isn't it?

Socialisation of sex role stereotypes happens very very young, and it happens to all of us/all of our children, no matter how much we think we protect them from it by making conscious choices to try and counter it in how we raise them.

I’m not 100% sold that all sex role stereotypes are purely conditioned by socialisation- spend any time around a stud farm and see the staggering difference between stallions and geldings and it’s obvious testosterone has some impact on some behaviours associated with males, I don’t believe this magically isn’t the case with humans- but boys dominating discussions and mansplaining I think it’s not nature or nurture but socialisation of sex role stereotypes (socialisation of gender).

Is that like the bloke that was trying to explain to women that they shouldn't need additional facilities when they had their periods, they should just keep it in until they got home?

Fun times.

That is not what patriarchy is, although there may of course also be groups of plotting men here and there. Patriarchy is the men coming into FWR with a sense of entitlement to dictate to us how we should speak, what we should think, and how we ought to behave towards others.

FWR is still holding out, which is what functions as a red flag to some men. It is an abomination to them that there should be any pockets of womanhood that does not bow to their superiority.

Yes, this exactly.

It's easier than saying "some women and trans men" every single time.

Then let's just say "women". Nothing is ever good enough.

I used the words brain fog in response to a poster who used brain fog.

How dare you use language specifically about incredibly distressing and debilitating female menopause symptoms to handwave away women you don't agree with?

I automatically make the judgement that woke men who tell women what to think and what language to use about their own experiences, are having a laugh at our expense. Because I cannot see how someone who was genuinely respectful of marginalised groups' right to a voice could do this.

I'm afraid I don't see these men as genuinely concerned about social justice and amplifying the needs of people with less power.