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.

It's important when discussing siuch issues to use inclusive language

The only people that need to be included when talking about people who get the menopause are women.

It's not rocket science.

Men certainly don't have the right to tell women what words they should accept to describe their own bodily functions. That's really weird behaviour.

As someone said so well on another thread - I couldn't care less what penis havers think about women's issues. Couldn't give a fuck. No lived experience and no experience of sexism due to being a woman means that your opinion just isn't relevant.

@Sophoclesthefox

Only women experience the menopause.

Yes. And I cannot believe that in 2021 a man thinks it's acceptable to come onto a feminist forum and tell women about menopause.

@Shedmistress

It's important when discussing siuch issues to use inclusive language

The only people that need to be included when talking about people who get the menopause are women.

It's not rocket science.

And the language used should be the language the overwhelming majority of women want used.

• and on a website called 'mumsnet'. Astonishing. It's almost like the more boundaries women put up the more some people want to test them.

@Sophoclesthefox

The opinion dadjoke is expressing isn’t just irrelevant, it’s actively harmful.

I bet these workshops are run by volunteers off the side of their desks, eg not their core duties.

I bet there are a number of women here who will volunteer or be asked at their jobs to do similar.

What do you suppose those women will do if they perceive that anything targeted towards women, such as a menopause workshop will inevitably turn into an identity politics shitshow?

They just won’t run them.

Nobody will get a workshop. And trying to get the language right from the start is doomed to failure, because it’s never enough. The physical fact is, this workshop is only for issues related to female biology, which is under great pressure to be unspeakable again.

Slow fucking handclap. Menopause gets shoved back into the shadows. Achievement unlocked.

Women's issues can be useful point-scoring issues. Recall Lily Madigan with the 'period poverty' slogan written on the hand?

But of course nobody pushing for 'inclusivity' really gives two fucks about women or their health or feelings. That's abundantly clear.

I am still in shock that someone has come here and interrupted this helpful discussion about how to make sure that menopause workshops were reaching their target audience.

Someone without any lived experience of menopause decided to lecture us who are going through it. This person also used ableist language and made Purgatory feel unsafe.

And this poster had the audacity to claim that they were inclusive (within a topic about which they know nothing). And their supposedly inclusive language excluded the daughter of a woman posting here.

I really think that DadJoke needs to educate themselves in how not to exclude disabled people. They should be more kind. And listen to the lived experience of people around them.

Purgatory I hope you are ok, that was quite a bit of an insensitivity there. Particularly considering the discussion is all around language and inclusivity. Inclusion does of course apply to everyone, including the female ones. Perhaps a better understanding of intersectionality may help some posters?

I also agree wholly about lived experience, having learned a great deal about this from trans activism and how very important it is to respect this. How does it go - nothing about us without us? Those who have not ever menstruated, never will menstruate or are menopausing of course have their own very special and unique experiences, but obviously it would be unhelpful to go speaking over those who have in matters specific to them as a group.

Now I've had a chance to recover my equilibrium after seeing such a distressing sneer, I am now feeling very confused that a man (who cannot experience menopause) thinks he is being inclusive by lecturing menopausal women on what language they should find acceptable during a workshop aimed at menopausal women, on behalf of other female people who don't like the term women.

There is something very distasteful here on two levels. Firstly, it is for a target group to say whether something is an appropriate term of address, and secondly, DadJoke has taken it upon himself to decide what transmen and female people identifying as non-binary want to be called.

Shouldn't we be asking them?

There is, in my experience, no clear consensus of preference for the type of term DadJoke advocates.

For example.

Person 1, he/him

Really need afab as a term to not be abandoned so I don't have to deal w people calling me a womb haver or menstrator in the context of reproductive healthcare/rights

Person 2

At this point I'd rather you just misgender me and call me a woman than call me a fucking "menstrator" or "uterus haver"

It's not inclusive imo, it's dehumanizing and reduces me down to what makes me dysphoric 🥴

This is an excerpt from a video by transwoman and youtuber Natalie Wynn, otherwise known as Contrapoints, discussing what transmen think of terms like "menstruator". Natalie describes it as dehumanising, too.

DadJoke
“or annoying, except for people whose attachment to the belief that trans men aren't men gives them brain fog.“

Who are the people who are attached to the belief that trans men aren’t men?

Theflamingnerd

Thank you. I very much appreciate the kindness you and other posters have shown tonight.

@MurielSpriggs

If the word woman encompasses everyone, it becomes meaningless.

I agree. But this is precisely not about widening the definition of "woman". It is about acknowledging that "woman" is not wide enough to encompass all those who (under the new theory) menstruate. Women are a subset of menstruators. There are some female men who menstruate.

That’s only needed because gender ideology shifts the definition of woman from a fact of the body to a state of mind.

However, this now-nameless group of humans with female bodies still exists, with undeniable and visible needs that are unique to the group.

So gender ideologists tie themselves in ridiculous knots trying to find a way to refer to that group within an ideology that cannot acknowledge the group’s existence.

It would be so so much simpler to simply realise sex exists as a fact of the body not an attitude of the mind, and as such can be recognised, labelled and discussed without anyone’s identity being ignored, denied or even part of the topic in the first place.

I had no idea that meltdown was ableist language and I apologise for the offence I caused. I won’t use it again.

I am not disagreeing with women as a whole, but with the opinions on inclusivity of a very specific group of gender critical people.

It’s because I think menopause it such an important issue that it should be discussed inclusively, not because I don’t.

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

I posted here because in the main it’s a gender critical echo chamber and there a few alternative views.

@DadJoke

What collective noun would you find acceptable for biologically female - female at birth (and indeed conception) people? How can we express the knowledge that the set of people who will/do/did/should menstruate entirely encompasses the set of people who may will/do/did/could give birth if we wanted to, for example, understand how these things impact ones long term economic outcomes?

It’s because I think menopause it such an important issue that it should be discussed inclusively, not because I don’t.

What do you mean by inclusively? Only female people (women) experience menopause. This includes those female people who identify as transmen or nonbinary. They are still female. Still women. It's not possible to change sex. These people know they are female, so the words 'women' and 'female' are totally inclusive of all female people (women).

It's not possible to change sex, either by medical means or by wishful thinking. And it's not very inclusive to insist on trying to change the language that we all use just because some women don't want to be women and some men don't want to be men.

You're going on about 'inclusivity', while trying to change language according to the wishes of less than 1% of the population, to the detriment of the other 99%. How is that inclusive?

Why should we accept being dehumanised and called 'people with' body parts and functions? Because some females and males have disassociated from their sex and therefore, their needs have been judged to be more important.

The disassociating women and men are just the excuse. The women at least are just useful pawns.

When we see a man opining on which language women should be allowed when discussing our own bodies and our bodily functions with each other, this is less about ‘inclusion’ of anybody, even those identifying under the trans umbrella, and more about patriarchy in action.

Sometimes when the term ‘patriarchy’ is bandied around, we are led to imagine it as a cabal of nasty men plotting how best to subjugate women. It is easy to understand why a lot of people are doubtful about the existence of patriarchy when this is what they think it means.

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. Twats.

Thank you for taking this on board.

Can you please explain to me the process and weighting on people's feelings that leads you to prefer "people who experience menopause" over "women and transmen" and so on?

I understand the desire to avoid offending the subset of female people, who are classed as transmen. I do not understand the casual attitude toward offending the subset of female people who find it dehumanising to be referred to by biological functions.

As those who are familiar with autistic spectrum conditions may be able to guess, I spent years of my childhood and adolescence developing conscious awareness of what constitutes politeness and rudeness, our social norms, the unspoken social contracts and so on.

I cannot fathom this. It is a double standard. Moreover, what about women like Petrarkanian's daughter? I understand that "person who experiences menopause" is a set that includes me, but I can safely say that there were girls at my old school who I do not think would understand this terminology. And yet menopause does not restrict itself only to adult female humans with a certain level of language proficiency.

The prominent transwoman and trans activist Jessica Yaniv/Jessica Simpson has said that it is offensive to be referred to by one's prostate.

If being referred to by body parts or bodily processes isn't good enough for Jessica, it's not good enough for anyone else who objects, either. Why should it be?

How can a request not to be referred to by body part or functions only be a reasonable request from some people, but not others?

Text of tweet for people using screenreaders.

Calling trans women "this person with a prostate" is rude and offensive. Not myself, nor@nicespurlingshould take that kind of harassment. Completely disgraceful. #LGBTQ2 #LGBTQ

www.twitter.com/trustednerd/status/1329159192012353550?s=19

That’s only needed because gender ideology shifts the definition of woman from a fact of the body to a state of mind.*

However, this now-nameless group of humans with female bodies still exists, with undeniable and visible needs that are unique to the group.

So gender ideologists tie themselves in ridiculous knots trying to find a way to refer to that group within an ideology that cannot acknowledge the group’s existence.

It would be so so much simpler to simply realise sex exists as a fact of the body not an attitude of the mind, and as such can be recognised, labelled and discussed without anyone’s identity being ignored, denied or even part of the topic in the first place.

What is the word for that group of people who can gestate and birth young, who usually provide the majority of care for the young, who have the types of bodies that a majority of men are sexually attracted to, whose healthcare needs are under researched and often ignored, who do the vast majority of the shitty work that no one wants to do, which is neither recognised nor paid as work, who have less time to invest in paid career work and who have the shittiest pensions as a result, but who do not identify as innately aligned with that role in life?

And which class of people benefit if the above mentioned class of people do not have a name to call themselves, and so do not have a way of joining the dots or recognising that they constitute a class, with needs, as a class?

You know on BMN when a white person goes on there presuming to know or educate black and brown women about their own experience they get told swiftly and bluntly where to go.

I don't because I'm not black and therefore wouldm't dream of postng on BMN.

However on FWR we'd be banned if we swiftly told men where to go when they come on and tell us how to think. Because there are special rules to protect men on here.

It really did take a turn. Hope you’re ok purgatory.

There really are some men who can’t tolerate women discussing things without feeling the urge to monitor and correct, aren’t there?