FB Groups and JK

[SusannaQueen]

Ok, I'm just having a rant and I know FB groups are free to set their own rules.
I've been following a fab FB group, (Home for Peculiar Artists 2), post goes up from admin saying this is a reminder, we don't allow anything Harry Potter or JKR related, if you don't know why then educate yourself. Lots of supportive replies.
I'm on the group in my real name, so I'm not going to weigh in, but it hugely fucks me off, so many people just believing lies with no dissent allowed. Just makes me think this whole thing is insurmountable.

Will this though process be applied to other real categories? Say age or race? If not, why not?

Ignoring male violence, taking away women's language, placing male sex offenders in female prisons. That isn't progressive, just more rights for men and less for women.

@AmIgoinghomeforXmas

I actually think it can be useful for people to see what the baseline actually is, to have no single sex spaces ever and no acknowledgment that sex exists unless it is for the benefit of the sex denying individual. This is so far from lived reality it is helpful to see it in black and white.

I had this discussion with someone (a woman) in a HR job. All "TWAW, what difference would it make".

Indeed what difference would it make if there are women with penis and women with vulva?
It's only labels imposing by western society for some unidentified gender role.

Women and men all college graduates. All working way, looking to move up through the ranks. Promotion after promotion, and by some odd coincident the women with penis or men with penis get the bulk of the promotions.
But women are still being promoted.

If woman/female is an identifier not one of two sex groups how would an employee prove that the top jobs were all held by men with penis or women with penis while the women with vulva were somehow career limited or actively managed out of the business?

It was a HR conundrum.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

Unless it's a trans man's penis, since clearly, a trans man would have to keep using female facilities.

If the men object to the transman in their spaces, then yes. Go make a thread on pistonheads and ask.

As the vast majority don't pursue phalloplasties, transmen are far more at risk in the men's area, because of the risk of rape if they are recognised as female.

There was a thread on a gay men's forum where posters were objecting to a transman (no "bottom surgery") being in a gay sauna. They weren't very impressed at having their spaces invaded either.

Flowerpotsnake

In fact as far as I can see, the push to cleanse people of their birth sex when it comes to things like medical records goes directly against the interests of trans people themselves and could lead to serious cases of misdiagnosis and incorrect treatment. Denying the reality of their sex could actually kill them.

Yup, at least one transman has nearly died on account of being recorded as male on medical documents. The individual seems to have been unwilling to voluntarily disclose it and under the impression that sex did not make any difference to treatment.

extract

It was 2016 and Cameron Whitley was gravely ill. He was urgently in need of a kidney transplant, which should have been no problem. He was young and otherwise healthy. He had medical insurance. He even had several gallant friends willing to undergo major surgery for him.

There was a catch, however. His doctors were missing a crucial piece of information – one which, until then, no one had thought to look into. Without it, they weren’t able to put him on the list.

And so, more than a year after he first turned up at a hospital in the US Midwest with mysterious ear pain – eventually leading to a diagnosis of chronic kidney disease – he was forced to go on dialysis. By this point, his organs were functioning at less than 8% of their normal capacity.

But here again, Whitley hit a snag: his doctors were in need of another vital piece of information – and without it, they couldn’t work out how often he would need this treatment. They had to guess; they got it wrong; he became yet more unwell. All this time, his friends were practically throwing their kidneys at him.

Finally, just as Whitley, who is an assistant professor of sociology at Western Washington University, was approved for a transplant, his dialysis treatment led to massive blood loss and the operation had to be delayed. “It was really hard. I was horribly sick,” he says.

What was going on?

Whitley is a transgender man – he identifies as male but his biological sex is female. He has been living as a man for around 20 years. In his words, he fully “passes” as one, for want of a better term – and he is registered as a man on all his legal documents, from his passport to his medical records.

(Continues)

In Whitley’s case, the problem was how the severity of kidney disease is assessed. The usual protocol is to calculate a patient’s “estimated glomerular filtration rate” (eGFR), which measures the amount of a certain waste product in their blood and therefore shows how efficient their kidneys are at filtering it out. If the eGFR is below a certain level, it’s an indication that their kidneys are failing and they are eligible for a transplant.

There are several different lower limits for an eGFR, depending on things like a person’s weight, age, sex and race, which are intended to reflect the natural variation in the human body. Based on the female cut-off, he would have been allowed a transplant immediately. But he’s registered as a man on his medical records, and this meant his doctors used the male eGFR level. He wasn’t put on the list until he reached it – a decision that ultimately delayed the surgery by over a year, and very nearly cost him his life.

And you do realize that the mere existence of this kind of segregation is upholding gender, right?

Wavedancer99 best get onto Plan International, Unicef and the United Nations Girls education Initiative and the Malala Fund. In their report on Covid and girls education, they say single sex facilities must be ensured.

"Ensure sustainable financing for safe,
accessible and age-responsive hygienic
single-sex WASH facilities in schools,
including in remote, fragile and conflict."

plan-international.org/publications/building-back-equal-girls-back-school-guide#download-options

^ ahh you see that is all about biological essentialism or something. They too are blinded by the roles forced on people due to societal expectations and if they didn't have the terms male and female all would be hunkey dorey.

I think it's that, and obviously this the fault of the GC in 2021 and absolutely nothing to do with history of mankind since Eve took a bite out of the forbidden fruit.

Whitefire my mum's homemade ones were the best. I don't like mince pies much, but cage ones with as little pastry as possible are better.

@Flowerpotsnake
gender ideology is interesting as a thought experiment

Look at the push to change language because changing a word really has no consequence.
Right?

Why not make small changes?

transwoman and women
becomes
trans women and women
becomes
trans women and cis women

Women is the "Gender" class
Cis women are a sub-class who's rights are shared by males who identify as women.

What implication has that for the sex class women?

Ireland is an example of where the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) allows a woman(female) to be legally recognised as a man(male). Anyone over 16 can obtain a Gender Recognition Cert (GRC).

The GRA also recognised two different gender roles for women and men, but like many law which was poorly written will need the Courts decide what these roles are or are not.

Females obtain the lawful rights/ recognition of a "man" and "loose" the lawful rights/ recognition that "women" have.

Prisons are not "safespaces" but historic numbers indicate women are less likely to be held for violent crime.

The Irish prison system is split by sex, only legal females can be lawfully housed in the female system.

Limerick prison has 28 female spaces; Dublin 147 including a mother and baby unit.

At least two biological males, with GRC's were in the female system (Limerick) in late 2020. Both presented a GRC in Court to ensure they were sent to the Female service.

Extracts: www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40352726.html

"The report said both women were subject to Rule 63 of the Irish Prison Rules 2007, which relates to vulnerable prisoners who may be at risk from other prisoners or who might pose a risk to other inmates."

Both would likely be under the same rule in the male system, one due to the nature of the conviction, the other as a danger to inmates and prison officers.

The inspection team said solitary confinement “causes psychological harm” to people in prison.
It's actually recognised as a form of torture. Inmates provide "involuntary" social interactions and mental stimulation to other inmates.

"The women raised concerns that when searches were being conducted a male officer was present in addition to a female officer," it said, adding that a small number of prison officers referred to them as "he/him".

In this situation female employees are expected to ignore safeguarding rules which are designed to protect the prisoner and the employee.
One of these two male prisoners had to be managed only by male officers in the children's service due to the very serious risk posed to women.

Given that precedent females who are lawfully male could only be lawfully held in the male prison system. To avoid this females with a GRC would be obliged to conceal their legal sex from the Court.

What about other legislation?

Most existing legislation for sex specific healthcare is written as either womens or mens care.

So it would be lawful to refuse a female/GRC male State funded medical care if its funding provision is for women. While the public system /HCP will continue to provide care, the individual involved is "defrauding" the State.

Even though the Abortion act came into existence after the GRA males can't obtain lawfully abortions either. It was either forgotten (unlikely with all the women who claim that TRA's were vital in getting the law passed) or TM were ignored. Now Mother and woman are in the Consitution so I suspect that the Court would decide that birthing new citizens is a "gender role" for women.

How about adding "women and those who hold a GRC" to single sex provision?

No rather to avoid this "problem" and support "Gender identity" a new act to provide free period products will be for a "persons need" or the longer definition "reference to a person's need for period products arising from menstruation".

So the first hurdle around the provision of (appropriate) period product would be to prove a woman is still bleeding. The State would have the right to examine the "evidence".

Using "people and function" laws carries a real risk that some women are accidently excluded from legislation rather than being ignored for political reasons.

It's like you think this generation have invented gender non-conformity.

Adult human females have been gender non-conforming for a long time. Some of us go by the label feminist, others don't both with a label.

I can't think of a single woman (female) in my life that absolutely conforms to gender roles or stereotypes. Some may do a bit. But a lot don't at all.

Two points

1. It doesn't make us any less women (female). We aren't men or in-between.
2. We are still affected by our female biology and society's treatment of women (females) and we cannot identify out of our oppression.

It's this mass miscalculation and misclassification that people creating this new terminology have made that most other people, Muggles if you will are happily fulfilling the gender role assigned with their observed sex at birth.

Men (males) might be slightly more rigidly conforming because of homophobia, but even then, the men and boys I know well aren't at all stereotypical men.

I don't know what made you or the people coming up with the idea that gender roles are followed by most people but so don't think it survives contact with real human beings who have a huge variety of personalities, presentations, preferences, careers, hobbies etc and have either male or female bodies.

I have my own guesses that it isn't a coincidence that this movement has gained such popularity amongst people who were babies and young children at a time where clothes and toys were highly coded by gender. I wonder if it has made that generation feel that gender is somehow super salient to their lives. Whilst they are also being told that sex is less relevant because women have the vote and equal pay etc.

I'm not that much older (36) but old enough to have had children and experience the biological realities of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding and note some of the sexual inequalities that still exist.

Back on point. Those identifying the majority of women as cis have made a mistake in mapping most women's lives into the new paradigm.

If I was compelled to identify my personality through the gender version of the horoscope/enneagram/Hogwarts house/Myers Briggs then it wouldn't be Cis.

It would be agender/no gender/undefined.

Which is under the umbrella of non-binary, which is under the umbrella of trans. Transwomen are identifying as something many women reject.

The binary in terms of gender identity (as opposed to biological sex) really doesn't exist. Because gender is bullshit and feminists consciously reject it but even when people don't think about it a lot, they usually have aspects of their personalities/interests/hobbies/careers which are not rigidly conforming to the traditional gender role associated with their sex. Because we are all human and these things are just part of the human experience whether they are traditionally associated with men or women.

The people who seem most keen on traditional gender roles and stereotypes seem to be those who identify into them rather than have them imposed on them.

Which probably alludes to how important it is for humans to feel self directed and free. It feels freeing for a transwomen to chose to conform to opposite sex stereotypes, but that doesn't make performing feminity liberating for natal females.

@Fukuraptor great post.

And it’s an old point but worth repeating for the “youth” generation who think they have invented “gender nonconformity”: because gender roles are social, they change a lot over time, and in complex ways. Almost all women today are “gender nonconforming” compared to some gender expectations of the 1970s or 1980s or earlier. Some gender roles from 1980 involve women staying at home and deferring to their husbands and being expected to like cooking and be naturally maternal and sexually available; on the other hand, in 1980 a woman or girl could have short hair, wear no makeup, play with Star Wars Lego, wear unisex jeans and a t-shirt and not shave her armpits and still not be thought of as somehow “unwomanly” or “not girly”.

And as we regularly point out, there are plenty of gendered social expectations that transwomen really do not seem to want to adopt - like being paid less, overlooked at work, expected to defer to men in a meeting, smile or speak in a low voice, and apologise first for having an opinion with lots of nice hedging words to seem less “angry”.

The idea that all we need is “self-determination” and “autonomy” seems to believe in this fallacy of an internal “gender essence”. Whereas socially constructed gender is constructed by other people. Trying to pretend it is all internal and everything will be great as long as you force people to use the pronouns you want is laughable naïveté.

Just why is it not acceptable to have some exclusively female only spaces in these circumstances? Why do you have no empathy for them? Because it hurts trans women? Okay, then why is trans women’s hurt so much more important than cis women’s? Why are you prioritising them in this way, because as long as there is also provision for trans women (and I would argue that trans women’s experiences of male violence are not the same as cis women’s because they’re not female, so I don’t see, apart from at best a sense of validation, at worst something rather darker, what they actually have to gain from that).

This piece is one of the best things I've read on this question. It doesn't pull any punches, and it refers to violence including sexual violence, just to make people aware.

https://medium.com/@kittyit/on-hurting-trans-women-a4a0ef1ef8d4

And unsurprisingly, not only have we still not got an answer on what JKR said that was transphobic (sending you best wishes on your ongoing vigil, Arabella #youmustbefreezing) but 'sex is a spectrum' is being stated as fact by posters who seem unable/unwilling to post the links to the evidence.

It would be hilariously awful if the ramifications for this bullshit weren't so wide reaching and detrimental to women.

Sorry that was directed to Flowerpotsnake but the Medium piece I linked is well worth anyone's time.

Trans ideology said: these male people are not men. They are just like you. If you think of or treat these people as men (or male), you are actively contributing to the oppression, suicide, and murder of the most vulnerable women alive, trans women. By the way, this includes thinking of any of their (male-patterned) behavior as male, being uncomfortable in any way, or not immediately and enthusiastically including them in your lesbian sexuality. I took it to heart, and that’s how I ended up in that hot car, stroking my trans girlfriend’s long hair, knowing that this couldn’t be a truly abusive situation, because the power dynamics between a dfab trans person and a trans woman wouldn’t allow it.
I hurt trans women. I hurt trans women when I name them as male people. I hurt trans women when I talk about the trans women who abused me. I hurt trans women when I talk about how the ideology of trans activism is fundamentally woman-hating. I hurt trans women when I talk about how male people identifying as lesbians is inherently lesbian-hating. I hurt trans women when I talk about the trans women who rape and murder. I hurt trans women when I won’t change my mind. I hurt trans women when I won’t shut my mouth about how trans women hurt me. I hurt trans women. I do.
But what about my pain? What about female pain? Can you answer? Did you hear me? Hello?

Yo, if trans women are women then what is a woman? How do we know that trans women are women if we don’t know what women are? Trans women are what exactly? 🤣

Ffs you TRAs are tedious in your idiocy.

The gender non-conforming thing has always amused me.

I'm a woman, I always have been.

But I'm not "girly", I wear dungarees and boots, I don't wear much make up, I'm not into dressing up, beautifying etc.

However when I've come across transwomen (random links to subreddits) they seem to either be going for the mini skirt and cleavage look, are in floral granny dresses and pearls, or are in bondage gear.

Im not even sure what transwomen think a woman is, or what would make you one.

I always simply regarded a woman as someone with a vagina, regardless of whether they're dressed like me in scruffy dungarees.

What is a woman if it's not women's chromosomes and genitalia?

Women have to exist as a definable 'discrete' group for transwomen to have something to want to imitate. If women are called cis women, then transwomen are further away from the discrete group, as now women have a word that essentially means real.

Anyone can pretend, but only women are women.

Why does any adult have to participate in anyone else's game of I-can-say-who-I-am, and I-can-say-who-you-are-too. It's like going to the birthday party of a spoiled child who is allowed to win every prize and eat all the cake and cry if all the other children don't clap loudly enough.

So basically to reduce sexes to biology is reductive and tantamount to abuse, but reducing your sex/gender (as they seem to be fully interchangeable now!) to what you want to look like and what toilets you want to use is brave and stunning??

I get that personality is vital and everyone should be able to define who they are but defining our biology is essential too, whether you like the biology nature has dealt you or not. Nobody seems to be objecting to 'bioessentialism' in any other areas, strange that isn't it? I don't see any transpeople kicking off that buses aren't designed for those of us that identify as sea creatures or that signs are written/audio described in human language rather than dolphin clicks.

That's exactly what it is, Princess.

@Drivingish
furry and friends is whole different "space" 😮 😳😳

[quote SolasAnla]@Drivingish
furry and friends is whole different "space" 😮 😳😳[/quote]
Lol, true, I probably shouldn't be giving anyone ideas about animal-identifying spaces

The fact remains that what she's advocating for – the complete exclusion of trans women from women's spaces – is inherently transphobic.

Well, there you go ladies. NOTHING your safety or dignity could possibly want or need can happen without you being transphobic. As we have been saying for years. Nice to have it so openly, almost gleefully, confirmed.

And all intersex people are affected by your bioessentialist definitions of gender.

I don't get that. It ignores what many groups and individuals of people with DSDs have been saying for years. It just tramples all over their rights too.

Almost as if the ONLY people with the right to decide who they are is transwomen - transmen not having been staunchly defended anywhere by @Wavedancer99.

Gender meaning the categories of "man" and "woman".

You mean masculine and feminine. You can't unilaterally re-write the dictionary and all physical sciences. You can act as though you have, but most people will look askance at you.

You only confuse your message when you do that. Make yourself unintelligible!

I don't think anyone is frightened of trans people. As ever it is the male predators who hide like a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Letting unknown sheep in with other sheep risks letting a wolf in too.

Sad we have to keep coming back to that, isn't it?

It is that stark lack of perception, understanding, that causes the probem in the first place.

It shouldn't need saying. Let alone it shouldn't be possible to ignore it, to drive a bulldozer through the laws that protect any vulnerable group, of safeguarding etc.

And yet, this is where we are!