Roe V Wade - intersex, binary and trans

[Dahliasaremyfavouriteflower]

I was on a US site yesterday (Peloton). People use 'tags', for example Black Lives Matters, to raise awareness, I guess, and so you're a member of a group allied with your values. Someone suggested #womensrightsmatter which many people thought was a great idea (including me). Then a poster chipped in saying: let's not forget that trans, intersex and binary people have the right to safe abortions, too. I said that could we not just focus on women on this one, awful day. I promptly got banned (also politely objected to the use of the word cis).

Did I do an awful thing? I want every one to have access to safe abortion and, yes, I suppose people in these groups may also need abortions. But is it really wrong to centre women for once? Not least because how the hell would you meaningfully get all those categories into one tag!

No not an awful thing. I probably would have ignored the whataboutery responses and not got into a discussion about it. Precisely because there's "no debate" allowed and womens rights are treated as conditional.

Have you been banned from the whole site or just one section?

I think that's what I should do next time. The whole site. They called me homophobic! I'm really not.

The Suffragette movement had all sorts of different women, with different viewpoints and backgrounds all focused on one ideal, unified under one banner.

This movement seems to be too focused on splitting one group into lots of individual groups, trying to fight for one individual issue (although I suspect that they may try to hijack it).

We saw the same in regards to Reclaim the Streets, the founders then had to put out a statement that it wasn't just about women, but trans, non-binary, intersex, sex workers, women of colour etc.

I think the thing is you put in something divisive that is away from the issue of Roe v Wade and its implications for all women, and those who also have women anatomy. Roe v Wade is the first step to winding back a lot of rights for people to conservative values. Its this lack of inclusiveness of difference that the conservative supreme court is forcing. Go on to a board and not being inclusive, then Im not surprised a ban came. The main issue is the lack of my body my choice rights for everyone and state regulatory oversight to conservative values.

Yes, that's a fair point. I was very much seeing it from a female perspective, not what it's perceived to mean in terms of wider implications.

Yes, would agree with this. Every group has to be seen to be included.

This is the trouble with the genderists co-opting the sex based word woman.
You can be whatever gender you want, but only female sexed women/girls will ever need abortions.

If we cannot view abortion from a female perspective without apologising for it then quite frankly we are stuffed.

That's exactly it, isn't it?

I agree. I don't think this is the right fight on this particular issue at this particular moment.

Something* like #abortionrights* would be more pertinent

The word for people who are adults with female anatomy are “women.”

It is only women (and girls) who can conceive. Not men. “Woman” encompasses every adult who is able to bear children.

Which trans, intersex and non-binary people do abortion rights impact?
The female sex ones, previously known as women.

So what is the inclusive word for people that have a uterus and may end up bearing a child in that uterus some day? That word used to be woman, and it covered trans, non binary and all other categories of people with a uterus, plus people who may once have had a uterus but don't any more. You're taking a word with a clear meaning, turning it into something completely different (a woman is anyone who feels like a woman and not anyone who doesn't feel exactly like a woman, how vague) and not coming up with a useful, useable alternative.

If you're looking at it in a BLM context, you don't need a massive, long hashtag that incorporates all non white ethnic groups because its understood that perceived 'blackness' by racist oppressors is the cause of the oppression, not the specifics of identification (as important as that is). In the case of Roe v Wade, the courts don't give a flying fuck how the person needing an abortion identifies, they know full well that only biological women need abortions and our sex is the basis of our oppression. You bet your ass if Brett Kavanaugh could get pregnant he would have ruled otherwise.

The Suffragette movement didn’t have all women included at all. In the U.S., there was very specific rhetoric that votes for white women were necessary to shore up white political power against free black men. The whole point of the Ain’t I A Woman speech is that black women weren’t included. Many U.S. suffragettes were also extremely classist, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic etc.

Some Suffragettes in the UK came out of the slavery abolition movement and recognized connections with black women, others were explicitly imperialist and colonial. In Canada, Indigenous women were denied the vote. Many saw women with disabilities or poor women as contaminating society. And so on and so on. There is a long documented history of the racism and at times Eugenicist leanings of many suffragettes including those who were otherwise left wing.

It does no good to insist that “unity” of women requires black women or anyone else to shut up about racism. Too often on this board and elsewhere, there’s an idea that talking about the multiple ways we experience oppression is divisive, but people have no answer for what women who also experience racism, anti-immigrant sentiment etc that also shapes our lives are supposed to do. Suggesting it’s “purity politics” for black women to not be cool, for example, with white right wing men who also advocate for us to be deported, or replacement theory, or support police who murder us or ban the teaching of our history isn’t some academic matter - it’s easy for some white women who aren’t affected to dismiss these as less important issues but that’s not the case for women who actually live out these realities and experience all these oppressions. This mythical past where people didn’t talk about identity only works for those not living in those identities.

You can never have anything exclusively aimed at women without what about happening

Ovarian Cancer? What about trans etc

Testicular cancer however is still men only thing.

There's no need to apologise for considering a womens rights issue from a womens point of view, and it certainly shouldn't mean being banned from a site, fgs. The response you got was intolerant and hostile, unsurprising given the way trans issues dominate online discussion forums.

I'm sorry this happened to you op but, as far as I'm concerned, anyone who cannot or will not recognise that only women need abortions is going to be a liability in this battle. I would cut your losses with this group and move on.

Feminism and anti-racism ought to be linked very closely. The abortion ban, as well as poor maternity rights, the pay gap, and many other feminist issues will have the greatest effect on women of colour.
www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/women-of-color-end-of-roe/

But surely, with a hashtag 'women's rights matter', it was the person who brought in gender identities that put in the divisive thing, not OP?

They banned you because they could. Others who think the same will now stay silent and your views will harden and become entrenched.

Only women need abortions.

And girls of course

No thanks. You campaign for what you want, but you don’t get to tell others that they have to get on your hobby horse too.

Very interesting to read and digest all of this. Many thanks. What I hate, most of all, is the way you can't express an opinion that's different to 'the one right way' without being banned. It's happened on quite a few groups now. I'm pretty polite and considered in my responses.

All lives matter right? FFS