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!

@FemmeNatal I think you may have missed my meaning somewhat. Or do you mean that you are only interested in feminist issues that affect well off white women? FGM, forced marriage, not of interest to you?

In the case of this board banning you it doesn’t actually make any sense. For example, black people aren’t the only people shot by the police, but police brutality falls disproportionately on the black community. We recognize all lives matter as a derail because we know it’s important for black people to specifically name oppression. People can also talk about other groups and make a hashtag for that.

Abortion overwhelmingly affects women. Women’s Rights Matter captures the issue for the majority. People are also free to make “nonbinary abortion access matters” hashtags too presumably, but acknowledging that women are the majority of those affected shouldn’t be a problem.

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
It wasn't the OP who put in something divisive. This issue only affects members of the female sex who until very recently had a name " women" ; a name which they are no longer allowed to use in the context of female biology because it upsets male people who identify as women and feel excluded. All the other people had to say was could you add us to this hashtag.

Sorry forgot to bold Mishy's quote.

Oh, they’ll raise FGM or forced marriage when it’s convenient to be used for their argument about women’s oppression, but then if women from those cultures also say “yes, we care about this issue but also about having our hijab ripped off in public, or being screamed at for our accent or not speaking English, or being sterilized in an ICE detention facility, or having a maternal death rate 10s of times the rates of white women” that’s a “hobby horse” and offensive.

I've had an argument on insta with someone about this whataboutery as well. Really pisses me off. Identities and pronouns don't mean jack shit when women die because they are denied abortions.

You seem to be suggesting in your final paragraph that women of colour aren't women? WTAF?

Some people just reflexively have to virtue signal. Father's Day has now become 'virtue signal about people without fathers' day, where people flash their moral superiority and kindness using other people's tragedies rather than actually speak with any genuine care or discretion, and without care for trashing the day and the people who do value that day in many ways. It's the keeping up with the Jones's in the modern liberal age.

And there's unfortunately also the Blair strategy beloved of his days in power: if there is any publicity, public attention, strength of feeling, interest, emotion, grab it by inserting yourself in there and benefit from it. Rather like he did his best to do with the Queen Mother's funeral. This is what you get from cold corporate capitalism without conscience.

Abortion overwhelmingly affects women. Women’s Rights Matter captures the issue for the majority. People are also free to make “nonbinary abortion access matters” hashtags too presumably, but acknowledging that women are the majority of those affected shouldn’t be a problem.

Exactly👆

You did nothing divisive OP. It is very much in the interests of those who wish to strip women of our rights, to divide us into ever smaller disparate groups rather than understand ourselves as one sex class which comprises 51% of the population.

And yes, my “hobby horse” is knowing accurate feminist history and not propagating ahistorical and false myths about organizing and social movements that don’t help us to organize collectively in the present. I was simply responding to the idea that “Suffragettes included all women” which really isn’t true for the whole movement, and it’s important we actually tell women’s history accurately especially since it’s so erased and ignored. Without understanding that past we end up in a present where some women still can’t manage to think about the place of women who aren’t white in women’s movements. We aren’t taught these histories so it’s important to talk about them when it arises.

I mean that suggesting that I need to also campaign on racism or the class system is imbecilic.

If they are what you care about that’s fine, but maybe stop trying to tell others that they are doing it wrong if they have different priorities to you?

No, I’m not giving up “women’s rights” because some people want to identify out of being women. I’m not talking about “reproductive rights” or “abortion rights”. They’re women’s rights. Women are being treated as if they don’t matter on a number of fronts, and we need to say so.

Charming language there, 'imbecilic', delightful. And it wasn't what I was saying at all, but perhaps your hobby horse is picking fights online so let's not let what was actually said get in the way of a row.

And yes, my “hobby horse” is knowing accurate feminist history and not propagating ahistorical and false myths about organizing and social movements that don’t help us to organize collectively in the present. I was simply responding to the idea that “Suffragettes included all women” which really isn’t true for the whole movement, and it’s important we actually tell women’s history accurately especially since it’s so erased and ignored. Without understanding that past we end up in a present where some women still can’t manage to think about the place of women who aren’t white in women’s movements. We aren’t taught these histories so it’s important to talk about them when it arises.

A very important point, especially in this context, as it is the same women who are suffering disproportionately from transgender issues. In the USA it is poor women, often WOC, who are being forced to share homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters etc with male people. They are also more likely to be incarcerated and have to share cells, showers etc with male offenders. Ignoring the fact that some women are more marginalised than others only helps the Patriarchy.

There were also amazing, ahead of their time women who organized - UK women who boycotted sugar and understood that what they bought for the household was supporting slavery (every grain of sugar a drop of blood.) That experience taught women they had purchasing power and many of the tactics learned in the slavery abolition movement by women - petitions, boycotts - were used in the suffragette movement as well. Women in Manchester factories recognized the cotton they wove came from plantations and they understood working class white women had solidarity with enslaved people through their exploited labour. Women recognized they were patriarchal property in marriage and tied that to slavery. And so forth. There’s a long history of feminist organizing in solidarity with other movements!

Can't we use woman and explain that we mean sex, not gender?

Well said

This post has sent me off on some very interesting searches on Google - thank you!

If we can't have a name for the group whose rights are threatened, how are we going to mobilise around the issue? This is not just about erasing all the names for the female sex in some woke abortion discussions, it's about all the issues where oppression is based on sex. Sex-selective abortions, FGM, sexual trafficking (where most of the victims are female), son preference in many cultures, religious rules limiting women's and girls' lives based on sex and so on.

Without a clear name for the targets of sexism and misogyny, data collection and analysis and even debate will be difficult and confusing and that benefits those on the other side.

Also, I am a woman because I inhabit a female body and that has affected my life both directly and indirectly. When someone decides that 'woman' is an abstract gender identity instead, my gender identity, in a loose sense, is erased and invalidated. So the new inclusiveness excludes many people of my kind.

As a related thing: I got an email advertising a livestream conversation about Roe v. Wade, and it includes this sentence:

Women of color, those facing economic hardships, and queer and trans people who need abortions are likely to lose the most with this decision.

This is an interesting example of piggybacking, in my view. to add "queer and trans people who need abortions" to the two overlapping groups (woc and the poor) who, indeed, are likely to lose the most. It's interesting that inclusiveness quite often now doesn't mean just to include some groups but to center them.

I can't see how the overturning of Roe has any greater impact on queer or trans people who need abortions than it does to women, in general, who need abortions.

I can see a better case for arguing the reverse, i.e., that it is going to affect queer and trans people much, much less.

That's because even if we exclude those queer and trans people who have penises, the remaining group still consists of a much higher percentage of female people who cannot get pregnant due to having had hysterectomy, being on testosterone or being in a sexual relationship with another person who also doesn't have a penis.

In 2017 only 0.06% of legal abortions performed in the US were on people who didn't identify as women.

In fact, as I am writing this I start getting angry about the wholesale erasure of the actual target group in the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

I agree that statistically LGBT +folx are much less likely to even get pregnant let alone seek an abortion, Men can't get pregnant for starters. But...they seem to get whatever they ask for unlike women so perhaps leave them at it.

Trans are going to be pretty much the least affected. Trans women can’t get pregnant, and trans men tend supposedly trying to live “as” men, so won’t tend to choose to, and many are on a cocktail,or hormones that mean that they can’t.

It’s like when the Guardian tried to claim that women were the group most affected by COVID despite it killing twice as many men.

This is what I thought. And the numbers of intersex people are tiny. Even the numbers of non-binary people must be relatively small overall. It infuriates me that, yet again, women have to share their space. Even on a bloody Peloton tag!

You've completely missed the point (and anyway I believe I was somewhat quoting a statement), or perhaps you're just seeking to be outraged?

Of course women of colour are women. That's not in doubt. There are female sex workers and female non-binary too.

My issue is that to say that this is a women's issue is already an inclusive statement, we don't need to divide that group up into smaller groups, and then campaign for each subset of that group. Stronger together. Not divide and conquer.