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!

You took a poster talking about racism, and particularly the racism faced by black women who have the double whammy of sexism and racism thrown at them.

And decided to go on about hobby horses, dismissing the issue as if you don’t care about it, and decided that the ideas that racism and classism are closely linked to feminism is imbecilic.

I don’t even think the poster was even suggesting you personally need to campaign about classism or racism. What an odd thing to go on a rant about

I'm just stating the obvious, something which always upsets those who don't want manipulation of language exposed. It's important to analyse how you use words, whose words you are using and how it has conditioned the way you think.

Oh the irony. I'm guessing that too is lost on you.

This is only true if you are of a very specific persuasion that believes that personhood begins at conception. If that's true for you, fair enough, but that's not true for lots and lots of people. An abortion isn't "someone dying" because there is no "someone" there. The possibility of a someone, certainly, but not an actual someone.

And "forced childbirth" is a perfectly reasonable term. If there is a possibility of terminating a pregnancy, and you are yet forced to continue it, bingo.

No because that hides that it is women who this is being done to. Yet again it is women who are controlled by others. We should not hide that bias.

The problem again is the conflation of gender and sex. Pregnancy gives not one fuck about your identity. Much like most people

Whose words are you using when you describe an embryo as a person?

For an abortion to be successful, someone always has to die.

How are you manipulating language?

It's obvious to most people that what you said above is bonkers.

Yep.

A woman can identify as non-binary/trans/whatever but she cannot identify out of being pregnant. That is the stark difference between sex and gender, and of course some people don't want language to reflect that.

"Safe abortion" means "safe for the woman who is having the abortion," not "safe for the fetus that is going to be aborted. " This is patently obvious to anyone who has two brain cells to rub together, so no, it is not "nonsensical," nor does it condition anyone to think a certain way. Obviously abortion is not safe for a fetus. Literally everyone knows this. It's not a fact that can be obscured or whitewashed.

You act as if "safe abortion" implies that the fetus doesn't die, when it implies no such thing. It's not talking about the fetus at all; it's talking about the woman. Because she's the important one here.

As for "forced to give birth," well...what else would you call it? If you want to abort your pregnancy but are prevented from doing so, then you are indeed being "forced to give birth."

Oh really? It is "obviously heinous" to perform a late-term abortion to save the mother's life? It is "obviously heinous" to do a late-term abortion on a fetus that is found to have such severe birth defects or congenital diseases that, were it to be born alive, it would have nothing to look forward to but a very short life filled with nothing but pain and suffering? That's "obviously heinous" to you?

I suspect you already know this, but late-term abortions are exclusively performed either to save the mother's life, or to prevent a doomed fetus from dying a slow and painful death. Women don't just arbitrarily decide to abort healthy pregnancies in the third trimester. It doesn't happen.

The worrying thing about this ideology is they’re very against the use of a word to describe females and female experiences. They talk about the differences between gender and sex but really they want woman and female to mean the same thing and by mean the same thing I mean whatever the person subjectively wants it to mean.

It’s ironic as it’s damaging to women and reflects the male dominance in this group which they seem unaware of - partially because you can’t use the words to describe it. Very Orwellian.

No, OP, you did nothing wrong.

If I were faced with is argument, particularly after reading this thread, I would probably say that criticizing #womenslivesmatter and wanting to add in trans and non-binary was dangerously like criticizing #blacklivesmatter and insisting on changing it to #alllivesmatter.

Some people lack empathy to the degree that they cannot see these parallels until they are smacked over the head with them.

I was going to respond to Hippopptamous’ ridiculous statement about the language of ‘forced to give birth’ but @Vagablond has already said it so well (love your name, btw).

There was actually a reason for most of this and it was a good one. When you take it out of context it sounds horrible on paper. But the fact is how does one back 70 years ago make progress for women's rights during a time that is hyper prejudiced? What exactly would your strategy be? Getting voting white men to buy into the idea of women making their own decisive was a HUGE ask during that time. They were already being laughed at for the very idea of wanting to go to vote, go to work or simply be their own person. If the suffragets did live up to modern expectations. Let's say they asked for the whole kitten kabuttal. Let's say they wanted black women to vote. Hell let's say they asked for gay marriage rights and trans women's rights! Do you think they would have made any progress and earned the right to vote as soon as they did?

One cannot move a mountain in a single day. But it is very convenient to take things out of context when they don't fit our narrative isn't it?

The stupid thing is that we could be using the word “female” instead of “women” to include everyone effected, as the former is unchangeable biological sex and the latter is a social construct- gender.

But you can’t do that either, bc it makes people too sad that they can’t be fully female, or many argue that they somehow morphed and now are.

Thank you! And yes, the correct response to people trying to claim that "feminism is for everyone" is, "Uh-huh! You're absolutely right! Feminism is for everyone! Just like how #AllLivesMatter!" accompanied by a withering smirk.

Anyone trying to claim that "feminism is for everyone" or "feminism isn't just for cis women" is AllLivesMattering feminism. And yet #AllLivesMatter is constantly criticized by the left, while female-centered feminism is considered "exclusionary."

The hypocrisy is an object lesson in feminism: women are literally the only marginalized demographic that is not allowed to campaign solely for our own interests. Disabled people, black people, Latinos, indigenous people, minority religions, people with severe psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, cancer patients/survivors, HIV/AIDS patients, and (most tellingly) trans people -- are all permitted to campaign for themselves without being criticized for "excluding" others in their activism.

Women are literally the ONLY group that is told they are Big Bad Meanies for centering themselves in their own activism.

Also watch how fast the passion for disability and minority religions and MH and survivors and homosexuals slams into reverse if the person with the characteristic is a female and a need has emerged that presents a boundary to a male.

It's so shallow you can crack it with a glance. This is the T Birds posing around with leather jackets being In The Cool Gang who are sooooo tolerant and aware as part of the image. There's not one single real value anywhere in it. Hell of a lot of sexism and male supremacism though. That's the value consistently being actually demonstrated in practice as opposed to a lot of performative hot air.

So they don’t even know what they are ‘defending’. They do know that women can be (gasp) gay?

idiotic knee jerk reaction.

Exactly