Page 31 | Can MNHQ set up a new discussion category called Feminism: sex & gender discussion (inclusive, non-GC)

PlanetLuna · 2023-04-04T13:59:27+00:00

MN, will you please create a talk group/category of Feminism: sex & gender discussion (inclusive, non-GC)? MN appears to currently have only 2 feminism categories: Feminism: chat Feminism: sex & gender discussions But the Feminism: sex & gender category on MN is predominantly GC, with its emphasis on trans exclusion ideology. Feminists who do not subscribe to those beliefs are often unwelcome and treated with derision and hostility in discussions. Certainly not always as some GC posters do enjoy open, intellectual discussions but often enough that engagement can be toxic & intimidating all around. It is almost impossible for non-GC feminists to find inclusive/non-GC feminist discussions, and we have to wade through unpleasant (for us) GC threads while attempting to do so. GC feminism dominates on UK parenting sites in particular. However, inclusive/non-GC feminism is extremely popular around the world (especially in places like the US, NZ, and AU) and in the UK among younger feminists and those who do not see trans rights as a threat to women & girls’ safety. Many UK feminists are non-GC but may feel silenced on MN. The addition of another category will help open up and improve MN discussions while reducing the toxicity and hostility that many feminists on both sides experience in discussions. So I propose the following feminism discussion categories: Feminism: chat (general) Feminism: sex & gender discussions (GC) Feminism: sex & gender discussion (inclusive, non-GC) {mention:MNHQ}

OneMorePlant · 05/04/2023 12:48

EmotionalSupportHyena · 05/04/2023 12:14

I hear Reddit is welcoming?

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Reddit hates women so they will feel right at home.

Brefugee · 05/04/2023 12:54

What do you do if your kid is distressed because they don't think they fit the stereotypes well enough. Seems to me the kindest best and most honest answer is screw the stereotypes you're perfect just as you are and don't need to live up anyone's ideas of what men/women have to be like.

welcome to 2nd wave feminism. How are we still at this? I've been at this for 40+ years. And we are still getting the Gender Stereotype Bollocks. I could scream

SinnerBoy · 05/04/2023 12:58

@howdoesatoastermaketoast

Seems to me the kindest best and most honest answer is screw the stereotypes you're perfect just as you are and don't need to live up anyone's ideas of what men/women have to be like.

That's my opinion, but you've put it more eloquently than I could have.

Whatsnewpussyhat · 05/04/2023 13:06

What do you do if your kid is distressed because they don't think they fit the stereotypes well enough. Seems to me the kindest best and most honest answer is screw the stereotypes you're perfect just as you are and don't need to live up anyone's ideas of what men/women have to be like

Well yes, exactly.

The only group who need the restrictive, sexist stereotypes are the genderists, because without having these to mimic as 'proof' of their inner gender feelings, the entire ideology becomes utterly meaningless.

howdoesatoastermaketoast · 05/04/2023 13:13

@Brefugee indeed I feel your pain, when I first had my long hair cut off my dad said I looked like a boy, whilst my friends thought that that was a very old fashioned attitude. When my daughter got her hair cut short it felt like it was her friends who thought she looked like a boy whilst I was the one who thought that that was a very old fashioned attitude.

RealityFan · 05/04/2023 13:27

ArabellaScott · 05/04/2023 10:31

IDK, AIBU to NGAF? DP is a CF and my DCs told me to FOTTFSOFATFOSM.

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All that's needed...
TRA? FFS!

raspberrywine · 05/04/2023 14:13

howdoesatoastermaketoast · 05/04/2023 13:13

@Brefugee indeed I feel your pain, when I first had my long hair cut off my dad said I looked like a boy, whilst my friends thought that that was a very old fashioned attitude. When my daughter got her hair cut short it felt like it was her friends who thought she looked like a boy whilst I was the one who thought that that was a very old fashioned attitude.

That reminds me of when I had my hair cropped. I got called skinhead by a few people. A sign of the times.

EmotionalSupportHyena · 05/04/2023 14:24

howdoesatoastermaketoast · 05/04/2023 13:13

@Brefugee indeed I feel your pain, when I first had my long hair cut off my dad said I looked like a boy, whilst my friends thought that that was a very old fashioned attitude. When my daughter got her hair cut short it felt like it was her friends who thought she looked like a boy whilst I was the one who thought that that was a very old fashioned attitude.

I got so fed up of this regressive sexists shite coming into my house from school/ TV/ internet that I (very theatrically) chopped my mid back length hair off with the kitchen scissors and demanded my three kids (then aged 9, 15 & 21) start calling me ‘dad’.

Seems to have cured them of their nonsense 😉

(Currently have a short 1920s style bob - I miss my hair but it was worth the sacrifice)

RedToothBrush · 05/04/2023 14:33

Non GC are welcome to debate and get involved in discussion on the feminism sections.

The clue here is 'discuss and debate'.

Setting up an echochamber where one view or another view are 'not allowed' is neither helpful nor workable.

There are plenty of other places on the internet where the focus is on non GC views too.

howdoesatoastermaketoast · 05/04/2023 14:33

@EmotionalSupportHyena made me chortle thanks

Eyerollcentral · 05/04/2023 17:30

EmotionalSupportHyena · 05/04/2023 14:24

I got so fed up of this regressive sexists shite coming into my house from school/ TV/ internet that I (very theatrically) chopped my mid back length hair off with the kitchen scissors and demanded my three kids (then aged 9, 15 & 21) start calling me ‘dad’.

Seems to have cured them of their nonsense 😉

(Currently have a short 1920s style bob - I miss my hair but it was worth the sacrifice)

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Ha ha ha ha absolutely brilliant. I also love a 20s bob. Gold star

Nellodee · 05/04/2023 17:37

My understanding of the phrase “paternalistic feminism” is that some feminism paints men as offenders and women as weak and in need of protecting from the nasty mens. I think of this view as Buffy feminism, and it would be great if we were all kick ass vampire slayers like her. Unfortunately, men ARE the offenders (not all men blah blah blah) and women ARE weaker (probably even most of the ones who think they’re not) and none of us are chosen ones.
I could have misinterpreted the phrase, but that’s my take on it.

IwantToRetire · 05/04/2023 17:39

Bad faith is the action of a person hiding the truth from him/herself. That "the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know the truth, in my capacity as [the] deceiver, though [the truth] is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived"; thus, in the praxis of bad faith, "I must know that truth very precisely, in order to hide it from myself the more carefully — and this not at two different moments of temporality."

People hold false beliefs despite being aware that their false beliefs are contradicted by the facts of external reality; thus those beliefs are held in bad faith towards one's Self.

howdoesatoastermaketoast · 05/04/2023 18:27

@nellodee I think you've got the right of it there.

Waitwhat23 · 05/04/2023 18:39

Nellodee · 05/04/2023 17:37

My understanding of the phrase “paternalistic feminism” is that some feminism paints men as offenders and women as weak and in need of protecting from the nasty mens. I think of this view as Buffy feminism, and it would be great if we were all kick ass vampire slayers like her. Unfortunately, men ARE the offenders (not all men blah blah blah) and women ARE weaker (probably even most of the ones who think they’re not) and none of us are chosen ones.
I could have misinterpreted the phrase, but that’s my take on it.

I once saw an interesting discussion about Buffy feminism which focused around the episode 'Helpless' where Buffy's strength and skills are reduced to those of an ordinary person as part of a test. She becomes very aware of how it feels to be vulnerable when her supernatural powers are taken from her.

Eyerollcentral · 05/04/2023 18:48

Makes sense. Does come across that the OP is quite young with limited experience of real life. I could be wrong but that’s certainly the kind of guff only a young woman or certainly a very naive one could come out with. I wonder how much the refusal to acknowledge the physical strength of men vs women plays in to the belief that men can be women.

Mummyoflittledragon · 05/04/2023 20:19

I’m still trying to chomp to the end of this thread. But the association of GC feminism with Nazism is ludicrous. The 3 pillars of Nazi ideology is the antipathy of feminism.

Kinder
Küche
Kirche

Children, kitchen, church. That’s supposedly what women were / are good for. No woman calling herself a feminist believes she’s on this earth just to go to church, cook and produce copious offspring… and most feminists don’t believe in the big man in the sky!

RosaBonheur · 05/04/2023 22:55

I already said this upthread but if you're turning up to a peaceful women's rights event wearing balaclavas and armed with weapons, ready to commit acts of violence against women who are just speaking about their own rights, you ARE the Nazis.

haXXor · 06/04/2023 03:24

Nellodee · 05/04/2023 17:37

My understanding of the phrase “paternalistic feminism” is that some feminism paints men as offenders and women as weak and in need of protecting from the nasty mens. I think of this view as Buffy feminism, and it would be great if we were all kick ass vampire slayers like her. Unfortunately, men ARE the offenders (not all men blah blah blah) and women ARE weaker (probably even most of the ones who think they’re not) and none of us are chosen ones.
I could have misinterpreted the phrase, but that’s my take on it.

"Paternalistic feminism" is a slur used by misogynists in feminist clothing, aka "libfems", to silence and shame any feminist who states her recognition that men are stronger than women and hence we are more vulnerable than men are to being seriously harmed during violent assault and are more easily overpowered for the purposes of rape etc. They dishonestly conflate asserting "women are vulnerable" with claiming that "women need male protection", hoping that no one will notice the conflation of two very different statements. See also phrases like "victim feminism".

There was a TRA on Twitter called xyr2000, account now deleted, who asserted that women wanting single-sex prisons was based on the "patriarchal and misogynist" idea that women can't defend themselves against men. It takes a special kind of malice to state that and claim to be progressive. Of course we can't, especially if we are a 5% minority in a mixed prison!

The whole premise of materialist feminism is that we recognise the following:

Almost all women have what I've called in the past "an unpatchable security vulnerability between their legs", it's called a vagina and if a man puts his penis in there he can make us pregnant against our will. Importantly, no man has this vulnerability. The common male experience is that they cannot ever get pregnant, by force or choice.
Almost all men have a purpose-evolved intrusion tool/weapon between their legs, it's called a penis and it can be deployed to force a woman to be pregnant. Importantly, no woman has this weapon. The common female experience is that none of us can sire children, by force or by choice.
The two points above mean that women all lack the structural power over the opposite sex that comes from being part of the sex class that a) is likely to be able to use a body part to force a pregnancy on someone else, b) can use the fear of such a forced pregnancy (whether bluffing or otherwise) to intimidate members of the other sex class, and c) is immune to being forced into a pregnancy.
Men are generally stronger than women, exacerbating my first two points by making it easy for men to overpower women.
It takes a woman 40 weeks to gestate a baby, but a man can sire a baby in minutes. This makes the woman the rate limiter of reproduction and makes her uterus a valuable resource to be collected (e.g. harems), controlled, and exploited. This also makes an infertile woman broken and worthless because her uterus is not exploitable.
In societies where violence is used to seize and defend land, men become the land owners because they are stronger and so more able to fight.
When men own land, they want their sons to inherit, making each man want to prevent other men from using "his" woman/en's uterus(es) to sire children.
When nation states arise, the State now also wants to exploit women's uteruses to create future citizens. When the State thinks women have too few children, we get Romania's Decree 770. Too few, we get China's One Child Rule.
Corollary to the previous point: The freedom of individual women to be child-free is conditional on the State allowing it, which in turn is conditional upon other women having children in sufficient numbers to keep the State happy.

All the rest - the double standards for sexual behaviour, the restriction of women to the home, the wife battering, the abortion restrictions, the existance of porn and prostitution and how female porn performers and prostituted women are treated, the blaming of rape victims, even the different clothing expectations for the sexes and the punishment of cross-dressers - are all consequences of my points above.

In particular, realising that last bullet point went a long way towards obliterating my previous belief in the libfem "choice feminism" narratives, because I realised how little agency we all truly have. We aren't all isolated individuals living isolated lives making isolated decisions; our decisions are made under the influence of social, financial, etc pressures and coercion from the State, which made me question other narratives about the "choice" to turn to prostitution or pornographic performance.

Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you see it, you can never again regard transwomen as more oppressed than any human female, because they have known from birth that they cannot get pregnant and have not spent their lives being oppressed because of their assumed reproductive potential.

Plzdontaskmyname · 06/04/2023 03:26

suggestionsplease1 · 05/04/2023 01:59

You go for it, absolutely!

Then we can apply the same naive, layman and fallacious analysis to data on lesbian criminality, and we can have a brand new demographic to demonise!

Won't it be fun!

Are you asserting that lesbians commit approximately 100 times as many sexual assaults as straight women, like men do? That's a pretty extravagant claim. I'm very interested to see the data you are citing.

Frenchfancy · 06/04/2023 05:39

@haXXor . I think that is the best post I have ever read on MN. I am going to share it with my DDs.

EmotionalSupportHyena · 06/04/2023 07:32

Frenchfancy · 06/04/2023 05:39

@haXXor . I think that is the best post I have ever read on MN. I am going to share it with my DDs.

I agree! Put it on a separate thread so it doesn’t just get lost in here, please @haxxor?

Helleofabore · 06/04/2023 07:54

haXXor · 06/04/2023 03:24

"Paternalistic feminism" is a slur used by misogynists in feminist clothing, aka "libfems", to silence and shame any feminist who states her recognition that men are stronger than women and hence we are more vulnerable than men are to being seriously harmed during violent assault and are more easily overpowered for the purposes of rape etc. They dishonestly conflate asserting "women are vulnerable" with claiming that "women need male protection", hoping that no one will notice the conflation of two very different statements. See also phrases like "victim feminism".

There was a TRA on Twitter called xyr2000, account now deleted, who asserted that women wanting single-sex prisons was based on the "patriarchal and misogynist" idea that women can't defend themselves against men. It takes a special kind of malice to state that and claim to be progressive. Of course we can't, especially if we are a 5% minority in a mixed prison!

The whole premise of materialist feminism is that we recognise the following:

Almost all women have what I've called in the past "an unpatchable security vulnerability between their legs", it's called a vagina and if a man puts his penis in there he can make us pregnant against our will. Importantly, no man has this vulnerability. The common male experience is that they cannot ever get pregnant, by force or choice.
Almost all men have a purpose-evolved intrusion tool/weapon between their legs, it's called a penis and it can be deployed to force a woman to be pregnant. Importantly, no woman has this weapon. The common female experience is that none of us can sire children, by force or by choice.
The two points above mean that women all lack the structural power over the opposite sex that comes from being part of the sex class that a) is likely to be able to use a body part to force a pregnancy on someone else, b) can use the fear of such a forced pregnancy (whether bluffing or otherwise) to intimidate members of the other sex class, and c) is immune to being forced into a pregnancy.
Men are generally stronger than women, exacerbating my first two points by making it easy for men to overpower women.
It takes a woman 40 weeks to gestate a baby, but a man can sire a baby in minutes. This makes the woman the rate limiter of reproduction and makes her uterus a valuable resource to be collected (e.g. harems), controlled, and exploited. This also makes an infertile woman broken and worthless because her uterus is not exploitable.
In societies where violence is used to seize and defend land, men become the land owners because they are stronger and so more able to fight.
When men own land, they want their sons to inherit, making each man want to prevent other men from using "his" woman/en's uterus(es) to sire children.
When nation states arise, the State now also wants to exploit women's uteruses to create future citizens. When the State thinks women have too few children, we get Romania's Decree 770. Too few, we get China's One Child Rule.
Corollary to the previous point: The freedom of individual women to be child-free is conditional on the State allowing it, which in turn is conditional upon other women having children in sufficient numbers to keep the State happy.

All the rest - the double standards for sexual behaviour, the restriction of women to the home, the wife battering, the abortion restrictions, the existance of porn and prostitution and how female porn performers and prostituted women are treated, the blaming of rape victims, even the different clothing expectations for the sexes and the punishment of cross-dressers - are all consequences of my points above.

In particular, realising that last bullet point went a long way towards obliterating my previous belief in the libfem "choice feminism" narratives, because I realised how little agency we all truly have. We aren't all isolated individuals living isolated lives making isolated decisions; our decisions are made under the influence of social, financial, etc pressures and coercion from the State, which made me question other narratives about the "choice" to turn to prostitution or pornographic performance.

Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you see it, you can never again regard transwomen as more oppressed than any human female, because they have known from birth that they cannot get pregnant and have not spent their lives being oppressed because of their assumed reproductive potential.

Show quote history

Absolutely this.

There are some posters who post on FWR who try using the ‘you make women out to be victims‘ line and their arguments lack any conscious understanding of other women’s lives. It is bonkers when you see. Truly bonkers.

ArabellaScott · 06/04/2023 08:27

Absolutely excellent post, haxxor.

Oddly, I've heard similar points made by misogynist and abusive men.

They approve or at least accept that situation, and I guess the whole point if feminism is to uncover and reveal that system/dynamic as well as counter it.

Women are seen as livestock by many, whether they acknowledge that consciously or not.

EndlessTea · 06/04/2023 08:58

Thank you haxxor. This thread moved too fast for me to follow, but I would love to have that post pinned to the top of the feminist board. It could save us all so much time and tedium on FWR.