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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions
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nepeta · 18/06/2023 18:46

Kathryn appears not to have read much about this issue from the other side.

For instance, she doesn't prove that trans women, as a group, are less likely to assault women than men who never transitioned, as a group.

What evidence there actually is suggests that trans women do not differ from men, in general, in their criminality pattern, or might even be more likely to commit sexual assault (based on the prison data of percentages sentenced for various types of crimes).

She comes across as never having studied what the counterarguments might be (say, the many different types of transitioners), as never having stepped outside her ideological tent, and, overall, as being where many of us began our journey a decade or two ago (be kind, like a doormat).

Teaching her grandmother to suck eggs, in other words (where does that saying come from? I never knew any old women who sucked eggs).

RoyalCorgi · 18/06/2023 18:53

I have no patience with these people and their stupid arguments. If you don't define the terms "woman" and "man" according to biology, what's the point in even having the terms "woman" and "man" in the first place? They exist purely because, at the point at which humans developed language, they recognised that you needed words to distinguish between the two basic types of human: the type that gestated babies and the type that didn't. If we are going to pretend that that distinction is not important, then we simply don't need the words "woman" and "man".

What, after all, are the words "woman" and "man" going to refer to if not biology? You might as well divide the human race into people who have dark hair and people who have fair hair, or people who like dogs and people who don't like dogs. The whole thing is mind-numbingly stupid. I have difficulty believing that these people have been through some kind of education because they have the reasoning abilities of a fish.

nepeta · 18/06/2023 19:06

Also, what women share with other women and not men is the female body, the direct experiences that come with having that body, including the experiences of being treated as female by the societies in which they live. That includes being treated with sexism, misogyny and various types of discrimination.

Women have very different life experiences depending on their race, class, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation etc., but what we all share is what I tried to condense into the above paragraph.

BernardBlacksMolluscs · 18/06/2023 19:16

IcakethereforeIam · 18/06/2023 18:46

What she wrote when she tweeted the article. As though anything in it was original. She really need not have bothered. Heard it all before.

https://twitter.com/kathryn42/status/1670363928407187456?s=20

Thanks to all the GC people sharing my work! I'm not reading the QTs but cheers for the support I guess

mmm

better preserve that echo chamber eh Kathryn? 👍

MargotBamborough · 18/06/2023 19:18

Excluding anyone on the basis of biological difference demonstrates a spectacular failure of empathy; worse, it reduces women to their reproductive systems, which is surely something we should be trying to move on from.

I find this take utterly bizarre, even coming from someone with a DSD who may understandably feele excluded by definitions of womanhood which focus on potential childbearing.

"Woman" is just a word that means adult female human. It's the human equivalent of the word "doe" in deer.

Saying so doesn't make me feel "reduced" to my reproductive anatomy, it's just a simple statement of fact. There is far more to me than being a woman. In fact I would say that most things about me have nothing to do with a woman. You can be a doctor, a Muslim, a cat person, a Capricorn, an ENFP, Spanish, a swimmer or a West Ham fan and all of these things contribute to making you who you are but none of them have anything to do with being a man or a woman. The only thing being biologically female reduces you to is being part of the category of people who are not male.

If you want to define women as being something other than female, what is it?

Because if you're going to talk about dresses and makeup, or even being more likely to be a victim of sexual violence, well yeah, I find that extremely reductive, and not inclusive of all women or exclusive of all men.

And even if you think we need a word for all people who do not believe themselves to be men (which I personally don't think we need a word for) but that we don't need a word for all people who actually are biologically female, fine. But trying to stop people who actually are biologically female from having the words to describe themselves which do not include people who are biologically male is abusive.

With gender and sexuality becoming increasingly fluid, feminism should aim to be more inclusive rather than less: welcoming trans men and women as well as non-binary, queer, intersex and gender-nonconforming people. While it may be true that trans women do not have the exact same lived experience as cis women growing up, cis women do not know what it is like to grow up as a trans woman, to be born in the wrong body and experience transphobia.

Why is feminism the only social justice movement that is expected to include and centre others?

Trans people already have their own movements. They have their own trans rights movement. They've also hitched the T onto the LGB and pretty much taken over the gay rights movement. Why do they need feminism as well? Why does feminism need to include them?

I believe feminism should include all women, even those who don't believe they are feminists and those who don't believe they are women.

If a trans man has an unwanted pregnancy, should they be able to get an abortion?

Yes, of course. Therefore, feminism includes them.

Feminism can't be about either female people or people who identify as women if it is expected to include both trans women, who are male, and trans men, who are female but do not identify as women. If it is for and about female people, it doesn't include trans women. If it is for and about people who identify as women, it doesn't include trans men (except it does, because they are still affected by most of the issues feminism is concerned with).

So let's be honest here. When you say feminism should be inclusive of trans people, what you are really saying is that feminism is for both women and trans people (because everything must always be for trans people), and in the event of a conflict of rights between these two groups, you must prioritise the trans people.

That makes it, er, not feminism anymore.

PonyPatter44 · 18/06/2023 19:26

zibzibara · 18/06/2023 13:48

This is nonsense. There is nothing whatsoever that unites women and so-called "trans women".

Eyeliner, and a propensity for pillow fights. Silly....

SabrinaThwaite · 18/06/2023 19:43

Kathryn is so confident in her views that she’s hidden any replies that disagree.

Backstreets · 18/06/2023 19:52

Haha, spectacular failure of empathy. More like the handwaving away of safeguarding reveals a shocking failure of imagination and an innocence that would be touching if it wasn’t so dangerous.

Funny how women who want privacy away from men aren’t worthy of all that young idealistic empathy young women have in droves. That all goes to the bepenised special women they saw on Euphoria.

DamePickle · 18/06/2023 20:56

I think TBH the article speaks more to Kathryn's pain at her diagnosis than anything else. Kathryn, if you're reading this, I am one of the women you so casually mention. I've had a hysterectomy and oophorectomy thanks to endometriosis. I'm just as female as I was before. Just as female as you, in fact, because we both have conditions that only women can have. Yes, it hurts to be this way. What they took from me hurts me.

But it gives me nothing in common with healthy, intact, fertile males who wish they were women. Or any males who wish they were women regardless of what steps they've taken to change their appearance. It doesn't matter how much they want it. None of them have to deal with what you and I are dealing with.

Fighting to bring males into female only spaces won't fix things for women. Hurting women who feel reproductive biology matters by insisting that they're bad people if they don't accept males in female only spaces won't fix it. Accepting that the ability to get pregnant separates women from men doesn't mean that a woman who can't is sexless or unimportant or somehow less or that men should be allowed to do whatever they want.

Being female matters.

RealityFan · 18/06/2023 21:56

As Colin Wright talked about, those trying to obfuscate on the definition of women use edge-cases to say that exceptions "prove" there is no cast iron definition of women/being female.

And that they only use edge-cases because they fully know the definition of women...the very definition that edge-cases by definition are defined against.

You can't talk about edge-cases without first being fully aware how a woman is defined.

Rest assured, EVERY man and woman, trans, NB, transmaiden "feminist", knows exactly what constitutes the female sex class.

Yes, it's too bad this author has issues meaning she can't bear children. However she doesn't get the right to so warp the definition of women to allow men in.

JoyceMeadowcroft1 · 18/06/2023 22:35

But where exactly does womanhood reside? In your ovaries, your cervix, your womb, your breasts? There are women who, for all sorts of reasons – illness, surgery, rare medical conditions – are missing one part or another of the female anatomy (Angelina Joliee*, for example), and yet they do not cease to be women

FFS. Well over 80% of people are fertile for a significant period of their lives. Those who have fertility issues, these are never linked to not knowing the sex of the person experiencing infertility nor not knowing where their sex resides.

I am so fed up with the 'sex is complicated' and acknowledging sex is reductionist.

SpringPop · 18/06/2023 22:38

To quote Kathryn: she describes the risk as "largely hypothetical"

Largely hypothetical....

It was largely hypothetical that a MET police officer would abduct and murder a girl - yet it happened and as a result we are learning lessons, I certainly would think twice if a police officer spoke to me these days.

It was largely hypothetical that a school caretaker would abduct and murder two school kids - yet he did, and as a result we are more careful about who we let in schools and how they are checked

Sorry, Kathryn. Until men stop committing violent crimes against women, I want my own spaces. I want my own sporting events and I want men to stop instructing me how to think.

As for what makes us a woman... no it's not ovaries or breasts. It is our chromosomes. And something else that can't be got on NHS or purchased online... gender pay gap, dying in child birth, maternity discrimination, endometriosis, painful coil fittings, periods that make you anaemic, PCOS, period poverty, ovarian cancer... shall I go on Kathryn?!

This article was awfully written and completely terrible to women.... no not cis women Kathryn.... you know, the ones with XX chromosomes... those ones.

Kathryn is a hideous individual that thinks she can argue with sane women and scientific fact. We should pity her really.

JoyceMeadowcroft1 · 18/06/2023 22:40

I spent about 15 years of my life worrying about getting pregnant. I then spent the next 10 worrying that I couldn't get pregnant.
I have since spent 6 years struggling with the impact of plummeting oestrogen levels.

Tinysoxx · 18/06/2023 23:19

the original tweet has 8621 likes and has been viewed a whooping 2.8 million times. So rounded up to 0.3% who read it then liked it.

TheAntiGardener · 18/06/2023 23:35

Some of those arguments are real blasts from the past. I.e. if you say biology is what makes someone a woman or not, you’re reducing women to their biology. And: if a woman doesn’t have all the biological characteristics that only women have, are you saying she’s not a woman, hmm?

I assumed both of those, which I used to see all the time a few years ago, had been retired as embarrassingly and transparently facile and illogical, but obviously not.

Toseland · 19/06/2023 05:48

Right, I think we need to have the question "what is a transwoman?" answered. Because to me, in my lived experience, a transwoman is someone who wants to dress up as a woman for a sexual thrill. To involve me unwillingly in their sex life and sexual activities. I see it as a form of rape.

MargotBamborough · 19/06/2023 06:18

TheAntiGardener · 18/06/2023 23:35

Some of those arguments are real blasts from the past. I.e. if you say biology is what makes someone a woman or not, you’re reducing women to their biology. And: if a woman doesn’t have all the biological characteristics that only women have, are you saying she’s not a woman, hmm?

I assumed both of those, which I used to see all the time a few years ago, had been retired as embarrassingly and transparently facile and illogical, but obviously not.

These arguments haven't been retired because they don't have any better ones.

lanadelgrey · 19/06/2023 06:34

As ever, a letter to the editor is always a good thing. If I were a letters’ editor, I’d publish a few of the comments above 😀

Tinysoxx · 19/06/2023 06:44

TheAntiGardener · 18/06/2023 23:35

Some of those arguments are real blasts from the past. I.e. if you say biology is what makes someone a woman or not, you’re reducing women to their biology. And: if a woman doesn’t have all the biological characteristics that only women have, are you saying she’s not a woman, hmm?

I assumed both of those, which I used to see all the time a few years ago, had been retired as embarrassingly and transparently facile and illogical, but obviously not.

‘Reducing to their biology’ is indeed how living things are classified. What, biologically, can a man (who feels like they are a woman) and women be reduced to? Answer= Humans. You can subdivide.

So ‘man’ and ‘woman’ don’t exist. This isn’t practical medically or socially as well as biologically.

Littlesprouts · 19/06/2023 06:45

SabrinaThwaite · 18/06/2023 19:43

Kathryn is so confident in her views that she’s hidden any replies that disagree.

She can rely on support from the comically insufferable Caspar Salmon, who calls criticism of the piece "an attempt to sicken LGBTQ+ allies into silence". Not a bloke; definitely not losing sleep over people who fail to realise this, obviously

Nothing to worry about - Another Guardian / Observer article
Nothing to worry about - Another Guardian / Observer article
SabrinaThwaite · 19/06/2023 06:57

Caspar is a “cis man” but doesn’t identify as a bloke? Perhaps he self identifies as an idiot that doesn’t understand the dictionary definition of bloke then?

DarkDayforMN · 19/06/2023 13:38

Oh god - is that prat redefining “bloke” as a position in the gender spectrum? That presumably the self identifying “cis man” doesn’t fit into because he wears nail varnish, or prefers wine to beer or something?

Thanks Casper, for this reminder of how very important it is to go outside.

SabrinaThwaite · 19/06/2023 13:43

Yes he is. Apparently “bloke” is a gender 🤣

Nothing to worry about - Another Guardian / Observer article
DarkDayforMN · 19/06/2023 13:46

“I don’t identify as shouting over women.”

🤦‍♀️

SinnerBoy · 19/06/2023 13:46

He needs professional help, doesn't he?