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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

University gym "womxn only sessions"

137 replies

adulthumanfemalemum · 31/07/2023 20:52

Went into local uni sports centre today. Posters everywhere advertising their special gym sessions only for "womxn and non-binary." Lots of blah about how important it is for "womxn" to feel comfortable using the gym. At the bottom in small print an explanation that "womxn is an inclusive term which includes people previously excluded from white feminist discourse, such as women of colour and trans women." FFS. So it's okay to use the word woman to describe trans women but not to describe actual women. And these special sessions are in fact open to anyone who says they are non-binary or a woman. So not remotely a safe single sex space. I'm so cross. I was there with 15 year old DD who is super woke with lots of trans and non binary friends. I really wanted to talk to her about it but didn't want to spoil a rare activity together by arguing.

OP posts:
Thisishard23 · 02/08/2023 09:06

It's part of a movement to undermine women. The younger generation have bought into it hook line and sinker.

user123212 · 02/08/2023 10:50

"womxn is an inclusive term which includes people previously excluded from white feminist discourse, such as women of colour and trans women."

what a load of distorted crap. now they're including men, they're effectively excluding all women, of all colours.

Gateappreciation · 04/08/2023 16:51

Just used this poster to start a conversation with young adult dc about gender. I tried to point out the contradiction of allowing people ‘identifying ’ as women’ into women’s sessions, designed for people who didn’t want to train with men.

Needless to say, he didn’t get it, and couldn’t quite understands that people like Eddie zizzard, wearing a skirt, shouldn’t be allowed in such sessions.

I did press him on whether you could change sex, and mentioned sport as well. He basically wrote me off as an old woman not understanding stuff. I think I know more than him!

methinks I have work to do.

Froodwithatowel · 04/08/2023 16:54

'Women wanting and needing space from men is something made up by nasty old white women'.

Tell them that in the third bloody world you very stupid child.

Froodwithatowel · 04/08/2023 16:56

I really am done with any lingering sympathy for men who identify as being other than men, as they apparently lack the faintest capacity for inclusiveness or care or sympathy for the class they claim to have joined and do not care what harm they do so long as they get what they want.

MimiGC · 04/08/2023 23:32

I just showed this to my 16 year old daughter, who is generally very understanding and positive about trans issues and she thought this ad was 'bloody ridiculous'. An indication, I think, that even supporters can be pushed too far too.

DiabolicalFinial · 04/08/2023 23:56

How could that definition not be considered racist hate speech - denying that all women of colour are women? Shocking.

Riverlee · 05/08/2023 07:55

@MimiGC It’s a good example of ridiculous the situation is. Ie. A session for people who don’t want to train with men, that includes men!

Igmum · 07/08/2023 07:18

It's appalling. Agree the comment equating women of colour with trans women is deeply racist. It used to be done a lot by TRAs. Is it an unthinking link to the US history of segregation? Not relevant to Canterbury but plenty of TRA stuff stems from the US experience.

NotTerfNorCis · 07/08/2023 07:27

womxn is an inclusive term which includes people previously excluded from white feminist discourse, such as women of colour and trans women

So insulting to equate black women with males. Also dishonest and insulting to earlier generations of feminists to pretend feminism was only for white women.

Muckysmucky · 07/08/2023 07:39

Do we know if anyone has complained about this?

NotTerfNorCis · 07/08/2023 07:46

This idea that earlier feminism was racialised and only for white women comes across as an attempt to discredit feminism and divide feminists. Obviously, trying to redefine 'woman' as a set of social stereotypes is pretty anti-feminist.

CurseYouPerryThePlatypus · 07/08/2023 07:47

Vile. Why do women of colour have some made up alien-sounding word?!

And even if they have previously been excluded from mainstream feminism (I really don’t know enough about feminist history, but no longer know where to trust to find out!) - surely the correct thing to do is to point out the bleeding obvious, that they are, what’s that word again, women. Not continue othering them by giving them an x in their name.

Wonder if the sessions will be well attended - by actual women. So many supposedly-for-women-but-actually-mixed sessions are far more subtle, not outright advertising like this.

Might peak lots of women in Canterbury at least…

NotTerfNorCis · 07/08/2023 07:49

Igmum · 07/08/2023 07:18

It's appalling. Agree the comment equating women of colour with trans women is deeply racist. It used to be done a lot by TRAs. Is it an unthinking link to the US history of segregation? Not relevant to Canterbury but plenty of TRA stuff stems from the US experience.

If they have to give an example, it usually comes back to the suffrage movement a century ago in the American South, where white women refused to march with black women. Hideous yes, but a product of its time, and hardly typical of the entire feminist movement.

Riverlee · 07/08/2023 07:54

Muckysmucky · 07/08/2023 07:39

Do we know if anyone has complained about this?

Yes, I have and got a standard reply, talking about safespaces, encouraging sport etc.

However, didn’t enter the central question about how can a session designed to train without men include men, so I sent another email.

(Name changed, so not identified, but long term user).

Rushed response as got to get to work.

Crankywiddershins · 07/08/2023 08:00

Controversial idea here, so before I start I'd like to say that I'm as GC as they come...
So they want the word "woman"? I say let them have it! I mean they've spent over a decade dragging it through the mud and it's all tatty and looks nothing more the beautiful, dignified noun they nicked from us. So we all (and it will take all of us) say "ok, you're woman, you can have that word all to yourselves, we're going to use womxn now". Within a week I predict that they'll have abandoned the word entirely, and we can take it back, clean it up and restore it to It's former glory. Truth is, they only want it BECAUSE it's ours.

Froodwithatowel · 07/08/2023 08:00

The mindless grabbing of anything that can be broken down for parts and used to push the agenda is a standard feature of this politics. It includes zero respect for the actual events or people involved in the historical event, and weaponises other people's abuse and even murders without the faintest conscience. 'Nazi' for example. There's usually zero actual knowledge at all of the real events, and less interest; the purpose is to use Words That Make Other People Jump When You Say, and it relies on the other person being a nice person who is horrified by those historic events and can be swayed by mention of them.

I wish I had not been forced to become so vilely cynical by this wretched political style.

Women wanting women-only spaces is framed as apartheid against biologically male people of all gender identity choices on the grounds that, I suppose, it is seeing 'another woman' as lesser because - well. They're male. It's pushing the idea that male biology is a form of disability or disadvantage to the women 'trapped' in the wrong body.

This wholly ignores the logic that this requires joining in a religious belief that:

  1. the body and soul are somehow different and that you have a religious duty to the soul above the body (see about 2 thousand years of Catholicism for details)

  2. women have a duty to sacrifice their privacy, dignity, feelings and perceptions to biologically male people as an offering to redeem themselves because of their born 'privilege' (again see about 2 thousand years of Catholicism, including 'Original sin' and 'the sin of Eve'

  3. you are required to enact a belief at all times that the male bodied person identifying as a man is a man, and it is perfectly right and proper for you as a woman to refuse to undress in their vicinity because awful abuse of privacy and dignity BUT the male bodied person identifying as something other than a man is absolutely different (even though in no perceptible way) and it is a sin to with hold your body in demonstration of your faith.

This all, of course, rests on the fundamental belief that the woman must at all times predicate what she sees, hears, thinks, feels and does, entirely upon what the biologically male person in front of her says is going on in their head at the time. And while doing all this, the woman must also pretend that this sex based power imbalance doesn't exist.

What's that bit again about oppression involving required labour?

Woman2023 · 07/08/2023 08:09

Crankywiddershins · 07/08/2023 08:00

Controversial idea here, so before I start I'd like to say that I'm as GC as they come...
So they want the word "woman"? I say let them have it! I mean they've spent over a decade dragging it through the mud and it's all tatty and looks nothing more the beautiful, dignified noun they nicked from us. So we all (and it will take all of us) say "ok, you're woman, you can have that word all to yourselves, we're going to use womxn now". Within a week I predict that they'll have abandoned the word entirely, and we can take it back, clean it up and restore it to It's former glory. Truth is, they only want it BECAUSE it's ours.

The thing is they've effectively already done this. Seeing a thread about "womxn" is odd as it was a fad about 5 years ago and I think trans activists themselves dropped it because, rather than being more inclusive of them, it "others" them, as though they aren't really women.

What black women think about the word womxn or woman doesn't appear to have ever been considered.

Woman2023 · 07/08/2023 08:10

as though they aren't really women.

Obviously they're not, I'm just using their version of logic.

Igmum · 07/08/2023 08:11

Interesting @NotTerfNorCis - so not this country, not this century and not widespread.

literalviolence · 07/08/2023 08:15

Crankywiddershins · 07/08/2023 08:00

Controversial idea here, so before I start I'd like to say that I'm as GC as they come...
So they want the word "woman"? I say let them have it! I mean they've spent over a decade dragging it through the mud and it's all tatty and looks nothing more the beautiful, dignified noun they nicked from us. So we all (and it will take all of us) say "ok, you're woman, you can have that word all to yourselves, we're going to use womxn now". Within a week I predict that they'll have abandoned the word entirely, and we can take it back, clean it up and restore it to It's former glory. Truth is, they only want it BECAUSE it's ours.

So true. If Eddie Izzard is a woman then I'm not because I have nothing in common with him that I don't have in common with every other man. But then whatever I am is what he wants to be. TW can chase and bully till the end of time but the reality is they are trying to control my thinking such that I come to believe that magically I am like them so they can be like me. It's gas lighting and it's abusive. And it's nothing to do with the suffragettes having been a bunch of racists like most people of their time.

Rightsraptor · 07/08/2023 08:18

And, @Igmum, not even this continent.

Inamuddle36 · 07/08/2023 08:30

Muckysmucky · 07/08/2023 07:39

Do we know if anyone has complained about this?

I don’t live anywhere near the gym but might still write as I find the poster shocking.
If I did live near and if I knew any non-“captured” young men, I would encourage them to attend these “womxn” sessions en masse — just to see how staff react and point out the absurdity of the policy. They would all have to maintain straight faces and say they “identify” as “womxn”!

(btw how nos “womxn” pronounced?
“wim -x -em”????)

Inamuddle36 · 07/08/2023 08:35

Email of the gym: [email protected]

Inamuddle36 · 07/08/2023 08:37

Mel ClewlowDirector of Sport
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 01227 (82)7673