Young people

[JeeeeezeLouise]

Ffs! I just have to vent a minute,..,,Some of the younger people I work with just don't get it!

They don't seem to realise that women still don't have equality. Or how many years we've been fighting the patriarchy.

Their smug, virtue signalling comments about some cultures having more fluid genders than ours... oh DO fuck off!

And then fuck off a little bit more. You privileged, sheltered little twats!

Part of the problem is that this is framed as an equality issue. The idea that "equality" is about being the same somehow , or that men and women won't have different experiences of life, is part of the problem.

There's no rational way to say that sexual equality should be about completely making men and women physically or their experience of life the same. As you say, women are physically different from men, that is a fact. Only women can be mothers and men fathers, that is a fact. Their experience as parents is often going to be different in ways that it can be difficult to pin down which are rooted in the body, but that is still a fact. Women and men who become parents will likely have a different set of realities to negotiate, even if society wants them to have the same options.. That is a fact, as much as some would prefer it not to be.

If what is a sort of political equality, or equality of value, or care, has to be manifested in a way that erases all of these kinds of differences, it's a pipe dream, and I'd suggest also a recipe for a dystopia.

You are right though that this is the vision of equality that a lot of girls grow up with, and it can be shocking to discover it's a fairytale.

Depends what you mean by "blurring the lines of the patriarchy".

I think it helps to conceal patriarchy, which is deeply unhelpful to women.

Let's be very clear. Identifying as a member of an oppressed class is not the same as actually being a member of that oppressed class.

In any social justice movement, you identify your oppressed class by reference to a particular characteristic which those people share, you make a case that they are oppressed because of that characteristic, and you propose that they have a need for specific rights and protections because of it.

So, if your oppressed class is gay people, the characteristic those people share is that they are same sex attracted. They have historically been oppressed because of that characteristic, which can be evidenced due to the fact that until very recently they did not have equal marriage rights even in modern western countries, in many parts of the world they still do not have these rights and in some parts of the world their consensual sexual activities are actually criminalised. The need they have is equal rights to heterosexual people, and a protection from the abuse, harassment and discrimination they still suffer as a result of their sexuality.

If your oppressed class is people of colour, the characteristic they share is that they are not white. In many parts of the world they have been oppressed by white people, which we see historically with slavery and apartheid, and today in modern western countries where people from certain ethnicities, particularly black and Hispanic people in the US, are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to be shot by the police, more likely to go to jail, more likely to die in childbirth. They clearly have a need for protection against discrimination.

If your oppressed class is women, the characteristic they share is that they are female, i.e. the childbearing sex. They have historically been oppressed by men, who are able to physically overpower women and use them as sex objects and birthing vessels. Men have taken advantage of the fact that a large part of women's lives is taken up with pregnancy and childbearing to organise society in a way that benefits men and disadvantages women, from denying women the right to vote and own property, to more subtle forms of discrimination that still exist today. So women have a specific need for protection from oppression and discrimination by men specifically and society in general.

There are, of course, other oppressed classes to the ones listed above, such as disabled people, and the same principles apply.

Intersectional feminism, incidentally, was supposed to focus on women who are not merely oppressed because they are women, but are also on other axes of oppression such as being black, same sex attracted, disabled and so on.

Trans people are an oppressed class, although there is a slight difference in that it is a class they are in on the basis of their own, subjectively experienced identity, rather on the basis of tangible, undeniable, inescapable, unalterable and undisguisable features such as sex or ethnicity. They still suffer from discrimination on the basis of being trans, and should be entitled to protection.

The problem is that trans women, in particular, may be oppressed because they are trans, but they are not oppressed because they are women. They do not share any relevant characteristics with women. Or even any irrelevant ones, for that matter. They do not suffer the same discrimination that women do, in the same way or for the same reasons. The discrimination that women suffer is because we are members of the childbearing sex who are exploited, to a greater or lesser degree all over the world and at all times in human history, for our reproductive labour.

Redefining women to include male people, who are not exploited for their reproductive labour and who have not suffered any historical sex-based discrimination such as being denied the right to vote or own property, obscures the reasons for and the effects of sex based discrimination against women.

If we are no longer allowed to name ourselves and what we are, i.e. members of the childbearing sex, because we must be redefined to include male people, we can no longer effectively fight against our own oppression. And the people who wish to prevent us from doing that are members of the same group of people who have historically oppressed us. No, not trans people. Male people.

And then there is the fact that male people who identify as women do not actually appear to be suffering the kind of discrimination they claim to suffer in reality. They talk incessantly about "transphobia" and about how they are the most vulnerable, when the reality is in fact rather different. Every time they are allowed into women's toilets, changing rooms and rape crisis groups, their safety and their comfort is being explicitly prioritised over that of the women who would prefer them not to be there. Every time they are allowed to compete in women's sports, they are taking opportunities away from female athletes. Every time we are forced to focus the discussion on trans people being the most vulnerable and the supposed epidemic of violence against trans people, when the number of trans people murdered in the UK has been less than one per year since this information started being recorded, we become less able to focus on the very real epidemic of violence against biologically female women and girls.

In the UK and other modern western democracies at least, the factors we would typically use to classify a particular group as being oppressed and vulnerable do not seem to be there in respect of trans people, particularly male trans people who identify as women.

So when you make the point that women are an oppressed class which nobody would choose to identify into if they had any real choice in the matter, you are ignoring the fact that male people who identify as women do not actually experience the oppression that women experience simply because they call themselves women.

And if you look specifically at the impact of someone identifying as the opposite sex in all areas of public policy, from toilets to prisons to rape crisis groups to competitive sports, one thing becomes incredibly clear.

Whatever the issue is, the impact of people identifying as the opposite sex is ALWAYS beneficial for people who were born male and ALWAYS disadvantages people who were born female, regardless of how anyone identifies or what they are calling themselves.

So yes, this transgender stuff is blurring the lines of the patriarchy, but not in a good way. It is still there, we are just less able to see it, and crucially, talk about it.

Let's get real. This transgender stuff, in fact, IS the patriarchy. It's just identifying as something else.

Where it gets really interesting is when you dig into the very few that have a female-to-pseudo-male structure (burnnesha, bacha posh). Those are very good at showing up the deep sexism - because they aren't about identity at all. They are purely practical fictions (and in the case of bacha posh, time limited ones) set up specifically to overcome the problems of building a society exclusively around men.

Becoming these 'genders' is not something the woman chooses because of how she feels. It is something that happens under a particular set of circumstances. There is a man-shaped vacuum (generally a husband dies without sons, or any sons are very young children), without a man the family or inheritance system is unable to operate, so the woman steps -.or is pushed - in to fill the gap because the society is so rigid that it cannot cope without a man. If you dont have a man to do man things, you have to invent one.

I can see why men would want to position themselves as an oppressed class - and would derive power and other benefits from doing so. Even more so when they can then position themselves as the victims of oppression by that oppressed class.

It really is a having your cake, eating your cake and then blaming the woman next to you for stealing the cake situation.

The ‘if women are so oppressed, why would men want to be women?’ argument is utterly disingenuous.

@RufustheFactualReindeer I think there’s some psychological self-protection going on when young women are so desperate to believe that women are no longer disadvantaged and oppressed. Even in seeing women as the oppressors of a much more marginalised group (biological men who identify as women).

Ultimately all the denial in the world doesn’t protect you practically from the disadvantages of being a women - which as you age, and especially if you become a mother, can start to affect your life in ways that mean you just can’t live in denial any more.

So many of us look back at our youthful idealism as utterly naive. I think Victoria Smith has written about this in Hags.

I find it quite curious that some women are so determined not to see themselves as oppressed that they deny the evidence of their own oppression even when it is right in front of their eyes, whereas some men are so determined to see themselves as oppressed that they make it a fundamental part of their identity even when there is no evidence whatsoever to support it.

Yes, in young women I think there is an element of denial, where they're still young and beautiful and unencumbered by kids and the world is their oyster, and they want to think "that won't be me", or they look at the imbalance of power in people 20+ years older than them and they think, "it won't be like that when I get there".

It's when they get there and find out that it still is like that that they - hopefully - become second wave feminists.

But by then they are tired and fat and wrinkly and no one wants to listen to them.

@MishyJDI what about the "euphoria boner" phenomenon, so often discussed on trans forums?

OP I do want to eye roll them too. But I remember that young women have been taught this by the prevailing culture. They have also not been taught to think critically. I was fortunate to have that experience. So I think we need to teach them to challenge their ideas. If they can back up what they say with logic and coherence then great. Hell if someone can do that I'm listening. But it is a slow steady slog to make up for the inadequacies of education of the young for so long. And of course, the young always trash the ideas of older people, it is virtually in their job description. Ours is to calmly and kindly share wisdom. It is exhausting but I regard that now as my job. There is no logic and coherence in the arguments of genderism, except sexism itself. We just need to keep pointing that out.

I feel ya.
Its very tiring, fatiguing, frustrating. I feel im fighting alone. I live in a smallish village and i dont see any change from 35 years ago. Misogyny and internalised misogny... 'acceptance of your place as a women' etc. Im so angry.

@MargotBamborough

Absolutely storming post 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Gets to the heart of the significant flaws / misunderstandings in this cultural movement to undefine femaleness and the reasons it's important for women that society resists it without demonising trans people themselves.

Depends what you mean by "blurring the lines of the patriarchy".

I think it helps to conceal patriarchy, which is deeply unhelpful to women.

An important point very clearly made.

Yes!

I am agog 🤯😱😳

HOW can anyone say that?
Only one of the two sexes gets pregnant.

I have also given up. Let them have their arses bitten then, if that is what it takes.

Women are generally older now when they become pregnant; often having enjoyed equality in the workplace up on to that point. The shock is real.

I was young-ish when I had my first. And naively thought that all of Europe had Scandinavia’s maternity- and childcare policies.
Well, the UK did not.
It also became abundantly clear that my «feminist» husband had rather set ideas of where a woman’s place was. A steep learning curve.

I don’t particularly wish that on anyone, but it is disheartening when young women seem to be actively working against their own interests.

I think feminism is a life long journey. Young woman simply have not yet had the full experience of being a woman at different stages of life.
That changes your views and priorities.
Many young people today are growing up in a different way to the previous generation (as often happens) with the rise of social media and imported views. Some of the new thinking that comes with that will stick, most of it won't.
I'm not sure there's any value going head to head with such naive assertions tbh. I took on one of my DD's friends (very very gently) about language - it was definitely a coded conversation! Pointing out that whilst language use and meaning does shift over time, you can't have a meaningful conversation on the same topic if your understanding of the meaning of the same words are wildly different and you (generalised 'you') can't just make a different meaning up! She was very quietly cross with me for several months! But as I hadn't actually crossed any red lines I couldn't actually be written off as a baddie.

@MargotBamborough that post is awesome and I entirely agree.

Doesn't gender woo actually help in blurring the lines of patriarchy?

It makes fighting sex-based oppression harder. Sex-selective abortions, female infanticide, and FGM are all based on the lesser desirability of female people in patriarchal societies, but if we lose the language to name the group suffering from such things patriarchy has more scope to function.

Some ideas inside the theories of gender identity are quite openly supportive of sex-based hierarchies, from agreeing with the far right anti-feminists that girls and dolls should be linked and boys and football should be linked, to more seriously damaging arguments, such as the replacement of biological sex with concepts of femininity and masculinity in how we define women and men, respectively.

This is because femininity is defined (in several places) as being submissive, passive, emotional, and nurturing, and masculinity as being dominant, active, competitive, and risk-taking, and if we use those to define 'women' and 'men', then patriarchy (in the sense of male dominance in the society), indeed, becomes entirely natural!

If being seen as submissive and passive doesn't appeal to a female person, well, she should transition! Sadly, as sexism and misogyny are unlikely to ask for someone's preferred pronouns before choosing their victims, this will not work without serious medical interventions, because in their absence female people are going to be treated as female.

So no, gender woo is not going to fight patriarchy at all, though well-passing trans men will get to share some of the privileges it awards.

I don't get why trans women would want to change gender from men to join an oppressed class. I don't buy the AGP nonsense.

There are support sites for those who state that they suffer from AGP, and we can all make our own minds about this after reading all the relevant studies and just by getting educated online and in the real world. This doesn't mean that all male people who transition would suffer from fetishes etc., but some state that they do.

But in any case I have seen some trans women deny online that women are at all oppressed, at least in the western countries, but that women are actually privileged (often, it seems, in terms of having any number of sex partners they wish or in terms of being taken care of).

So some may not be that aware of what it actually means to be a woman (especially the unpleasant bits, such as the unpaid work load, the assumptions of intellectual inferiority, the sexual threats, not being heard or respected as people, and many much, much worse things for some sub-groups within womanhood), only about what it looks like to them from the male angle (which seems sometimes rather focused on looks and youth).

I love the younger kids and that they are doing what we did when their age - challenging the older folks and bringing new ideas.

Yes, of course that is what young people have always done! The polyamoury thing is particularly fascinating, given that it's a repeat from both the early years of the 20th century when 'free love' was touted and also from the hippie generation of the 1960s and 70s! And of course polygamy is an actual thing in some cultures. That all of those will benefit men a lot more than they benefit women or children is also going to be a repeated observation.

Supporting sex work, i.e., greater access to commercial sex is also a new idea which is going to benefit the buyers of commercial sex (almost entirely male) considerably more than it will benefit the sellers of commercial sex (predominantly female).

Sex workers have always and everywhere been treated dismally, and they certainly deserve their own justice movement. But a movement which doesn't analyse the deeply sexist characteristics of this marketplace is not going to improve matters much for the actual workers, though the pimps and corporate owners (and sex traffickers) probably will benefit a lot.

Whether erasing the female sex from our language (a truly new idea!) will be an improvement remains to be seen, given that the male sex is not being erased at all (just an old repetition of sexism in societies, i.e. the privileging of male concerns).

I very much doubt that this is a new idea which the progressives in some distant future era will praise, given that it's going to make the world a less just place.