The words that have been pulled over your eyes

[FlirtsWithRhinos]

I initially wrote this as a reply to a thread in relationships, but rather than derail the thread I decided to post it in FWR as a thread in its own right about a common accusation made against gender critical feminists.

It is a response to the claim that the only people who object to the word "cis" are people who deny the existence of trans women, and that such people are transphobes.

"Transphobe", like "trans woman" and indeed "cis woman", are just the words trans activists use to hide what is really going on.

These words exist to hide one simple truth: Trans women are not, in any objective, real way, in any way outside their own heads, in any way that is real to anyone else, any closer to being a woman than any other man is.

"Trans women" in reality are just men who for some reason feel compelled (or sometimes just really want ) to adopt a cross-sex persona playing out whatever their idea of what a woman is.

The words exist to make it sound like a reasonable thing when such men demand that their wives, children, friends and family, colleagues, officials, all of society pretend they are women, let them enter private spaces for women, let them touch or counsel women in roles reserved for women, let them take prizes for women, let them speak for women.

Because we'd never accept that as ok from men. But it's ok for trans women, and if it's not ok that's transphobia.

And we'd never say women in general are more privileged and powerful than men, but call the men trans women and the women cis women and suddenly everyone nods along. And if they don't it's transphobia.

But I don't believe the thing that makes men and women different is our minds. And without that belief, the whole thing falls apart.

You can't fathom and your bothered. Fair enough.

Your stance indicates capacity for imagination though. Imagination to the point of wishful thinking, in fact.

Because they are a group of men who are insistent that they must enter women’s single sex spaces, that gives women the impression that they are more likely to be a risk to women than men who don’t try to be around us when we’re undressed and vulnerable, and we know that there are women who have been attacked and raped by this group of men who would not have been hurt if society hadn’t decided that the magic words ‘I identify as a woman’ suddenly removed all risk. Some women could have been ok if they hadn’t been let in, that why we have to keep objecting, we can’t save every woman but we have to at least do what we can to save the ones we can.

Yes it's most intriguing. I can't imagine why they love talking about genitalia so much. It's almost as if...

Well, I think we have finally put to bed the idea that the hens should really be concerned about the foxes in the woods, and not the ones feverishly digging their way under the coop.

It does feel that way, doesn’t it.

Because apparently the fence is there to keep them out so that issue is all sorted according to noknitting.

Trans men in men's sports are at a severe physical disadvantage. To be kicked out of a men's team, they'd have to qualify to be on it first, and that's very rarely going to be the case, if at all.

Don't forget that some of the foxes might be really sad and also vegan, so if hens don't welcome those into their coop, they are bigoted hens.

I very rarely post this fact on Mumsnet but there's no shame in it.

I used to work as a prostitute (in a flat). Started when I was 17. This is early nineties so a long time ago now. Anyway.

I had a regular AGP as a client. He'd bring knickers and pay me to compliment him in them.
He'd try pushing me into anal, deep throat, sex without a condom, you name it. It was all about pushing boundaries. The other working girls in the flat had similar stories (different blokes).

It wasn't unusual actually that cross dressing men were in fact far less respectful than "the common man". The "common" men usually paid for a regular girlfriend experience.

When I first heard "TWAW" some time in the early 2000's I just laughed. How stupid. I'd actually been paid by them for sex, just like all the other blokes.

So for anyone to flippantly brush aside my experiences as "not being enough" they can go f themselves.

So let’s put this into perspective.

in the red corner we have:

obsessed with genitalia

in the blue corner we have :

women’s safe spaces for reasons of womens safety against stronger human beings, but also for reasons of social or religious requirements ,the after effects of previous trauma ,the need for dignity and privacy applying to girls and women of all ages . Also in the blue corner is the language women use about themselves including the names we choose to use for our body parts, which makes important issues like our general health, our gynaecological history, our experiences of pregnancy etc clear and unambiguous to us and to health care professionals. Included here are the words we use to describe ourselves as adult human females, our pronouns etc and our rejection of the derisory names used about us like menstrutaters. The blue corner is getting a bit crowded now, but we still need to make room for males muscling in on women only shortlists for jobs and women only prizes in the arts, male athletes stealing womens sponsorship, training opportunities, medals, records and future earnings, male athletes in womens sports injuring female athletes ……… and in the remains of the blue corner are the rest of the incursions and intrusions and lies that transwomen have used in their attempt to claim that being a woman is actually mostly about their feelings, their dignity, their wish to live an authentic life.

So it is not really about genitals at all - apart from the ones used as weapons and threats and for men the residual effects of male puberty - especially since most transwomen, and transmen, balk at the final “transition”. What needs to be addressed is the question is how can an authentic life be lived when it is built on deceit, lies, threats, manipulation, spite and entitlement.

@NoKnittingAllowed

I am not sure if you have half an hour to spare, but this might be the answer to some of the things that appear to be puzzling you. I do apologise for the video being over five years old, clearly if it was more recent there would be a few better known men included, quite a few rapists, a few people with a strange taste in tight pink leggings, a few people who hit sixty year old women, a few people who have managed to pull the wool over naive political parties, a few thousand abusers who think a woman who uses her name and wealth to support other women is fair game for threats of violence. But it is what it is and , like an iceberg bearing down on us, is probably only the visible tip .

Never sure if things are loading , so this is my back up. Apologies.

I am so sorry for what you’ve been through, @Circumferences .

@Datun , I must remember not to have hot drinks when reading here. The foxes in the woods comment had me accidentally snort Earl Grey up my nose. I pictured it illustrated by Axel Scheffler, Gruffalo style.

I have noticed one of @FlirtsWithRhinos word-creep. We used to be very careful when using the term ‘transwomen’ to keep it as the one word, never ‘trans women’, because that made the trans bit look like an adjective referring to a set of women. Whereas ‘transwoman’ has as much to do with being a woman as ‘transplant’ has to do with being an aspidistra.

But lately I’ve seen that inoffensive-seeming space between the parts of the word crop up more and more. And it pisses me off.

As has been said by wiser souls than me, The Word Woman Is Taken.

I too have noticed that there are numerous pundits on social media who are now saying that they will no longer use the term transwoman now, not even with the space. Academics, authors and a large number of women’s rights campaigners. I stopped using the term years ago when I realised that if I used it, my posts were not as accurate or precise as I wanted. I do use it rarely now, often if I have to make a particular point.

They have their personal reasons but usually it revolves around the fact that they acknowledge that any mention of the word woman in relation to a male person causes confusion in the message. Some of those have complained about ‘ultras’ in the past too, I believe. Yet there they are now hardening their own language. Particularly after the NHS Fife case.

I agree that we need to use accurate language. We still seem to be deleted for saying someone is a man sometimes. So I stick with ‘male people’ because I got tired of having to retype out deleted posts. But there is a benefit to using male people and female people too. Because I find myself not having to type out ‘women, girls and women with transgender identities’ to ensure people understand I also include all female people. Cumbersome, you betcha.

However, there is nothing quite like seeing the difference while some people are still up for playing linguistic games like “yes, I see we agree that women should be in female single sex toilets and not ‘men’. Transwomen are not ‘men’.” Whereas, persisting in saying all male people need to be excluded above the age of a child needing care is clear and stops the fuckwittery.

And what is also becoming apparent is that there are those who are still trying desperately to remain ‘kind’ and what they consider ‘moderate’. And those who then describe why they are moderate are usually those who personally will arbitrate who is and who isn’t ‘trans’ using their own personal criteria. Which is actually the opposite of kind when you see it posted.

It is also usually not moderate either. It will either be what feminists have been campaigning for more than a decade for. Or it still allows male people into female single sex spaces based on that person’s personally developed criteria that ignores the needs of female people and centres a special group of male people.

IIRC a school shooting in the US was by a TM. Proof, if needed, that it’s really not a good idea to fill a disturbed young teenager up with testosterone.

You obviously did not read or understand my post. I understand very clearly that TM do not pose a threat to men in men’s sport. I don’t need you to help me understand this, I already know this.

I don't know that this is a great argument against the "mystical bollocks" though. Because whilst all of the stuff you mention is applicable to most women and girls, is largely specific to women and girls, and is the reason we need feminism and protections in law, it's not actually what makes us women. That's purely just our female bodies. My body is me. Your body is you. What makes me a woman is literally just having a female body. This fact is twisted and oversimplified by TRA into "you're obsessed with genitals" but actually, yes - womanhood (or girlhood) is simply having a female body. Being female is about our bodies. Which is not to say that women are only valuable because of their body parts, to preempt another strawman that gets thrown up by TRAs.

I take your point, but I list these things because it's important to recognise that we are not just bodies, we are the lives lived within the immutable constraint of our bodies.

I've noticed gender ideologists tend to think of people as something like mathmatical functions - as if for any given input you get the same output irrespective of the rest of the human. Change the pronoun and the man is now a woman, interchangeable with any other women other than biologically.

My point is that the fact of our bodies impacts how we experience our lives and therefore the person we are. An adult human female is not just a person with a woman's body today, she's a person built on the continously expereince of her life in that body since the day seh was born.

So while I don't subscribe to woman having an a priori mystic feminine engery bollocks that just sort of is, neither do I think are we simply a genderless mind with some womanly bits attached that would have turned out exactly the same if the bits had been male. We are complete humans formed by our experience of life, and the immutable fact of our bodies influences how we experience life because it influences how we see ourselves, the opportunities we get and and how others treat us.

So yes, I agree that the only thing on which the legal or social definition of women should rests is our female biology, but I think it's important to make it clear that this is not the same thing as saying biology is all we are, because to me it's the social and power differences laid upon biology (including here the social cost of reproduction) that are the reason we need to care about the biology.

But apparently not female enough to escape being bannable from female facilities as well as male ones.

In my opinion the only way to be a woman is to be born female and grow up. No other definition will work. A TW can never know what it is to be a woman as they were born male. Even those who claim they are treated “as a woman” are only being treated as a male who believes he is a woman. No one actually believes he is a woman. If they did, he would be treated as society treats women.

@FlirtsWithRhinos I completely agree with your post of 13:18. We care about what sex someone is, not because the genitals matter at all but because the disadvantages loaded upon us from the day we are born are there because of our sex, as (almost-always) observed at birth via the simple check of what genitals are visible.

Women can do anything they put their minds to, but in any endeavor where the advantages of male physiology for strength, speed etc would be significant, there is no point running competitions to identify which woman or team of women is the best if there are any males in the competition. Even if the male is relatively mediocre and only comes 5th, every single competitor from 6th place to 100th place has been robbed of a slice of the achievement and that's nothing to do with genitals, but it is to do with biology.

When it comes to Business Woman of the Year awards or events/opportunities for women in science, engineering or tech, it's just as important that these are just for actual biological women even though there is no biological reason at all for women to perform less well than men - but the reasons why these things are needed are nevertheless rooted in biology and genitals because the societal pressure on a female person to be less, to be quiet and good and kind and acquiescent, is there all the time and it takes immense effort of will to overcome that. We have to care about the biology to understand what social barriers have been overcome for a woman to achieve what she has.

A male person who is bombarded with demands to conform to male stereotypes and who strongly feels that he doesn't fit that model is not and never can be in the same category as women who are fighting against the straightjacket of the sexist stereotypes that we are bombarded with, and which set of stereotypes we are damaged by is totally down to which genitals we have, so of couse we have to care about the biology.

Gendered expectations are horrible, damaging and wrong, and yet criticism of the structures that create all this damage (aka being Gender Critical) is somehow called "transphobic". It's awful how misrepresented the ideas of feminism are among people who haven't thought about this stuff properly.

If you keep believing that then it makes the life of a bunch of trans people slightly easier, I suppose. Silver linings and all.

Where has this happened?

Prepare for all the set up scenarios we’ve already debunked to be unleashed!!

Gendered expectations are wrong, and are the boxes used to keep people in check. Unfortunately, without using these outdated, sexist stereotypes, gender ideology falls down. If being a man or a woman is not based on biology, the only other criteria is the gender stereotypes hated by feminists. Which reduces women to people who like pink, dolls and housework and men who like blue, cars and building. A lot of the trans ideology apostles claim they knew from a very young age as they wanted the toys and clothes belonging to the gendered stereotypes of the opposite sex. Rather than being a boy who liked pink and dolls, they claimed they must be a girl because only girls like those things. It’s a load of sexist bollocks.

<gets popcorn, settles down>