TW at women's bookclub?

[HeartyAzureCritic]

I attended a new bookclub yesterday that was advertised as women only but I think one of the people was a TW. Is this allowed? I though it had to be female only. It seemed like this person has been going for a while and people were friendly with him.

That's your call.

I'm not asking about "passing". That's actually irrelevant when it comes to the question of how it can be justified that some men are "really" women (although your mind going to physical appearance is quite telling).

And to be crystal clear, the issue is not "a bloke in a frock" either. I'm all for blokes in frocks as long as they recognise they are still blokes!

The issue is a bloke who believes something in his mind makes him a woman (or makes him entitled to be treated as if he is a woman).

Frock or not, I would find that as offensive as turning up to a book club to find one of the blokes is wearing a T shirt with a sexist joke on.

It's belittling and disempowering. It puts women in the unenviable position of having to be "the one who makes a fuss about something silly" or to smile and pretend that being reduced to a chariacture is just fine.

It's an exercise in power. It's no different to all the times we smile weakly instead of making a fuss when a man makes a sexist demeaning joke at our expense, and he knows it.

Women's spaces aren't just about who sees us unclothed and whether we have suffered enough trauma to justify saying no to men. They are also about having conversations abour our own thoughts and experiences without men feeling entitled to reframe them for us, a space to experience being just us and how we are when men are not around, to help us see more clearly the subconscious patterns society lays out for us.

'Cacophony'

Womens voices are just so shrill, don't you find?

Its okay if they are saying nice soothing kind stuff but oh my word when they start screeching like hyenas/karens ...

Yep.

Women are allowed some boundaries - we are allowed not to get undressed in front of men or to not have men in our sports and to exclude men from refuges and rape crisis centres.

But women are certainly not allowed to draw a general line and say "men are never women in any circumstances" - lord no! Utterly unreasonable!

Someone somewhere could usefully observe women's group interactions with and without males present. There'd be space for comparing groups with a man present and groups with a man in women's clothing present.

I can guarantee they are not the same as an all women group.

And every woman knows it.

Dont know if OP is coming back. In case she does - the group is already ruined, OP.

If you object, you'll be the one pointing out the emperor's new clothes.

The dynamic has already formed around appeasement, with all the subsequent consequences.

Unfortunately the social contract has been torn up since the advent of 'genderism'.

We know most women have 'gender critical' views. So we know most who attend a women's group are not expecting men there. We also know that they mostly won't say anything - we've seen what happens to women who object.

Any man who attends a women's group knows he is transgressing. And knows women are afraid to challenge him.

Its odd that people are suggesting that a group that advertises itself as a women only group, but includes men who want to pretend that they are women, is the norm. Its just something that happens, and if a women doesn't like it, move on.

He might not be a man, other women are happy to pretend too, nobody is taking their knickers off, he might not mansplain, so does it matter?

Its no big deal.

But women saying its odd are being dramatic?

'Its nice to have spaces free of men'

Unfortunately they are harder and harder to find. Because we know not to make a fuss, rock the boat, be unkind, or go too far. And whenever a man decides he wants what women have got, it gets handed over.

'nobody is taking their knickers off, he might not mansplain, so does it matter?'

Edit - this is sarcasm, right?! You got me! 😁

We’re about not pretending men can be women.

The attitude is that women only groups are a nice idea, but impossible in most cases.

But a man can pretend to be a woman in most situations.

Men pretending to be women is more normal than women only groups.

No it's not. There's a different energy when men are around.

Wasn't the idea of the Trades Descriptions Act that if people are paying money for something, it ought to do what it says on the tin?

Perhaps we need something equivalent for organisations and services.

Sometime around 2018/19, a million name changes ago, I put my marker down on the consequences of the excesses of gender ideology. I accurately predicted that when the pendulum swung, it wouldn't be pretty, and the backlash would not just affect those claiming trans identities, it would affect lesbians and gay men as well. And that is exactly what we are seeing.

If you fight for the absolute need for female only book clubs because the have a 'different energy' (as opposed to being about safety, dignity or fairness), then don't be surprised when the pendulum swings again that they come for all female spaces.

In this case I would argue the appropriate action is to give the club a whirl, and if it is not to your liking for any reason, find another one. Claiming a male in a book club advertised as female only in some way breaches your rights just does not stack up.

So, as I said, it is your prerogative if you want to go to the barricades for this, but don't be surprised when shit like this is cited as a reason why the argument for protecting women's spaces is flawed.

Eh?? How does ensuring that a club that says it is for women only includes women mean that "they" will come for the lesbians?

If you fight for the absolute need for female only book clubs because the have a 'different energy' (as opposed to being about safety, dignity or fairness), then don't be surprised when the pendulum swings again that they come for all female spaces.

I have said on the thread that OP can't prevent a small group choosing to be for mostly women and a man. Equally OP has every right to run an actually women only book group if she damn well pleases. And if it's going to be a large/formal association or paid service you'd have to have it actually women only if you can justify excluding men at all.

"the backlash would not just affect those claiming trans identities, it would affect lesbians and gay men as well. And that is exactly what we are seeing."

What has that got to do with the situation under discussion?

"don't be surprised when the pendulum swings again that they come for all female spaces."

Why would anyone be surprised? That is exactly what we have seen happen - and it is still happening.

"Claiming a male in a book club advertised as female only in some way breaches your rights just does not stack up."

IANAL but if money has changed hands then it would think that it breaches consumer rights.

"don't be surprised when shit like this is cited as a reason why the argument for protecting women's spaces is flawed."

Plenty of women on this thread have already covered a wide range of perfectly legitimate issues they would have if a "Women's Only" Book Club turned out to include men. Describing what they have said as "shit like this" is on the same page as "They can pee next to me!"

There isn't one argument for protecting women's spaces, there are many. They have all been rehearsed in this thread more than once. The fact that you don't care, or you refuse to understand these arguments, doesn't make you right.

Your argument would make more sense if you said that advertising a women only book group was wrong. The idea that a book group isn't about saftey, dignity and fairness, therefore shouldnt exist under the equality act.

But you dont seem to be saying that? The argument is that a womens book group can exist but the definition of women here is one of identity. And if we dont have situations where that is the case, we risk losing everything as the pendulum swings against us.

The idea that only one definition of women is as excessive as expecting self id into every womens space and opportunity.

But how can that work for women, organisations and written into law.

Say a book group, that advertises for members, is happy to have TW in their group, who is going to define what a TW is? Who gets to decide - the man or the women.

Book groups can disband and set up again the next week, but what about other groups where thats harder? My mother goes to a widows group, its takes a lot of effort to organise, is she entitled to meet without men?

You are stuck in the TRA's trap that the only two points are "Any man can be a woman any time" and "No man can be a woman ever". You think the reasonable position is somewhere between them where "Some men can be women sometimes".

But anywhere between the truth and a lie is still a lie.

This is not a pendulum settling on a midpoint. It is impossible to take even a tiny step away from woman as a biological sex without changing fundamentally what the word woman means for all women. And because sex is immutable and our sex does have consequences for our lives, changing the word that labels this, and with it the shape and rational for the women-only provisions that were only ever created in the first place to support our sex, hurts us.

The answer to this is to step out of the linear question TRAs want to constrain this to. Why can't we recognise sex as well as identity? Why does this thing that is not body sex have to take the same names and provisions as body sex, overwriting and negating it as if it's a new better version of the same thing when it's clearly and obviously something totally different, something that if it does exist (and I have no issue with society deciding it wants to reify personality classes as well as sex - we do that in an ad hoc way all the time through dports and politics and music and class itself) exists alongside and separate from sex.

Even your pendulum metaphor shows it. Swinging back and forth along its two dimensional arc. But take a step back and it's swinging in three dimensional space. It is the pendulum itself that creates the constraints it operates under.

Genuinely, take a step back, look outside the two points joined by a single line and ask why not have a book club, or a support group, or even political rights for people of any sex who feel more aligned to or comfortable with traditionally female-coded interests, presentations or ways of interacting? Why is this only possible to do if it has the label "woman"?

Or take a different step back, look from another angle - which you can't do on a line but can do infinitely in space - and you might wonder if there's a good reason a trans woman might benefit from or add to a woman-only book club, surely there are other men who would as well? Once you include a trans woman you've clearly decided sex doesn't matter so what's the criteria to include transwomen men and no other men?

Stop trying to shoe-horn "gender" into the pre-existing language, concepts, provisions and rights of sex. Give it its own name, its own identity as something that is not sex, and let us all explore what it could really mean for us free from the constraints of sex that came before.

Because one fixed thing we know in all these possibilities is that whereever gender goes, sex will still exist and will still have consequences for women.

So why on earth in all these possibilities would anyone want to take the one path that requires denying that truth and demands taking spaces and resources away from women for the benefit of men?

There are several ways a male being included in a ‘women’s’ book club can impact it.

Book choices can end up being influenced by this man in a way that a female only book club would be less likely to be. And the discussion of the books can also then be influenced towards points that the man might be very keen on. Particularly if the man has fetishised female body parts or female body processes.

Of course, it is a book club and considered a friendship group so to speak. However, there are numerous ways that a male person can negatively impact that group. And even cause harm.

I can imagine a man being in a women’s book club wanting to use women’s discussions about a book in ways a woman would never use them. I can imagine a man being in a women’s book club using those women as a resource in ways a woman would not.

Even if we decided that gender identity was sound enough to build societies on, would woman and these men have the same gender identity? Enough the make the groups cohesive?

We can have book groups for people who like reading, or like reading women authors or reading jane austin. But that isnt gender identity, just interests.

I can't see how a gender identity can be the same for both men and women, given how it its about being perceived in a certain way, or to present in a certain way. Women wanting to be percieved as feminine/masculine are motivated by very different pressures than men wanting to be percieved as feminine/masculine. And i would argue that a masculine woman is nothing like a man, or even a feminine man.

The mermaids image of barbie to action man never made sense to me, mainly because the the extremes are measuring different things. The barbie is achievable because its cosmetics - wear make up, a dress, long hair. The action man is about physically strength, somthing that few women can achieve. Therefore men can easily cover the whole spectrum, for women, its not so easy.

Good post!

Insofar as there are any good intentions mixed up in this overwriting of sex with gender, it seems to me that the same mistake is being made that the Victorians made.

Victorians: if we stop people talking about sex, sexual immorality will go away.

Genderists: if we stop people talking about sex, sexism will go away.

It won't, in either case. It will just be swept under the carpet as unmentionable. All the old abuses will continue, but it will be harder to name and shame them.

I don't know the answer, but again I don't need to. That's kind of the point really.

Break the illogical "gender is not the same as sex because trans, but it is the same as sex when it comes to language, law and anything sex segregated, or the rights and needs of everyone who isn't trans" construct and people will be free to start working that out. If the mental identity thing can't be called "being a woman" or "being a man" anymore, that frees people to think of themselves outside these current gendered (ha!) expectations.

I personally think in such a world we'd end up with several of "genders" that are more akin to people grouping themselves by personality. Sure some might end up with more women and others with more men, but it wouldn't be because they were part of being a woman or a man.

My intuition is that there is a desire for something, a cultural shorthand of groups that lets people express "themselves" to others. It's not an original thing to point out that LGBTQ+ seems to be taking the role in awkward teen lives that goths and suchlike used to. And there's fandoms, regional identities and so on.

Taken from that perspective, channeling all this into structures based only on variations to the sex binary is kind of a disaster. It's not liberating, it's limiting.

(I'm ignoring the fetishists here obviously. For those guys, the conflating of sex and gender and the access it gives them is the whole point. But I don't respect their drivers, and they can't admit them, so I'm not bothered that my better way cuts them off from what they really want.)

If it weren't for fetishists, the whole landscape of genderism would be a very different place.

If he wasnt a fetishist, he'd still change the dynamics and atmosphere. Only women would likely be less on guard and inhibited in response.