Any recommended genderist writers?

[bonfireoftheverities]

"He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that." - John Stuart Mill

This is something I've tried to keep in mind over the last half dozen or so years since I heard TWAW, thought "What?" and fairly quickly found FWR. So I've made sure to read as much as I can take from those who truly believe that men can be women, or if they don't actually believe it (because how can you, deep down?), desperately want it to be true. I say as much as I can take because after a while you've seen and heard it all before, and it never starts being convincing.

The latest pile of nonsense I dove into is this: The End of Trans Rights in the UK Is the Start of Democratic Collapse. Dear god, that almost made my brain melt. The links alone show you that he never strays outside an idiotic bubble (Helen Webberley being the first I clicked into).

Is there anyone you can recommend who makes their case without lying and relying on liars?

I blame that one where everyone got categorised into like 'risk takers' or 'crafters' or whatever (actually, there might be a few of those)

It's just yet more MBTI/Star signs, with a dash of predictive analytics with the hope of invading women's toilets for a wank.

I'm a woman because I like woman things. Apparently the archetypal woman doesn't get a say in whether they like those things or if they were forced/strongly encouraged to do them from birth and so whether these blokes get to declare themselves part of the group. And worse, those women who don't want to declare that they absolutely love skirts and knitting might not be part of the group at all, it depends on how long they spent naval gazing to decide if their gender or their sex is ascendant at that point in time.

It's all anti-feminist nonsense. Carefully crafted nonsense, but nonsense none-the-less

Totally agree. It’s all sexist, regressive bollocks.

No. You need to re read my comments as you keep misinterpreting them so I won't be repeating myself.

That’s not what you said. It’s identifying with ‘typical behaviours’ according to you. Or are you saying that is only the categories male and female that have associated ‘typical behaviours’? No other groups exhibit ‘typical behaviours’?

I'm saying its upto the individual to decide if sex or gender defines them & whatever they choose is a valid identity.

And this is why we cannot use this in society.

If we need to have separate facilities and opportunities for women and men, its unworkable if the individual gets to decide on the criteria.

Two men may be identical in every way but one wants their identity to be based on their sex, the other their gender.

How can separate facilities and opportunities meet the needs of the individuals if there is nothing linking the individuals, or if two individuals have the same needs but classify themselves differently.

Ultimately, for women our needs are based on our sex, not a gender men imagine they share with us. Sex cannot disappear or be set aside for some people.

I have read them. You spent hours arguing gender was about socially constructed stereotypes and that was how people knew whether they were men or women. Now you’re pivoting to gender being “inborn”. If gender is truly inborn, like homosexuality. then all the socially constructed stereotypes in the world will not change it, but you said that people can determine their gender by observing social stereotypes.

i think his ChatGPT has crashed.

Ah, so you do understand that in some cases, those typical behaviours are strongly enforced by a patriarchal society?

I wouldn't have been killed for not wearing a school skirt, but I had no choice in the matter either - and I hated those gingham summer dresses with a passion. Other girls didn't feel strongly either way, and I'm sure some girls actively liked them - but it would all be bundled under 'typical female behaviour' even though in a majority of cases it was societally imposed.

Maybe the free trial ran out 😁

Shoulda paid for the pro plan. You just can't get the bots these days. Filled up his context and crashed.

I think the problem is that you are comparing the two as identities and sex is not an identity.

Sex is obviously an important classification (pregnancy would certainly have been a massive shock if I hadn't realised that I am female), but like age it has nothing to do with identity. It's a protected characteristic because of the material consequences of sex which affect women regardless of whether they feel any strong associations with other women or even identify as women.

I'm genuinely racking my brains to think of any situation when gender identity would have been relevant to me, but then I'm still not sure how I would know what it is.

Your understanding of gender seems more similar to an understanding of social class or nationalism. Do you understand that those classifications are also unimportant to many people? That identity is generally a matter that is personal and subjective?

Less practical application than an on-line Myers Briggs personality test.

Our charming Em thinks that Dr Upton was correct when he said that he was female and has defended a man working in a toy shop who was wearing big, rubber boobs.

I don't think this poster has anything useful to add to this debate.

Can you give some actual examples of typical gendered behaviours? It's all been a bit vague so far.

Sorry @bonfireoftheverities your thread seems to have been derailed so I will also recommend the highly informative Anne Lawrence - Men Trapped in Men's Bodies.

Thanks for the recommendation @PencilsInSpace. I don't mind the thread doing whatever it wants to do, including be a showcase for another entirely unconvincing genderist. Guess that's my "priors" showing.

Men are free to 'identify' however they wish. I don't really care why - whether it's autogynephilia, gender woo, or whatever.

However, it does not follow that biological men (with or without a penis) are entitled to use single sex changing rooms, to invade women's sports, lesbian groups, or otherwise infringe upon and stamp all over women's hard won sex-based human rights. We are entitled both morally and legally to say fuck off no.

I missed this thread up until now, but thought the premise was interesting and started to read through it in order to find out if there were in fact any texts by genderist writers that FWR's wonderful hive mind (!) thought were worth the bother of casting an eye over. Just like OP I'd like to know my enemy, but I'm thoroughly lazy, so a few opinions from women who'd done all the work for me seemed like a win. Then @EmilyinEverton turned up. And I realized that I was barely scanning Emily's self-referential and circular posts, and just properly reading the posts in between his bouts of posturing AI mansplaining. So nice of him, I thought, to come on and demonstrate exactly why there aren't any genderist texts worth the time it would take to read them.

Sorry I have t read the whole thread.

I found Shon Faye’s book The Trans Issue; an Argument for Justice a good read and helpful in some ways. I don’t agree with all of it but there is some useful and helpfully challenging stuff there.

i really, really recommend the original essay on intersectional thinking by Kimberlé Crenshaw, which is as crisp as an apple and beautifully argued, easily available online. Helpful to tease out what intersectionalism is and isn’t, important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Gender Outlaw by Kate Bernstein (also findable online; I’d pay for it but not the current secondhand prices, as I don’t think it’s considered ok enough to reprint ) does all the things that aren’t encouraged any more, like be cheerfully honest about surgery, and about humiliation pornography, and pretty clear that they aren’t a woman and never were (though they still like to describe themselves as one sometimes). For me though there are shafts of light through it, some very unexpected against my own thinking, some not, that give some understanding of their life experience.

Bornstein not Bernstein. I do think if American culture weren’t so much like it is, including autocorrect which insists that they must be called Bernstein, we wouldn’t be in this pickle. But then the American iron rigid sex culture I'm thinking of has Anglo roots I guess.

if a trans woman exhibits obvious male secondary sex traits they will be categorised as a trans woman rather than a cis woman. IE their reproductive sex is male.

So basically you are saying that if a transwoman doesn't "pass", she is a man?

I assert that every transwoman is a man, i.e. a male. That is literally the defining characteristic and the only thing that all transwomen have in common.
If you are not a man / male, you cannot be a transwoman.

Chromosomes determine the size of gametes produced, and also hormones.
Unless you are dragging DSDs into the conversation - not cool, don't do that.

Morphology - are you suggesting women with flat chests are somehow 'a bit male'? Or that fat men with man-boobs are 'a bit female?'

In Serano's own words:

And when the overwhelming majority of cis dykes date and fuck cis women, but are not open to, or are even turned off by, the idea of dating or fucking trans women, how is that not transphobic? And to those cis women who claim a dyke identity, yet consider trans men, but not trans women, to be a part of your dating pool, let me ask you this: How are you not a hypocrite?

Keep in mind this is a heterosexual male writing this, one who calls himself a lesbian. He is clearly very upset that actual lesbian women are not intererested in males like him.

Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-struggle-to-find-trans-love-in-san-francisco/