Friends suggesting transphobia and misogyny both rooted in policing gender roles

[Pyjamatimenow]

Friend of mine has posted on her social media ( a very long detailed post) that basically trans rights are women’s rights and that what she sees as transphobia is akin to people who ‘punish’ women who don’t fit into gender stereotypes, don’t get married, don’t look ‘feminine’, don’t have children…Says she’s a feminist and defends the rights of trans women to live safely etc …whatever that means. Cis women mentioned several times. I don’t normally comment on these kinds of things on FB but struggling with this particular post! If I were to say something what would you say?

To be fair, I had to look them up. We called them "mug", "bitter glass", "larger glass/ladies bitter glass", "ladies larger glass". Male definitely was default human in the Northern 90s pubs!

Now that is really triggering my gender dysphoria.

No matter how much lace I wear, I'll never be read as a man by those gatekeeping feminists.

What I do take issue with, are those people who seemingly can understand the fundamental nature of lace as a psychologically essential part of female makeup, but seem, oddly, incorrectly tied to the concept that the "lace" in question must be pink!

I'm more concerned with why it has to be itchy. Surely that is of greater importance than pinkness. I wouldn't give it the time of day, personally.

For some reason, when I saw those pink portraits up thread, what immediately came into my head was the theme music for "Blackadder".
Does that make me a man or a woman, I wonder?
Perhaps a woman, because Malala Yousafzai said she liked Blackadder too.

Blackadder you say?

I don’t agree with this. The GC position on single sex spaces is to do with the very real, statistically provable risk that male people pose to women and children. Not a “rigid idea” about how men behave. Men commit the vast majority of sex crimes and most violent crime. A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK. Facts, not ideas.

The context is more egalitarian societies.

Stop trying to divert from the point. The context being discussed was feminine attire patriarchal expectations that Germaine Greer & other GC anti feminine stereotype thought leaders hypocritically model.

That you can't hold two conflicting thoughts in your head at once being men & women share gendered behaviours & those behaviours are more typical to one sex than the other is why GC ideology is flawed.

Trans is in essence saying 'I have more in common behaviourally with the typical behaviours of the opposite sex'& wish to be categorised that way'. They aren't saying they are identical to the opposite sex because of that behaviour. That in no way implicates cis gender non conforming people who wish to be defined/categorised by their reproductive characteristics.

Ultimately, personal social classification is a subjective based system underpinned by how an individual interprets the world & their values. IE nobody gets to tell anybody what they identify more with.

It’s ok to identify with another group and feel strongly, but it’s also ok for that group to say: no, actually you aren’t. Empathising is not the same as going through something.

Your'e almost there!

Yes! Everybody has a right to their own opinion!

Whether or not society decides to structure it that way is upto social negotiation.

It's self explanatory by the use of the word "common".

And just what are dungarees associated with? See where this is going?

Are you suggesting there are no patriarchal feminine standards now?

Make up your mind.

OOOOOH! If the french aristocracy was doing it for a brief period in history everyone must have been!

"The French aristocracy wore extravagant wigs, heavy makeup, and silk stockings primarily to conceal health issues, prevent hygiene problems, and display immense wealth. These items of clothing evolved from practical, disease-masking solutions into strict, undeniable symbols of power, prestige, and class. 1, 2]

NEXT: Judges wearing wigs.

Baily's 100k or so words spread across the various threads, boiled down to 5: Let men in women's spaces.

Dungarees are like pinafore aprons but with better coverage. They send the patriarchy a message that women live active, practical lives. In the later twentieth century also sent the patriarchy a message that women felt solidarity with their working sisters. A left-wing statement.

Does an association with work seem 'unfeminine' to you? If so it demonstrates how decoupled from femaleness this 'femininity' you have imagined is.

Handy at any time, for me dungarees have always been the choice garment for messy work - in the garden, on excavations, in museum storage areas, in book stacks. I'm annoyed that a pair I've been wearing on-and-off since 1992 has just disintegrated from old age. Me next I fear.

Here are some hardworking women from 1918.

Thank you for this, @Baileyonice.

Confirmation that trans identity is simply about stereotypes:

Trans is in essence saying 'I have more in common behaviourally with the typical behaviours of the opposite sex'& wish to be categorised that way'.

It's unsurprising that those of us who have spent a lifetime trying to escape the narrow confines of female stereotyping have no time for all this trans nonsense.

'Woman' is not a stereotype, it's a biological reality. It doesn't matter how we behave, we're still women. It doesn't matter how men behave, they're still men.

Is this a bit like 'all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others'?

So:
'Research shows that males and females share the vast majority of cognitive abilities, leadership traits, and personality dimensions, but despite this it is scientifically uncontroversial that some cognitive abilities & personality dimensions are associated with ladybrain and some are manly.'

Is that it?

Exactly.

It's not unreasonable for anyone to wish to be included in a group they feel they have a lot in common with. But that group has the right to say no. Being excluded from the category of "woman" does not deprive transwomen of any human or civil rights. They have all the same rights as every other human being.

Giving them the right to force their way into a group they don't actually belong to would give that group - the group known as "women" - a uniquely diminished status. No other groups in which people find themselves by birth or accident are forced to admit people simply on the grounds of a claimed "identity". I can't demand disabled status simply by claiming to be disabled. I can't join the BIPOC group simply by claiming I "feel more black than white".

Self-determination does not mean anyone has the right to force themselves into protected spaces intended only for the use of a group to which they do not belong.

That in no way implicates cis gender non conforming people who wish to be defined/categorised by their reproductive characteristics.

Implicates? I can't make this sentence make sense. Implicates what? Do you mean impacts? It very much does impact women if the definition of women becomes adult human females and some adult human males.

I guess men can't wrap their heads around why some women don't want to be naked in front of man because 'hey I don't care if a chick sees the goods' but that is because women (as a class) aren't a threat to men (as a class) in the same way.

One more time, men can wear what they like (within the bounds of decency and appropriateness), choose to use whatever name they like, have any hobbies, jobs or interests that they like but none of this will make them a woman and they need stay out of female single sex spaces.

Men cannot be women.

Men cannot be female.

Men can present as 'feminine'.

Women are female.

Women will remain female whether or not they present as 'feminine'.

The standard of what is 'feminine' is culturally constructed and changes all the time.

Gender neutral loos are often very unsavoury because some men's standards of cleanliness are different from women's, as any train traveller learns.

Not wanting men in the women's loos is not just about avoiding voyeurs, exhibitionists, and rapists.

I have often thought what would happen if a bunch of women just got fully naked in a men’s changing room and started walking around. When challenged they just say we are trans men. Whilst I am sure people would laugh and say the men would love it and think it’s just a big ol joke, I expect honestly the vast majority of men would feel as uncomfortable as women would in the opposite situation and that has nothing to do with feeling a threat.

Im glad you agree, for a long time people who hold sex realist opinions were called transphobes and have suffered harassment arrests, job loss, threats things like that.
I only wish trans identifying men would listen more to people like you and come to appreciate your point of view. They are still stuck in the trans women are women mindset of the past, and are still threatening women who hold their own opinions with ‘rape with a splintery rolling pin’ and other such delightful threats.
Perhaps you should go on Reddit and continue this discussion with them, see if they can be persuaded that everyone can hold their own opinion.

Whether or not society decides to structure it that way is upto social negotiation.

Nope- woman is not up for negotiation, there is no way to tell if someone is actually trans so there is no way to just let some men in. Women's space are for women. If some men choose not to use men's spaces that's on them not us.

Oh and drop the cis women are not a sub category of women.

Well said