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?

Who says it means anything about whether trans women are women or not? I am just saying that it is obvious that many of you here are very entrenched in sex based stereotypes which yes, are sexist. It's a comment about the environment here. I find it funny that trans people and their supporters have equally rigid views about sex and gender. Like peas and carrots, you all are.

That’s nice dear.

Yet again an advocate for the TRA position doesn’t understand the importance of socialisation to feminist analysis.

People hold a wide range of sometimes opposing political and cultural views and also believe that sex is immutable and important.

'Gender critical' means questioning gender, but it's difficult to avoid crime figures demonstrating that the overwhelming majority of violent and sexual crime is committed by men. Whether that is because of nature or nurture is debated, but the fact is difficult to avoid.

What group of people are saying there’s no difference and we are all the same?

Exactly. Some things are simply not gender/sex neutral and crime is one of those things. Puppy dogs’ tails notwithstanding.

Alright. You got me. I confess. I have rock solid rigid views on both sex and gender. I am rumbled.

My view on sex is that it's fixed during conception and in-utero development and immutable thereafter: it cannot be changed later in life.

My view on gender is that it's a social construct of the society in which we all swim.

No two.humans are the same

Yes, that’s the point she was making

You’ve created a straw man.

Sex being immutable doesnt mean that all men think this and all women think that.

Again, who said it did?

Of course not, but it does mean that no man can 'become' a woman.

If blood is flowing from your nether regions do you

a) call an ambulance
b) get a sanitary pad

How do you decide which?

'Women's rights are undermined by anti-trans activism. It promotes gender conformity, disparages female accomplishment in sport, and encourages the idea of limiting what young women should be able to do with their bodies.' ... @TransParentlyAnnoyed

Women's rights are undermined by trans activism. It promotes gender conformity, diminishes female accomplishment in sport, and encourages young women to do harm to their bodies.

Fixed that for you. You're welcome.

Bit sexist...

/s

No, and society would be very different if it were assumed that all men did think like this. However, it does explain why women are campaigning for the right to e.g. keep men out of rape crisis centres and why many women are so dependent on a wider range of single sex services.

You can argue the toss about when single sex services are appropriate, but you can't provide a single sex service that is used by both sexes simultaneously.

Presumably in this analysis gender critical lesbians just don't count as gender critical women.

We are all limited by our biology in a variety of ways. My digestive biology makes it impossible for me to survive on a diet of bamboo. My respiratory biology makes it impossible for me to breathe water like a fish. My skeletal biology precludes me from growing a pair of wings. All the self-determination in the world can't change these biological facts. Why should my reproductive biology be the only exception? My reproductive biology means I can only be a mother, never a father. My husband's reproductive biology means he can't contribute to breast-feeding our child.

Self-determination never meant that we could re-write biology to suit our preferences. What it means is that, when it comes to the choices we are all free to make - such as what work we will do, or what hobbies we will pursue, or who we will love, or where we will live, or what clothes we will wear, or how we will vote - our sex should not dictate the options available to us. When it comes to our sex, though, we don't get a choice. Nature makes that decision for us.

I think that is more to do with your interpretation than what women actually say.

Here's the cliff notes for how I see it.

Men and women have different bodies and to a small degree at the population level we see biological differences in character, mainly to do with agression and risk taking. However, at an individual level men and women display a lot of overlap - plenty of women are more agressive and risk taking than plenty of men.

On top of this is a huge amount of socialisation where different behaviours are rewarded or punished depending on ones sex. This is not just, indeed mostly not, simple obvious stuff like parents telling boys not to be babies and girls to play nicely, but the cumulative influence of all the people we interact with, hiw they treat us and how we observe them interacting with each other, the stories we are told and the media we consume, millions and millions of tiny message about what it is to be a woman or a man and how those intersect with all the other social cues and rules we internalise, and also what we as women or men can expect from others, women and men.

And then on top of that, Feminists are trying to unpick it again to understand who we as individual women really are, what we could be outside that framework, while also dealing with the reality that the framework still exists and doesn't just influence how we feel and act but also how others see us and treat us, and a man's belief that we are only there for sex, for example, or an employer's belief that women are not as strong leaders as men can still hurt us whether or not we see ourselves like that.

So yes, there is an element of "sugar and spice, slugs and snails" but it's not describing what women and men innately are so much as current socialised behaviours that need to be managed if women are to have the freedom to take as much advantage as they can of their native talents and live the best lives they can within this society.

One of the Gender Absolutists, I forget which but Howse or Emily or whichever one it is on this thread, currently has a bee in his bonnet about "is" and "ought". He thinks we think that because it is necessary to have sex based protections and supports today, we think that is the way it ought to be.

For me at least, that is a fundamental misunderstanding. I recognise it is necessary today because of the marginalising or exploitative behaviour -physical, sexual, social or professional - of some men towards women today. But I believe those protections ought not to be needed because that behaviour ought not to be happening.

As a Feminist, I am entirely capable of separating what we pragmatically may need to support women today from the more equal and safer future I hope we can build towards for women tomorrow.

For me at least, that is a fundamental misunderstanding. I recognise it is necessary today because of the marginalising or exploitative behaviour -physical, sexual, social or professional - of some men towards women today. But I believe those protections ought not to be needed because that behaviour ought not to be happening.

Does that mean you don't put any weight on the privacy and dignity reasons for providing separate facilities for men and women?

I can see that safety may be less of an issue in in a future nirvana, but that's only one of three headings under which single-sex facilities are mandated. Or do you see issues of privacy and dignity disappearing too?

Personally, I think that the reason we experience mixed sex spaces to be undignified and less private than single sex ones is simply because of how male people fetishise the female body and female nudity. I think it's cultural not innate.

Similarly, I think we need women's social and professional spaces today because of the overbearing professional behaviour of men, but I would again hope in future this is no longer needed because gender has ceased to be a limiting factor in women's careers and men have stopped crowding women to the metaphorical edges of social activities.

None of this is to minimise the reasons we need them today. And never would I suggest this changes until such a time as women, all women, no longer feel they are needed.

So, it's rather a moot point in practice. If I'm right, we will still only move on from sex segregation at such a stage we all agree it's unnecessary. And if those who believe privacy and dignity are inherently single sex are right, we will never reach that cutoff. So having different views about where we might end up in future is never going to cause us to disagree about what's needed in practice.

The only practical place we might differ today is that I would generally support mixed sex options (not as the only provsion but as an alternative) so that men and women who are comfortable in a mixed sex environment have that option, in the hope that over time this lessens the "mystery" of women's spaces that is seems so compelling to some men.

Personally, I think that the reason we experience mixed sex spaces to be undignified and less private than single sex ones is simply because of how male people fetishise the female body and female nudity. I think it's cultural not innate.

Do men not also have a right to privacy and dignity away from the female gaze?

Women don't fetishize the male body, broadly speaking, but I think privacy for men is also a consideration. I also don't think that because it's cultural it's less important.

That's fine. As I said, we don't need to agree on this to have the same objectives in the here and now.

Do purely cultural ideas of dignity and privacy have the same weight as innate drives? To me anything that causes unnecessary restrictions or divisions between people is fair game to at least challenge as to whether it's actually a good thing to have.

But there is never going to be a time where no man is leering at women’s bodies, is there? I think the suggestion that there is implies that there will be a cut off somewhere where women or men as pp said are deemed unreasonable for objecting to mixed sex spaces.