What TRAs or 'gender' advocates and 'gender critical' feminists agree on.

[WrongKindOfFeminist]

Thought it might be useful to find points of commonality.

Ever the optimist! 😊

1. Gender stereotypes can be restrictive and limiting.

There are plenty of misogynistic people in the world, and internalised misogyny is part of why it perpetuates.

It doesn't matter what percentage it is. There is no percentage that means that a woman who doesn't want to get changed in the presence of males should lose the right to having a single sex space and lose the bodily autonomy to choose who sees her naked.

The variety in different polls comes from (a) ambiguous wording, where polls that aren't clear that they are talking about biologically intact male people in spaces that are supposed to be female only getting very different responses than ones that are clear and (b) changes over time as more people think about it properly and realise that it's not such a great idea.

The #nodebate strategy was the TRA's best hope, it prevented people from engaging their brains. Now that the actual law has been clarified people are using their brains a bit more. Changing the law would require someone to come up with an unambiguous wording that either definitively draws a distinction between "true trans" vs "any male who wants to enter" (I have yet to see any attempt to do this) or abolishes single-sex spaces altogether (which would need a hell of a lot of justification given how much evidence there is that they are needed and are a reasonable and proportionate provision.)

It's a free country with free speech and it is entirely legitimate for there to be discussions and debates about how to change the law, but the new law will need to be based on specific, measurable and objective facts and the process of trying to work out what it should be is intrinsically causing more and more people to conclude that actually single sex spaces delineated solely on biological sex aren't that bad. You cannot have a female male any more than you can have a square circle.

I expect it's a bit of a mix. Some stereotypes are based on rough generalisation (women are smaller than men). And some are hyper-exaggerations of sex differences (women are less hairy than men, translated into 'women must be totally hairless'), and some are just pure invented hogwash - 'women are temptresses'.

Some of it is also applying 'might is right' to the situation. I mean, women are physically weaker than men by some metrics.

I reckon at root it comes down to who wins in a fight, I'm afraid. And that is literal oppression.

100%.

I did start my thinking well back to the very beginnings of human communities, and my thinking was that the first thing males would have noticed would have been that women were weaker, and that only women gave birth. That would be a valuable commodity for males, and would have wanted to protect (control) that commodity. Hence, the possession. The protection would have created dependence. And birth, breastfeeding, and keeping children from being eaten by wild animals would have meant the woman's time would be taken up completely with foraging and other responsibilities, and keeping the children alive.

The "women are temptresses" was thoroughly embedded through various religions much later. But I think that just illustrates my point: women were only allowed to be seen by society in certain ways, and these "ways" came to mean "feminine." These stereotypes certainly weren't going to be seen as "masculine" because men weren't allowed to be "weak", weren't "burdened" by children, and always had more power, mobility, and agency than women (even if they had very little to none, men always had more than women).

And birth, breastfeeding, and keeping children from being eaten by wild animals would have meant the woman's time would be taken up completely with foraging and other responsibilities, and keeping the children alive.

Mammals (whether or not they are human) rely on females prioritising the needs of their young until they are independent. The idea that they might prioritise their own needs is therefore intrinsically threatening.

Another factor is cultural conceptions of womanhood and femininity - and who has the power and influence to shape these.

The vast majority of women throughout history spent their lives slogging away in intense physical (and endless reproductive) labour. But our standard image of woman is hardly pregnant and sturdy, wearing practical clod-hoppers and with leathery hands. It's the whole sexualised Madonna / whore shebang - woman defined only in relation to man, and on his terms.

And I guess it was men with money and time who constructed her - writers and artists and thinkers, building on a privileged, romanticised male gaze. Which means the idealised femininity of the maiden/lady is confined to literature, art and the more rarefied environments with privilege to accommodate - and therefore demand - those ideals. But as such, she becomes aspirational.

I think we see this even now, as this newest iteration of ideal womanhood is similarly shaped by middle-class privilege - academia, influential middle-aged white male transitioners, drag culture etc. - and imposed on the rest of us as a moral standard to which to aspire: in this case, Be kind! (Plus ça angel-in-the-house change...)

ETA: Yes - kind of a cross-post, ish, with Bridget and Tea.

I think TRAs and GC people are both sick of how toxic the debate has become, and I think a large part of that stems from social media and the flattening of language it facilitates.

I don't think this is true.

TRA never wanted a debate. They wanted to pass laws without much attention and present it as a done deal later.

Look how much attention the GRA had compared with Civil Partnerships just a few months later. It could be argued that the number predicted GRC issued was going to be less than the numbers of civil marriages, but GRA always had more potential to impact on all women.

When May was thinking about self id, TRA made debate difficult - they refused to be on panels with women forcing the debate to be cancelled or to carry on without women.

Its TRA who pushed the idea that even discussing it was transphobic. The media was lobbied via TRA influence within Stonewall.

Women used social media because we had no other outlet. And TRA again tried to shut down womens voices. Are you forgetting the twitter bans for stating woman are female?

The idea that TRA are victims of social media is bonkers. All thet happened is that they had control then lost it.

There is a set of books that I have been trying to read for 30 years: Gerda Lerner The Creation of Patriarchy (1986) and The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (1993), so maybe I'll try again now! My goodness are they dense, especially the first volume! Sets out the history of patriarchy from its earliest beginnings in civilized society, from the little I can remember of the little I have read. 😬

Of course, 'No Debate' was a literal slogan/instruction.

Sounds interesting if a bit daunting.

I like a summary.

https://www.supersummary.com/the-creation-of-patriarchy/summary/

Yeah, really interesting.

I find it a bit frightening sometimes to wonder how different a female-only society could be given how much our conceptions of ourselves must be shaped by patriarchal history and culture. I mean, men, too, but as the oppressed group, women especially.

And our few visions of that - Lesbos, the Amazons etc. - can't escape that male gaze. A feminist Wonder Woman is fab... as long as we keep the costume sufficiently skimpy.

I think GC feminists may perhaps be more likely to focus on the limitations of the latest Wonder Woman - something like, "OK, so we may at last be subverting some of the usual sexist tropes.... but we're doing it in a tropey way, in which everything's still bloody seen through the limiting lens of gender!" Whereas TRAs and lib fems may be more likely to celebrate her as a confident expression of sexuality and liberatingly complex gender identity - gender ideology claiming to break down gendered stereotypes... by reinforcing them.

This article, for example -

Yes, she is sort of naked a lot of the time, but this isn’t objectification so much as a cultural reset: having thighs, actual thighs you can kick things with, not thighs that look like arms, is a feminist act. The whole Diana myth, women safeguarding the world from male violence not with nurture but with better violence, is a feminist act.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/05/why-wonder-woman-is-a-masterpiece-of-subversive-feminism

Also in the same article: Being able to stop people getting pregnant would be a cool superpower. Yeah, it's fine to mention the "w-" word as long as it's safely expressed in terms of an acceptable showing of flesh (satisfactorily feminine) and violence (subversively masculine). But heaven forbid it be mentioned in relation to something as mundane as pregnancy.

Cultural gender swallows reality yet a-bloody-gain, and in a feminist article.

I have lost count of the number of times women have been told - and repeat - that self objectification is 'empowering' themselves. And 'their choice'.

Yes, she is sort of naked a lot of the time, but this isn’t objectification so much as a cultural reset: having thighs, actual thighs you can kick things with, not thighs that look like arms, is a feminist act. The whole Diana myth, women safeguarding the world from male violence not with nurture but with better violence, is a feminist act.

I'd like to think that women could safeguard the world from male violence without more violence, but it would probably only happen if women were in charge and made all the laws and controlled all the resources. And, we'd have to successfully go through an awful lot of violence in order to achieve that first!

The skimpy outfit who kicks ass only works as a feminist icon if we don't have to also deal with pervy men, who would take that icon and turn it into what they want. Which they have.

Yep. I look at the early-teen girls now, with their skimpy skirts and unnecessary foundation and uniformly straight hair, and wonder who they'd really be, if they'd not been sold this lie. And at the NBs and transboys, too, for whom the happy, being-true-to-myself (honest, guv!) medium is... a standard boy's cut and tellingly baggy trousers and t-shirt.

Thanks for that! I think a summary would be a good place to start, or I might give up again.

ed missing word

Sorry, @Catiette , that article is by Zoë TWAW Be Kind Williams who would rather throw women's rights under the bus than criticise Drag Race. She's one of the patriarchy's useful idiots.

Zoë Williams "identifies" as a feminist as much as my 3 year old identified as the pilot of Thunderbird 3.

The tension, meanwhile, between the thrill of the action, which is what combat is all about, and the objectification, which is what women are all about

Feck off, Zoë.

I'd actually not noticed it was Zoe! Some of her stuff drives me up the wall. This one felt sharper than others... but so, so blinkered still.

The "people" and pregnancy thing? The irony hurt.

And the line you quote, which I'd totally missed in skimming? Says it all. TRA thinking seems to rely so much on "I say, therefore it is". TWAW!!! Or Zoe, here: "I'm describing gender roles in an ironic tone, just as the film does - QED I'm critiquing them, just as the film does." But there's nothing beyond this - no "But is this effective, or enough?"

It feels lazy. Safe and reassuring and lazy.

I think TRAs and GC feminists would each say they're fighting to subvert gender roles - but this GC feminist would argue that most TRAs just stop at the first hurdle, sit down and open a picnic basket (neatly packed by a transman), declaring the race already won.

I would also like to tell Zoe to fuck off.

She has a daughter, ffs!

I imagine it would never occur to her that anything like this would ever impact on her daughter (others' perhaps, but as long as it isn't happening to me...) A lot of people just don't think that far ahead.

Someone commented earlier today on another thread about politicians enacting laws as a short-term solution to an immediate problem, never thinking how this "tool" might be used in the future by a less conscientious government (power monger). I thought it was a really apt observation.

Maybe not engaging with it as it was intended, eh? Maybe engaging with it as the person doing the engaging intends, however.

And another poster chose to inform one of the others on this thread that "I think you aren't quite with the gist of the conversation."

Patronising much?

I have had quite a lot to do with a fair number of men who identify as women. They have probably been (mostly) on the "reasonable" side of that group (with two notable exceptions) and so I have more than once tried to have discussions with them. I suppose it could be described as "tried to engage" with them.

Every time, unless I just slavishly agreed with whatever the other person said, after a certain point I have been shouted at, told I am stupid, that I am a bigot, that I am engaged in genocide, and on one occasion accused of having said earlier in the conversation that all transwomen are rapists. (I am not that stupid: some at least lack the penis with which to commit rape, after all.) When they are in any way threatened by being disagreed with, it's quite remarkable how male and overbearing, even threatening, their behaviour abruptly becomes.

There comes a point at which I can no longer be bothered with such unreasonable, and I fear unreasoning, chaps. I just want some sort of guarantee that they will stay out of women's single sex spaces, and thus ensure that malign men are denied to opportunity to PRETEND TO BE TRANS and perv their way in. Which is, and always has been, the danger of which I am very much aware: not the sweet little innocent trans folk, but their hangers on and fellow travellers, and those who use them as cover for their own fetishes and sexual perversions and pleasure in violence against women.

You'd think the trans ones would object to those quite as much as women do, particularly if they wish to be thought of themselves as being women, but it seems not.

(I'm not going to read the rest of the thread before I go to bed. It is late and I am only on page 5, but I decided I'd reply to that post at this point because I had something I wanted to say.)

You disagree with the biggest, most reliable and provenly accurate opinion polling company in the country which has demonstrated it's representative nature on politics in the last few general elections...

... In favour of some niche journals without proven methodology.

Ok then

I always take 'not engaging as intended' to be a euphemism for 'not complying with my pre decided narrative.