Trans Rights: The Conjuring Trick at the Toilet Door

[frazzled1]

https://heartlandstribune.com/trans-rights-the-conjuring-trick-at-the-toilet-door/

Great article - capture of the left, trans rights versus women's rights.

The left is supposed to begin with material reality. Bodies. Labour. Class. Wages. Violence. The analysis of women’s oppression that produced the Equality Act, that built the refuges, that fought for the single-sex provisions now being contested, was a materialist analysis. Women are oppressed because they are female. Not because of how they feel about being female. Because of reproduction, sexual vulnerability, male violence, unpaid domestic care, wage inequality and systematic exclusion from public life. The material conditions of being a woman in this world are not a cultural mood. They are a structural fact.

Liberalism, in its contemporary iteration, has made a different set of commitments. It has committed to the proposition that identity is self-determined, that the sincere assertion of an identity creates an obligation on others to affirm it, and that any structure which resists this obligation is oppressive by definition. That is not materialism. It is idealism. It mistakes the declaration for the thing declared. It confuses the map for the territory, the word for the body the word describes.

There is nothing inherently left-wing in that position. It is, in fact, a philosophy that systematically privileges the subjective over the material, the assertion over the evidence, and the feelings of one group over the physical safety of another. On those terms, it is not the left that has adopted a new progressive position. It is the left that has been captured by liberalism and dressed the result in the language of solidarity.

Bollocks. Feminism was legitimised by interchangeability. That the sexes overlap both cognitively & psychologically was the justification for equality. There's a reason why apes don't qualify for equal treatment.

The left has long been about equality & self determination not being limited by morphology so its ludicrous to suggest its only materiality that justifies its principles.

And thats a neat attempt at the same conjuring trick right there...equality is not limited by sex. Humans are a sexually dimorphic species; males as a class tend to be larger and stronger than women as a class.

Bollocks….

That’s what all men have, even if some choose to have them chopped off.

If only more on the Left shared that perspective.

It's an excellent article. With arguments which any actual old school socialist left-winger with principles should be familiar. Unfortunately many, mostly extremely middle class people, who merely "identify" as left wing while being privileged, neoliberal and obsessed with batshit elitist postmodernist theories, are not.

That the usual ignorant suspects who love to rewrite history and want everyone to pretend reality isn't reality get riled by even the existence of a left wing narrative that doesn't fit their own (because it speaks to material reality and especially the very long social history of the fight for rights in this country) is very telling.

But also amusing.

Great article, OP, thanks for posting.

Lots of powerful points in it. I particularly liked the inclusion of just how this whole farrago has shafted working class women, in particular - not a new point, but one the left studiously avoids confronting. It needs more sunlight.

Excellent article. Thanks for sharing.

Liberalism, in its contemporary iteration, has made a different set of commitments. It has committed to the proposition that identity is self-determined, that the sincere assertion of an identity creates an obligation on others to affirm it, and that any structure which resists this obligation is oppressive by definition. That is not materialism. It is idealism. It mistakes the declaration for the thing declared. It confuses the map for the territory, the word for the body the word describes.

I think this does articulate some of the dissonance well.

Err. No. Overlap is not interchangeability.

Feminism has never been about the interchangeability of the sexes. If we were actually interchangeable we wouldn't need feminism. The recognition that the needs, desires, and experience of women are as valid as that of men is at the core of feminism, not the interchangeability of men and women.

While the polarization of cultural gendered expectations and assumptions is a problem for feminism it isn't the heart of the struggle, just a frequent battleground.

Are you seriously suggesting males & females aren't cognitively & psychologically interchangeable? And this recognition hasn't been & still is a major struggle that underpinned feminism that had/s implications on the self determination of women?

Is there a difference between male and female bodies?

This is rubbish. Feminism is about achieving equality by acknowledging the world and society works differently for men and women based on their biology. For example in work with anything ranging from safety equipment, uniforms, toiletbreaks to healthcare to research to simple things such as the design of cars.
Feminism is also providing the same choices to women as to men and where women are at a disadvantage, providing additional measures to help overcome that disadvantage. Feminism is also for increasing the awareness that being a mother and raising a family is different than being a father.
Feminism is all about the unique experience of being born female, being a girl and growing into a woman, based on biology. Don't be fooled by third wave feminism theory that is all about ignoring the origin of feminism and turning the fight for equality of race, religion, disability, womens problem to solve instead of focusing on our own problems first.

That's only part of the story. The Declaration of Sentiments (a foundational first wave declaration) was about women's access to the civil, social, political, and religious rights of men.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeclarationofSentiments

My own feminist journey like many others has been one of being denied access to choices because of my sex. Whilst access to flexibility of measures is part of this journey its certainly hasn't by a long shot been the biggest hurdle…which is the door being slammed in your face before you even get a chance to ask for extras.

Men and women are cognitively and psychologically interchangeable according to gender ideology. Or is it just clothes?

Great article OP. Really nails the whole thing.

If we were actually interchangeable we wouldn't need feminism.

And women would find it alot easier to use urinals.

Can one self determine out of having a period? An unwanted pregnancy? Menopause? Are female athletes just not self determining hard enough?

I'm sure this must have been explained to you before:

Men are like rams/bulls/boars because they are male.

Men are like women because they are both human.

Men have rights because they are human, not because they are like females.

Men have rights because they are human, not because they are like females.

WOOHOO! WELL DONE!

Glad you finally got the point of interchangeability.

No. Male and female mammals are not interchangeable, and this means that human females (at least in countries like the UK) have specific rights that men don't need, most obviously the right to control their fertility. This enables them to access education and work, and underscores the expectation that they have an equal right to education and work.

You didn't answer my question earlier. What is the difference between men and women? Or is there no difference?

No, that's nonsense. Feminism was legitimised by the growing recognition that women are persons - human beings. Human beings don't have to be interchangeable with one another in order to deserve human rights. It was exactly the same process as civil rights: a growing recognition, hard-fought-for, that the color of one's skin is irrelevant to one's status as a human being. Likewise, one's genitalia and one's role in the reproduction process are irrelevant to one's status as a human being.

I think race is any many ways interchangeable, and perhaps that is why Americans 'liberals' get so confused about rights that relate to characteristics where difference is relevant.

Good article. Hate the AI art.

"Interchangeability" is meaningless term and a red herring.