Can you be a fully trans inclusive feminist?

[Imdunfer]

Inspired from another thread where it was out of place so I brought it here.

Someone seemed to claim that it was possible to be both be a feminist and to be trans inclusive, where by trans inclusive they mean males in women's spaces and shortlists (the attitude to sport wasn't stated).

I don't believe that you can truly be both, do you?

No, not that being oppressed by powerful men is what makes you a woman.

My point is that some people (men and women) mistakenly think that if the issue is 'men doing oppressing', that must be a feminist issue. (Hence why transwomen can be included in feminism). They can't see anything else except feminism that is analysing and criticising 'men doing oppressing' - and mistakenly believe that feminism is about 'fighting men doing oppressing', instead of feminism being about 'women being oppressed'. A subtle but crucial distinction.

The exchange between @sosomewhereelse and @Rollingpinofdoom , finishing at 22:12 yesterday on page 21, illustrates this beautifully. (I also saw the mistake crop up on an earlier page of this thread but can't find that post now.)

The logic goes
A. Powerful men are oppressing other men, causing problems like e.g. men's mental health issues
B. Patriarchy is about 'men doing oppressing'
C. Therefore men oppressing men is a result of patriarchy
D. Feminism is about fighting patriarchy
C. Therefore men being oppressed by men is a feminist issue.

The flaw creeps in at step B - patriarchy is specifically about men oppressing women, not men oppressing other men.
Then the flaw continues in step C - because the word 'patriarchy' lost its definition in step B, and becomes expanded in step C to include men oppressing men.

This is where I bring in traditional leftist analysis of social class and capitalism. It is these that will help you understand men oppressing men, not feminism.

To be precise, it is not merely about social class and capitalism. These may be just further symptoms of men's need for hierarchy and tendency to oppress anyone they see as weaker.
I am not sure if there is a word for the analysis of this. Which may be why we resort to inaccurate words like 'feminism' or not-quite-accurate words like 'classism' or 'capitalism'.

It is admirable that people are concerned with men oppressing transwomen and want to fight this. But it is not a feminist issue. 'Men oppressing everyone else' needs another name.

This is the best they can send apparently.

Yes.

What an interesting post. Thanks for reposting it here.

Trans inclusive feminism is a type of feminism, just like trans exclusive feminism. It doesnt matter how much you snarl and fight about it, irrespective of your beliefs, both are feminist approaches and always will be.

That's why if you google "what are the types of feminism", both types will come up.

So it doesnt matter if you get to 1000 replies and 17 threads. Trans inclusive feminism will still be postmodern feminism. Or how many times you try and quote me, chase me around the site talking about my marriage or past, try and derail threads I am on, or circumvent MN sock troll detectors, transninclusive feminism will still be a type of feminism. It will still be listed in textbooks as a type of feminism by all academics.

"snarl"

It's a discussion, Lexible.

Word salad is salad.

Google says both types exist - that’s proven then

I do think men can be feminists
I don’t think that anyone who can’t understand what a woman is can be a feminist
but of course they want to eliminate the meaning of useful words

Trans inclusive feminism is a type of feminism

Trans women are a type of women

Trans men are a type of men

Non-binary is a type of identity

Flat earthism is a type of astronomy

When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less

Flat earthism is a type of astronomy

As is geocentrism. You know, Galileo Galilei vs the Inquisition.

This is an example of what I talked about in my post yesterday:

If your concern is mainly with who is doing the oppressing, and dismantling the tools and mechanisms they use to oppress others, it might be easy to lose sight of the importance of analysing who are the people being oppressed, and how and why is each group being oppressed.
I think some modern ways of thinking tend to do this, by lumping all oppressed people together, be it black, disabled, mentally ill, women, trans, gay, or whatever.

@Choppingwoodcarryingwater you are lumping together being an immigrant, being a woman, and being poor, labelling the lump as being about egalitarianism, and contrasting that against authoritarianism.

What feminism does is separate out the strands of that lump and concern itself only with the 'woman' part.
There are other analyses, other schools of critical thought, other "isms", that are concerned with immigration and (separately) with poverty. And more that look at disability rights, racial issues, etc. etc.

Egalitarianism is the belief that everyone is equal and should have equal rights. But is does very little to analyse why some groups of people don't have equal rights in practice. For that you need to separate out the groups of people being oppressed and look at each one, not lump them all together and just 'fight authoritarianism'.

Until there are new textbooks and an update of Wikipedia which state that "trans-inclusive feminism" was a misstep, and not, in fact, a feminism at all.

Pesco-Vegetarian is a term that will come up if you google. Most vegetarians don’t consider people who eat fish any type of vegetarian.

You know if we googled “flat earth" we'd find societies dedicated to it?

If someone believes they have a missing limb when they actually don’t, should they be given a blue badge and PIP and other benefits they may be granted if they actually had a missing limb?

Should they be allowed to park in disabled spaces which are limited, at the expense of people who have a disability who then may not have enough parking?

These are genuine questions as I’m trying to work through your analogy logically.

Geocentrism is exactly what Genderism always makes me think of.

They have a fixed belief at the centre that is axiomic. Every observation has to be made to work with that.

But the world isn't like that. And reality keeps breaking through in ways that their model doesn't fit.

So they end up with more and more convoluted logic, more and more made up explanations to account for all the exceptions to their core assertion, more and more "have you considered that..."s and "I expect that science will eventually show that..."s, til what they have is the Genderist equivalent of all those supercomplicated calculations and "retrograde movement" medieval astronomers needed to try to predict the motion of the plants and the paths of the sun and moon in the sky in a way that aligned with their fixed belief that the earth was the thing they all moved round....

When the actual reality was simply that they had started from the wrong place, and once you start from the right place what looked impossibly complicated becomes far far simpler.

But even beyond this, the biggest irony for the Genderists, even more ironic than the story of the geocentrists and all the time spent on calculations to solve the wrong problem, is not simply that the Genderists are wrong but that even if they were right, even if all that effort was justified, they still aren't proving what they think they are.

Because the thing they actually need to prove isn't that this "Gender" thing is real, or even that it matters. The thing they actually need to prove to support their extremist demands is not that "Gender" is real but that sex is not.

They need to prove that sex isn't real, or that sex doesn't matter, or that the language and provisions set up for sex make more sense made over to "Gender" and nothing would be needed to replace them.

And these things is they can never prove, because reality belies them.

That is literally one of the best analogies of it that I’ve ever read 👏

The idea that its authoritarian not to have an undefined category of social women is an interesting take.

I suspect that its not possible to define the category, because in doing so, itll be forcing women into an arbitrary category they dont consent to.

Wear a dress - become a social woman, wear a tie, they become a social man.

Choppingwoodcarryingwater
Discomfort being so subjective makes it a logistical nightmare impossible to cater for so as a standard/principle its not practical that gender critical feminists don't seem to understand the consequences of in that once a principle is established it also needs to apply broadly.

You may have been tired when you wrote that, it took a few reads, but I think this is the meaning - I'm open to correction, sorry if I've got it wrong -
catering for a subjective concept like 'discomfort' is a logistical nightmare, and broad principles need to be implied instead.

Have I got that right?
If so, I think it sums up very well the pragmatic, pro-social approach I take - yes, individuals have all sorts of subjective feelings, but if it is decided that the safe speed at that point is 60mph, individual feelings about it are irrelevant, the principle is applied not just broadly but universally; even Max Verstappen has to respect the limit.

Similarly, where facilities are separated on the basis of sex, it would result in a 'logistical nightmare' if individual feelings about whether sex means 'biological sex' or 'sociological sex' or feelings of 'discomfort' at having to use the facilities designated for one's biological result in a logistical nightmare were taken into account.

The principle that single-sex facilities are in some circumstances required, and that 'sex' means biological sex, avoid the logistical nightmare you refer to.

Broadly applied, that means providing, where required, facilities reserved for biological males, and facilities reserved for biological females, and trusting people to respect them.
That's a configuration which worked well for the huge majority of people until very recently.

Men's/women's/accessible provision is pragmatic, economic, safe, fair for most of the population, based on provable distinctions between men and women, easy to implement, and pretty much universally respected until very recently.
It works fine unless
'Discomfort being so subjective'
is invoked by men demanding to use the women's facilities which
'makes it a logistical nightmare'
as organisations, companies and venues have been discovering to their cost.

edited to say that the para starting 'Similarly...' is pretty dense, sorry - must've been feeling tired all of a suddent😞

Shouldn't need saying but probably does...

A person who is oppressed (or in HowseSpeak suffering from the imposition of another's "authoritarianism" limiting what they want to be allowed to do) may in another context be the person who is oppressing (imposing "authoritarianism" upon others).

An analysis which becomes impossible if all axis of oppression, exploitation and marginalisation are munged into one blob.

Gender Critical Feminism and I have no opinion on the authenticity or otherwise of transgender people. Our concern is with social construct of Gender and how it is used to deny women our full role in society. I, and other gender critical feminists have no desire to curtail the sex-based rights of transgender people but don't accept that gender-based rights should be a thing because of our view of gender itself.

On the other hand, both genderists and your bogeymen believe that gender is not a social construct but is innate, part of the natural order and very important.

BTW, we are not small children to be frightened into line by the threat of monsters under the bed.

I do find it odd that none of these “trans-inclusive feminists” are happy that the SC judgement gave TIF clarity on their rights to abortion, maternity and healthcare, and the right to access female only RCC. Or is their “”feminism” only concerned with the rights of TIM?
none of them have answered the question, in a scenario where a vulnerable woman needs a single sex space, but a TIM also wants to access the space, whose wishes and needs should be met?

Exactly.

Plenty of authoritarianism is apparently totally fine when it comes the suggestion that female people be allowed to say for ourselves when our sex matters, or whether we consent to being redefined by some amorphous constellation of unsayable but nevertheless very important, of course you know what they are, so why would I need to say? social commonalities.

When it comes to the significance of sex, suddenly we don't get a say at all.

Very good point that I had not thought of.

False.

Women’s rights are different from men’s rights in areas where the difference of sex is a factor that makes risks different, or where the situation (like maternity) is only possible for members of one sex.

This has been enshrined in law since at least 1823.

You really know very little & seem to resist learning - and yet you are constantly raising the subject.

Why?

Why not master the basics before you start?