A Woman's Place is Speaking Up in Wales

[MochaSoul]

That sentence is enough to put you in the bigot box with me.

When a group of trade unionists decided their union's place was to put women in their place... They got jumped on by anti-woman activists too.

 

[Sea Star]

That sentence is enough to put you in the bigot box with me.

you wish. Sadly, not.

 

[MochaSoul]

And if people think you're including trans people when you say "woman", there's no problem for you? Or for them?

Do you do the same with ethnicity? Person; black person; Asian person...

Do you not see the problem with that kind of argument?




Or do you think I bleed through my ears and give birth though my stomach... or sumink?

 

[Sea Star]

I get the principle Spanglechick but there's a problem of imposed categories/labels on people which goes for both sides of the debate. I'm a woman. To be told that I can't use that term but must refer to myself as a cis-woman or natal-woman feels extraordinarily disempowering - distressingly so. And it's particularly hard when the pressure to change appears to be coming from those who were not born female. I understand that how I feel isn't the same as how it is of course. But language has long been a battle-ground for the women's movement and this certainly feels like a backwards step.

as this thing does revolve so much about language - a quick explanation which will ignored I'm pretty sure.

trans means transgender in this context as cis means cisgender. Cisgender women and transgender women, just like autistic women, black women, French women, wealthy women, unemployed women, are just different ways of describing attributes that some women have. When you write it trans-woman, or cis-woman, or even transwoman, then you're breaking that convention and making it seem like we're asking for something we aren't. All cis women are women. All cis women can say they are a woman without being transphobic or excluding trans women.

But if you describe yourself as a woman and then call a trans woman a trans woman, or a transwoman, or a trans- woman and not just a woman then you're pretty much implying that trans women aren't women. And that's why trans women have a problem with that, because we know who we are and we don;t need anyone telling us we're not.

(and i expect to be called out for pedantry by all sides now. Oh hum. If I am then fuck this and I'm not going to waste me time here)

 

[MochaSoul]

OMG!

 

[Sea Star]

Do you not see the problem with that kind of argument?


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Or do you think I bleed through my ears and give birth though my stomach... or sumink?

you're one for missing the bleeding point aren't you?

 

[MochaSoul]

you're one for missing the bleeding point aren't you?

I don't exist for the validation of your claim to womanhood if that's what you mean.

 

[Sea Star]

I don't exist for the validation of your claim to womanhood if that's what you mean.

 

[Sea Star]

*SMH*

i give up

 

[MochaSoul]

I doubt it! Womanhood is not a prize and I won't have you trampling all over me for you to get it.

 

[spanglechick]

That sentence is enough to put you in the bigot box with me.

Why?

 

[Sea Star]

I doubt it! Womanhood is not a prize and I won't have you trampling all over me for you to get it.

get a life.

 

[spanglechick]

Do you not see the problem with that kind of argument?


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Or do you think I bleed through my ears and give birth though my stomach... or sumink?

I don't understand - are you equating womanhood with periods and childbirth?? Surely not.

 

[MochaSoul]

get a life.

 

[spanglechick]

That sentence is enough to put you in the bigot box with me.

Really struggling here.

I'm assuming that you're not troubled by my saying that regardless of medical treatment, trans people cannot fully biologically become the opposite sex.

So I'm left with you objecting to my saying that gender is different to biological sex, and that this is somehow bigoted. Which is more extreme than anything I've come across before so I'm going to need some help understanding why.

 

[MochaSoul]

I don't understand - are you equating womanhood with periods and childbirth?? Surely not.

Last time I checked the ability to give birth was not what prevented women for getting the vote for as long as they did in this country and it's not what prevents them from property rights in many others still today as per:
Women own less than 20% of the world's land. It's time to give them equal property rights

 

[spanglechick]

Last time I checked the ability to give birth was not what prevented women for getting the vote for as long as they did in this country and it's not what prevents them from property rights in many others still today as per:
Women own less than 20% of the world's land. It's time to give them equal property rights

Right. So why did you bring up bleeding and childbirth?

And as a second question, do you imagine trans women are not victims of sexism and misogyny?

 

[kabbes]

so you're saying that because transphobes have made a big fuss about a basic and simple change to the law to improve thousands of people's lives, and strongly suggested that abusive men would be able to use it as a loophole (unsubstantiated i hasten to add) then now those thousands of people should now just accept 2nd class citizenship. I'm damned sure nobody else on this forum sits back and accepts that, so why should trans people?

eta - and please note that your post quoted here seems to imply you'd like trans rights to be rolled back to almost before living memory.

To be frank, I don’t have a position that I’d like to enact. I see a lot of women who have ended up in shitty positions through no fault of their own — both trans and cis — who are having to put up with a society that is not built in their interests. What I’d like is not to live in that world at all. All I’m saying is that circumstances change and when they do, innocent people may end up as collateral damage to absolutist principles.

What nobody is talking about here is how, practically, you enforce a roll back of rights. How are you going to identify trans women in order to ensure they don't access the same rights as cis women? Will it be checking genitals? Mandatory birth certificate checks? Remember this will affect all women, unless maybe you target the more masculine women, which I'm sure feminists everywhere will love.

Ah, well, on that score, the situation is made harder by including anybody who self-identifies purely at the point of entry. A rule that says “nobody with male bodies” can certainly be circumvented, but only to the point that somebody reveals their naked self, and it is arguable that as long as they stay unidentifiable, there is little practical effect. But a rule that requires nothing but self-identification presents considerable more difficulty when it comes to drawing an absolute line of behaviour that is unacceptable.

 

[MochaSoul]

Right. So why did you bring up bleeding and childbirth?

And as a second question, do you imagine trans women are not victims of sexism and misogyny?

The moment you are born people separate you because you are a human female... meaning you have a vagina.

The sexism that affects men and which includes "men don't cry" and similarly alienating and ultimately harmful ideas is a product of gender.

Gender is a social police mechanism of the sexes. That it is now being equated to sex is what lays at the heart of this question.

 

[Sea Star]

T

Ah, well, on that score, the situation is made harder by including anybody who self-identifies purely at the point of entry.

This though - is not what is proposed. No more than it is already. Try walking in to a women's changing room now and telling them you're a woman - and i guarantee you'll be asked to leave. This will not change.

 

[kabbes]

This though - is not what is proposed. No more than it is already. Try walking in to a women's changing room now and telling them you're a woman - and i guarantee you'll be asked to leave. This will not change.

I guess I’m confused as to what the parameters are of the “women’s space” we were discussing. I’d interpreted it as refuges and so on, not changing rooms.

 

[MochaSoul]

This though - is not what is proposed. No more than it is already. Try walking in to a women's changing room now and telling them you're a woman - and i guarantee you'll be asked to leave. This will not change.

Because women have no way to distinguish between transexuals and all manner of fetishists from the voyeur to the flasher who we know to be creative in their pursuits. The explosion of porn online is giving them more and more ideas. It's particularly worrying that people like Eddie Izzard go on mainstream media to describe groups of young girls in female toiltes as "terrifying" for grown men like him. It encourages young girls in particular to let their guard down when we know from what happened with the rugby players that women may well have to face the fact of their vaginas giving them a second class status in the "who to believe" stakes when they report sexual offenses.

 

[Athos]

This though - is not what is proposed. No more than it is already. Try walking in to a women's changing room now and telling them you're a woman - and i guarantee you'll be asked to leave. This will not change.

Not immediately, as a consequence of the proposed chnges to the GRA, maybe. But that's certainly the direction of travel, and something much of the trans lobby are pushing for i.e. the idea that what someone claims about their gender becomes unassailable e.g. that a male-bodied person, calling themself John, with a full beard, and dressing in stereotypically male clothes, but who (on that day, at least) says they 'identifiy as' a woman, ought to be able to use a women's changing room without challenge. What do you think? Do women have the right to excude that person, given that there's absolutely no way to check his motives and whether he's acting in good faith, and given the history of sexual violence by people born male against people born female? (Cue another evasive non-answer.)

 

[Treacle Toes]

Do you not see the problem with that kind of argument?


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This logic only works if being a woman in the natal sense is fundamentally the preserve of white cis women.

 

[Sea Star]

I guess I’m confused as to what the parameters are of the “women’s space” we were discussing. I’d interpreted it as refuges and so on, not changing rooms.

even tighter rules for refuges. I was going with an example that I thought people were most likely to just rock up to and enter.

i've been using women's toilets now for 5 years - and no-one has checked any of my id or asked me to leave. When i first started using ladies toilets i hadn't even changed my name. Nothing stopped me from going in but because i was presenting as female, i was never challenged. i was in a toilet a few weeks ago and a man came in - he was doing some work in there, but there was immediately a change of atmosphere and he was challenged to prove he was there for a legitimate reason. This won't change.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Really struggling here.

I'm assuming that you're not troubled by my saying that regardless of medical treatment, trans people cannot fully biologically become the opposite sex.

So I'm left with you objecting to my saying that gender is different to biological sex, and that this is somehow bigoted. Which is more extreme than anything I've come across before so I'm going to need some help understanding why.

Whereas for a long time we'd come to understand that gender and sex were different constructs, now anti-trans reactionaries argue that gender is sex. It's been so commonsense that they are different for so long that it's a bit of a lightbulb moment when you first realise the anti-trans reactionaries are arguing from the opposite position.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Be fucking bonkers if we all stood together to oppose patriarchy instead of blaming trans women for it.

 

[Athos]

Whereas for a long time we'd come to understand that gender and sex were different constructs, now anti-trans reactionaries argue that gender is sex. It's been so commonsense that they are different for so long that it's a bit of a lightbulb moment when you first realise the anti-trans reactionaries are arguing from the opposite position.

Surely, what your opponents are saying isn't that sex and gender are the same thing, but that gender (in the sense of a socially costructed phenomenon, as opposed to individualistic 'gender identity') is a product of sex i.e. that it's a set of social expectations which are applied to people because of, and according to, their sex?

 

[Sea Star]

Not immediately, as a consequence of the proposed chnges to the GRA, maybe. But that's certainly the direction of travel, and something much of the trans lobby are pushing for i.e. the idea that what someone claims about their gender becomes unassailable e.g. that a male-bodied person, calling themself John, with a full beard, and dressing in stereotypically male clothes, but who (on that day, at least) says they 'identifiy as' a woman, ought to be able to use a women's changing room without challenge. What do you think? Do women have the right to excude that person, given that there's absolutely no way to check his motives and whether he's acting in good faith, and given the history of sexual violence by people born male against people born female? (Cue another evasive non-answer.)

dammit, Athos. I want to stick to the point at hand and not muddy the water with what ifs and having to discuss the mythical trans lobby, wherever they are.

But, OK - I would ask them to leave myself because as a woman, I would not be happy with people who present as men entering a female toilet or any female only space. And if I was asked to leave I would probably leave myself because i hate confrontation. Now please, can we stick to the subject at hand?

 

[MochaSoul]

Aww, I'm flattered Sea Star

This logic only works if being a woman in the natal sense is fundamentally the preserve of white cis women.

Go online and find out what they actually mean by "white feminism".