#there was so much discrimination going against menstruating women

[femsolid]

Last month, the Daily Mail reported on the shocking case of 15-year-old Olivia Maunder, who was told by Frimley Park Hospital to try a mindfulness app to deal with her ‘indescribable agony’. It turned out she had a tumour in her pelvis. On one of the many occasions she was taken to A&E, she was told to ‘calm down’. On another, she was told that she was just ‘mirroring [her] mum’s pain as she had had back problems’. She and her mum were told it was all down to stress. By the time the tumour was discovered, it was so extensive that surgery was no longer an option. Olivia now has a few months to live. I had a personal experience of this some years ago, when a friend lost the use of her legs and was offered mindfulness classes rather than a mobility scooter. No doubt she was expected to use the power of her mind to teleport. I wonder if men are told to go away and be mindful as much as women are? I very much doubt it. We didn’t need the arrival of terms like ‘cervix-havers’ and ‘menstruators’ – but never ‘prostate-havers’ and ‘ejaculators’ – to know that the medical profession has always treated women differently. Women are 50 per cent less likely to be diagnosed after having a heart attack, are given less CPR than men, and are more likely to be given sedatives – rather than painkillers – for pain than men. While the NHS has been busy erasing such hate-speech terms as ‘mother’ and ‘breastfeeding’ from their public-information bulletins, NHS maternity negligence claims have doubled in the past decade. Last year, it was revealed that more than 200 babies and nine mothers had died due to bad care at the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust alone. Sadistic doctors no longer perform lobotomies on women as a cure for promiscuity, or diagnose any female behaviour unpleasing to men as ‘hysteria’, but as Caroline Criado-Perez’s 2019 book, Invisible Women, pointed out, the medical system is ‘from root to tip, systematically discriminating against women, leaving them chronically misunderstood, mistreated and misdiagnosed’. Women are still being told that extreme illnesses are all in their minds. Nicolette Baker, a woman from Cornwall, shrunk to three stone because her doctors insisted that she was anorexic, repeatedly sectioning her. She is dying of Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome. Kirsty Maxwell, from Perthshire, was repeatedly told she had an eating disorder and was given everything from Gaviscon to antidepressants. She had terminal cancer. Doctors certainly seem to know what a woman is when it suits them – someone you tell to ‘calm down, dear’. This is the most lethal kind of gaslighting. It needs to be tackled, not zhuzhed up with twaddle like mindfulness. It’s thought to be worth around $4 billion, taking in everything from meditation apps to the 60,000 books on Amazon including the word ‘mindfulness’ in their titles, including Mindful Finance, Mindful Leadership and Mindful Dog Owners. This is all despite the increasing evidence that too much navel-gazing can increase depression and decrease your ability to withstand pain – even though dealing with pain is precisely what mindfulness is often prescribed for.

[writcraft]

you said to message you about the jrk thing. she said sex is real and that's pretty much it. she said biological women should be able to address issues that affect only them and that the type of seemingly progressive language of "people who menstruate" is only used on women's issues. never seen "prostate havers" or "dick owners" from men's cancer groups. + every social/cultural group gets their own "space" other than of course biological women. why should gender supersede sex in these spaces?

Thanks for the message Anon. I’m going to break down my reply to this using your message. She said sex is real and that’s pretty much it. She’s said quite a bit more than that and at some length, but on that point specifically there’s a rigidity to the ‘sex is real’ argument that I don’t consider to be particularly helpful. As science has developed we are beginning to understand sex isn’t as binary as we once thought. 2% of the population are born intersex, hormone levels vary, chromosomes are not binary. We can argue back and forth on the science as it’s a conversation that remains unsettled, but I do not take an absolutist approach to sex. I believe I can be persuaded by more inclusive scientific studies around sex, use language that doesn’t exclude marginalised groups and still fight for women’s rights without erasure of the specific, gender-driven violence and inequalities women experience.

She said biological women should be able to address issues that affect only them. I remain baffled as to why we would be unprepared to adopt our language to talk about a biological matter in a way that includes all those that experience it. There are publications that explore the risk of prostate cancer in transgender women so it’s incorrect to say you never see that addressed, but I would advocate for making language around specific biological issues more inclusive across the board. To take the menstruation example, I have zero issue including transgender men and my non-binary siblings in conversations around menstruation and referring to them under the umbrella of “woman” is invalidating, exclusionary and it denies them that place in the conversation. To me, using inclusive language is simply a respectful way of enabling transgender men and non-binary people who face the same issues around things like tampon taxes to be part of the conversation. What does a woman whose gender corresponds with her sex lose from that inclusion? Aren’t we ultimately stronger together than apart?

Every social/cultural group gets their own “space��� other than biological women. Why should gender supersede sex in these places? I guess I would flip this around and say what is it about the current system that suggests that kind of space is necessary? I find the debate around access to single-sex spaces very confused because in the UK transgender people can use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender and transgender women can access women-only spaces such as crisis centers. Removing access to these essential services based on the mythical ‘trans villain’ the ‘man in a dress’ masquerading as transgender to cause harm to women is preposterous, dangerous and reinforces the kind of thinking that places transgender people at particular harm. If that was a legitimate concern we would already have seen evidence of the right to access single sex spaces being abused, yet we haven’t. Why? Because the brutal reality is men do not have to go to those lengths to commit violence against women. Is the suggestion honestly that we roll back existing rights, taking a legislative step backwards, in a way that would enable the turning away of transgender women who have experienced violence and are seeking refuge because we are scared of a monster that doesn’t actually exist? I really struggle to understand what excluding transgender women from vital women-only services actually accomplishes. I don’t believe it would make cisgender women any safer from male-perpetrated violence but it would make the position of transgender women even more unsafe.

The patriarchy oppresses women and gender based violence does not discriminate, treating femininity with suspicion and posing a threat to transgender women and femmes together with cisgender women. The suspicion of the feminine operates at all kinds of levels, including the way it manifests in violence against effeminate gay men. Together with misogyny, transgender women also experience queerphobia and if it’s a woman of colour, systemic racism too. Recognising and wanting to support women who experience those intersectional struggles seems to me to be at the very heart of the feminist movement. As Audre Lorde said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” I really struggle to understand what the feminist movement gains from gatekeeping who benefits from it and fail to see anything progressive in enforcing rigid male/female binaries which are rooted in colonialism that were specifically designed to oppress women, permit gender violence and create deep inequalities.

[comrade-meow]

Complaints that menstruation education is ‘sexist’. Classroom where feminism is taboo.

"A complaint came in saying that there was talk of sexism in class. It's a sexually sensitive atmosphere these days, so it's not okay to talk like that to students." Working at a primary school for 20 years, teacher Mr. A has recently pointed out, such affairs to the director. “This happened after I mentioned to the students in the physical education class, 'Students who are unable to work because of their menstruation, tell their teacher' and taught them how to use sanitary towels in health class.” Person A said, "There was no talk of sexism at all, I just taught both boys and girls in the same class about menstrual symptoms and the location of sanitary towels in the school." There was no problem because the education process also included changes in the body due to secondary sexual characteristics such as menstruation.” .” With anti-feminist sentiment spreading recently, teachers agreed that it was an atmosphere to avoid feminism-related comments in the classroom as much as possible. This is because criticism of feminism from some students, parents, and fellow teachers is growing. “At school, they listen to the students’ stories and they are afraid of parent complaints, so they tell us not to talk about sexual issues,” he said. “There was an opinion among teachers that gender equality education should be done.” . As the grades go up, direct conflicts between students over feminism arise. B, a high school teacher in her 30s said, "There is a case of cyber school violence after a female student commented on a post about feminism on Facebook, saying, 'Isn't it feminism?'" Even on social networking services ( SNS ), there are voices that attack or express hateful expressions against feminism in the classroom are getting serious. Students said, "My friend talked about feminism and was bullied in the classroom all year long", "I was entering the classroom earlier and someone said, 'Isn't there a feminist massacre like the massacre of Jews?'", etc. There are many students who actively express their antipathy to feminism. One online community said, 'I'm a high school sophomore, but these days, all the kids at school don't sit still when they see feminist behavior. They send their friends or teachers to hell,”. “There was a Feminist related question on the midterm exam question, but after receiving protests from students, I took the test again a week later with a different question.” This situation seems to originate from a difference in perception of feminism. According to the Korea Women's Policy Research Institute's 'Study on Gender Equality Awareness and Attitudes of Adolescents Through Peer Culture' last year, a majority of 2,519 elementary, middle, and high school male students understood feminism as discrimination and hatred. The results showed that 32.3% of male adolescents viewed feminism as 'feminism' and 29.6% as 'man-hateism'. Also, 25.4% of male adolescents answered that 'the atmosphere emphasizing women's rights threatens men's rights', and 25% said that 'the more women's rights increase, the more men's rights are violated'. This perception met with the recently raised 'controversy over men' and feminism's backlash (revolt against change) is being expressed in the classroom. Among teachers, there is a voice that the most necessary time for gender equality education is the current situation where even the word 'feminism' cannot be mentioned. It is pointed out that sex education in schools should be redesigned from the ground up. This study pointed out, 'Now, sex education is concentrating only on physical development, sex and reproduction,' and pointed out that 'the paradigm of school sex education must be changed to establish sex education based on gender equality. Since 2018, UNESCO (UNESCO) has recommended comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) that includes not only biological characteristics but also understanding of relationships, values, rights, culture, sex, and gender.

[garbagefool]

If you dont understand what the problem with what Jk Rowling is saying and you want to listen: here you go.

Disclaimer- I'm one person. My experiences and thoughts are not universal

Let's start with the first tweet in the thread.

Jk says " 'people who menstrate.' I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpmund? Woomud?" In reference to the phrasing of this article title 'Opinion: Creating a more equal post COVID 19 world for people who menstruate'

It's important to understand Why the article phrased it this way to begin with, which is to include trans men and non binary people who menstruate in a conversation about access to sanitary products.

In her tweet JK is very clearly saying that she believes there are no non woman persons who menstruate. And if no non woman menstruate, then that means to her, trans men and assigned female at birth non binary people are women.

Let's move on to the next tweet.

In this tweet JK asserts that transgender people are 'erasing the concept of sex' and that that 'removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives'

I can only guess that what she has misinterpreted as 'eraseing' are things like 'sex is social construct' and 'there are more than two sexes' so let's explain what those Actually mean.

Sex is social construct in the same way a Wednesday is a social construct. Saying that something is a construct means only that the concept was created by humans. Now you might be saying " wait a minute how did humans make up the idea of sexes!?" Which is a good question. It's true that different variations in what we know as 'sex characteristics' are physically observable and not just in humans. But it also true that there aren't, neither in humans or animals, only two variations.

Much of western life is shaped by this perceived binary.

And there are certainly aspects where life is shaped in negative ways by the perceived binary. You see just because there aren't strictly two sexes and two genders doesn't mean that those two sexes/genders have no bearing on our lives as part of our societies. This is, in my opinion, the core foundation of being transgender. That there are numerous and diverse ways people interact with this structure of two.

So if anything, what we're doing is expanding people's ability to meaningfully discuss their lives. Are we changing the way things are spoken to be more inclusive of a broader experience? Absolutely. Are we saying you can't still identity with labels that are meaningful to you? No. Just because I as a trans man have a greater ability to discuss my experiences does not mean you have no ability discuss your experiences as a cis woman. It's not pie.

Now this where I became most upset upon reading the thread. In this tweet JK says ' I'd march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans' as if we aren't being discriminated against. As if she isn't discriminating against us by trying to remove us from conversations about our own bodies.

She also says ' my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it is hateful to say so'. To which I must say: of course your life has been shaped by being female, and no this is not hateful to say. There are most certainly unique ways being female shapes your life. And no one is trying to say there isn't. The hate comes into play when you assert there is only one way to be female and decide you have the power to decide who does and doesn't fit that bill. It comes into play when you erase trans women from discussions about the experiences of women. It comes into play when you misgender and ignore the voices of trans men asking not to be defined as women.

I hope this sheds some light on why this is hateful and transphobic to those who are actually seeking to understand.

[jacine-the-queen]

Oh boy more brain rot to sift through

Many government documents don't distinguish between sex and gender - if you have a problem with that you're welcome to actually argue change on it - once again, it is not common around the world to carry around a fucking birth certificate

Trans men literally do achieve competitive sports? They're not at a disadvantage? You realize that the biggest factors affecting an athletes performance is the access to training and equipment they have and for how long they've had it? Along with other factors such as genetics of being naturally taller or having a wider wingspan?

Trans women are women. Trans women who commit crimes go to women's prisons. If they are a sexual predator the same precautions can and should be taken around if they were a cis woman who is a predator - again if you want improvement argue actual better procedure amongst dealing with predatory people in general.

Gee I wonder why so many trans people call terfs nazis.. Is it maybe because a terf group was recently quoting Mein Kampf and Hitler? Or is it maybe how many terfs support Posie Parker? A literal white supremacist and nationalist who has openly had other nationalists on her YouTube channel? Trans people have literally said there's no right way of being a woman because it's a subjective experience? You can literally go through my account I have argued this multiple times. No woman's experience is exactly the same. Trying to use "biological description" to define women once again, leaves out countless cis women, especially intersex women

You realize not liking things typical of the gender assigned to you at birth is just an indication that you might be GNC or possibly trans? Same way of if you didn't feel much desire to be around the opposite gender and preferred being close to those of the same gender it might be an indication that you could be gay? Like yeah guess what we use stereotypes to make a general assumption, emphasis on assumption, it's why exploration is always encouraged. Sex is bimodal btw. Woman is in reference to gender, female is in reference to sex. I get that you're a conservative larping as a feminist but try keep up that there is a difference between the two. Talking about your experience as a cis woman doesn't result in trans people attacking you, saying the experience of cis women is the only experience of womanhood is what gets people calling you out. Because if you act like menstruation is a core part of womanhood, countless cis women don't experience menstruation, trans women don't experience menstruation, trans men and some non binary people who aren't women experience menstruation. Like it really isn't a hard concept, if you try define an entire demographics experience behind something that not everyone in that demographic experiences they're going to call you out. There's an intersection between discrimination against women and females that I'm happy to talk about, but to pretend that misogyny is based purely on someone being female is just completely false.

Trans people don't say if you're feminine you're a woman? We literally encourage breaking gender norms and stereotypes? Masculine trans women are still women. Feminine trans men are still men. Expression, ie. Being masculine, feminine or Androgynous ≠ identity

Everytime I've heard terfs argue about the definition of female/women they often talk about the ability to either - fall pregnant, menstruate or having xx chromosomes. All of which countless cis women can not have/achieve therefore disqualifying them from the definition being used.

And no intersex women are defined as intersex women. Trying to say oh well they're actually female just with a disorder or something is literally what allows for intersex surgeries to be done on them as babies. "Oh this baby looks mostly female, let's lob off any male bits"

found this gem

[questionableart420]

In which way are men trying to control trans women's ability to create children by carrying a baby in their uterus for 9 months? How are trans women's vulvas mutilated at age 7? Which family sends their trans daughter to a menstruation hut when she first starts her period? Which medication is recommended to trans women by most gynecologists to prevent pregnancy, that fucks up their hormonal system? Who sells young trans girls into sexual slavery? Who forces their wive to abort the trans girl in her womb, because the society they live in values males above females? Where are the millions of trans women forced into prostitution, either by sex trafficking or because there is no other way of supporting their family? In which country are trans women not allowed to drive a car? To get education, to chose who they marry, to sue against domestic violence?

I’m going to try and say this as civilly as possible, but I will have to delete any other incredibly insensitive asks you send me afterward:

Oppression and discrimination are not contests. There are some struggles trans women and cis women share. There are some struggles only cis women have. And there are some struggles only trans women have. I’m not going to list every problem a trans woman faces, because it seems like it’s going to turn into you sending me more lists to make sure you “beat” mine, and then an endless cycle will start.

Omitting trans women from a day meant to recognize women is transphobic and shameful, and I stand by that.

And loud and clear: NOBODY IS SAYING THOSE PROBLEMS YOU LISTED DONT EXIST. YOU DONT HAVE TO PICK BETWEEN SUPPORTING CIS WOMEN AND TRANS WOMEN, AND DEFENDING ONE DOESNT MEAN YOU CANCEL OUT THE OTHER.

As a society, women have to battle sexism, and trans women also have to battle transphobia. If we could just support one another in those, we would be able to address MORE problems, not cancel each other out. Instead, transphobic people CREATE more problems, because they try divide us when we would be so much stronger together.

Women are supposed to support women. All women. Period.

PS: and before you get angrier, I called your ask insensitive, because you just threw incredibly traumatic topics at me with the purpose of trying to win the oppression competition, which I personally find offensive to people who’ve actually endured those things. Some of which I have endured myself.

[all-things-lgbtqia]

JK Rowling continues to spout TERF ideology, continues to say she’s not a TERF.

JK Rowling, best known as author of the world-renowned Harry Potter series and the decider of who is and isn’t gay, took to Twitter within the past 24 hours to make what I can only assume was supposed to be a joke in response to a Tweet about efforts to help create a more equal world “those who menstruate” in a post Covid-19 world, saying that “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people.”

When called out for her erasure of trans men, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people - all people who can be assigned female at birth but do not identify as women - Rowling went on the defensive, criticizing the idea that “sex isn’t real”.

Here’s the thing, Rowling: sex is real. Trans people know this. That’s kind of what makes most of us trans. Their biological sex, which is a real and tangible thing, does not match the identity they see for themselves, which is also real although it can be a lot harder for us outsiders to see. This is why many trans people opt for modified clothing (such as binders and gaffs), hormones and surgeries to make the exterior body match the internal sense of gender. Granted, many trans people will not do this, and they are not obligated to do so, but the vast majority of us will opt for such measures, not just to make ourselves more comfortable in our skins, but also so people like you don’t keep misgendering us and then pretend to be the victim when we call you out on it (which you’re doing right now). Absolutely no one is arguing that biological sex isn’t real.

She then goes on to say that saying women like her, “who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades”, hate trans people “because they think sex is real and has lived consequences - is a nonsense”.

Like I said Rowling, sex is real and absolutely no one is saying otherwise. You’re the one who keeps saying it. You said it during the Maya Forstater debacle and you’re saying it now. “Woman” is not a term that refers to someone who is biologically female. An overwhelming amount of the time it does, but not always. “Female” and “female-bodied” are somewhat controversial terms when it comes to afab transgender people, but they always refer to someone who is biologically female. “Afab” is an acronym for “assigned female at birth”, which can even refer to cis women. So as you can see, there are better terms to refer to someone with female reproductive organs than “women”. And believe it or not, a lot of those “lived consequences” are often the same for a lot of afab people. Not everyone has the privilege to transition at 6-years-old, before the horrors of the real world affect most of us. Many afab trans men (I would like to quickly acknowledge that some trans men may be biologically intersex), non-binary and gender-nonconforming people will have lived as females or a somewhat “female experience” up until they come out of the closet and begin their transition, if they do so at all. Pre-transition afab people are still subjected to the same amount of sexism, misogyny, sexual harassment and general dangers that come with being a woman because even though they are not women, society sees them as women. And yes, these people will even menstruate, because they have a female reproductive system (although it is worth noting that some people born with these parts may not menstruate at all, because biology is weird and sometimes things don’t function the way they’re supposed to). And on top of all that, trans women will also face the same hazards during and after the main stages of their transitions. In fact, statistically speaking, transgender women are even more likely to experience male violence than cis women, so let’s not pretend they aren’t involved in this whole conversation at all.

And just a quick sidebar, like I said, some people with female reproductive parts don’t menstruate because their body just never kicks that system into gear. If a cis woman never menstruates because she’s one of those people, is she no longer a woman, J?

I would also like to take the time to comment on how she pretends trans people don’t exist when she wants the spotlight and only references them when she gets called out for it. This is a lot like the, “I can’t be racist, I have black friends” “argument”. We’re not tools that you can use and then put back in the closet when you’re done (only we can decide if it’s time to go back in the closet, and I would rather not do that again, thank you very much). We’re not accessories you can flaunt to show how accepting you are. We exist even when you’re not making exclusionary remarks and pretending that the issue at hand is exclusive to cis females only.

She goes on to claim she would support trans people if we are discriminated against. I don’t have a Twitter account so I can see only very limited Tweets online, but so far I haven’t seen her comment on the proposed UK bathroom bill that would force trans people to use the bathrooms that correspond with the sex marker on their birth certificates. If she has commented, let me know and I will update this section of this post appropriately.

She tries to justify herself by saying she is well-read in scientific journals and transgender experiences, so she knows the distinction between sex and gender. But if this was the case, she wouldn’t still be using “woman” to refer strictly to cis women, and she certainly wouldn’t be using it to describe all  people who menstruate.

She says, “Never assume that because someone thinks differently, they have no knowledge.” And she would make a good point, if saying that only women menstruate and implying that if you menstruate you are a woman, plain and simple, wasn’t TERF rhetoric. Listen, you can know all about a subject as complicated and relatively new as gender identity, but knowledge and acceptance are two different things. Just because you major in Africana Studies and can name just about every major figure in black history doesn’t make you less racist when you clutch your purse tighter when you see a black man jogging down the street. Having a degree in Women’s Studies doesn’t make you any less sexist when you tell a woman to make you a sandwich because you disagree with her opinion. And reading scientific papers about transgender people and what it all means doesn’t make you less transphobic when you make sweeping claims that only women menstruate, and that transgender people don’t understand the struggles of being a woman.

In what is her most damning move so far, Rowling then Tweets out, “‘Feminazi’, ‘TERF’, ‘bitch’, ‘witch’. Times change. Woman-hate is eternal.” One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong...

I get it, there are plenty of terms and phrases used with the intent of shutting up women you don’t agree with. TERF is not one of those terms. TERF is in the same category as racist, misogynist, neo-nazi, etc. NOT the same category as women-silencing words like ‘bitch’ or ‘feminazi’. A TERF is a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, someone who discredits the existence and experiences of transgender people (primarily trans women) because they feel like it (the transgender experience) doesn’t belong in discussions of women’s rights, or even that it threatens their identity as women. Sounds kinda familiar, doesn’t it? Calling someone a TERF is not a silencing behavior, and you’d figure a feminist would understand this. Calling someone a TERF is calling them out for behavior, while also letting the transgender community know that this is not a safe person to be around. If anything it’s a warning label. 

And look, don’t take this all to mean I hate women. I don’t. I only hate it when we pretend that an issue such as menstruation is exclusive to cis women. It isn’t. Women’s issues typically aren’t restricted to cis women. Trans women will experience violence and hate, usually at a disproportionately high rate when compared to their cisgender sisters. Trans men will often experience discrimination pre-transition, and maybe even post-transition from people who still see them as women. Not only that, but trans men typically experience the issues that come along with being biologically female (again, those that are afab). Most transgender men will menstruate and experience all the absolutely wonderful symptoms that come along with it. Some transgender men even get pregnant and have babies. No one is arguing that women have it easy. Transgender people - regardless of if they’re trans women, trans men, non-binary, agender, gender fluid, or gender-nonconforming - don’t want to erase women’s experiences throughout the years. We just want to live our lives in peace like everybody else. I just wish Rowling would stop pretending otherwise.

Is JK Rowling a terrible person? I don’t think I can go that far. She has made some serious contributions towards the acceptance of LGB (although notably not T) themes in children’s media, supports the Black Lives Matter movements, and even showcases fan art from very young fans on her Twitter. Although, she did share an article talking about the lesbian experience with discrimination and erasure, which is very important (hell, I admittedly don’t come across a lot of lesbian content on my Tumblr feed so I don’t get a chance to reblog a whole lot of it), but it also says that “ask my pronouns” is decidedly anti-lesbian, and paints the entire LGBTQIA+ community (referred to as “LGBTQ” with the quotes) as greedy, money-hungry, well-supported, and even predatory against children. Is this just a subject I’m not all that knowledgeable in? Perhaps, but I have a really hard time taking your arguments seriously LGBTQIA+ community is decidedly predatory against children, but I digress. I will say, however, that I am just disappointed. I’m disappointed someone who has been all about standing up to bullies and fighting against oppression has been using her platform to side with bullies and take part in said oppression. I’m disappointed she lumps “TERF” in with “Feminazi” and other terms designed to discredit women with opinions. And above all, I’m disappointed that she claims to offer us support when her actions support just the opposite. But, after all we’ve seen over the years, I can’t say I’m surprised.

[thepoetlillies]

I am not an oracle fyi, this is just what I have gathered so far and if I am wrong about anything or say anything insensitive, please correct me and I’ll better myself to be a greater ally, because even though I’m queer/fluid, I don’t know the struggles of being trans/gnc firsthand x

Transwomen are women. Ciswomen are women. Transmen are men. Cismen are men. Nonbinary folk are not men or women.

Yet they are all valid.

Firstly, to define a woman by the biological functions of ciswomen is not only cruel, but a disguised act of transphobia.

Not all ciswomen have wombs. Not all ciswomen menstruate. Not all ciswomen go through the menopause. So already this definition is flawed.

Your gender identity does not rely on these.

The concept that the acknowledgement of transpeople is dangerous to cispeople, specifically ciswomen, is atrocious. Allowing transwomen to use the restroom/changing room that they identify with should be common sense but instead transphobes twist the sick tale that it is dangerous. That transwomen will assault ciswomen in those places, or that men will dress as women to get in there to assault ciswomen. It is cruel to deny basic rights to transpeople just because of the most sick people in society who might abuse it. Transwomen are not a danger to ciswomen. Transmen are not a danger to cismen. Nonbinary folk are not a danger to cispeople.

I also find this argument ridiculous for the fact that it recognises that the problem is not transwomen, but cismen who assault people. So how about instead of discriminating against the trans community, we address the issue of cismen harrassing/assaulting/raping people. That’s the real issue there. Instead of denying transpeople their right to exist and teaching people that it is wrong to be trans/nonbinary, teach people not to rape.

Another argument I have seen claims that the acknowledgment of the trans community and nonbinary community erases the struggles/experiences of ciswomen. This is also not true. We know about women’s suffrage, it is an incredible part of world history and therefore cannot be erased. By allowing transwomen, this does not erase modern struggles/experiences either. I assure you. There are still struggles facing women in this day and age but transwomen will not take that away. They face their own struggles/experiences on account of gender identity, such as this one you have created for them. Ciswomen will still face discrimination on account of their gender, just like transwomen do, so why aren’t we working together to create equality among everyone regardless of gender? Unless that isn’t what these transphobes want.

Moreover, I’ve seen the argument that the acknowledgment of transpeople erases the identity of cispeople. Again, this isn’t the case. Nobody is saying that a ciswoman is not a woman and that a cisman is not a man. Because they are that. But also transwomen are women and transmen are men. They are not a threat to cismen and ciswomen. Because the rights granted to the trans community and nonbinary community are not rights taken away from the cis community. That’s not how it works; it just means that there are more rights. What it does mean however, is that cispeople lose the unfair privilage they have by identifying with their born gender and the world becomes a more equal place because certain people don’t benefit from the discrimination and oppression of other people on account of gender. To say that you don’t accept transgender or nonbinary identities is to say that you want to maintain the privilage you get from their oppression, and therefore do not want gender equality. And that’s not okay, so we will continue to point out your insensitive, discriminatory actions and comments until we reach equality which we deserve.

Additionally, it is not misogynistic to point out these behaviours, i.e the case regarding JK Rowling. It is not misogynistic to argue with one ciswoman for her blatantly discriminatory views. By correcting her, we do not diminish her identity as a woman, for she is one, and we do not criticise on the basis of her gender. We also do not criticise with the intention of discrediting all women, as she does not speak for all women. We criticise on the basis that she is oppressing the gender identity of so many, including so many that previously looked up to her. And it is not misogynistic to do so. Also JK, nobody is saying that sex doesn’t exist, we are simply providing the distinction between sex and gender as they are different, even though your sex and gender are both female. And TERF isn’t a slur by the way so it’s also not misogynistic to say because Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists do not actually fight for equality.

To the trans/gender nonconforming community, you are loved, you are supported, and you are valid !

I think this was pretty much everything I wanted to say, and if you identify as trans or nonbinary and I’ve said something wrong, please correct me because I just want to be the best ally I can for you 💜 !

[snapeaddict]

Hello! I hope you don’t mind me asking this, I’m a little lost about all the hate going around towards J.K. Rowling, I don’t really know that much about her, but I’ve always loved Harry Potter (even though I’m mostly a pretty new fan) would you mind explaining to me the hate towards her? Maybe, giving me both sides of this argument? If that’s alright.

Hi, not at all! As I am a cis woman I'll give you the link of this article written by a trans woman who explains how JK Rowling is spreading transphobic rhetorics, implying that trans people existing invalidate the notion of sex identity, and thus women's struggles within our society.

So what she said that was problematic was:

1 - Trans movements imply that sex isn't real, thus endangers women's voices within our society

2 - She implied that people with menstruation can only be considered as women (thus excluding trans women, intersex women, women with health conditions... But here her problem is with trans people), implying that your biological sex only can define who you are.

3 - "I have a lesbian friend who agrees with me, so I listen to queer people" shows ignorance and lack of will to educate yourself, plus a feeling of legitimacy to, as a white cis woman, challenge trans people's identity

4 - Implied trans people weren't discriminated against (during pride month!)

5 - Used her platform to put trans people's lives in danger and take focus off BLM

And this is just the first time she makes her views clear; she has supported terfs and transphobic people for a long time. Plus, she often seems to be using POC and queer people to please her audience and give the impression she is open minded, while obviously refusing to educate herself on the matter and hear their voices.

I cannot give you the "other side's" views on this because it is just transphobic and using false information (aka trans women invalidate women's experience of a patriarchal system) to justify their transphobia. I'll just quote the beginning of this article:

"The argument is “If we call trans women women, then we can’t discuss sexism against women or sexuality”, but in fact the truth is the exact opposite. Trans women face misogynistic sexism and sexual violence for being women every day. Trans lesbians face structural and street homophobia/lesphobia across the world. Both of those are observable facts. After all, does a sexist abuser ask to see your original birth certificate before sexually harassing you? No."

Using the argument of feminism to invalidate people's identity is disheartening. Being supportive of trans people is not at all challenging the existence of biological sex (which is already much more complicated than we thought it to be); but asking to make a difference between it and gender, and support the fact biological sex must not shape the way society sees you.

PS: Welcome in the Harry Potter fandom! I'm happy to say, must of us are much more open minded than JK Rowling, and though we cannot separate her from her books (to understand them, and their flaws, better), I think HP pretty much belongs to its fans now, and we must make of this fandom a place of acceptance and tolerance ❤️

[xxladylovexx]

On Saturday, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling shared an article on Twitter, titled, “Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate,” adding, “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” For those of us who have been following as the word “woman” is erased from all womanly things — everything from periods to pregnancy to vaginas — we are well aware of what this code-phrase implies.

Referring to women as “people who menstruate” is no accident: it is to signal “inclusivity.” Who, you might wonder, needs to be “included” in the category of “people who menstruate” beyond, well, those who menstruate? That is to say, those once known as “females.”

Today, of course, words like “women” or “female” are taboo. Some women would prefer to be men and some men are women. There are “female penises” and “men who have babies.” It is a new time, and human narcissism has evolved beyond nature. What is biology, after all, in the face of a “she/her” Twitter bio?

In some ways, it is depressing to witness the level of celebration (sane) women relayed online in response to Rowling’s tweet. It is sad that phrases like “people who menstruate” have been so normalized that to question them seems revolutionary.

There was immediate backlash. Rowling was called a “TERF,” “evil,” a bitch, “scum,” and much more.

Model and trans activist Munroe Bergdorf accused the author of being “transphobic” and said Rowling and other reality-believers constituted “another branch of white supremacy.”

Ben O’Keefe, former senior aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, responded, “Shut the fuck up you transphobic fuck.” Rowling defended herself, explaining:

“The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women — i.e. to male violence — ‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences — is a nonsense.”

She added:

“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.“

It’s odd to feel one has to add a caveat to explain that understanding only women menstruate does not equate to “hate.” It’s almost more odd to have to say this at all, to grown adults who surely understand, at this point, how babies are made, and who have been through puberty themselves. Those of us who have been attempting to make basic statements of fact in public like, “Men are not women” and “It isn’t hate to speak the truth” know all too well the hysteria we can expect in response, though becoming accustomed to this doesn’t make it any less confounding.

I have never understood how anyone could stand by quietly and watch the existence of women be eroded, or say nothing while our friends and colleagues insist those who understand the dictionary definition of “woman” are bigoted. And it seems Rowling has finally gotten to the end of her rope.

The extreme backlash, hate, and misogyny has become the norm. The response to someone like Rowling demonstrates the extent to which trans activists and their allies are so accustomed to having the power to bully celebrities, politicians, friends, and family into submission, that they simply cannot accept a famous woman stepping out of line. It is shocking for them to lose their almost total grip on women and liberals who are meant to care more about being liked than stating the obvious. The religious doctrine sometimes referred to as “cancel culture” demands the confessing of sins and begging for forgiveness from our social media lords. It demands women have a “middle aged moment” rather than stand up for the truth and the other women under attack for doing so.

Even Harry Potter himself felt “compelled” to speak out, and publicly declare his faith, writing:

“Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I. According to The Trevor Project, 78 per cent of transgender and non-binary youth reported being the subject of discrimination due to their gender identity. It’s clear that we need to do more to support transgender and non-binary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm.”

It is unclear how understanding only females menstruate harms “transgender and non-binary people,” but that’s not the point. The point is that Harry Potter is safe, having disassociated himself from the witch. He has dutifully thrown a log on the fire.

It has felt like we are all living a kind of bizarro world for some time now, wherein women who dare speak the truth are banished, and virtually burned at the stake. And while I’m no more interested in what celebrities say than intellectuals or the non-famous, I wonder if the response to Rowling will wake people up, and lead more to stand up and announce that the emperor has no clothes, and that those who say so are not evil or hateful, but sane. I wonder if this experience will lead Rowling to stand with the women fighting this fight in public or render her silent in an attempt to avoid further flogging. It should be all too clear that there is no winning with this crowd — no level of politeness, kowtowing, or rationalizing can ward off the virulence and misogyny leveled at women who push back against gender identity ideology. You either go full tilt or you surrender to twisting yourself into knots trying to adopt ever changing, evermore nonsensical demands, contorting your language in ways that should feel sacrilegious to a writer. The way forward seems obvious to me.

[absolute-immunities]

Joan Didion:

More and more, as the literature of the movement began to reflect the thinking of women who did not really understand the movement’s ideological base, one had the sense of this stall, this delusion, the sense that the drilling of the theorists had struck only some psychic hardpan dense with superstitions and little sophistries, wish fulfillment, self-loathing and bitter fancies. To read even desultorily in this literature was to recognize instantly a certain dolorous phantasm, an imagined Everywoman with whom the authors seemed to identify all too entirely. This ubiquitous construct was everyone’s victim but her own. She was persecuted even by her gynecologist, who made her beg in vain for contraceptives. She particularly needed contraceptives because she was raped on every date, raped by her husband, and raped finally on the abortionist’s table. During the fashion for shoes with pointed toes, she, like “many women,” had her toes amputated. She was so intimidated by cosmetics advertising that she would sleep “huge portions” of her day in order to forestall wrinkling, and when awake she was enslaved by detergent commercials on television. She sent her child to a nursery school where the little girls huddled in a “doll corner,” and were forcibly restrained from playing with building blocks. Should she work she was paid “three to ten times less” than an (always) unqualified man holding the same job, was prevented from attending business lunches because she would be “embarrassed” to appear in public with a man not her husband, and, when she traveled alone, faced a choice between humiliation in a restaurant and “eating a doughnut” in her hotel room.

The half-truths, repeated, authenticated themselves. The bitter fancies assumed their own logic. To ask the obvious—why she did not get herself another gynecologist, another job, why she did not get out of bed and turn off the television set, or why, the most eccentric detail, she stayed in hotels where only doughnuts could be obtained from room service—was to join this argument at its own spooky level, a level which had only the most tenuous and unfortunate relationship to the actual condition of being a woman. That many women are victims of condescension and exploitation and sex-role stereotyping was scarcely news, but neither was it news that other women are not: nobody forces women to buy the package.

But of course something other than an objection to being “discriminated against” was at work here, something other than an aversion to being “stereotyped” in one’s sex role. Increasingly it seemed that the aversion was to adult sexual life itself: how much cleaner to stay forever children. One is constantly struck, in the accounts of lesbian relationships which appear from time to time in movement literature, by the emphasis on the superior “tenderness” of the relationship, the “gentleness” of the sexual connection, as if the participants were wounded birds. The derogation of assertiveness as “machismo” has achieved such currency that one imagines several million women too delicate to deal at any level with an overtly heterosexual man. Just as one had gotten the unintended but inescapable suggestion, when told about the “terror and revulsion” experienced by women in the vicinity of construction sites, of creatures too “tender” for the abrasiveness of daily life, too fragile for the streets, so now one was getting, in the later literature of the movement, the impression of women too “sensitive” for the difficulties of adult life, women unequipped for reality and grasping at the movement as a rationale for denying that reality. The transient stab of dread and loss which accompanies menstruation simply never happens: we only thought it happened, because a male-chauvinist psychiatrist told us so. No woman need have bad dreams after an abortion: she has only been told she should. The power of sex is just an oppressive myth, no longer to be feared, because what the sexual connection really amounts to, we learn in one woman’s account of a postmarital affair presented as liberated and liberating, is “wisecracking and laughing” and “lying together and then leaping up to play and sing the entire Sesame Street Songbook.” All one’s actual apprehension of what it is like to be a woman, the irreconcilable difference of it—that sense of living one’s deepest life underwater, that dark involvement with blood and birth and death—could now be declared invalid, unnecessary, one never felt it at all.

One was only told it, and now one is to be reprogrammed, fixed up, rendered again as inviolate and unstained as the “modern” little girls in the Tampax advertisements. More and more we have been hearing the wishful voices of just such perpetual adolescents, the voices of women scarred not by their class position as women but by the failure of their childhood expectations and misapprehensions. “Nobody ever so much as mentioned” to Susan Edmiston “that when you say *I do,’ what you are doing is not, as you thought, vowing your eternal love, but rather subscribing to a whole system of rights, obligations and responsibilities that may well be anathema to your most cherished beliefs.” To Ellen Peck “the birth of children too often means the dissolution of romance, the loss of freedom, the abandonment of ideals to economics.” A young woman described on the cover of New York as “The Suburban Housewife Who Bought the Promises of Women’s Lib and Came to the City to Live Them” tells us what promises she bought: “The chance to respond to the bright lights and civilization of the Big Apple, yes. The chance to compete, yes. But most of all, the chance to have some fan. Fun is what’s been missing.”

Eternal love, romance, fun. The Big Apple. These are relatively rare expectations in the arrangements of consenting adults, although not in those of children, and it wrenches the heart to read about these women in their brave new lives. An ex-wife and mother of three speaks of her plan to “play out my college girl’s dream. I am going to New York to become this famous writer. Or this working writer. Failing that, I will get a job in publishing.” She mentions a friend, another young woman who “had never had any other life than as a daughter or wife or mother” but who is “just discovering herself to be a gifted potter.” The childlike resourcefulness—to get a job in publishing, to become a gifted potter!—bewilders the imagination. The astral discontent with actual lives, actual men, the denial of the real generative possibilities of adult sexual life, somehow touches beyond words. “It is the right of the oppressed to organize around their oppression as they see and define it” the movement theorists insist doggedly in an effort to solve the question of these women, to convince themselves that what is going on is still a political process, but the handwriting is already on the wall. These are converts who want not a revolution but “romance,” who believe not in the oppression of women but in their own chances for a new life in exactly the mold of their old life. In certain ways they tell us sadder things about what the culture has done to them than the theorists ever did, and they also tell us, I suspect, that the movement is no longer a cause but a symptom.

[aftselakhis-shaladin]

Rarely do I see stories that so spectacularly fail to deliver their message as Man-Eaters do. While I am unsure about what precisely the message was supposed to be, the impression the comic gives is contrary to that. Below I’ll explain what exactly went wrong, and how to avoid similar pitfalls in one’s own fiction.

1.       The discrimination seems reasonable in-story

To recap, the plot of Man-Eaters follows contemporary USA stuck by a plague – one that makes women and girls turn into blood-thirsty big cats when they menstruate. The transformation is involuntary, and the woman cannot control her actions while transformed, often resulting in massacres and killing sprees. To avoid this, government adds contraceptives to drinking water, as no ovulation means no menstruation.

I think it is obvious what went wrong here. Within the setting, the threat posed by women not on contraceptives is real and deadly. There is simply no way for the female characters to avoid going feral. It makes the forced control over women’s fertility a rational decision, and the characters who willingly avoid them seem dangerously antisocial. If you want the readers to sympathize with the group discriminated against, don’t give them destructive powers they cannot control.

2.       It doesn’t work as a metaphor of current reproductive rights issues

The problem the female characters of Man-Eaters have is being forcefully made infertile. The point of view characters also all happen to be white and wealthy. For such women, generally speaking worldwide, the reverse is the problem – governments forbidding or severely limiting access to contraception and abortion, and doctors ignoring various health issues of their patients, going as far as risking their lives to preserve their fertility, even when they don’t want to ever reproduce.

The women who are sterilized against their wills though? Those are poor women of color. There’s a dark history of forced sterilization of Native and Black women across Americas and Australia within not only living but recent memory. They have also been subjects of nonconsensual medical experimentations. Furthermore, the latest chapter shows the story’s protagonist being locked in a camp. The imagery brings to mind current forced imprisonment of Latines in the USA. In this context, I find it insulting that the author chose white characters for her story.

3.       Bad science

Almost everything to do with reproductive health displayed in the comic is wrong. While I shouldn’t probably have expected much from a satirical fantasy, I find it still baffling due to subject matter. Several plot points don’t even make sense, like school nurses examining the girls for signs of puberty, as they don’t have to correlate with the body starting bleeding at all. Similarly, the nature of the camp activities aiming to eliminate or control the were-felineness of the characters make no sense in-universe, as for women whose bodies are resistant to contraceptives the only solution would have been removal of uterus. You cannot wish away menarche, yet the comic acts as if you could. And, most bafflingly, putting contraceptives into drinking water exposes men and boys to them even if they avoid drinking it, which has negative effects on their bodies. I have a feeling that the author doesn’t care about boys though.

4.       Transphobia

The comic has been leaving a bad taste from the beginning due to its aggressive equating of femininity if not feminism with menstruation, in a sense gatekeeping access to womanhood to women who don’t menstruate for whatever reason. Furthermore, the contraceptives added to drinking water in-universe serve as puberty blockers, medicine needed by transgender children who are often blocked from accessing it.

In the UK, it is currently a subject of media-wide controversy filled with transphobic voices, echoes of which are present in the comic. I find it disingenuous to equate fantastic puberty blockers and contraceptives with evil and men controlling women’s bodies when irl women and AFAB trans people who want them are barred access to them.

If there was any doubt whether the transphobia was intentional or a result of unfortunate implications, the latest chapter resolved the question – it’s intended. The comic reproduces a tweet of a reader worried about transphobic undertones of the comic in a scene of men controlling women’s bodies, making it obvious that the author considers the worried trans woman to be yet another man who wants control over women. The scene was so blatantly hateful I am shocked the publisher greenlit it.

In conclusion, there’s so much to unpack here that it’s better to just throw away the whole suitcase.

[thisdiscontentedwinter]

“I do see exclusion as an inherently bad thing, yes, and nothing will change my mind on that. Simply because women are not a monolith, and being born with a vagina does not mean we all share the same experiences of how being female relates to the world. I believe in intersectional feminism, and that transwomen are very much a part of that.” And this is the core thing, isn’t it. I actually held this same opinion until a couple of years ago. I started seeing a certain kind of rhetoric from trans activists online - some of whom, upon reflection, probably represent an extreme view that shouldn’t be taken too seriously - that had me doing double takes and started changing my mind. I’ll back up and try to explain how my mind changed and why I struggle with this topic. I agree with you that women are not a monolith and that women in general have different experiences. I also agree that being born with a vagina does not mean we all share the same experiences of how being female relates to the world, but I disagree with what that implies and how you’ve interpreted that - those different experiences are because of the different cultural takes on what that vagina means. The presence of the vagina is inherent and necessary. The fundamental principle of feminism that I grew up with is that the category of woman is given to people with the female reproductive system, and that category was seen and treated as inferior for no good reason in all cultures. What ‘woman’ actually is (gender roles, gender expectations, treatment by wider society etc ie “gender”) is culturally malleable and constructed and varies slightly from place to place; the universal consistency is that this category is placed upon people born with the female sex (distinct from gender) in order to control and oppress them. Like, it’s key to feminism that the sex provokes the ‘woman’ category, and females are socialised into the ‘woman’ role. The oppression women face isn’t due to a demonstrable lack of intelligence or capability or physiology, it’s because someone looked at our genitals as babies and went 'okay, this is what we call and how we treat people with this biology.’ So that’s my understanding. Women are historically oppressed due to abitrary negative stereotypes placed on them because of their biological sex. How that oppression manifests is different according to culture, geography, ethnicity, religion. Where intersectionality comes into it, for me, is acknowledging all those differences in experiences and including them in feminist progress in dismantling these stereotypes and the unequal treatment and discrimination resulting from them. (some) Trans women state that they are women because they essentially 'feel like it’. They claim an internal sense of 'womanhood’ and this means they are women. When I saw this I was like “:/ okaaay, but how do you measure that, what does that actually mean.” This internal sense seems to be explained in terms like “I preferred pink and playing with dolls as a child, and I always got along better with girls, I preferred doing girly things.” This is more of a call on gender stereotypes than a satisfactory explanation - identification with the performance of the arbitrary, cultural construction of gender, something which changes over time and with which many (cis) women do not identify (yet are still discriminated against - their feelings don’t matter to people who look at them and treat them differently). They have this idea of womanhood and identify with that. I know trans people say that cis people don’t understand that internal sense of 'manhood’ and 'womanhood’ because in them it’s all aligned with their sex - I disagree. If there’s this strong of an internal sense of being a woman or being a man, surely a reasonable proportion of all women and men would report experiencing it. Again, I’m falling prone to the anecdote thing, but in my case, I don’t 'feel’ like a woman. I’m a person in a meatsack who is treated unfairly because of stupid ideas about the meatsack that have nothing to do with my qualities as a person. My female and male friends report the same kind of feeling. If I woke up tomorrow in a male body, I’d probably miss some things about my female body, but I’d be able to go through life in a male body without too much concern. I would then be a man and not a woman, despite my previous few decades in a female body; the concept is a nothing concept so it doesn’t matter. I am open to the idea that people have an innate sense of womanhood or manhood, but it’s so subjective it’s not very useful as a key identification measure for a political group. This is a very different definition of 'woman’ and to me, it completely undermines the key principle underlying feminist discourse. What is also confusing to me is that the transgender community seems roughly split into two groups - those, like above, who *feel* aligned with the opposite sex; and those who say there is a physical miswiring somewhere that causes a mismatch between their internal sense of themselves and their sex, this is a medical condition called gender dysphoria, and the best treatment is transition. Ie you’re trans if you think you are, you’re a woman if you think you are, and you’re a man if you think you are, versus you are trans if you have gender dysphoria, you think you are a woman but biologically you’re a man and you can’t expect to be treated as a woman (or a man) until you physically transition, which will ease your dysphoria. These are two quite different experiences underpinning the definition of transgender. To me, all this confusion over what it even means to be transgender doesn’t represent a cohesive front or group to meaningfully discuss this stuff with. The big thing that got me criticising the issue of inclusion of trans woman is the above realisation, that that definition undermines the ideological foundation of feminism that has brought so much progress to women. It’s an ideological difference that’s fundamental. Other things that bolstered it was accompanying rhetoric I saw online. - eg it’s transphobic/exclusive to discuss things like uteruses (uteri?), menstruation, FGM in feminist spaces, if you do it, you’re a bigot. That doesn’t feel like progress to me, to tell women they can’t discuss the bodily stuff that is the basis of their oppression, and still is for girls and women around the world, in the context of their experiences as women and as people in the world. It feels like misogyny by another name. - eg it’s transphobic to have genital preferences. I think this is a horrible thing to say. Some people do not care what genitals are involved in the sex they’re having, that is fine. Some people do, and that is also fine. Dating and who you have sex with is inherently exclusionary - not everyone is attracted to every person in their identified pool - and it involves bodies, it involves hardwired preferences, and these things can’t be changed if you just think about it really really hard. 'Preferences’ is not a good word for the concept, it implies a choice that I don’t think is there. I really don’t think people choose what they’re attracted to and what turns them on in sex. Examining your sexual self to understand how you operate and what you like and don’t like is an excellent thing to do. I also agree that trans people find it hard to date people. But calling people transphobic - especially lesbians, this seems to happen more with lesbians and trans women than gay men and trans men - because of something innate is just shitty behaviour. I was really disgusted by this. No one is owed sex. - eg there are no real differences between trans women and cis women. Any differences noted in discourse are a result of the person stating them being transphobic. A person who says they’re a woman has female biology because of this statement. This is an attitude I see a lot - any criticism of things like the above, any reference to any differences between trans woman and cis women, and suddenly you’re a bigot, a terf, a transphobic asshole, wrongthink in action! This worries me. Because there ARE differences, and shouting them down is not the way to bring people to your way of thinking. - eg gender dysphoric children should be encouraged to transition or go on puberty blockers. There’s a study out there that states something like 70-90% of gender dysphoric children desist by the end of puberty. Telling them they’re trans and putting them on drugs is not the right way to treat these kids, sensitive and appropriate counselling is. This in particular really worries me. - eg detransitioners exist and have a lot to say, but because it’s critical of transgenderism, they’re ignored. This rubs me the wrong way - they have insight into the interplay between self-understanding, sex, gender and culture, that’s valuable to general understanding of the self, sex, gender, and culture. I could go on, but this is so long. So I was originally supportive - I really was. I’m now more critical, because I don’t see a clear cohesive movement that is, ironically, inclusive, or that supports feminist issues, I’m seeing something that aggressively undermines the one movement that has truly progressed women’s rights. It strikes me that women and feminists are arguing about this more than men are, that men aren’t saying 'trans men are men’ in the same way women are expected to say 'trans women are women’. That also says something to me about the overall issue, and it’s not a good thing. It’s entirely possible that I’m hanging out in the trans part of the internet that has the assholes in it. Every group has its assholes. I also acknowledge that radical feminist groups have their hateful assholes too - but the reason I went into radical feminist spaces was to see what those evil terfs are saying and why they’re so bad, and I didn’t find evil, I found them addressing the concerns I had. They’re talking about the above things, whereas in the supposedly inclusive spaces with trans people, those topics weren’t allowed to be discussed. But I haven’t seen many answers to some of the problems trans people face - violence and discrimination in employment and housing is a real thing, and that does need to be addressed. By feminists? I’m not sure. Trans people are more than capable of organising in their self-interests - if they could find a common ground and common interests. I do think trans women face violence in male spaces and can be accommodated in female spaces - within reason. The case of Karen White in the UK is a good example of how that’s not a good rule of thumb. There’s also a domestic violence shelter in Canada that’s being sued by the women who were in it for allowing a trans woman inside, because the trans women acted in a very predatory way that caused the women distress in a place where they expected safety. I also know of one trans woman in Vancouver who tried to have a rape crisis shelter defunded because it didn’t support sex workers - that’s a valid criticism, but defunding it isn’t the action I would hope to see from any woman; it’s pointedly aggressive coming from a trans woman. For me, I do wonder whether people such as yourself are seeing the same stuff I’m seeing. I guess not. I find it very difficult to go back to the whole 'oh yeah, trans women are women and share our oppression’ stance, because I just don’t see that in evidence. In our conversation I notice that we’ve got a really fundamental difference in how we interpret and approach the world, for example the exclusion thing. Perhaps it’s too fundamental a difference and we won’t find much to agree on. I don’t know if you’ll take the time to respond to this, because it’s so long, but if you could articulate why this inclusion makes sense to you, I would actually really appreciate it. If not, that’s fine, we’re both busy people. Thanks for reading anyway, and thanks again for the conversation and for engaging with me. I *am* sorry about the length :S

DW: 

For me, it’s not a matter of “transwomen are women and share our oppression.” 

It’s a matter of “transwomen are women and are oppressed because they are transwomen.” 

Their oppression might not be exactly the same as mine, but neither is the oppression of a 12 year old child bride on the other side of the world. 

Simply put, it intersectional feminism can make room for all the different types of experiences of women–cultural, and economic, and religious, and social, and geographical–then why not widen the umbrella to include transwomen? 

There’s also a domestic violence shelter in Canada that’s being sued by the women who were in it for allowing a trans woman inside, because the trans women acted in a very predatory way that caused the women distress in a place where they expected safety. I also know of one trans woman in Vancouver who tried to have a rape crisis shelter defunded because it didn’t support sex workers - that’s a valid criticism, but defunding it isn’t the action I would hope to see from any woman; it’s pointedly aggressive coming from a trans woman.

There will always be anecdotes, and there will always be assholes, but judging all transwomen by the actions of a few is not helpful to anyone. 

When it comes to women’s shelters, there are plenty of shelters who don’t allow boys to stay, forcing families out onto the streets in cases of domestic violence because a mother doesn’t want to be separated from her son–who is a child. I think that’s unfair and wrong, but I’m not going to claim from that that all feminists are anti-child. 

I’ve taken calls from women’s shelters before where women were being threatened by other women and the workers were requesting the police. The women there also had an expectation of safety, but gender doesn’t come into it, and the implication that the transwoman was predatory because she is trans is drawing a very long bow.   

In the case of the Vancouver rape crisis shelter, why aren’t sex workers supported? That seems discriminatory. Also, why it is more “pointedly aggressive” coming from a transwoman than from anyone else? Given that transwomen are over-represented in sex work, why wouldn’t a transwoman have every right to want to fight this?

And you can bring up Karen White if you like. And I can counter with articles about transwomen who have been raped in male prisons, which I hope you would agree is just as heinous. 

In the end, nothing is going to change my mind on this. I think that being a woman is more complicated than a biological function, and I think that transwomen, while not oppressed in the same way as ciswoman, still face oppression because of their gender. And I think that there is plenty of room to be inclusive. 

[comrade-meow]

The “world historical defeat” of the female sex continues apace.

Women in their tens of thousands are trafficked into sexual slavery every year. Increasing numbers of poor, black and brown women are virtually imprisoned on commercial surrogacy farms, producing babies for the benefit of rich couples. Brutalisation of women in the porn industry is feeding through into its viewers’ sex lives, with grim consequences, while teenage girls face an epidemic of sexual harassment at school and on the streets.

The frequency of female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage has shot up during the Covid-19 crisis. Domestic violence has likewise rocketed. In the UK, prosecutions are so limited that rape is virtually decriminalised. Abortion rights are under attack, from the USA to Poland. And international ‘men’s rights’ networks like ‘Men Going Their Own Way’ attract millions of viewers to videos that dehumanise and pathologise women to an extreme extent.

This is a resurgent global system of exploitation and oppression targeted on women, a reaction against the many gains of feminism. The increasingly commercial nature of many of these deeply exploitative and oppressive practices - the porn industry, for one, makes billions every year, some of it from content involving rape, child abuse, non-consensual filming and the like - drives home the desperate need for a socialist analysis that exposes the roots of these ancient but enduring patriarchal oppressions. And we need an understanding and a language that enables that analysis.

But at the same time as this shocking acceleration of anti-woman attitudes, practices and policies, the categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are being rapidly taken apart in response to a worldwide ‘trans rights’ movement. In a rush to embrace the new world of multiple genders, organisations and corporations as diverse as Amnesty International, Tampax, the stillbirth charity, Sands, the Harvard Medical School and many others are in a sudden rush to delete the words ‘woman’ and ‘girl’ from their vocabulary and replace them with a new, ‘inclusive’ language of ‘menstruators’, ‘gestational carriers’, ‘birthing people’, ‘cervix-havers’ and ‘people with uteruses’.

At the same time, the word ‘sex’ has progressively been replaced by the word ‘gender’, which is used to refer not only to reproductive class, but also to aspects of human life as disparate as individual psychology, personality, mannerisms, clothing choices and sexual roles. And the words ‘male’ and ‘female’, ‘man’ and ‘woman’, are being repurposed to refer not to the sexes themselves, but to aspects of psychology, personality or clothing that are traditionally associated with one or the other sex.

Is this new language - and the renaming and breaking up of the category of people formerly known as women - the tool we need for the job of dismantling the worldwide discrimination, exploitation and abuse of women that is so often focussed on the female sexual and reproductive characteristics? I would argue not. These misguided attempts to dismantle the language used to describe women’s bodies and lives does nothing to reveal or dismantle the oppression itself.

This is because the conceptual framework that is driving the change in language - and stretching and distorting the categories of man and woman into meaninglessness - is fundamentally wrong. And badly so.

Sex as fiction

The political driver behind these linguistic changes is the ‘trans rights’ movement, which bases its arguments on the most extreme and illogical aspects of queer theory. Many trans activists insist that to even question the precepts that they advance is actively hateful, even fascistic in nature - witness the social media furore when any celebrity, such as JK Rowling, dares to say that the word ‘woman’ means a female person. But it is neither hateful nor fascistic to question arguments that have neither intellectual nor political integrity.

I will quote from Judith Butler’s book Gender trouble1 - first published in 1990, and often hailed as a foundational text of queer theory - and its 1993 follow-up, Bodies that matter2, to illustrate the thinking behind the current trans activism movement. Queer theory is an unashamedly post-modernist, anti-materialist and psychoanalytic school of philosophical thought that frames sex, sexual behaviour and sexual identity (being gay, bisexual or straight) as social constructs, and takes its arguments so far that it claims that the two sexes (not just gender, but the sexes themselves) are fictional. The phenomenon of intersex is thought to prove that sex is not ‘binary’, with only two possibilities, but exists on a spectrum between male and female (I, among many others, have debunked this notion elsewhere3). But in queer theory, gender is not just “the social significance that sex assumes within a given culture”.4 Queer theory goes much further, purporting that the two sexes themselves are social constructs, like money or marriage. Thus gender replaces sex altogether: “... if gender is the social construction of sex, then it appears not only that sex is absorbed by gender, but that ‘sex’ becomes something like a fiction, perhaps a fantasy.”5

Therefore, according to queer theory, male and female are not objective realities, but ‘identities’. Everyone is required to fit into one or other of those two ‘identities’ in order to enforce reproduction through “compulsory heterosexuality”:

The category of sex belongs to a system of compulsory heterosexuality that clearly operates through a system of compulsory sexual reproduction … ‘male’ and ‘female’ exist only within the heterosexual matrix … [and protect it] from a radical critique.6

It is therefore through the power of language, and the naming of male and female, that gender oppression is created; and it is by the power of language that it can also be defeated. In order to dismantle the oppression that has resulted from this categorisation, it will be necessary to implement an “insidious and effective strategy … a thoroughgoing appropriation and redeployment of the categories of identity themselves … in order to render that category, in whatever form, permanently problematic”.7 This feat is to be achieved specifically by “depriving the … narratives of compulsory heterosexuality of their central protagonists: ‘man’ and ‘woman’”.8 The category ‘women’ is particularly promoted as being ripe to be emptied of meaning. It should be

a permanent site of contest … There can be no closure on the category and … for politically significant reasons, there ought never to be. That the category can never be descriptive is the very condition of its political efficacy.9

It is evident that the programme of queer theory is working, in the sense that it is changing and dismantling the language. But does the whole of gender oppression across history really originate in the simple naming of male and female? Because, if it does not, then this new movement is a dead end that is ultimately doomed to failure as far as challenging the structures that bear down on women’s lives.

While it is true that human thought and culture must have developed in tandem with the particulars of our species’ sexual behaviour, reproductive biology and mating systems - such as menstruation, which, although not unique to humans, is unusual among mammals - it is futile to protest that sex did not exist prior to the emergence of the human race.

Queer theory, however, rejects any understanding of human sex or gender that involves biological sciences. Our evolutionary history simply disappears in a puff of smoke:

... to install the principle of intelligibility in the very development of a body is precisely the strategy of a natural teleology that accounts for female development through the rationale of biology. On this basis, it has been argued that women ought to perform certain social functions and not others; indeed, that women ought to be fully restricted to the reproductive domain.10

For those who believe that reproduction is the only societal contribution appropriate to the class of people that possess wombs, by virtue of the fact that they possess wombs, altering the use of the word ‘woman’ cannot change that. It is the reproductive ability itself, not the words used to describe it, that the argument is based on. Nothing materially changes - moving words around will not change the position of the uterus, or its function. It is as futile as rearranging the labels on the deckchairs on the Titanic. Or like renaming the Titanic itself after it has hit the iceberg - thus, miraculously, the Titanic will not sink after all.

Many of the abuses and exploitations that oppress women target the real sexual and reproductive aspects of women’s bodies - our materiality - so a materialist analysis is essential. Can any such analysis work, when its starting point is that sex is a fiction?

Applying Occam’s Razor - accepting the simplest explanation that can account for all the facts - queer theory’s conceptual framework does not cut the mustard. If sex is a fiction invented to enforce heterosexuality and reproduction, it leaves vast swathes of the picture unexplained. An analysis worth its salt would bring together multiple, seemingly different, inexplicable or unconnected aspects of social and cultural attitudes to sex under one schema. A materialist analysis that takes into account the reality that there are two meaningful reproductive sex classes fares far better, and explains far more of the problematic - and often bizarre - social and cultural practices and attitudes around sex.

Is it not a far better explanation that people became aware of the blindingly obvious early on in human development - that there are very clearly only two reproductive roles, and that the anatomical features associated with each are astonishingly easy to identify at birth in nearly all humans? And that the possession of those distinct anatomies resulted in them being named, in the same way that other significant natural phenomena are named - because, irrespective of any relative value placed upon them, they actually exist?

Leaving aside that blatantly obvious counterargument, there is a further problem with queer theory: homosexuality just does not need to be eradicated in order to ensure reproduction. Why? Because occasional heterosexual intercourse, at the right time, during periods of female fertility, is all that is needed. A woman could sleep with a man just once or twice a month, and have it away with another woman for 20-odd nights a month, with exactly the same reproductive outcome. While it is true that there would be no reproduction if every sexual encounter was homosexual, strict heterosexuality, or anything approaching it, is not required to ensure childbearing. Likewise, a fertile man can sleep with a woman a few times a year and be almost certain to father children. And since one man can impregnate many women, significant numbers of men could be largely or exclusively homosexual without any impact on the number of children born - so why persecute and punish homosexual behaviour so severely?

The ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ argument has no basis, once examined in this light, and thus a central plank of queer theory falls easily.

Queer theory proposes that the so-called ‘complementary’ aspects of masculine and feminine behaviour have been created by culture in order to justify the compulsory pairing of male with female. Genders, including the two sexes themselves, are understood to be performative: brought into being by repeated ‘speech acts’ that, through the appearance of authority and the power of naming, actually create that which they name.

Thus, each individual assumes - or grows into, takes on and expresses - a ‘gender’ that is encouraged, promoted, and enforced by social expectations. I broadly agree that many of the observable average differences in male and female behaviour are largely culturally created, and reinforced by oft-repeated societal expectations. The fact that the expectations have to be so often stated, and sometimes violently reinforced, is testament to the fact that those differences are in no way innate, but are driven by the requirement to conform. But the origin of the expectations of ‘complementary’ male and female behaviour is not, as queer theory suggests, to counteract homosexuality and force the pairing of male with female.

The specifics of masculine and feminine behaviour do not point towards such a conclusion. Why is feminine behaviour submissive, while masculine behaviour is dominant? Why not the other way around? Why must one be dominant and the other submissive at all? Wouldn’t a hand signal do instead? How do the particular, specific manifestations of gender serve the purpose of enforcing heterosexuality and eliminating homosexuality, when many of them, such as FGM, reduce heterosexual behaviour in heterosexual women? True, any enforcement would require bullying of some kind, but why is it that so much of the bullying related to sex focuses on (heterosexual) women, and so relatively little on heterosexual men? Why is virginity in women prized but of little account in men? Why is so much actual heterosexual behaviour, that could lead to reproduction, so viciously punished? Why are women punished, humiliated, shamed far more than men for sexual promiscuity - heterosexual promiscuity? Why is it girls, not boys, who are the primary victims of child marriage practices? Why, in so many cultures, are women traditionally not allowed to own property, and children are considered the property of the father and not the mother? What answer does queer theory have to all this? None. It is not even framed as a question that needs to be answered.

Patriarchy

All of these disparate cultural practices spring sharply into focus when we understand the simple rule formulated by Friedrich Engels, the primary and founding rule of patriarchy, which exists to enforce the rights, not of men in general, but specifically of fathers: when property is private, belonging to male individuals rather than shared communally, women must bear children only to their husbands.

Why? Because the mechanics of reproduction mean that, while a woman can be certain the children she is raising are indeed her own, a man cannot - unless he knows for sure that the children’s mother cannot have slept with any other man. Thus when private property is concerned, men have a strong motivation to ensure that the children to whom they pass on their wealth are their own offspring. Herewith the origins of monogamous marriage. And with it, as an integral part (indeed as a driving force), the origins of women’s oppression - or “the world historical defeat of the female sex”, according to Engels.11

The gender rules developed in order to ensure paternity and inheritance. This simple explanation takes us a long way to understanding the specifics of how gender oppression manifests itself globally, in the enforced submission of women to men, and specifically to their husbands, and in seemingly disparate cultural values and practices that prevent women from having heterosexual sex with multiple male partners, outside of marriage, or punish them if they do.

How do men, individually and collectively, stop - or attempt to stop - their wives from sleeping with other men? Promises are not enough, as we know. How do you stop anyone from doing something they want to, from expressing their own desires? You bully them. You humiliate, threaten, harass, attack and perhaps - occasionally - even murder them. In these multiple ways you seek to enforce compliance, through assuming social dominance and forcing social submissiveness and subordination. Society and culture evolve around these values, and develop in ways that satisfy the needs and desires of the socially dominant group. Meanwhile members of that socially submissive group are discouraged from banding together (they might mount a revolution), and learn to adapt their own behaviour to avoid harm. And, since conflict is costly, disruptive and traumatic, both groups develop strategies to signal their social position, to defuse and avoid conflict and possible injury, with social rules and expectations developing around these behaviours.

The global hallmarks of masculinity and femininity would be recognised in any other primate species as the unmistakable signs of social dominance and social subordination. Socially dominant primates (and other mammals, plus many other vertebrates) make themselves large, take up space, monopolise resources. These are the core components of masculine behaviour. Subordinate animals drop or avert the gaze, make themselves small, move out of the way, and surrender resources. These are typical feminine behaviours. In primates, attending to the needs of the dominant members of the group, by grooming, is also characteristic of social subordinates. In humans, grooming as such has been replaced by a far broader suite of behaviours that involve serving the needs of the dominant class.

Gendered behaviours and the social values attached to each sex reflect this pattern worldwide. Societies globally and throughout time promote and encourage these masculine and feminine behaviours - better understood as dominant and subordinate behaviours - as appropriate to men and women respectively. Western cultures are no exception.

The enactment of dominance (‘masculinity’) and subordinance (‘femininity’) can be understood as partly learned and partly innate. Innate, in the sense that the expression of these behavioural patterns is an instinctive response to a felt social situation, or social position - anyone will signal submissiveness in the presence of a threatening social dominant who is likely to escalate dangerously if challenged. Thus, nearly everyone signals submissiveness extremely effectively, and unconsciously, as soon as they have a gun pointed at their heads. And it is hard not to display these behaviours, when we feel ourselves to be in the presence of a socially dominant or subordinate individual or group.

So femininity is a stylised display of primate submissiveness - a behavioural strategy that reduces or avoids conflict by reliably signalling submission to social dominants. Members of either sex, when they find themselves towards the bottom of any social hierarchy, deploy different, but similarly ritualised and reliable, submissive gestures. Examples include bowing, curtseying, kneeling or prostration before monarchs; the doffing of caps with downcast eyes and slumping shoulders in the workplace; and the kneeling and bowing (in prayer) that is such a large part of patriarchal organised religions. It is easy to recognise such gestures as signals of submission to social superiors, and they should be opposed as manifestations of social hierarchies that need to be abolished as an implicit part of the project for universal liberation. Neither the bowing and scraping of the dispossessed nor the arrogance and high-handedness of the wealthy should be welcomed or celebrated. It is time to apply the same approach when it comes to gender.

Moving beyond their instinctive component, the specifics of so-called ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ behaviour are learned and then practised until they become habitual; and sometimes deployed consciously and strategically. People do what other people do; children start to mimic others around them, especially those they perceive to be like themselves, at a very young age, perfecting gestures, postures and vocal tones that may be cultural or, within each culture, gendered. Learned and practised from a young age, it is no wonder that these behaviours can feel like a natural part of a person’s core being - especially when they also incorporate an instinctive response that is deployed after rapidly gauging the level of threat posed by others. In addition, both sexes are explicitly taught to behave as expected - and so the dominance of males and the subordination of females is reinforced and perpetuated from one generation to another.

Anything that undermines the position of men as dominant and female as subordinate is a threat to the established order. Thus the second rule of patriarchy: men must not act like women, and women must not act like men.

This explains why homosexuality, cross-dressing and other forms of refusal to conform to gendered expectations are persecuted in many societies. For men to start acting ‘like women’, either sexually or socially – ie, submissively, which has come to include being penetrated sexually - would be to undermine and threaten the superior role of all men. Similarly, for a woman to act ‘like a man’ is a shocking insurrection - she must be kept down, and such behaviour has to be punished and made taboo. Since clothing and other behaviours are cultural markers that help to distinguish between the two sexes, cross-dressing breaks this law very blatantly. And further, to allow cross-dressing potentially allows the mixing of the sexes in ways that could undermine paternity rights.

On this reading, then, the persecution of homosexuality, cross-dressing and all other forms of gender non-conformity originated secondarily from the enforcement not of compulsory heterosexuality, but of compulsory monogamy for women in the interests of ensuring paternity rights. This is an important distinction, for, while it accepts that gendered behaviours and values are cultural, it acknowledges the material existence of the two sexes as a real and significant phenomenon, with powerful influences on societal development.

Combating oppression

Understanding and placing ourselves as animals with real, material, biologically sexed bodies - rather than the smoke-and-mirrors erasure of sex and materiality itself that queer theory promotes - gives us a far more powerful tool to understand and combat the oppression of women, and homosexual and transsexual or transgender people, than queer theory’s baseless speculations ever can.

It explains not only the different social and cultural values and expectations around men and women, but it also explains many of the specifics of what they are and why the expectations are so strongly hierarchical. Women must be submissive to men (‘feminine’) because they must be controlled - from the male perspective, in order to bear children fathered by the man who controls them. From their own point of view, they must allow themselves to be controlled, and teach each other to be controlled, in order to avoid injury or worse. It also explains widespread cultural practices that control the sexual lives and reproduction of women - from FGM to child marriage, to taboos around female virginity and pregnancy outside of marriage. These things happen because sex is observable, and real, and known from birth. At birth, it is in nearly all cases blatantly obvious whether a person can be reasonably expected to be capable of bearing a child, or of inseminating a woman, and it is on this basis that the two sexes exist as classes. To suggest otherwise is to enter the realm of absolute fantasy, or at least of extreme idealism, which indeed queer theory does, since “to ‘concede’ the undeniability of ‘sex’ or its ‘materiality’ is always to concede some version of ‘sex’, some formation of ‘materiality’.”12

The current queer theory-led trans movement seeks to dismantle the second law of patriarchy - men must not act like women, women must not act like men. We do indeed need a movement against sex-based oppression that acknowledges and unites against that law. We need to work towards a world where qualities like strength, assertiveness, caring and gentleness are rewarded, encouraged and promoted in both sexes rather than mocked and punished when they are exhibited by the ‘wrong’ sex; where it is impossible for men to act ‘like women’, or women to act ‘like men’, because gendered expectations attached to each sex no longer exist and anyone can, without censure or even mild surprise, be an engineer or a carer, be logical or emotional or wear a dress or make-up or high heels or a tie or cut their hair short, irrespective of their sex. But to pretend that the sexes themselves do not exist is a nonsense. And it is a dangerous nonsense, when it obscures and denies the existing power relations between men and women.

Female oppression is not an inevitable consequence of the differences between male and female bodies. Yes, the fact that men are bigger and stronger on average can make it easier for them to establish social dominance through direct physical threat; while the risk of being left literally holding the baby and having to provide for it can put women in an economically vulnerable position, where social subordination is a likely outcome. But under different material conditions - and a different value system - there is no reason why we cannot shed these destructive, dysfunctional habits of gender that oppress and limit our humanity.

There is nothing inherent in being a man that makes men oppress women - it is their position in society that allows them to do it, and rewards women who collude with them. Power is the ability to harm without being harmed yourself, and therefore, with sufficient motivation, many people when they have power will use it to cause harm. Currently, men very frequently have that power in relation to women, and so they use it, resulting in very many harms. When, within any given social grouping or class, men occupy a position of power with respect to women, it is not an inevitable effect of human biology: it is a position gifted by property, by wealth, by tradition and by law.

We must seek to rebalance power to prevent harm. That involves, among many other things, abolishing both masculinity and femininity - no progressive cause should support or perpetuate a social system in which dominance is encouraged in one group, while social submissiveness is promoted in others. It is absolutely contrary to all ideas of human dignity and liberation. How could any liberatory movement adopt a position that posits an innate, inescapable hierarchical system at the heart of human nature, with close to 50% of humanity born inescapably into a submissive role?

But in today’s gender debate, the position of queer theory-inspired trans activists is exactly that. For them, to be a ‘woman’ is not to be female, but to be ‘feminine’- in other words, to be a ‘woman’ is to be submissive. It is here that we begin to see the true social regressiveness of this supposedly liberatory movement. For, while it is understood that biology does not determine the gender of trans people, the flipside of that argument is that most people’s gender is indeed innate, as social conservatives have always thought. Why? Because, according to trans activism, most people are ‘cis’ - they ‘identify’ as the gender they were born into. If 1% are trans, then 99% are cis; perhaps being trans is more common, especially if it includes the non-binary category, but still the vast majority of people are cis. So, since most people born with female reproductive systems are ‘cis’ women, they are supposedly innately feminine, which is to say, innately submissive, subordinate, and servile. Meanwhile a similar proportion of people born with male reproductive systems are considered to be ‘cis’ men: innately masculine, and therefore born into a socially dominant role. It is likely that many activists and well-meaning people on the sidelines of this debate have not thought it through far enough to understand that this is the logical and necessary conclusion of their arguments.

While most trans activists avoid definitions like the plague, such a conclusion is borne out by the attempts of some to redefine ‘woman’ and ‘female’. Definitions of ‘woman’ include such gems as: “a person who acts in accordance with traditional gender roles assigned to the female sex” and “anyone that culturally identifies and presents as the combination of stereotypes and cultural norms we define as feminine” or “adhering to social norms of femininity, such as being nurturing, caring, social, emotional, vulnerable and concerned with appearance”. And femaleness is “a universal sex defined by self-negation … I’ll define as female any psychic operation in which the self is sacrificed to make room for the desires of another … [The] barest essentials [of femaleness are] an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes.”13

This is what we are fighting. It is why we are fighting. We refuse to submit.

[obeymebutnotlikethat]

I just an article about a college's mens' bathroom having a tampon dispenser and that is great. Unfortunately, it is raising questions because of a note saying it was paid for by student fees.

A student who filmed it said they believe the student fees should go for actual change and not forced inclusivity. Which yes student fees should go to other things that can aid in inclusion but this is also important and makes a change.

I, along with a majority of the student body, feel this is an absolute waste of our resources. The school shows no initiative in showing how much of our money has been spent on items like this and that bothers me greatly," the student who filmed the video told Fox News Digital.

"We feel like the forced need to be so ‘inclusive’ on campus is getting in the way of real progress that can be made in other areas that can actually have positive change," the student added.

Some men do need tampons (not every guy has a dick). Student fees go to a lot of things in school buildings and sometimes they aren't always helpful. I do not understand the forced inclusivity point when the tampon dispenser wouldn't really affect anything except make it accessible for students who need it. Its not like you are being forced to include another student in a group project. Its not affecting anyone negatively by existing.

Its only a waste if you cannot use it and unfortunately that is why many things that are useful to communities get cutback. Maybe it doesn't necessarily aid you but it does aid others.

In 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is called for men's restrooms to include tampons in order to prevent discrimination against "every person who menstruates."

While free menstrual products are not uniformly provided in women’s restrooms, they are almost never available in men’s restrooms, even for pay," the group said in a statement. "Men’s restrooms are also less likely to have a place to dispose of these products conveniently, privately, and hygienically."

Via: Fox news.

[naturopathycanada]

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Sperm matter reduces.

Do I Required to See a Doctor Regarding My Hormone Inequality?

Hormones have a fragile equilibrium that just a doctor may check and oversee. Because there are hundreds of hormones in the body, it's difficult to understand what's creating your signs without clinical testing.

If you have symptoms of an inequality, it's very easy to think you may handle the problem by yourself, but this isn't an excellent idea. Lots of other problems resemble the signs and symptoms of a hormone discrepancy, as well as we should dismiss all various other problems prior to therapy.

It is necessary to consult with your doctor for extensive screening to relieve signs and bring your body back into balance. As soon as we establish your diagnosis, we give accuracy treatment alternatives like HRT with BioTE to restore your health and wellness and health and wellbeing.

Benefits of Bioidentical Hormonal Agent Substitute Treatment.

BHRT is aiding countless clients all over the globe to restore harmony and also balance in the body. The benefits of bioidentical hormonal agent treatment are the leading factor they choose this therapy. Listed below we check out a few of the many advantages of using BHRT to manage hormonal agent inequalities.

You're Never ever Alone.

You are not the only one with BHRT. Modifications may feel terrifying, but our pleasant and professional group is with you every action of the method. We are familiar with you as well as your body to find the most competent methods to aid. When you take the primary step towards us, we'll take ten steps towards you. Our clients are our top priority, as well as we do everything we may to provide remarkable care.

A Lot More Natural Method.

BHRT mimics your body's hormones. Among the most considerable reasons this therapy is the recommended choice is that it's more all-natural than different hormone replacement therapies. BHRT hormones are synthesized from plants, and also the body embraces them. This therapy is also suitable for people sensitive to other hormone therapies.

Accurate Test Results.

You always understand where you stand. Hormones utilized in various other therapies do not constantly offer correct screening results due to the fact that they do not blend right into the body very well. Using BHRT means that when you treat your hormonal agent imbalance, you may properly track just how well the therapy is working.

Reduced Maintenance.

This isn't a daily hassle. With bioidentical hormonal agent therapy, you don't need to remember to take pills or take time out of your day for therapy. After we carry out treatment, females are good to go for three months, and also men will not require to return for approximately 5 months.

Handle Hot Flashes.

Hot flashes do not need to disturb your life. Warm flashes are never ever pleasurable, as well as you never ever understand when they might strike. You might feel fine one minute as well as the following you remain in a sauna. This bothersome sign may do work, rest, and also social involvements excruciating. BHRT decreases hot flashes so you may get back to living.

Stabilize Mood.

BHRT may make mood swings a distant memory. It's popular that hormonal mood swings may adversely affect partnerships; they may additionally take a toll on your self-worth. No matter which area of your life takes the largest hit from oscillating state of minds, BHRT may assist.

Clearer Ideas.

Reclaim your emphasis. Hormones could be at play if you are fighting brain haze, absent-mindedness, or memory issues. Do not reach for caffeine. Rather, publication an assessment with us to find the underlying cause of these adjustments. If a hormonal agent imbalance is impacting your reasoning, BHRT may bring you support to speed.

Much more Energy.

Seize the day. BHRT is here if you are tired of feeling tired. Exhaustion is a common issue shared by individuals experiencing hormonal imbalances. You might feel great in the morning but fear the lunchtime decline. When these plant-based hormones increase hormone degrees, you'll have extra energy throughout the day, all the time.

Protect Against Loss Of Hair.

Conserve your hair. Thinning as well as falling hair is a typical indication that hormonal agents aren't balanced. Individuals that do not understand that BHRT may help could chalk hair loss as much as genes or the natural process of aging. Choosing this treatment might help you maintain your hair.

Prevent Gastrointestinal Disruptions.

Heal your digestive tract with BHRT. Although they might not seem connected, hormones dictate your digestive system tract, and changing hormonal agents may set off IBS. Taking care of GI-related hormonal agents with BHRT may prevent excruciating signs from developing.

Stop Bone Loss.

Keep your bones strong with BHRT. Bone loss and also osteoporosis are linked to hormone shortages directly. We require our bones to bring our weight as well as obtain us to where we need to go. Caring for your bones with BHRT currently may prevent breaks as well as cracks later.

Much good Sleep.

Sleep like a baby. If your sleep isn't as unwinding as it when was, maybe an indication that you have imbalanced hormones. Rest loss isn't just a nighttime issue. The body mends itself when we rest and also feeling tired during the day may impact your relationships, task, and also security. Selecting BHRT may bring your body back to its normal, drowsy self during the night to maximize your total wellness and health and wellbeing.

Boost Pleasure.

BHRT battles sexual dysfunction. Hormones play an important function in sexual health. If sexual hormones run out whack, your enchanting life may experience. Men experience ED while ladies battle with genital atrophy and also dry skin; both may really feel less encouraged to participate in sex in any way. Dealing with the underlying hormonal source of these conditions might revitalize your sexual desire for a lasting pleasure enhancement.

How Much Time Will It Take for Bioidentical Hormone Treatment to Work?

BHRT isn't a brisk fix yet a long-term option. You'll discover adjustments as early as 3 weeks after your appointment. The optimal benefits of treatment may take three months to show up. Although the modifications aren't immediate, when triggered, you'll delight in alleviation for a long period of time.

Am I a Candidate?

Anyone that thinks they may have a hormonal shortage or hormonal inequality could be a prospect for bioidentical hormone therapy. Your treatment begins with thorough testing. We explore your hormone levels to discover what's creating your signs and symptoms. Patients with serious symptoms are particularly excellent candidates for this treatment. Those suffering from disrupted rest, night sweats, migraines, or other incapacitating symptoms benefit most from this hormone therapy.

Setting up an assessment with us is the very most method to find out if you are a candidate for BHRT. We need to meet with you in person to get to know you and comprehend what you're experiencing.

The article “ DISCOVER THE ADVANTAGES OF BIOIDENTICAL HORMONE THERAPY “ was published first on Quench Wellness

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