TERF's - Feminists that don't think trans women are women

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Sahn
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01 Jan 2020, 10:02 am

magz wrote:

I don't entirely agree with TERFs but I want to understand their stance and logic.

I don't understand either magz, I've not been aware of the debate until a couple of weeks ago.

I had a quick look at the WoLF (Women's Liberation Front) website and found this.

http://womensliberationfront.org/declaration-of-no-confidence-in-lgb-movement-leadership/

Quote:

Misuse of science – Sex is determined by objective, physical criteria, not mental states. Mammals can’t change sex. Some doctors and scientists, may go along with changing social or legal markers out of an attempt to be polite or ease suffering, to save their careers from the online mob, or to attract a new market in patients: but they’re never going to submit a peer-reviewed paper documenting a case in which a human being changes from male to female Nor will they submit a paper worrying over the pronouns of cows, or classifying any animal research subjects by sex on any basis other than the type of gamete they’d produce if they were healthy and reproductively active. Stop encouraging the idea that sex is a “social construct.” Stop claiming that the fact that sex exists is “white colonialism,” as though colonial-era Europeans were the only people who ever figured out how babies are made, and no one else knew until they showed up. This is nonsense on par with claiming that the Earth is flat and it makes everyone who repeats it sound ridiculous.

And more historically.

Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman, 1999

Quote:

"Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex. No so-called sex-change has ever begged for a uterus-and-ovaries transplant; if uterus-and-ovaries transplants were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight. The insistence that man-made women be accepted as women is the institutional expression of the mistaken conviction that women are defective males".

magz
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01 Jan 2020, 10:23 am

domineekee wrote:

magz wrote:

I don't entirely agree with TERFs but I want to understand their stance and logic.

Quote:

And more historically.

Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman, 1999

Quote:

That's actually quite understandable. Sex - defined as reproductive abilities - cannot be changed with current technologies. No transition does it.
Social recognition of gender can be altered for a given person but from what I have read about radical feminists, they want to entirely deconstruct the social dimension of gender.
So, trans people operate in the area that radical feminists wish to deconstruct. No wonder they end up in conflict.

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TwilightPrincess
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01 Jan 2020, 11:32 am

^^

I want people to just be who they are and to not feel constrained due to societal expectations.

For some reason, thinking about gender identity as being on a spectrum has always made sense to me from a logical standpoint.

It’s probably beyond the scope of this current conversation, but I think that people’s experiences, especially in childhood, probably inform their standing on topics like this one.

As a tomboyish little girl who had to wear dresses, tights (vile things), having bobby pins shoved into my scalp for hairdos, being told to sit like a lady, and similarly uncomfortable trimmings to church, I can relate to people whose outside doesn’t entirely conform to their inside. I didn’t feel like me in the pink princess dress. My mom desperately wanted a girly girl.

I shouldn’t complain too much. While I’m not a girly girl, I’m more feminine than masculine. Maybe I could’ve worn pants or pants underneath a dress of my choice... I’ve talked to actual transgendered folks who were forced to conform to such gender rigidity well into their teens. Oy vey! That’s caused some traumatic childhoods!

If someone wants to deconstruct gender altogether, they can do so, but others may (and do) view things differently. Not all radical feminists want to deconstruct gender. The term often refers to those who get involved in militant activism. Think PETA but the feminist version.

Anyway, as far as gender identity goes, I think: You do you. I’ll do me. Despite our differences, I still respect and acknowledge your experience which would include using the correct terminology to the best of my ability. I’m fine with transgendered women using women’s bathrooms and fitting rooms. There’s no way to police that even if I felt differently (which I don’t!).

Sahn
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01 Jan 2020, 12:02 pm

More on Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer can no longer be called a feminist (Published today)
https://www.varsity.co.uk/comment/13829

Quote:

Trans women have enough to deal with without the people who are supposed to be standing with them, making space for them, spewing bigotry. In the US, trans women are 4.3 times more likely to be murdered than cis women (those whose gender matches the sex they were given at birth). It isn’t a matter of academics: it’s a matter of life or death.

She is refusing to let trans people get on with their lives, including the opportunity to come to this university and feel safe. To pick on trans women because they interfere with a gender theory that was developed more than forty years ago is to be incredibly arrogant, not to mention ignorant about social change.

Greer is now just an old, white woman who has forced herself into exile. Her comments are irreparably damaging, reflecting a total lack of regard for trans lives. Thinking what she thinks, she cannot be a prominent feminist any longer. She no longer stands for the same things we do

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01 Jan 2020, 1:14 pm

magz wrote:

Social recognition of gender can be altered for a given person but from what I have read about radical feminists, they want to entirely deconstruct the social dimension of gender.
So, trans people operate in the area that radical feminists wish to deconstruct. No wonder they end up in conflict.

Yep. This is the heart the problem. Most serious feminists want to believe that most or all aspects of gender, particularly feminine behaviour, feminine predispositions and, by extension, their male counterparts are imposed by society, social pressure, the patriarchy etc. If gender dysphoria is a real condition that pretty much undermines the foundations of feminism and makes a mockery of everything they have achieved so far or hope to achieve in the future. Gender dysphoria should not exist if feminists are right about men and women. Those poor souls should have been socialised into the "correct" gender by virtue of their birth sex. It should not be underestimated how much of a threat trans is to feminist ideology.

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magz
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01 Jan 2020, 2:02 pm

Mikah wrote:

Those poor souls should have been socialised into the "correct" gender by virtue of their birth sex.

Wait... how can it happen if gender was deconstructed?

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01 Jan 2020, 2:36 pm

magz wrote:

Mikah wrote:

Those poor souls should have been socialised into the "correct" gender by virtue of their birth sex.

Wait... how can it happen if gender was deconstructed?

Who, exactly, has "deconstructed" gender? Do they have any real training in human psychology, or are they simply people who refuse to accept what has been defined as "hetero-normal" for centuries?

Just as there are efforts by non-whites who are not scientists to "decolonize" science, there may also be efforts to "deconstruct" gender by non-heteronormatives who are not professionals in human psychology.

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01 Jan 2020, 2:48 pm

Fnord wrote:

Radical feminists (or some subset of them) postulate deconstruction of gender roles.
Some of them don't accept transwomen.
Mikah claims it means they want to force transpeople to gender roles fitting their sex.
But if they want to deconstruct gender roles, how can they force anyone to something that - according to them - should not exist at all?

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01 Jan 2020, 2:55 pm

Radical Feminism ("RF") has fractured along lines of conflicting interests, so I do not consider anything any one RF faction says as being a reliable statement of truth.

Thus, "Deconstruction of Gender" is meaningless.

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01 Jan 2020, 3:06 pm

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/woman-2

Quote:

Radical feminists reject the notion of a “female brain.” They believe that if women think and act differently from men it’s because society forces them to, requiring them to be sexually attractive, nurturing, and deferential. In the words of Lierre Keith, a speaker at Radfems Respond, femininity is “ritualized submission.”

In this view, gender is less an identity than a caste position. Anyone born a man retains male privilege in society; even if he chooses to live as a woman—and accept a correspondingly subordinate social position—the fact that he has a choice means that he can never understand what being a woman is really like.

Quote:

The dispute began more than forty years ago, at the height of the second-wave feminist movement. In one early skirmish, in 1973, the West Coast Lesbian Conference, in Los Angeles, furiously split over a scheduled performance by the folksinger Beth Elliott, who is what was then called a transsexual. Robin Morgan, the keynote speaker, said:

I will not call a male “she”; thirty-two years of suffering in this androcentric society, and of surviving, have earned me the title “woman”; one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain? No, in our mothers’ names and in our own, we must not call him sister.

magz
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01 Jan 2020, 3:08 pm

Fnord wrote:

Radical Feminism ("RF") has fractured along lines of conflicting interests, so I do not consider anything any one RF faction says as being a reliable statement of truth.

In such case, there would be no point in discussing anything any radical feminist claims - which renders this whole topic pointless, there is no such thing as TERFs because RFs don't exist... wait, not?

Fnord wrote:

Thus, "Deconstruction of Gender" is meaningless.

Why? An idea that people should not be treated differrently depending on their masculinity or feminity - one may disagree with it but it's definitely not "meaningless".

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magz
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01 Jan 2020, 3:13 pm

domineekee wrote:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/woman-2

Quote:

What is "female brain" in your opinion?

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01 Jan 2020, 3:24 pm

Bravo5150 wrote:

TheRobotLives wrote:

The more boundaries are pushed, the more normal autistic people seem.

You're autistic?? BORING.

Trans-racial
Trans-species (furries)
Trans-gender
1000 identities (man today, woman tomorrow )

A trans-species man who identifies as an elf

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... y-elf.html

If a trans-species identity is mistreated, do they call the ACLU or ASPCA for advocacy?

Hope this attempt at humour is merely a , not understanding depths of abuse can go too... Many people's have lost their lives due to these horribly misunderstood issues . Hard to perceived humour in this issue if you personally were acquainted with person's of this part of the human race.

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01 Jan 2020, 3:28 pm

magz wrote:

domineekee wrote:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/woman-2

Quote:

What is "female brain" in your opinion?

This type of article actually making it into print in just saddening .
Appears to entirely neglect the concept of how nature actually works in reality

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magz
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01 Jan 2020, 3:33 pm

Jakki wrote:

Appears to entirely neglect the concept of how nature actually works in reality

Care to describe "how nature actually works in reality"?

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Jakki
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01 Jan 2020, 3:53 pm

magz wrote:

Jakki wrote:

Appears to entirely neglect the concept of how nature actually works in reality

Care to describe "how nature actually works in reality"?

One might engage in a study of biology of various species and adaptions to situations and or stresses brought on by the environment the entity must survive/hopefully thrive in . This is not conjecture or opinion.
Merely based on billions of years of evolution in the field of biological diversity.

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