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[–]kissfan7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Any violence and discrimination they recieve we conceptualize as discrimination against gender non-conformity

Aren't trans women who look like regular women also subject to violence and discrimination?

I Googled "queer theory" but can't find a set definition that my dumb brain can understand. It seems like "post-modern" in that regard. The best I can understand is that it's looking at issues through the eyes of gay people instead of just from a straight man's perspective. All the feminists that I know of are pro-gay rights and either are lesbians or support lesbians, so shouldn't feminists be for queer theory? And I don't get what that has to do with intersex people.

Also, as a gay guy with Aspergers, you're gonna have to clarify some stuff in #1.

In contrast, a lot of radfems are for abolishing gender

What are radfems?

Would abolishing gender mean getting rid of separate bathrooms? I have no problem with that, but I'd imagine some women might.

And I know I'm a dude, but I want to emphasize I fully support feminism. Because a) I care about my family and friends who are women and b) I think gay men owe A LOT to women, who have been there for us personally and politically since forever. If I actually thought a broader definition of "woman" would make shit like honor killings, abortion restrictions, sex trafficking, and just general shitty behavior to women worse I'd stop doing it immediately.

Thanks for your patience. Despite what my elementary school teacher said, I do believe there are dumb questions so thank you for answering mine.

BTW: I'm just using "trans women" instead of TIMs, not to upset anyone or to make it seem like I won't change my mind. I'm doing it just because it's easier for me to keep track that way. Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but for now at least I see them as women because (I know this is gender sterotyping) but they just look like women to me.

EDIT: I've listened to enough women to know that we guys kind of ramble, so I apologize for the length.

[–]goodbyeplanet 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Aren't trans women who look like regular women also subject to violence and discrimination?

Female-specific violence and discrimination happens to women at a way larger scale than it does to men who identify as women. I do not have the source currently as GC was nuked, but more women are killed monthly in the US by abusive relationships than TIMs have been ever. Further, there is a pattern of indoctrination that occurs from birth, and includes various forms of demoralization, as well as sex specific abuses such as reproductive coersion and marital rape. As the majority of transwomen were originally able-bodied middle-class white men, they do not experience the same harassment, and when they do, they process it differently from the average woman (possibly due to high rates of cluster-B comorbidity).

In essence, we focus on the experience amd ramifications of being Designated Childbearer at birth. You cannot identify into or out of biological sex.

Regardless, as we consider them men, harassment that they recieve from men for not looking like a man is an issue for them. While we support gender non-conforming men, we will not center them in our feminism because women need a place to discuss issues that effect women only, and this is that place. When we let men in they just take over, as seen in liberal feminism.

asperger's

I'm also on the spectrum so I am willing to field a few questions, but I am not going to be your repository to find out everything you ever wanted to know about radical feminism. I do not have that kind of time, and am actively aware of the concessions toward "normality" forced onto me by virtue of being a woman. I suggest reading some dworkin, or lurking on tumblr radical feminist communities. I'm always glad to have more newcomers, but unfortunately I can't be your only source of information.

queer theory being a load of noise

Yes, that's our problem with it too. It's the idea that you can identify as anything you like, as a spinoff of critical theory. We think LGB exist, and everything else is subjective human experience impacted by culture. Intersex people are used to defend the idea that sex is fluid etc etc, which is an insult to both intersex people and reproductive dimorphism in species.

radfems

Radical feminists. TERF stands for trans-exclusive radical feminist.

seperate bathrooms

No, we're not about abolishing sex. We acknowledge sex is a thing, and sex-specific issues are a thing. However, since sex has the reproductive meaning, I use "gender" and "sex" interchangeably a lot. This is confusing for anyone not aware of both meanings of the word, my apologies. However, Gender As a Social Construct is the set of behaviours expected from you based on your sex, as well as the experiences you get due to it. That is what we want to abolish.

make it worse

Well, it does. It distracts from women's issues and marginalizes women's voices and experiences in favour of TIMs. Blurring the definition of who is and who isn't abused based on concrete characteristics is dangerous for those who are. JKR did a good bit on this. https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

everything else

No worries. I'm just trying to lay the groundwork for our community to shuffle into here. I wish I could devote my days to debating, but I can't.

EDIT: sorry if I have a bit of a word salad going on at the moment, this is stressful.

[–]kissfan7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Female-specific violence and discrimination happens to women at a way larger scale than it does to men who identify as women.

Isn't that because there are a lot more regular women than than transgendered women? And I imagine normal-looking transgendered women still get harassed as much as normal women.

I suggest reading some dworkin, or lurking on tumblr radical feminist communities

Wasn't Dworkin pro-transgendered? That's the impression I get after some light Googling.

Intersex people are used to defend the idea that sex is fluid etc etc, which is an insult to both intersex people and reproductive dimorphism in species.

How is it an insult? Don't most (or at least a lot) of intersex people not identify as men or women?

Blurring the definition of who is and who isn't abused based on concrete characteristics is dangerous for those who are. JKR did a good bit on this

Rowling mentions her support of MS research and how seeing transgendered women as women might make it harder. But wouldn't intersex people also make that research harder. I mean, they're both such small segments of the population that I doubt it would effect that much. If they do, just study regular men and regular women.

And it's not a word salad. I fortunately only had to look up a couple things (namely remind myself who Dworkin is and looking up "cluster b".)

[–]goodbyeplanet 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

This article does some number crunching if you scroll down to death rate. https://medium.com/@sue.donym1984/inauthentic-selves-the-modern-lgbtq-movement-is-run-by-philanthropic-astroturf-and-based-on-junk-d08eb6aa1a4b Beyond that, female-specific violence is reproductive violence. Women aren't sold into sex slavery, reproductively coerced, or banned from participation because they're feminine; these things are done because they're biological women. Trans women are men adopting femininity. Femininity isn't what causes a girlchild to die in a period hut; systemic discrimination against female biology is. A baby born as female cannot identify out of the biology that causes her family to drown her in milk, in the case of femicide.

Dworkin was okay with transsexuals as gender nonconforming people, because they weren't trying to co-opt the identity of woman at the time. Her reliance on female biology as a center to her arguments is difficult to misunderstand.

From what I've seen there's a vocal community of intersex people who acknowledge that they are, in essence, a mutation, and don't want their particular physical characteristics to be used to erode the idea of sex-based protections.

Ultimately, we believe that gender is bs and people's behaviour should not be expected to be tied to their genitals. But the issue with "just study regular women" is that there is a vocal minority of transwomen that make it absurdly difficult to create spaces or research for biologically female persons. They had the PCOS subreddit shut down, ffs.

A further issue is that transwomen have male crime rates, and for some absurd reason that data is being lumped in with female data. I would argue that based on the numbers, violence committed by transwomen is worse than violence committed to transwomen.

[–]kissfan7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Trans women are men adopting femininity.

But everyone who is feminine adopts femininity, right? Feminists taught me that babies aren't born liking pink and playing with dolls just because of their body parts.

Re intersex people: Dworkin said "The discovery is, of course, that 'man' and 'woman' are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs. As models they are reductive, totalitarian, inappropriate to human becoming. As roles they are static, demeaning to the female, dead-ended for male and female both. The discovery is inescapable: We are, clearly, a multisexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete."

If there is a vocal community of intersex people who disagree with Dworkin, I haven't heard of them.

I would argue that based on the numbers, violence committed by transwomen is worse than violence committed to transwomen.

Do you have a source that says this? It's not mentioned in the article you linked to. That article doesn't seem to be a big fan of me or the rest of the LGBQ part of the LGBTQ community, by the way. Not sure why you cited a writer that hates my community.

The article also counts all hate crimes (including non-violent ones) to prove that hate crime murders don't effect transwomen, which is a rhetorical stretch. It also ignores the fact that hate crimes, even murders, are notoriously underreported by law enforcement. I'm not sure I should trust anything the author says if she's gonna twist sources like that.