Apparently not stripping in front of TIMs is "transphobic". I never thought that they'd come up with something more rapey than the "cotton ceiling", but here we are.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-26T00:30:18+00:00

Newspeak for "women are evil for refusing to get naked with men".

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-26T00:50:52+00:00

Ooooh, it's one of their favourite things to say we're saying they're all rapists. No, we're saying they're all males. A significant number of males are rapists and predators, and we don't know who is or isn't just by looking, and we certainly can't tell from what they say about themselves, because they almost all say they're not. So we have to treat it as a possibility when dealing with any unknown males (and many known males). That's our reality.

But don't say anything about the millenia of systematic sexual violence by males against females, because our naming of this reality and our boundaries that we made as coping strategies hurt their feelings and their reputations and their lives.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-24T02:09:43+00:00

Seems like it's meant to be 'relatable'. You know, bonding over shared difficulties. Perhaps treating the pain as a badge of authenticity in the relevant social circles. Kinda reminds me of pro-ana content, actually.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-21T04:38:09+00:00

It's not bad faith. It's a carefully considered position. I think 'woman' refers to a sex, not a social expression. I used to be very interested in compromise, but I am rapidly losing patience as I see people deliberately using our polite lies--that men can be a kind of sort of women if they try--to justify female erasure and male entry into women's spaces. Look at Rachel McKinnon. He says he's a legal female, therefore he's female, therefore he belongs in women's sports. He's using a legal fiction designed to reduce people's discomfort with reality in order to intrude on something women have carved out in an attempt to create substantial equality of opportunity in a male centric society. Maybe little linguistic concealments would be appropriate in a different political climate. But the equivocation of people like McKinnon forces people like me to clarify. Only men can be transwomen. There is nothing wrong with being a man. But there is something very wrong with appropriating womanhood.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-26T04:08:54+00:00

No one is asking you to ask for forgiveness, and there is no atheism requirement. You are welcome.

We will not refrain from critiquing misogynistic and sexist practices wherever we find them. You've probably noticed that much of our critique is focused on western culture and trans rights activism. Still. Sometimes we talk about other cultures and practices. Do you believe that this critique constitutes hate and vitriol, or are you referring to something else when you mention hate and vitriol?

Radical feminists are unlikely to agree that any enactment of gender norms is entirely 'free'. One of the main jobs of our feminist critique is to analyse the ways in which culture, violence, economics and politics result in systematic reductions in our physical and mental freedom. Not all GCs are radical feminists. However, there is significant overlap. You are likely to encounter people here who are deeply sceptical of any claim that we truly, freely engage in feminine gender norms that systematically disadvantage us, or that the approval and nice feelings we get from conforming with gender norms constitute any form of 'power'. That goes for western femininity, too, not just for women practicing Islam.

You can ignore any conversation or thread that is uncomfortable for you. You do not need to engage with any specific person. You can participate as much or as little as you want, in whatever topics interest you. Welcome and I hope you find something of value here.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-27T01:18:04+00:00

I read that the damage from strangulation can be invisible, internal, and not necessarily noticeable straight away but possibly days later. There is no safe way to assault your partner.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-28T00:59:33+00:00

I like how they frame it as a ban of people competing in the category 'consistent with their gender identity' rather than 'inconsistent with their sex'.

There are no 'gender identity' categories in sports. Otherwise they'd need to check the gender identities of everyone competing. And I guess we GC types wouldn't be allowed to compete at all, since many of us deny having gender identities at all.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-28T04:34:32+00:00

It's one of the main groups that pushes the transing of kids. They present themselves as a charity that helps trans kids and their families.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-23T15:17:25+00:00

I think normative masculinity can be brutal and crushing. The difference is that when you cave in to the gender policing and perform masculinity correctly, you get significant benefits despite the strain of conformity and the fear of policing. With femininity, the strain and the policing are still there, but the reward you get for compliance is lower status and the rather dubious 'power' of being attractive and wanted. To say it's 'just as bad' is to really look at those two things out of context. Society never stops finding ways to make women's disadvantage invisible again.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-24T01:31:22+00:00

There's a difference between segregation and separatism. Segregation is forced on a subordinated group in order to maintain their subordinate social status. Separatism (whether it's having our own spaces or our own theory or even disaggregated data about us) is an incredibly important tool for advancing the perspectives, interests and needs of a systematically disadvantaged group that would otherwise be disappeared and neglected.

Thanks for coming to my saidit comment.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-26T02:17:05+00:00

Very true. We deserve privacy.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-28T00:37:30+00:00

I was reading the comments and I thought I'd read Mermaids' open letter to JK, since they're presenting themselves as friendly and civil opponents. They cited a study that purportedly showed that trans women are no more of a threat to women than are other women. But when I read the study, it said MTF transsexuals maintained male levels of criminality. Mermaids seems to have taken the statement that MTFs were not more dangerous than control of the same natal sex to mean they're not more dangerous than anyone. Which is false. Male violence disappeared again.

They also said that there are accounts of trans people being totally fertile, but they link to a study about males, plus one story of trans female who gave birth. But she started taking T at 25, well after puberty would have helped her eggs to mature. Mermaids is deliberately conflating adults going on hormones with children missing out on puberty. Where's the study on what happens if you don't have a natural puberty at all, Mermaids? Not that one study could tell us enough about such incredible interference with nature.

They say they see no evidence of young women transitioning to escape misogyny, but have they looked for evidence? Anyone who suggests it might be a possibility is shouted down as a transphobe! I haven't seen any study that even attempts to measure internalised misogyny in trans youth, and on the other hand I have seen several anecdotal accounts saying that this is exactly what made people want to transition. If Mermaids cared about children they would be as keen on further research as we are.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-28T04:53:19+00:00

I've seen that. It's so friggin gross. Where does identifying with a barbie come from, I wonder? Can't be society. Must be the soul.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-26T00:27:45+00:00

Sure, we can talk. I'm guessing you're saying you don't feel allowed to critique the hijab or other similar garments because you'll be accused of islamaphobia, is that right? I do think cultural relativism can get in the way of feminist critiques, for sure. But the same bind occurs when we talk about western gender norms, too. Feminists who critique harmful gender norms are accused of criticising or trying to control the women who conform to them. So when feminists point out that the fact that women are always posing half naked with pouty faces on magazine covers, and that this kind of sexual objectification is bad for us as a class, people think we're saying that wearing sexy clothes is always wrong, or that the women doing it are doing something wrong. The truth is we're punished for conforming to gender norms, and we're punished for not conforming. So we need to critique the harmful expectations without slamming any woman for how she navigates those unfair expectations. To make things more confusing, women-haters use our feminist critiques to humiliate and shame women. When we critique sexual objectification, women-hating pseudo-feminist men can say "yeah, she shouldn't be showing her tits like that... have some self respect, lol". If we critique sexist practices in other cultures, women-hating racists say "look how bad these foreign men treat their women! Just, uh, don't look at how we treat them over here". It's a bit of a trap. I guess we just have to keep critiquing the norms while repeating, over and over, that the point is not to punish or humiliate any woman for how she navigates them.

ETA I'm still thinking through these issues. Let me know what you think.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-19T15:58:54+00:00

I wish I could tell my TRA acquaintances that they converted me. To radical feminism.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-07T03:54:41+00:00

The Scientific American article says "New evidence suggests that the brain consists of a “mosaic” of cell types, some more yin, others further along the yang scale."

Ah yes, the science of yin and yang cells.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-21T03:23:46+00:00

Beautiful and brave, just not women. Men. And that's okay. Also, arguments are valid in which the conclusion follows from the premises. I don't know what valid humans are though.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-25T03:10:25+00:00

Be a good host. Have snacks and tampons ready for your women guests. Also, like feminism, soap is for everybody.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-21T03:19:39+00:00

To the commenter who says they struggle to open jars after two years on HRT: get thee to a gym and get thine hands upon the iron. Verily, the deadlift can purge thy piteous weakness. Sure, having thin, unmuscled hands and forearms may be fashionable, but nothing is more important than rapid access to pickles.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-26T02:20:22+00:00

No, I don't believe we can ever abolish it all together. Males and females are different, and culture will always accumulate and crystallise around those differences. My guess is the best we can do is make sure our cultural options for being men and women are flexible, non-heirarchical, and positive, and that non-conformity is not punished.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-17T00:40:59+00:00

Oh, what a coincidence. I withdrew my support for them after seeing their lovely 'neutral' coverage of JKRowling. I told them to shove it.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-28T04:57:11+00:00

Yep, it always helps to look at the reasons why women might need something separate. Sometimes it's about bodies, sometimes it's about socialisation, sometimes it's about class. Sometimes it's about all of those together. When transgendered males say they need or deserve access to women's spaces, because they're "women", they're using a new definition of "womanhood" that is totally incapable of justifying those spaces in the first place. They hope you won't notice the mix up, though.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-16T04:53:03+00:00

So infuriating! They don't even say 'trans woman' they just say 'woman'

As though women are the kind of human that is likely to download 79,958 child porn images

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-24T02:14:02+00:00

That word doesn't mean what you think it means: certainty, vagina, imbibe, valid, substantiated, shamed, discrimination, objectifying.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-31T16:09:35+00:00

You can if you want. I'm suspicious, given the ubiquity of appallingly misleading strawmen of GC feminism, that you intend to pathologise feminists without understanding their views.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-07T13:32:29+00:00

Nope. This is exactly the kind of female erasure people did with J K Rowling and GC feminists rightly called it out. Margaret Atwood wrote the Handmaid's Tale. Margaret Atwood posted a misleading article and tweeted something foolish and untrue.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-31T17:36:44+00:00

Results: GC feminists are suspicious as fuck, and rightly so.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-31T15:43:12+00:00

It's a political movement, not a psychological trait. Why would you need to study it?

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-27T02:38:13+00:00

Well, I'm actually happy to leave 'choke on dick' comments to the lovely trans rights activists. It seems to be a core part of their gender performance, and I wouldn't want to appropriate that.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-27T01:19:35+00:00

Wouldn't that make, like, all feminists trans men? Shit, we could start a movement.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-16T04:54:33+00:00

You know what doesn't smudge under a mask? Resting radfem face.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-14T15:54:56+00:00

I think feminists have said a lot of things, and some of them were wrong. Other feminists said they were wrong at the time. But it's a very, very broad collection of activists and theorists. It's pretty fucking annoying that I would have to answer for postmodernists and anti-science types when I just want to work toward a more egalitarian society with better outcomes for women. It's also pretty annoying that people who hate the idea of society changing to make things more equal for women comb through feminist theory to find the least defensible proposals, and interpret these in the least charitable way, in order to pretend that feminists in general are mad.

Like point 4. Why don't you read any one of the many, very plausible explanations of patriarchy that don't rely on conspiracy and get to work addressing structural inequalities? We can talk about the finer points of Dworkin's writing and where we disagree with her when you've already demonstrated your commitment to ending men's sexual violence.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-29T14:58:37+00:00

I wonder if trans women have 'feminine' patterns of work and transport. Do they do the majority of care work in their families? Either way, I didn't throw the book out the window when it looked at issues that I personally don't face but other women do.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-27T01:11:57+00:00

I completely agree. Their moral analyses of prostitution are completely individualistic and focused on 'free choice'--they're blind to power, to systematic oppression, they refuse to analyse structures, and they prioritise negative freedom (not being prevented from doing what they want) over every other value. They welcome market values into every arena of life, including the female body. Because they're relatively privileged, they don't perceive being 'positioned' themselves by societal structures, so they have little interest in how those structures constrain others even more cruelly. They have utterly betrayed and abandoned other women and children. I am so angry at them.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-09-05T16:14:11+00:00

Nothing wrong with just liking sex and not needing to make it into an elaborate, artificial performance with hierarchical role play that reproduces your internalised misogyny. Kink isn't spicy. It's an artificial flavour enhancer for people who burnt out their taste receptors with porn.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-26T00:35:00+00:00

But... left handed people are demonstrably left handed.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-19T04:39:40+00:00

"they threw up, cried, and had to take a nap"

Kinda sounds like a cat but without the fluffiness to take the edge off.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-15T14:53:17+00:00

I don't think TRAs want to debate us. They tell each other that our critiques of their world view are transphobic. I think they realise that clarity doesn't really help them.

Spikygrasspod · 2021-05-31T12:06:42+00:00

There's a tiny bit of fuzziness at the boundaries of many of our concepts, but that doesn't endanger the categories themselves. The real question is why you have decided to take this radically sceptical, deconstructive approach to sex and not to other concepts. It's a little uncertain where the sea turns into the sand but do you try to walk on waves, or sail in the desert? There could be some argument about when raw becomes cooked becomes burnt but do you eat cinders or raw meat? No, you don't, because there's an important practical difference and the exact boundaries don't matter most of the time. And anyway, sex is not a spectrum like thin to fat or small to big. There are two big, very different categories into which almost everyone falls, and a tiny number of hard-to-categorise cases.

Oh, and I can't believe I have to say this, but humans are not bananas. Humans are not merely a set of genes. They're an evolved kind. They're born from other humans. In other words, there's a process and a history involved, not just a list of properties.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-09-30T15:01:17+00:00

Yep. My non-binary friend recently posted a list of all the ways we're allowed to talk about her. Not just pronouns, but also honorifics, nicknames, terms of endearment, descriptions, everything. There was a common theme: anything but female/feminine.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-20T15:54:16+00:00

Where does the 'industrial' come in? Do we have factories? Do the factories produce facticities?

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-28T02:12:54+00:00

Maybe it feels like a betrayal because her internalised misogyny is now externalised--it's spilling out onto us, too. She feels like throwing up when she's correctly identified as female? Why? Because it's so disgusting to have a female body that you need to retch? I sympathise, to an extent. I also struggle with internalised misogyny. Those values were imprinted on me at a subconscious level, so I can't get rid of them. But I sure as fuck am not going to hurt other women by explicitly endorsing those values.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-27T01:29:36+00:00

Wowwwww that's a really loose, inaccurate and terrifying definition of privilege that I think translates roughly as 'I want what you have, it's not fair, this is your fault'

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-26T02:29:40+00:00

Also, non-binary doesn't eliminate gender, it disappears sex.

Spikygrasspod · 2021-06-02T07:00:44+00:00

I don't like being blunt or hurtful, and tried to discuss things nicely with people at first. The problem, as I see it, is that we define as 'rude' and 'offensive' everything we don't want to hear. And we don't want to hear women telling the truth or defending their interests. Reading a little bit of feminist history has made me realise that women at the cutting edge of promoting women's liberation have frequently been very unpopular. That's not to say there aren't people who are unnecessarily nasty, as well. But when you're talking to people who have redefined clarity and truth as hate speech, you're never going to meet their standards for politeness. I had this problem when discussing the issues with a QT friend. I tried to hedge my bets and use language she would understand and accept, that wouldn't hurt her feelings, but she used the ambiguity in my choice of words to deliberately and repeatedly miss the point and answer straw men. Yet had I used the plain language necessary to prevent these misunderstandings and make a compelling argument she would have been devastated and thought me a villain.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-19T04:17:22+00:00

I hate Biden, too. But the republicans are working hard to sabotage climate action and to keep big money in politics. I'm not American, but I'd really love it if you all would vote Trump out then argue this with Non-Trump when he's in office.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-29T15:04:26+00:00

That medium article complains that Criado Perez mentions police uniforms being dangerous because they don't fit well over large breasts, and that this is exclusionary and transphobic. I am not a police woman, and even if I were, I don't have a large bust. I have invented a new term, small-bust-exclusionary-researcher-feminist, and I now intend to slander Criado Perez for her exclusionary work. SBERF! Also, NPERF! (Non-policewoman-exlusionary-researcher-feminist). Criado Perez needs to think specifically about me before she researches anything. /s

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-19T01:51:46+00:00

I'm going to become 'that feminist' who complains about everything :P

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-10T00:28:02+00:00

Oh, inequality between women and men exists? Who exactly are those two groups of people, and what causes the inequalities between them?

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-04T15:22:08+00:00

It's an insult specifically for women. The excuse is that it's only for 'entitled' women who act like arseholes, but imagine if you made an insult for any other marginalised group. Pick one. Imagine it. Imagine if your excuse were "oh, but it's only for people (of that category) who are lazy/deceitful/perverted/violent" or whatever. You can't do that. It might start off as a way to single out women who are entitled arseholes, but it ends up as a stereotype that all (especially white, middle class) women are entitled arseholes. Soon enough it will be used to just insult and silence women, any women, even if their behaviour is not entitled.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-03T04:14:29+00:00

I don't know for sure, but maybe: 1. men don't care because females don't sexually assault and harass them, don't beat them at sports, don't talk over them and shout them down when they talk about the lived realities of their sex, etc. 2. TRAs don't care because they're more concerned about invading female spaces 3. feminists don't care because they don't think it's their job to decide whether men want females in their spaces 4. trans men don't make a fuss because they're not socialised to feel entitled to men's stuff, or to flip out when men say no to them.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-19T03:22:52+00:00

I'm sorry you're struggling. Of course you can do whatever you need to in order to feel better. But are you placing too much meaning on your breasts and what it will be like to get rid of them? Maybe start with taking the focus off the question 'am i lesbian or trans'. The answer to the question doesn't need to be found right now; the answer will still be there to be found later. It's not urgent.

Instead, it might be worth doing some digging. What do you like about the idea of going to the beach topless? What would you feel? How would people react? What would it mean for you? For me I hated my hips. I felt they meant domesticity and childbearing, and I wanted to be an adventurer instead.

Do you do any sports or activities where the focus is on what your body DOES rather than what it looks like or symbolises or how it makes you feel? I ask because taking up strength sports actually significantly relieved my body dysmorphia, and other women have said so too (usually in relation to weight, but this is not unconnected to our sex and gender)

Spikygrasspod · 2021-06-01T05:25:34+00:00

Agreed. The really effective tactics are 1. telling everyone that their critics are right wing bigots, thus isolating us and our ideas from our likeliest allies. 2. associating their movement with gay rights by analogy so that progressives will accept it without looking more closely 3. redefining language and demonstrating so much outrage when people disagree or use different language that many well intentioned people hesitate to say anything at all.

Logically the twaw position is incredibly weak, though, because at the core is equivocation between two terms: 1. woman (female person) and 2. woman (personal identification as a female person despite lacking the key qualification).

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-31T16:28:31+00:00

Thanks for checking it out.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-15T04:26:35+00:00

Erm. 6.8% of tens of thousands is quite a lot of people. Help me math here. Is it, like 680s of people?

And why the fuck is a twice-convicted rapist not locked up permanently? Can we please just free all the non-violent people who are in for stupid marijuana and traffic charges and throw the rapists in a deep well?

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-01T03:00:46+00:00

I'm so sorry about your friend. She could have asked you more about your views before leaving. She could have disagreed with you without ghosting you. Things are fucked. I had a terven disagreement with someone recently. Why do I feel so anxious and angry? I don't usually feel this awful when I disagree with people about things. Maybe it's because I feel like everyone is poised to reject me and paint me as the villain.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-27T00:36:05+00:00

Ermmmm. But we're not defining men women by secondary sex characteristics such as facial shape and body hair. Our idea of womanhood is based on reproductive sex. Which, incidentally, you can't change with facial feminisation surgery or electrolysis beard removal. Not that anyone would try to 'achieve' 'womanhood' by doing that :)

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-19T04:37:08+00:00

Actually, it's "mit ihr". How dare you misgrammar them /s

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-14T01:35:26+00:00

No. Sperm contain the X or Y chromosome that determines a zygote's genetic sex, so, DSDs aside, there's no early stage at which a male foetus is "truly" female. There's only a stage at which genitals haven't developed yet. And a stage at which they begin to develop along different lines due to the presence or absence of androgens. Males are not actually females. They do not start as females. They start without their distinctive male characteristics, because they haven't developed them yet. But zygotes also start without eyes. Make of that what you will.

To say we're female by default is a figure of speech, or a way of conceptualising foetal development. That's all. It's not literally true.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-04T18:32:38+00:00

Don't call people "disgusting trannies". It's legitimately transphobic, unlike merely disagreeing with TRA ideas.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-04T15:58:11+00:00

No, that isn't even remotely close to what I said. Do you understand the difference between criticising someone's behaviour and creating a generalised insult for a group?

When you say a specific woman is entitled, or an arsehole, you address her behaviour specifically. When you create an insult that applies only to women, it may begin with the intention of describing specific behaviour, but it will end up being a general insult.

You can and should criticise the problematic behaviour of individuals. You should not create insults specifically for marginalised groups (or anyone, in my view). Seriously, insert a different group of marginalised people and think it through. Think about criticising the behaviour of someone from another marginalised group, then think about creating an insult that applies only to people from that group.

Spikygrasspod · 2021-05-30T08:01:20+00:00

That doesn't work because words also have historical associations, not just current meanings. The redefinition of woman from 'female person' to 'feminine person' allows people to equivocate between both meanings. For example, athletes like Veronic Ivy/Rachel McKinnon say they deserve to play in women's sports (sports for female people) because they are women (feminine people). Even if we agreed to your redefinition, there'd be significant confusion due to all the remaining associations. And if we ever did manage to shift all the associations, then presumably 'male woman' would no longer satisfy male people who wish to be treated as women, precisely because 'woman' would have lost its association with female people.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-09-18T06:04:22+00:00

He's fixed on the label terf in an us vs them/paladins vs nazis fantasy. Maybe just send him terf stuff but don't say it's terf, just say it's feminist stuff and ask what he thinks.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-26T03:55:26+00:00

Yep, you're right, and I disagree on principle with veils for women. The justifications for this practice are blatantly misogynistic, and there's no universe in which it is morally justified to treat women as the location of sexual temptation that causes men's bad behaviour.

I'm just on edge about this because politicians use it to push white supremacist agendas. Like Australia's Pauline Hanson (of the white nationalist 'one nation' party) or Germany's AFD. And I'm pretty sure these people do NOT have in mind a future of equality for women.

Perhaps the solution is to push these opportunistic types to support things that would actually help women. "Oh, so you care about women's lib? Would you like to support my policy that will make things better for women?" That way they would forced to either help, or admit they don't actually care about women.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-26T01:09:24+00:00

Usually they kick the can down the road by positing 'gender identity'. If you'd like to read a very explicit attempt to formulate a trans inclusive definition of woman by a philosopher (they who spend their days attempting to define things) I can recommend Katharine Jenkins's "Amelioration and Inclusion". I consider it an uncommonly clear statement of the 'transfeminist' position, and an incredibly effective reductio ad absurdum of said position.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-24T05:13:06+00:00

Women are trans women!

.../s

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-24T02:40:35+00:00

So he just keeps repeating that you have to be compassionate and let people be themselves. It seems like the only way to be compassionate is to avoid critique of someone's worldview, and people can only be themselves by self-identifying into categories whose core criteria they don't meet.

Also, no one has pointed out that this misuse of the word 'gender' effectively conceals the real gender-gender as class, gender as a system of norms that serves to control out behaviour and justify sex based injustice.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-21T04:11:23+00:00

My friend brought up JKRowling the so-called TERF in a conversation, and I said "well, actually..." and told her what I thought. Surprise, she agreed with me. JKR is a witty, compassionate, articulate queen and the people attacking her will regret drawing attention to their viciousness and illogic.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-17T05:09:17+00:00

Stock is lovely. Her articles have helped me understand the issues. I'm glad of her writings.

Spikygrasspod · 2021-06-30T08:08:08+00:00

Do you bring this level of radical scepticism to all categories, or just male and female? I propose to you that the world is a blob with patches of different properties, and that trying to distinguish, group and label different areas of the blob is always social construction. It's social construction to distinguish yourself from the surrounding environment (where does the air begin and end? Inside your lungs? Outside your mouth?). To distinguish air from water (what if the air is humid? What if the water has bubbles in?). To distinguish cake from bread (What is even banana bread??? Fruit bread? Fruit cake?). All human-invented categories that impose order on the single-item, the blob universe.

That said, certain categories have incredible explanatory and predictive power. For example, even though it's somewhat arbitrary where we place the boundary of "beach" and "ocean" the likelihood of being bitten by a shark is rather higher when the human is in one of these socially constructed spaces. Likewise the category MALE can predict with astonishing accuracy who is most likely to commit violent sexual crimes against other humans, for example.

It's funny how the kind of people who treat the categories of male and female with radical scepticism treat all other categories as common sense, and base their behaviour on them (which of course, is necessary for any sensible interactions with the world). It might be instructive for you to look at whose interests this highly specific deconstructionism serves.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-23T03:30:08+00:00

I just visited and there's even more bad posts :(

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-13T02:22:50+00:00

The argument is that the best way to protect trans people is for everyone to pretend they're literally the opposite sex. But people tend to not go along with this when it's stated openly, so they get there via the sleight of hand that is 'gender identity'. Unfortunately, trans rights activists are, with the collusion of the medical industry, simultaneously vastly expanding the category of trans to accord with this unfalsifiable object, 'gender identity'. In practice it is a subjective mental state evidenced by an act of declaration. Again, people are unlikely to go along with this (especially the transing of children) if it's stated directly, so there is more obfuscation. Obfuscation works better when combined with threats, accusations, and silencing, though, so the movement has adopted much of the language of social justice movements to make their goals seem legit and to make critics seem like villains. But yeah. The basic position is that any man who says they're a woman is literally a woman and should have access to all women's rights and spaces, and be legally and socially treated as though they are literally a woman. This is in direct opposition to women's separatism, a crucial tool for improving women's lot in male dominated societies.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-12T15:29:32+00:00

Personally, I think there could be an interaction between bodies, hormones, sexuality and socialisation that can't be untangled. I think it's implausible to say there are no physical differences that inform different behaviour and that everything is socialisation--otherwise men's violence wouldn't be such a constant across different cultures and eras. It would also be odd if we were the only mammal with no sexually dimorphic behaviours. But it's equally implausible to treat physiology and socialisation as separate. There's no clean nature/nurture divide. Bodies act on culture and culture acts on bodies. They're irreducibly entwined. Maybe men and women will change radically as gender becomes less restrictive and harmful. Maybe they'll only change somewhat. Our equal moral worth isn't predicated on our being exactly the same, and we shouldn't look for equality through sameness. Equality can only be achieved by noting our differences and designing societies that create a level playing field around them.

P.S. If I understand this correctly, synthetic testosterone is an anabolic androgenic steroid. Females who hormonally transition are put on steroids. This boosts energy and reduces depression and anxiety. Of course they help some people feel better. But they're a pretty invasive and dangerous way to achieve that end. When men have abnormally low levels of T, they feel pretty bad, too. They are given a dose that brings them to the normal range because being above or below the normal range can have bad side effects.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-10T00:24:56+00:00

Wish I could say I don't feel safe whenever people spout sexist bullshit or cancelly shit, but that wouldn't work. I actually have to argue for things. Pity. Do you think if I stopped merely being a woman and started identifying as one, people would take me more seriously? "I identify as a woman and a cancelled person, and you saying this letter makes you feel unsafe, makes me feel unsafe".

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-06T15:14:15+00:00

I think they're going for being unconditionally accepted as the sex they wish they were. They react so strongly because their position is based on an incoherent conceptual framework. Since the logic is flawed, their only choice is to build and protect with word games.

Spikygrasspod · 2021-08-25T09:19:19+00:00

You say it's fair for a person to compete if they meet the requirements, but the question is: what should the requirements be? What categories are supposed to exist in sports, and why? It's not "lame" to pose hypothetical scenarios; it's a very useful way of figuring out what priorities someone places on different values, and for clarifying their positions when they seem ambiguous or inconsistent.

If sporting organisations wish to protect purely non physical identity categories, why do they have testosterone or other physical requirements? And why should we have separate sporting categories for personal identities at all?

These are questions worth asking because there are good reasons to have male and female sporting categories. Allowing males to compete in the women's category contradicts the purpose of the women's category, and adding a testosterone requirement is a useless papering over of this contradiction. There is no coherent principle or reasoning behind these rules, and the hypotheticals are designed to reveal this.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-30T19:59:40+00:00

It's a success because it reduces demand. Reducing demand matters, because most of the women and girls who are 'supplied' are coerced in one way or another--financially, emotionally, physically. They are taken from the most vulnerable, poor populations. The stories they tell are horrific. It is, in general, an industry of abuse, even if there are some exceptions.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-26T05:41:24+00:00

Yep, 'passing' and 'conforming' are gender performances, not gender identity (sorry! there are about five definitions of "gender"). Gender identity is innate, so they say. In ordinary TRA speak, gender identity is an innate 'sense'. Though 'sense' here obscures whether this mental state is more like a physical sensation, a belief, or a wish. In more rarified academic discussions, gender identity is sometimes defined in terms of 'norm relevancy'. In plain English, it means people perceive gender norms appropriate to the opposite sex as actually applying to them. So a male has a deep feeling that norms of femininity somehow apply to him, regardless of whether or not he conforms with them. Just like women know that norms of femininity apply to them, even if they resist. This might be the intellectual basis of claims that trans women don't experience male socialisation because they interpret it as not applying to them. 'Norm relevancy' is what Jenkins goes for in "Amelioration and Inclusion". It's ultimately incoherent. If you're interested, Bogardus responds with a pretty comprehensive take-down in "some internal problems with revisionary gender concepts".

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-26T04:52:46+00:00

You are most welcome :)

I'm sorry, the attacks on your faith must feel exhausting and threatening. Happily, most of the threads here are not about religion so you should be able to engage as much or as little as you like on that issue, and still have plenty of space to talk about LGB and other aspects of trans rights activism.

Yeah, it has also been an immense relief to me to find this space after years of alternately wondering what was wrong with the highly individualistic mainstream feminism I was being offered and what was wrong with me.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-25T03:21:21+00:00

What do they mean about a cycle? Is HRT designed to mimic a natural cycle, with different levels of different hormones throughout the month?

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-24T02:35:03+00:00

Oh wow. What an entitled jerk.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-21T05:03:41+00:00

Hello! I am a books-and-staring-out-the-window-at-birds-gendered-person who doesn't understand the internet. What is an 'air gap'? Is safari safe? Is firefox better? What can people know about me if I visit this site on a laptop without sharing my email? What if I read forbidden feminist works on medium, quillette, unherd, 4W and feminist current? What is VPN and do I need it? What is a cloud server and do I have one? Do they already know who I am if I used my email for reddit?

I know that's a lot of questions. Thank you in advance for any and all answers.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-21T04:49:16+00:00

Goddess preserve. Does it bother anyone else that these people think human surgeons are creators akin in skill and competence to nature itself?

Spikygrasspod · 2021-08-28T18:09:11+00:00

Women have multiple penises. The nose, for example, is a penis for breathing. We have ten hand penises for grasping, and as many foot penises for balancing.

Spikygrasspod · 2021-06-05T04:35:49+00:00

I'm not sure that's what we need, to be honest. To take the friend I was talking about, I think what she needs is intellectual honesty and to stop treating women's interests as unimportant. I don't think the breakdown in communication was due to sensitivity, impatience or mistakes, I think it was due to her being emotionally and intellectually manipulative in order to rationalise her worldview and behaviour and make it appear less like what it is: prioritising her personal identity, and her affiliation with other transfeminist philosophers and activists, over women's collective interests and safety. She rejected the idea of third spaces, by the way, which made me think it's not really about safety for her. I think when faced with someone like that, patience is beside the point and women need to advocate for their interests more directly, with e.g. policymakers.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-14T03:00:47+00:00

Ehhh. I think female and male are types created by nature, not just collections of features. A female is a creature whose body is organised around the reproductive role of conception, gestation, delivery. You might as well ask whether we can surgically construct a cat if we get all the cat features right.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-29T15:16:49+00:00

Abolish prostitution, get reproductive rights into the law, get better healthcare & social security for everyone but especially mothers, get women into politics, make it 'mainstream' to always include women in every kind of research & policy making and always look at specific effects on poor women, non-white women, elderly women, mothers & carers etc., start undoing the policies that reduce social mobility, rewrite the whole damned legal system to address rape and domestic violence adequately. Make more cultural spaces just for women. I dunno. Just throwing some ideas.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-29T14:47:55+00:00

So, I actually read this. It sounds like some racist white scientists said that white people were more differentiated in their secondary sex characteristics, which they were so desperate to prove that they measured people's arses. So when the article is talking about 'biological sex' they're not even talking about reproductive roles & organs, they're talking about body shape. No wonder they're confused.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-23T04:22:25+00:00

Awesome. I appreciate you, mods.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-21T14:51:51+00:00

I'm also worried that we're in a situation where saying the truth is considered rude, or even hateful. We do need to recalibrate. Truth with compassion.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-20T03:39:00+00:00

I feel like doctors have some responsibility here for pretending they can construct a sexed body and that the rest of us would go along with it.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-07T04:29:59+00:00

Very interesting. And there's microchimerism. Which is also very interesting, but it doesn't change the fact that there are two natural kinds (with some exceptions) and that we can tell each other apart well enough to create a society that places roughly half of us under systematic threat of domination by the other half, other axes of oppression and domination notwithstanding.

This whole distraction annoys me so much because sex based oppression definitely won't go away if we let deconstructionists murder the words and concepts that describe it...

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-05T05:08:08+00:00

I agree, it's not outmoded. We'll need 'women' as a concept as long as sex differences remain relevant to our lives, which they always will.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-04T16:24:15+00:00

You can criticise groups of arseholes based on their behaviour, not based on their membership in a class of people. We have plenty of insults that do that. So if we're not that different, why do we need an insult that ONLY applies to women?

Did you think about what I asked you to think about? Did you think about making an insult for a marginalised group? Can I help with some concrete examples? How about gay men, or disabled people? Would you feel comfortable creating an insult that ostensibly applies to bad behaviour from people in those groups, but which ONLY applies to people from those groups? Would you think it a good outcome if other people--people who hate or disrespect gay men and disabled people--started using the insult you created to refer to ALL gay men and ALL disabled people, regardless of whether they were displaying the behaviour the insult was intended to describe?

Karen may have started as an insult to describe entitled behaviour, but it will end as a general insult for women. So called progressives are loading up the word Karen with hatred and negativity, and those associations will still be stuck to that name when misogynists start using it to refer to women generally. If you doubt this, look at 'b*tch'. It's ostensibly for women who are aggressive arseholes... and now men use it to describe women who disagree with them, women who refuse to have sex with them, all women, any women, every woman.

To say that white, middle class women are not marginalised is to say that sexism doesn't exist, or that it only exists when women are marginalised along another axis, like race or poverty, that is also experienced by men. Catharine McKinnon has a paper on just this, if you're interested.

Spikygrasspod · 2021-08-25T17:01:08+00:00

It's not lame, the questions are designed to probe your ideas of fairness in sport, and of what defines men and women.

The reason to have men's and women's categories (when I say men and women, I mean adult male and female people) is that men have a large systematic average advantage in almost every sports category. If there were only an open category, men would win virtually everything, except maybe some ultra endurance events and a couple of other things where speed and strength aren't important. There are benefits to women when they can compete in sports: it boosts confidence; it is good for health; sporting excellence is an achievement in its own right; we are committed to enabling women to take part in the same aspects of public life that men enjoy; and some people make a career out of it. We should encourage girls and women in sports, and celebrate when they achieve excellence. However, excellence simply looks different for women because our bodies are a compromise between athletic performance and the ability to bear children (whether we choose to or not). A category just for women means that they can compete without the likelihood of being so dramatically outclassed by men that they are at risk of injury (in contact sports), or that they have no reasonable chance of winning anything. Splitting sports by sex doubles the number of people who can profitably compete, just as splitting boxing or weightlifting into weight classes increases the number of people who can sensibly compete in those sports. Unlike weight classes, however, women are also from a socially disadvantaged class, whom many people like myself desire to see especially encouraged in public life. Virtually all the people who benefit from sports being split into sex categories are women and girls, and virtually all the people who would suffer from sports being mixed sex are also women and girls. Why the flip would we want to take away those benefits from women and girls?

I'll answer the thought experiment for you, because you seem unwilling to commit to any principles or definitions: It's always unfair for men/males to compete in the women's category, regardless of their gender identity. Low testosterone rules are worse than useless, because they create the illusion of objectivity around the women's category while eroding its original, actually useful meaning.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-09-21T05:51:21+00:00

I think most transgender people do have sex role distress rather than body dysmorphia; or sometimes body dysmorphia arises as a complication of sex role distress or autogynephilia. The scandal is that doctors are trying to align young people's bodies with their distress, rather than trying to treat the distress and allow people to accept their bodies.

I think the term transgender was popularised in the 90s by crossdresser Virginia Prince, in order to avoid the terms transvestite and transsexual, which had a certain stigma due to the fact that people understood them as sexual conditions of men. This according to Sheila Jeffreys, anyway.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-15T04:19:11+00:00

"This is our formal notice to vacate: The meaning of WOMAN is taken. Its definition is and will only ever be adult human female. A GIRL is an infant to adolescent female. Males are men and boys. All those occupying these spaces under false pretense, please promptly vacate the premises."

I love it. <3

Spikygrasspod · 2020-08-15T04:13:14+00:00

It's not your fault that a shit person deliberately trampled your boundaries and didn't give a fuck what you wanted or what was best for you.

It's normal to not be psychologically prepared to object or fight back, because we don't expect people to shit all over our boundaries. We can't imagine doing that to other people, so we don't expect them to do it to us. And it's normal to try to 'normalise' the relationship by pretending things are okay before you've had a chance to process.

None of this is your fault. It is all his fault. It doesn't matter what it felt like or what you said; he kicked over your spoken boundaries and did what he wanted because he doesn't give a fuck about you. Fucking boundary trampling men do it on purpose, it's not a mistake for them, it's deliberate. It absolutely didn't happen because you weren't clear enough. Because you know what men do if they're not rapist fucks and they're not sure if you want anal sex? They ask you. They make sure. But violators creep around and figure out what they can get away with.

I'm so sorry you went through this. You will be okay despite the hurt.

Spikygrasspod · 2020-07-27T02:05:59+00:00

Ugh. Placing personal identity over structural analyses of injustice isn't radical. Somebody needs to confiscate that word from them and ask them to sit in the corner and think about what they're doing.

Spikygrasspod