A prime case of “Baptists and Bootleggers”: The Equality Act is drawing opposition from both feminists and conservatives, who claim that a law that requires people to be treated as the gender that they claim to be (rather than the gender they actually are) is going to be greatly disadvantageous to women, because it takes away “safe spaces” for women (not the best term, since that has loaded connotations, but I can’t think of what else it would be called.) A man could then compete as a woman in woman’s sports simply by claiming he is a woman, etc.
Transgender women aren’t “claiming to be women” – they are women. You appear to be confusing gender with biological sex.
The “feminists” in your OP is the Women’s Liberation Front(WoLF), a very radical feminist group dedicated to opposition to transgender rights. This fringe group does not in any way represent feminists as a whole. The “conservatives” in your OP are the Concerned Women for America, a conservative, evangelistic Christian women’s activist group who( I dare say) do not represent conservatives as a whole.
Feminists are not, in general, opposed to trans rights, or the Equality Act. A small, radical group of bigots have appropriated the term “feminist” to give cover to their hateful attacks against trans people. They’re a fringe group who can’t get a platform in traditional leftist circles for their prejudicial agenda, and so have agreed to play kapos for Republicans who oppose them on literally every other issue they claim to care about. They’re also so fringe that Republicans have had to import extras from the UK, where they are unfortunately rather thicker on the ground.
They’re scum, basically. Hate-mongering quislings who will sell out every ideal they claim to hold to ally with people who will support them in their efforts to shit on a disadvantaged minority.
Would you like the mods to change the title to “Two hate-filled fringe groups agree on something”?
They’re a very vocal, very visible, long standing and pretty influential group. When they aren’t attacking trans people (and, to a lesser extent voice their sex-negativity , but this bothers few people), their stances receive uncritical support by leftist activists.
They’re definitely not people who pretend to be feminist just to bash trans. They’re feminists at the core, and have a long history as feminists, and are only incidentally and secondarily anti-trans. Their rejection of transsexuals being based primarily on their basic philosophy according to which there’s no mental difference altogether between men and women, all observed and/or supposed differences being social constructs and/or the result of women oppression and/or of the pressures of the patriarchal culture, a position that obviously clashes with the stance of transsexuals (being a woman in a male body, etc… which assumes a difference between male and female brain). And also based on the idea that nobody who isn’t born a woman can really be a woman, because he won’t share the experience of being raised a girl and experiencing male oppression and cultural pressures girls are subjected to since birth.
And also, even though many social activists deny that such a thing exists, due to the presence in their midst of many men haters, who can only see transsexuals as sexually perverted males trying to steal from women the only thing they have ever been allowed to have : being a woman. When they aren’t just simply pretending for sexual gratification. They don’t hate trans per se, they hate the men they see pretending to be women, infiltrating women movements, stealing women achievements and entering women locker rooms. They don’t see trans-women, they see men. Most would deny that transsexualism is even a thing. They’re more lenient with trans-men, but they don’t really spare them, either. Basically, these are traitors, “passing” as men.
They definitely aren’t pretending. They have been and still are at the vanguard of all feminist movements, throwing their support at every feminist cause you are yourself supporting (and probably some you aren’t). You want to believe that because it would fit nicely in your worldview where feminist activists are nice oppressed people who always fight the good fight against the oppressive male patriarchy, and trans activists nice oppressed people who always fight the good fight against the oppressive cis male culture. And where everybody disputing either group’s claims is a hater. So, you’d rather invoke the “no true Scotsman” fallacy and assume that a feminist objecting to some or all of trans people claims isn’t a true feminist (or is as rare an an unicorn) than face the reality of the presence in both group of people who have no interest whatsoever in the plight of the other group. Trans people who don’t give a shit about the situation of non trans women and about the consequences policies they advocate for would have for them and feminists who don’t give a shit about people who aren’t born women and/or aren’t physically women and about the consequences the policies they advocate for would have for them.
It’s easy to accuse cis straight white males of being haters when they argue against trans-women in women locker rooms, because your world view definitely allows for them to be haters. But it doesn’t allow for feminist women to be haters or to be deluded by extremist/fundamentalist beliefs that allow no nuance. So it becomes a problem when those feminists are arguing against the exact same thing, on the basis of longstanding views that you’re otherwise supportive of, which can only be solved by denying that such sincerely feminist women exist, or at least are in any way representative or significant. I’m sure you’d have no problem agreeing with such a feminist stating “Given how much women are victimized, it’s perfectly normal for a woman to be wary of all men and about their true intents, and to not assume honest intents on their part”. But since you also throw your support to the trans cause, and to their claim that their gender identification shouldn’t be disputed in any circumstance, you somehow have a problem when a feminist tells you “why should I assume honest intent on the part of a naked dick-waving person in my locker room just because he says “I feel I’m a woman”, exactly?” “Why should I have to face such a situation that I find threatening and abusive and can’t have a place where I feel safe, not even a place where I go to undress?”
Being a feminist doesn’t mean that one follows every single one of your progressive (or not progressive for that matter) ideas. Feminists won’t necessarily stop arguing for the protection of women interests just because you feel they should in such or such circumstances for the benefit of groups they don’t belong to. They won’t necessarily feel that a situation isn’t threatening just because you say that they shouldn’t feel this way. They won’t necessarily share any of your views that isn’t directly related with feminism, and in particular your definition of “woman”. Their feminist views (that, once again, you probably wouldn’t dispute if they didn’t impact a group that you favor) might very well bring them to absolutely oppose your values. They can very well, and very logically, note that their own interests as non trans women are at odds with the interests of trans women.
These radical feminists aren’t really rare among vocal activists (they’re quite rare in the general population, but then again, casual feminists in the general population aren’t necessarily very supportive of trans rights, either). It’s just that you probably don’t question their equally radical statements when they don’t impact trans people. Think about it for a minute : why would you assume that one couldn’t at the same time be a sincere feminist (like denouncing sexual abuses, or income differences) and being anti-trans? Is there any obvious reason you can see why being supportive of one issue would make you necessarily supportive of the other? And as I already pointed out, there are on top of this reasons why radical feminist ideology will not be accepting of the concepts generally advanced in support of transsexuals.
Can you, or anyone else, please define “feminist” for this thread? I really want it nailed down. What it is and what it isn’t so we can then discern what they do and do not support as a group.
The unholy alliance of conservatives and radical feminists isn’t a novelty, by the way. You can see it in action in their common fight against pornography, prostitution and sex work, which occasionally goes beyond the coincidental. For instance both will launch attacks pornography totally independently, but they will sometimes objectively ally and even cooperate with each other for instance to pass laws.
Let’s take any random dictionary definition :
or another :
Neither of these definitions requires the inclusion of transwomen in the “women” group.
I can’t think of a definition of feminism that isn’t ad hoc and that would imply the acceptance of transwomen.
Seems to me “equality of the sexes” would encompass transwomen.
If society is going to demand separate considerations, such as sports, for men and women at some point simply declaring one to be a man or a woman won’t be sufficient for acceptance in exclusive activities. There are real biological differences between men and women that one cannot doublethink away.
And I’m not sure why people are attacking the recognition of biology as hate. It’s bizarre. That said, nothing is going to be resolved on this subject here. It’s like the endless gun debates.
Personally I don’t care what people call themselves, how they dress, what pronouns, what name, or who they have sex with. But I do have an issue with biological men competing in women’s divisions merely because of a declaration.
Me too but it takes more than a declaration.
But it is abundantly clear that men who switch to being women have a major advantage over women who were born women in many sports.
That said I do not see what “feminism” has to do with this.
Going by the OP’s article, the feminists might be upset about having to share space with other women who are a) biologically male b) stark naked, and c) sexually attracted to them, d) somewhat lacking in decency. Not a difficult concept.
That’s an article of faith, not an objective statement. It entirely depends on your definition of “woman”, and this definition is clearly disputed. You can’t advance it as fact, only as something that you wish would be true or think would be better. Your opinion that the definition of woman should be based entirely on gender identity without reference to biological sex is clearly not shared by everybody and there’s no objective, indisputable way to establish what the definition of “woman” should be.
And even if you managed to have everybody agree that the definition of woman should be entirely based on gender identity, you still wouldn’t have a general agreement that actual gender identity is the the same as gender self-identification. Besides the trivial example of someone lying, you can’t demonstrate for instance that the TERF argument according to which you can’t really have a female identity if you were born a boy because you haven’t been subject to the same extent to the patriarchal pressures that mold a female identity, thus creating an unbridgeable gap between a biological woman and a trans woman is objectively false.
On top of it, as exemplified by this other thread going on, biological sex can’t necessarily be objectively established, either.
The concept of woman is based on a binary division where each category is assumed to have all the characteristics associated with this category. As soon as you introduce concepts like gender identity being different from biological sex and such, or the idea that both gender identity and biological sex are fuzzy concepts, you don’t have anymore a clear, generally accepted, and valid in all circumstances, definition of what a woman is, and as a result can’t determine objectively whether such or such person should be deemed a woman in some or all circumstances. Everything that has to do with sex and gender is based in large part on arbitrary social conventions and as a result heavily disputable, and definitely not resolved by pronouncements ex cathedra by you or others.
You might have extremely good intentions and feel that you’re sparing people grief by acknowledging without reservation their gender self-identification, but being nice shouldn’t go as far as distorting reality. To be clear, it’s fine to call someone a woman if she self identify as such, but it’s not to make absolute statements like “transwomen are women” when you’d be hard pressed to define objectively and indisputably what a “woman” is, what “gender” is, etc… It might sound as nitpicking about the meaning of words, but it becomes important when competing interests are at play in which situation being nice amounts to playing favorites, and stating “transwomen are women” amounts to saying : “your concerns are objectively unfounded” when of course, you can’t decide objectively, to take the example given in the article, that the subjective distress of a transwoman denied access to the women locker room should be given more importance than the subjective distress of a woman seeing a person with a dick in her locker room.
What?
Everything you wrote is a difficult concept for me.
I don’t understand what you mean, here. I assume you don’t mean that transwomen are a third separate sex that should be equal to the others.
So, assuming that we’re talking about two sexes, then of course transwomen would be included and equal to everybody else, but this still wouldn’t say if they are men equals to women or women equal to men.
On top of it and more importantly, what you’re trying to do here is, again, a true Scotsman fallacy. While it’s obvious that not all people who define themselves as feminist, or who are generally considered as feminists support the transwomen right to be considered women, you’re trying to interpret definitions of feminism so as to exclude them.
Feminists have historically fought for the rights of women, as they understood “women” to be. Which means that many never even wondered about whether transwomen should be included, and a significant number have openly excluded transwomen. They didn’t fight for trans rights, and you can’t invent a requirement for being considered a feminist like supporting transwomen, supporting gay people, favoring an universal healthcare system or liking Pepsi more than Coke.
This problem is almost entirely confined to the area of sports competitions, though. In pretty much every aspect of life other than people engaging in heavily elaborated versions of playground games for the entertainment of spectators, whether or not a person is transgender or cisgender is simply irrelevant. (Of course, many people feel that the distinction between transgender and cisgender is important in their private romantic and sexual lives, but that’s their personal preference and nobody else’s business.)
Nobody is “attacking the recognition of biology” or trying to “doublethink away” “real biological differences”. As I have explained to you and others on these boards at least a dozen times, nobody is trying to pretend that transgender and cisgender (not to mention intersex) people don’t have real biological differences in their genetic makeup, their genital anatomy at birth, and so forth. Trans rights are not about denying biological reality in any way.
What trans rights are about is the current category shift in the social definitions of the categories “men” and “women”. There is no intrinsic reason, for example, why the social use of the label “man” has to be synonymous with the category of “people born with a penis”, any more than it has to be synonymous with the category of “people who are sexually attracted to women”.
Is it “denying biology” to refer to homosexual men as men, even though (most) homosexual men lack the traditionally essential male characteristic of being sexually attracted to women? If not, then there’s nothing intrinsically “denying biology” in referring to transgender men as men, even if they lack the traditionally essential male characteristic of being born with a penis.
Easy. They see it as men invading one of the rare women space and stealing their accomplishments. In fact, it’s mentioned in the article linking to by the OP, I believe.
Or maybe I should rather write “preventing women from achieving anything”. Radical feminists have a very adversarial view of gender relationships (not just strictly radical feminists, in fact. You can see this adversarial view of gender relations in action for instance in the current thread about touching coworkers, where a certain number of posters immediately assume that the only reason a man could have to touch a woman would be asserting control and power on this woman. They don’t just suspect that the man could have nefarious intentions, they assume this as default). So, they tend to perceive men as permanently trying to oppress women. And to assume that the motivation (not just the result) of a man’s action is to oppress them (consciously or unconsciously). So, in this case it can go beyond the suspicion that a man who can’t compete as man will pretend to be a woman so that he will get a medal, incidentally depriving a woman from it, motivated by egoistical self-interest, to the assumption that the man will pretend to be a woman in order to deprive actual women from a medal (again, not necessarily perfectly consciously), motivated by a desire to oppress women and put them back at their subordinate place.
Look for instance at the arguments used against the participation of transwomen in feminist events. You’ll easily notice that it goes beyond the idea that transwomen aren’t really women and have no place there. The idea is that they’re men trying to deprive women from power even within the feminist movement and to gain control of this movement. They’re not just wrong in thinking they’re women, they’re actively, sneakily, trying to oppress women.
Just correcting this misinterpretation of the concurrent thread: No, it’s not that all men are immediately assumed to have “nefarious intentions” about deliberately trying to “assert control and power” over women. It’s that in a traditionally and persistently sexist society, human beings are always immersed in cultural expectations about men being entitled to assert control and power over women, and human behavior is bound to reflect that.
Well, in this case, it’s similar to what I wrote about RadFem not necessarily assuming that a man oppressing a woman does so consciously but that his behavior is often dictated by the patriarchal structure of society. I struggled with expressing this concept.
In any case, I still see what you say as an adversarial view of gender relationships. when you write that men behavior will reflect the cultural expectation that men are entitled to assert control over women, it still implies that it’s what they do when they touch a woman (asserting control). And exclude a simple explanation like : “he touched her because it was a convenient way to get her attention” without not only nefarious intent, but also any subtext reflecting men entitlement.
This is definitely a view according to which any male behavior is interpreted by default as reflecting men entitlement and women oppression and the possibility that there could be a neutral or pragmatical explanation for these behaviors is rejected.