Misogyny and other gender issues. - The Bear and Badger

Funkstain

Armitage_Shankburn wrote:

JonB wrote:

Armitage_Shankburn wrote:

This is your reminder that this thread started about misogyny in the sense it means , has meant and has happened for 1000s of years affecting circa 51% of all of the people who have ever existed, and is now and has for some time been about a much smaller group of people, a much newer form of prejudice (or conversation about prejudice), much of it aimed at a subset of people who experience misogyny and conceive of it as I described above. Maybe, just maybe, this basic fact - about this thread - will give you a clue as to why some among that group feel aggrieved that the conversation has taken this turn. Someone (male) ITT recently described this woman who was in NZ as a cunt. Unironically, and no one picked him up on it. Maybe, just maybe, as a group of mostly men, mostly straight, overwhelmingly white and privileged folk, we should reflect on that.

The amplification of trans issues is more about the pushback against it than trans people taking over discussion. Trans activists will campaign for trans rights to the best of their ability - and why wouldn't they? - but they and their supporters don't have the power to make their agenda a defining cultural issue. Right-wing media and politicians have seized on this as a weapon in their culture wars, while certain feminists have taken to campaigning about this single issue, taking oxygen away from others. When all the furore about a trans rapist in a women's prison was going on a while back, for instance, no one seemed very concerned about the wider issue of safety conditions in women's prisons. So, if there's a problem in this thread, it's that it shows how successful the Right have been in drawing attention away from women's rights issues by framing them as a battle between cis and trans women.

I wholeheartedly agree, in fact, part of me honestly believes this issue is a sort of online psi op to divide the left /progressives. That's maybe conspiracy theory, but y'know, it's working. Just look at this thread. Look at kasperian / cenk ughyur TYT thingy recently. Edit- re trans people taking over the discussion. If you mean trans issues, that's my point - if you mean people, you've missed it slightly. I'm talking about men talking over women, telling them shut your fuckface, figuratively speaking, calling them cubts, literally speaking, laughing at their being assaulted. That kinda thing. And specifically groupthink and backslapping ITT. I'm pointing out that this kind of behaviour can easily be seen as plain old miso by some. I'm trying to generate empathy and talk to "my" group in a challenging way. It's interesting that the response has been strawmanbing, zero sum games, climate change and so on. But I can live with that. I don't know how anyone can clap at a woman getting slapped, punched by a much bigger, testosterone enhanced person, or assaulted with a liquid substance and made to wonder for a split second what it is You do that to me and see what happens. Let's see your response if someone does that to you

Right. So can we be specific then? I'm not happy about violence against women, or anyone, unless in defence. I shouldn't need to say it but due to your post I feel I have to. I'm not happy about the binary (lol) nature of the conversation, nuance-free, lack of empathy / thought for consequences of certain positions on physical or moral reality. Again it annoys me to have to say it.

The reason I push back against Knight's stuff is: it's basic. We know what the position of so-called TERFs is: only a woman born with a woman's reproductive organs can be a woman. And we know what the consequences of that position are: non-women, declaring themselves women after transition, are able to infiltrate (language deliberate) women-only 'safe spaces' to the detriment of 'real' women's safety. And we know what the other consequence is: people who identify as a woman, born with male reproductive organs, unable to exist as full real women.

And we also know what the consequences of holding the position of: trans women are real women. there are a number of them: how do we deal with professional sports? how do we deal with men abusing simplified gender declaration processes? what does it mean for homosexual women? and so on and so on.

Instead we keep having this incredibly reductive "why can't everyone see this" one sideism childish bullshit.

And from you Gonz, we have the "you should all know better you should all listen to women you should all have more empathy" and I'm like ok great thanks

Funkstain

I mean for fuck's sake invoking 'expertise' in the form of an old rude pompous cunt like Dawkins as if it means anything, as if he furthers the nuanced, careful, delicate, considerate, empathic discussions required on the consequences of literally allowing certain people to exist the way they want to

Funkstain

The crux of your argument is: people who are pro-trans rights engage in at least questionable, and at worst violently wrong, behaviour to further their agenda.

OK? great, I guess we agree on that, it's not cool. Let's continue to call that out when we see it here, and can we move on to more interesting discussions?

If you really believe that the only invasion of anti-trans rights people comes from the 'far right' and that's only 'unhelpful' then it feels very much like you cannot shine such a crusading, revealing light on 'your' side of things

JonB

Knight wrote:

People shouldn’t campaign vociferously for certain things and when they get pushback from a broad spectrum of people - including the communist party now! - accuse those pushing back of stoking a culture war as if all pushback is just in bad faith and from the far right. They’re the ones wanting to overturn long established patterns, they are seeking to change ‘the culture’ and overturn heteronormativity etc. which is fine, you’re free to campaign for that, we live in a pluralistic society where people are allowed to push for their ideological positions to be accepted more broadly. But don’t disingenuously claim that it’s just a ‘campaign for your rights’ when that campaign includes the literal rejection of a biological sex binary. People are asking to be treated as women on the basis of their self ID (not just after extensive evaluation as has been claimed on this thread) and included in single sex spaces such as elite sport etc. People are pushing irreversible surgery and experimental ‘treatment’ on minors. It’s not simply about trans people being free to live without discrimination and fear and adults being able to present as a different gender to their biological sex. JK Rowling has absolutely no issue with that as she’s stated many times and yet she’s constantly accused of transphobia.

I'm a bit lost if this is a response to my post, TBH. I was talking about the scale of the issue being down to intentional culture war stoking by the Right. As in a deliberate effort with the aim of creating division and exclusion.

As for caring so much - I responded to some , in my opinion unfair, accusations of transphobia from JK Rowling and some misogynistic language used about her, I didn’t bring this up. I’m continuing to engage because various people, including you, have done me the courtesy of responding thoughtfully to various things. That this issue has also been pounced on by bad faith actors (the literal far right) is also indisputable of course and in so far your post picks up on that I agree and think it deeply unhelpful.

But you're obviously quite invested in this and have been reading around the subject, and I wonder if that's the same with other aspects of feminist struggle. I also know that if any cause I believed in was attracting the interest of actual fascists, I'd see that as much more than unhelpful.

DrewMerson

RedDave2

With all the respect Drew, I watched that video, I thought it was great, very informative but while it did a great job of showing how different human biology can get I dont think it helped me that much in terms of understanding the whole mess of what this gender debate can come down to. I'd still struggle to fully explain it to my daughter as to what these terms all mean now. Sorry if that annoys anyone here, but its a fact.

Despite that video I dont understand how for thousands of years so many cultures and countries oceans apart settled on the male/ female idea as the general norm. I'm not saying everyone will (or should) fit into exact pegs (you only have to look at how different humans are from eye, hair, skin colour to even basic body shapes to see that we not a one size fits all species) but I guess where I struggle with is how so many understood the basic idea of male and female but thats not actually the case.

But I struggle with the notion of Gender as purely a social construct. Certainly there are gender stereotypes but (and I ask this in good faith) if genders are only made up or so flexible why is it important to a trans person to feel correctly identified? (my stance is not that the Trans person is incorrect, but the idea of gender being fluid and a social construct is flimsy imo)

Anyway, upshot is I dont have a useful input on this other than to show how confusing for some of it is.

Diluted Dante

RedDave2 wrote:

Despite that video I dont understand how for thousands of years so many cultures and countries oceans apart settled on the male/ female idea as the general norm.

Plenty of cultures have had the concept of 'third' gender.

monkey

That video is good for dismantling the idea of a biological gender that you can use to exclude people from. Whatever aspect of eg womanhood you use as a classification, there’s a non-trans woman who wouldn’t qualify and maybe a non-trans man that might.

Sex organs can vary quite a bit as well. There’s female sex organs, male sex organs and then, as in my case, Super male sex organs that are of such gargantuan proportions that other men seem closer to women than to me. Hope that helps.

Brooks

I particularly enjoy the current meme of adding -ussy to everything.

DrewMerson

GooberTheHat

I'm kind of with red Dave on this. If gender is not binary, why isn't the argument to recognise more genders, or do away with gender classification, rather than demanding the freedom to be recognised as one of two genders?

Diluted Dante

It's all three of those.

RedDave2

Diluted Dante wrote:

RedDave2 wrote:

Despite that video I dont understand how for thousands of years so many cultures and countries oceans apart settled on the male/ female idea as the general norm.

Plenty of cultures have had the concept of 'third' gender.

In the grand scheme of things, not that many have. Even the article you link to isnt exactly brimming with lots of examples.

Worth nothing these two points from the first paragraphs:

Most cultures use a gender binary, having two genders (boys/men and girls/women)

A culture recognizing a third gender does not in itself mean that they were valued by that culture, and often is the result of explicit devaluation of women in that culture

Funkstain

This is not the argument, this is not the issue.

Let anyone say they are who / what they say they are. Now deal with the consequences

This historical shit, this minutiae of the science of gender and sex, the whole "why if people are so keen to tear own the cultural construct of gender do they then insist on being one of those genders" stuff is noise, it's designed to cloud issues, it's designed to drive division, it's for people to quote their favourite scientist / expert and for what? what does it achieve?

Let's just start from the point that: for ever, some people (a tiny minority) have been struggling with their birth sex. They want to change it. When they do, in many cases they feel much happier, less suicidal, more at peace with themselves. This is a positive thing.

Dispute that, start talking about mental health, modern worries, cultural impacts and so on: you sound like someone who believes in gay conversion therapy. Who cares what people want to be. move on.

Next: despite this being a positive thing, it has consequences for our societies. For example: I know you want to be a woman, but you've been chemically, sexually a man most of your life; that gives you advantages in women's sport. How should we deal with that?

It has other consequences if you make that transition as easy as a declaration: how do you protect vulnerable women from predatory men who 'transition'?

And further consequences: is it wrong for a cis lesbian to reject a relationship out of hand with a trans lesbian?

These are gnarly questions and there are answers out there and we can explore them together, if we're interested to (NB: most of us probably aren't because we're still hung up on our favourite scientist's definition of gender and what society thinks and what not rather than just letting people be happier, more comfortable, less marginalised)

Funkstain

FWIW my highly personal answers to the above are:

- who cares it's sports entertainment. maybe come up with a new classification if you have to? measure testosterone levels or something and classify athletes like that. be more nuanced: this surely affects some sports more than others (team vs individuals etc)

- this doesn't seem like the massive problem it's made out to be. how many predatory men, genuinely will go through with whatever steps they need to to transition (after all a legal declaration is more than a signed document: it has huge impacts on all areas of bureaucratic and personal life!)? what about the incredibly large amount of predatory men who, you know, don't transition in order to cause harm to women? is this really the biggest problem, or even a big problem, or even actually a problem for women? what are you imagining - thousands of men transitioning and then what, being allowed into refuges somehow?

- let anyone fancy anyone they like. no-one is under obligation to fancy someone who used to have a penis. don't be mean about it, but also do you

GooberTheHat

Let anyone say they are who / what they say they are. Now deal with the consequences

For what it's worth this is generally my attitude towards the whole thing, I just don't have the time or energy to investigate it as deeply as some of you have.

So please accept any questions I have in here as good faith genuine questions, where I'm just after some more information or broader opinion, as I value everyone's contribution in here.

RedDave2

I'm not sure I agree with your stance Funk to be honest. I dont mean to start an argument, I just mean my understand of the 3 issues you raise isnt as cut and dry.

I do agree that we should let people say who/ what they are.

And I'd agree with helping people be happy with their identified sex.

So far so good.

First problem is the sports. Honestly, my understanding of this is that some trans woman want to be able to compete in the category of Women and some cis women feel this gives an unfair advantage. Saying "who cares, sports entertainment" flies in the face of anyone who takes their sport seriously for a start (I'm talking athletes who dedicate their whole life to being an athlete). But past that a new classification delegitimises the Trans argument (to my understanding) You would be labelling them different.

Second issue - I would agree with your point on this and I believe the problem is way smaller than its made out to be. But we do know a lot of woman have had some form of assault visited on them by men. There is a natural distrust of strange men for a lot of woman and there is no point pretending this is not a big part of the issue (I'm sure a trans man is equally scared of changing in a room with other men given possible past experiences) There's a bit in Hannah Gadsbys Nannette where she makes it clear that while not all men have committed violence against her, everyone who has committed violence against her was male. I dont have the wording quite right but I remember watching that and it being a bit of a "god, I hate being a man" moment for me. A lot of women I know will cross the street if it means avoiding walking past a strange man. So while I dont think its maybe the most sensible fear, I do understand it. The Trans Woman is probably statistically safer than a regular man in this regard but they still (to some women) represent men.

As for the last, I agree with this. Fancy who you like and with a bit of luck they will fancy you back. If they dont, move on regardless of gender. I'm not sure on the angle of this in the debate.

Funkstain

Sure but at least we're talking about what actually matters (if indeed it is agreed that these things matter to some / many people, which, regardless of my personal views, they do) rather than pretending we know / care about the details of sexual evolution and gender theory, and addressing the actual problem (people being miserable and marginalised and discriminated against - and the concurrent consequences of accepting them)

So you not agreeing my stances on three of the consequences of 'trans women are women' statement is absolutely fine, and good, and hopefully some very smart, careful and empathic people can come up with solutions to them. Be warned that whatever solutions, they are bound to be compromises, and therefore everyone will be slightly unhappy with them - but that's negotiation

Funkstain

And the funny thing is when you start talking about these consequences you begin to realise that actually, we’re talking about minute consequences for the world at large, really. Outsized, of course, considering the base of people involved, but still - in the grand scheme of things this is pretty small fry for those not directly impacted. Spoiler alert for knight: that would not include almost all women in general.

So Jon was right all along: making this a progressive flash point, pitting us against each other on this, means the attention (which is a finite thing) is less on the really big shit: climate change, shitty government, hospitals falling apart, justice system defunding etc etc etc

Funkstain

Generally speaking and tldr: Jon is right. Handy shortcut there

Brooks

It's just power. What's more practically, demonstrably corrosive to polity X, such that it needs serious interrogation - a bunch of marginals finally achieving something like a normal political voice, or large and ubiquitous media entities going basically insane with dread for fun and profit.

acemuzzy

I thought it was me that was always right?

Brooks

What's actually, materially threatening the viability of comfortably 'traditional' gender performance in 202X? Could it be - and stop me if this is triggering - boring economics?

DrewMerson

Funkstain

I dunno man it’s like one step up

Tempy

Not gonna weight into pages and pages of discussion but I am going to share this, which is an interesting enough account of the way Conservatives in America have lost ground in places over Trans issues.

https://ettingermentum.substack.com/p/the-modern-electoral-history-of-transphobia?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=auto_share

There’s also a rather similar video by Three Arrows on youtube about Matt Walsh’s attempted to weaponise trans issues, and the reasons it didn’t stick.

Actually to dip my toe in slightly, I think that video might contain an anecdote that is perhaps a little instructive (or I might have read it somewhere else) about how legislation on Trans sportspeople can cause unforeseen issues. In this instance a trans athlete wanted to begin competing in their newly assigned gender, but by law or school code (I cannot recall which) was forced to compete in their birth gender. However, because they were Female to Male they were the essentially the opposite of who the restrictions had been designed for - and were unable to do what they felt was fair. I think I recall that testosterone tests found a much lower than average level of T as well, meaning they would have been handicapping themselves by competing against men.

That’s not to say it implies a simple answer, or that we can solve it all by letting people self select, but I think the assumption that all trans people are Male to Female is often the baseline a lot of these arguments and regulations are constructed off, and is important to consider. I’ll try and find the source, if I can, but I am in the middle of packing up and moving house.

Of course all of that could be bollocks. As you were.

Brooks

the assumption that all trans people are Male to Female

It's the scarier, more dramatic one (also the one that gets all the porno, hmmm), so it's going to be centred by the most paranoid commentators. Simultaneously Threatinin Our Gurlz and Being Fuckin Soft and Corrupting Manhood, will probably still Fly To Thailand.

Knight

Oh I dunno, lots of the pushback, for example ‘irreversible damage’ by Abigail Shrier, is about the skyrocketing numbers of teenage girls seeking to transition. See also the recently published expose of travistock by Hannah barnes. https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/19/time-to-think-by-hannah-barnes-review-what-went-wrong-at-gids

Knight

Brooks wrote:

What's actually, materially threatening the viability of comfortably 'traditional' gender performance in 202X? Could it be - and stop me if this is triggering - boring economics?

This is a very good point, if I’ve understood you correctly, and people like Mary Harrington are making very bracing arguments about it. Most on here will probably disagree with about 80% of it but ‘feminism against progress’ is nothing of its not provocatively interesting

And to the person who asked me if my feminists concerns go beyond trans issues, feel free to read the book because that’s the last book by a feminist and about feminism I read.

By the way re the pushback on mentioning Dawkins, which I note funkstain has done a few times. I was literally told to tell a biologist that ‘biological sex is binary’ and mentioned a biologist in response. Apparently he doesn’t count because he’s mean/horrible or whatever although I was under the impression that scientific chops and moral uprightness weren’t coterminus.

Funkstain

Dunno if I bothered mentioning Dawkins more than once but he’s a bona fide arsehole who 100% believes his own hype. Memes indeed

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