Bullying your mum isn’t activism
thecritic.co.uk
thecritic.co.uk
I just don't understand why you'd bother except for intolerance - you can literally just listen to a person say "I feel like I'm a woman even though I was assigned male at birth" and say "oh ok" and go about your day.
This is a perfectly reasonable take, but only as long as the wish for general acceptance doesn't turn into mindless approval of discrimination of yet in turn another people under the guise of absolute equality. Not all critique is intolerance.
On the other hand, stubborn bigotry from parents of older generations is definitely a thing, and every child yearns for the acceptance of their parents.
The one thing I agree with the author on is that the threat of cutting people out of one's life is only really valid for self-protection or in the case of the other person sharing extreme fringe ideas. If you use such a threat as a tool to convince people of your agenda, you're not really achieving anything but resentment. They just won't tell you what they really think of a topic anymore.
Alone due to how many trans people exist.
But I do think it's critical from a wording perspective to not mix woman with transwoman in certain topics as they just mean different things and implications.
Sports for example, at least on Olympic level.
Or if someone creates a woman save space.
Or fighting for woman rights.
If I say woman rights I mean woman rights like vaginal mutilation, rape etc.
That's Linguistically different to transwoman rights like not getting hanged in Iran due to other believes.
Unfortunately saying this alone is already terf? (I think terf is if you see a difference between woman and transwoman).
Also I'm not a cis man. I'm a man. For most people it's not necessary to do a language exercise in this regard.
This has some implications like for woman quotas: the German green party has a transwoman and if a transwoman is using up a quota to get women in Positions they have not had the proper chance, you know don't have a woman quota but a minority quota.
All good if that's how the green party want to handle it, it's just a different thing with different implications.
For me though I have to admit that I do believe that transwoman in Sport and in original woman quota positions give me the feeling that we undermine woman again and don't think this is helpful.
The discussion with woman save space for example got me in a discussion were a transwoman doesn't think it's okay to exclude her from that save space.
But yes it is not necessary that a woman is tolerant to a transwoman. And she should be tolerant of course but in my opinion it's a pyramid: people tolerate gay people and than they tolerate trans people.
Same issue with transwoman in woman only spaces like a swimming pool.
This is incorrect, but an understandable error due to the quality of the discourse on the topic. You can read here about the difference between feminism and trans-exclusionary feminism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF
Modern feminism sees the problems with gender roles in general which causes problems for both men and women. Transgender people highlight this issue very well. Transgression against gender roles was punished severely with both social and legal complications. Essentially, in modern feminism, the problem isn't just the way society devalues the feminine, but also the way society enforces standards of masculinity and femininity.
Whether it's the benign (Drinking coffee black to be more masculine) or the malignant (Assaulting a boy for exhibiting traditionally feminine traits) these problems lead to the devaluing of the feminine.
Trans-exclusionary feminists are reactionaries attempting to prop up existing gender roles and stick people back into their assigned places. They often subscribe to old school feminist beliefs where we still have a masculine/feminine gender divide but they want to focus on the value of the feminine. The common refrain is a feigned concern for those who transgress against gender roles while at the same time doing everything they can to enforce them.
TERFs are essentially reactionaries in radical clothing.
> Trans-exclusionary feminists are reactionaries attempting to prop up existing gender roles and stick people back into their assigned places.
Absolutely not. One of the core tenets of gender critical feminism is that the imposition of gender roles is harmful, particularly as they are used to oppress and disadvantage women and girls.
> They often subscribe to old school feminist beliefs where we still have a masculine/feminine gender divide but they want to focus on the value of the feminine.
No, they recognise the male-female divide, and how this is the basis of oppression of women and girls.
Consider which of the two sexes that FGM, forced marriage, child brides, sex-selective abortions, denial of education to girls in poorer countries, trafficking of girls and women into sexual slavery, etc. is imposed upon. Not the males, that's for sure.
> The common refrain is a feigned concern for those who transgress against gender roles while at the same time doing everything they can to enforce them.
Gender critical feminists have no problem with transgression of gender roles. Their feminism is fundamentally about rejecting these roles. They believe that there's no right way to be a woman or a girl in terms of presentation or behaviour or belief; being female is the only criterion.
I mean, go to any radfem meetup and you'll see so many women there who don't conform to gender roles and gender stereotypes.
The key issue that brings this feminism into conflict with transgender ideology is the claim of "transwomen are women", and the downstream effects of this claim: males demanding access to female-only spaces on the basis that they are women. Gender critical feminists naturally reject this, because to be a woman or girl is not a state of identity, or how well someone performs femininity, but is the material existence of being female.
Fundamentally, gender critical feminism is not about transgenderism, it is about sex. In particular, about being female, and what that means socially, politically, economically and legally, in societies and cultures emerging from histories of male dominance.
What is the "Material Existence of Being Female." I'm guessing you mean assigned gender? The gender you were raised to follow? The experience of being expected to follow a gender role? Or do you mean the 5 year old understanding of genitals and karyotypes?
TERFs want to exclude people who are inconvenient to them. It's the psychology of cooties at a national scale. The idea of an indelible mark on people at birth that separates them into the male and female that cannot be removed or changed. Be who we tell you to be. Here is your place. Non-fungible gender.
Name it whatever you like, it is still the same ignorance and intolerance.
No, I mean sex. From a radical feminist perspective, this is what women and girls have been and still are oppressed and disadvantaged by, as a class.
For example, if you consider women denied the right to vote, this was imposed based on them being female, whether it's the pre-1920s United States, or Saudi Arabia prior to 2015.
Another example, if you look at Afghanistan under the Taliban right now, women and girls denied the right to education are being persecuted on this basis due to being female. They can't just somehow reassign themselves to the male sex and identify out of this oppression, that's not how it works.
We still need to make sure transwomen get prostate exams, but we would never instruct women to do so. We still need to check women for ovarian cancer, but we would never instruct transwomen to do so. Yet when someone has a position as reasonable as "you do you, but no I am not going to call a transwoman a real woman" - isn't it in fact intolerant to try and shut that person down by calling them a bigot or a TERF or whatever?
At the same time, despite all that, I can still live with them because we don't HAVE to agree to get along. Just because someone disagrees with you or even treats you poorly, that doesn't mean the best thing is to do the same in return. By returning kindness in the face of malice and ignorance I have an opportunity to de-radicalize and provide a constant counter example to the propaganda.
Even better. I get to still be with my parents who, despite their flaws, are remarkable people. I could scream at them or call them names, but it wouldn't really do all that much other than alienate them. At the same time, I deeply empathize with those that want to scream back at the ignorance and hatred. You certainly don't have to tolerate abuse and are perfectly justified in walking away. But there are times for turning the other cheek.
This is a fucking laugh. Trying to cut your family member off from fanatics who are damaging them isn't coercive control with malicious intent, it's also similar steps you have to take to deprogram people from cults.
It's a weird roundabout way of saying you should "always respect your elders" even when they don't respect you and have spent their life gaslighting you.