We're much further along in the liberation of women and girls than it may appear | Hacker News Reader

We're much further along in the liberation of women and girls than it may appear

karadansky.substack.com

13 pointsCKP_againing26 comments

I have vouched for this article because it blew my mind.

I had no idea that there are left-leaning, feminist-identifying women who held such views.

I wish this article laid out a more substantive foundation for why the author holds their views. I tried to look into the book she mentioned, and I do worry that there's a bit of a echo-chamber effect going on here, because somehow the book was featured by Tucker Carlson? [1]

But it seems that there's a lot of passion here about protecting women-only spaces. I can respect that.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/59589019

I think you may find this article of interest, it's a decent backgrounder to this point of view, and hopefully gives insight into why many left-leaning feminist women have adopted this view or are moving towards it:

https://hollylawford-smith.org/what-is-gender-critical-femin...

Holly Lawford-Smith's book Gender-Critical Feminism expands on this in much detail. Kara Dansky's book, that you cited, is an enlightening read too, with more of a focus on US law and politics, as her linked blog post is. If you would prefer a more philosophical treatment of this topic, may I also recommend Kathleen Stock's work Material Girls.

I flagged this because not only is it a transphobic hit piece, it has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with pushing an agenda.

> I had no idea that there are left-leaning, feminist-identifying women who held such views.

They're among the most vocal and out there group among the feminists, they're hard to miss.

> because somehow the book was featured by Tucker Carlson?

That should be a big clue. These aren't feminists looking out for other women, these are feminists looking for ways to elevate themselves at everyone else's expense.

Frankly it blows my mind to see this bigotry on hackernews, yet here we are.

I find it interesting that so many commenters here have reacted to this female-centered perspective with such knee-jerk emotion, throwing around accusations of bigotry rather than engaging intellectually with this feminist viewpoint.

At least there was one commenter who approached the issue with intellectual curiosity, marvelling at a point of view he'd never before encountered, and on that basis I consider this article having been well worth posting.

How would you handle the prison situation?

Convicted formerly-male rapist, now identifies as female. Which prison do they go to?

Yes it's a cherry-picked example but it's also a test of absolute statements about bigotry. Maybe there's nuance.

It's prison. You don't want them fighting and fucking, you keep them separate, not based on sex, not orientation, not identity, not race, (they will largely self-sort along those lines anyway), but rather on the key thing that actually matters: their ability and prediliction for causing violence/problems/injury/the thing you're trying to avoid.

The person in question like to fight people of a certain skin color, gender, identity, orientation, favorite food, etc? Keep the INDIVIDUAL that's causing a problem separate, not whatever demographic they belong to.

Can't keep them separate? Sounds like you overcrowded your prisons, which is an entirely separate issue. Trying to blame gender or sort the problem through the lens of sex/identity/gender just means you know have 3 separate groups that are fighting and fucking amongst each other. Good job, just wasted a bunch of time and resources on some virtue signalling.

Additionally it would be better to try to actually reform and treat people instead of just punishing them then tossing them aside, then wondering why it's so hard to keep the peace in the prison. But yes, the Trans people are the problem /s.

> It's also a test of absolute statements about bigotry

No, it's a dog whistle based on a false premise. You don't call for nuance with an "absolute test". You do that to feign an air of tolerance while pushing forward the narrative.

Its a binary question and I see zero answer despite a lot of words.

If you had to make that call, in that case, which is it?

(For the record, the narrative I'm pushing here is "shades of gray" rather than "red")

So I Answer with nuance about said shades of gray, and your response is that you don't want to read that much and "Its a binary question".

> For the record, the narrative I'm pushing here is "shades of gray

Fine. Let's assume that's true.

> Convicted formerly-male rapist, now identifies as female. Which prison do they go to

With information given, it doesn't matter, but generally default to male for violent criminals.

Reason: You prioritize protecting others from violent offenders over the offender themself when push comes to shove, which is what you're forcing by framing the question in such a way.

If we modify the question slightly to remove the implication and give enough actual information to make a determination, we'd specify who the male had raped. You send them to the opposite. Unless it's both/unclear, in which case, you refer back to my default.

It's not a hard question. But the way you frame it is straight out of a fascist handbook (Throw the "paradox" of tolerance in their face while strictly framing the question in a way that does not allow for nuance), especially while trying to advocate for "shades of gray" while insisting on reducing the discussion to a binary question. It's not productive discourse.

So no, the narrative here you're pushing is not "shades of gray", it's literally binary.

Hang on, we agree on where the prisoner should go. Obvious slam dunk case.

Why am I a fascist for it and you're not?

Yes I am deliberately winding you up here but maybe you're overattached to some narrative points? It comes off just like the people raving about groomers.

> Why am I a fascist

You still haven't picked up on the fact that I'm addressing your choice of manner to engage as a troll, not on the merit of subject at hand because I knew this wasn't about that anyway.

I don't know if you're a fascist, but you're using textbook fascist tactics to very poorly try to "gotcha me" before I called you out for not engaging in this topic in good faith, which you've now admitted multiple times.

To be clear, nobody is “formerly-male”. Gender reassignment through hormones and surgery doesn’t actually change sex.

The answer here depends on what you think the purpose of segregated prisons is. If you think it’s to reduce the risk of females being attacked by males (because the overwhelming majority of sexual assault is done by males to females), then males (regardless of gender) must go to male prisons.

Your second paragraph is a total dodge. I'm tempted to characterize it as lacking male-gendered terms.

Are you clear on the difference between sex and gender? Some people think prisons are supposed to be segregated by sex, with gender being less relevant to the purpose of protecting females.

But if you had to make the choice, in exactly one case? Convicted rapist, currently identifying as female.

Doesn’t really matter what they identify as. If they’re male they should go in the male prison. Identifying as something doesn’t change the physical attributes that make males a potential threat to females.

I agree, it's obvious common sense.

What's interesting is that it was so hard to get there. Despite the answer being obvious.

The article author suffers from the same problem, she keeps tacking on unnecessary attacks on what gender "is" that derail some legitimate concerns.

What a lot of people don’t understand about this flavor of feminism is that it isn’t about gender, or directly about trans people. It’s about the primacy of sex in defining and defending women as a class.

Social roles, gender, clothes, appearance, identification, personality… none of these things are what makes a woman a woman.

Yeah, I guess I was getting around to arguing about primacy of sex vs gender being stupid.

Let people live their lives and then make the obvious decision when that clashes with the rights of others.

The contrarian in me just loves riling people up on the topic :)

How do you vouch for posts? I didn't know that was a feature, and I have 900 karma which should be enough, but it doesn't show up the next to the flag (https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/two-hn-announcements/). The flags make sense though, it's too explicitly political and has opinions many on the site don't like.

Transphobic "feminists" will sometimes claim to be left-leaning, but the company they choose to keep betrays them.

This is called gender-critical feminism, a predominantly left-liberal movement that left-progressives in the US don’t distinguish from right-wing anti-trans people like Tucker Carlson. In the UK there is a clearer demarcation between being gender-critical and being anti-trans.

It is based on the idea that violence/harassment/oppression of women is rooted in sex (biology), not gender (social roles) and therefore that sex is the more important and meaningful way to define and protect womanhood, and thus that “woman” means “adult human female”, and is not something that can be identified into.

Thank you, I was afraid to post the same thing. Definitely transphobic at points but also valid at other points and still a very interesting read.

Is this transphobia masquerading as feminism?

Oh, "a man who claimed to be a woman". Yes, it is. Why is nonsensical bigotry posted here?

Agreed, what is this bigoted bullshit on hackernews, we for real right now?

Yes, a lot of words that amount to the sophistry of the "gender critical" (TERFistry?) and a status report on their bigoted agenda.

The author clearly states that they hate that the Biden administration made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender identity. That's it. That's their gripe.

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