On phone right now so not gonna get into this but I recommend reading a variety of radical feminist literature (many don’t define it as being the same as female). I also recommend reading papers on the metaphysics of gender (philosophy). Some notable authors being Haslanger, Witt, Sveinsdottir, and Warnke. You’ll find multiple definitions of gender that aren’t circular or depend on the simplistic dictionary definition (dictionaries often don’t include all definitions btw which is one of the reasons why appealing to them is a logical fallacy, which I’m sure you care about considering you dislike circular reasoning).
Getting really tired of seeing these posts.
I’m not here for philosophy. I’m here to talk about the material reality that is women. We aren’t concepts, let’s knock that off.
“What does ‘woman’ mean?” Is a philosophical question. You can’t ask a philosophical question and then not expect people to give philosphical answers.
nope, it’s asking the definition of the noun. not everything is deep hon.
“Person”, “Truth” and “Good” are all nouns and the definition of what they are have been super deep questions. Not everything is deep but this is a deep.
woman: people who categorise themselves as members of the group “women” and/or are categorised by others as members of the group “women”.
you realise you used a circular definition right?
“woman” defined in terms of the abstract concept “women”, which is defined socially atop the usual phenotypical distinctions based largely on whether you are testosterone dominant or estrogen dominant, or however you like to categorise the biology of it.
lexical definition please, not bs theory.
lexical definition? Google suggests “plural of woman, adult human female”
my dictionary also defines masturbation as “self-abuse”, which confused me mightily as a child I have to say, but it’s from 1913 so I guess it can be forgiven.
*Puts down a Wartenberg wheel and a burning candle*
You mean that masturbation doesn’t mean “self-abuse”, and I was doing it wrong? Eh, whatever, I already like it this way.
Maria Maclachlan, 61, was giving evidence against Tara Wolf, 26, whom she claims tried to attack her at a rally, knocking her to the floor…
District Judge Kenneth Grant warned Ms MacLachlan to refer to Miss Wolf as “she” while giving evidence.
He said: “The defendant wished to be referred to as a woman, so perhaps you could refer to her as ‘she’ for the purpose of the proceedings.”
Ms MacLachlan replied: “I’m used to thinking of this person who is a male as male.”
She told Hendon Magistrates’ Court: “A hooded figure suddenly ran at me, ran past me from left to right, knocking the camera from my hand.
“They swatted it. Although it was knocked out of my hand it was caught by the strap so it didn’t hit the ground, which I thought was the intention.”
she even used gender neutral pronouns, but that’s not good enough!! pander pander pander.
Support Tara Wolf. Every fucking major news publication is framing this story as the “evil and violent, transgendererer, punches innocent small indefensible feminist.”
Tara Wolf smacked a camera out of the radfems hand because the radfem was trying to take photos of trans people to put them on a site called “gender identity watch” which the far right uses to target the most vulnerable population in the TLGBQ community.
And TERFS really wanna say shit like “we’re very reasonable and listen, it’s men who are only and exclusively violent.”
PSA: terfs are not and nor will they ever be tolerated here
(All caps removed for accessibility)
[First image is of a tweet by Stonewall (@stonewalluk) that reads, “There is no place for violence in our movement, as a form of attack or retaliation” It’s been retweeted by moth dad (@innesmck) on 9/17/17 with the comment, “Your organisation is named after a fucking riot,” in all caps.
The next images are more tweets by moth dad continuing on that thread, “friends, this is fucking exhausting”
“It’s important you know why LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall made a statement condemning violence today, and why that is so innapropiate [thread]”
“So, last week in London, several well-known TERFs and transphobes organized a public ‘debate’ on trans gender recognition”
“The fact trans people are continuously subject to debates undermining our existence is ridiculous, exhausting and dehumanizing”
“And in this case the speakers really just wanted a platform to misgender, vilify and promote violence against trans people, especially women”
“So, various people attempted to prevent the even ahead of time, but when it went ahead anyway, some went to protest in person”
“The end result? A trans protestor being held by a TERF in a headlock. There’s video footage. There are police statements. This happened.”
“After and as a result of this, one of the speakers is hit by a trans protestor.”
“And this is what we’re now arguing about, now condemning: trans people defending themselves from violence.”
“I hate violence. I hate aggression. I think anyone who knows me would consider me a quiet, peaceful person. I do not revel in conflict.”
“But look at the ways in which violence is constantly inflicted on trans people, centering on the most marginalized of us.”
“Look at the statistics for assault and murder, especially of trans women and femme people of colour.”
“Look at the suicide rate for trans people, from childhood, especially those without adequate support. Look at the lack of help.”
“Look at the systematic erasure from public life, the difficulties in finding employment, healthcare, mental health support.”
“Trans people are hurting and they are dying. This isn’t an abstract. My friends are dying.”
“So how can an organisation claiming to support us ignore all of that, and instead condemn trans people who choose to defend themselves?”
“How can they choose straight cis respectability over standing up for a community member now?”
“How can an organisation named after a riot believe we should just lie down and accept the violence enacted against us?”
“If you’re an ally, if you want to support trans people, have our backs when it gets messy and not just when we’re docile and polite.”]
yo if youre a cis woman who considers yourself an ally to trans women please take a second to read this
stop engaging with terfs, its not helping. it has never helped. stop reblogging terf posts to poke fun at them, stop directly engaging in arguments with terfs for the sake of getting off some petty insult or telling them off, youre not proving anything and youre not going to change their minds. doing something to “piss off terfs” does not help trans women, it just frustrates terfs, who will then take their frustrations out on trans women. terfs might tell u off or insult u but ultimately they see u as a poor victim who has been Brainwashed By The Trans Rights Activists™, youre not a target, youre not the one who has to deal with their anger, we are.
if u want to help trans women do things to uplift and support trans women, if u see a trans women is being harassed on this site by terfs throw some positivity her way. dont rile up ppl who are attacking someone else just to earn radical discourse brownie points.
Anti-terf activities that can actually be helpful for cis allies to engage in:
If someone makes a post about “please don’t reblog from (popular artist) cause they’re a terf,” feel free to reblog it! Help spread information about who terfs are.
If a trans woman makes a post detailing why terf arguments are absurd nonsense, feel free to reblog it! Help spread information about why terf ideas are bullshit.
If you see a post like that, or a general positivity post for trans women, and there’s some terf being hateful on it, just reblog from OP! Even if someone further down in the thread “totally destroyed” the terf’s argument! Don’t give terfs a platform on your blog.
If you see a post from a lesbian feminist blog you don’t recognize, give it a quick look before you reblog! This goes doubly true if the post talks about people in terms of “males” and “females” or the person has words like “radical”/”rad” or “female” in their url or blog title. Put in the effort to not reblog from terfs so trans women don’t have to do it for you!
If someone close to you turns out to be a terf, cut them off and tell them why. Don’t think you can be an ally to us and still be friends with the people who want us dead.
But like the OP said, making a big show about arguing with terfs and mocking them doesn’t actually help us at all. I know it’s easier and flashier to fight a big evil enemy, but it’s better and more important to help the trans women who’re being hurt by them and by the world we live in.
Love and support trans women before you worry about fighting terfs.
Did you grow up thinking your future was being locked up in a house pregnant ? Did you grow up thinking having sex would hurt ? Did you grow up thinking you would either be a prude or a slut? Did you grow up thinking your body was wrong and ugly? Did you grow up wondering what was happening to your body because no one talks about female puberty ? Did you grow up knowing you would have to shave your body hair ? When you were a kid, were you ever called “bossy” for having an opinion ? Did they ever tell you you “would change your mind” if you didn’t want to get married and have children ? Did boys harass you at fucking primary school ? Did they tell you you were ugly? Did they ask before they touched your body ? Have you ever started your day and suddenly had a panic attack because you realized you forgot to put make up on or you forgot to shave ? Have you ever starved yourself to the point of passing out because you were “fat”? Have you ever had to sleep less because you had to : Do your make up, do your hair, choose outfit, work out ? Have you ever wondered if you would end up being stoned to death ? Married to an unknown older guy who would rape you ? Have you ever feared to be raped ? Well know what ? I’m scared to be raped AGAIN. Have you ever walked on the streets, hoping no one would harass / rape / kill you ? Have you ever used public transportations without being scared to death of the men around you ? Did you ever have to wear uncomfortable outfits and shoes ? Have you ever feared for your life for simply going out with friends ? Have you ever feared for your life when a man harassed you ? Not knowing how to get rid off him ? Have your boss ever touched your ass? Kissed you ? Do you have to hear that women are ugly and dumb several times a day, everyday ? From your relatives, your dad, your brother, your uncle, your son?
You might pass as a woman because you perform well the shitty fetishes of men. But you know what ? I’ve gone through all these things, I still do. Whether I’m feminine or not. Because I’m not hated and treated like an object based on my clothes. It happens because men hate women.
So trans women aren’t women because you’re paranoid?
Your abuse has nothing to do with what other people need to do in order to not kill themselves.
Also not all females grew up with the same shitty expectations you were. There is very little “universal female experience”- a lot of what you listed tends to be limited to a specific socioeconomic class, a specific subculture, or a specific situation (abusive family members).
GET OVER YOURSELF.
IS that what being a woman feels like?
Maybe I do feel like a man, then.
Umh… that is probably the worst TERF argument I’ve ever seen. Are you saying you’re not a woman unless you’ve lived your entire life being abused and/or fearing abuse? That’s such a weird fucked up thing to say on so many levels I don’t even know where to start unpacking this.
It makes sense in TERF, I think.
Because the whole underpinning of terfiness, as I understand it, is that genders aren’t real things people have, they’re social classes. They’re a system of social control designed to exploit the weaker group for the benefit and amusement of the more powerful one.
The more powerful one is called “men” and the less powerful one is called “women.”
So, since “woman” just means “member of the exploited class,” “what it feels like to be a woman” isn’t about femininity or comfort in one’s own body or other things like that.
The only thing you experience “as a woman” is exploitation, so when you feel especially woman-y, you either feel afraid or angry.
When you see an otherwise decent post containing “cishets” or “LGBT”
when you openly hate lgbt people so much that seeing “lgbt” on someone’s blog will stop you from following them
Obviously they said that because people who use LGBT instead of LGBT+ or LGBTQ+ etc are leaving a lot of people out. It’s not clever to intentionally misunderstand something like that.
^^ what??? That’s not even close smh did you drop an /s or something??
So what’s wrong with cishet then in that case?
Nope. It’s unfortunately a dogwhistle on this site at this point. I have found, much to my chagrin, that I’m usually better off checking to be sure that someone who just uses LGBT isn’t using it to exclude people on purpose, the same way that I would check to be sure that someone using ‘female’ or ‘male’ in a post isn’t a fucking TERF.
It sucks, but there it is. It’s not consistent – not everyone who uses ‘female’ in a post is a TERF, not everyone who uses ‘LGBT’ is trying to leave people out, but it’s common enough that I usually think it’s a good idea to check before following or reblogging.
(And the fact that @ghostqueenofthesun was responding to one of the best-known anti-ace blogs, who literally take their name from a joking conversation between myself and @scribbleowl where one of us mistyped ‘gatekeepers’ as ‘hatekeepers’ and I posted laughing about it, is preeeeetty much all you need to know about how very intentionally they are misunderstanding, and why.)
Oh – and the thing about cishet? It’s been appropriated by the REG crowd, which sucks. They deploy it against ace/aro folks of any persuasion, but are glad to slap it in the general direction of anyone who thinks ace/aro folk are part of LGBTQIPA or Queer communities. (I cannot count the number of times I’ve been called ‘cishet’ by exclusionists, despite being neither.) So if I see it? I check to be sure they aren’t just dogwhistling for ‘ace/aro ppl or people who disagree with me about including ace/aro ppl.’
I feel it’s time we stop pretending like dogwhistles aren’t being used, and also stop pretending like people don’t know they use ‘em.
People are most definitely manipulating and skewing these conversations a lot, and they fully utilise dogwhistles to do so.
And will deny any such a thing when it’s brought up – and even resorting to use more dogwhistles. Which we see exemplified above.
People are wary of dogwhistles, so when people see that, they respond by using more, and pretend to mistake the wariness of dogwhistles, with what they’re pretending the dogwhistles mean.
So when someone is wary at “lgbt”, these people clearly often mean “not nb/pan/ace ppl” a huge chunk of the time, but people shut that critique down by trying to paint you as actually being distrustful of what lgbt literally stands for (and not the context of its use), so being wary of lesbian, gay, bi, n trans folks.
And I really thought by now that this was apparent and obvious, that these people are clearly being manipulative, because, I mean, it’s manipulation being criticised to begin with.
Also, the other point, cishet, when people show wariness over that, again, people will act like you’re wary of people talk of their oppressors, and not the context and intent of its use – where the person believes this includes people who aren’t even “cishet”.
See their tactics. Recognise them. And don’t take their manipulative rhetorics as genuine critique, but as simply shit to try to paint you as vile and immoral.
Anyway, it’s pretty reasonable in an lgbtq+ context, when there’s so many polarising and hateful ideologies in the bunch.
People are trying to twist dislike of ideology, to be about dislike of a minority. To make themselves seem more in authority in this, thus more in the right. Conflation of identity and ideology is pretty common thing to do as well to skew the conversation.
This is also the EXACT SAME FUCKING THING as TERFs constantly screaming “lesbophobia” and “just say you hate lesbians go on admit it” any time someone mentions, for example, that they check for TERF posts when they see a URL like vulvacentric or clitoridyke or lavenderlesbian.
Us: So many people in this community use these words as dogwhistles to signal to each other that they hate us, and want us to fuck off and die, that now I check before I follow someone using them
People who want us to fuck off and die: JUST SAY YOU’RE A BIGOT WHO HATES EVERYONE IN THE GROUP WE’RE BOTH IN
that post i made a while back asking cis people about their experience of their gender identity is getting bounced around yet another ring of TERFS and so far my favorite comment is ‘roachpatrol is a man, right?’ based on someone’s conclusion that only a man could assume that women enjoy being women
TERFS: We are miserable being women! Being woman is pain! Everything about being a woman is bad!
Trans women: But actually we feel like there’s something wonderful about being female and we strongly feel that we are women and we love it when the world acknowledges us as women.
TERFS: You are lying! No one could ever want to be a woman! And since men are evil, and no one could possibly want to be a woman if they could be a man instead, you must be scamming us so you can infiltrate our ranks and spy on us for the patriarchy!
Trans women: Huh? That makes no sense.
TERFS: You don’t need to make sense! You’re men! Men are just born evil for no particularly good reason! Men are born to hate women and make them suffer!
Trans men: We disagree. We don’t hate women or want them to suffer and we feel that we are men.
TERFS: Oh, poor honeys, you hate being women so much you want to be men! We understand perfectly. That’s normal for being a woman!
Cis women who are not TERFS: No it’s not.
TERFS: No one asked you.
TERFS: Also, we are completely 100% pro woman! We are the only pro women people on the planet! Every woman who claims she actually likes being a woman has a false consciousness! Being a woman is pain and suffering and awfulness and the only way to solve this is to commit gendercide against men because men are the root of all evil! If you don’t hate men and you don’t hate being a woman, it’s just because you’re too stupid to understand how the patriarchy has brainwashed you into being happy with being enslaved!
The rest of feminism in general: How is a stance that says that being female makes you inherently miserable and this cannot be changed as long as men exist and so we’d basically have to wipe out half the human race for women to ever be happy a pro-woman stance?
TERFS: FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS! shut up, brainwashed slaves of patriarchy!
When TERFs like Robin Morgan (who supplied Sheila Jeffreys’ Gender Hurts a glowing recommendation) threatened to disrupt the 1973 West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference unless the conference vote to eject trans women, the conference voted to instead keep trans women. Radical Feminists like Robin Tyler were physically beaten for trying to protect trans women from TERFs. Even though the conference overwhelmingly supported the inclusion of trans women, trans women left so that the conference wouldn’t be destroyed by TERFs. When TERFs threatened to boycott the iconic women’s music collective Olivia Records unless it voted to eject trans women from the collective, Olivia instead voted to keep trans women. However, after the collective began receiving death threats, trans women left to prevent potential physical assaults and the threatened destruction of the entire collective by TERFs. Ironically, both of these cases are cited by TERFs as evidence of an inherent male-essenced trans aggression.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.