Epiphanies 2019: TERFs, gender, sex, etc.

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  • Leorning CnihtLeorning Cniht Shipmate
    edited August 2020
    But that's what I mean - it's relative. [redacted]

    You can be misinformed in private, but when you are repeatedly misinformed in public, over a period of time, and don't allow yourself to be informed, it turns in to something else.
    [redacted]

    There's plenty of room for nuance, and for reasonable people to disagree, on some issues surrounding trans people. This wasn't one of them. [redacted] an article entitled "Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate". It's an article about menstrual health and hygiene, particularly in the context of the developing world. "People who menstruate" is precisely who the article is about. [redacted]
  • quetzalcoatlquetzalcoatl Shipmate
    edited August 2020
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  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    edited August 2020
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  • Interesting point in that article that bathroom bills end up policing cis women, presumably who don't look traditionally feminine. I've never seen this in action, how on earth do you monitor people going to the toilet?
  • Leorning CnihtLeorning Cniht Shipmate
    edited August 2020
    lilbuddha wrote: »
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  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    edited August 2020
    lilbuddha wrote: »
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    You are the master of your own conscience. [redacted]
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited August 2020
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  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    edited August 2020
    Gee D wrote: »
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  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate
    edited August 2020
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  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited August 2020
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  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate
    edited August 2020
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  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited August 2020
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  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate
    edited August 2020
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  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    That's a better approach but not at that stage. As a part of general winding-up towards the end would be better
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    edited August 2020
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  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    edited August 2020
    [redacted]

    Exactly. Writers are of their time as.much as any of us. Ursula le Guin regretted the sexism of her early Earthsea series, but she didn't pretend it wasn't there. She just did better in later works. [redacted]
  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    edited August 2020
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  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    edited August 2020
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  • Curiosity killedCuriosity killed Shipmate
    edited August 2020
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  • LouiseLouise Epiphanies Host
    edited August 2020
    I'd imagine the Ship would have plenty exceptions to the rule, but I'm finding that in my day to day life there's an age watershed. Other half and I are in our early 50s and it's like sitting almost exactly on a watershed with older friends, even card-carrying, normally lefty folk, often saying things that shock us [redacted] - but younger friends, even including young evangelical baptist family friends, being trans-inclusive. Do other people find this strange generational thing?
  • MarsupialMarsupial Shipmate
    A friend of mine linked to an article to this effect on Facebook - suggesting that there's some kind of generational thing at work. It surprised me, and I'm not really plugged in enough to know, but apparently you're not the only person who thinks this...
  • It doesn't come up with my own generation in conversation, but my 30 year old daughter, who had to move back home a couple of years ago, and her friends are very trans- and gender fluid inclusive. One of my daughter's friends at school transitioned as early as he could, campaigned for trans rights for a few years, but for the last few has kept a low profile, not referring to trans issues. Another of her current friends is trying to get approved to transition formally and finding that the psychologists they are working with are not necessarily that helpful (refusal because they didn't like a name, for example).

    The youngsters, school age teenagers I see, vary - some of the boys I've worked with have been traditionally anti-gay and anti-trans, but others have been far more comfortable with gender fluidity. The few boys who are more gender fluid seem to be happier with changing traditional roles having accepted they do not want to fit within rigid gender divisions. And some boys are just completely confused. Girls seem generally happier with gender fluidity, but there are exceptions who have fixed and rigid views.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    edited June 2020
    It was simply unheard of when I was growing up. Indeed I was about 15 before I even read anything in print about homosexuality - in the pages of The New Statesman AIR. Even in adulthood the only trans account I came across was by Jan Morris. And maybe an article on exotica like Indian Hijras.

    It's really only impinged on my particular (and fairly secluded) world in maybe the last few years.
  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    Louise wrote: »
    I'd imagine the Ship would have plenty exceptions to the rule, but I'm finding that in my day to day life there's an age watershed. Other half and I are in our early 50s and it's like sitting almost exactly on a watershed with older friends, even card-carrying, normally lefty folk, often saying things that shock us and backing JK Rowling - but younger friends, even including young evangelical baptist family friends, being trans-inclusive. Do other people find this strange generational thing?
    I see the generational differences, but I don't know that they are strange. Change is more difficult as we age.
  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Louise wrote: »
    I'd imagine the Ship would have plenty exceptions to the rule, but I'm finding that in my day to day life there's an age watershed. Other half and I are in our early 50s and it's like sitting almost exactly on a watershed with older friends, even card-carrying, normally lefty folk, often saying things that shock us and backing JK Rowling - but younger friends, even including young evangelical baptist family friends, being trans-inclusive. Do other people find this strange generational thing?
    I see the generational differences, but I don't know that they are strange. Change is more difficult as we age.

    Is it more than that, though? Is it the differences in philosophy and understandings of womenhood between 2nd, 3rd and 4th wave feminism (the full-on TERFS seem to be primarily 2nd wave).
  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    edited August 2020
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Louise wrote: »
    I'd imagine the Ship would have plenty exceptions to the rule, but I'm finding that in my day to day life there's an age watershed. Other half and I are in our early 50s and it's like sitting almost exactly on a watershed with older friends, even card-carrying, normally lefty folk, often saying things that shock us and backing JK Rowling - but younger friends, even including young evangelical baptist family friends, being trans-inclusive. Do other people find this strange generational thing?
    I see the generational differences, but I don't know that they are strange. Change is more difficult as we age.

    Is it more than that, though? Is it the differences in philosophy and understandings of womenhood between 2nd, 3rd and 4th wave feminism (the full-on TERFS seem to be primarily 2nd wave).
    Well, the problem is that characterising the movement as waves implies a solidarity that was never quite complete. There have always been a level of fragmentation, from those with different goals to those eliminated by the main body. The First wave deliberately excluded black women. Both in plain racism and in reaction to black men getting the vote first.* They wouldn't even be allowed at the current table, but they are all dead, so... The Second wave didn't have a great track record on racism nor with lesbians, forget anything more progressive. Both the First and the Second were mostly about straight, middle-class white women, they were never about inclusivity beyond this. The Third Wave coined intersectionality and has included non-binary and trans and POC/BAME. No one agrees whether or not the Fourth Wave exists.
    IMO, Second wave bigots are a product of their generation and the narrow focus of their brand of feminism as well as protecting their turf.

    *The UK didn't have enough brown people for that to be a factor.
  • ArgonaArgona Shipmate Posts: 17
    Louise wrote: »
    I'd imagine the Ship would have plenty exceptions to the rule, but I'm finding that in my day to day life there's an age watershed. Other half and I are in our early 50s and it's like sitting almost exactly on a watershed with older friends, even card-carrying, normally lefty folk, often saying things that shock us and backing JK Rowling - but younger friends, even including young evangelical baptist family friends, being trans-inclusive. Do other people find this strange generational thing?

    To a degree, I do. I'm non-binary and look it, most people show no sign of finding that a problem but when they do, it tends to be someone I'd guess was 35+. Things were very different twentyish years ago, when teens could be quite hostile. If I had 50p for each time I was asked, belligerently, 'Are you a man or a woman?'
  • Zeitgeist. It provides words, concepts, structure, agenda, truth.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Louise wrote: »
    I'd imagine the Ship would have plenty exceptions to the rule, but I'm finding that in my day to day life there's an age watershed. Other half and I are in our early 50s and it's like sitting almost exactly on a watershed with older friends, even card-carrying, normally lefty folk, often saying things that shock us and backing JK Rowling - but younger friends, even including young evangelical baptist family friends, being trans-inclusive. Do other people find this strange generational thing?
    I see the generational differences, but I don't know that they are strange. Change is more difficult as we age.

    Is it more than that, though? Is it the differences in philosophy and understandings of womenhood between 2nd, 3rd and 4th wave feminism (the full-on TERFS seem to be primarily 2nd wave).
    Well, the problem is that characterising the movement as waves implies a solidarity that was never quite complete. There have always been a level of fragmentation, from those with different goals to those eliminated by the main body. The First wave deliberately excluded black women. Both in plain racism and in reaction to black men getting the vote first.ᵘˢ* They wouldn't even be allowed at the current table, but they are all dead, so... The Second wave didn't have a great track record on racism nor with lesbians, forget anything more progressive. Both the First and the Second were mostly about straight, middle-class white women, they were never about inclusivity beyond this. The Third Wave coined intersectionality and has included non-binary and trans and POC/BAME. No one agrees whether or not the Fourth Wave exists.
    IMO, Second wave bigots are a product of their generation and the narrow focus of their brand of feminism as well as protecting their turf.

    *The UK didn't have enough brown people for that to be a factor.

    Hmm.... I associate 2nd wave with political lesbianism, with folk like Germaine Greer and Julie Bindel, and with provocative statements like "all PIV sex is rape" or "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle". I'd also tend to associate it with the first women's refuges (the images here are what spring to mind: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jun/11/i-could-have-ended-up-dead-why-womens-refuges-face-a-fatal-new-threat) and with Gingerbread (the grassroots support network for single mothers) and hence with a retired priest friend of mine (as working class as they come) who founded one such group in her West Yorkshire village after her husband ran off with another woman. Sure, the books and academic theorising were middle class, they pretty much always are, but I'm not so sure that was true at ground level.
  • Point of information -Gingerbread was for all single parent families (link to organisation). I was a member in the early 1990s and there were both male and female led single families in the groups I knew. I knew several new families formed by families coalescing.
  • Point of information -Gingerbread was for all single parent families (link to organisation). I was a member in the early 1990s and there were both male and female led single families in the groups I knew. I knew several new families formed by families coalescing.

    Fair. Though I suspect that at the beginning (1970) the proportion of male-led single parent families was even smaller than it is today.
  • LouiseLouise Epiphanies Host
    Zeitgeist. It provides words, concepts, structure, agenda, truth.

    If I catch your drift on that, and not spelling it out allows for ambiguity, the same would apply to the change in attitudes on gay folks. There are plenty gay folk here, are you going to try that one on them?
  • It seems that the UK government have decided to drop proposals for self ID, and also may be "strengthening" women's spaces. No idea what this means, since some women's refuges accept trans women. I'm hoping it doesn't turn into an anti-trans witch-hunt. Sorry, no link.

    Note also, Trump seems to be dropping anti-discrimination health measures for trans people. There's a cold wind blowing.
  • LouiseLouise Epiphanies Host
    It's an anti-trans witch-hunt already - a tiny relatively powerless group in society get demonised and scapegoated on the basis of the ill-grounded fears of the more powerful. It's a moral panic of the sort that used to be got up against gay people and here is the result - the 'Keep the Clause'* movement of our day and worse in the US - that wants to keep a harmful laws in place and roll back protections. The likes of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Viktor Orban are not feminists.

    Also thanks Argona for that interesting post.


    *Section 28 (or 2A in Scotland)
  • quetzalcoatlquetzalcoatl Shipmate
    edited August 2020
    There are rumours that 100 000 people replied to the public consultation on trans rights, with 70% approval for self ID, yet the government seems to have said that this figure was distorted by mass campaigns. I haven't heard much feedback on the ground, but I expect sadness, anger, despair, from trans people. [redacted]
  • Gay Times reporting that a bathroom bill will be brought in. What, with anatomical examination?
  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    Hmm.... I associate 2nd wave with political lesbianism,
    It did, but with resistance.
    Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique that is credited with beginning the second wave, and co-founder of NOW,* was anti-lesbian in the beginning. She wasn't the only one.


    *National Organisation for Women
  • Some people shaking with fear and crying, over the supposed bathroom bill. But is the Sunday Times full of nonsense? And does Boris need a culture war with Labour over gender?
  • MarsupialMarsupial Shipmate
    A little good news from an unexpected source:
    The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal anti-discrimination laws protect gay and transgender employees, a major gay rights ruling written by one of the court’s most conservative justices.

    Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court’s liberals in the 6 to 3 ruling. They said Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination “because of sex,” includes LGBTQ employees.

    Washington Post article.
  • Curiosity killedCuriosity killed Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    A couple of Guardian articles today, firstly a longer interview piece in Society, looking at the work of the Gender and Family Project (GFP) at Ackerman Institute in Manhattan in 2010 link
    On one side of the debate are people who think [ ] gender dysphoria will fade by adulthood. On the other are the vast majority of mental health professionals who study gender dysphoria insisting that affirming a child in whatever way they express their gender is beneficial to their mental health.

    and secondly the report with the news that the current Government is dropping the self-identification of gender, that conversion therapies are to be banned and that single sex spaces are to be protected - link. This comes from a leaked document, so may yet change
  • Marsupial wrote: »
    A little good news from an unexpected source:
    The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal anti-discrimination laws protect gay and transgender employees, a major gay rights ruling written by one of the court’s most conservative justices.

    They rule that discrimination against gay people is a form of sex discrimination (you don't care about a man living with a woman, so you can't care about a woman living with a woman, or you're discriminating on grounds of sex.) The gymnastics to import trans people into the ruling is similar, but slightly more complicated.

    I like the outcome, but I don't find the jurisprudence terribly convincing.
  • GwaiGwai Epiphanies Host
    Makes a lot of sense to me. If I can't discriminate based your sex/gender, I can't discriminate based on the sex/gender of your partner either.
  • Marsupial wrote: »
    A little good news from an unexpected source:
    The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal anti-discrimination laws protect gay and transgender employees, a major gay rights ruling written by one of the court’s most conservative justices.

    They rule that discrimination against gay people is a form of sex discrimination (you don't care about a man living with a woman, so you can't care about a woman living with a woman, or you're discriminating on grounds of sex.) The gymnastics to import trans people into the ruling is similar, but slightly more complicated.

    I like the outcome, but I don't find the jurisprudence terribly convincing.

    It does have a certain "technically correct is the best kind of correct" quality about it, but the logic is sound and certainly something I've mentally explored before (if, in Christ, there is neither male nor female then it surely cannot matter to Christ if the person you love is male or female). I'm kind of astonished to see Gorsuch come down on that side of things though.
  • MarsupialMarsupial Shipmate
    Marsupial wrote: »
    A little good news from an unexpected source:
    The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal anti-discrimination laws protect gay and transgender employees, a major gay rights ruling written by one of the court’s most conservative justices.

    They rule that discrimination against gay people is a form of sex discrimination (you don't care about a man living with a woman, so you can't care about a woman living with a woman, or you're discriminating on grounds of sex.) The gymnastics to import trans people into the ruling is similar, but slightly more complicated.

    I like the outcome, but I don't find the jurisprudence terribly convincing.

    I haven't read the rulings yet. I remember thinking way back when the issue first came up that collapsing sexual orientation into sex for equal protection purposes was a bit of a stretch. I think there is a better argument that gender identity is an aspect of sex. The way it worked in Canadian law is that gender identity was litigated as an aspect of sex long before the legislatures explicitly added it as a separate ground, whereas I think sexual orientation was only ever argued under that explicit ground (sexual orientation was added to the various Canadian codes long before gender identity was).

    My understanding is that the majority decision upholds some fairly well-established law, so it would have been a major reversal had it gone the other way.


  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    I think as I read it that the court said that since you wouldn't fire a person with ovaries for identifying as female, it's sexual discrimination to do so just because the person in question has testes.
  • MarsupialMarsupial Shipmate
    I'm kind of astonished to see Gorsuch come down on that side of things though.

    Impossible to know what's really going on in nine people's heads (or specifically, Roberts' and Gorsuch's), but one thing that does occur to me is that being in a position to cast a deciding vote really does focus the mind on what you think the law should be. If you're constantly in dissent you can whine and moan until the cows come home and it won't make any difference.

  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    Marsupial wrote: »
    A little good news from an unexpected source:
    The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal anti-discrimination laws protect gay and transgender employees, a major gay rights ruling written by one of the court’s most conservative justices.

    Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court’s liberals in the 6 to 3 ruling. They said Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination “because of sex,” includes LGBTQ employees.

    Washington Post article.
    Progress is a weird motherfucker, innit.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited August 2020
    Marsupial wrote: »
    A friend of mine linked to an article to this effect on Facebook - suggesting that there's some kind of generational thing at work. It surprised me, and I'm not really plugged in enough to know, but apparently you're not the only person who thinks this...

    Yes to this.

    I'm a member of another forum which is generally pretty left wing, but it's mostly older middle age men, for some reason. They tend to support what I might call TERF-lite position - they don't deny inherently trans identity, but just don't see the problem with "protecting" women's spaces, [redacted] etc... and tend to see those who do as unreasonable Corbynites.

    Not that I know Corbyn ever said anything about trans issues, but they don't like him either ;)
  • I thought Labour under Corbyn was pretty pro-trans; I expect that to change now. Some people even speculating that Boris will come down hard on trans rights, in order to start a culture war with Labour. I think Starmer will cave. Agree about generational divide.
  • ArgonaArgona Shipmate Posts: 17
    I thought Labour under Corbyn was pretty pro-trans; I expect that to change now. Some people even speculating that Boris will come down hard on trans rights, in order to start a culture war with Labour. I think Starmer will cave. Agree about generational divide.

    As I posted up-thread, a qualified yes to the generational divide.
    My androgynous appearance doesn't disguise, to anyone who actually looks,
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