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[fusijui]

Speaking as someone I gather this forum as a whole would designate a TERF, the argument that "gender identity" is incompatible with feminism makes a lot more sense.

The 4B movements are anti-gender in practice if not in explicit theory (though largely that too). That makes it incompatible with the liberal-led backlash to women's rights as well as to the reactionary-led one, correct.

[Linguoboy]

Speaking as someone I gather this forum as a whole would designate a TERF, the argument that "gender identity" is incompatible with feminism makes a lot more sense.

I'm not sure why "gender identity" is in quotes. I think it's inarguable that that cis men and women have a strong sense of their assigned gender and it's hard to imagine a feminism which doesn't rely on this to a greater or lesser degree.

[Ahzoh]

Though, it probably will end up just being reactionary just like MGTOW is.

Well, it's off to a good start by being incredibly TERFy.

Well I'm not aware of there being a visible pro-trans movement or sentiment in South Korea, so it's not surprising. OTOH, just because South Korean 4B is transphobic, doesn't mean the US equivalent has to or should.

[Ahzoh]

Speaking as someone I gather this forum as a whole would designate a TERF, the argument that "gender identity" is incompatible with feminism makes a lot more sense.

I'm not sure why "gender identity" is in quotes. I think it's inarguable that that cis men and women have a strong sense of their assigned gender and it's hard to imagine a feminism which doesn't rely on this to a greater or lesser degree.

Maybe they don't believe in the concept of gender identity, especially as distinct from one's biological sex. Or they're just using an emphatic/highlighting quotative.

[Torco]

I have one or two terfy friends. they generally say "gender identity" in quotes because they want to deny that such a thing exists, and to say instead that it is some weird delusion of people who are wrong. weirdly enough they see themselves as striving towards the abolition of gender. the relationship between this notion of "gender abolition" (i here use quotes cause what the terfs mean by gender abolition is not gender abolition, at least in my estimation) and their enforcement of rules of the "you must perform the gender your sex mandates" type is complicated: on the one hand, they strongly oppose deviations from gender norms that are aesthetic or relate to personal presentation, like amabs wearing dresses or afabs using "he" pronouns and being called david or whatever, but they do support the rights of people, mostly afabs, to deviate from the more onerous of gendered expectations, like women not marrying, not having kids, not staying at home and being homemakers, having the choice to have homosexual relations and so on.

I'm not sure i totally understand it but it seems that at the same time they want to say that the social role of woman is inherently oppressive and that amabs (they kinda don't care about trans men) should not get be permitted access to perform or present as the social role of woman: I suppose in this sense it is similar to the taboo against blackface in the anglosaxon world? black as a category is subordinate, minoritized etcetera, but at the same time whites must not present as black. the progressive might say something like "but blackface is a mockery-by-imitation, it is apeing and not an earnest attempt to actually perform and live blackness", to which the terf will respond "neither do [insert transphobic language denoting trans women here]".

I suspect in the case of, so to speak, womanface there's an element of "we're fighting hard to secure rights for women, i do not want amabs [in terfspeak, men] to benefit from that struggle", which is not an element that is present, i think, in the taboo angainst blackface.

[Linguoboy]

Maybe they don't believe in the concept of gender identity

Seems to me on a par with doubting the concept of racial identity. Such a thing definitely exists, whether or not you believe "race" does. In both cases you have a spectrum of biological realities that is condensed into a handful of societally-recognised categories. If you don't believe that people have a sense of gender identity that allows them to identify as "women", how do you conceive of the ideology which allows them to recognise others with the same identity, note the common experience of discrimination they face, and propose a liberation movement forged by this common struggle? Or if your ideology is conservative, how do you expect people to be able to recognise and perform their predetermined gender role if they can't identify with a gender?

I'm not sure i totally understand it but it seems that at the same time they want to say that the social role of woman is inherently oppressive and that amabs (they kinda don't care about trans men) should not get be permitted access to perform or present as the social role of woman: I suppose in this sense it is similar to the taboo against blackface in the anglosaxon world? black as a category is subordinate, minoritized etcetera, but at the same time whites must not present as black. the progressive might say something like "but blackface is a mockery-by-imitation, it is apeing and not an earnest attempt to actually perform and live blackness", to which the terf will respond "neither do [insert transphobic language denoting trans women here]".

JKR has explicitly said as much.

I suspect in the case of, so to speak, womanface there's an element of "we're fighting hard to secure rights for women, i do not want amabs [in terfspeak, men] to benefit from that struggle", which is not an element that is present, i think, in the taboo angainst blackface.

So the two chief objections I hear from gender-essentialist women (not all of whom are feminists or identify as such) to letting AMABs identify and present as women are:

1. Male sex criminals will do this in order to crime, and
2. Female-presenting AMABs will marginalise cis women, speaking over them in public and extending patriarchal oppression to the very domains created in order to combat it.

I'm sympathetic to both these objections. The first, though, strikes me as primarily a complaint against our societies' continued failure to prevent male sexual predation. The problem with the proposed solution is that there are very few confirmed examples of cis men doing this (even my most TERFy friends can only find a handful of examples worldwide in the last couple decades) whereas trans women are demonstrably at greater risk of abuse from cis men than even cis women. So it fails a very basic harm-reduction test.

As for the second objection, I can't really speak to it since I'm not allowed in those spaces.

[Travis B.]

I don't see how transwomen could marginalize ciswomen, since transwomen are so much more marginal in society than ciswomen are, are only a small percentage of the female population, and experience so many more hurdles than ciswomen do. Transwomen would have to be dominant over ciswomen to marginalize them, which they definitely are not in our society.

[Torco]

Or if your ideology is conservative, how do you expect people to be able to recognise and perform their predetermined gender role if they can't identify with a gender?

in general conservatives and other advocates of systems of oppression expect people to obey rules without fully thinking about them as concrete and contingent objects. they prefer to think of social modes as transcendental truths revealed by the absolute, sublimely self-evident and so forth. ofc you can't formally call for a system in which people follow gender without even thinking about it so instead, you just say "gender? that's made up, now perform the obligations what follow from the facticity of your sex" even though the mandate itself entails the existence of what is denoted by the word gender.

1. Male sex criminals will do this in order to crime, and
2. Female-presenting AMABs will marginalise cis women, speaking over them in public and extending patriarchal oppression to the very domains created in order to combat it.

the first part sure. then again, women also do crime through performing femininity: it's an inherently useful social role for keeping a low profile or being perceived as nonthreatening, which is itself useful in various criminal endeavours. and because we're in a lot of ways much less harsh towards women it's a useful role if you get caught as well. then again, there's lots of civil rights that we could deny people in order to make it harder for criminals to do crimes.

I don't see how transwomen could marginalize ciswomen, since transwomen are so much more marginal in society than ciswomen are, are only a small percentage of the female population, and experience so many more hurdles than ciswomen do. Transwomen would have to be dominant over ciswomen to marginalize them, which they definitely are not in our society.

well, minorities quite often subjugate majorities: every nobility, every settler movement, politicians, business owners and every priesthood are examples of minorities subjugating majorities within a territory (which is why i think it's both wrong and useful for those subjugator minorities to use "minority" to mean "subjugated group" the way it's so often done in english, but that's neither here nor there). point being, I guess, that terfs think amabs will become sort of an aristocracy within woman spaces due to their, I don't know, using male privilege while performing femininity or something? this is not theoretically impossible, just not empirically not the case.

[Ahzoh]

So the two chief objections I hear from gender-essentialist women (not all of whom are feminists or identify as such) to letting AMABs identify and present as women are:

1. Male sex criminals will do this in order to crime, and
2. Female-presenting AMABs will marginalise cis women, speaking over them in public and extending patriarchal oppression to the very domains created in order to combat it.

God, my mum is number 2 objection so hard. But she doesn't even think that trans women will themselves marginalize cis women but that "trans activists" will facilitate the marginalization by, for example, passing laws and whatnot "taking away the things women fought so hard for", And also that society will punish you for not wanting to date trans women as a lesbian and other such things. She's really about this idea that the "trans activists" (not necessarily trans people themselves) want to erase women's progress.

It's weird cuz she understands the concept of differences in sexual development and also that there's nothing biological about aspects of gender like clothing choices and mannerisms, but then she's also kind of essentialist in saying that you're not "a real woman" unless you experienced "growing up as a woman" or "lived as a woman"

[fusijui]

Quick and final thoughts --

The people being described as "gender essentialists" are, of course, "gender abolitionists". I think most you realize this, but perhaps prefer to play word games; or maybe you really have learned everything you know about feminism from men's rights outlets.

The 4B movement, like other feminist movements not rooted in liberal feminism, are sex-based. So they don't exclude from their scope of concern trans people, but they do exclude male people. Again, most of you realize this but (understandably) prefer not to make that your complaint. I certainly was never excluded by even the scariest and most horrific radfems, even at the peak of my trans identification and activism, even when I really wanted them to.

Buh-bye, bros.

[Ahzoh]

The people being described as "gender essentialists" are, of course, "gender abolitionists".

We're talking about people whose beliefs and actions are practically "gender-essentialist", even if they may or may not also be "gender-abolitionist". But transphobes don't tend to be "gender abolitionist" anyways because that would be open to acknowledging that "man" and "woman" are not immutable categories.

I think most you realize this, but perhaps prefer to play word games; or maybe you really have learned everything you know about feminism from men's rights outlets.

This is a pretty stupid and dishonest take and you know it.

The 4B movement, like other feminist movements not rooted in liberal feminism, are sex-based. So they don't exclude from their scope of concern trans people, but they do exclude male people. Again, most of you realize this but (understandably) prefer not to make that your complaint. I certainly was never excluded by even the scariest and most horrific radfems, even at the peak of my trans identification and activism, even when I really wanted them to.

If they count trans women as men because they were amab, then it's no longer purely about sex, but sex and gender.

[bradrn]

This is a truly excellent article from Derek Lowe, on the nomination of RFK Jr: https://www.science.org/content/blog-po ... what-we-re

[Nortaneous]

Or if your ideology is conservative, how do you expect people to be able to recognise and perform their predetermined gender role if they can't identify with a gender?

"Identifying with a gender" is not a concept that exists in conservatism. There are proper social roles for the sexes based on their reproductive capacity; the closest concept that exists to "identifying with a gender" is something along the lines of "being called by God to monastic celibacy". The social role of women (i.e. people who can become pregnant and bear children) is circumscribed in order not to conflict with pregnancy; the social role of men (i.e. people who do not bear the biological burden of reproduction) is circumscribed as well, in order to put their particular talents (and greater biological expendability) to use. In addition to reproduction, there are many traits that are distributed bimodally by sex, such as upper body strength and propensity to rape, which lead naturally to a division of labor between the two sexes: without social pressure one way or the other, one would expect to see approximately no female soldiers, for example. But in certain cases, social pressure is justified: who would trust a male elementary school teacher not to be a pedophile? These are natural expressions of biological facts of human existence. In other cases, such as modes of dress or the division of musical instruments into those played by men and those played by women, the assignment of things to sexes is arbitrary, but greater principles demand that some assignment be made. Humans are not quite as sexually dimorphic in appearance as one would like, so fashion serves to amplify sexual dimorphism, to make it obvious whether someone is a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, so that confusion and embarrassment do not arise. Certain skills must be transmitted from teacher to students and practiced among students themselves, and mixed-sex groups have undesirable social dynamics (men in an all-male group behave differently than they would if the same group contained even one women, and vice versa for women in an all-female group) and lead to temptations such as to promiscuity, so are in general considered undesirable by the wise.

This leads to the question of what to do with eccentrics like Violette Morris or Ayn Rand. In general, the social order can accommodate some small amount of eccentricity as long as it does not lead to confusion, but it must be remembered that the social order is more important than a handful of aberrations, and the disordered mustn't be allowed to lead normal people into confusion. Let the religious hold out hope that God can cure the worst and most destructive aberrations, and the scientifically minded hold out hope for the discovery of a cure. In general, however, most of the gender-confused - crossdressers and the like - display personality traits in accord with their natal sex; the confusion stems from a desire for transgression and disobedience, an attempt to tear down the social order itself. To such people correction must be administered, to demonstrate to them that their war against society is unwinnable, and that they should instead do something productive with their lives.

I do not endorse or believe any of this, but I was in conservative circles for some time and (alas) live in a very conservative stratum of society to this day, and I believe this to be an accurate answer to the question of how conservatives expect this.

[Raphael]

[snip]

I think Linguoboy's point was that none of that is possible if no one thinks of themselves as belonging to a gender in the first place.

[bradrn]

[snip]

I think Linguoboy's point was that none of that is possible if no one thinks of themselves as belonging to a gender in the first place.

I rather read Nort as saying that conservatives consider gender = sex, in which case there is no need for a concept called ‘gender’ separate to that of ‘sex’.

Or, in other words, it makes no sense to ‘identify with a gender’ in a world where one’s gender identity is fully determined by one’s sex.

(As with Nort, obligatory disclaimer: I do not agree with any of this.)

[Travis B.]

From the position Nort was speaking of, it seems that in it the whole of one's gender role and position in society is inherent in one's biological sex and one ought to live by such biologically-determined roles, and that, say, not only can only biological women give birth to babies but that they should give birth to babies because that is their biologically-determined place in life. Conversely, given this view men should do supposedly manly things like go off and fight in wars because that is their biologically-determined place in life. This is reactionary biologically-determined gender essentialism at its purest.

[Raphael]

From the position Nort was speaking of, it seems that in it the whole of one's gender role and position in society is inherent in one's biological sex and one ought to live by such biologically-determined roles, and that, say, not only can only biological women give birth to babies but that they should give birth to babies because that is their biologically-determined place in life. Conversely, given this view men should do supposedly manly things like go off and fight in wars because that is their biologically-determined place in life. This is reactionary biologically-determined gender essentialism at its purest.

And the people who believe that spent generations telling everyone else that their most important political principle is freedom.

[Travis B.]

Quick and final thoughts --

The people being described as "gender essentialists" are, of course, "gender abolitionists".

That would only be the case if you really wanted to abolish the categories of male and female altogether. But obviously TERFs don't want to do this -- rather they clearly want womynhood-for-biological-females-only, which makes them gender essentialist.

I think most you realize this, but perhaps prefer to play word games; or maybe you really have learned everything you know about feminism from men's rights outlets.

Accusing people with whom you disagree of guilt-by-association-with-MRAs when I am sure they disagree with MRAs wholeheartedly (possibly someone I won't name here but whom you can probably guess aside) is not very nice...

The 4B movement, like other feminist movements not rooted in liberal feminism, are sex-based. So they don't exclude from their scope of concern trans people, but they do exclude male people. Again, most of you realize this but (understandably) prefer not to make that your complaint. I certainly was never excluded by even the scariest and most horrific radfems, even at the peak of my trans identification and activism, even when I really wanted them to.

Hence in your view feminism is inherently gender-essentialist and non-gender-essentialist feminism is a "liberal" aberration. Nice way to smear feminism overall, even though I bet you don't see it that way.

Buh-bye, bros.

Rage-quitting, but taking the opportunity to accuse those you disagree with of being MRA sympathizers and referring to them with an anti-male slur on the way out...

[Ahzoh]

From the position Nort was speaking of, it seems that in it the whole of one's gender role and position in society is inherent in one's biological sex and one ought to live by such biologically-determined roles, and that, say, not only can only biological women give birth to babies but that they should give birth to babies because that is their biologically-determined place in life. Conversely, given this view men should do supposedly manly things like go off and fight in wars because that is their biologically-determined place in life. This is reactionary biologically-determined gender essentialism at its purest.

It's also proto-fascism

[Ahzoh]

I think most you realize this, but perhaps prefer to play word games; or maybe you really have learned everything you know about feminism from men's rights outlets.

Accusing people with whom you disagree of guilt-by-association-with-MRAs when I am sure they disagree with MRAs wholeheartedly (possibly someone I won't name here but whom you can probably guess aside) is not very nice...

Not to mention that MRAs are on the exact same side as TERFs on the matter of trans people.

Buh-bye, bros.

Rage-quitting, but taking the opportunity to accuse those you disagree with of being MRA sympathizers and referring to them with an anti-male slur on the way out...

Meh, MRA is as much of a slur as TERF is, which is to say, it's not.