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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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JKR has explicitly said as much.Torco wrote: ↑Thu Nov 14, 2024 8:03 amI'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]".
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:Torco wrote: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.
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.