TERF's - Feminists that don't think trans women are women

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It's uncomfortably close to "A woman engineer is like a guinea pig. Neither a pig nor from Guinea." I heard it as a child and I'm very happy that I learned to ignore such nonsense early in my life and followed my interests without questioning my identity.


Yes and they are hard to bear. For both genders, if we're to trust my real life friends.

Yeah, I asked my brother who used to be extremely conservative about this once. I was talking about how the gender expectations weren’t good for either gender and asked him if he found the pressure put on him as “head of the household” who makes all the decisions and carries most of the weight of the family on his shoulders difficult.

He said, “Not really.”

I guess since he was raised that way he became acclimated to it.

It’s odd that he and I have had such different upbringings due to gender alone. We’re only a couple of years apart.

The conservatism of my upbringing lacks this hierarchy. Actually, my mother and my grandmother ruled the household, men being mostly absent at work or busy with repairs. I even regret that my father didn't have more say at home. His ways of clear, pronounced rules appealed much more to my Aspie mind than my mother's "but it's obvious".
In my country, men and women are expected to be equally capable of making decisions. My parents are very conservative but they hold to it. I wonder if it's an adaptation to turbulent history of my country, with men often absent at war?

That’s quite possible.

My particular group was more ultra conservative/fundamental than conservative. There was an emphasis on applying as much of the Bible literally as they could.

I bet they would like to bring back stoning if they could.

Actually, based on a comment I heard once that’s probably not too far off the mark...

I addressed some of your points in the other thread.

Poland is not just a conservative country but also a former communist one, so gender roles when you were growing up would have been very different to the UK or France at the same time.

I am very much opposed to the self identify thing. There's nothing stopping anyone self identifying right now, and that's fine, but if it's in legislation, I assume that means it forces you to go along with whatever someone identifies as.

You can self identity as whatever you want, but I should be able to choose whether I go along with it or not. I'll probably go along with you and use your preferred pronouns, but the choice should be mine. If I think I'm looking not at a transperson but a grifter, I should be free to not go along with their con. Hey Snake Plissken, how ya doing? How's Carjack doing?

Also, it shouldn't be law that you have to even if you know the person is trans. You still have your harassment law for if someone is deliberately being a dick with pronouns. It's never going to be truly wrong not to use it, because even if you go all the way to the limit of modern medical science, you're still going to have the DNA and the skeleton of your biological sex.

TERFs should be free to hold their views if they're not breaking the law. We live in democracies not dictatorships.

I am aware that former communist states have it better with gender equality. At least some advantage of this sick system exists.
I'm under an impression that people largely misunderstand Polish conservatism. It's a conservatism mostly towards local traditions and among them tolerance has really deep roots - together with preference to openly expressing disagreement over silencing any side of a conflict. We argue and complain all the time and that's the tradition.
We were the first country in the world to have a transgender MP but IRL I don't know any transgender person - I know several "not really gendered, oh, yes, that's my sex, just reproductive ability, it does not define who I am" but no real trans.

So, at least to some extent, I do agree with what you describe as rad feminists in a preference to deconstruct or loosen the cultural dimension of gender to embrace more diversity instead of interpreting not conforming to gender roles (for the sake of expressing one's true self) as being transgender. I don't claim true transgender doesn't exist - I just never met any - it's rather a matter of what should go first. Does the society accept just two slots and some individuals who jumped to the other slot or does it accept wide space of possibilities? Preferably both but I prefer to start with the latter.

Last edited by magz on 23 Dec 2019, 3:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

Why not both?

I am mostly okay there currently being a male side and a female side. But recognise that I have different gendered voices inside of me, and still see as a generality I land on the male side. I ain't the only experience, some people have it tougher, but we can take steps of acceptance to the broader idea of gender spectrums in preserving more binary rights, rather than rushing to create dozens of genders that alienate those slow.

I would maybe like Wrong Planet to include a NB choice in genders, though.

As an individualist, I ask - but why create dozens of genders? Why not broaden and partially deconstruct the existing ones? Why not see people as individuals with unique sets of characteristics?

Actually, I know why: our culture is not something external, it's an important part of every individual, providing the boxes inside of which we think. If a culture is strongly gendered, it seems easier to imagine dozens of genders than imagine being radically less gendered.


Yeah, I agree with it - it wouldn't be my choice but it definitely should exist - unfortunately, the admin is notoriously unavailable

People like categories, and within grounds of peoples fears that everyone get treated fairly, we need some signifiers. Or again women could find themselves in unfair positions of sports and the like.

As much as it was antithetical to what I preach, I will admit that as I was becoming educated into trans and NB topics, I was and possibly still am having a jerking reaction to gender people, especially their assigned gender, and would perhaps think of them differently. I kind of think that I have been so programmed to figure out a binary to make myself feel like I am thinking "normal", that I too have problematic thoughts.

As another example about myself, a conclusion I have reached about myself is that I am straight, that someone assigned male I was generally attracted to femininity, and I had jerking reactions like I would try to binary identify someone before I would let myself be allowed to acknowledge attraction. But as it stands, I have recognised that sometimes I think a guy looks cute, I might even find him attractive sexually, at least that is what I am finding now that I have been divorcing myself worry about if thinking that way will me gay. Whether that just means I am bisexual, I don't know, can't even explain what it is about some dudes that I might find attractive, because it isn't really masculinity, while a women with certain more masculine traits are super attractive to me.

My point being that I like categories as a way to explain things, while I also admit those categories can be imperfect. And it isn't like reproductive ability would not play any part in what I might seek in a partner, but I am trying to tell myself it does not have to be that important.

That is all talking too much about myself, and often times I think that I don't know everything about myself. Part of my realization was finding out that other people were not as fascinated by gender swapped characters, gender queer characters, and fantasise about the ability of swapping between genders, like those Super Crown Memes.

I think this talk of “dozens of genders” come as the result of some sloppy journalism.

Facebook, for example, has ~60 gender options, but by no means does it actually have 60 genders. If you look at them, it’s more about phrasing and a lot of different ways to express the same concept. For example, they have “cis”, “cisgender”, “cis male”, “cis man”, “cisgender male”, and “cisgender man”. There are even more options to indicate that I am a trans man - “Female to Male”, “FtM”, “trans male”, “trans* male”, “trans man”, “transgender”, “transmasculine”, “transsexual”. I’m not listing all the variations there but hopefully you can deduce them.

Realistically, a list like Facebook’s ultimately has the following options when you remove the duplication:

- man
- woman
- both (bigender, pangender)
- neither (agender or non-binary)
- in-between (some other non-binary people)
- not fixed (gender fluid)

and then there are a few traditional third genders from other cultures. Away from Facebook, there’s a little bit of a push for identities like demigirl and demiboy. But one important thing to remember is that trans people don’t generally have narrow definitions of gender and you can’t solve their dysphoria by saying “hey men can be househusbands now”

The way I see it:

Sex - defined by reproductive potential. Options: male, female, significantly intersex (rare but existing);
Sexuality - defined by experience of sexual attraction. A fluid spectrum mapped with several categories, including continuous scales like asexuality umbrella or Kinsey scale;
Gender expression - the way one expresses themself within a given culture and how the culture interprets their expression. Part of broader topic of self-expression within a culture. Dependent on cultural concepts of masculinity and feminity, experiencing two-way individual-society dynamics. Options: everyone writes their own story in their own cultural contexts.

Myself as an example:
Sex - female, after two natural childbirths there is no doubt about it;
Sexuality - heteroromantic demisexual, Kinsey 1-2;
Gender expression - strong willed, nerdy woman with analytical mind, little interest in "girly" things (no makeup, no high heels, hair in a ponytail, comfortable clothing) and very strong maternal instinct.

My mother is one.
Except she thinks of herself as a feminist and isn't a very good feminist by their standards either. For eg don't call afab people different insults to amab people if you want to be remotely feminist.
Christmas will be fun... already been called a b***h... I'm nb and more on the masculine side of that.

People have the right to declare whatever identity they believe they have.  People also have the right to ignore or even deny another person's declared identity.

Just because someone believes they have a certain identity does not mean that I have to agree with them or honor their belief.

Real lunch conversation I had with my subordinate (QA tester) in my tech team:
- Me: Do you love coding?
- She: So so, I liked it at college, why asking?
- Me: Well, you're a software engineer, and learning it will help you to advance in your career - not just here, but even elsewhere.
- She: I know that.
- Me: If you're aiming to become a QA engineer, it will be crucial to understand behind the scenes of the software, to write testing scripts, using testing frameworks...etc , otherwise you will just remain a QA tester.
- She: Yes I know but going this path would take time.
- Me: I know it won't be easy, try to dedicate some tutorials in your free time, I can advise you some to start with.
(She paused and she continued)
-She: Yeah, but you know *shrugging*, I am a girl, later I may not have time to learn much of that (Translation: her ambition is to become a housewife).
- Me: Oh...I see.

I wanted to pour my soft drink on her. She has no further potential in my eyes anymore.