Defining womanhood by female biological experiences liberates womanhood from gender roles. It means no matter who you are or what your personality is or how you dress or behave or what your interests are, your womanhood is valid.

[feministingforchange]

Did I say it or what?!? Apparently womanhood is defined by your reproductive parts ppl! You can all go home now, it’s been settled! 

But then… I wonder if I qualify as a woman now bc my parts are a little messed up with my urethral opening in my vagina (it’s called a urogenital sinus abnormality and it’s not even that uncommon). My physiology doesn’t fit the “normal” biology of a supposed “woman” so… do I count? I wonder… 

Basically this whole thing is fucking brutal and can go right to hell. I refuse to have my womanhood defined by my parts. If I have some removed bc of illness, do I still get to be a woman or am I “less” of a woman because of it? If I find out I’m incapable of reproduction, am I also no longer a woman? 

Like where tf do we draw the line on this shit?!?! 

It’s all so wrong and horrible omfg….. >_______>

[witwitch]

The point of this message is that womanhood is the experiences  that come from having female biology. You don’t need to have “ideal” female biology in order to still be female. Of course you count, no radfem is excluding you.

What else do you think womanhood should be defined by? Make up and hair styles and stereotypes?

Sex = biological reality.

Gender = social construct, gender is what oppresses us, gender forces us to be feminine, gender is the set of stereotypes we are forced in to since birth.

There’s a difference between sex and gender. Even if we abolish gender, biological sex will still exist. Womanhood is the experiences that come from having female biology.

I think this definition of womanhood is very liberating. It means you can have any interests, any hobbies, any style, any appearance, and still be a woman. It means that your womanhood is not based on how much you conform to stereotypes. Womanhood should not be about conforming to stereotypes.

[comrade-hannah]

also can I point out that having your urethra in your vagina has literally nothing to do with your biological sex? I’m assuming that person probably still produces eggs and even if she doesn’t, she sure as fuck doesn’t produce sperm

In science, we call people that produce eggs women and people that produce sperm men. so convenient.

even if you can’t say a woman has a vagina with a urethra above it and above that is the clitoris and above the vagina is a cervix followed by a uterus and fallopian tubes etc you sure as SHIT can say “a woman never produces sperm”.

Like you are not excluded from womanhood because of a fucking birth defect, just like we don’t exclude people without legs from personhood jesus fucking christ

[feministingforchange]

Wow… both of these ppl continue to pretend that my point isn’t meaningful when it is. I’m saying that if you’re going to define sex by our biology then where exactly is the line between male/female? And what if I wasn’t producing either eggs or sperm; what am I then? What happens when women get hysterectomies, what then? Are they no longer women? Biology changes, malfunctions, etc etc. Not to mention that it’s incredibly reductive…. My womanhood is NOT about my body. There is so much more to me. And even if it WAS just by body, that would just be me, one person. That’s hardly science.

These are just SOME of the reasons that biology is a shitty shitty shitty way of defining sex & gender, which both of you claim are somehow different from each other but then are constantly conflating them w/o an ounce of irony or shame. And that’s the point of my screencap above. You insist that we get rid of gender and that you’re super “gender critical” and what not, but then you do everything in your power to maintain a prescribed notion of what it means to be a woman that is as exclusionary as it is fucked up and illogical.  #RadFemLogic

[witwitch]

Female biological experiences are valid and important and it’s not “reductive” to acknowledge them as such.

Womanhood is about female biological experiences. Defining womanhood by biological experiences is much better than defining womanhood by how much you conform to patriarchal gender roles.

Defining womanhood by our biology means there is no right or wrong way to be a woman. It means women don’t have to conform to gender, an oppressive social construct invented by men, in order to be women.

Being a chef is about cooking food. You can’t be a chef if you don’t cook.

Being a writer is about writing books. You’re not a writer if you don’t write.

Being a smoker means you smoke cigarettes. you’re not a smoker if you’ve never done it.

If you call yourself one of those things, do people assume they’re reducing you to only that one thing? No. Talking about womanhood in reference to female biological experiences doesn’t mean that you can’t/don’t do other things, it means that other things are not related to womanhood. It means hobbies, clothes, interests, job, etc.. none of that has anything to do with womanhood.

Words have meanings. Defining womanhood as the label that female people have for our collective shared female biological experiences is important.

What word should female people use for our collective biological experiences, if we can’t use womanhood?

What does womanhood mean to you? Is womanhood absolutely meaningless to you? Or do you think womanhood is about conforming to gender stereotypes made up by males?

[feministingforchange]

For you womanhood is either a collection of parts or a series of stereotypes. But that is a false dichotomy that is hugely exclusionary and you need to move beyond that. 

Instead, womanhood is what we each make of it and it’s different for each and every of us. But no matter how womanhood presents, it’s always valid no matter your job, interests, sexual orientation, taste in music, biology, performance of femininity and masculinity, and so on and so forth. 

In this way, we can all congregate around our experiences as a woman w/o having a particular definition of what that is. I wonder if maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the “uncertainty” of leaving biology behind bc that means womanhood doesn’t have a particular definition and maybe that’s a bit unnerving for some. And by “leaving biology behind” I don’t mean that we forget it by any means bc it’s important. It’s just that it would be nice if we didn’t insist that all women have weewees and all men have peepees. That’s so not cool IMHO.

[witwitch]

So you think womanhood is meaningless?

I don’t think womanhood is a collection of parts, I think it’s a set of experiences unique to women.

What makes someone a woman? Who are women? How can feminism fight for women if we don’t even know what a woman is?

What word can female people use to describe our biological experiences?

Womanhood isn’t fucking meaningless. It means something and it means something important.

[feministingforchange]

See what I mean? You’re definitely uncomfortable with the notion that womanhood cannot be clearly defined and nailed down. Nothing in life is actually so rigid as we humans are trying to make sex and gender, and by doing so, we are being incredibly exclusionary. 

And please know that womanhood doesn’t have to have a prescribed definition to “have meaning”. We can all tell each other, as unique individual women, what that means to us. Our stories, our experiences, our unique biologies, how those biologies impact and are impacted by our patriarchal environment, etc etc. THESE collective experiences are what make us women, including but not limited to our bodies. And women have a VARIETY of bodies and they are all valid and should be recognized as such.

This essentially gives us the room to be who we are as women, including trans women who are excluded here (and trans men who are inaccurately included) by the popular notion that womanhood is “female biology”. Did you know that the notion of female & male is man-made? The biology itself is “real” but how we have symbolized & named it is entirely a social construct. Gender AND sex are both man-made social constructs and it’s really important that we all move past it as a definer of what it means to “be woman” and start welcoming women of ALL shapes and sizes into our ranks like we always should have. 

[witwitch]

Uhhh, yeah, I am, because a feminism that can’t define woman is completely useless. Who is feminism fighting for? What are the issues these people face in common together?

Yes, it does need to have a meaning in order to have a meaning. Having a meaning means having a meaning. Having a meaning does not mean obscure vague feelings about nothing in particular.

Language is a social construct, but biological sex isn’t a construct just because we use language to describe it. Sexual reproduction is real, you’re being willfully obtuse.

Social constructs are things that only exist within a specific society. Sorry but biological sex keeps existing in any and every context, because it’s real. Gender is oppressive to women and needs to be abolished.

You haven’t answered any of my questions. How do you expect feminism to fight for women when you don’t even know what a woman is to begin with? 

[feministingforchange]

Why are you so certain we “need” to define women to have an effective feminism? I think you’re the one being willfully ignorant here bc a) there’s no evidence that we need to define womanhood in fact all the evidence is to the contrary, and b) womanhood is too diverse an experience for you to be able to neatly label. Social reproduction is absolutely real but lots of men have babies too, lots of women can’t or choose not to have babies, lots of men can’t or won’t either, lots of women have penises, and there are lots of ppl with male/female bodies that do not ascribe to any gender at all. But you think you know best what their genders are, regardless of their personal feelings and beliefs, bc they have parts you deem to be “woman” or “man”???? NO! You are not the arbiter of this and you need to step off.

And what I’d really like to know is how do you EVER expect to do away with gender if you keep insisting upon it at every turn???? On the one hand you say that gender is oppressive but then in the next breath you insist on defining and controlling womanhood. If womanhood is something to be maintained and cordoned off from manhood, then how do we ever get rid of it?!?! I think that’s pretty misogynistic of you tbh. 

[feministingforchange]

^^^^^^!!!!

[reminiscingphosphorescence]

So basically, according to feministingforchange, anyone can identify as a woman if they say they’re a woman, and if I would want to talk about my biology with other women who’ve experienced the same things, or talk about sexual harassment with women who’ve grown up with it vs only experienced it when they transitioned from male to female, that would make me exclusionary?

[feministingforchange]

This is ridiculous. JUST BE SPECIFIC. Speak about cis women when you’re talking about cis women, females when speaking about females, women when you mean all of us, etc. That’s being SPECIFIC, not exclusionary. Easy peasy. *dusts off hands*

Also, you have to stop with the whole “perverted dudes are gonna pretend to be a woman and exploit transness to access women victims if we accept trans women as women” argument I’m detecting here bc it’s bullshit. 

I mean, if a guy wanted to go into a women’s bathroom to rape or peep (or whatever), he would find a way and we all know that many many have. Not to mention that trans women (& trans men) are in much more danger while using their proper facilities than cis women are:

More helpful info (p. 73-4):

And don’t ignore the increased washroom danger to PoC and ppl of low socioeconomic status in the study described above. It’s time to get real here TWEFs & TWERFs…. >_____>

[pineappleisdelicious]

It looks like you’ve already edited this but just for extra clarification: woman and female ARE SYNONYMOUS. Telling radfems to use “women” to refer to all of us and “females” to refer to those with “female biology” (which makes no sense, trans men and women have male and female biology respectively, all the time, regardless of how many surgeries they’ve had done, by virtue of being men and women) will only result in upholding the status quo when it comes to these people. They more often than not already do use “female” to refer to what they see as “all women” and they define them by their “female biology”. So yeah, they include cis women and trans men in their definition. This is violent misgendering. Their is no such thing as “female biology”, and trans men are never “female”. If you’re discussing periods (for example), and you want to describe people who get them, you can say “people who get periods”. It’s really not that hard. I don’t expect TWERFS to listen to this, but @feministingforchange this is something you should be aware of.

[feministingforchange]

I did actually already know this which is why I tried to edit my poorly written post above, but thank you x100000 for putting this into much clearer words!  

For anyone interested, this is the edited version of my post 💗

[feministingforchange]

Y’wanna know what’s really funny here? Years later, I’ve just discovered that my urogenital sinus abnormality is in fact an intersex condition so…. these TWERFS trying to deny that I’d be ousted as a woman by their twerfy, biologically essentializing standards is clearly bullshit. It’s painful to say this but by their rules, I am NOT a woman.

But my biology does not determine my gender.

I. DO.

[feministingforchange]

*I’ve also realized that i’m not cis, i’m non-binary ;)

Defining womanhood by female biological experiences liberates womanhood from gender roles. It means no matter who you are or what your personality is or how you dress or behave or what your interests are, your womanhood is valid.

[feministingforchange]

Did I say it or what?!? Apparently womanhood is defined by your reproductive parts ppl! You can all go home now, it’s been settled! 

But then… I wonder if I qualify as a woman now bc my parts are a little messed up with my urethral opening in my vagina (it’s called a urogenital sinus abnormality and it’s not even that uncommon). My physiology doesn’t fit the “normal” biology of a supposed “woman” so… do I count? I wonder… 

Basically this whole thing is fucking brutal and can go right to hell. I refuse to have my womanhood defined by my parts. If I have some removed bc of illness, do I still get to be a woman or am I “less” of a woman because of it? If I find out I’m incapable of reproduction, am I also no longer a woman? 

Like where tf do we draw the line on this shit?!?! 

It’s all so wrong and horrible omfg….. >_______>

[witwitch]

The point of this message is that womanhood is the experiences  that come from having female biology. You don’t need to have “ideal” female biology in order to still be female. Of course you count, no radfem is excluding you.

What else do you think womanhood should be defined by? Make up and hair styles and stereotypes?

Sex = biological reality.

Gender = social construct, gender is what oppresses us, gender forces us to be feminine, gender is the set of stereotypes we are forced in to since birth.

There’s a difference between sex and gender. Even if we abolish gender, biological sex will still exist. Womanhood is the experiences that come from having female biology.

I think this definition of womanhood is very liberating. It means you can have any interests, any hobbies, any style, any appearance, and still be a woman. It means that your womanhood is not based on how much you conform to stereotypes. Womanhood should not be about conforming to stereotypes.

[comrade-hannah]

also can I point out that having your urethra in your vagina has literally nothing to do with your biological sex? I’m assuming that person probably still produces eggs and even if she doesn’t, she sure as fuck doesn’t produce sperm

In science, we call people that produce eggs women and people that produce sperm men. so convenient.

even if you can’t say a woman has a vagina with a urethra above it and above that is the clitoris and above the vagina is a cervix followed by a uterus and fallopian tubes etc you sure as SHIT can say “a woman never produces sperm”.

Like you are not excluded from womanhood because of a fucking birth defect, just like we don’t exclude people without legs from personhood jesus fucking christ

[feministingforchange]

Wow… both of these ppl continue to pretend that my point isn’t meaningful when it is. I’m saying that if you’re going to define sex by our biology then where exactly is the line between male/female? And what if I wasn’t producing either eggs or sperm; what am I then? What happens when women get hysterectomies, what then? Are they no longer women? Biology changes, malfunctions, etc etc. Not to mention that it’s incredibly reductive…. My womanhood is NOT about my body. There is so much more to me. And even if it WAS just by body, that would just be me, one person. That’s hardly science.

These are just SOME of the reasons that biology is a shitty shitty shitty way of defining sex & gender, which both of you claim are somehow different from each other but then are constantly conflating them w/o an ounce of irony or shame. And that’s the point of my screencap above. You insist that we get rid of gender and that you’re super “gender critical” and what not, but then you do everything in your power to maintain a prescribed notion of what it means to be a woman that is as exclusionary as it is fucked up and illogical.  #RadFemLogic

[witwitch]

Female biological experiences are valid and important and it’s not “reductive” to acknowledge them as such.

Womanhood is about female biological experiences. Defining womanhood by biological experiences is much better than defining womanhood by how much you conform to patriarchal gender roles.

Defining womanhood by our biology means there is no right or wrong way to be a woman. It means women don’t have to conform to gender, an oppressive social construct invented by men, in order to be women.

Being a chef is about cooking food. You can’t be a chef if you don’t cook.

Being a writer is about writing books. You’re not a writer if you don’t write.

Being a smoker means you smoke cigarettes. you’re not a smoker if you’ve never done it.

If you call yourself one of those things, do people assume they’re reducing you to only that one thing? No. Talking about womanhood in reference to female biological experiences doesn’t mean that you can’t/don’t do other things, it means that other things are not related to womanhood. It means hobbies, clothes, interests, job, etc.. none of that has anything to do with womanhood.

Words have meanings. Defining womanhood as the label that female people have for our collective shared female biological experiences is important.

What word should female people use for our collective biological experiences, if we can’t use womanhood?

What does womanhood mean to you? Is womanhood absolutely meaningless to you? Or do you think womanhood is about conforming to gender stereotypes made up by males?

[feministingforchange]

For you womanhood is either a collection of parts or a series of stereotypes. But that is a false dichotomy that is hugely exclusionary and you need to move beyond that. 

Instead, womanhood is what we each make of it and it’s different for each and every of us. But no matter how womanhood presents, it’s always valid no matter your job, interests, sexual orientation, taste in music, biology, performance of femininity and masculinity, and so on and so forth. 

In this way, we can all congregate around our experiences as a woman w/o having a particular definition of what that is. I wonder if maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the “uncertainty” of leaving biology behind bc that means womanhood doesn’t have a particular definition and maybe that’s a bit unnerving for some. And by “leaving biology behind” I don’t mean that we forget it by any means bc it’s important. It’s just that it would be nice if we didn’t insist that all women have weewees and all men have peepees. That’s so not cool IMHO.

[witwitch]

So you think womanhood is meaningless?

I don’t think womanhood is a collection of parts, I think it’s a set of experiences unique to women.

What makes someone a woman? Who are women? How can feminism fight for women if we don’t even know what a woman is?

What word can female people use to describe our biological experiences?

Womanhood isn’t fucking meaningless. It means something and it means something important.

[feministingforchange]

See what I mean? You’re definitely uncomfortable with the notion that womanhood cannot be clearly defined and nailed down. Nothing in life is actually so rigid as we humans are trying to make sex and gender, and by doing so, we are being incredibly exclusionary. 

And please know that womanhood doesn’t have to have a prescribed definition to “have meaning”. We can all tell each other, as unique individual women, what that means to us. Our stories, our experiences, our unique biologies, how those biologies impact and are impacted by our patriarchal environment, etc etc. THESE collective experiences are what make us women, including but not limited to our bodies. And women have a VARIETY of bodies and they are all valid and should be recognized as such.

This essentially gives us the room to be who we are as women, including trans women who are excluded here (and trans men who are inaccurately included) by the popular notion that womanhood is “female biology”. Did you know that the notion of female & male is man-made? The biology itself is “real” but how we have symbolized & named it is entirely a social construct. Gender AND sex are both man-made social constructs and it’s really important that we all move past it as a definer of what it means to “be woman” and start welcoming women of ALL shapes and sizes into our ranks like we always should have. 

[witwitch]

Uhhh, yeah, I am, because a feminism that can’t define woman is completely useless. Who is feminism fighting for? What are the issues these people face in common together?

Yes, it does need to have a meaning in order to have a meaning. Having a meaning means having a meaning. Having a meaning does not mean obscure vague feelings about nothing in particular.

Language is a social construct, but biological sex isn’t a construct just because we use language to describe it. Sexual reproduction is real, you’re being willfully obtuse.

Social constructs are things that only exist within a specific society. Sorry but biological sex keeps existing in any and every context, because it’s real. Gender is oppressive to women and needs to be abolished.

You haven’t answered any of my questions. How do you expect feminism to fight for women when you don’t even know what a woman is to begin with? 

[feministingforchange]

Why are you so certain we “need” to define women to have an effective feminism? I think you’re the one being willfully ignorant here bc a) there’s no evidence that we need to define womanhood in fact all the evidence is to the contrary, and b) womanhood is too diverse an experience for you to be able to neatly label. Social reproduction is absolutely real but lots of men have babies too, lots of women can’t or choose not to have babies, lots of men can’t or won’t either, lots of women have penises, and there are lots of ppl with male/female bodies that do not ascribe to any gender at all. But you think you know best what their genders are, regardless of their personal feelings and beliefs, bc they have parts you deem to be “woman” or “man”???? NO! You are not the arbiter of this and you need to step off.

And what I’d really like to know is how do you EVER expect to do away with gender if you keep insisting upon it at every turn???? On the one hand you say that gender is oppressive but then in the next breath you insist on defining and controlling womanhood. If womanhood is something to be maintained and cordoned off from manhood, then how do we ever get rid of it?!?! I think that’s pretty misogynistic of you tbh. 

[feministingforchange]

^^^^^^!!!!

[reminiscingphosphorescence]

So basically, according to feministingforchange, anyone can identify as a woman if they say they’re a woman, and if I would want to talk about my biology with other women who’ve experienced the same things, or talk about sexual harassment with women who’ve grown up with it vs only experienced it when they transitioned from male to female, that would make me exclusionary?

[feministingforchange]

This is ridiculous. JUST BE SPECIFIC. Speak about cis women when you’re talking about cis women, females when speaking about females, women when you mean all of us, etc. That’s being SPECIFIC, not exclusionary. Easy peasy. *dusts off hands*

Also, you have to stop with the whole “perverted dudes are gonna pretend to be a woman and exploit transness to access women victims if we accept trans women as women” argument I’m detecting here bc it’s bullshit. 

I mean, if a guy wanted to go into a women’s bathroom to rape or peep (or whatever), he would find a way and we all know that many many have. Not to mention that trans women (& trans men) are in much more danger while using their proper facilities than cis women are:

More helpful info (p. 73-4):

And don’t ignore the increased washroom danger to PoC and ppl of low socioeconomic status in the study described above. It’s time to get real here TWEFs & TWERFs…. >_____>

[pineappleisdelicious]

It looks like you’ve already edited this but just for extra clarification: woman and female ARE SYNONYMOUS. Telling radfems to use “women” to refer to all of us and “females” to refer to those with “female biology” (which makes no sense, trans men and women have male and female biology respectively, all the time, regardless of how many surgeries they’ve had done, by virtue of being men and women) will only result in upholding the status quo when it comes to these people. They more often than not already do use “female” to refer to what they see as “all women” and they define them by their “female biology”. So yeah, they include cis women and trans men in their definition. This is violent misgendering. Their is no such thing as “female biology”, and trans men are never “female”. If you’re discussing periods (for example), and you want to describe people who get them, you can say “people who get periods”. It’s really not that hard. I don’t expect TWERFS to listen to this, but @feministingforchange this is something you should be aware of.

[feministingforchange]

I did actually already know this which is why I tried to edit my poorly written post above, but thank you x100000 for putting this into much clearer words!  

For anyone interested, this is the edited version of my post 💗

[feministingforchange]

Y’wanna know what’s really funny here? Years later, I’ve just discovered that my urogenital sinus abnormality is in fact an intersex condition so…. these TWERFS trying to deny that I’d be ousted as a woman by their twerfy, biologically essentializing standards is clearly bullshit. It’s painful to say this but by their rules, I am NOT a woman.

But my biology does not determine my gender.

I. DO.

[forevrdreamingofbetterthings]

*I’ve also realized that i’m not cis, i’m non-binary ;)

• radfems: DOWN WITH GENDER!! GENDER IS THE DEVIL!!!
• radfems: OMFG don't you know anything?!?! You can't be a woman unless you have a vagina, JFC!

Defining womanhood by female biological experiences liberates womanhood from gender roles. It means no matter who you are or what your personality is or how you dress or behave or what your interests are, your womanhood is valid.

[feministingforchange]

Did I say it or what?!? Apparently womanhood is defined by your reproductive parts ppl! You can all go home now, it’s been settled! 

But then… I wonder if I qualify as a woman now bc my parts are a little messed up with my urethral opening in my vagina (it’s called a urogenital sinus abnormality and it’s not even that uncommon). My physiology doesn’t fit the “normal” biology of a supposed “woman” so… do I count? I wonder… 

Basically this whole thing is fucking brutal and can go right to hell. I refuse to have my womanhood defined by my parts. If I have some removed bc of illness, do I still get to be a woman or am I “less” of a woman because of it? If I find out I’m incapable of reproduction, am I also no longer a woman? 

Like where tf do we draw the line on this shit?!?! 

It’s all so wrong and horrible omfg….. >_______>

[witwitch]

The point of this message is that womanhood is the experiences  that come from having female biology. You don’t need to have “ideal” female biology in order to still be female. Of course you count, no radfem is excluding you.

What else do you think womanhood should be defined by? Make up and hair styles and stereotypes?

Sex = biological reality.

Gender = social construct, gender is what oppresses us, gender forces us to be feminine, gender is the set of stereotypes we are forced in to since birth.

There’s a difference between sex and gender. Even if we abolish gender, biological sex will still exist. Womanhood is the experiences that come from having female biology.

I think this definition of womanhood is very liberating. It means you can have any interests, any hobbies, any style, any appearance, and still be a woman. It means that your womanhood is not based on how much you conform to stereotypes. Womanhood should not be about conforming to stereotypes.

[comrade-hannah]

also can I point out that having your urethra in your vagina has literally nothing to do with your biological sex? I’m assuming that person probably still produces eggs and even if she doesn’t, she sure as fuck doesn’t produce sperm

In science, we call people that produce eggs women and people that produce sperm men. so convenient.

even if you can’t say a woman has a vagina with a urethra above it and above that is the clitoris and above the vagina is a cervix followed by a uterus and fallopian tubes etc you sure as SHIT can say “a woman never produces sperm”.

Like you are not excluded from womanhood because of a fucking birth defect, just like we don’t exclude people without legs from personhood jesus fucking christ

[feministingforchange]

Wow… both of these ppl continue to pretend that my point isn’t meaningful when it is. I’m saying that if you’re going to define sex by our biology then where exactly is the line between male/female? And what if I wasn’t producing either eggs or sperm; what am I then? What happens when women get hysterectomies, what then? Are they no longer women? Biology changes, malfunctions, etc etc. Not to mention that it’s incredibly reductive…. My womanhood is NOT about my body. There is so much more to me. And even if it WAS just by body, that would just be me, one person. That’s hardly science.

These are just SOME of the reasons that biology is a shitty shitty shitty way of defining sex & gender, which both of you claim are somehow different from each other but then are constantly conflating them w/o an ounce of irony or shame. And that’s the point of my screencap above. You insist that we get rid of gender and that you’re super “gender critical” and what not, but then you do everything in your power to maintain a prescribed notion of what it means to be a woman that is as exclusionary as it is fucked up and illogical.  #RadFemLogic

[witwitch]

Female biological experiences are valid and important and it’s not “reductive” to acknowledge them as such.

Womanhood is about female biological experiences. Defining womanhood by biological experiences is much better than defining womanhood by how much you conform to patriarchal gender roles.

Defining womanhood by our biology means there is no right or wrong way to be a woman. It means women don’t have to conform to gender, an oppressive social construct invented by men, in order to be women.

Being a chef is about cooking food. You can’t be a chef if you don’t cook.

Being a writer is about writing books. You’re not a writer if you don’t write.

Being a smoker means you smoke cigarettes. you’re not a smoker if you’ve never done it.

If you call yourself one of those things, do people assume they’re reducing you to only that one thing? No. Talking about womanhood in reference to female biological experiences doesn’t mean that you can’t/don’t do other things, it means that other things are not related to womanhood. It means hobbies, clothes, interests, job, etc.. none of that has anything to do with womanhood.

Words have meanings. Defining womanhood as the label that female people have for our collective shared female biological experiences is important.

What word should female people use for our collective biological experiences, if we can’t use womanhood?

What does womanhood mean to you? Is womanhood absolutely meaningless to you? Or do you think womanhood is about conforming to gender stereotypes made up by males?

[feministingforchange]

For you womanhood is either a collection of parts or a series of stereotypes. But that is a false dichotomy that is hugely exclusionary and you need to move beyond that. 

Instead, womanhood is what we each make of it and it’s different for each and every of us. But no matter how womanhood presents, it’s always valid no matter your job, interests, sexual orientation, taste in music, biology, performance of femininity and masculinity, and so on and so forth. 

In this way, we can all congregate around our experiences as a woman w/o having a particular definition of what that is. I wonder if maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the “uncertainty” of leaving biology behind bc that means womanhood doesn’t have a particular definition and maybe that’s a bit unnerving for some. And by “leaving biology behind” I don’t mean that we forget it by any means bc it’s important. It’s just that it would be nice if we didn’t insist that all women have weewees and all men have peepees. That’s so not cool IMHO.

[witwitch]

So you think womanhood is meaningless?

I don’t think womanhood is a collection of parts, I think it’s a set of experiences unique to women.

What makes someone a woman? Who are women? How can feminism fight for women if we don’t even know what a woman is?

What word can female people use to describe our biological experiences?

Womanhood isn’t fucking meaningless. It means something and it means something important.

[feministingforchange]

See what I mean? You’re definitely uncomfortable with the notion that womanhood cannot be clearly defined and nailed down. Nothing in life is actually so rigid as we humans are trying to make sex and gender, and by doing so, we are being incredibly exclusionary. 

And please know that womanhood doesn’t have to have a prescribed definition to “have meaning”. We can all tell each other, as unique individual women, what that means to us. Our stories, our experiences, our unique biologies, how those biologies impact and are impacted by our patriarchal environment, etc etc. THESE collective experiences are what make us women, including but not limited to our bodies. And women have a VARIETY of bodies and they are all valid and should be recognized as such.

This essentially gives us the room to be who we are as women, including trans women who are excluded here (and trans men who are inaccurately included) by the popular notion that womanhood is “female biology”. Did you know that the notion of female & male is man-made? The biology itself is “real” but how we have symbolized & named it is entirely a social construct. Gender AND sex are both man-made social constructs and it’s really important that we all move past it as a definer of what it means to “be woman” and start welcoming women of ALL shapes and sizes into our ranks like we always should have. 

[witwitch]

Uhhh, yeah, I am, because a feminism that can’t define woman is completely useless. Who is feminism fighting for? What are the issues these people face in common together?

Yes, it does need to have a meaning in order to have a meaning. Having a meaning means having a meaning. Having a meaning does not mean obscure vague feelings about nothing in particular.

Language is a social construct, but biological sex isn’t a construct just because we use language to describe it. Sexual reproduction is real, you’re being willfully obtuse.

Social constructs are things that only exist within a specific society. Sorry but biological sex keeps existing in any and every context, because it’s real. Gender is oppressive to women and needs to be abolished.

You haven’t answered any of my questions. How do you expect feminism to fight for women when you don’t even know what a woman is to begin with? 

[feministingforchange]

Why are you so certain we “need” to define women to have an effective feminism? I think you’re the one being willfully ignorant here bc a) there’s no evidence that we need to define womanhood in fact all the evidence is to the contrary, and b) womanhood is too diverse an experience for you to be able to neatly label. Social reproduction is absolutely real but lots of men have babies too, lots of women can’t or choose not to have babies, lots of men can’t or won’t either, lots of women have penises, and there are lots of ppl with male/female bodies that do not ascribe to any gender at all. But you think you know best what their genders are, regardless of their personal feelings and beliefs, bc they have parts you deem to be “woman” or “man”???? NO! You are not the arbiter of this and you need to step off.

And what I’d really like to know is how do you EVER expect to do away with gender if you keep insisting upon it at every turn???? On the one hand you say that gender is oppressive but then in the next breath you insist on defining and controlling womanhood. If womanhood is something to be maintained and cordoned off from manhood, then how do we ever get rid of it?!?! I think that’s pretty misogynistic of you tbh. 

[feministingforchange]

^^^^^^!!!!

[reminiscingphosphorescence]

So basically, according to feministingforchange, anyone can identify as a woman if they say they’re a woman, and if I would want to talk about my biology with other women who’ve experienced the same things, or talk about sexual harassment with women who’ve grown up with it vs only experienced it when they transitioned from male to female, that would make me exclusionary?

[feministingforchange]

This is ridiculous. JUST BE SPECIFIC. Speak about cis women when you’re talking about cis women, females when speaking about females, women when you mean all of us, etc. That’s being SPECIFIC, not exclusionary. Easy peasy. *dusts off hands*

Also, you have to stop with the whole “perverted dudes are gonna pretend to be a woman and exploit transness to access women victims if we accept trans women as women” argument I’m detecting here bc it’s bullshit. 

I mean, if a guy wanted to go into a women’s bathroom to rape or peep (or whatever), he would find a way and we all know that many many have. Not to mention that trans women (& trans men) are in much more danger while using their proper facilities than cis women are:

More helpful info (p. 73-4):

And don’t ignore the increased washroom danger to PoC and ppl of low socioeconomic status in the study described above. It’s time to get real here TWEFs & TWERFs…. >_____>

[pineappleisdelicious]

It looks like you’ve already edited this but just for extra clarification: woman and female ARE SYNONYMOUS. Telling radfems to use “women” to refer to all of us and “females” to refer to those with “female biology” (which makes no sense, trans men and women have male and female biology respectively, all the time, regardless of how many surgeries they’ve had done, by virtue of being men and women) will only result in upholding the status quo when it comes to these people. They more often than not already do use “female” to refer to what they see as “all women” and they define them by their “female biology”. So yeah, they include cis women and trans men in their definition. This is violent misgendering. Their is no such thing as “female biology”, and trans men are never “female”. If you’re discussing periods (for example), and you want to describe people who get them, you can say “people who get periods”. It’s really not that hard. I don’t expect TWERFS to listen to this, but @feministingforchange this is something you should be aware of.

[feministingforchange]

I did actually already know this which is why I tried to edit my poorly written post above, but thank you x100000 for putting this into much clearer words!  

For anyone interested, this is the edited version of my post 💗

[feministingforchange]

Y’wanna know what’s really funny here? Years later, I’ve just discovered that my urogenital sinus abnormality is in fact an intersex condition so…. these TWERFS trying to deny that I’d be ousted as a woman by their twerfy, biologically essentializing standards is clearly bullshit. It’s painful to say this but by their rules, I am NOT a woman.

But my biology does not determine my gender.

I. DO.

Defining womanhood by female biological experiences liberates womanhood from gender roles. It means no matter who you are or what your personality is or how you dress or behave or what your interests are, your womanhood is valid.

[feministingforchange]

Did I say it or what?!? Apparently womanhood is defined by your reproductive parts ppl! You can all go home now, it’s been settled! 

But then… I wonder if I qualify as a woman now bc my parts are a little messed up with my urethral opening in my vagina (it’s called a urogenital sinus abnormality and it’s not even that uncommon). My physiology doesn’t fit the “normal” biology of a supposed “woman” so… do I count? I wonder… 

Basically this whole thing is fucking brutal and can go right to hell. I refuse to have my womanhood defined by my parts. If I have some removed bc of illness, do I still get to be a woman or am I “less” of a woman because of it? If I find out I’m incapable of reproduction, am I also no longer a woman? 

Like where tf do we draw the line on this shit?!?! 

It’s all so wrong and horrible omfg….. >_______>

[witwitch]

The point of this message is that womanhood is the experiences  that come from having female biology. You don’t need to have “ideal” female biology in order to still be female. Of course you count, no radfem is excluding you.

What else do you think womanhood should be defined by? Make up and hair styles and stereotypes?

Sex = biological reality.

Gender = social construct, gender is what oppresses us, gender forces us to be feminine, gender is the set of stereotypes we are forced in to since birth.

There’s a difference between sex and gender. Even if we abolish gender, biological sex will still exist. Womanhood is the experiences that come from having female biology.

I think this definition of womanhood is very liberating. It means you can have any interests, any hobbies, any style, any appearance, and still be a woman. It means that your womanhood is not based on how much you conform to stereotypes. Womanhood should not be about conforming to stereotypes.

[comrade-hannah]

also can I point out that having your urethra in your vagina has literally nothing to do with your biological sex? I’m assuming that person probably still produces eggs and even if she doesn’t, she sure as fuck doesn’t produce sperm

In science, we call people that produce eggs women and people that produce sperm men. so convenient.

even if you can’t say a woman has a vagina with a urethra above it and above that is the clitoris and above the vagina is a cervix followed by a uterus and fallopian tubes etc you sure as SHIT can say “a woman never produces sperm”.

Like you are not excluded from womanhood because of a fucking birth defect, just like we don’t exclude people without legs from personhood jesus fucking christ

[feministingforchange]

Wow… both of these ppl continue to pretend that my point isn’t meaningful when it is. I’m saying that if you’re going to define sex by our biology then where exactly is the line between male/female? And what if I wasn’t producing either eggs or sperm; what am I then? What happens when women get hysterectomies, what then? Are they no longer women? Biology changes, malfunctions, etc etc. Not to mention that it’s incredibly reductive…. My womanhood is NOT about my body. There is so much more to me. And even if it WAS just by body, that would just be me, one person. That’s hardly science.

These are just SOME of the reasons that biology is a shitty shitty shitty way of defining sex & gender, which both of you claim are somehow different from each other but then are constantly conflating them w/o an ounce of irony or shame. And that’s the point of my screencap above. You insist that we get rid of gender and that you’re super “gender critical” and what not, but then you do everything in your power to maintain a prescribed notion of what it means to be a woman that is as exclusionary as it is fucked up and illogical.  #RadFemLogic

[witwitch]

Female biological experiences are valid and important and it’s not “reductive” to acknowledge them as such.

Womanhood is about female biological experiences. Defining womanhood by biological experiences is much better than defining womanhood by how much you conform to patriarchal gender roles.

Defining womanhood by our biology means there is no right or wrong way to be a woman. It means women don’t have to conform to gender, an oppressive social construct invented by men, in order to be women.

Being a chef is about cooking food. You can’t be a chef if you don’t cook.

Being a writer is about writing books. You’re not a writer if you don’t write.

Being a smoker means you smoke cigarettes. you’re not a smoker if you’ve never done it.

If you call yourself one of those things, do people assume they’re reducing you to only that one thing? No. Talking about womanhood in reference to female biological experiences doesn’t mean that you can’t/don’t do other things, it means that other things are not related to womanhood. It means hobbies, clothes, interests, job, etc.. none of that has anything to do with womanhood.

Words have meanings. Defining womanhood as the label that female people have for our collective shared female biological experiences is important.

What word should female people use for our collective biological experiences, if we can’t use womanhood?

What does womanhood mean to you? Is womanhood absolutely meaningless to you? Or do you think womanhood is about conforming to gender stereotypes made up by males?

[feministingforchange]

For you womanhood is either a collection of parts or a series of stereotypes. But that is a false dichotomy that is hugely exclusionary and you need to move beyond that. 

Instead, womanhood is what we each make of it and it’s different for each and every of us. But no matter how womanhood presents, it’s always valid no matter your job, interests, sexual orientation, taste in music, biology, performance of femininity and masculinity, and so on and so forth. 

In this way, we can all congregate around our experiences as a woman w/o having a particular definition of what that is. I wonder if maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the “uncertainty” of leaving biology behind bc that means womanhood doesn’t have a particular definition and maybe that’s a bit unnerving for some. And by “leaving biology behind” I don’t mean that we forget it by any means bc it’s important. It’s just that it would be nice if we didn’t insist that all women have weewees and all men have peepees. That’s so not cool IMHO.

[witwitch]

So you think womanhood is meaningless?

I don’t think womanhood is a collection of parts, I think it’s a set of experiences unique to women.

What makes someone a woman? Who are women? How can feminism fight for women if we don’t even know what a woman is?

What word can female people use to describe our biological experiences?

Womanhood isn’t fucking meaningless. It means something and it means something important.

[feministingforchange]

See what I mean? You’re definitely uncomfortable with the notion that womanhood cannot be clearly defined and nailed down. Nothing in life is actually so rigid as we humans are trying to make sex and gender, and by doing so, we are being incredibly exclusionary. 

And please know that womanhood doesn’t have to have a prescribed definition to “have meaning”. We can all tell each other, as unique individual women, what that means to us. Our stories, our experiences, our unique biologies, how those biologies impact and are impacted by our patriarchal environment, etc etc. THESE collective experiences are what make us women, including but not limited to our bodies. And women have a VARIETY of bodies and they are all valid and should be recognized as such.

This essentially gives us the room to be who we are as women, including trans women who are excluded here (and trans men who are inaccurately included) by the popular notion that womanhood is “female biology”. Did you know that the notion of female & male is man-made? The biology itself is “real” but how we have symbolized & named it is entirely a social construct. Gender AND sex are both man-made social constructs and it’s really important that we all move past it as a definer of what it means to “be woman” and start welcoming women of ALL shapes and sizes into our ranks like we always should have. 

[witwitch]

Uhhh, yeah, I am, because a feminism that can’t define woman is completely useless. Who is feminism fighting for? What are the issues these people face in common together?

Yes, it does need to have a meaning in order to have a meaning. Having a meaning means having a meaning. Having a meaning does not mean obscure vague feelings about nothing in particular.

Language is a social construct, but biological sex isn’t a construct just because we use language to describe it. Sexual reproduction is real, you’re being willfully obtuse.

Social constructs are things that only exist within a specific society. Sorry but biological sex keeps existing in any and every context, because it’s real. Gender is oppressive to women and needs to be abolished.

You haven’t answered any of my questions. How do you expect feminism to fight for women when you don’t even know what a woman is to begin with? 

[feministingforchange]

Why are you so certain we “need” to define women to have an effective feminism? I think you’re the one being willfully ignorant here bc a) there’s no evidence that we need to define womanhood in fact all the evidence is to the contrary, and b) womanhood is too diverse an experience for you to be able to neatly label. Social reproduction is absolutely real but lots of men have babies too, lots of women can’t or choose not to have babies, lots of men can’t or won’t either, lots of women have penises, and there are lots of ppl with male/female bodies that do not ascribe to any gender at all. But you think you know best what their genders are, regardless of their personal feelings and beliefs, bc they have parts you deem to be “woman” or “man”???? NO! You are not the arbiter of this and you need to step off.

And what I’d really like to know is how do you EVER expect to do away with gender if you keep insisting upon it at every turn???? On the one hand you say that gender is oppressive but then in the next breath you insist on defining and controlling womanhood. If womanhood is something to be maintained and cordoned off from manhood, then how do we ever get rid of it?!?! I think that’s pretty misogynistic of you tbh. 

[feministingforchange]

^^^^^^!!!!

[reminiscingphosphorescence]

So basically, according to feministingforchange, anyone can identify as a woman if they say they’re a woman, and if I would want to talk about my biology with other women who’ve experienced the same things, or talk about sexual harassment with women who’ve grown up with it vs only experienced it when they transitioned from male to female, that would make me exclusionary?

[feministingforchange]

This is ridiculous. JUST BE SPECIFIC. Speak about cis women when you’re talking about cis women, females when speaking about females, women when you mean all of us, etc. That’s being SPECIFIC, not exclusionary. Easy peasy. *dusts off hands*

Also, you have to stop with the whole “perverted dudes are gonna pretend to be a woman and exploit transness to access women victims if we accept trans women as women” argument I’m detecting here bc it’s bullshit. 

I mean, if a guy wanted to go into a women’s bathroom to rape or peep (or whatever), he would find a way and we all know that many many have. Not to mention that trans women (& trans men) are in much more danger while using their proper facilities than cis women are:

More helpful info (p. 73-4):

And don’t ignore the increased washroom danger to PoC and ppl of low socioeconomic status in the study described above. It’s time to get real here TWEFs & TWERFs…. >_____>

[pineappleisdelicious]

It looks like you’ve already edited this but just for extra clarification: woman and female ARE SYNONYMOUS. Telling radfems to use “women” to refer to all of us and “females” to refer to those with “female biology” (which makes no sense, trans men and women have male and female biology respectively, all the time, regardless of how many surgeries they’ve had done, by virtue of being men and women) will only result in upholding the status quo when it comes to these people. They more often than not already do use “female” to refer to what they see as “all women” and they define them by their “female biology”. So yeah, they include cis women and trans men in their definition. This is violent misgendering. Their is no such thing as “female biology”, and trans men are never “female”. If you’re discussing periods (for example), and you want to describe people who get them, you can say “people who get periods”. It’s really not that hard. I don’t expect TWERFS to listen to this, but @feministingforchange this is something you should be aware of.

[feministingforchange]

I did actually already know this which is why I tried to edit my poorly written post above, but thank you x100000 for putting this into much clearer words!  

For anyone interested, this is the edited version of my post 💗

[feministingforchange]

Y’wanna know what’s really funny here? Years later, I’ve just discovered that my urogenital sinus abnormality is in fact an intersex condition so…. these TWERFS trying to deny that I’d be ousted as a woman by their twerfy, biologically essentializing standards is clearly bullshit. It’s painful to say this but by their rules, I am NOT a woman.

But my biology does not determine my gender.

I. DO.

tfw u’re missing some important meds bc they’re apparently on backorder across canada

[feministingforchange]

Defining womanhood by female biological experiences liberates womanhood from gender roles. It means no matter who you are or what your personality is or how you dress or behave or what your interests are, your womanhood is valid.

[feministingforchange]

Did I say it or what?!? Apparently womanhood is defined by your reproductive parts ppl! You can all go home now, it’s been settled! 

But then… I wonder if I qualify as a woman now bc my parts are a little messed up with my urethral opening in my vagina (it’s called a urogenital sinus abnormality and it’s not even that uncommon). My physiology doesn’t fit the “normal” biology of a supposed “woman” so… do I count? I wonder… 

Basically this whole thing is fucking brutal and can go right to hell. I refuse to have my womanhood defined by my parts. If I have some removed bc of illness, do I still get to be a woman or am I “less” of a woman because of it? If I find out I’m incapable of reproduction, am I also no longer a woman? 

Like where tf do we draw the line on this shit?!?! 

It’s all so wrong and horrible omfg….. >_______>

[witwitch]

The point of this message is that womanhood is the experiences  that come from having female biology. You don’t need to have “ideal” female biology in order to still be female. Of course you count, no radfem is excluding you.

What else do you think womanhood should be defined by? Make up and hair styles and stereotypes?

Sex = biological reality.

Gender = social construct, gender is what oppresses us, gender forces us to be feminine, gender is the set of stereotypes we are forced in to since birth.

There’s a difference between sex and gender. Even if we abolish gender, biological sex will still exist. Womanhood is the experiences that come from having female biology.

I think this definition of womanhood is very liberating. It means you can have any interests, any hobbies, any style, any appearance, and still be a woman. It means that your womanhood is not based on how much you conform to stereotypes. Womanhood should not be about conforming to stereotypes.

[comrade-hannah]

also can I point out that having your urethra in your vagina has literally nothing to do with your biological sex? I’m assuming that person probably still produces eggs and even if she doesn’t, she sure as fuck doesn’t produce sperm

In science, we call people that produce eggs women and people that produce sperm men. so convenient.

even if you can’t say a woman has a vagina with a urethra above it and above that is the clitoris and above the vagina is a cervix followed by a uterus and fallopian tubes etc you sure as SHIT can say “a woman never produces sperm”.

Like you are not excluded from womanhood because of a fucking birth defect, just like we don’t exclude people without legs from personhood jesus fucking christ

[feministingforchange]

Wow… both of these ppl continue to pretend that my point isn’t meaningful when it is. I’m saying that if you’re going to define sex by our biology then where exactly is the line between male/female? And what if I wasn’t producing either eggs or sperm; what am I then? What happens when women get hysterectomies, what then? Are they no longer women? Biology changes, malfunctions, etc etc. Not to mention that it’s incredibly reductive…. My womanhood is NOT about my body. There is so much more to me. And even if it WAS just by body, that would just be me, one person. That’s hardly science.

These are just SOME of the reasons that biology is a shitty shitty shitty way of defining sex & gender, which both of you claim are somehow different from each other but then are constantly conflating them w/o an ounce of irony or shame. And that’s the point of my screencap above. You insist that we get rid of gender and that you’re super “gender critical” and what not, but then you do everything in your power to maintain a prescribed notion of what it means to be a woman that is as exclusionary as it is fucked up and illogical.  #RadFemLogic

[witwitch]

Female biological experiences are valid and important and it’s not “reductive” to acknowledge them as such.

Womanhood is about female biological experiences. Defining womanhood by biological experiences is much better than defining womanhood by how much you conform to patriarchal gender roles.

Defining womanhood by our biology means there is no right or wrong way to be a woman. It means women don’t have to conform to gender, an oppressive social construct invented by men, in order to be women.

Being a chef is about cooking food. You can’t be a chef if you don’t cook.

Being a writer is about writing books. You’re not a writer if you don’t write.

Being a smoker means you smoke cigarettes. you’re not a smoker if you’ve never done it.

If you call yourself one of those things, do people assume they’re reducing you to only that one thing? No. Talking about womanhood in reference to female biological experiences doesn’t mean that you can’t/don’t do other things, it means that other things are not related to womanhood. It means hobbies, clothes, interests, job, etc.. none of that has anything to do with womanhood.

Words have meanings. Defining womanhood as the label that female people have for our collective shared female biological experiences is important.

What word should female people use for our collective biological experiences, if we can’t use womanhood?

What does womanhood mean to you? Is womanhood absolutely meaningless to you? Or do you think womanhood is about conforming to gender stereotypes made up by males?

[feministingforchange]

For you womanhood is either a collection of parts or a series of stereotypes. But that is a false dichotomy that is hugely exclusionary and you need to move beyond that. 

Instead, womanhood is what we each make of it and it’s different for each and every of us. But no matter how womanhood presents, it’s always valid no matter your job, interests, sexual orientation, taste in music, biology, performance of femininity and masculinity, and so on and so forth. 

In this way, we can all congregate around our experiences as a woman w/o having a particular definition of what that is. I wonder if maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the “uncertainty” of leaving biology behind bc that means womanhood doesn’t have a particular definition and maybe that’s a bit unnerving for some. And by “leaving biology behind” I don’t mean that we forget it by any means bc it’s important. It’s just that it would be nice if we didn’t insist that all women have weewees and all men have peepees. That’s so not cool IMHO.

[witwitch]

So you think womanhood is meaningless?

I don’t think womanhood is a collection of parts, I think it’s a set of experiences unique to women.

What makes someone a woman? Who are women? How can feminism fight for women if we don’t even know what a woman is?

What word can female people use to describe our biological experiences?

Womanhood isn’t fucking meaningless. It means something and it means something important.

[feministingforchange]

See what I mean? You’re definitely uncomfortable with the notion that womanhood cannot be clearly defined and nailed down. Nothing in life is actually so rigid as we humans are trying to make sex and gender, and by doing so, we are being incredibly exclusionary. 

And please know that womanhood doesn’t have to have a prescribed definition to “have meaning”. We can all tell each other, as unique individual women, what that means to us. Our stories, our experiences, our unique biologies, how those biologies impact and are impacted by our patriarchal environment, etc etc. THESE collective experiences are what make us women, including but not limited to our bodies. And women have a VARIETY of bodies and they are all valid and should be recognized as such.

This essentially gives us the room to be who we are as women, including trans women who are excluded here (and trans men who are inaccurately included) by the popular notion that womanhood is “female biology”. Did you know that the notion of female & male is man-made? The biology itself is “real” but how we have symbolized & named it is entirely a social construct. Gender AND sex are both man-made social constructs and it’s really important that we all move past it as a definer of what it means to “be woman” and start welcoming women of ALL shapes and sizes into our ranks like we always should have. 

[witwitch]

Uhhh, yeah, I am, because a feminism that can’t define woman is completely useless. Who is feminism fighting for? What are the issues these people face in common together?

Yes, it does need to have a meaning in order to have a meaning. Having a meaning means having a meaning. Having a meaning does not mean obscure vague feelings about nothing in particular.

Language is a social construct, but biological sex isn’t a construct just because we use language to describe it. Sexual reproduction is real, you’re being willfully obtuse.

Social constructs are things that only exist within a specific society. Sorry but biological sex keeps existing in any and every context, because it’s real. Gender is oppressive to women and needs to be abolished.

You haven’t answered any of my questions. How do you expect feminism to fight for women when you don’t even know what a woman is to begin with? 

[feministingforchange]

Why are you so certain we “need” to define women to have an effective feminism? I think you’re the one being willfully ignorant here bc a) there’s no evidence that we need to define womanhood in fact all the evidence is to the contrary, and b) womanhood is too diverse an experience for you to be able to neatly label. Social reproduction is absolutely real but lots of men have babies too, lots of women can’t or choose not to have babies, lots of men can’t or won’t either, lots of women have penises, and there are lots of ppl with male/female bodies that do not ascribe to any gender at all. But you think you know best what their genders are, regardless of their personal feelings and beliefs, bc they have parts you deem to be “woman” or “man”???? NO! You are not the arbiter of this and you need to step off.

And what I’d really like to know is how do you EVER expect to do away with gender if you keep insisting upon it at every turn???? On the one hand you say that gender is oppressive but then in the next breath you insist on defining and controlling womanhood. If womanhood is something to be maintained and cordoned off from manhood, then how do we ever get rid of it?!?! I think that’s pretty misogynistic of you tbh. 

[feministingforchange]

^^^^^^!!!!

[reminiscingphosphorescence]

So basically, according to feministingforchange, anyone can identify as a woman if they say they’re a woman, and if I would want to talk about my biology with other women who’ve experienced the same things, or talk about sexual harassment with women who’ve grown up with it vs only experienced it when they transitioned from male to female, that would make me exclusionary?

[feministingforchange]

This is ridiculous. JUST BE SPECIFIC. Speak about cis women when you’re talking about cis women, females when speaking about females, women when you mean all of us, etc. That’s being SPECIFIC, not exclusionary. Easy peasy. *dusts off hands*

Also, you have to stop with the whole “perverted dudes are gonna pretend to be a woman and exploit transness to access women victims if we accept trans women as women” argument I’m detecting here bc it’s bullshit. 

I mean, if a guy wanted to go into a women’s bathroom to rape or peep (or whatever), he would find a way and we all know that many many have. Not to mention that trans women (& trans men) are in much more danger while using their proper facilities than cis women are:

More helpful info (p. 73-4):

And don’t ignore the increased washroom danger to PoC and ppl of low socioeconomic status in the study described above. It’s time to get real here TWEFs & TWERFs…. >_____>

[pineappleisdelicious]

It looks like you’ve already edited this but just for extra clarification: woman and female ARE SYNONYMOUS. Telling radfems to use “women” to refer to all of us and “females” to refer to those with “female biology” (which makes no sense, trans men and women have male and female biology respectively, all the time, regardless of how many surgeries they’ve had done, by virtue of being men and women) will only result in upholding the status quo when it comes to these people. They more often than not already do use “female” to refer to what they see as “all women” and they define them by their “female biology”. So yeah, they include cis women and trans men in their definition. This is violent misgendering. Their is no such thing as “female biology”, and trans men are never “female”. If you’re discussing periods (for example), and you want to describe people who get them, you can say “people who get periods”. It’s really not that hard. I don’t expect TWERFS to listen to this, but @feministingforchange this is something you should be aware of.

[feministingforchange]

I did actually already know this which is why I tried to edit my poorly written post above, but thank you x100000 for putting this into much clearer words!  

For anyone interested, this is the edited version of my post 💗

[feministingforchange]

Y’wanna know what’s really funny here? Years later, I’ve just discovered that my urogenital sinus abnormality is in fact an intersex condition so…. these TWERFS trying to deny that I’d be ousted as a woman by their twerfy, biologically essentializing standards is clearly bullshit. It’s painful to say this but by their rules, I am NOT a woman.

But my biology does not determine my gender.

I. DO.

littlestr asked:

I'm so sorry to hear that my message was the only nice one. =( I'm really proud of you for coming out! That takes a lot of courage, and this time it didn't feel good at all and that sucks.

forevrdreamingofbetterthings answered:

Aw thank you so much sweetie! Sorry it took so long to get back to you, I’ve been swamped with marking and I also had a doctor’s appt. :/

Coming out as panromantic on tumblr has definitely been an experience, in that the first day was fairly painful (for lack of support) yet educational (I still totally appreciate the criticisms I got), but the day after went a lot better with the support of friends and even super nice people who were previously strangers to me (e.g., you!). 

So over all I would say it’s been a good and productive experience, but it’s still super scary and I’m definitely dealing with the existential questions and details that apparently go along with coming out (Fun!). 

But I’m also feeling freer and happier to have accepted this fact about myself instead of continuing to deny it. Amazingly, figuring out on Tumblr that I was demisexual helped me to see and finally accept that my crushes on ppl of all genders are the SAME, OK, and REAL; instead of pretending otherwise simply bc of heteronormativity and misunderstandings about attraction based in allosexism. 

YAY!!!!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉

[feministingforchange]

I think super nice ask from back when I came out as panromantic in Dec 2016 is so important. Among other things, it explains one of the major reasons that I consider my panromanticism the modifier, not my demisexuality. 

The other major reason is bc my demisexuality colours everything I do, in that I see the entire world through asexual lenses and so everything/one appears as entirely Asexual. I don’t care how pretty, handsome, or sexualized someone is, they get desexualized through my eyes. That said, I can still easily recognize sexualization and what not bc I know what it looks & feels like. :/

#BoostAceVoices

• radfems: DOWN WITH GENDER!! GENDER IS THE DEVIL!!!
• radfems: OMFG don't you know anything?!?! You can't be a woman unless you have a vagina, JFC!

Anonymous asked:

i'm wondering when you're going to address what you you based your panromantic identity on. do the sentiments of "i find everyone so beautiful", "my friends make me feel warm and happy" and "i just really like penises" qualify you to discuss being gay or bisexual? importantly, do you really know what it's like to be gay or bi in a conventional sense of being in any way attracted to women, and if not, in what way are you qualified to discuss lgbt issues - simply by masquerading as one of us?

forevrdreamingofbetterthings answered:

I wasn’t aware that I had to defend myself, and your questions sound rather transphobic in assuming I don’t like women because you think I only like penises (lots of women/nb/intersex ppl have them though…). Also you don’t actually know any details about this bc I didn’t share any, but thanks for acting like you know me and can determine the validity of my orientation…

Basically, you are rude and clearly hateful, but your questions would be great if not framed in such a way because I’m actually very happy to explain myself and have been hoping for an opportunity. But in all honesty, all I keep hearing from aphobes is that “my orientation is TMI” so it felt it would be even more “TMI” to get into further details. Is that not true? (I had better not get hateful anons claiming “TMI” about this later btw…. )

First of all, I’m demisexual because I do not see ppl as sexual beings. I just don’t and never have. In fact when I was a child I couldn’t even tell an attractive person from a non-attractive person, so to speak. I even had to have my older sis help me figure out my first of two celebrity crushes in my life, that I had simply to fit in. 

Also, I cannot imagine sex with the people that I have crushes on or even really kissing them, it’s just weird somehow. And I have a libido and masturbate but NEVER to ppl. I always thought it was so weird that I wasn’t sexually attracted to ppl or anything ftm, the libido just kicks in at random!

But I have all kinds of platonic feelings to compare my romantic feelings to and my crushes are very different. I have strong warm feelings that make me want to get close to them and be around them a lot. They invade my mind a lot and make me smile and I want to know more about them. I also wonder what it MIGHT be like to kiss them, but I don’t really imagine it bc it weirds me out. But I consider it a possibility and that’s kinda thrilling! I would ID as fully Ace if it weren’t for my last BF who I was actually semi sexually attracted to.

Despite the fact that my crushes are all the same despite gender, until I realized I was demisexual I interpreted them all as just weird anomalies unless they were for men. Even in my youth when I had crushes on girls (like my best friend) I just believed them to be “friendsly”, but they confused me a lot of the time because I knew it was more but couldn’t take it seriously because of heteronormativity and the fact that I figured I had to have a sexual attraction to take it seriously (bc that’s what a crush is, like pshaw!). So even though all my crushes were the same (even for men) without sexual attraction, I just took the het crushes as “real” bc of heteronormativity. I dunno if that makes total sense, but that’s how I see things.

Once I figured out I was demi then I finally started to take my other crushes more seriously. And to look back and realize those crushes I had thought were crushes but had talked away HAD IN FACT BEEN crushes. And I’ve realized that for me gender really doesn’t matter and that’s why I ID as panromantic. *shrugs*

And the thing about being “more into penises” isn’t actually accurate either and I admit that’s my fault for not giving more information. I actually have a lifelong (since I was born) sensory issue with having anything on my hands. I’m not a germaphobe but I cannot stand anything on my hands that I can feel or see. Even water is a problem, I have to get it off immediately or I get nauseous and panicky. My sink is ALWAYS full for this very reason, and I had to buy a countertop dishwasher to make my life even remotely possible with this sensory hand issue I have.

SO my problem is not vaginas specifically bc I actually find them quite beautiful. In fact, I cannot stand anything on my hands, same with sperm from penises but as luck would have it that’s mostly only a problem at the end and I can quickly go wash it off. I have no actual problem with vaginas (again, they’re beautiful) and I’d love to go there with gloves or something but I’m afraid of hurting my partner’s feelings…? :/ 

But my point is, I am panromantic demisexual.

[the-nerdy-curvy-feminist]

“i’m wondering when you’re going to address what you based your panromantic identity on.”

It doesn’t matter. If they say they are panromantic, that’s what they are. End of discussion. That is what they are. 

do the sentiments of “i find everyone so beautiful”, “my friends make me feel warm and happy” and “i just really like penises” qualify you to discuss being gay or bisexual? 

Question: did they ever once fucking say that, because I follow this blog and have for months and haven’t seen it. Follow up question: do you actually know what panromanticism is because that’s not what it is.

Also…they’re allowed to have a thing for penises? Hell, I’m pansexual and have a preference for penis regardless of the gender of the person I’m with, and I have my reasons for it. Having a preference doesn’t make me less pansexual; I’m still attracted to all bodies and all genders. I’m sure the same is true of them. I don’t know, because I never asked; and since you didn’t ask either, you also don’t know. Maybe quit assuming?

importantly, do you really know what it’s like to be gay or bi in a conventional sense of being in any way attracted to women, and if not, in what way are you qualified to discuss lgbt issues - simply by masquerading as one of us?

Oh, so pansexual and panromantic people aren’t LGBT now? Really? And what makes you think you get to decide that for us? Hm?

A person can be pan without feeling attraction to women, if they know they could potentially be but it just hasn’t happened yet. A person can also be bi without attraction to women, assuming they still like 2 or more genders. 

Also, what the fuck is with your attitude? feministingforchange has done literally nothing to you. What the fuck is your problem?

Leave them alone anon. They deserve so much better than to be treated like this by some anonymous asshole. 

[feministingforchange]

Thank you again @the-nerdy-curvy-feminist​, I really appreciate your support in this. And by all means, please let anon have it lol.

To be fair, I wasn’t exactly surprised by this anon but I was shocked by how they managed to even exclude pan orientations from the list of LGBT+ options (just gay, bi, & trans apparently?), but since I’m still fairly new to these discussions I assumed it was implied. I should really know better with these REGs though, they are so very true to their label.

So to sum up: According to this person, my ID as panromantic demisexual is not LGBT+ at all. Yup…

But see what REALLY blows my mind is that aspec exclusionists go on and on about how the “A” in the LGBT+ acronym is for ALLIES ONLY NOT A-SPECS, bc it’s for ppl who are using ally as a cover-up for the fact that they’re questioning so they can safely interact with their possible community. I think that’s actually super important and I support that for sure (except for the aspec exclusion part of course).

Well, I’ve been a pretty good ally for YEARS and in doing so I learned more and more about myself and FINALLY allowed myself to start questioning my internalized homophobia and aphobia. So as a direct result of my allyship, I discovered that I am demisexual, and then over the next 2 years I slowly came to accept that I wasn’t even heteromantic bc I’m PANromantic.

And then what do a lot of exclusionary Tumblr LGBT+ do to me? Start going off about how I’m just a faker and appropriator and that I’m no longer even an ally; I’m now a homophobic, transphobic, thief.  

Is THIS how they treat allies who realize they’re actually LGBT+?????

Someone, please make sense of this :’(

[vivaladivatracy]

Well, see the thing is this: NO ONE, absolutely NO ONE, has the power or right to tell someone else who and what they are. So fuck them. Do you.

That is how to make sense of this. 

[feministingforchange]

#BoostAceVoices

[sarahsyna]

Honestly, the hardest part of finding receipts on exclusionists isn’t that there’s a lack of them (they’re like fish in a barrel, basically), it’s wading through the sludge of every OTHER awful, selfish, often downright abusive thing they’ve said to find a specific instance that’s the issue. Turns my fucking stomach.

[feministingforchange]

If this isn’t the truth I don’t know what is.

Rant.

[the-independent-jew]

When I first came onto tumblr, the LGBTQ+ discourse was all up in arms against people who claimed that teaching about same sex attraction in sex ed was “sexualizing minors” because that implied that there was something inherently more sexual and “inappropriate” about same sex attraction than the heterosexual attraction which was already talked about.

But now those same people have taken up the very discourse they fought against so strongly to accuse ace people of “sexualizing minors” for wanting to have asexuality discussed in sex ed.

The lack of self awareness is mind blowing.

The discoursers are forgetting entirely that asexual minors do in fact exist, and are harmed by a society that constantly tells them that sex is the ultimate goal of a relationship, or that it is “fundamental human instinct for everyone.”

All we want is to tell them that not feeling this attraction does not make them broken or less human.  And, that you can have a fulfilling relationship WITHOUT SEX.

To me, that seems like the opposite of sexualization.

[feministingforchange]

Originally posted by onlyolliepop

As far as I can tell, we aspecs are the ONLY ONES telling kids they don’t have to have sex ever, and somehow these tumblr aphobes are saying this is “sexualizing kids”. 

#LogicFail #BoostAceVoices

Invisibility is Not a Privilege.

[a-spec-tacular]

Invisibility means every person you come out to requires a vocabulary lesson.

Invisibility means the very nature of your identity is up for debate.

Invisibility means years feeling alone, broken, and unnatural.

Invisibility means you might not even consider the possibility that you’re anything but what society says you can be.

Invisibility means you have to find out about your own identity from strangers in small, distant corners of the internet.

Invisibility means being taught in school that your orientation makes you inhuman.

Invisibility means being told by educated professionals that your orientation is pathological, a mental illness, and Must Be Fixed.

Invisibility means taking an extra year to convince yourself that your orientation could even exist before you even beginning to accept yourself as what you are.

Invisibility means coming up with an arsenal of excuses for your lack of Normality, an army of justifications for living a life that makes you just a little more comfortable.

Invisibility means “acceptance” comes at the price of breaking up and stuffing away the things that make you you, and struggling to force yourself into a hole that doesn’t fit.

Invisibility means forcing yourself into relationships and acts that you don’t want because the alternative is taboo.

Invisibility means you can never really tell them who you are.

Invisibility means you can’t even feel pride in your community half the time, because the world is intent on destroying what little of a community there is.

Invisibility means facing a world of people who would have you bow your head and let them rewrite your identity for you; who demand your complacence while they redefine the things that make you who you are.

Invisibility means your suffering doesn’t even matter to those supposedly fighting to End All Suffering.

Invisibility means shame.

Invisibility means denial.

Invisibility means loneliness.

Invisibility is not a privilege.

[dukeofellington]

Invisibility means people think you’re just cutely stating your independence, or simply wearing an array of pretty colours, when you’re wearing literal badges with your orientation on them.

Invisibility means feeling obliged to add ‘but who knows haha, I could be wrong, I could feel different when I’m older,’ to the end of every coming out/explanation.

Invisibility means not feeling you can claim ‘coming out’ as a phrase because even people in the community you belong to by definition are insisting that ‘A’ stands for ‘Ally’.

Invisibility means despite feeling so strongly and never being more sure than anything in you’re life, you’re still don’t feel ‘queer’ enough to justify a label.

Invisibility means questioning if your mental illness affects/is the driving force behind your orientation and having people pinpoint the cause as ‘just a few bad experiences’ which therefore renders it invalid.

Invisibility means when people ask ‘how’s you’re lovelife?’ you say ‘non-existent,’, but laugh along instead of clarifying the literal meaning when they express sympathy.

Invisibility means squirming every time someone is genuinely curious because you’re having to convince yourself that your orientation is real as well as them.

Invisibility means never officially telling your parents what you identify as because ‘isn’t there enough labels already without making any more up?’.

Invisibility means people will try and find loopholes in your identity to manipulate you for their own benefit rather than listen, understand and accept.

Invisibility is not a privilege.

[feministingforchange]

One more time for the ppl in the back:

         Invisibility means shame.

         Invisibility means denial.

         Invisibility means loneliness.

         Invisibility is not a privilege.

#BoostAceVoices #BoostAroVoices

RadFemPERKS

feministingforchange:

radfemprobs:

Knowing your arguments can be backed up with scientific studies and not having to rely on circular logic.

omg this^ is hilarious (c/o the link!)

Defining womanhood by female biological experiences liberates womanhood from gender roles. It means no matter who you are or what your personality is or how you dress or behave or what your interests are, your womanhood is valid.

[feministingforchange]

Did I say it or what?!? Apparently womanhood is defined by your reproductive parts ppl! You can all go home now, it’s been settled! 

But then… I wonder if I qualify as a woman now bc my parts are a little messed up with my urethral opening in my vagina (it’s called a urogenital sinus abnormality and it’s not even that uncommon). My physiology doesn’t fit the “normal” biology of a supposed “woman” so… do I count? I wonder… 

Basically this whole thing is fucking brutal and can go right to hell. I refuse to have my womanhood defined by my parts. If I have some removed bc of illness, do I still get to be a woman or am I “less” of a woman because of it? If I find out I’m incapable of reproduction, am I also no longer a woman? 

Like where tf do we draw the line on this shit?!?! 

It’s all so wrong and horrible omfg….. >_______>

[witwitch]

The point of this message is that womanhood is the experiences  that come from having female biology. You don’t need to have “ideal” female biology in order to still be female. Of course you count, no radfem is excluding you.

What else do you think womanhood should be defined by? Make up and hair styles and stereotypes?

Sex = biological reality.

Gender = social construct, gender is what oppresses us, gender forces us to be feminine, gender is the set of stereotypes we are forced in to since birth.

There’s a difference between sex and gender. Even if we abolish gender, biological sex will still exist. Womanhood is the experiences that come from having female biology.

I think this definition of womanhood is very liberating. It means you can have any interests, any hobbies, any style, any appearance, and still be a woman. It means that your womanhood is not based on how much you conform to stereotypes. Womanhood should not be about conforming to stereotypes.

[comrade-hannah]

also can I point out that having your urethra in your vagina has literally nothing to do with your biological sex? I’m assuming that person probably still produces eggs and even if she doesn’t, she sure as fuck doesn’t produce sperm

In science, we call people that produce eggs women and people that produce sperm men. so convenient.

even if you can’t say a woman has a vagina with a urethra above it and above that is the clitoris and above the vagina is a cervix followed by a uterus and fallopian tubes etc you sure as SHIT can say “a woman never produces sperm”.

Like you are not excluded from womanhood because of a fucking birth defect, just like we don’t exclude people without legs from personhood jesus fucking christ

[feministingforchange]

Wow… both of these ppl continue to pretend that my point isn’t meaningful when it is. I’m saying that if you’re going to define sex by our biology then where exactly is the line between male/female? And what if I wasn’t producing either eggs or sperm; what am I then? What happens when women get hysterectomies, what then? Are they no longer women? Biology changes, malfunctions, etc etc. Not to mention that it’s incredibly reductive…. My womanhood is NOT about my body. There is so much more to me. And even if it WAS just by body, that would just be me, one person. That’s hardly science.

These are just SOME of the reasons that biology is a shitty shitty shitty way of defining sex & gender, which both of you claim are somehow different from each other but then are constantly conflating them w/o an ounce of irony or shame. And that’s the point of my screencap above. You insist that we get rid of gender and that you’re super “gender critical” and what not, but then you do everything in your power to maintain a prescribed notion of what it means to be a woman that is as exclusionary as it is fucked up and illogical.  #RadFemLogic

[witwitch]

Female biological experiences are valid and important and it’s not “reductive” to acknowledge them as such.

Womanhood is about female biological experiences. Defining womanhood by biological experiences is much better than defining womanhood by how much you conform to patriarchal gender roles.

Defining womanhood by our biology means there is no right or wrong way to be a woman. It means women don’t have to conform to gender, an oppressive social construct invented by men, in order to be women.

Being a chef is about cooking food. You can’t be a chef if you don’t cook.

Being a writer is about writing books. You’re not a writer if you don’t write.

Being a smoker means you smoke cigarettes. you’re not a smoker if you’ve never done it.

If you call yourself one of those things, do people assume they’re reducing you to only that one thing? No. Talking about womanhood in reference to female biological experiences doesn’t mean that you can’t/don’t do other things, it means that other things are not related to womanhood. It means hobbies, clothes, interests, job, etc.. none of that has anything to do with womanhood.

Words have meanings. Defining womanhood as the label that female people have for our collective shared female biological experiences is important.

What word should female people use for our collective biological experiences, if we can’t use womanhood?

What does womanhood mean to you? Is womanhood absolutely meaningless to you? Or do you think womanhood is about conforming to gender stereotypes made up by males?

[feministingforchange]

For you womanhood is either a collection of parts or a series of stereotypes. But that is a false dichotomy that is hugely exclusionary and you need to move beyond that. 

Instead, womanhood is what we each make of it and it’s different for each and every of us. But no matter how womanhood presents, it’s always valid no matter your job, interests, sexual orientation, taste in music, biology, performance of femininity and masculinity, and so on and so forth. 

In this way, we can all congregate around our experiences as a woman w/o having a particular definition of what that is. I wonder if maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the “uncertainty” of leaving biology behind bc that means womanhood doesn’t have a particular definition and maybe that’s a bit unnerving for some. And by “leaving biology behind” I don’t mean that we forget it by any means bc it’s important. It’s just that it would be nice if we didn’t insist that all women have weewees and all men have peepees. That’s so not cool IMHO.

[witwitch]

So you think womanhood is meaningless?

I don’t think womanhood is a collection of parts, I think it’s a set of experiences unique to women.

What makes someone a woman? Who are women? How can feminism fight for women if we don’t even know what a woman is?

What word can female people use to describe our biological experiences?

Womanhood isn’t fucking meaningless. It means something and it means something important.

[feministingforchange]

See what I mean? You’re definitely uncomfortable with the notion that womanhood cannot be clearly defined and nailed down. Nothing in life is actually so rigid as we humans are trying to make sex and gender, and by doing so, we are being incredibly exclusionary. 

And please know that womanhood doesn’t have to have a prescribed definition to “have meaning”. We can all tell each other, as unique individual women, what that means to us. Our stories, our experiences, our unique biologies, how those biologies impact and are impacted by our patriarchal environment, etc etc. THESE collective experiences are what make us women, including but not limited to our bodies. And women have a VARIETY of bodies and they are all valid and should be recognized as such.

This essentially gives us the room to be who we are as women, including trans women who are excluded here (and trans men who are inaccurately included) by the popular notion that womanhood is “female biology”. Did you know that the notion of female & male is man-made? The biology itself is “real” but how we have symbolized & named it is entirely a social construct. Gender AND sex are both man-made social constructs and it’s really important that we all move past it as a definer of what it means to “be woman” and start welcoming women of ALL shapes and sizes into our ranks like we always should have. 

[witwitch]

Uhhh, yeah, I am, because a feminism that can’t define woman is completely useless. Who is feminism fighting for? What are the issues these people face in common together?

Yes, it does need to have a meaning in order to have a meaning. Having a meaning means having a meaning. Having a meaning does not mean obscure vague feelings about nothing in particular.

Language is a social construct, but biological sex isn’t a construct just because we use language to describe it. Sexual reproduction is real, you’re being willfully obtuse.

Social constructs are things that only exist within a specific society. Sorry but biological sex keeps existing in any and every context, because it’s real. Gender is oppressive to women and needs to be abolished.

You haven’t answered any of my questions. How do you expect feminism to fight for women when you don’t even know what a woman is to begin with? 

[feministingforchange]

Why are you so certain we “need” to define women to have an effective feminism? I think you’re the one being willfully ignorant here bc a) there’s no evidence that we need to define womanhood in fact all the evidence is to the contrary, and b) womanhood is too diverse an experience for you to be able to neatly label. Social reproduction is absolutely real but lots of men have babies too, lots of women can’t or choose not to have babies, lots of men can’t or won’t either, lots of women have penises, and there are lots of ppl with male/female bodies that do not ascribe to any gender at all. But you think you know best what their genders are, regardless of their personal feelings and beliefs, bc they have parts you deem to be “woman” or “man”???? NO! You are not the arbiter of this and you need to step off.

And what I’d really like to know is how do you EVER expect to do away with gender if you keep insisting upon it at every turn???? On the one hand you say that gender is oppressive but then in the next breath you insist on defining and controlling womanhood. If womanhood is something to be maintained and cordoned off from manhood, then how do we ever get rid of it?!?! I think that’s pretty misogynistic of you tbh. 

[feministingforchange]

^^^^^^!!!!

[reminiscingphosphorescence]

So basically, according to feministingforchange, anyone can identify as a woman if they say they’re a woman, and if I would want to talk about my biology with other women who’ve experienced the same things, or talk about sexual harassment with women who’ve grown up with it vs only experienced it when they transitioned from male to female, that would make me exclusionary?

[feministingforchange]

This is ridiculous. JUST BE SPECIFIC. Speak about cis women when you’re talking about cis women, females when speaking about females, women when you mean all of us, etc. That’s being SPECIFIC, not exclusionary. Easy peasy. *dusts off hands*

Also, you have to stop with the whole “perverted dudes are gonna pretend to be a woman and exploit transness to access women victims if we accept trans women as women” argument I’m detecting here bc it’s bullshit. 

I mean, if a guy wanted to go into a women’s bathroom to rape or peep (or whatever), he would find a way and we all know that many many have. Not to mention that trans women (& trans men) are in much more danger while using their proper facilities than cis women are:

More helpful info (p. 73-4):

And don’t ignore the increased washroom danger to PoC and ppl of low socioeconomic status in the study described above. It’s time to get real here TWEFs & TWERFs…. >_____>

[pineappleisdelicious]

It looks like you’ve already edited this but just for extra clarification: woman and female ARE SYNONYMOUS. Telling radfems to use “women” to refer to all of us and “females” to refer to those with “female biology” (which makes no sense, trans men and women have male and female biology respectively, all the time, regardless of how many surgeries they’ve had done, by virtue of being men and women) will only result in upholding the status quo when it comes to these people. They more often than not already do use “female” to refer to what they see as “all women” and they define them by their “female biology”. So yeah, they include cis women and trans men in their definition. This is violent misgendering. Their is no such thing as “female biology”, and trans men are never “female”. If you’re discussing periods (for example), and you want to describe people who get them, you can say “people who get periods”. It’s really not that hard. I don’t expect TWERFS to listen to this, but @feministingforchange this is something you should be aware of.

[feministingforchange]

I did actually already know this which is why I tried to edit my poorly written post above, but thank you x100000 for putting this into much clearer words!  

For anyone interested, this is the edited version of my post 💗

[forevrdreamingofbetterthings]

Y’wanna know what’s really funny here? Years later, I’ve just discovered that my urogenital sinus abnormality is in fact an intersex condition so…. these TWERFS trying to deny that I’d be ousted as a woman by their twerfy, biologically essentializing standards is clearly bullshit. It’s painful to say this but by their rules, I am NOT a woman.

But my biology does not determine my gender.

I. DO.