vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Sat Mar 25, 2023 8:12 pm
So-called 'trans activists' have shown how tolerant and harmless they are in Nyoo Zilind. This woman has been defamed in the NZ media and constantly referred to as an 'anti-trans activist' when she is actually a women's rights activist.
An important explication made by one of the leading gender-critical feminists:
"[T]he accusation behind ‘TERF’, or ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’, is partly correct. Gender-critical feminists are not exclusionary of trans people per se, but they include in their constituency transmen rather than transwomen, and female nonbinary people rather than no/all nonbinary people. Gender-critical feminists do this because our constituency, as already explained, is female people. Far from excluding trans people per se from the constituency of feminism, gender-critical feminists are very concerned with the situation of transmen and female nonbinary people. We are very concerned with the massive increases of young girls reporting to gender clinics, with the risk clinical ‘affirmation’ policies for trans people pose to young lesbians and to lesbian culture, and with the increasing numbers of detransitioned women speaking out about their experiences."
(Lawford-Smith, Holly. Gender-Critical Feminism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. p. 61)
"From a gender-critical perspective, there is no automatic right to inclusion, because these spaces are part of a package of political provisions designed to improve women’s participation in public life, or increase women’s representation in areas where they have been historically underrepresented, or correct for structural, institutional, and interpersonal discrimination against women. But there might nonetheless be reasons to choose to include transwomen, if it can be shown that they are ‘like women’ or ‘unlike men’ in the respects that rationalize the spaces."
(Lawford-Smith, Holly. Gender-Critical Feminism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. p. 105)
"[G]ender-critical feminism is regularly accused by other feminists of being ‘trans-exclusionary’ and ‘anti-trans’. Is it? My answer is ‘no’. Gender-critical feminism is feminism for females, not feminism for feminine ‘gender identities’ or feminism for feminine ‘gender performances’. Because of this, it includes transmen, and excludes transwomen. It does not exclude trans people in general: on the contrary, it is very concerned to include transmen and female nonbinary people, because it is concerned with the harms done on the basis of female sex and as a result of the (attempted) imposition of norms of femininity. Because some women don’t fit those norms or find conformity to those norms comfortable, they end up thinking that they are not women, or being convinced by others that they are not women. When they then identify as transgender, whether as nonbinary or as transmen, this can come along with negative health impacts for the individual and have adverse consequences for society, impacting lesbian culture, diversity, and feminism.
Lesbian culture is impacted when lesbians repudiate this status and claim to be straight men instead. It is impacted when the lesbian partners of transmen feel under pressure to change their publicly claimed orientations because they no longer fit with those partners’ gender identities. Diversity is impacted when women look around and see only a narrow version of femininity represented under the label ‘woman’, because non-feminine females now identify as nonbinary or as transmen. And finally, feminism, understood as a political project aimed at women’s liberation, is impacted when its goal is downgraded so substantially, from gender abolitionism to a mild form of gender revisionism. Gender abolitionism is the only sensible response to a harmful system of norms that constrains people’s life choices and impacts on their well-being. Accommodating gender identity means leaving in place a system that harms women in general because that system is desirable from the perspective of a small group of trans people. No feminism worth its salt should be willing to make that trade."
(Lawford-Smith, Holly. Gender-Critical Feminism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. pp. 115-6)