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Trans-exclusive radical feminists think they’re super pro-woman by pushing for definitions of gender that reduce women to sexual biology—e.g. women are “ppl who menstruate/have vaginas/get pregnant/etc.” Actually? They’re about as anti-woman as you could possibly be. [Thread]
Trans women are women, and trans rights are women’s rights. As long as gender differences are rooted in sexual biology, women will never experience full liberation. This is bad news not just for trans women but for cis women too.
Yes, making sexual biology an “essential” component of gender is harmful to cis women. In fact, it NEVER works in cis women’s favor. TERFs are literally relying upon a logic that has always functioned to oppress the cis women that they somehow think they’re protecting.
Definitions about gender rooting the differences between “men and women” to sexual biology have a LONG-standing history of being used to relegate women to inferior status and subject them to sexual exploitation.
Building conceptions of gender upon sexual biology has consistently, throughout history, allowed cisgender men to reduce women to sexual objects and relegate them to a corner of society where they exist for male sexual pleasure and/or raising babies and that’s it.
Aristotle, as one example, explained the differences between men & women by starting w/ genitalia. He observed that vaginas must be “inverted” penises & extrapolated upon this a whole explanation for why women were lesser than men, first sexually, then physically, then rationally
Darwin, as another example, used his theory of evolution to explain how female sexual biology evolved to make women “less fit” than men. This provided rationale to oppose women’s suffrage bcuz biology “clearly” established women’s identity as existing beneath men.
These theories made another resurgence during the second-wave feminist movement, when ppl AGAIN built conceptions of gender upon sexual biology to keep women out of the workforce, arguing that evolutionary processes sexually “wired” men to provide and women to raise children.
But it gets worse. Making sexual biology an “essential” component to gender isn’t just used to make “women” inferior to “men.” It has JUST as long of a history of being used to justify men’s sexual violence.
Roman society took Aristotle’s ideas about vaginas being “inverted” penises & built upon it an entire sexual system where the penis was a virtue unto itself. Sexual domination became a primary way that men could prove their masculinity.
During the trans-Atlantic slave trade, as another example, pseudo-scientific ponderings about biology suddenly made it “natural” for white men to have not only a wife but also a slave mistress or two.
Biology here worked twice against Black women, who were not only sexually inferior but also racially inferior & therefore open game for white men to rape. Social Darwinism came along later to provide further justification for this type of thinking.
Today, we can even see this playing out in churches that hold to “complementarity of the sexes.” In many such churches, women become responsible for causing men to “stumble” because this is just how men are “biologically wired.”
Allegations of sexual abuse in such churches are, not surprisingly, through the roof. Whenever the differences btwn men & women are rooted in sexual biology it inevitably leads to men becoming sex-crazed animals and women their subordinates, leading to rape, assault, & abuse.
There’s actually no historical example where, when sexual biology was made an “essential” difference btwn men and women, it didn’t lead to horrendous abuse, dehumanization, and subordination of women. This is ALWAYS the trajectory of such thinking.
TERFs might say, “But we’re not reducing gender to sexual biology, we’re reclaiming it!” Fact is, when major TERF activists are calling women “people with vaginas,” they ARE reducing women to sexual biology. This is not reclaiming anything. It is falling for a trap.
TERFs might also say, “But we’re trying to argue that having a vagina doesn’t make you unequal.” That’s great, it doesn’t. But if they really think that making a vagina the essential difference between men & women contributes to women’s equality, they’re deceived, plain & simple.
No. Women are not “people who menstruate/have vaginas/get pregnant/have XX chromosomes/[insert-sexual-biology-here].” This type of thinking has a LONG history of being used to justify women’s subordination to men and, ultimately, their sexual exploitation.
Trans women are women. They are not men who just want to be women. They are not rapists looking to assault women. Trans rights don’t lead to more rape, but reducing ppl to sexual biology definitely does. It’s what encourages male sexual violence in the first place!
If TERFs were really pro-woman, they wouldn’t be making sexual biology essential to gender. They’d be learning better ways to articulate gender so that all ppl are uplifted & respected as human beings w/ infinite worth. They’d be learning from trans ppl instead of attacking them.
