I’m Tired of Trans Activists Silencing Women

I’m not fond of transpolitics. I’ve seen the damage this ideology is doing to women around the world. In the past I ignored it as a passing fad thinking women would just put their proverbial foot down and that would be that. In a word, I was ignorant of the damage it was doing until a few months ago.

Recently, my regular audience has widened to include women who were silenced by transactivists and their allies on other blogs that purport to be against misogyny. It’s not something I can ignore.

I’ve now taken a pro-active stance on this issue publishing several pieces by transpeople and radical feminists alike who know that gender is deadly to women and that women deserve spaces away from biological males. I also set up this blog FOR WOMEN. By re-publishing some important gender critical pieces and making my stance known I feel I’ve avoided a lot of drama. Plus, I’m really not the sort of person who caves in when I’ve created solid principles.

On Twitter, it’s a different scene.

Yesterday, I found one of PZ Myers tweets disparaging women who simply want their own spaces.

He was embracing the transpolitical rhetoric meant to silence women. TERF stands for ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist.’ It’s a massive straw man. We are however setting boundaries and making safe spaces for women which we EXPECT to be honoured by biological males. PZ Myers has a scientific background and I got into a Twitter fight with another male claiming he was doing masters level biology. You can imagine my shock at finding that someone at that level of biology could possibly fuck up so badly.

PZ Myers saw my tweet that said XX is female. He immediately engaged in an MRA stunt and claimed that Androgen Insensitivity was somehow an argument to my statement that females have XX chromosomes and males are XY.

I made sure to point out we were NOT talking about intersex conditions or endocrinology. PZ shut up after his one lazy shot but it took his male friend Ben Blanchard a bit longer. Other trans activists chimed in but said nothing of any value except disparaging remarks about me personally. I typically block anyone who starts sounding like an MRA.

What resulted was a Storify that I think is emblematic of the transpolitical garbage being tossed about by those who should know better.

After this, Blanchard went totally silent. Maybe he got to thinking ‘What makes a woman?’ Maybe I gave him something to chew on. I considered it a victory.
It appears all you have to do is ‘feel’ like you’re a woman and magically you become one. Sorry dudes but it doesn’t make it so.

53 thoughts on “I’m Tired of Trans Activists Silencing Women

  1. Chromosomes are indicators of sex, they don’t determine it. Some women with an XY karyoptype have conceived and borne a child. So we have to delve a bit deeper into genetics to find what makes a man and what makes a woman. Other than that I agree with your post entirely. Other than in cases of intersexuality men are men and women are women. The whole idea of gender being a continuum is sheer nonsense.

    • That’s impossible for them to conceive since they don’t produce eggs.

      They LOOK female, have some part of the female rep system but they’re really XY.

      They’ll go through life as a female, be socialized as a female since nobody can tell until they don’t menstruate and/can’t ovulate.

      That ain’t what’s going on here though.

      I’m talking about men who put on lipstick and heels and claim authority that they’re women and are entitled to our safe spaces.

    • Incorrect, chromosomes do indeed determine sex, for instance the SRY gene is responsible for the initiation of male sex determination. Humans sexually reproduce, as do all mammalian species and there are several billions of humans on this earth to prove this. Not all females will or can gestate a child, but ONLY females can do this. Females do not produce sperm, they produce ova. That is something only males can do.

      You’d be rewriting biology there, as is PZ Myers. You are saying the exceptions are the rule, instead they prove the rule as generally the tiny percentage that have chromosomal abnormalities or other problems are infertile. One unusual case does not mean that male is female, male reproductive anatomy and female reproductive anatomy differs considerably, hence you can take that case as applying to a female as despite the XY chromosomes that person developed as a female with female anatomy. Ditto for all others with AIS. Also as an FYI most intersex individuals are readily identifiable as male or female, and with conditions like Kleinfelters they only detect the condition when normal puberty doesn’t occur.

      So no great delving required, instead we need to delve into this idea of gender and inherent gender identity as what it means to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ differs from time to time and place to place and generally means ‘woman’ is placed as inferior (and has been denied participation in public life as a result) and ‘man’ superior. This harms women, as does rhetoric which denies women’s biology and lives and reduces them down to well, I haven’t figured it out completely, but seems to mean a set of stereotypical appearances like “long hair”, “wears a dress and high heels”, “uses makeup” rather than referencing biology and other factors that don’t change depending on where and when a person happens to live.

      • Precisely. We’re not talking about anomalies. We’re talking about males who suddenly insist they’re women and have all the same life experience and material realities as women when they quite clearly don’t.

        The amazing amount of delusion is something I can’t quite understand.

        We as women are supposed to think being a woman is just a feeling inside your head? It isn’t.

        My experience is based on my unique biology. I can get pregnant. That right there is one of the key defining elements of how, as a woman, I am socialized in the world.

        If I get raped it doesn’t stop there for me. I have to worry about pregnancy.

        Not being able to recognize these very real material realities erases women. It’s a bunch of people saying being a woman ‘is all in yer head’ when it’s obviously not. It’s people saying I have to accept males in a space reserved for females.

        • I see on Pharyngula, in a post titled “I guess I’m an MRA now” (I’ll leave you to add a link if you wish) has replied. In this he claims “TERFs” were flocking to him, I’m not so sure about that given it takes so little to be termed one – like talking about female biology, a sentence concerned for the safety of women or liking a post by someone they’ve labelled as such. I’m not so sure it wasn’t just chatting about the subject which is beyond the pale these days.

          Next up it’s back to sex isn’t black and white, and the fact is in early development of the foetus errors can occur in sex development but that no more means sex is a spectrum than limb reduction defects mean there is a spectrum of limbness. It just means there are exceptions, but that doesn’t work in with the rhetoric that sex and gender is just an identity that anyone can adopt, there are no real and important differences between any person depending on sex. Sex in humans does exist though, and it’s not just a feeling or a supposition even if there are some outliers.

          This starts getting interesting, as in another thread a while back “An exam question idea” a while back dealing with men asked to draw the female reproductive system he states “I teach both human physiology and developmental biology — it would be entirely appropriate to ask my students to draw pictures of reproductive anatomy on an exam” and says later women should be challenged to complementary test for the male reproductive system so he jumps from knowing this is different and consistent anatomically by sex, and what those reproductive organs do and what gametes they produce to “I don’t even know what it means to define “biological male” so absolutely.” It’s not long before someone jumps in to say “female anatomy”? When you mean “vaginas”, say “vaginas” and stop being cissexist. It’s really disappointing seeing you continue to make these mistakes, PZ.” Apparently, even acknowledging female anything exists is erasing trans people, but they don’t seem to see the contradiction to this and erasure of actual female persons in not allowing what is half the population to talk about their anatomy and being female, or even biologists to bring this up. It is apparently OK to talk about female or male badgers but labeling a uterus or vagina as a female anatomy is off limits there.

          Doesn’t stop the claim it’s a “continuum” again (was using a comment here by womanofthewoods) and discounting that we can tell this and what a baby boy or girl is at birth or an adult of either sex (even from behind or looking at those ugly feet) in the vast majority of cases. Then there is a classic as he says “The purpose of pointing that out is not to beat women over the head, but to tell them that they don’t get to beat the minority over the head.”

          Who is telling who to stop talking about their lives and biology again? It’s not women, just mentioning that female and male sex exists in humans or that those sexes are socialised differently is not beating up on a minority. It’s rather the opposite in fact. It’s acknowledging our unique reality.

          I suppose there a scrap thrown out to say “It is not misogyny to not want to sleep with a man. Acknowledging the status of trans woman is not a promise to have sex…” but this ignores the labelling of lesbians as phobic and the pressure on them to “examine their preferences” coming out of those quarters while men never have their preferences questioned, even if they are of the most spurious type like saying they don’t like large women or prefer blondes.

  2. I’d like to add that AIS women who are raised as girls, as it seems almost all are, are distinguishable from trans women in many different ways. It’s important that they do not react to androgens. That means the problem of male aggression, to the extent it is a biological predispostition, is nonexistent. Also, while they are taller on average than women and may have skeletal and “reach” advantages, they are only about 3 ” taller on average. Remember that photo of the trans basketball player who was like 7 feet tall, standing with those college girls? It’s not going to be a big deal like that is.

    They aren’t going to decide to present as males tomorrow. That isn’t an option for them.

    But most importantly, they have spent their lives as girls/women. They have been socially conditioned, they have experienced the problems women have. They have been subject to male domination their whole lives and they are therefore part of the oppressed sex class.

    Beyond all that, they are the exceptions that prove the rule of a dual-sex species.

    I love the new blog! You ought to keep this one.

  3. Biological sex is biological sex. Gender is a socially constructed heirarchy (with female humans – women- at the bottom). Lipstick doesn’t make anyone a female any more than wearing hiking boots and a hoodie makes one male.

  4. Everybody knows what is a girl and what is a boy. These dudebros just love using their own bullshit patriarchal scientific and patriarchal establishments to beat women over the head and waste our time. I looked at the storify comments and I saw a couple of willfully obtuse misogynists being complete assholes to a woman who refuses to be gaslighted, as usual. Isn’t that PZ dude a disappointment, though. He’s the alleged “skeptic” who helped blow the whistle on a serial rapist from one of the atheist conferences. But, men are men and they think they have the right to set up the terms for us and then change those terms whenever they like.

    What kind of skeptic accepts this tranny nonsense, anyway. A couple of weeks ago I was at the check out counter of a grocery store in the middle of nowhere and there was a magazine with Bruce Jenner on the cover and I made a comment about it to the clerk. I said, “I don’t think he can *become* a woman, do you?” She laughed and said, “I don’t think so.” No, of course not because you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that a person born female, with female genitals or, at least, a dominance of female hormones and characteristics (the docs do a test for this whenever children are born with two possibilities) is female and that this is a condition that cannot be changed. It’s the same for males born males – they are always males and the concept of “transitioning” is a fantasy; it is a delusion.

    As you said, HMQ, I didn’t think it was much of a dangerous delusion, either, until fairly recently. These men are men in every sense of the word and they have power. For instance, when the Planet Fitness thing happened, the local media had to be very careful because loads of organized men were calling in demanding that men be called “women” or “trans women” in their on-air discussions. Being part of a dangerous, violent mob doesn’t make men right – it just makes them dangerous and violent.

  5. Ok I am sticking my neck out here. I pretty much support trans women and I can understand how you might not and you are entitled to that opinion but I don’t understand what the problem is. You can certainly tell a transwoman that you don’t feel comfortable having him/her in your personal safe spaces. You can tell that to anyone who frightens or upsets you whether that is intentional or otherwise.

    • We’re not saying we don’t support transpeople. We’re saying we want our women-only spaces respected and they’re not being respected.

      I want lesbians to be able to say ‘I don’t like penis’ without a whole bunch of men in dresses screeching at them they’re ‘transphobes’ or ‘transmisogyny.’

      How is it misogyny to not want to sleep with a man? They’re not actually women. That’s the point.

      Women are being no-platformed, harassed and threatened all over the place because all transppl have to do is say ‘TERF!’

      Women-focused events, plays are being cancelled b/c these supposed ‘women’ are angry they’re about female biology. Vagina Monologues anyone?

      There’s a lot of work out there describing these things in greater detail.

      St. Chauvinism runs an excellent blog cataloguing this. You can click on the comment that blog left and go to the site.

      I wasn’t truly educated about this until very recently, say the last 4 months or so. Once I found out what was really happening, I had to open up about it since this very blog is women focused.

    • Women are free to tell a trans woman that women are frightened by males in female spaces because male violence against women is the greatest human rights crisis the world has ever known? Go ahead, tell ’em! What could possibly go wrong?

      • How many trans women have attacked people for asking for their own space??? I think that it isn’t impossible but I think that you probably don’t have any examples.

          • Well I mentioned the Vagina Monologues having to be cancelled b/c apparently talking about female biological realities is twanzphobia.

            Also, Michfest, big fucking deal. It’s a one year private event for women and apparently women can’t have one single music festival to themselves as that’s twanzphobic.

            Just yesterday on Twitter, some male said women having their own spaces is twanzphobic

            No platforming of several radfems who now can’t get published in mainstream media or speak at Universities because talking about women’s issues is twanzphobic.

            The facts are out there. I can’t list every single one but the translobby is constantly either invading female space, no platforming women who speak about women’s issues, harassing women who speak about women’s issues, cancelling women’s events, and so on and on it goes.

  6. I never liked PZ Myers, and this only confirms it to me. He’s a liberal through and through. You can be sure that when push comes to shove those types will not defend the oppressed. They will come back to their privilege like a dog goes back to his vomit.

    • I had no opinion of him until now. Committing the biggest logical fallacy ever: anomaly to somehow dismiss females that have a totally different biological and social reality.

      I must accept males into a female space because once a male says ‘I FEEL female’ must make it so.

      Just no.

    • You can find the worst of the irrational genderists over at Skepchick, an ostensibly atheist site that is supposed to be all about the promotion of rational thought but in reality is a 3rd wave post modernist circle jerk. A couple of years ago, one of their columnists wrote a long column trashing Dr. Harriet Hall as “transphobic” because she wrote a column in which she stated “only women breast-feed.”

      Here’s if you want to read what that asshole wrote:
      http://skepchick.org/2013/02/37609/

      • You’ll forgive me if I don’t bother with more woman hatred. Thank you for illuminating this for other readers who may have a libfem mindset and need to be notified of this male violence against women.

      • DoubleX,

        I just read part of it. I got this far, “The terms “women” and “men” are terms for gender;” and then I started skimming. It’s the same kind of gaslighting and silly arguments that PZ and the lesser known dudebro were giving the HMQ in the Twitter discussion referenced above.

        I have a theory about some of what is going on here with the atheists, the skeptics and with anyplace, including online, that women congregate to discuss our lives. These people, those who wish to speak for us either as atheists, skeptics or women, are gate-keepers for the established order.

        I’ve mentioned it before in a post a long time back about how libertarianism was infiltrated. I became a libertarian sometime in the 1980s, but by the 1990s, there were infiltrators – mostly Republican men like Ron Paul – who came in and soon became leaders and began to re-define libertarianism. The new libertarians somehow came to idolize Ayn Rand, a woman who hated libertarians and libertarianism. Now, the whole movement appears to be full of misogynists and Republicans masquerading as libertarians. I’m scared to call myself a libertarian, anymore. But, these people don’t even begin to speak for me or for the original principles of libertarianism.

        The original atheist was a woman name Madalyn Murray O’Hair. She was the first person to dare to use the word atheist. Then, a man murdered her and now a bunch of misogynistic white men claim to speak for atheists. They form groups and tell the world that atheists embrace Darwinism and the orthodox medical and scientific establishment, etc. I should be able to use the term “atheist” to describe myself but as soon as I do, I’ll be asked about evolution. Atheism is just that – atheism. It doesn’t mean that a person who is an atheist accepts anything else. But, these men and a whole huge misinformed mob of their followers claim to speak for me.

        The skepdick thing probably bothers me the most, though, because I consider myself a true skeptic. A true skeptic is one who questions and then follows through to investigate for herself. As a skeptic, I have come to wildly different conclusions about things like homeopathy than those espoused by the official skeptics who claim to speak for people like me. I saw a YT vid of Watson giving a very idiotic and ill-informed presentation on homeopathy at a skeptic conference and it was clear to me that she has never studied this subject or made her own experiments with it. She’s just espousing the establishment’s line, parroting what she has heard from others in her group – people like that monumental fraud, James Randi. She and Randi and the people in his organization who claim to be skeptics are not, they are simply gate-keepers for the patriarchal medical and scientific orthodoxy.

        All these people are gatekeepers to stifle serious inquiry to important subjects like science, medicine and spiritual matters.

        And, now it looks like we have something similar going on with men who want to control women’s lives and speak for us. They say, “I’m a woman,” just like Paul said, “I’m a libertarian” and Watson said, “I’m a skeptic.” Now, they’re going to try to speak for us and they are legion! They have the numbers and the support of their fellow men and quite a few women who probably just haven’t had a disturbing encounter with one of them yet.

        One of these people got upset with me here at this blog a few months ago because I said that men have penises. Yes, “men have penises” is the most hateful bigoted statement ever uttered. You’ll find it somewhere here in the comment section from months ago.

        These men and their supporters are patriarchal gatekeepers. They want to infiltrate us, literally get into our skin, and speak for us.

        • The exchange between Skepchik and Science-Based Medicine was a pivotal moment for me that drove me towards gender-critical feminism. The misogyny of the transgender movement had never before been so apparent.

          Though a few years previous to that exchange, I encountered a “transwoman” named Valerie Keefe, (who may actually not be trans at all, but a man who likes to play at being a lesbian on-line). Valerie insisted that women’s access to reproductive health services, such as abortion, was EXACTLY the same as transpeople’s access to gender-confirming surgeries. When I protested that women die in childbirth or from botched abortions, he said that transpeople kill themselves if they don’t get their surgeries.

          • XX,

            I just went back and read the original article at Science-based Medicine. Her article seems pretty reasonable and she starts out discussing why there appear to be so few women atheists. I can tell you why I don’t go to atheist conferences and it isn’t lack of money or anything else – it’s fear of men, both on my way to the conference and then once I arrive. Women aren’t safe traveling alone on the highways anymore and we never were safe in hotels, parking lots or in elevators and now it’s far, far worse. This is why women aren’t doing a lot of things these days. I believe it is the violent backlash documented and predicted by Susan Faludi.

            Does men’s biology make them more violent? It sure looks that way. Does putting lipstick on him mitigate or eliminate this violence? Certainly not.

            It’s a shame that the term “gender-critical feminism” had to be coined because feminism has always been critical of gender. No one group of people are meant to be subordinate to another group on any basis.

            A dead giveaway that you’re talking to a dude is that they use feminine-sounding names, both first and last. Actual women usually don’t use their first and last names online because of all the perverts and stalkers. The exceptions are women who basically have to because they are reporters or something like that.

            One exchange with a delusional pervert is pretty much all it took for me! Anybody defending these nuts has to have a screw loose, too.

          • Valerie Keefe is literally an MRA.

            He claims that women are privileged over men, although presumably he’s not privileged over men because he supposedly identifies as a trans woman, and trans women are the most oppressed class. Going by Keefe’s logic, I guess it makes sense. If men are more oppressed than women, then it’s not so illogical that a man claiming to be a woman would be even extra oppressed since us privileged women want to keep him out of the club.

  7. A website that catalogues violence by transwomen was started by a woman who was frustrated by all the reports of, “but there isn’t one single case of a transwoman assaulting a woman,” even though it’s demonstrably not true.

    https://allisonslaw.wordpress.com/

    There was one case in my home town. It’s mentioned on the Allison’s Law site, but you can also google “Christopher Hambrook.”

  8. Pingback: I guess I’m an MRA now - Atheist Boutique

    • Natalie Reed is another trans woman who’s literally an MRA. Reed gets very, very angry about the L’Ecole Polytechnique memorials in Montreal because it demonizes male violence and “excludes” trans women.

    • The crux of the matter is the claim was made in a blog post in which he was sneering at a woman who complained about a male academic who whipped out a article about fellatio in fruit bats in a conversation about human exceptionalism, and of course in the comments someone brought up that they wouldn’t see students alone because of the risk of people “making claims” and of course, he had to one-up by saying he faced an actual claim and how he had to race around to protect himself.

      It was an anecdote just used as a device to trash women, showing how quick they are to rush to accuse men as well as how stupid and mean they are to see sexual innuendo (it was only an article! A science one!) and I’d leave it at that. The truth or not of the claimed situation doesn’t really matter, it’s how it was used and in what context that counts IMO. As far as I am concerned it was about dismissing and smearing a woman and supporting a male academic. My understanding is that he’s repeated the claim since, no doubt to trash women again and portray himself as a big man standing above such things, but details have changed over time hence the argument. Sceptics love finding inconsistencies and tearing them apart and this is a great example of that.

      I think another blogger (Lousy Canuck) has made a similar claim about something he reckoned a ex said to others, but this was to push the trope of false claims at the same time as pretending what a good guy he was to stand above it all and that he doesn’t hold it against women at all.

  9. Pingback: Libfem’s Critical MRA Analysis: Females Who Want Space Are Sluts, Whores, Cunts and Nazis | Mancheeze

  10. Im a transgender woman. I don’t understand why women can’t advertise for genetic females only and have that honored. My experience is that there are plenty of events and places I can go where I’m embraced as a woman. So why bother people who want something for themselves. Women have it hard enough just being female and don’t need more crap to fill their time fighting females who should be on the same fight for equality. Just asking because I’m ignorant of why this fight is even an issue. Again I’m trans and I don’t see a point

    • Thanks for stopping by. I know some transppl that aren’t threatened by women having their own spaces and culture. It starts with recognizing you’re not female. I know that might be harsh to hear but in order to start to understand what this is all about, this has to be said.
      If you read through this blog and the many other pieces I’ve put on the sidebar you will start to understand this problem, and it’s a big one.

      Michfest, Vagina Monologues, Smith College and University Women’s studies depts. are embracing fantasies, that males can become females. This one point has to be stated over and over again.

      • I respectfully disagree with being male. I wont debate who is or isn’t. What is true is that if the so called TERF’s want privacy I say let them have it. I don’t know a single tgirl who wants more problems. If advertised as a TERF area or event great we won’t go. But please don’t diminish me while you seek your goals.

        • Well, that was quick. I thought you actually wanted to understand this issue. If you’re going to call women who want their own spaces away from males ‘TERFS’ then you’re not welcome here any more.

          Welcome to the banhammer.

          • Haha, standard male behaviour. He reminds me of those male ‘feminists’ who sashay in and say something nicey-nicey, and then when you don’t give them the cookie they’re after, the barely cloaked and ugly misogynist slurs pop right out in your face like a trenchcoat-hidden boner.

  11. The thing about PZ, and other people in the public eye that I could mention, is that they couldn’t possibly believe what they profess to believe. They say they believe women should have autonomy and the right to speak without harassment; that women shouldn’t be co-erced into sex; that bullying against feminists on the internet is reprehensible… And then you read the thread to that item, and it’s just contempt and hatred towards feminists, the whole thing.

    He has his funny ironic title about being an MRA, but he’s acting no differently to one. Just smears and ridicule and hatred. Absolutely no respectful consideration of what feminists believe. How is he not full of shit?

    • “The thing about PZ, and other people in the public eye that I could mention, is that they couldn’t possibly believe what they profess to believe. ”

      Yup I’m sure any of the trans ally straight male “feminists” would be happy to put their actions where their delusions are and actually date some of these transwomen-are-real-women. Penis shmenis. Oh wait, probably not… bigots! Transphobes the lot of them!

      Though unfortunately it seems the majority of MTTs are heterosexual and busy preying on lesbians so unfortunately I don’t think we’ll get to see too much of this delightful hypothetical in action. Would be nice to see male sexual agency questioned and degraded in the same manner that it is for women. But of course we won’t.

  12. As a gay man in his 50s, I just discovered the new level of madness of the transgender women in the last year. WOW! Who are they to tell real women that they have to accept them just because they put on a dress and some lipstick. As far as I remember lesbians are not interested in penises or Rubbermaid vaginas. I’ll side any day with the lesbian organizations who refuse to cater to them. They have the right to have activities without these “false” women. I remember them in clubs in the 80s and they were a pain in the neck back then and it seems it just got worse.

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