I Think One Of The Major Issues In Getting People To Understand What Radfems (or Any Group, Really) Believe

I think one of the major issues in getting people to understand what radfems (or any group, really) believe in is the idea that outliers in a data set suddenly redefine any given concept. People will say that biological sex is a spectrum due to the fact that people with DSDs exist. But that's not how a spectrum works. A spectrum is when all possible options are distributed across an axis and with statistically significant occurrences for all options. If, for example, 10% of the population had Turner's Syndrome, then the spectrum for biological sex would probably be XX, XY, and X, because common occurrences have to be on our radar in order to understand the biological differences and their effects on medical treatment etc. All other chromosomal occurrences would be outliers. It doesn't mean that the outliers don't exist, it just means it is considered abnormal.

I think a better way of understanding it is to look at how we define the human body. If you asked anyone on the street to describe the human body, they would probably say a human has two arms, two legs, a head, two eyes, etc. Every day, lots of children are born missing a vital organ or with too many toes or some other anatomical anomaly. But baby Sally having 13 toes doesn't suddenly make it so that we have a "spectrum of toe counts from 1 to 13". That would require a large portion of the population to have too many or not enough toes. The reality is that she has 3 extra toes. It doesn't make her non-human, it makes her toes an EXCEPTION to the rule of 10 toes.

I just wish people would understand this mindset and how it has such a huge impact on the way data is recorded and thus on health outcomes.

[the art is not mine! Template free on Canva, designed by National Studio; text from me]

Don't believe in sexist stereotypes.

BBC News

Extreme heat can double stillbirth among working women - study - BBC News

Women in India are found to be twice as likely to lose babies if they are working in hot conditions.

Women in the “Global South” are at the forefront of experiencing the worst of climate change and they are facing the gravest of consequences due to global inaction on this catastrophe.

You know those yard signs that are like "In this house we believe: climate change is science, no humans are illegal, gay rights are human rights" etc. and they basically just sum up the American liberal belief in one easy-to-read sign? I want one of those for radfem beliefs that just sums our talking points up. I'm thinking something along the lines of "In this house we know that:

-lgb rights are human rights

-feminism exists for the liberation of women

-abortion and contraception are healthcare

-hormone replacement and plastic surgery for the purpose of gender transition are NOT healthcare

-Pornography fuels the sex trafficking industry and both industries exploit women endlessly for male pleasure

Anyone else have additions?

LGB stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bi. Why on earth would that be a tag for bigots and racists? Sexuality has nothing to do with race.

As to your question about trans people: sexuality is almost always based on a person's sex, not their gender identity. The reason for this distinction is that while sexuality and gender identity are technically both abstract concepts, sexuality is rooted in concrete physiological processes. What I mean to say is that when a human being is sexually attracted to another human being, there are concrete signs of it in their body (ranging everywhere from an increased heartrate/perspiration to an erection to the body self self lubricating).

Gender identity, on the other hand, has exactly zero concrete markers. Let me ask you this: is a trans woman still trans if she has a penis? How about facial hair? What about if she doesn't like to dress in feminine clothing and prefers short hair?

Now imagine the person I described above is an identical twin, but their twin still identifies as male. So both twins have short hair and facial hair, with looser fitting clothing, but one twin identifies as a trans woman and one does not. You cannot tell the twins apart much as their gender identity is one of the few things that is different about them. My guess is that anyone attracted to one of them on first glance would almost certainly be attracted to both of them, because they look exactly the same. So if a gay man is sexually attracted to the one who identifies as male, he is almost guaranteed to be attracted to the one who identifies as a trans woman. Does that now make the gay man straight? Bi? Why does the gender identity of one person affect the sexuality of another person?

This is the problem with using an abstract concept with no concrete markers as a basis of identity for who you are sexually attracted to: no one else can see the abstract concept. Which is why sexuality has always been rooted in a person's sex instead of their gender identity. Lesbian women are only attracted to other females, and they are not aroused by male genitalia. Gay men are only attracted to other males, and they are not aroused by female genitalia. And Bisexual people are attracted to men and women and can be aroused by either set of genitalia. This is something that can be scientifically tracked due to those concrete physiological markers and is in fact, the definition of sexuality.

Let me take my analogy one step farther just to prove the point: say the gay man in my scenario never actually meets these twins, just passes them in public and knows he feels sexually attracted to both of them when he sees them. By your logic, he would be considered bisexual because he was attracted to both a man and a trans woman, but his brain saw two people with short hair, facial hair, and loose fitting clothing who looked exactly the same, so he assumed they were both male. Thus, in his mind, he is still gay.

It's the idea that one person's identity should alter the sexuality of someone else that I have a problem with. Why does a random stranger's gender identity affect my sexuality? If I am dating a man who one day wakes up and feels they should identifying as trans, am I now in a lesbian relationship despite only exclusively being attracted to men my whole life? Do you see the problem with replacing sex with gender identity in the realm of sexuality? It simply doesn't work because it just becomes a tangled web of everyone having to announce their gender identity for people to know what their sexuality is. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to just use biological sex in regards to determining sexuality, don't you think?

You know those yard signs that are like "In this house we believe: climate change is science, no humans are illegal, gay rights are human rights" etc. and they basically just sum up the American liberal belief in one easy-to-read sign? I want one of those for radfem beliefs that just sums our talking points up. I'm thinking something along the lines of "In this house we know that:

-lgb rights are human rights

-feminism exists for the liberation of women

-abortion and contraception are healthcare

-hormone replacement and plastic surgery for the purpose of gender transition are NOT healthcare

-Pornography fuels the sex trafficking industry and both industries exploit women endlessly for male pleasure

Anyone else have additions?

continuing the trend set by

dr seuss -- stole from Helen Palmer, his wife

paul klee -- stole from Hilma af Klint

andy warhol -- stole from Hilma af Klint

albert einstein -- stole from Milena Maric, his wife

cy twombly -- stole from Hilma af Klint

hayao miyazaki -- stole from Akemi Ota, his wife

leo tolstoy -- stole from Sophia Tolstoy, his wife

otto struve + henry norris-russell + ejnar hertzsprung -- stole from Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

george lucas -- stole from Marcia Lucas, his wife

f scott fitzgerald -- stole from Zelda Fitzgerald, his wife

john steinbeck -- stole from Sanora Babb

karl marx -- stole from Jenny von Westphalen, his wife

watson and crick -- stole from Rosalind Franklin

piet mondrian -- stole from Marlow Moss

jackson pollock -- stole from Janet Sobel

wolfgang amadeus mozart -- stole from his sister, Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart

felix mendelssohn -- stole from his sister, fanny mendelssohn

today i had the dubious honor of learning that william wordsworth stole entire passages out of the journals his sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, wrote.

"The Grasmere Journal and Wordsworth's other works revealed how vital she was to her brother's success. William relied on her detailed accounts of nature scenes and borrowed freely from her journals. This passage is clearly brought to mind when reading William's 'Daffodils', where her brother, in this poem of two years later, describes what appears to be the shared experience in the journal as his own solitary observation. Her observations and descriptions have been considered to be as poetic if not more so than those of her brother."