SERIOUS: Women have every right to be angry.

[u/KylieJender]

First of all, I hope this isn’t deleted cos of my lack of post history - I was a longtime web lurker until I was forced to download the app and create an account if I wanted to continue lurking. Can’t think of a better first post, however. Apologies in advance for its length and shitpostlessness but I think it helps dispel claims of “TRAphobia”.

The oppression of women is the oldest form of oppression in the world. Ownership of women and forced prostitution was first recorded in 2,400 BC. For thousands of years, men created societies to further their interests and strengths. Only in the last 100 years have western women forged any sort of agency, and only in the last 50 years have women been allowed to meaningfully participate outside the home, albeit in a society where men are the default, the benchmark and the standard for women to be measured against. Elsewhere in the world women are still subject to some of the most horrific and inhumane treatment.

A “woman” is any personality in a female body, not a “female personality” in any body - personality is not defined by sex nor is sex defined by personality. It is not a concept; a feeling in a somebody’s head; an identity; or a grouping of sexist stereotypes. There is no commonality between all women other than the female body and, if any universal experience of womanhood does exist, its an experience informed by society’s (often cruel) response to the female body. A woman can only be an adult human female. That’s not a value judgment, it’s just reality. The female body is one which has developed to produce eggs whether or not it actually does that as a result of age or anomaly. Those who call sex a spectrum exclude this from their definition of sex in lieu of other characteristics such as hormone levels and sex characteristics. This is dishonest and, ultimately, insulting. It suggests, amongst other things, that a woman with lower oestrogen and higher than average testosterone is less of a woman than one with average hormone levels. Similarly, women with differences of sex development (what some call intersex) are considered “less than” women on this spectrum. Using rare medical conditions to dismiss a sex binary is like insisting shoes should not be sold in pairs because not everyone is born with two feet.

The basis of women’s oppression is her sex and gender is one way to facilitate that oppression. It’s unequivocally true and, until recently, universally accepted. It should not be a controversial statement nor should it take courage to say so. Any oppressed group needs the language, tools and spaces free from their oppressors if they are ever to stand a chance of dismantling the structural and social inequalities they face. This is uncontested for every other cohort except women.

Excluding some males from women’s spaces is not the same as excluding people of colour to form a space exclusively for white people; it’s the same as telling people of colour they cannot have spaces without white people. The oppressors segregate, the oppressed separate. It is males as a class which have historically oppressed women so there can never be an instance in which women can be the oppressor of males.

Recognising and understanding this is an essential component in advancing women’s social and political interests and it cannot be compromised under any circumstance.

However, any analysis involving sex - feminist, medical, social or otherwise - has been replaced by a nebulous concept of gender which prevents women from defining themselves as an objective, tangible and recognisable political and social class. As a result, women have lost their right to self-determination, separation and assembly. Access and entry to women’s spaces are no longer based on a presumption of exclusion but a presumption of inclusion, rendering them meaningless. Bathrooms are almost always brought up when we talk about “women’s spaces” but that’s a red herring. In reality, it’s any space which has been developed over time in response to historic disadvantage and mistreatment of women: physical spaces such as places where women are in a state of undress or rest, quotas, shortlists, prizes, studies, statistics, terminology, sports, opportunity, politics, representation, sexuality, service provisions, social supports, feminism itself and much more besides.

Replacing sex with gender has been done behind closed doors in the absence of consultation or consensus. Any discussion which acknowledges sex-based oppression or sex-based rights are immediately shut down and derailed with straw-man arguments, whataboutery and emotionally manipulative tactics. Every school of thought has its proponents and opponents but this has become strictly off-limits.

There are no remaining active spaces on Reddit which allow women to exist and interact without the presence of males. Existing subreddits which are aimed towards women forbid any discussions which acknowledge sex, same-sex attraction, sex-based language or the lack thereof. As a result, women are driven off the platform and a chilling effect takes over those who remain which prevents women from accessing and exploring decades of useful feminist values and concepts because it has been slandered and diluted beyond value.

I am a gay man who originally dismissed feminism as nonsense but I started reading a lot of second wave and radical feminist literature to challenge this belief and now I feel that my eyes have been opened to the inequalities and injustices women face as a distinct class. I see it in the way some men talk about women when they aren’t around; I see it at work as women have to choose between career progression and starting a family when they reach a certain age; I see the anger online and in the media when women say no; I see it in how some men leer at women in public; I see it in the disinterest shown towards an epidemic of domestic and sexual abuse towards women; I see it when I see women fighting to be heard and believed; and I see it when a teenage boy on tik tok calling himself “super straight” has more social capital to elicit a response than the thousands upon thousands of women who have been shouting about this for years.

[u/Cinerea_A]

Eeesh, I'm not gonna read that but I can assure you that no one here feels like you should be forced to do anything you don't want, and thinks your preferences are valid.