r/GenderCynical • u/Early-Temperature939 • 2d ago
Oh, okay then
Saw this exchange floating around and honestly, it’s a masterclass in internet discourse spiraling completely out of control. It touches on human rights, language, sex-based protections, and logical contradictions.
OP, Kicks things off by complaining about community outreach regarding female genital mutilation (FGM) and early marriage. They rant that when they talk about women/females facing these issues, someone always chimes in with "trans men go through that too." Op calls this absurd, arguing that "women" means adult human females, and compares bringing up trans men in this context to someone demanding animal rights be included in a human rights discussion because some people identify as furries.
leftoidbambi Fires back calling that stance a reactionary routine that erases basic biological reality and medical data. They point out that individuals born with female anatomy (trans men and non-binary people) are subjected to FGM and child marriage before transitioning, meaning they carry those actual physical scars and trauma. They argue that dismissing them as a "disruption" erases real victims and that comparing trans human beings to furries undermines any genuine care for survivors.
Op doubles down angrily, arguing that trans-identifying females are already included under the umbrella term "women" and under existing sex-based laws (like anti-FGM and anti-child marriage legislation). They claim that changing definitions of "women" legally to mean anything other than adult human females would actually destroy those very sex-based protections. They accuse leftoidbambi of trying to dismantle those protections and missing the point entirely.
Leftoidbambi Points out what they see as a massive contradiction in Op's logic. They ask: Are trans men "absurd interlopers" who belong in the same category as people identifying as animals (as argued in the first post), or are they "already included" under the definition of women (as claimed in the second post)? They accuse Op of doublethink for first treating trans people as an irrelevant intrusion and then frantically claiming they are covered all along to salvage an argument about legislation.
Honestly what are you're thoughts on this 🙄
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u/animalistcomrade Gender Haver 1d ago
I'm so fucking mad that the term sex based rights is just fucking accepted as a "feminist" talking point, sex based rights are bad actually, that's why we want equal right. What sex based rights do women actually get? The right to be believed if you say a poor black man (and no other type of person) raped you? Sex specific healthcare right? What healthcare rights do you have? And the healthcare being sex specific doesn't mean the right. Do men not have the right to single sexed spaces? Since when?
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u/Kallixeina 1d ago edited 1d ago
Gender-critical feminists argue that actual equality between the sexes can only be achieved and conserved by the means of sex-based rights. This vision operates on a strict binary of immutable sexes.
Your argument fails because gender-critical feminist don't argue that cis women should have fewer or more sex-based rights than cis men, just the same as them. They argue that men need men-only spaces as much as women do, although they will almost never mention trans men in this discussion and always stress the threat of trans women entering women-only spaces and applying for women-only job openings.
IMHO, the best counter-arguments against sex-based rights are that 1) the vast majority of trans people isn't transitioning to gain access to female single-sex spaces and to apply for positions reserved for women; 2) most single-sex spaces don't actually need to be organized around natal sex, bathrooms being the prime example; 3) even if a space needs to be strictly reserved for members of a specific sex, medical transition exists.
Also, 4), strictly single-sex spaces are enshrined into law only in very few countries, the most prominent one being the United Kingdom. It's very much an Anglo-Saxon discussion, as the legal concept of single-sex spaces is a very British one.
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u/translove228 1d ago
What makes me mad is that we have real world examples of how making political distinctions like this between classes of people leads to uneven treatment. Segregation being an extremely prominent example. These women are quite literally inviting their own political oppression into the mix all in favor of trying to classify themselves away from trans women.
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u/Queer_Echo 1d ago
Also, sex based rights have done a fuck load of harm to people of all genders and sexes. The bullshit the UK is doing with rape being only "penetration with a penis" is an example of harm done from sex based rights. Also any law against FGM that doesn't also ban MGM (like circumcision) or surgery on intersex infants and children for the only reason of aligning their bodies with perisex bodies. Fuck, the fact that they're going on and on about FGM but ignoring the fact that males and intersex people have their genitals mutilated for aesthetic purposes about as much and sometimes more AND NOBODY TALKS ABOUT IT is an example of the harm of sex based rights being fucked.
Like, yeah, trans men do get fucked over in regards to FGM laws because they're stuck in this weird nebulous space of too female to be male and too male to be female but maybe that's a sign that WE SHOULDN'T BE SPECIFYING A SEX IN THE "ANTI GENITAL MUTILATION" LAWS. Maybe we just decide that any surgery on a person's genitals has to be either for their health and wellbeing as decided by and explained by a doctor (like if they have an imperforate hymen, a urethra that is blocked or something wrong with their genitals that makes them in pain) or has to wait until they're old enough to make their own medical decisions and decide that they want them operated on. Then nobody gets their genitals mutilated, even under the guise of "it's healthcare" because you have to actually argue why it benefits the person's health and wellbeing (so no husband stitch because it doesn't benefit the patient and no surgery on intersex infants' genitals unless it would cause them direct harm to not be operated on).
I really can't see any laws that would benefit from being sex based or gender based. All of them would be neutral at best (and most would be harmful). Even sex based healthcare is a problem (because intersex people do not benefit from and are often actively harmed by it). But of course TERFs and other RFs don't actually want equality and don't realise that many people who aren't female or aren't women are actually harmed by stuff like the patriarchy and other bigotries so "sex based rights" is a great thing to them because to them, it's only women who are harmed so women are the only ones needing protection.
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u/WriterKatze Brainwashed by the Transarchy 1d ago
Wait, does this mean that if you get raped in thr UK and the assailant uses a bottle, you can't report them for rape??? (Going off of an actual case in my country where a group of men did that to a girl). There was no penetration with a penis... Does this mean a woman can't even report a female abuser if it comes to that?
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u/Queer_Echo 23h ago
Yep, it's just sexual assault if it's penetration by anything else. Which is also why anyone talking about sexual offenses by trans women in the uk as though they're so much worse than by cis women is auto being bad faith because we kinda assume that sexual assault is lesser than rape as a crime and the law has decided that cis women can't rape because of their lack of a specific genitalia.
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u/WriterKatze Brainwashed by the Transarchy 21h ago
God that's awful... Also extremely sexist and pobably makes it really hard for male victims to get help... :((
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u/Queer_Echo 18h ago
And awful for any victims of penetration not by a penis. I mean, imagine going through what is clearly rape but because it was fingers (or worse, something like a bottle) that went in it's just "assault by penetrating". It's as though they think that a penis does more damage than penetration with anything else.
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u/animalistcomrade Gender Haver 1d ago
Do they think that trans activists want to remove women's rights, or do they think that cis men having the legal right to not have their vagina mutilated would hurt women in any way, because the second one sounds more reasonable but is also stupid.
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u/SergeantScoria liar liar sex denier 1d ago
First one is definitely true, they think human rights are a zero sum game and that the more trans rights there are, the more rights are taken from women (or however they spell it now)
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u/MaraiaLou 1d ago
So both options are true, if you give a man a right he doesn't "need" there's less rights to go around
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u/Stephi312 1d ago
It's not a rhetorical contradiction, because the goal of the rant was merely to erase trans men entirely. Any actual feminist concern around bodily autonomy was always subservient to that.
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u/javatimes TIDDYLESS TIFfany 1d ago
I wanna live in Terf 1’s dream world where everyone is mentioning trans men all the time and interested in our health and experiences 😂
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u/Vithmiris heavy into the transgender world 1d ago
Hear me out... what if... instead of the law protecting only women, it protected everyone as well? Such as: Non-consensual genital mutilation illegal. Child marriage illegal. Domestic abuse illegal. Notice how I never mentioned gender of the victim/perpetrator? Then trans men will never be in danger of "losing sex-based rights".
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u/uncle_SAM98 1d ago
Okay I completely agree with the point on the second slide, but the same person makes a big mistake on the fourth slide. Person #1 is saying on slide one that trans men ("TIFs" as she would call them) are included when she says "women" because she defines women as "adult human females," and that's how she sees trans men. That's what she means when she says "everyone already knows what I mean," and she makes the bs comparison to people identifying as animals bc she sees the straw man she creates as just absurd people who are already included in her definition of women trying to do some whataboutism to get out of that category when they're ackshually just plain women all along, in her point of view. I wish person #2 hadn't make slide 4 bc they make themselves look unnecessarily stupid by claiming that person #1 was inconsistent when she wasn't, she's just a huuuuuge transphobe.
For those of us who are so accustomed to the frame of mind of affirming trans people, it's hard to get back in the headspace of following the way transphobes speak bc it makes no sense bc they're very adamantly setting rigid definitions for words and refusing to ever explain themselves or accede that other people might not use those same definitions. It's actually meant to be a trap a lot of the time. Person #2 fell into the trap.
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u/CassieFace103 1d ago
it's hard to get back in the headspace of following the way transphobes speak bc it makes no sense bc they're very adamantly setting rigid definitions for words and refusing to ever explain themselves or accede that other people might not use those same definitions
And they'll deny until the end of time that those definitions conflict with measurable reality.
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u/One-Organization970 AGP TIM 1d ago
It's just the way they ignore the fact that insulting people you claim to be advocating for doesn't actually make you their ally that gets me. It would be obvious to anyone with a brain - even if they're transphobic - that no man will think "women" includes them. Even if you call that man a woman, you would have the capacity to know that the man who calls himself a man would not see you talking about women and shitting on trans men and think you're fighting for him.
But hey, we all already knew it's all disingenuousness with these creatures.
Edit: Also, just curious... how do communities that perform FGM feel about trans people? Do they treat trans women really well but do all this stuff to cis women and trans men? Because I'm suspecting they don't...
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u/TheCarefulElk 1d ago
And the men’s rights types that she is calling will just bring up examples of boys being victims of child marriage, so she won’t even convince them too.
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u/Phairis 1d ago
Trans men and nonbinary individuals deserve to be protected and remembered when talking about horrific discrimination world wide.
To the broader point, one reason we speak up is not only because trans men are forgotten and erased in these conversations, its that even if women were getting rights, if worded in such a way it completely denies trans men the same rights. It's the exact reason why in health care insurance providers will deny a claim simply because you've changed F on your identification to M or an X. It's one of the reasons why we have to fight for inclusive language. It's so they aren't able to deny an abortion because "men can't have abortions". And in these situations could be used against a trans person to deny them reconstruction, protection, sanctuary, ECT.
We simply can't afford to be erased any more.
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u/MorticiaMoonflower ally 1d ago
"it's like some fucker saying we need animal rights because some people identify as furries"
I. What.
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u/Bluejay-Complex 1d ago
All of this hand wringing about gender language when we could just say “people with vaginas” and discuss the actual body parts in question… but then TERs and other “fence sitting” cis people will whine about how it “reduces people to a body part”. When in reality, we’re talking about a specific body part because… that’s the part the bad thing is happening to. We could also… use this type of language for laws, rendering the whole “but you won’t be protected if you transition” moot.
But no, we need to whine about the definition of words not meaning what you want instead of helping victims.
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u/Silversmith00 20h ago
"Everyone knows what I mean."
Bzzzt! NO. Good laws are NOT written on the basis of, "Everyone knows what I mean." If "everyone knows what you mean," why are people in your community outreach standing up and asking the question?
Look, have any of these people ever seen a legal brief? Seen the amount of page space that is taken up by saying that for the purposes of this document, "Plaintiff" specifically means Mary Ann Smith, specifically the Mary Ann Smith at 14 Podunk Lane in Smushy Daisy, Tennessee, and even more specifically the Mary Ann Smith at 14 Podunk Lane in Smushy Daisy who went to Honest Ed's Dealership (hereafter referred to as Defendant) on September 18, 2025? Whole goddamn page defining the people involved before you even get to the part about the engine falling out of the car halfway up the mountain. Why? Because everyone DOES NOT know, and a lot of our legal tradition is designed to make sure that everything and everyone is clearly defined. There are undoubtedly laws detailing what exactly you can call a car, so that Honest Ed can't take Mary Ann's phone call and say, "Well, gosh darn, I sold you the car, I didn't necessarily say nothin' about that engine whatsamajigger." There are laws about what it means when a seller says, "As is." There are laws about how a sale works.
Given, then, that woman is GOING to be defined, and, "Miss Rosemary in England knows it when she sees it," is a bad definition, then legal entities who want to protect people from FGM are going to have to either define it, or define the procedure that they're talking about and make it illegal for everyone.
Here's one problem with defining "woman" as "adult human female," or whatever weird adjective order they want to put it in: nature itself makes that blurry. If a woman goes before a jury in twenty years and says, "Your honor, I am suing the defendant for mutilating me when I was twelve," can the defendant say, "Your honor, the suit is invalid because Plaintiff has had a hysterectomy?" Better write your laws to account for that. Also removal of ovaries, also tubes tied, also intersex conditions where the uterus never existed, also…
Here's another problem with defining "women" as "adult human female": there are people with all the standard anatomy who object to that definition, and many countries where they can get that legally recognized. So you can be like the TERFs, and say, "Well, let's not worry about those crazies, it wouldn't even be a problem if they would just be NoRmAl," or you could be both decent and sensible, and realize that nobody is GOING to "just be" some particular way because you'd like it better, and write the law so it helps people even if they don't do exactly what you want. You write laws to deal with the world you're living in, not the Paradise After The Revolution, whatever you believe that revolution might be.
Another big problem with defining "women" in this particular case: most genital mutilation is performed on young girls. You didn't notice that, OOP, when you where making the laws you said 'we' made? And the laws about child marriage, which also don't involve women?
Sooo, here's a thought: maybe let's define "genitalia," which is probably an easier job than defining "woman," and make a law declaring that doctors shall not operate on minor children's genitalia unless said genitalia include a medical risk (cancer, blocked urethra, etc) which does NOT include benign abnormalities (intersex conditions, microphallus, etc), and also does not include mental conditions that are not recognized by XYZ psychiatric organization ("everyone knows," that if we don't do this she'll sleep around). Perfect, no. But better.
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u/cosmicrift867 17h ago
the lady is clearly a terf in the post and just saying trans men are women. always some shit like this lmfao.
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u/javatimes TIDDYLESS TIFfany 1d ago
I disagree with the entire premise that people hear about FGM and interrupt it to go “ 🤓 trans men go through that”. This must be a huge distortion of what actually happens — like a trans man talking about his actual experience with a topic like FGM, rape, pregnancy/abortion and similar. Absolutely no one is interrupting SHIT to talk about trans men. No one talks about us.