That word, I mean non-word, womxn: how to say it

So my very last word on this is, next International Women's Day I hope to be marching and singing again. And whatever the theme be it Period Poverty, A Knicker Revolution, WASPIs or Resucitation education I will not be asking the women around me to show me their birth certificate or how they identify, because when they stand beside me, march and sing beside me they are my allies and my sisters and together we are stronger.

Oh trisher come on.

Galaxy The Paralympics really isn't a good comparison for anything it is currently going through a lot of examination for what it defines as a disability.

Elegran you like everyone else can call yourself whatever you want because in doing so you do not impose on other people. If they then choose to call you something you do not accept you are free to tell them, but they still may not recognise the name you choose. I am really not expecting you all to believe trans women are women or trans men are men simply that they have the right to believe that they are and can call themselves such. Just as anyone can call themselve non binary.
Doodledog I'm sorry you feel my passion rules out humour I simply don't understand why it is funny to think that only transwomen can be militant. I suppose you don't expect everyone to have the same sense of humour do you?
I hope you all read the post from WearingLadies Things on the thread about menstruation. If not I suggest you find it. It's real life experience and not the world of threats and social media hate speech which some seem to think is the real world
Fennel there was much speculation about that in the 70s one other proposal was that it originated from 'woe to man".

I wonder if the word 'woman' was originally coined from 'man with a womb'?

I agree doodledog although lots of indications the tide is turning but I fear it may be too late.

I can’t help thinking that attempting to proscribe any attempt to lighten the tone of what was becoming a polarised discussion on the grounds that it is something that you are passionate about the subject weakens your argument for free speech, trisher.

Nothing that I (or anyone else) is saying suggests that we are not supportive of trans people, nor that we are not feminist in our motivation, and I feel that it is insulting to insinuate that this is the case.

Galaxy, I wonder how long sex will remain a protected characteristic? I worry that it won’t be for much longer.

So if this transman or transwoman says that I, who was born a girl and grew up as a woman, is not a woman any more but a ciswoman or a womaxn, he or she doing the same to me or any other person whose sex/gender history is the same, as you describe Galaxy doing to your transman? I.E, giving us a label we don't want?

So if I as an able bodied person tried to enter the Paralympics for example it would not be persecution for someone to point out that I am able bodied. In certain circumstances sex is important and a protected characteristic.

I am not insisting anyone calls themselves anything. I know you cant change sex as does everyone. It's not persecution to say people cant change sex.

But it's not you who has to change to accommodate the belief Galaxy it's the transman who has to be something he denies- that he's a woman. So it's as if you were an atheist and someone came along saying I believe in God and so must you. Now you can believe he isn't a man but you can't make him a woman, anymore than someone can make you believe in God. And if you insist he must call himself a woman you are persecuting him. (Only as you believe he's a woman you are persecuting another woman)

Hold on are you saying I am guilty of hate speech.
No it isnt persecution trisher. I dont believe in god, this does not mean I am persecuting those who hold religious beliefs. In fact to force me to say I believe in god would actually be persecution.

It is persecution to punish or harrass someone because of their beliefs, so insisting a transman is a woman is persecution. It is similar to what was sometimes done to gay people, refusing to accept their sexuality and regarding it as treatable. Some may be 'saved' others may committ suicide.

So how many times do I have to say violence in any form isn't acceptable Galaxy before you will stop trying to infer that I accept rape? I could quite easily ask you if you accept all the hate speech aimed at trans people, but I trust you don't and I accept you mean no harm (although you may inadvertently cause some). It is a pity you can't do the same for me.

To be honest trisher I quite welcome a bit of levity in the debate, and I feel passionate about it as well.

Because the trans activists you are stating are the saviours of feminism are using threats of violence. Again and again. Accompanied by some men and some women cheering them on.
It is not persecuting someone to recognise their sex, for transmen in particular it is often life saving.

Elegran the term "Womxn" was coined by women in Seattle to include all taking part in a march. It may have been adopted by some trans-women but it is not their property nor indeed their invention. Is ignoring the women who created it really feminism?

Doodledog perhaps you shouldn't make jokes about something I am passionate about. Militant women were (and still are) dismissed by other women, wiped out of history by other women, because they were seen as too radical (investigate Kitty Marion) and have been largely forgotten, until recently. People will still tell you that Emily Wildng Davison "threw herself in front of the King's horse" because they cannot accept heroic actions by women, only unstable ones.
It strikes me as strange that women are now campaigning as feminists who have been silent for years and who seem to want some sort of feminism that discriminates. I can only go by what I have learned but I believe that women living as men (look up Jane Gomeledon) and men living as women has happened throughout history. Certainly in 1980s New York there was a trans-culture (watch Pose). They may now have become more vocal but that is the way with rights activism. It begins with people expressing ideas and progresses to people shouting.
Galaxy I have said all hate speech is wrong and is unacceptable to feminism, why do you persist in trying to make out I am not against violence?
As for trans-men well I have no idea what is your concept of where they belong, are they destined to remain women because you don't believe they can change and isn't that persecuting women?

Trans women are very keen to apply new words to people who are not exactly the same as them. They would be better to coin a new term for themselves.

I did wonder if reefs was a new insult I had missed

Brilliant post doodledog.
It's also mentioning that in every one of these threads it is transwomen who are discussed, transmen are barely mentioned. People need to think hard about why that might be.

‘TERFs’, not ‘reefs’

You really seem to be deliberately misunderstanding anything that doesn’t fit your world view.

My point is that feminism happened because for centuries women’s rights were given lower priority than men, even allowing for the fact that discrimination on numerous other grounds was also rife.

Women gained a significant rise in status as a result, and advances in areas such as contraception have contributed to giving women more control over their own lives.

Now that we have better life chances than we once did we suddenly find that men, who had not been keen to give up their automatic right to higher status before, were starting to want to become women. But not ‘women’, ‘womxn’ a special category that has expanded to include them.

Women who feel that they would rather not give way yet again to the demands of men are patronised, called ‘narrow and prejudiced’, attacked as so-called ‘reefs’, and silenced by cancel culture.

What about exploring the reasons why women object to language playing into the ‘male as default’ dialectic, instead of jumping to the defence of the (very few) men who want to hijack gender-based femininity and deny that biological sex exists?

My aside about men pushing their own needs ahead of those of women was followed by a wink, and at least one poster picked up on the context.

Do you mean an activism that involves threats of rape and violence, of threatening women with losing their jobs.

I think that you are assigning roles to women ie that they are always passive, and yet there have been very demonstrative and outspoken women. The suffragettes for instance were very militant and that was 100 years ago. Now I could draw parrallels between those women and trans activists. They are the outspoken voices and actions which bring about change. So the idea that only men are militant is not only false it promotes an idea of women which many of us have always rejected. In fact one of the theories about including trans-women in the women's movement is that they will bring a return to active feminism, which seems to lost impetus in the 21st century. It isn't patriarchal to push for the needs of a minority. If you imagine that you not only misunderstand patriarchy you fail to understand minorities as well..