Selfish women hogging all the menstruation
I saw this
Shall we sample? Let’s.
Page 1:
Menstruation is defined as “the monthly shedding of the lining of [the] uterus”
(Cleveland Clinic, 2019, para. 2). Although menstruation is often considered in the
context of the experiences of cisgender women (Brantelid et al., 2014; DeMaria et al.,
2020; Donmall, 2013; Jackson & Falmagne, 2013; Mason et al., 2013), many scholars
have begun to critique the idea of menstruation as an experience unique to women and a
mark of womanhood.
Menstruation is defined as that but it also is that. People who’ve done it can confirm. (They’re all women, by the way.) Knowing what menstruation is isn’t just a matter of looking in the dictionary. It’s not a word like “affable” or “landscape” or “confusion.” Just for one thing, it’s part of a process that results in all of us. Without it none of these fucking fools would be here gurgling about the definition of menstruation and none of us would be here wanting to smack them.
No real scholars “have begun to critique the idea of menstruation as an experience unique to women.” It’s too stupid. Scholars would spot that right off. Even scholars in astrophysics or church history would.
It’s not an “idea” that only women menstruate. It’s reality. People didn’t sit around and dream it up; it’s reality.
But this pile of tripe is for a degree of Master of Arts, so I guess respect for truth has no role. Make no mistake though: this is ridiculous contemptible childish garbage. A university that takes it seriously should close its doors.
Scholars have promoted a more feminist and gender-inclusive conceptualization of menstruation and have acknowledged that not all women menstruate and not all who menstruate are women.
It’s not a club. It’s not a party. It’s not a class outing to the botanical gardens. It’s part of a biological process essential for making new humans. It doesn’t need to be “inclusive” and it can’t be. Trying to be more “inclusive” about it is pointless and absurd and childish.
Page 2 is just as stupid. I stopped reading there.
All this ‘scholars’ bullshit is just another form of borrowed valour. If ‘scholars’ really have said that, the reference needs to be provided so the reader can evaluate the relevance and quality of the argument. Especially so since the claim flies in the face of both conventional concepts and plain old physical facts. This thesis, their supervisor, department, and university deserves serious side eye.
‘Scholars,’ particularly those of the ecclesiastical persuasion, once proclaimed to all and sundry that the Earth was flat. And having the power to eliminate dissenters, they used it.
‘Scholarship’ has worn many guises through history. One has been the promulgation of ideology and doctrine. Another has been the promotion of free thought, free enquiry, and of critique. Only via the latter has the modern world emerged.
One could also ask for the identity of these ‘scholars,’ if one could be bothered.
(My apologies to readers for my perhaps too liberal use of scare quotes. I fought my hands down to the keyboard in every case. But it was one losing battle after another. My ‘apologies’ once again.)
All the nonspecific “some scholars do this” and “some other scholars say that” is idea laundering. They’ve built themselves a self-justifying, self-sustaining, bootstrapping network of literature to give themselves the appearance of intellectual respectability. It’s an ouroboros of citation with no connection to reality.
Omar, I would really like to know the identity of these ‘scholars’. Even if they exist they may not be reliable. But I would also like to know the identity of the ‘scholars of the ecclesiastical persuasion’ who proclaimed to all and sundry that the Earth was flat.
Nullius in Verba, I love that phrase ‘an ouroboros of citation’.
And it wasn’t even “some” scholars; it was MANY scholars. Oh yeah? Scholars of what exactly? From the department of mendacity?
If a term applies to a particular biological process, and something other than that process is taking place, don’t use that word. Language is specific with good reason – to facilitate communication – and medical language especially so.
“Many scholars” – by which the author means bloggers and social media ‘activists’.
What I find especially depressing is that this person got a Masters in Educational Psychology. I know a lot of EdPsych people, I work with some of them, and for the most part they do good and sometimes important work. This is not one of them.
But anyway, “not all women menstruate”–yes, that’s trivially true (trivial in this context, though I realize it can be a serious issue). “Not all people who menstruate are women”*–clearly false, though so many have bought into the ideology that they can’t see clearly. But in any case, neither of those statements are relevant to the underlying syllogism of the thesis, which seems to be:
–Women menstruate.
–TWAW.
–Therefore, transwomen menstruate.
I’ll leave it to the reader to discover the flaw in that logic.
*Which suggests a probably unoriginal joke: Putting the “men” back in “menstruate”!
Or, alternatively, it suggests a urinaloriginal joke.
OK, OK.! I can find my own way out. And I’ve been chucked out of better pubs than this.!
Re ‘not all women menstruate’ – when I started menopause it was pointed out to me that an average woman spends more of her life not menstruating than menstruating. Food for thought (at least I thought so).
Of course it’s true that ‘not all women menstruate and not all who menstruate are women’, because we only menstruate between menarche and menopause even if nothing is wrong, and menarche usually happens in adolescence – when we are girls, not women. So it’s also true that the absence of menstruation – an exclusively female phenomenon – isn’t diagnostic of not being a woman.
The writer omits the rest of the sentence which would show, clearly, what the truncated phrase actually means. But saying ‘not all women menstruate because some are pregnant, or post-menopause, or taking certain forms of birth control or have had endometrial ablation, or have a disorder; and not all who menstruate are women, because some are girls’ would not allow the insertion of the lie that men with a fetish are menstruating because they say so. Men can’t, and won’t ever, have periods. Because inserting tomato sauce into your rectum isn’t remotely similar to menstruating, and wanting a period isn’t going to get you one (as many a girl and woman has found out when faced with an unplanned pregnancy).
Saying something true, and then twisting it to pretend that it means something completely false is not something that I would expect to see in a doctoral thesis; even from an arts student. ;-)
I haven’t read your book Does God hate women? — probably I should, but I haven’t. Anyway, menstruation strikes me as one of the best examples of this hate, because it’s not female mammals in general but women in particular that menstruate. It’s actually very rare, being largely confined to primates, among which chimpanzees, for example, but I doubt whether they’re untypical, menstruate in such a mild way that it almost passes unnoticed. Unnoticed by the chimpanzees, I mean, not by the zoologists who look for it.
There’s no “should” about it; you’re under no obligation to read it!
What it’s about, though, is not the physical handicaps on women but the religious ones imposed by godbothering humans. There are as it were invisible quotation marks on the God in the title.
tigger, also all those who have had hysterectomy. The trans lobby loves to throw post-menopausal women or women with some disorder in our face. ‘are you saying they’re not women?’ No, because saying only women menstruate is not the same as saying all women menstruate. It IS one of the diagnostic characteristics of being a woman, but it does not exist all by itself in that group.
Of course, iknklast; hysterectomy = instant menopause. No more periods, ever. I went through a total hysterectomy in my thirties. With my ovaries gone as well as my womb, besides the immediate cessation of menstruation I also had a hormonal cycle crash.
Taking cross-sex hormones for cosmetic purposes is nothing at all like having the complete cocktail of hormones in varying proportions, precisely tuned to the regular cycle. These men are torturing themselves without realising it; and women on exogenous testosterone aren’t turning into men – they’re turning themselves into old women thirty years early.
P.S. Just to spoil all the men jokes:
Menstruation is named after the Latin word for month, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the word for adult human males, which has entirely different roots.
I know the etymology of menstruation, but the men jokes are aimed at men who are trying to appropriate it for their own weird reasons.
Ohtobide @# 4: A fascinating subject, though somewhat OT for this thread.
I used to know years ago a Bible-thumping fundamentalist who was a scientist; a graduate in Pharmacy. (!) He was also a flat-earther, because he was convinced by some other such believer that it has scriptural justification. The Book of Revelation apparently is the source of the expression ‘the four corners of the Earth,’ and everyone knows that spheres do not have corners. Simple, really.
Just goes to show that it takes all sorts….
See also:
https://www.wyzant.com/resources/answers/615982/did-medieval-scholars-believe-the-earth-was-round
Omar,
See: https://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/WS06/pmo/eng/Gould-FlatEarth.pdf
and: https://historyforatheists.com/2016/06/the-great-myths-1-the-medieval-flat-earth/
The second one talks about Isidore of Seville, btw.
As for eliminating dissenters, I have never heard of anyone who was persecuted because they thought the Earth was round. Do you have any names?
I don’t doubt there were some flat earthers in earlier centuries. There were certainly some in the 19th century. But, for the most part, flat earthism is a modern phenomenon. Future historians will write books about the 21st century flat earth movement and put them on shelves beside ‘The religious fanaticism and intolerance of the 21st century’ and ‘The 21st century belief that men can turn themselves into women.’
Your fundamentalist friend(?) sounds like a bit of a flat earth heretic, btw. After all, circles don’t have corners any more than spheres. Does he think God has revealed that the Earth is a rectangle?