Across the globe and throughout history, women and girls have experienced discrimination rooted in their sex and/or reproductive function; often intersecting with other prohibited grounds.… As a result, they have been subjected to specific forms of violence that have affected them disproportionately because of their female sex, such as forced marriages, femicides, female genital and other bodily mutilation or harm, rape, sexual and other types of exploitation including prostitution– to mention a few. …
Today, violence against women and girls remains at epidemic levels, including new, emerging and evolving forms and manifestations. Additionally, certain forms of violence remain insufficiently recognized or reported. The experiences of women and girls of this violence continue to be profoundly shaped by their sex. Despite its centrality, while many States and other actors have adopted ad hoc legal– sometimes conflicting – policy and legal frameworks to prevent and respond to sex-based violence against women and girls, significant gaps persist in analysing them effectively and tackling the root causes of such violence. Additionally, there is an observable trend to adopt laws and policies that are blind/neutral to the specific sex-based discrimination, including violence, against women. …
The Special Rapporteur would like to receive input to better understand different forms and manifestations of sex-based violence against women and girls; analyse challenges and gaps in national, regional and international legal and policy frameworks to prevent and respond to sex-based violence against women and girls; and to form recommendations and actions to be undertaken by relevant actors in order to better identify, prevent and respond to sex-based violence against women and girls.
Promoters of the statement flagged up by Hines:
1. IPPF = International Planned Parenthood Federation
Our mission is to protect and promote the bodily autonomy of girls, women, and gender-diverse people, focusing specifically on their control over their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). We believe that gender equality cannot be achieved unless girls, women, and gender-diverse people have the freedom to make fundamental choices about their own bodies, sexuality, and health.…
A girl or woman is anyone who has lived experience as a girl or woman, or identifies as a girl or woman.
This important statement details why a sex based approach to violence against women is problematic.
Anything other than a sex based approach to violence against women endangers women and girls you idiot. It’s only “problematic” if you insist on “including” people who don’t belong, i.e. men. A clear boundary is only a problem for those who wish to blur it in order to violate it. Why do you hate women so much, Sally? Why do you find it more important to placate men than protect women?
A girl or woman is anyone who has lived experience as a girl or woman, or identifies as a girl or woman.
How does this help women Sally? The only people who benefit from your expanded “definition” are men. Under your terms, women lose. All of the people who have ever had or will ever have “lived experience as a girl or woman” are female. Being female is a state of being such that, those born into it will always accumulate “lived expereience” as a women with no effort whatsoever. All they have to do is exist and metabolize. The rest comes automatically. On the other hand there is no way at all for a male to ever have such “lived experience”, whatever the effort put into the attempt. Pretending to be a women can’t do it. Being mistaken for a woman can’t do it. “Identifying” as a woman can’t do it. No choice of wardrobe, accessories, comportment, hormones, or surgery can turn a man into a woman, a male into a female. You can’t get there from here.
However convincing my costume, no amount of time dressed as a furry will give me even a fraction of a second’s worth of “lived experience” as a lion, tiger, or bear. The only way I can “become” one of them is to be eaten by one of them. If I want to fly away as a bird, my only real option is a sky burial. But then I can’t write home about it, or enjoy any of the “lived experience” that my molecules are now having as the new species of which they’re now inhabitants and constituents. You can’t have your cake and be it too.
Womanhood isn’t something that can be won, acquired, or conferred. There’s no “gatekeeping”. It’s not a matter of some kind of evaluation or recognition of how well a given male “performs” femininity. Being female isn’t a performance. It’s not filling up a bingo card. It’s not like a coffee card where, instead of getting a free latte when the last entry is punched or stamped, you “become” a woman. That’s not how reality works.There is no authority “excluding” them, or a commitee failing to admit them, it’s just life. It’s nobody’s fault or decision. No authority or pronouncement can change that. A GRC is not binding on the universe. It means nothing whatsoever. It gives its bearer no rights or privileges, or at least it shouldn’t. Appealing to argumentum ad clownfish won’t help you, though such appeals are not surprising coming from a movement owing more to post-modern literary criticism than it does to natural science. Never bring a metaphor to a biology fight. Obfuscatory word salad is no match for a gamete.
The Statement certainly isn’t the most limpid or coherent thing, but the main line of argumentation seems to go something like this:
– Gender is the set of social constructs built around the sexes;
– Women are oppressed because of the social constructs built around their sex, AKA their gender;
– Therefore, women are not oppressed on the basis of their sex, but on the basis of their gender;
– Therefore, anyone with the gender of “woman” has meaningful potential to suffer from oppression as a result of it, and the call for input needs to include males, and so on.
It’s the rethorical equivalent of a magician hiding an object with a handkerchief, then pulling the handkerchief away to reveal another object in its stead – although the Statement does it much less cleverly, and I’d guess that whoever wrote it was not pulling it off consciously.
Of course oppression isn’t instrinsic to human females. Of course human females being oppressed because of their being human females is a result of social constructs. That doesn’t mean that human females, under these social constructs, aren’t being oppressed because they are human females. This really shouldn’t need saying, yet somehow it does. Whoever wrote this didn’t get it:
Adopt an inclusive, evidence-based gender lens, recognizing that violence is rooted in structural inequalities and social norms, expectations and stereotypes, not biology alone.
Well duh. Sharks aren’t being finned because of “biology alone.” (Well, unless we count sociology as a form of applied biology, but what is meant here seems to be clear enough.) That doesn’t mean that sharks being sharks isn’t relevant to their being finned, nor that organisms opposing abuse to sharks should adopt a more holistic stance that also includes people who pretend to be sharks. Yes, under certain circumstances, a human can probably end up receiving abuse directed at sharks. That doesn’t change the fact that the abuse is directed at sharks.
There are several places where their ‘logic’ falls apart, but using Mosnae’s formulation above, this is an obvious one (at least to me):
Women are oppressed because of the social constructs built around their sex, AKA their gender;
This appears to be a statement of fact, but there is no evidence to back that up. Yes, social constructs are built around sex, and no matter what we call those social constructs, the oppression is built around their sex. The social constructs ARE the oppression…or maybe I should say the oppression IS the social constructs. Many of them are designed to hobble women – some of them, like high heels, literally.
If this statement falls apart, the rest of the argument doesn’t hold. This statement doesn’t work because it is a house of cards. The slightest breeze blows it down, which is why the ideologists don’t even want us talking about this amongst ourselves, lest the slightest breeze from our words blows past and knocks the house down.
From Call for input to the report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls to the HRC – Forms of sex-based violence against women and girls – new frontiers and emerging issues:
Promoters of the statement flagged up by Hines:
1. IPPF = International Planned Parenthood Federation
2. Women Deliver:
Shorter Sally Hines: WHAT ABOUT THE MEN?!
Anything other than a sex based approach to violence against women endangers women and girls you idiot. It’s only “problematic” if you insist on “including” people who don’t belong, i.e. men. A clear boundary is only a problem for those who wish to blur it in order to violate it. Why do you hate women so much, Sally? Why do you find it more important to placate men than protect women?
How does this help women Sally? The only people who benefit from your expanded “definition” are men. Under your terms, women lose. All of the people who have ever had or will ever have “lived experience as a girl or woman” are female. Being female is a state of being such that, those born into it will always accumulate “lived expereience” as a women with no effort whatsoever. All they have to do is exist and metabolize. The rest comes automatically. On the other hand there is no way at all for a male to ever have such “lived experience”, whatever the effort put into the attempt. Pretending to be a women can’t do it. Being mistaken for a woman can’t do it. “Identifying” as a woman can’t do it. No choice of wardrobe, accessories, comportment, hormones, or surgery can turn a man into a woman, a male into a female. You can’t get there from here.
However convincing my costume, no amount of time dressed as a furry will give me even a fraction of a second’s worth of “lived experience” as a lion, tiger, or bear. The only way I can “become” one of them is to be eaten by one of them. If I want to fly away as a bird, my only real option is a sky burial. But then I can’t write home about it, or enjoy any of the “lived experience” that my molecules are now having as the new species of which they’re now inhabitants and constituents. You can’t have your cake and be it too.
Womanhood isn’t something that can be won, acquired, or conferred. There’s no “gatekeeping”. It’s not a matter of some kind of evaluation or recognition of how well a given male “performs” femininity. Being female isn’t a performance. It’s not filling up a bingo card. It’s not like a coffee card where, instead of getting a free latte when the last entry is punched or stamped, you “become” a woman. That’s not how reality works.There is no authority “excluding” them, or a commitee failing to admit them, it’s just life. It’s nobody’s fault or decision. No authority or pronouncement can change that. A GRC is not binding on the universe. It means nothing whatsoever. It gives its bearer no rights or privileges, or at least it shouldn’t. Appealing to argumentum ad clownfish won’t help you, though such appeals are not surprising coming from a movement owing more to post-modern literary criticism than it does to natural science. Never bring a metaphor to a biology fight. Obfuscatory word salad is no match for a gamete.
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The Statement certainly isn’t the most limpid or coherent thing, but the main line of argumentation seems to go something like this:
– Gender is the set of social constructs built around the sexes;
– Women are oppressed because of the social constructs built around their sex, AKA their gender;
– Therefore, women are not oppressed on the basis of their sex, but on the basis of their gender;
– Therefore, anyone with the gender of “woman” has meaningful potential to suffer from oppression as a result of it, and the call for input needs to include males, and so on.
It’s the rethorical equivalent of a magician hiding an object with a handkerchief, then pulling the handkerchief away to reveal another object in its stead – although the Statement does it much less cleverly, and I’d guess that whoever wrote it was not pulling it off consciously.
Of course oppression isn’t instrinsic to human females. Of course human females being oppressed because of their being human females is a result of social constructs. That doesn’t mean that human females, under these social constructs, aren’t being oppressed because they are human females. This really shouldn’t need saying, yet somehow it does. Whoever wrote this didn’t get it:
Well duh. Sharks aren’t being finned because of “biology alone.” (Well, unless we count sociology as a form of applied biology, but what is meant here seems to be clear enough.) That doesn’t mean that sharks being sharks isn’t relevant to their being finned, nor that organisms opposing abuse to sharks should adopt a more holistic stance that also includes people who pretend to be sharks. Yes, under certain circumstances, a human can probably end up receiving abuse directed at sharks. That doesn’t change the fact that the abuse is directed at sharks.
There are several places where their ‘logic’ falls apart, but using Mosnae’s formulation above, this is an obvious one (at least to me):
This appears to be a statement of fact, but there is no evidence to back that up. Yes, social constructs are built around sex, and no matter what we call those social constructs, the oppression is built around their sex. The social constructs ARE the oppression…or maybe I should say the oppression IS the social constructs. Many of them are designed to hobble women – some of them, like high heels, literally.
If this statement falls apart, the rest of the argument doesn’t hold. This statement doesn’t work because it is a house of cards. The slightest breeze blows it down, which is why the ideologists don’t even want us talking about this amongst ourselves, lest the slightest breeze from our words blows past and knocks the house down.