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Kajsa Ekis Ekman Biography

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“US trans activist Sam Dylan Finch lists 300+ "Unearned advantages" that cis people benefit from. These include being spared questions on how one has intercourse, being able to move freely around without being stared at, receiving competent healthcare, not being discriminated in the workplace, not being bombarded with articles about how many people of their gender are murdered, being allowed to wear clothes and uniforms which align with ones' gender, not being sexually objectified and potential partners knowing what their genitals look like and what to call them. Sound familiar? Finch has just described what most women go through on a daily basis. Receiving poorer healthcare due to ones' sex, being groped, subjected to sexual violence and inappropriate, probing questions, reading articles about how women are killed by their partners because they are women - this is unfortunately well known territory for us women. The text thus turns the very harassment and injustices the women's movement fought against into undeserved privileges. We should feel pleased that we are allowed to dress in alignment with our gender, despite us having done nothing to deserve it. We should be thankful that we are permitted to wear high heals and veils, since these 'align' with our gender. If we follow this analysis to its logical conclusion, even a girl who is genitally mutilated at nine and married off at twelve is a cis person and thereby privileged - her sexual partners know what they are to call her genitalia: CUNT! Similarly, a homosexual man in Saudi Arabia or Uganda would, according to this interpretation, be considered the 'normal, natural and healthy' - and privileged.”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“Attempts to narrow the referents of the term woman - which refers to half the world's population - to a politically obsolete elite consisting only of privileged, ignorant, upper-class white women are often made by those who belong to this group themselves, so-called 'white cis women'. This can seem odd - are they not pulling the rug out from under their own feet? On the other hand, it may be a smart move, in that a seemingly self-critical attitude allows them to secure their position, symbolically distancing themselves from their identity. Striking first, they anticipate the critique that could be directed towards them, by being the harshest critic of their own circumstances. Thus they are no longer the 'white cis woman' but the 'critic of white cis women'.”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“The male space is constructed as homogenous, monolithic, exclusionary and violent. The women's space is for the leftovers - women, trans people, non-binary people - and is required to be inclusive yet not in need of protection. This model also neatly summarises gender identity theory: the male name, male sport, male spaces, all are retained intact while female spaces are opened up.”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“Yet if we are to understand matrilineal society seldom become matriarchies, a simple answer is not necessary for a woman to lock up a man and deprive him of his freedom in order to be certain that a child is hers. She can transfer her religion and property to her children without needing to control her husband. Patrilineal systems with private ownership of property have, on the contrary, tended to result in patriarchy and sexual oppression of women.”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“Sexually loaded terms like 'bastard child', virgin and promiscuous are therefore meaningless when decoupled from their roots in the organisation of reproduction, since it is woman who gives birth and thereby channels male inheritance and surname from father to son. She bears the cultural burden of sexuality precisely due to the lethal mixture of biology and patriarchy; of being the one who gives birth and thereby the one who the result of sexual intercourse stays with, while the man leaves it behind, while at the same time not having the power to decide anything about the offspring. Carrying the future but not having a say about it, such is woman's predicament under patriarchy.”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“Banning of the concept of biological sex has turned out only to apply to the category of 'woman'. When 'trans' and 'cis' are to be defined, the biological dichotomy between sexes resurfaces and reigns unfettered - now it must no longer be questioned. It is no longer fluid and shifting but fixed. A biological woman cannot decide to call herself a trans woman: to be one, she must have been born a man. She is dispatched to the category cis woman and becomes privileged as a consequence. Unless of course she decides to change sex and become a trans man - in which she will be considered privileged because she is a man. In this new gender structure, no platform exists from which women can speak without being labelled privileged.”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“The category woman is expanded to include men and the word woman in the sense of the political subject of feminism now also comprises men and women. It has become taboo to say 'woman' if one means only biological women, yet there is now a different word to refer to this group, one with the obligatory prefix 'cis', which equals privilege. Thus, according to gender identity theory, it is only possible to speak of the group biological women as a privileged group. At the drop of a hat, women as an oppressed group have been reinvented as privileged and the definition of the most oppressed has become... those born with a penis.”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“For all that is said about male privilege, trans men do not seem to get any of it. The only thing conceded to them are the pronouns; other than that, males do not share power, spaces, brotherhood, prizes or political offices with them. They are not allowed to really be men, which leaves us with the following equation: men can be women, but women cannot be men, men can be men, but women cannot be women, men can be trans women, but women cannot be trans women. Men can be everything, women nothing.”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“Suddenly, the philosophical discussion about what makes men dangerous is absent: now they are without question extremely dangerous and no woman should have to be in the same room as a man. The authors imply that a perpetrator of violent crime who is a biological man can, by identifying as a woman, renounce his violent tendencies. Yet, if it were this easy to do so, why is it not possible for all men to just do it?”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“Where does this leave women? In the mentioned philosophers' text, three categories emerge: the perpetrator of violence (man), the one requiring protection (trans woman), and the one who does not perpetrate violence but does not require protection either (woman). The trans man is not mentioned at all. What, then, does the opening up of the category 'woman' mean for women's status? It means that a woman remains a woman no matter what she is called: her being and room for manoeuvre is not expanded. In the trans economy she will be ignored and trampled upon whatever gender she identifies with.”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“The arch patriarchal and highly illogical rule regarding nudity tells us: men want to see naked women, women do not want to see naked men; men want to show their naked body to women, women do not want to be naked in front of men. The age-old male practice of indecent exposure has been revived on the internet where millions of men shamelessly send images of their genitals to women they have never met and enjoy the idea that women are looking at their penis. When she sees his penis, patriarchal logic dictates, he has power over her. Yet this power also manifests when he sees her naked, for a man who sees a woman naked is able to ruin her life. He can, in certain cultures, wreck her chances of marriage and he can publicly ridicule her so that she is beset by horrific shame. He can spread her image at school, to her colleagues and parents and bring her to the verge of suicide. A woman, on the other hand, has no power over a man she sees naked: the only meagre vengeance she could possibly mete out is to spread the rumour that he has a micro penis. Opening women's changing rooms to anyone who wishes to call themselves a woman changes absolutely nothing in this power dynamic. In the meeting between the post-modern patriarchy and traditional patriarchy, women are left in the firing line with only themselves to rely on to resolve their predicament.”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“All patriarchal systems subscribe to a set of moral norms. These can be: men should be bread winners, women should be stay-at-home mums; men should behave like gentlemen, women should not put out; men should be strong and not cry and so forth. Many mistakenly believe that these rules are patriarchal, but their moral rules themselves do not necessarily constitute oppression - had they really been applied. Differing roles are not in and of themselves a sign of oppression. What actually characterises patriarchal systems is the fact that men are free to break the rules, while women are punished both when they comply and when they resist.”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“If sex-based oppression really was only a cultural construct, would it perhaps go away if we ceased naming it - is that why other systems of domination, such as racism or homophobia, still insist on naming their oppressed subjects, whereas patriarchy knows it doesn't have to name - women will still be women anyway?”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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“Regardless of the structure a society has, certain consequences exist as a result of biological sex. Women's bodies tell them when they are going to be mothers, while men become aware they are going to be fathers when a woman informs them. No mother can doubt her motherhood, while a father can never be fully sure. Men can abandon a foetus by walking out the door, women require a doctor and abortion rights. Men can have hundreds of babies a month, women can have one baby a year. Becoming a mother involves physical pain, becoming a father does not. Being a mother alters one's body, being a father does not. Women can feed babies with their bodies, men cannot. Women bleed every month, men do not. A penis can injure a vagina, a vagina cannot injure a penis.”

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Book:On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman
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