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Quote by Kajsa Ekis Ekman

“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.”

Quote by Kajsa Ekis Ekman

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

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Kajsa Ekis Ekman

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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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”