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That is common sense thinking that was the norm for thousands of years until yesterday.
Sure, I didn't intend to say that only radfems share that general view, though their interpretion is, as said, different from the traditional view - just that they do have actual ideological reasons to oppose transition, it's not just man-hating.
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Well yes, it is. But it's also radical feminist thinking(that's what radical feminist means- it's not a synonym for "particularly extreme feminist")- most feminists deny the obvious differences between men and women and claim that -whatever- will make the differences go away.
What makes them feminists is that they support reordering society(in admittedly vague and poorly defined ways) to put people exhibiting the things making women different from men on top just by nature. It's totally possible to be a moderate radical feminist. JK Rowling is probably an example.
For example, I think most radical feminists would endorse that men are more inclined to violence or criminality and are physically stronger than women (hence the concern about trans women in women's spaces), but they would deny that there are any differences in intellectual interest or interpersonal capability between men and women. For them, as the phrase goes, the sex differences stop at the neck.
They share the latter denial with more mainstream, intersectional feminism, but largely do not share the former endorsement with it -- so that's why there's an area of agreement between conservatives and radfems on the "trans women are physically stronger than women and thus are potentially dangerous to them" point. But the disagreement between radfems and conservatives on sex differences above the neck form a serious point of dissent, where in other times, where feminism in itself was more the issue du jour, they would be the worst of enemies.
From personal experience, I wager that people specifically identifying with the elements of radical feminism that haven't gone mainstream are women who typical-mind-fallacy their way into speaking for most women, who are unlike them. It seems to be a cacaphony of disagreeable women, high-self-confidence women, women with intense intellectual interest, women who don't like children, women who like challenging the status quo, women who are very stubborn. I don't intend those statements to be judgmental, just descriptive. But they are statistically unusual for women, and those traits are more typical of men.
I reckon that the very real but statistically unusual life experience and personalities of the radfems made them underestimate the difference in personality and interest that exist between average men and women. If you're disagreeable, don't like children, want to challenge the status quo (i.e. are a contrarian), then people telling you women are sweet and kind and love cute babies and often reinforce the moral order and so on sure sounds like them trying to lie to you in order to oppress you!
J.K. Rowling, whatever her problems with depression, sure seems like an agentic and stubborn person. I would say that probably the very traits that led her to such great wealth also led her to radical feminism.
This is the opposite of what actual radical feminists believe- they mostly agree that women are underrepresented in engineering and overrepresented in teaching due to intellectual interests. It’s just that their solution to that is some combination of cutting engineering salaries and raising teaching salaries until teachers are better rewarded than engineers.
Radical feminists believe any difference in "intellectual interests" is entirely sociological, not biological. In a hypothetical Patriarchy-free world, they think there would be equal numbers of male and female engineers and teachers.
ETA: Didn't notice this post was 7 months old. I replied only because someone for some reason reported something in this thread, so I was reading it on my phone.
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No, not really. They used to back all the annoying "women in tech" initiatives, and say all the differences in outcomes come down to socialization. The entire trans affair is a bit of a bucket of cold water on their worldview, because they suddenly find themselves in the position of defending sex segregation not just in physical sports, but intellectual / hand-eye coordination ones like poker, chess, darts, or pool. But as far as I've seen they're still sticking to socialization.
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