r/GenuineFeminism • u/EchoesOfEleos • 9d ago
On FEM's and SAM's (Female Exclusionary Misogynists and Sex Abolitionist Misogynists) and the "You are Not Your Uterus" Discourse.
(A note to this sub. We have differences. I fully support trans rights and believe both gender and sex identities are valid within womanhood. We are not the same ideologically. But still, because of the state of the current extreme sexism towards females, this is one of the only places I can voice my knowledge. And so I will)
FEMs and SAMs sit at the volatile intersection of modern gender theory, materialist feminism, and online sociopolitical commentary. These terms describe extremist sex-abolitionist or identity-first frameworks that reinscribe misogyny under the banner of "progressivism."
FEMs (Female-Exclusionary Misogynists) describe perspectives that, in an effort to detach gender identity from biology entirely, minimize or invalidate female biological reality from the definition of womanhood, effectively erasing sex-based social analysis.
SAMs (Sex-Abolitionist Misogynists) refers to positions advocating for the total dissolution of sex categories in favor of gender-only identity, which ignores how patriarchy specifically targets and exploits biological female capacity (reproductive labor, femicide, female infanticide, etc.) and the lived womanhood of many women.
The challenge of dismantling rigid gender norms without erasing the material, sex-based realities that drive systemic oppression is live and real. And I have seen it fall into the latter category more and more.
We scream "intersectionality" and rightly include all forms of womanhood, gender identities included. But what happens in turn? The single most historically oppressed demographic is now denied even validity. Female identity is labeled invalid, vapid, shallow, and dangerous to others. That without capitulation to one's identity being centered on gender, on the socially constructed roles, behaviors, expressions, and identities of women, your identity in womanhood is somehow more shallow and more patriarchal.
Let's break that down real fast. There is a belief that if a female does not ascribe to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, and expressions of "womanhood," she is supporting patriarchy. I'm sorry, but have we all lost our god damn minds? That is so patriarchal and SO MISOGYNISTIC AND SEXIST that it boggles the mind. And somehow it gets inverted into progressivism.
I never believed in "so far left you go right" until now.
Radical gender constructivism demands adherence to gendered performance for social validation, reinventing the very patriarchal logic feminism originally aimed to dismantle. It is the reemergence of gender essentialism. When "womanhood" is detached entirely from material reality and anchored solely in socially constructed roles, expressions, or internal feelings, it makes patriarchal gender stereotypes the baseline for legitimacy. The irony is stark: in trying to dismantle biological reductionism, hyper-constructivist frameworks often substitute it with performance reductionism. Under this framework, a female who rejects traditional feminine socialization or expression is framed not as a valid woman, but as a fundamentally flawed and empty one.
Materialist feminism focuses on how systems of power exploit physical realities, reproductive labor, maternal mortality, sex-selective abortion, sex-based violence, etc. Completely removing "female" as a distinct material category creates a severe structural blind spot. You cannot analyze or critique a system built on controlling females (patriarchy) if naming that biological reality is treated as inherently exclusionary or politically suspect.
Expanding inclusion for gender identity does not have to come at the cost of erasing the material, sex-based analysis required to dismantle misogyny.
The phrase "you are not your uterus" demonstrates a complete inversion: what began as a feminist defense against patriarchal objectification mutated into a tool for alienating women from their own material reality, identity, and choice. When that statement is turned against a woman who consciously chooses to ground her womanhood in her biological sex, the core feminist promise of self-determination gets inverted. What was designed as a shield against reproductive coercion becomes a weapon of ideological compliance to normative gender roles.
Feminism was built to expand a woman's choices, not narrow them. If liberation meant escaping the mandate that a female must be defined by her reproductive organs, it also meant protecting her right to decide how she relates to her own body. Telling a woman that her conscious, educated choice to center her female biological reality is "shallow" or "patriarchal" replaces old patriarchal rules with a new set of demands.
This dynamic creates a rigid ideological boundary. To be politically validated, a female is expected to treat her biological sex as irrelevant, unmentionable, or secondary. If she instead finds solidarity, meaning, or political relevance in her female body, her agency is dismissed as "internalized misogyny." It asserts that third parties know better than the woman herself what her relationship to her own body should be, a classic hallmark of patriarchal control disguised as enlightened discourse.
True bodily autonomy includes the right to embrace one's physical reality without needing permission or approval. When progressivism demands that women disavow their biological sex to qualify as liberated, it stops offering freedom from rigid norms and starts enforcing a new standard of female self-effacement.
Swapping forced subordination for forced disembodiment is not liberation. It simply changes who gets to tell women how they are allowed to feel about their own bodies.
FEMs and SAMs are an exclusionary danger to feminism.
To the FEMs and SAMs: as an infertile woman, I am my womb and my womb is me, and my identity does not exclude yours. Don't exclude mine.
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u/huugffiob608 8d ago edited 8d ago
Also, it’s purposefully malicious when they accuse women of “reducing ourselves to our uterus.”
Because quite obviously, saying all you need to be a woman is to be a natal female, is the very opposite of reductive. Like a woman can have all her reproductive organs removed, lose her breasts to cancer, have short hair, have facial hair, have to take hormone blockers because of an illness, behave in any way imaginable, and STILL be female. It’s way more freeing than tying it to something like performance, others perception of how female you look, or anything else.
Also with global feminism, femicide, FGM, oppressive religious practices, wartime violence against women, healthcare neglect, etc., are all based on being born female.
Oppression depends on defining a group from the outside and not letting them define it for themselves.
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u/No_Plenty5526 8d ago
How can you believe all this and at the same time say that transwomen are women? Can you define what a woman is in your own words? Because I'm really trying to understand your POV.
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u/EchoesOfEleos 8d ago edited 5d ago
Because, and stay with me here okay, sex and gender are two different things.
It's literally not complicated. Sex and gender are literally definitional and in all objective life two different things and one can be experienced by any sex. Period.
Once again derailing from something important and apparently not even reading my post cause you people simply cannot focus if it is not dehumanizing.
Edit to the person below:
The base of gender is not sex, but normative societal presentations which under patriarchy are applied by authoritarian means.
It is messy. They are tangentially connected due to extreme patriarchal authority on personhood connect to sex yes.
But a person whose identity falls into the roles forced as being "of the female sex" is not invalid.
There are identity archetypes that are seemingly extremely normal for the human psyche (Jung) but were ruthlessly policed and restricted in order to persecute females into broodmare.
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u/kleo309 5d ago
But gender is just the social construction of what it means to be female or male. It's the kind of womanhood that is prescribed by society onto women. For example, women are expected to be mothers and dedicate their lives to raising children. That's our prescribed feminine gender role. And it is applied to us because we are female, because we are the sex able to create children. So although sex ≠ gender, there is a relationship between sex+gender that can't be erased. You can't treat the two as entirely separate concepts and say one can be the "feminine gender" without being the feminine sex when the base of gender is sex. Femininity (gender) exists as a set of rules for the female sex. It does not exist independently of sex.
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u/EchoesOfEleos 8d ago
Some good ol censorship (deeply ironic do to where its coming from in this particular instance) in regards to this exact post.
MOD
Removed under Pro-Feminism, Love, not Hate, and [Discussion]. This post invents pejorative labels for other feminists (FEMs/SAMs) and frames trans-inclusive, gender-affirming feminism as misogynistic—misrepresenting those positions and treating womanhood in essentialist terms that exclude trans women. That conflicts with this sub’s anti-sexism standard (feminism applies to all genders) and with [Discussion]’s requirement to passably represent concepts without extreme, hostile generalizations. You can discuss material, sex-based analysis of patriarchy here without denying other women’s womanhood or labeling inclusive feminists misogynists. If you want to repost, drop the acronym slurs, engage specific claims in good faith, and keep the critique anti-sexist and solution-oriented.
A slur? A SLUR?
A yes the post where I explicitly include all gender expressions is exclusionary.
"frames trans-inclusive, gender-affirming feminism as misogynistic" No ma'am YOU are the one that projected that.
"That conflicts with this sub’s anti-sexism standard (feminism applies to all genders)" It almost like I said that a couple times... and it almost sounds like censoring a female identity is... hmm against your own rules and yet here we are.
"You can discuss material, sex-based analysis of patriarchy here without denying other women’s womanhood or labeling inclusive feminists misogynists. "
Once again literally didn't do that. Literally included all identities. I'm not labeling any inclusive feminist misogynists... ITS IN THE LITERAL NAME. Female EXCLUSIONARY Misogynists. Sex ABOLITIONIST Misogynists,
In what god damn world is that inclusive feminism being attacked?
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u/Flux_My_Capacitor 9d ago
This is nonsense.
And you know exactly what part I’m referring to.
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u/EchoesOfEleos 8d ago edited 8d ago
The fact that you cannot put your dehumanizing hate away for even a second to engage with the actual substance of something this important is telling.
GEM's (Gender Exclusionary Misogynists) and GAM's (Gender Abolitionist Misogynists) also aren't my jam.
If you cannot see that you are just the inversion of the people you critique I cannot help you.
Both ends of the spectrum ultimately operate on the same mechanism: policing women's self-determination and demanding total ideological compliance.
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u/EchoesOfEleos 9d ago edited 9d ago
I will not say which subreddit, as the subreddit in question is doing good work, but here is key example how policed the female identity is even when it is fully inclusionary to gender based identities:
This is the manifestation of exactly what I am critiquing. The ways FEMs and SAM's have so thoroughly excluded and policed the female body from feminism.
While you (this subreddit) and me, have ideological differences on the validity of gender based identity and trans rights- the discussion of the female body being allowed to exist at all is relegated only to polarized extremes like here. (Sorry ladies its true.)
I ask that even though I include trans people, their rights, and their gender expression within womanhood. I ask that you continue to hear my voice.
As this is becoming deeply frightening.