If "woman" is a social role, isn't that "promoting harmful stereotypes"? Pray tell, trans activists, which particular specific social role defines the identity of "woman"? And do persons who do not fit this social role and it's specific expressions, therefore not qualify as "woman" even when in the posession of a uterus? Is Dylan Mulvany more woman than your average woman who might wear a pair of pants or might even have short hair instead of prancing around like an obscene caricature of a 15 year old girly girl?
That is an excellent point Michiel! And do they ever promote stereotypes: "I always knew I was a girl because I wanted to play with the other girls and not be in rough team sports."
They do often refuse to acknowledge that at least some of the social roles are not "imposed" on women by "society" or "the patriarchy", but are a pretty direct consequence of said biological reality.
I should add to that, laws which make it legal for a husband to rape his wife, also impose child-rearing on women in a way that is not based on a biological child-rearing drive.
Fair enough. But, even if child-rearing is natural for women on average, it has also been societally imposed. That is the result of policies which prevent women from having access to food and housing without a husband. That coercion is not natural.
Hence why they first made a distinction between "sex" and "gender".
The problem is that the social roles were based on the biological differences. This is most striking in their insistence that women's sports be given the same funding as men's sports because they're equivalent, but don't make women compete against biological men.
Women typically spending more time on child rearing while men spend more time gathering resources is based on biological differences. Women being denied access to education, employment, bank accounts etc. is not, nor is women being treated as the property of their fathers/husbands. This is what feminism was needed to overcome.
Oh I agree. It's the gender people and allied feminists/progressives who use this argument about "harmful stereotypes" to the extreme where we're not allowed to make any kind of general statement about any group in society anymore. Any "protected group", that is. That doesn't include men, white people or Christians for example. You can promote all the stereotypes about those groups as much as you want and it's stunning and brave.
Michiel: "gender people and allied feminists/progressives"
Yeah. Many of the "gender critical" crowd seem to be more a part of the problem than of the solution.
Michiel: "can promote all the stereotypes about those groups as much as you want ..."
Indeed. Part the woke-mantra that "-isms = prejudice + power", that the "marginalized" can't possibly be guilty of things like racism. Apropos of which, you might have some interest in something from the annals of the late and entirely unlamented Atheism Plus, although it did provide some "entertainment":
You might also have some interest in a conversation thereon in response to an illuminating and "trenchantly" amusing post on that "Woke" theme from UK physicist Rudolph Rigger:
But "stereotypes" in general are an interesting question and topic -- Substacker and social scientist Lee Jussim once argued that "Stereotype Accuracy is One of the Largest and Most Replicable Effects in All of Social Psychology":
Seems rather clear that many groups are characterized by various traits that are more or less common within the group -- the justification for your "general statement about any group" -- without being definitive. Not sure how much statistics you have under your belt, but even the rudiments should be sufficient to appreciate this comparison of agreeableness between men and women:
Women are -- on average -- somewhat more agreeable than men: the peak for women is at a higher "agreeableness" measurement (4.1) than is the peak for men (3.8). But it is quite clear from the graph that many women are, in fact, rather less agreeable than many men. But if one was working in a human resources department of some large corporation, and one was comparing the qualifications of candidates for some customer service position, and one had two candidates -- a man and a woman -- who otherwise had the same scores on various tests -- then one might reasonably argue that, statistically speaking at least, the woman was likely to be the better bet.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. 🙂 And stereotypes. Many people don't seem to have a solid grasp on either which tends to compound any number of problems.
#NotAllFeminists -- don't think it helps to be painting with too wide a brush, to be tarring all for the "sins" of the few.
Feminism, in general, has turned the whole concept of gender into something of a dog's breakfast. But I think some "sects" have a useful insight in DEFINING it as more or less synonymous with "feminine and masculine personality":
Where many go off the rails and into the weeds is in thinking that those personality types are entirely "socially constructed 🙄", are just some things hatched in the inner sanctums of "The Patriarchy!!11!!" simply to "oppress" women.
I am sick to the teeth of this argument: "They represent a movement which discriminates against them and denies their existence.” Nobody is denying that men who wish to cosmetically alter themselves to fit a stereotype of women do not exist. Nobody is denying that men who won't even go so far as to cosmetically alter themselves to fit a stereotype of women but simply apply a label to themselves exist. We are all very well aware that these people exist. In fact they exist so much that we have to twist logic and language to make sure they exist exactly how they want to exist and we have to encourage children to damage their bodies so these people can pretend they "exist" that way from birth.
But what women need to do is to push back. A "transwoman" is a very specific thing. It's a man who wants to cosmetically alter himself or label himself a woman and live as the other gender. They can "exist" in that form without having to confuse language and insult women and erase us by insisting that we have to append "cis" to who we are because we are just another "subset."
The radical relativism, ie. nihilism, of the left, which pervades our culture as a whole, is what allows them to get away with it. Standing up for anything today can be called ‘bigotry’, an accusation decent people everywhere seek to avoid.
I would also note that when we discuss the narcissistic behaviors of trans activists, all the people we are discussing are males. Some women also transition to live as men, but we rarely hear from them or about them. Because they are women??
I think we do hear from them. They're the ones complaining about terms like "breast-feeding" and "pregnant mothers" and trying to shove "menstruating people" and "uterus-havers" on us. Because they don't want to be called women when they get pregnant, or don't.
That is true, Pariah. I had forgotten about that nonsense. It irritates me incredibly when women who are living as men decide to live as women for a few years so that they can carry and deliver babies, but they then deny that they are women while they are doing that. As we dialogue about this, I am seeing that women who are normally gendered are being erased by both the trans women and the trans men. I guess that the erasers do not mind being hated by half the population.
You know, I actually asked myself that question as I was typing. Why is it we're only really focused on transwomen? I honestly think its because there is no real gain for a woman to declare herself a transman. She is no threat in their sports, and not really much threat in their spaces. While I won't go so far as to say men, particularly white men, are oppressed in our society, I will say that there is no advantage to claiming to be one. It's not like the days of yore when women couldn't own property or vote. Now they have all the rights men have plus there have programs aimed at advancing female representation in business, sports, etc. On the other hand, since men don't have those programs, claiming you're a man gets you what? Nothing really. So transmen are no threat to men because they don't become men in the most important ways (physically, as in size and strength, the ability to produce children without carrying them, and, without a lot of surgery, the ability to pee standing up, that last one being the one I personally really envy). Most of the detransitioners I've seen have been transmen (women who went on hormone treatments, had mastectomies, etc., and now regret it).
As for why we don't hear from transmen . . . we heard from the one in Nashville. But you're right in that we don't hear from a lot of them. For that, I don't know that I have a good answer, other than they feel they have less reason to speak up (given that they aren't seen as a threat by men), there aren't that many of them that don't detransition (I'd actually love to see honest statistics), or the psychological makeup of men who would be women vs women who would be men is so different that transwomen are that much more narcissistic, mentally unstable, and diva-ish than transmen.
There is a plastic tool sold to campers that enables women to pee standing up. I have never used one but have been advised that they work well.
I know some trans men who haven't detransitioned, and I can't imagine that they would attempt to do so. They are not at all readable as women. They have male register voices, substantial facial and chest hair and male pattern baldness. It would be impossible for them to "pass" as women again. Anyway, prior to transitioning they already had been living all their adult lives in masculine roles within the lesbian community. Historically, there has been a broad spectrum of masculinity among lesbian women, and prior to the gay liberation movement it was common for some women to use a masculine name when they were in gay social contexts. One of the trans men I know explained that in his experience, there was a "spectrum" along which lesbian women varied both in degree of outward masculinity and in the extent to which they wanted to be recognized as women rather than guys, dudes, and so on.
The young women and teenagers who are suddenly deciding they are "trans" or "nonbinary" are a different group, and I do not think they are "really trans." Apparently, they don't think so either after they grow up a bit.
I knew someone would think of something, re: the peeing standing up.
Thank you for your personal experience with transmen. I have none, only what I gather through YouTube and reading.
Young women and teenagers trying to find themselves and their place in world need to be protected from what amounts to impulsive medical decisions often stemming from peer pressure and inept counselors. No, they are not "nonbinary" or "trans." They're just searching, and they should be given the room to do that.
There is one thing about age of onset of dysphoria that is not related to your point that I'd like to mention. The cases of gender dysphoria that were seen during the Eighties and Nineties were mostly males, and most described adolescence as age of onset of preoccupation with gender identity. This new drive led them to cross-dress in private settings, and many male adults describe experiencing sexual arousal while doing so. Some TIM's report this was "a phase that passed" while others persist in the behavior. This is technically regarded as transvestic fetishism, as I am sure you know. It is the case that many men who later fully transition start their gender explorations in this way, but of course the majority of males who engage in transvestic behavior do not go on to identify as trans gender. It seems likely to me that more of the male adolescents who are doing the transvestic sexual behaviors may now be channelled into the path to medical transition, because many of them become confused about what it means about them that they feel compelled to cross dress, and don't recognize that they could get over these behaviors in time.
Maybe I’m wrong here but I feel like woman’s movements are in fact responsible for much of this (and I’m sure I’m not the first to raise this but to be honest I don’t spend much time on these issues). It was these movements, which claimed to represent woman, that started the process of suggesting that genders are simply social constructs and that any suggestion otherwise was bigotry.
Since gender is a social construct any men’s or boys groups should be considered discriminatory in their nature since there is no justification for these groups since they just perpetuate these false constructs and roles (even while woman insisted on having their own groups, which thrive still in almost all areas of professional interest). This came at the expense of men and boys, who succeed best with strong male role models (especially when that isn’t available at the home, which is increasingly the case). Boys are hardly winning at anything outside of some top performers that distort this perception.
Now the trans are coming for woman, the definition of and any groups representing, using much of the same tactics. There is some sense of cosmic justice in this, but I don’t derive much pleasure in it. It does seem however that if women’s groups want to win this fight it might be time to acknowledge their own role in this.
Trans ideology is actually patriarchy on steroids driven by male fetishist billionaires who have weaponized women's socialization as handmaidens to convince feminists and the public that trans ideology deserves compassion and understanding . It's nothing more than oligarchs leveraging their power to destroy women's rights, parent's rights and gay rights for profit and control of the population. The propaganda campaign has been very effective. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/01/the-billionaires-behind-the-lgbt-movement
The problem is that there are several 'waves' of feminism. I'm referring to original goals of feminism which were intended to free both women and men of social constructs of gender which limits their ability to be fully independent, autonomous, self-actualized human beings with dignity and agency beyond their utility in society. THAT is what feminism is supposed to stand for. It no longer does. Or at least the most vocal proponents of feminism no longer advocate for its original goals.
The 'third wave' feminism we see today has been grotesquely distorted and co-opted by porn and sex industry to manipulate women into thinking their bodies are the only thing that really matters and convince everyone that men are nothing but sexual predators. This, too, is driven by patriarchy on steroids. Alpha males control the narrative which binds the average woman and man to stereotypes that serve the patriarchy and disempower women socially, politically, economically.
All one has to do to understand how society views women is to go to any porn site where women are verbally abused, choked, spit on, beaten, tortured and, yes, killed FOR MEN'S VIEWING PLEASURE. I dare you to read this book to find out just how diabolical the porn industry is: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Porn-Inc-Exposing-Pornography/dp/1876756896/ Women have internalized this misogyny and move through their world sensing just how much society actually despises them. Do you not see how the narrative that women are to blame for trans ideology reinforces that misogyny? Blaming the victim is the most effective way to avoid confronting the truth.
Unless and until men realize how much they've contributed to the spread of trans ideology and all of it's demonic offshoots such as pedophilia, and join radical feminists or any women who advocate for feminism's original goals, trans ideology will continue to consume our children, and society. Since these feminists have been silenced, deplatformed, smeared, censored, lost jobs and careers, threatened with rape, torture, death, you're not hearing from them. Oh, and those doing the censoring and threatening? ALMOST ALWAYS MEN.
“Do you not see how the narrative that women are to blame for trans ideology reinforces that misogyny”. Did you not notice that I never said woman were to blame but rather the trans movement is co-opting the same strategy that the woman’s MOVEMENTS used. Those movements created the blueprint. I never once said woman were to blame, I blamed the movements that purported to represent woman.
I can actually agree with a lot of what you say but this use of “patriarchy” is too non specific. I like your article to points to specific men and billionaires. Fine we can have that conversation. This idea of patriarchy sounds like all men are on board for this. Further on your last paragraph you basically blame all men. Men and boys are also suffering from the ubiquitous access of porn in my judgment. It’s terrible for the entire culture in my view.
Finally I’ve noticed the heads of trust and safety at corporations, the people often censoring on behalf of the trans movement, are almost always woman. The latest example being Twitter and not allowing Matt Walsh’s movie clips (regardless of what you think about him and that movie). Who pushed for Dylan at bud light? A woman. I don’t understand why you think it’s almost always men doing the censoring when woman seem to have bought into this stuff far more.
I read that the majority of DEI officers are women, and that women have some top ranking positions in the DEI bureaucracies around the country. Scolding about following rules, and policing other peoples' virtue are behaviors that many women seem to find irresistible.
Feminism is itself a form of misogyny. They wanted what men supposedly had and threw womanhood as a whole under the bus. For the sake of an ‘equality’ that refused to recognize differences between the sexes.
Yes. Feminism concocted a theory that served their interests, which like all lies of convenience, had severe unintended consequences. It’s not all the fault of feminism, but this is something they should own, rather than resort to their default blaming of the ‘patriarchy’.
I think it was Erich Hoffer that described how social movements grow and end up as rackets. That’s largely what the culture wars today are about. Fighting against the racketeers, the grifters, and those who just don’t want to lose what gives them meaning in their lives.
This whole "denies their existence" phraseology is maddening. I doubt anyone is denying that "trans" people exist. Of course they do. If they didn't, we wouldn't be here having these discussions. What is being "denied" is that someone can just "be" the opposite sex because of how they feel, or become the opposite sex by means of hormones and/or surgery. When we recognize that a kid wearing a red cape isn't REALLY Superman, regardless of what he (or she) may think about the matter, we are not denying that child's existence. But we are aware of reality and how it differs from fantasy. Similarly, if we say that Lia Thomas isn't really a woman, we're not denying his existence; or denying that he may think he's a woman, or that he wants to be seen/treated as one. But we can object to him competing in the pool and sharing a locker room with actual women.
My analysis is that the activists are viewing the situation as narcissists would. Narcissists describe their inner state as not having any self, or at other times, seeing themselves as worthless selves. To compensate for this situation, they perform false selves that they can switch up to create a variety of idealized images. They then try to force other people to act as though the narcissist's performance is his/her real self, because without outside "mirroring" they are unable to sustain an internal conviction that they really are what they portray (which they know is not true). I suspect that many of the trans activists are also narcissists. I don't know if all other trans people share their need for validation. Most trans women want to pass as women, but many are easily "read" as male and the trans women are aware of that, so they know which sex they are and that their bodies still display it.
Hi Miguelitro! I'm sorry it has taken me so long to respond! I was on vacation from work the first week of this month, and life has been hectic since then.
There is a perspective out there that one of the motives for transitioning gender incongruent teenagers is to make sure they are heterosexual, even if they have to identify as a member of the opposite sex to get there. I don't see much evidence that this is actually happening. There are a number of things going on that make the homophobia theory less likely to be true.
One is that the people who are gung ho about the gender affirmative care are the same people who brag about being gay or having "queer kids," etc. I think that being trans or having trans kids has become more fashionable and special even than being gay, so they are opting for the more extreme choice, but people from this demographic experience an overwhelming dread of being homophobic, racist, or any kind of "bigot."
Among adults who have transitioned, not all keep the original preference for sex of partner. There is in fact quite a bit of crossover, but I don't know how long it lasts. Some trans-identified males develop a curiosity about trying out their new bodies with a male partner, even though they haven't previously been attracted to men. This kind of attraction might have more to do with the trans individual's feelings for him/herself than for the potential sex partner. Another situation that occurs with gender incongruent women is that most of them adapt by becoming butch (or simply masculine) lesbians. Masculine women are popular in the lesbian community. If they medically transition most of them do testosterone and "chest reconstruction" but decline genital surgery, so they still have female genitals. Some of these women are at least bisexual rather than lesbian, and there may be a few who are mostly heterosexual in their partner preferences. A masculine women without breasts isn't likely to attract many heterosexual males, and without a credible set of male parts she isn't likely to attract gay men. So if she is planning on continuing to have intimate relationships she will probably end up staying with women, which does accomplish what the article suggests---i.e., the masculine woman was originally identified as lesbian but by transitioning becomes straight.
A colleague who is a trans man (https://reidvanderburgh.com/blog/) led a workshop in which he described a common situation of women who had been living as masculine partners of femme women continuing in their previous lifestyles after transitioning. Mr. Vanderburgh said he encourages the trans man in that scenario to start defining himself as a "straight man in a straight couple" and to make couple friends within the straight community. Many trans men are able to pass easily as males if they have been on testosterone. This advice compels the femme partner of the transitioning person to do serious thinking about whether she is willing and able to give up her identification as a lesbian living in the lesbian community, most likely within a social circle that includes other butch/femme couples. Based on what my colleagues tell me, femme partners tend to go along with the transition, unlike heterosexual women, many of whom divorce husbands who transition. For the trans identified females and for their femme partners as well, in most cases the transition isn't as big of a lifestyle change as it is for trans identified males and their wives.
In my city it is generally expected that all of the above described lifestyles as well as much more bizarre ones be treated by everyone as if they are completely ordinary and expected. It is considered extremely uncool and unsophisticated as well as of course bigoted and harmful, to feel or think that people being gay and engaging in the various gay lifestyles are in any way unusual. One is expected to be quite worldly about such things and not display any blatant ignorance let alone disapproval over gay lifestyles.
I might have mentioned in a previous post what I have heard about the majority of "butch" women medically transitioning with testosterone and mastectomies. It sounds to me like the subculture that was the butch/femme community will meet its demise. I believe that this is a manifestation of the contagion epidemic, but it is also true that many masculine women in the lesbian community have lived pretty much as men for years, and they know what they are doing. I would say that about the adults exclusively, as I am against promoting and enabling transitions of children and adolescents.
Thank you so much for your perceptive thoughts on this. I really trust your judgment so that’s why I sought out your opinion.
I generally agree with everything you say. I think the only place where transitioning is consciously and expressly intended to erase homosexuality is in Iran.
But transitioning in the West and including in your city might have the effect of erasing homosexuality even though not consciously intended. Specifically, the comment makes reference to pre pubertal gender dysphoria often resolving itself through letting the natural pubertal process play out. This author and many others assert that such children most often make their peace with their biological sex and become gay lesbian or bisexual after natural puberty. But if you disrupt natural puberty first with off label blockers and then with cross sex hormones then this reconciliation is less likely to take place. Do you think there is any merit to this?
It seems to me at least that default assumptions have completely changed. In the 70s and 80s a gender nonconforming child was assumed to be a budding same sex attracted person, not trans. In the last 13 years or so that default assumption has reversed.
It just really really frightens me how we are seemingly recklessly messing with children’s minds and bodies with all this intervention. As a result I do see a blossoming tension between LGB and TQ. But the people who just want to be “with it” will never see why.
It is hard to understand in many cases of males undergoing transition why they would risk rejection by the vast majority of potential romantic partners, when in most cases they look at least as good as the average man, starting out.
Just like for "woman", the word "they" cannot be given a new meaning by a specific individual. This pronoun "they" means "specific persons more than 1". It cannot be used for a specific person.
"Someone is coming. They have ice cream". This is wrong. "Someone is coming. He has ice cream." is correct.
Many of these arguments really hinge on "let's pretend 'woman' has exactly one meaning", don't they? Without getting into the whole prescriptive-vs-descriptive dictionary debate, seems to me that the social-role "gender" quasi-definition of woman is valid in the sense that lots of people now use it. But many of those people want to pretend that it replaced the "adult human female" definition, and use that pretext to say that obviously "trans women" should be allowed into "women's" spaces. But the "original" definition didn't become wrong just because they added a new definition. Just about any commonly used word has multiple definitions, and context matters. If the local Applebee's hangs up a banner saying "kids eat free on Tuesdays", everyone understands that they are only talking about human children. Kid can also mean young goat, but no one sees that banner and thinks they can bring a baby goat in for free alfalfa on Tuesday.
Well, it's much the same with 'woman.' Until about five minutes ago, most people outside activism and academia understood woman to mean adult human female, or maybe "any human female" in the context of women's bathrooms and locker rooms. If a business or government office hung up a "women's restroom" sign in 1950, nobody thought that this would ever include a male in a dress, no matter what he called himself. Then at some point, a small but critical mass of vocal people not only adopted the "gender" definition of woman but started acting as though it was and always had been the only valid definition in all contexts, including women's locker rooms and sports. If we had collectively agreed that, OK, "woman" now includes some males in these contexts, it would be easier to swallow, but instead it feels like we all just woke up one day and were told that we were obviously and hatefully wrong about something that everyone agreed on yesterday. It feels dishonest and gaslighting, although I'm sure the people advocating it see it as fair and just.
This is part of the woke strategy, acting like some major bizarre new policy has "already been decided and is in place now." The time for explaining and selling the program is past, feedback is no longer accepted, this is how things are and always have been, you just needed us to make you see it and submit. And magically, so many people simply say "ok." It's the strangest thing. Must be something evolutionary about it.
Brock: "... seems to me that the social-role 'gender' quasi-definition of woman is valid in the sense that lots of people now use it ... "
Exactly. For example, see Merriam-Webster [MW]:
MW; Usage Guide: "Among those who study gender and sexuality, a clear delineation between sex and gender is typically prescribed, with sex as the preferred term for biological forms, and gender limited to its meanings involving behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits. In this dichotomy, the terms male and female relate only to biological forms (sex), while the terms masculine/masculinity, feminine/femininity, woman/girl, and man/boy relate only to psychological and sociocultural traits (gender)."
As you justifiably point out, "just about any commonly used word has multiple definitions, and context matters". And the consequential problem there is in not specifying exactly what definition one is using in which context. One might reasonably say that Jenner is a woman (gender), but not a woman (sex: adult human female). We may need, at least in the interim, to specify each and every use of such words.
But even in the latter case, one might reasonably have to say "adult human female (folk-biology)" or "adult human female (strict biological)". Nice to see many sports organizations now, in effect, stipulating the former as the criteria for competing in women's sports, but the law may well have to take the bull by the horns and do likewise.
However, because of the cumbersomeness and probable confusion of having to clearly differentiate between folk-biology and strictly scientific-biology, it seems like it might be wise or useful to create entirely new definitions for "man" and "woman" for use in law that completely disconnects the terms from the sexes -- which according to standard biological definitions are only transitory states dependent on the possession of functional gonads.
For example -- and to play the Devil's Advocate ..., one might define, stipulate for the purposes of the law, that "woman" is "an adult human vagina-haver", or, maybe, "adult human who typically has an XX karyotype and ovaries of 'past, present, or future functionality'".
Though I rather doubt that will or should preclude being clear on the strict biological definitions for the sexes which will exclude many boys, girls, men, and women. Suck it up buttercups.
But whole transgender clusterfuck seems predicated, to a very large degree, on childishly pigheaded squabbles over who is going to claim the "golden apple -- for the fairest". Far too many seem to have their hands and "minds" stuck in "monkey traps" when the most sensible and effective way off the horns of that dilemma seems to be to specify exactly what we mean by various terms, in which contexts, and what are the specific criteria to access various toilets, change-rooms, and sports leagues:
“ 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. — Will Durant"
When young Eric Blair toddled to Spain to fight the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, he noted that in Communist-held areas, they had prohibited the use of formal pronouns—an obvious ploy to communicate that we are all proletarians now (or else). Of course, Eric is better known by his pen name of George Orwell, and I cannot help but wonder if that political use of pronouns didn’t spark the idea of “newspeak” in his later writings. We let totalitarians control our language at peril to our liberty….
Not sure how Sapir-Whorf bears on the possibility--and that is all it is and all that I suggested--that Orwell's exposure to the Communists' manipulating pronouns in the late 30s may have played into his later development of Newspeak. Certainly, such manipulation was noted by at least one of Orwell's contemporaries: Arthur Koestler's fictitious protagonist, Rubashov (a party official who had fallen from grace and faced show trial and execution) reflected on how a totalitarian society permitted its citizens to think of themselves only as “we,” so much so that the government had “inoculated everyone against employing the first-person singular.” And in one vignette, Rubashov taps a message to an adjacent cell, only to realize that “[h]e had never tapped the word ‘I’ in a conversation.”
This is wonderful! I love the humor, although the trans ideology is really about trying to take over the world.
Changing language to suit their ideology has always been the goal of authoritarians . But as the author points out , reality gets in the way. Men will never be women, and women can never be men.
Great writing! In my trans widow memoir, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022, eBook and soft cover, 50 nature photos), I start off with exactly the same sentiments, but from the personal stance of my ex husband now claiming "motherhood," and to his acquaintances (there was some overlap, so they told me) he co-opts my experiences of natural labor, birth and breastfeeding as if it was him. Anyone in this community seeking a free copy of my book, who can provide a continental US mailing address, up to 10 copies total, I will send free of charge. When you're done reading, donate to a Little Free Library in the "woke-est" neighborhood near you.
I can generally sympathize with your plight and those of all "trans widows". But kinda think y'all are shooting yourselves in the feet by refusing, more or less, to define your terms:
Claire has a more or less justified complaint with her, "the sinkhole of vagueness Orwell described has now swallowed up the word 'woman' ..." However, one might reasonably argue -- though I doubt that you or she is really listening -- that you and she and many other "women" are just as guilty of that by turning "woman" and "female" into "immutable" 🙄 identities based on "mythic essences" or on, at best, quite unscientific folk biology.
I find the insistence on 100% categorical accuracy — which with the presence of intersex and “abnormal sexual conditions is not possible — a bit like Portia’s insistence that Shylock can only get his pound of flesh but not one drop of blood.
If "woman" is a social role, isn't that "promoting harmful stereotypes"? Pray tell, trans activists, which particular specific social role defines the identity of "woman"? And do persons who do not fit this social role and it's specific expressions, therefore not qualify as "woman" even when in the posession of a uterus? Is Dylan Mulvany more woman than your average woman who might wear a pair of pants or might even have short hair instead of prancing around like an obscene caricature of a 15 year old girly girl?
That is an excellent point Michiel! And do they ever promote stereotypes: "I always knew I was a girl because I wanted to play with the other girls and not be in rough team sports."
"Woman" being a social role, that biological women must escape, was standard feminist dogma a few decades ago.
Feminists have wished to escape the social roles imposed on women. They have not said that women have no biological reality.
They do often refuse to acknowledge that at least some of the social roles are not "imposed" on women by "society" or "the patriarchy", but are a pretty direct consequence of said biological reality.
I should add to that, laws which make it legal for a husband to rape his wife, also impose child-rearing on women in a way that is not based on a biological child-rearing drive.
Fair enough. But, even if child-rearing is natural for women on average, it has also been societally imposed. That is the result of policies which prevent women from having access to food and housing without a husband. That coercion is not natural.
Hence why they first made a distinction between "sex" and "gender".
The problem is that the social roles were based on the biological differences. This is most striking in their insistence that women's sports be given the same funding as men's sports because they're equivalent, but don't make women compete against biological men.
Women typically spending more time on child rearing while men spend more time gathering resources is based on biological differences. Women being denied access to education, employment, bank accounts etc. is not, nor is women being treated as the property of their fathers/husbands. This is what feminism was needed to overcome.
Not all stereotypes are necessarily "harmful"; many of them have a great deal of social value and utility.
For example, see Kathleen Stock's criticisms of radfems as "barking (mad)" for wanting to "abolish gender":
https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/lets-abolish-the-dream-of-gender
Oh I agree. It's the gender people and allied feminists/progressives who use this argument about "harmful stereotypes" to the extreme where we're not allowed to make any kind of general statement about any group in society anymore. Any "protected group", that is. That doesn't include men, white people or Christians for example. You can promote all the stereotypes about those groups as much as you want and it's stunning and brave.
Michiel: "gender people and allied feminists/progressives"
Yeah. Many of the "gender critical" crowd seem to be more a part of the problem than of the solution.
Michiel: "can promote all the stereotypes about those groups as much as you want ..."
Indeed. Part the woke-mantra that "-isms = prejudice + power", that the "marginalized" can't possibly be guilty of things like racism. Apropos of which, you might have some interest in something from the annals of the late and entirely unlamented Atheism Plus, although it did provide some "entertainment":
https://web.archive.org/web/20130525005812/http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2105
You might also have some interest in a conversation thereon in response to an illuminating and "trenchantly" amusing post on that "Woke" theme from UK physicist Rudolph Rigger:
https://rudolphrigger.substack.com/p/a-glossary-of-glossolalia/comment/22092929
But "stereotypes" in general are an interesting question and topic -- Substacker and social scientist Lee Jussim once argued that "Stereotype Accuracy is One of the Largest and Most Replicable Effects in All of Social Psychology":
https://spsp.org/news-center/character-context-blog/stereotype-accuracy-one-largest-and-most-replicable-effects-all
Seems rather clear that many groups are characterized by various traits that are more or less common within the group -- the justification for your "general statement about any group" -- without being definitive. Not sure how much statistics you have under your belt, but even the rudiments should be sufficient to appreciate this comparison of agreeableness between men and women:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joint_probability_distribution_by_sex_and_agreeablenes.jpg
Women are -- on average -- somewhat more agreeable than men: the peak for women is at a higher "agreeableness" measurement (4.1) than is the peak for men (3.8). But it is quite clear from the graph that many women are, in fact, rather less agreeable than many men. But if one was working in a human resources department of some large corporation, and one was comparing the qualifications of candidates for some customer service position, and one had two candidates -- a man and a woman -- who otherwise had the same scores on various tests -- then one might reasonably argue that, statistically speaking at least, the woman was likely to be the better bet.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. 🙂 And stereotypes. Many people don't seem to have a solid grasp on either which tends to compound any number of problems.
#NotAllFeminists -- don't think it helps to be painting with too wide a brush, to be tarring all for the "sins" of the few.
Feminism, in general, has turned the whole concept of gender into something of a dog's breakfast. But I think some "sects" have a useful insight in DEFINING it as more or less synonymous with "feminine and masculine personality":
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/feminism-gender/#GenFemMasPer
Where many go off the rails and into the weeds is in thinking that those personality types are entirely "socially constructed 🙄", are just some things hatched in the inner sanctums of "The Patriarchy!!11!!" simply to "oppress" women.
I am sick to the teeth of this argument: "They represent a movement which discriminates against them and denies their existence.” Nobody is denying that men who wish to cosmetically alter themselves to fit a stereotype of women do not exist. Nobody is denying that men who won't even go so far as to cosmetically alter themselves to fit a stereotype of women but simply apply a label to themselves exist. We are all very well aware that these people exist. In fact they exist so much that we have to twist logic and language to make sure they exist exactly how they want to exist and we have to encourage children to damage their bodies so these people can pretend they "exist" that way from birth.
But what women need to do is to push back. A "transwoman" is a very specific thing. It's a man who wants to cosmetically alter himself or label himself a woman and live as the other gender. They can "exist" in that form without having to confuse language and insult women and erase us by insisting that we have to append "cis" to who we are because we are just another "subset."
The radical relativism, ie. nihilism, of the left, which pervades our culture as a whole, is what allows them to get away with it. Standing up for anything today can be called ‘bigotry’, an accusation decent people everywhere seek to avoid.
I would also note that when we discuss the narcissistic behaviors of trans activists, all the people we are discussing are males. Some women also transition to live as men, but we rarely hear from them or about them. Because they are women??
I think we do hear from them. They're the ones complaining about terms like "breast-feeding" and "pregnant mothers" and trying to shove "menstruating people" and "uterus-havers" on us. Because they don't want to be called women when they get pregnant, or don't.
That is true, Pariah. I had forgotten about that nonsense. It irritates me incredibly when women who are living as men decide to live as women for a few years so that they can carry and deliver babies, but they then deny that they are women while they are doing that. As we dialogue about this, I am seeing that women who are normally gendered are being erased by both the trans women and the trans men. I guess that the erasers do not mind being hated by half the population.
The weird thing is (or rather, one of the multitude of weird things is) that half the population - the female half - does NOT hate them! Women are much more accepting of trans ideology, and men in female spaces, than men are! See here:https://today.yougov.com/topics/society/articles-reports/2021/09/23/americans-transgender-survey
You know, I actually asked myself that question as I was typing. Why is it we're only really focused on transwomen? I honestly think its because there is no real gain for a woman to declare herself a transman. She is no threat in their sports, and not really much threat in their spaces. While I won't go so far as to say men, particularly white men, are oppressed in our society, I will say that there is no advantage to claiming to be one. It's not like the days of yore when women couldn't own property or vote. Now they have all the rights men have plus there have programs aimed at advancing female representation in business, sports, etc. On the other hand, since men don't have those programs, claiming you're a man gets you what? Nothing really. So transmen are no threat to men because they don't become men in the most important ways (physically, as in size and strength, the ability to produce children without carrying them, and, without a lot of surgery, the ability to pee standing up, that last one being the one I personally really envy). Most of the detransitioners I've seen have been transmen (women who went on hormone treatments, had mastectomies, etc., and now regret it).
As for why we don't hear from transmen . . . we heard from the one in Nashville. But you're right in that we don't hear from a lot of them. For that, I don't know that I have a good answer, other than they feel they have less reason to speak up (given that they aren't seen as a threat by men), there aren't that many of them that don't detransition (I'd actually love to see honest statistics), or the psychological makeup of men who would be women vs women who would be men is so different that transwomen are that much more narcissistic, mentally unstable, and diva-ish than transmen.
There is a plastic tool sold to campers that enables women to pee standing up. I have never used one but have been advised that they work well.
I know some trans men who haven't detransitioned, and I can't imagine that they would attempt to do so. They are not at all readable as women. They have male register voices, substantial facial and chest hair and male pattern baldness. It would be impossible for them to "pass" as women again. Anyway, prior to transitioning they already had been living all their adult lives in masculine roles within the lesbian community. Historically, there has been a broad spectrum of masculinity among lesbian women, and prior to the gay liberation movement it was common for some women to use a masculine name when they were in gay social contexts. One of the trans men I know explained that in his experience, there was a "spectrum" along which lesbian women varied both in degree of outward masculinity and in the extent to which they wanted to be recognized as women rather than guys, dudes, and so on.
The young women and teenagers who are suddenly deciding they are "trans" or "nonbinary" are a different group, and I do not think they are "really trans." Apparently, they don't think so either after they grow up a bit.
I knew someone would think of something, re: the peeing standing up.
Thank you for your personal experience with transmen. I have none, only what I gather through YouTube and reading.
Young women and teenagers trying to find themselves and their place in world need to be protected from what amounts to impulsive medical decisions often stemming from peer pressure and inept counselors. No, they are not "nonbinary" or "trans." They're just searching, and they should be given the room to do that.
I agree with your post.
There is one thing about age of onset of dysphoria that is not related to your point that I'd like to mention. The cases of gender dysphoria that were seen during the Eighties and Nineties were mostly males, and most described adolescence as age of onset of preoccupation with gender identity. This new drive led them to cross-dress in private settings, and many male adults describe experiencing sexual arousal while doing so. Some TIM's report this was "a phase that passed" while others persist in the behavior. This is technically regarded as transvestic fetishism, as I am sure you know. It is the case that many men who later fully transition start their gender explorations in this way, but of course the majority of males who engage in transvestic behavior do not go on to identify as trans gender. It seems likely to me that more of the male adolescents who are doing the transvestic sexual behaviors may now be channelled into the path to medical transition, because many of them become confused about what it means about them that they feel compelled to cross dress, and don't recognize that they could get over these behaviors in time.
Just made a similar comment without having read yours first! Well said.
T is for tyrants. The sooner we get this the sooner we can get through this insanity.
Absolutely! That’s the crux of the matter! Unlike the Nazi tyranny, this has infected many more !
Time to resist .. as any tyranny must be fought!
Maybe I’m wrong here but I feel like woman’s movements are in fact responsible for much of this (and I’m sure I’m not the first to raise this but to be honest I don’t spend much time on these issues). It was these movements, which claimed to represent woman, that started the process of suggesting that genders are simply social constructs and that any suggestion otherwise was bigotry.
Since gender is a social construct any men’s or boys groups should be considered discriminatory in their nature since there is no justification for these groups since they just perpetuate these false constructs and roles (even while woman insisted on having their own groups, which thrive still in almost all areas of professional interest). This came at the expense of men and boys, who succeed best with strong male role models (especially when that isn’t available at the home, which is increasingly the case). Boys are hardly winning at anything outside of some top performers that distort this perception.
Now the trans are coming for woman, the definition of and any groups representing, using much of the same tactics. There is some sense of cosmic justice in this, but I don’t derive much pleasure in it. It does seem however that if women’s groups want to win this fight it might be time to acknowledge their own role in this.
Trans ideology is actually patriarchy on steroids driven by male fetishist billionaires who have weaponized women's socialization as handmaidens to convince feminists and the public that trans ideology deserves compassion and understanding . It's nothing more than oligarchs leveraging their power to destroy women's rights, parent's rights and gay rights for profit and control of the population. The propaganda campaign has been very effective. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/01/the-billionaires-behind-the-lgbt-movement
The problem is that there are several 'waves' of feminism. I'm referring to original goals of feminism which were intended to free both women and men of social constructs of gender which limits their ability to be fully independent, autonomous, self-actualized human beings with dignity and agency beyond their utility in society. THAT is what feminism is supposed to stand for. It no longer does. Or at least the most vocal proponents of feminism no longer advocate for its original goals.
The 'third wave' feminism we see today has been grotesquely distorted and co-opted by porn and sex industry to manipulate women into thinking their bodies are the only thing that really matters and convince everyone that men are nothing but sexual predators. This, too, is driven by patriarchy on steroids. Alpha males control the narrative which binds the average woman and man to stereotypes that serve the patriarchy and disempower women socially, politically, economically.
All one has to do to understand how society views women is to go to any porn site where women are verbally abused, choked, spit on, beaten, tortured and, yes, killed FOR MEN'S VIEWING PLEASURE. I dare you to read this book to find out just how diabolical the porn industry is: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Porn-Inc-Exposing-Pornography/dp/1876756896/ Women have internalized this misogyny and move through their world sensing just how much society actually despises them. Do you not see how the narrative that women are to blame for trans ideology reinforces that misogyny? Blaming the victim is the most effective way to avoid confronting the truth.
Unless and until men realize how much they've contributed to the spread of trans ideology and all of it's demonic offshoots such as pedophilia, and join radical feminists or any women who advocate for feminism's original goals, trans ideology will continue to consume our children, and society. Since these feminists have been silenced, deplatformed, smeared, censored, lost jobs and careers, threatened with rape, torture, death, you're not hearing from them. Oh, and those doing the censoring and threatening? ALMOST ALWAYS MEN.
“Do you not see how the narrative that women are to blame for trans ideology reinforces that misogyny”. Did you not notice that I never said woman were to blame but rather the trans movement is co-opting the same strategy that the woman’s MOVEMENTS used. Those movements created the blueprint. I never once said woman were to blame, I blamed the movements that purported to represent woman.
I can actually agree with a lot of what you say but this use of “patriarchy” is too non specific. I like your article to points to specific men and billionaires. Fine we can have that conversation. This idea of patriarchy sounds like all men are on board for this. Further on your last paragraph you basically blame all men. Men and boys are also suffering from the ubiquitous access of porn in my judgment. It’s terrible for the entire culture in my view.
Finally I’ve noticed the heads of trust and safety at corporations, the people often censoring on behalf of the trans movement, are almost always woman. The latest example being Twitter and not allowing Matt Walsh’s movie clips (regardless of what you think about him and that movie). Who pushed for Dylan at bud light? A woman. I don’t understand why you think it’s almost always men doing the censoring when woman seem to have bought into this stuff far more.
I read that the majority of DEI officers are women, and that women have some top ranking positions in the DEI bureaucracies around the country. Scolding about following rules, and policing other peoples' virtue are behaviors that many women seem to find irresistible.
> Do you not see how the narrative that women are to blame for trans ideology reinforces that misogyny?
No one is blaming women. We're blaming feminism. And yes feminism is to blame, whether that narrative "reinforces misogyny" or not it is still true.
Feminism is itself a form of misogyny. They wanted what men supposedly had and threw womanhood as a whole under the bus. For the sake of an ‘equality’ that refused to recognize differences between the sexes.
Yes. Feminism concocted a theory that served their interests, which like all lies of convenience, had severe unintended consequences. It’s not all the fault of feminism, but this is something they should own, rather than resort to their default blaming of the ‘patriarchy’.
A group of women resorting to hysterics and blaming men when faced with the consequences of their actions, imagine that.
Glad to see all the menz coming to agree on one thing: feminism is to blame for everything.
I think it was Erich Hoffer that described how social movements grow and end up as rackets. That’s largely what the culture wars today are about. Fighting against the racketeers, the grifters, and those who just don’t want to lose what gives them meaning in their lives.
CTE: "... but I feel like woman’s movements are in fact responsible for much of this ..."
Yeah. Hoist by their own petards; chickens coming home to roost. At least to some extent.
See my comment for a bunch of women who likewise agree with that:
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/trans-activists-have-no-right-to/comment/16863192
This whole "denies their existence" phraseology is maddening. I doubt anyone is denying that "trans" people exist. Of course they do. If they didn't, we wouldn't be here having these discussions. What is being "denied" is that someone can just "be" the opposite sex because of how they feel, or become the opposite sex by means of hormones and/or surgery. When we recognize that a kid wearing a red cape isn't REALLY Superman, regardless of what he (or she) may think about the matter, we are not denying that child's existence. But we are aware of reality and how it differs from fantasy. Similarly, if we say that Lia Thomas isn't really a woman, we're not denying his existence; or denying that he may think he's a woman, or that he wants to be seen/treated as one. But we can object to him competing in the pool and sharing a locker room with actual women.
My analysis is that the activists are viewing the situation as narcissists would. Narcissists describe their inner state as not having any self, or at other times, seeing themselves as worthless selves. To compensate for this situation, they perform false selves that they can switch up to create a variety of idealized images. They then try to force other people to act as though the narcissist's performance is his/her real self, because without outside "mirroring" they are unable to sustain an internal conviction that they really are what they portray (which they know is not true). I suspect that many of the trans activists are also narcissists. I don't know if all other trans people share their need for validation. Most trans women want to pass as women, but many are easily "read" as male and the trans women are aware of that, so they know which sex they are and that their bodies still display it.
Hi Sandra this is Miguelitro. I was wondering what your reaction is to the post in this link about the gay/trans tension that some see.
https://substack.com/profile/40650295-sufeitzy/note/c-17004175?r=9oxmc&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Hi Miguelitro! I'm sorry it has taken me so long to respond! I was on vacation from work the first week of this month, and life has been hectic since then.
There is a perspective out there that one of the motives for transitioning gender incongruent teenagers is to make sure they are heterosexual, even if they have to identify as a member of the opposite sex to get there. I don't see much evidence that this is actually happening. There are a number of things going on that make the homophobia theory less likely to be true.
One is that the people who are gung ho about the gender affirmative care are the same people who brag about being gay or having "queer kids," etc. I think that being trans or having trans kids has become more fashionable and special even than being gay, so they are opting for the more extreme choice, but people from this demographic experience an overwhelming dread of being homophobic, racist, or any kind of "bigot."
Among adults who have transitioned, not all keep the original preference for sex of partner. There is in fact quite a bit of crossover, but I don't know how long it lasts. Some trans-identified males develop a curiosity about trying out their new bodies with a male partner, even though they haven't previously been attracted to men. This kind of attraction might have more to do with the trans individual's feelings for him/herself than for the potential sex partner. Another situation that occurs with gender incongruent women is that most of them adapt by becoming butch (or simply masculine) lesbians. Masculine women are popular in the lesbian community. If they medically transition most of them do testosterone and "chest reconstruction" but decline genital surgery, so they still have female genitals. Some of these women are at least bisexual rather than lesbian, and there may be a few who are mostly heterosexual in their partner preferences. A masculine women without breasts isn't likely to attract many heterosexual males, and without a credible set of male parts she isn't likely to attract gay men. So if she is planning on continuing to have intimate relationships she will probably end up staying with women, which does accomplish what the article suggests---i.e., the masculine woman was originally identified as lesbian but by transitioning becomes straight.
A colleague who is a trans man (https://reidvanderburgh.com/blog/) led a workshop in which he described a common situation of women who had been living as masculine partners of femme women continuing in their previous lifestyles after transitioning. Mr. Vanderburgh said he encourages the trans man in that scenario to start defining himself as a "straight man in a straight couple" and to make couple friends within the straight community. Many trans men are able to pass easily as males if they have been on testosterone. This advice compels the femme partner of the transitioning person to do serious thinking about whether she is willing and able to give up her identification as a lesbian living in the lesbian community, most likely within a social circle that includes other butch/femme couples. Based on what my colleagues tell me, femme partners tend to go along with the transition, unlike heterosexual women, many of whom divorce husbands who transition. For the trans identified females and for their femme partners as well, in most cases the transition isn't as big of a lifestyle change as it is for trans identified males and their wives.
In my city it is generally expected that all of the above described lifestyles as well as much more bizarre ones be treated by everyone as if they are completely ordinary and expected. It is considered extremely uncool and unsophisticated as well as of course bigoted and harmful, to feel or think that people being gay and engaging in the various gay lifestyles are in any way unusual. One is expected to be quite worldly about such things and not display any blatant ignorance let alone disapproval over gay lifestyles.
I might have mentioned in a previous post what I have heard about the majority of "butch" women medically transitioning with testosterone and mastectomies. It sounds to me like the subculture that was the butch/femme community will meet its demise. I believe that this is a manifestation of the contagion epidemic, but it is also true that many masculine women in the lesbian community have lived pretty much as men for years, and they know what they are doing. I would say that about the adults exclusively, as I am against promoting and enabling transitions of children and adolescents.
Thank you so much for your perceptive thoughts on this. I really trust your judgment so that’s why I sought out your opinion.
I generally agree with everything you say. I think the only place where transitioning is consciously and expressly intended to erase homosexuality is in Iran.
But transitioning in the West and including in your city might have the effect of erasing homosexuality even though not consciously intended. Specifically, the comment makes reference to pre pubertal gender dysphoria often resolving itself through letting the natural pubertal process play out. This author and many others assert that such children most often make their peace with their biological sex and become gay lesbian or bisexual after natural puberty. But if you disrupt natural puberty first with off label blockers and then with cross sex hormones then this reconciliation is less likely to take place. Do you think there is any merit to this?
It seems to me at least that default assumptions have completely changed. In the 70s and 80s a gender nonconforming child was assumed to be a budding same sex attracted person, not trans. In the last 13 years or so that default assumption has reversed.
It just really really frightens me how we are seemingly recklessly messing with children’s minds and bodies with all this intervention. As a result I do see a blossoming tension between LGB and TQ. But the people who just want to be “with it” will never see why.
It is hard to understand in many cases of males undergoing transition why they would risk rejection by the vast majority of potential romantic partners, when in most cases they look at least as good as the average man, starting out.
Good stuff.
Just like for "woman", the word "they" cannot be given a new meaning by a specific individual. This pronoun "they" means "specific persons more than 1". It cannot be used for a specific person.
"Someone is coming. They have ice cream". This is wrong. "Someone is coming. He has ice cream." is correct.
Or she has ice cream.
Many of these arguments really hinge on "let's pretend 'woman' has exactly one meaning", don't they? Without getting into the whole prescriptive-vs-descriptive dictionary debate, seems to me that the social-role "gender" quasi-definition of woman is valid in the sense that lots of people now use it. But many of those people want to pretend that it replaced the "adult human female" definition, and use that pretext to say that obviously "trans women" should be allowed into "women's" spaces. But the "original" definition didn't become wrong just because they added a new definition. Just about any commonly used word has multiple definitions, and context matters. If the local Applebee's hangs up a banner saying "kids eat free on Tuesdays", everyone understands that they are only talking about human children. Kid can also mean young goat, but no one sees that banner and thinks they can bring a baby goat in for free alfalfa on Tuesday.
Well, it's much the same with 'woman.' Until about five minutes ago, most people outside activism and academia understood woman to mean adult human female, or maybe "any human female" in the context of women's bathrooms and locker rooms. If a business or government office hung up a "women's restroom" sign in 1950, nobody thought that this would ever include a male in a dress, no matter what he called himself. Then at some point, a small but critical mass of vocal people not only adopted the "gender" definition of woman but started acting as though it was and always had been the only valid definition in all contexts, including women's locker rooms and sports. If we had collectively agreed that, OK, "woman" now includes some males in these contexts, it would be easier to swallow, but instead it feels like we all just woke up one day and were told that we were obviously and hatefully wrong about something that everyone agreed on yesterday. It feels dishonest and gaslighting, although I'm sure the people advocating it see it as fair and just.
This is part of the woke strategy, acting like some major bizarre new policy has "already been decided and is in place now." The time for explaining and selling the program is past, feedback is no longer accepted, this is how things are and always have been, you just needed us to make you see it and submit. And magically, so many people simply say "ok." It's the strangest thing. Must be something evolutionary about it.
Brock: "... seems to me that the social-role 'gender' quasi-definition of woman is valid in the sense that lots of people now use it ... "
Exactly. For example, see Merriam-Webster [MW]:
MW; Usage Guide: "Among those who study gender and sexuality, a clear delineation between sex and gender is typically prescribed, with sex as the preferred term for biological forms, and gender limited to its meanings involving behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits. In this dichotomy, the terms male and female relate only to biological forms (sex), while the terms masculine/masculinity, feminine/femininity, woman/girl, and man/boy relate only to psychological and sociocultural traits (gender)."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender#usage-1
As you justifiably point out, "just about any commonly used word has multiple definitions, and context matters". And the consequential problem there is in not specifying exactly what definition one is using in which context. One might reasonably say that Jenner is a woman (gender), but not a woman (sex: adult human female). We may need, at least in the interim, to specify each and every use of such words.
But even in the latter case, one might reasonably have to say "adult human female (folk-biology)" or "adult human female (strict biological)". Nice to see many sports organizations now, in effect, stipulating the former as the criteria for competing in women's sports, but the law may well have to take the bull by the horns and do likewise.
However, because of the cumbersomeness and probable confusion of having to clearly differentiate between folk-biology and strictly scientific-biology, it seems like it might be wise or useful to create entirely new definitions for "man" and "woman" for use in law that completely disconnects the terms from the sexes -- which according to standard biological definitions are only transitory states dependent on the possession of functional gonads.
For example -- and to play the Devil's Advocate ..., one might define, stipulate for the purposes of the law, that "woman" is "an adult human vagina-haver", or, maybe, "adult human who typically has an XX karyotype and ovaries of 'past, present, or future functionality'".
Though I rather doubt that will or should preclude being clear on the strict biological definitions for the sexes which will exclude many boys, girls, men, and women. Suck it up buttercups.
But whole transgender clusterfuck seems predicated, to a very large degree, on childishly pigheaded squabbles over who is going to claim the "golden apple -- for the fairest". Far too many seem to have their hands and "minds" stuck in "monkey traps" when the most sensible and effective way off the horns of that dilemma seems to be to specify exactly what we mean by various terms, in which contexts, and what are the specific criteria to access various toilets, change-rooms, and sports leagues:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/14/how-to-avoid-monkey-trap-oliver-burkeman
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/monkey_trap
“ 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. — Will Durant"
https://quotefancy.com/quote/3001527/Will-Durant-If-you-wish-to-converse-with-me-said-Voltaire-define-your-terms-How-many-a
When young Eric Blair toddled to Spain to fight the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, he noted that in Communist-held areas, they had prohibited the use of formal pronouns—an obvious ploy to communicate that we are all proletarians now (or else). Of course, Eric is better known by his pen name of George Orwell, and I cannot help but wonder if that political use of pronouns didn’t spark the idea of “newspeak” in his later writings. We let totalitarians control our language at peril to our liberty….
Not sure how Sapir-Whorf bears on the possibility--and that is all it is and all that I suggested--that Orwell's exposure to the Communists' manipulating pronouns in the late 30s may have played into his later development of Newspeak. Certainly, such manipulation was noted by at least one of Orwell's contemporaries: Arthur Koestler's fictitious protagonist, Rubashov (a party official who had fallen from grace and faced show trial and execution) reflected on how a totalitarian society permitted its citizens to think of themselves only as “we,” so much so that the government had “inoculated everyone against employing the first-person singular.” And in one vignette, Rubashov taps a message to an adjacent cell, only to realize that “[h]e had never tapped the word ‘I’ in a conversation.”
This is wonderful! I love the humor, although the trans ideology is really about trying to take over the world.
Changing language to suit their ideology has always been the goal of authoritarians . But as the author points out , reality gets in the way. Men will never be women, and women can never be men.
And, my cat can never be a dog .
Wonderfully said. Thank you for the great read. Sincerely, Frederick
Keep fighting for truth and facts. Rational people support you!
Great writing! In my trans widow memoir, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022, eBook and soft cover, 50 nature photos), I start off with exactly the same sentiments, but from the personal stance of my ex husband now claiming "motherhood," and to his acquaintances (there was some overlap, so they told me) he co-opts my experiences of natural labor, birth and breastfeeding as if it was him. Anyone in this community seeking a free copy of my book, who can provide a continental US mailing address, up to 10 copies total, I will send free of charge. When you're done reading, donate to a Little Free Library in the "woke-est" neighborhood near you.
(contact form at uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com) {and Steersman, thanks for not replying}
"Is the ice still in the river? Are the old folks still the same?
And by the way, did she mention my name?" 😉🙂
https://youtu.be/r2ni9hRaU5A
I can generally sympathize with your plight and those of all "trans widows". But kinda think y'all are shooting yourselves in the feet by refusing, more or less, to define your terms:
https://quotefancy.com/quote/3001527/Will-Durant-If-you-wish-to-converse-with-me-said-Voltaire-define-your-terms-How-many-a
Claire has a more or less justified complaint with her, "the sinkhole of vagueness Orwell described has now swallowed up the word 'woman' ..." However, one might reasonably argue -- though I doubt that you or she is really listening -- that you and she and many other "women" are just as guilty of that by turning "woman" and "female" into "immutable" 🙄 identities based on "mythic essences" or on, at best, quite unscientific folk biology.
Pots and kettles; motes and beams ...
Right? LOL. All that matters is power.
I too share an appreciation for Orwell’s “warnings” so examined the dangers of transgenderism’s focus on subjective reality.
https://hoisttheblackflag.substack.com/p/the-emperor-has-no-clothes
Cunts like Claire Lehmann rejoice when 9-year-old girls are sexually assaulted and publicly humiliated.
https://twitter.com/62Takes/status/1668434471249653761
I find the insistence on 100% categorical accuracy — which with the presence of intersex and “abnormal sexual conditions is not possible — a bit like Portia’s insistence that Shylock can only get his pound of flesh but not one drop of blood.