A word on the shifting of language

I don't believe most of them even have hurt feelings anyway. It's just weaponised offence. The real goal, which they do a piss poor job of hiding, is to attack and subjugate women.

Ova this is so true. Undermining women as individual people but also undermining the accepted idea of what ‘women’ as a group are, or how they can be defined.

This is a really helpful thread. thanks Floral.

I get confused why people say that they are trans but at the same time say they are a woman just like me. These concepts are chalk and cheese to most people. So maybe it helps to ease the cognitive dissonance to a small extent if the ‘trans’ label can be gradually dropped?

Yet where would that loss of a label leave the whole advocacy position that revolves around being able to point to trans people as a distinct group?

It would be ironic if the TRA lobby groups finally realised there are down sides to not being able to describe yourself or people like you...

Ironically, it is poststructuralist discursive approaches that drive the focus on what language does.

The people who think they are postmodernist or poststructuralist in their approach to sex and gender, just heard a claim that these approaches = a free-for-all in claiming whatever they like, and just ran with it. A careful analysis of language in use, as Floral is doing, is far more poststructuralist than awa’s have ever been (I have poststructuralist leanings myself, and despair at what is being done in it’s name, so I mean that as a compliment, Floral )

I like how they can't answer what trans means if it doesn't means transitioning and they just start to attack.

@AnyOldPrion yes. If all women started calling themselves ciswomen, you can bet that would be appropriated next.

I had an argument with someone recently where they were saying it was unkind to refer to people along the lines of "used to be a man/woman". And I said no, actually, you can't just take words that used to refer to sex, unilaterally decide they now refer to gender, and then be offended when people use them in their original context.

There’s an irony in all of this. Even if they achieve the dream of there being “women and ciswomen”, it won’t bring them what they want, which is to be women.

Next thing they’ll be claiming they’re ciswomen and we’ll be called something else entirely.

I should have guessed that they will just change the definition

I have seen transpeople simply drop the "trans" as you suggest. As you say, the new thing from some transwomen is that they are specifically adult human females (in those words) and that they always have been female. Not so much shifting language as appropriating and obliterating

And the unnatural use of ‘they’ suggests a lack of confidence in the GC position and a fear of challenging it head-on.

I think that TRA claims that ‘misgendering’ is psychologically damaging to trans people is a cover: they know that the honest use of language would expose the weakness of their position.

Free I love that quote. I don't think I have ever said that I have been offended by something that has been said to me directly because it has always sounded entitled. Mr. Fry perfectly sums it up!

Another excuse to resurrect my favourite Stephen Fry quote (from 2005 - man was ahead of his time):

It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

I don't believe most of them even have hurt feelings anyway. It's just weaponised offence. The real goal, which they do a piss poor job of hiding, is to attack and subjugate women.

Agreed Ova

I think it’s worth emphasizing that the use of feminine pronouns to refer to ‘transwomen’ not only confuses a GC argument – it positively affirms the trans argument.

You see it a lot in exchanges where AWAs talk about a transperson as 'more of a woman than you'll ever be'- as though 'woman' is a value judgement rather than a simple description of a sex class.

That's a great way of putting it Floral !

Maybe woman is a value judgement for them in some ways as it can never be based on actual reality for those males identifying as women.

Are some of these males judging themselves as lesser in some way and therefore should be in the category of woman by their own sexist logic while a cohort of them get of on that subordinate position at the same time - being a "beta-male cuck" as some would nastily put it, doesn't make you a woman ffs.

And as Rufus says cis can fuck the fuck off.

I don't believe most of them even have hurt feelings anyway. It's just weaponised offence. The real goal, which they do a piss poor job of hiding, is to attack and subjugate women.

It kind of feeds in to a general sense of the pushing of a Cultural Revolution 2.0.

This odd article by Ian Jack feeds into it - his 'young friend' deeming what should and shouldn't be thrown off the White Cliffs - but, to link back to the OP, it's not limited to nostalgia and heritage, it's also common and established definitions that are to be wiped away in favour of some sort of brave new SJW world.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/03/british-icons-white-cliffs-nuclear-monarchy

This is reality

Yes. Sadly this is where I've reached now. If you go along with any of it, you've just opened the door to be shoved to go along with all of it, and it's pushed further into the depths of batshittery every day where it's actively damaging to women, girls, safeguarding, the law and society. These things matter more than hurt feelings.

terry has it

Its a sly manipulation of language

And some people just make it up as they go along!! Literally

Then pretend its always been the case

Ive got some made up words for them as well but i might get deleted

Oh and 'woman and cis woman' can fuck right off'

And its not happening to men so the misogynistic twunts can do one

I agree Errol that's how I'd interpret woman with a trans history, but as I said it's sly manipulation.

Hacsi Horvath addressed this issue a bit on Monday:

"Don't play along with it. I don't play along," Horvath said when asked by The Christian Post about how people on the political right and left might respond effectively together to the rapid spread of gender identity ideology in a polarized political climate.

"I don't say transwoman, I don't say she, her [when speaking about a male]. I don't care if it hurts their feelings. This is reality and it gaslights everybody else. And it gaslights yourself, and you begin to internalize it."
www.christianpost.com/news/to-resist-gender-transitioning-of-kids-be-willing-to-lose-friends-activists-say.html

I thought that was an interesting point about using the compelled language causing people to internalize the compelled thought/perception.

Yes, there was, Terry. The most obvious and logical reading of 'woman with a trans history ' would be a female who'd become a transman (or one if the more nebulous categories under the trans umbrella') who was now a 'detransitioner', back to identifying as a woman again.

I'm sure there was a male describing themselves recently as a woman with a trans history or something like that, can't quite remember and I was struck by the placing of woman first so that's what sticks in your mind - so much sly manipulation of language.

I agree with Ode, I'm not prepared to give ground on language even though it makes discussion on here so tricky at times.

V interesting op. I looked at the twitter page of the woman, Emma, on that thread who is arguing that transwomen were never male (🙄) , her pinned tweet is a little joke about her toddler being a MRA. Oh the irony and lack of self awareness. The idiocy .

perhaps it might be useful to have record of subtle changes and the impact that has
Totally agree. Like the threads on biased sources, it's more powerful when it's collated. Good thread idea.