£10,000 prize for arguing both sides of trans debate

@Gagagardener

That's an interesting article, but I think it misses an important part of the historical origins of the word woman.

Wif-man indeed was the origin, but the "man" in that sense didn't mean a bloke, it meant human, or person.

A man in the sense we mean today was a were-man, the "were" surviving in the word virile, and of course werewolf.

A woman wasn't being compared to a man linguistically, they had equal grammatical standing.

https://interestingliterature.com/2023/08/woman-word-origin-etymology/
I thought this article, the first part anyway, might be of interest to anyone tackling the essay and wishing to consider wif+man=woman alongside whether trans+woman=transwoman.

No, it's a little splinter with a rounded pink blob on one end.

That's just the female ones. What have you got against male matches? They're not all volatile and prone to explosion...

I know you were! I was commenting on the argument! Thought that's what we were all doing.

I don't consider myself that. Asking me my gender identity is vaguely akin to asking me which sect of Islam I'm signed up to (Sunni, Shiite, the other one). To me the question is non applicable, I don't believe in any of it. If people who do believe want to put a word to that then fine but I won't ever use it.

nauticant · Yesterday 16:42

"What does a match look like? It looks like gender stereotypes."

No, it's a little splinter with a rounded pink blob on one end.

Dons jacket, exits via side door...

I thought you were making a statement of how you perceived it

No, it's a clear case of propping up a failed model with epicycles to explain abnormalities.

I didn't realise you were participating in the both sides argument, I thought you were making a statement of how you perceived it, @noblegiraffe

And you have to be able to argue against GI too, so it's all good.

If you think that everyone has a gender identity then you need to explain the people who don't think that they have one, and that is covered by 'agender'.

And there's the problem. The instinct is to argue against the arguments from the other side instead of constructing them!

X post with @IcakethereforeIam

Agree, "agender" is a gender identity.

That's the gender identity term for it, yes. I don't believe in "gender" in the same way genderists do though. I have a sex. I don't have a "gender identity" as an innate property that's distinct from my sex.

People who don't believe they have a gender identity are agender.

sigh

I am claiming no such thing, I am merely repeating a common argument made by those who believe TWAW. Hint, the part of my sentence you DIDN'T quote makes it clear I'm r referring to a claim made by those who believe TWAW.

If I decide to enter this competition I will need to engage with the idea that we all have a gender identity, and try and find any strengths to this argument.

there is a mismatch between their gender identity and their sex

A mismatch requires you to believe there is such thing as a match.
To acknowledge a match, eg woman matches female, you have to acknowledge there is something female about a woman, to know what a a TW is identifying into.

You are claiming either that there is a set of personality traits that "match" your body.... or, as I said was the more sympathetic argument, that so many people believe there is, that this match may as well exist. If everyone is going to stereotype you, why not at least switch the stereotype to one that you feel is closer to what you're like?

(I guess people do this in subtle ways anyway , "expressing themselves" through clothes- trying to look like a sporty person, urban, fashionable, geeky etc. As there's not really any harm in, say, thinking someone is sporty when they're not we don't say "tracksuit wearers are runners, deal with it". Or "glasses wearers are intellectuals, deal with it".)

But when it comes to being dishonest about your sex, that's where we draw the line. Sex matters.

Ooh a potential 10k coming your way. Crack on dear I hope you win.
As for arguments supporting gender ideology, ummm nope, maybe twitter/X
Oh good quality, yeah, nope sorry.

Indeed, but I think this does underlie the "feminist" support for TWAW. Something like... Women are marginalised because if their sex. Men are not. So if Woman is defined in only in terms male people can and do exhibit and if womanhood can be shown to include male people then the reason women are marginalised will have gone away so all women will get the same default level of respect as male people currently do. If people would just stop noticing sex then sexism goes away.

Yeah, I know it's bollocks but I reckon that's the unconscious thinking behind it.

And pigs might fly...

I suspect she thinks, maybe not even consciously, that if men(M) are seen as women(x) that means bodies have stopped being noticed so women(F) will be accorded the same status and respect as men(M).

there is a mismatch between their gender identity and their sex

What does a match look like? It looks like gender stereotypes.

Is she arguing for trans women to be treated like shit? You know, the way women are actually treated?

Or is she arguing that we should say that trans women are women and let them into women's spaces whilst still treating them with the same consideration and respect we give to men?

Catherine McKinnon is an academic arguing for trans women to be treated as women...

Poor woman is in her dotage.

Catherine McKinnon is an academic arguing for trans women to be treated as women - though I'm not sure that she comes out and says that trans women are women:

https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/18252/88.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y