Made-up, nonexistent rules about what spaces between words mean

[WombOfOnesOwn]

I've held my tongue long enough! I'm going to make enemies of both sides with this post.

So we all know that "transwomen" is a no-no and "trans women" is fine, and this shibboleth exists because of the insistence of MTFs that the space indicates that "trans women" are a specific type of woman, while "transwomen" indicates non-womanness. Someone in a previous thread brought up "seahorse" as a reason that "transwomen" could mean "people resembling, but not identical to women or contained in category 'women.'"

So I have to ask: Are TRAs putting sea cucumbers into their garden salads?

Would they be excited to take their children to see the sea monkeys in the zoo?

Would they take a "koala bear" to a bear sanctuary?

Do they think the "vice president" is a type of president?

Are they horrified at the eating of "hot dogs"?

Do they wonder why the cream never turns into "peanut butter"?

By the same token, women who absolutely insist on putting no space in the word "transwomen" because they feel like it, like "seahorse," connotes a resemblance but not belonging in the category:

Is a sunflower not a flower?

A rattlesnake not a snake?

Peppermint isn't real mint?

Seashores must not be real shores, blacksmiths must not be real smiths, sandstone must not be a real stone.

There is no rule in English, not even one of those fuzzy ones where 2 or 3% of words are exceptions, about whether open compounds (with a space) or closed compounds (without a space) connote a specific type of the noun in the compound, or whether they connote a more metaphorical relationship. We use context to understand this complex, non-rule-bound interaction of words.

Why on earth this is a hill anyone has chosen to die on, from either side, is beyond me. Why perfectly reasonable feminists have either bought so deeply into trans rhetoric that they believe a transparently false "rule" about English, or are reacting so deeply against literally anything trans activists say to the point where they'd insist the sky was orange if the TRA said it was blue, is even more confusing.

Oh it's bollocks, just a load of fucking bullshitting bollocks.

Utter narcissistic bollocks.

Did I mention that it is actually just all bollocks?

I want to hug you.

Sorry to actually answer your point... the person I know in RL who gets crossest about all this is in fact a linguistic scientist.

She rages about all this language shite.

"Words mean things! Words have to mean things or else we may as well just go back to grunting and poking things with sticks" is her constant refrain on the matter.

It's more mind games - best not to buy into it - I know who are the delusional ones - no one has consented to change the terms men and women - only in people's fantasies.

Ive always said transwomen

Thats what it always was and thats what my ipad defaults to

I dont use punctuation ...are paragraphs punctuation cos i dont use them either...capitals are good either

So usually itll be trans woman..if my finger slips it might be trans woman

But in my case there is no deeper meaning

Capitals arent good ...obviously

I mostly gave up using capitals after the shift key broke on the last key board. may have something to do with ds stiing on it or using it as a car track as he liked the bumpy feeling. (just as he did in the pushchair going over manhole covers... ) are fuck has anyone asked them their gender?

I have fingers that type the right letters but in the wrong order. I have fingers that refuse to type the right letters at all, the least of my worries is whether there should be a space or not, and quite frankly there is a snowball in hells chance of remembering when I struggle spelkling some words.

Actual lol excellent point, well made. Brava.

Wait what? I say transwomen because I thought that was correct I didn't know anything about spaces etc. Everyone in real life says it and also Trans people I actually know I thought that was just the normal default. I wasn't trying to make any kind of point.

I am a transsexual and have posted transwoman in here to describe myself often.

There is NOTHING wrong with it at all.

It is an idiotic demand. Ignore it. I certainly will.

irene

Well im sure the Op will be back in a minute to say that she didnt mean people like us

But thats a fat lot of good when people like us are being lumped in with those making a political point

If MNHQ made a rule saying if everyone who made a spelling/grammar/punctuation mistake had to leave or would be deleted the whole site would look like swiss cheese...i cant see how it would work with spaces either

Well thats a cross post so please include both home and irene in my post

I won't use 'woman' for a man no matter the prefix. Unless it is 'not'.

For that matter,
cis:same
Trans:opposite

I'm not sure seeing 'transwoman' doesn't trigger 'the opposite of woman' in most minds anyway given the connotations of trans.

I have no idea where that grin emoji came from!

I typed trans = opposite

I am a grown adult woman and I won't be 'educated' on how to say or spell something. Fuck it!

Well cis is made up bollocks..I'll give you that

I think some people out there are just trying to pick fights over anything.

I spent time on Twitter in the last two days being told by the Lib Dems I was a transphobe (despite being a transsexual woman who is one of the few who has a GRC). This was because I made clear I do not believe you can actually change you biological sex. Like 99.999% of the world knows is true.

Utter madness.

And today I wasted an hour trying to explain to someone why it was not right to conflate intersex people with transgender people in discussions. As they are not the same thing and the intersex people are sick of asking it to stop.

I was asked to prove it and I refused saying it is basic human decency to do this especially after someone requests it. No proof needed.

Odd that I should provide proof to stop this ill taste discussion. But these same people who want legal gender change from self ID say no proof of their sincerity is needed and we should just trust them.

Just superb. Perfection in a post.

You obviously missed the VICIOUS arguments over that little space that were had on countless blogs etc ten years ago!

It was another foot in the doorway. Radical feminists said it would be. And here we are relabelled as cis, and males declaring to be females. It might not be as easy to see if you didn't see the whole thing played through.

Transplants are plants

hear hear home

OMG, dying at that username, TransplantsArePlants.

You know, for that matter, speaking of "OMG," it seems to me that observant Jewish people don't like the word "god" uttered at all. They'll even take the vowel out to avoid writing it ("g-d").

And devout Christians think it's wrong to take the Lord's name in vain, so my "OMG" would have been pretty offensive to them, unless we could sort of pretend I meant "gosh" or "goodness."

If we're going to let groups of people with very strong ideological beliefs dictate the rules of conversation, until it's forbidden to say anything that could offend a minority group, I should be pretty much strung up if I say "oh my god." Tolerating one group's blasphemy while banning another's stinks to high heaven of favoritism (or, possibly, what I've sometimes heard referred to as "performative wokeness," aka "look how enlightened we are, see our policy, isn't it neat?").

I'd tolerate any number of TRAs calling me a TERF or "cis" or whatever, in order to be allowed to use factual descriptive language for their status as regards sex.

We need to remember that when we pursue the "this is a slur, this is hate speech" path the way the TRAs do, the result is this kind of "ok, fine, now you're both banned from saying words the other doesn't like" decision. It's the kind of thing you decide on when you've been on a car trip for a long time and two children are squabbling in the back. "He did it first! No, she did!" "Both of you are in the wrong and need to stop what you're doing to each other."

The result of this is that TRAs are banned from using conflationary terms like "cis" ... and feminists are banned from using actual descriptive language.

I just wanted to give a very dry round of applause to all the women chanting "TERF is a slur" and talking about how "cis" is hate speech. You got what you wanted! Isn't it great? Let's all celebrate.

Oh my mum hated me taking the lords name in vain

You should see what happened when i said bloody

Terrifying woman at times lord love her

I said faffing

I got really told off cos my mum said that it SOUNDED like i was swearing