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.

I rather liked "Trans*," but you'd have to read Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions" to understand exactly why.

I didn't want terf banned. I did, and do, want it recognised for what it is. Because right now there are people saying punch a TERF of die TERFs die with no commupance. If you replaced terf with pretty much any other insulting name, or even factual name like Jew, you would be done for hate speech. In fact yesterday had the news that someone has been charged (quite rightly) for posting Punish a Muslim leaflets. And yet baseball bats saying Die Terf are celebrated as art.

Don't ban a word. But do recognise it for what it is.

A Vice President is a type of president, though, aren’t they? They’re the type of president who is vice, surely ?

Transwoman is fine! The goalposts will be moved every time some amount of conformity to trans ideology is achieved. It will never be enough!

womb

You honestly completely and utterly believe that some posters on here have got cis and terf banned and as an unhappy side effect have to stop using TIM?

You think its that way round?

Not being snide or sarky...honestly interested. Partly because it may affect me contributing to the thread

Womb Is a GF who is revelling in the anger the new guidelines have produced.

Feminists pointed out the rank meanings behind TERF and cis to get people to think about what they were saying. It wasn't about getting them banned for most of us, it was about unveiling misogyny.

I don't accept for one second that women pointing out misogyny and asking for politicians and mainstream media not to use them is anywhere near the same as trans activists literally trying to silence women from speaking at all about our bodies or about what it means to be a woman, and about issuing bomb threats and punching 60 year old women.

I agree with Joan and Rufus and Mip

Cis boiled my bones but frankly it showed up the people using it once it was explained what it implied, so I was happy for them to do so. Never wanted words banned.

MNHQ decided to ban that as some kind of misguided quid pro quo for banning TIM

Not being snide or sarky...honestly interested. Partly because it may affect me contributing to the thread
Yeh, this.

Not a GF. Not even gluten-free (ha!).

I'm mourning the fact that so many women I'm on the same side as have decided to throw in their lot with the "let's call it hate speech" crowd.

I agree that it's the "other way 'round," i.e. "TIM" and "transwoman" were banned and then "cis" and "TERF" were banned to make it fair and even. But if our side had not agitated for those bans (and even if you individually didn't support them, you must admit there was a fair amount of agitation for hate speech designations and bans on these boards, see above links), there would have been no "evening up" to do.

If Mumsnet decided in that circumstance to ban words TRAs disliked, while making no "equivalent" bans on words disliked by feminists, it would be 100% obvious that there was a feminist-squelching policy in effect. We could talk to people about how clearly unfair it was, and how it showed how swiftly language policing was moving when trans activists asked for it.

Instead, they've been able to come up with a "compromise solution" whereby any feminist saying "they banned all these words we need to use" is met with a "it was done to words on both sides, it's fair, you just want special treatment."

"Rules for thee, but not for me" is a credo that won't get you very far. If MNHQ had banned just a set of words used by feminists, we could fight back and maybe win by showing how unfair that was. But instead we decided to show a way to create a perception (at least to the general public) of fairness with a purportedly equivalent ban.

We used the other side's tactics with the expectation that they would save us. It's the classic Audre Lorde quote about being unable to tear down the master's house with the master's tools, learned all over again by yet another group of women.

As far as I recall "transwoman" hasn't been banned...can someone show me where it says we can't use it if that is the case.

kyanite

No its not been banned

I agree that it's the "other way 'round," i.e. "TIM" and "transwoman" were banned and then "cis" and "TERF" were banned to make it fair and even

Oh thank goodness..i thought you'd completely lost the plot

Queen please would you ask your friend if she'd permit me to use that comment about words being important on a home made, one off t-shirt? It's made my day!

Apologies that should have been a PM

I'm with you womb. It's an important point. Words are banned in the current identity politics environment because marginalised and oppressed people are apparently fragile. Look at that student union teddy bear that you could go and cuddle if someone got your pronouns wrong. Fuck that.

We used the other side's tactics with the expectation that they would save us

Hardkym. MN feminists were not targeting advertisers on Mumsnet making threats and calling MNHQ repeatedly using different phone numbers, leaking IP addresses of users and basically making working life a living hell for Justine and co.

We want to talk. They make it impossible. At the end of the day HQ need to balance resources and PR as a running business.

*Hardkym = hardly.

The whole lingo in this argument is baffling and seems to change from person to person. I was having a debate with someone about the issue and I think at one point we were in some sort of agreement but we were almost speaking a completely different language.

Of the links cited above, I had a quick look, most of them were only small threads (by FWR standards!), one was long. A significant number of them were links to articles/videos discussing what the words mean, and not necessarily calling for a ban.

You obviously missed the VICIOUS arguments over that little space that were had on countless blogs etc ten years ago!
Some of us were there, and remember Joan. How it all started was TRAs insisting we feminists use the space, or get called 'transphobic'. Just caused us to dig in our heels really.

For the record, 'cis woman' was the insulting term to describe what most of us commonly know as 'women', the default of the category. We did not need 'modification' to show we were 'non trans' - that was the point of the objection. And it was kind of fun to expose them for continually using it, when asked not to, ie showing they had no respect of women's boundaries. A teaching tool.

Oh yeah, I certainly do remember back when "trans" started appearing everywhere. Because I had no idea about its origin I'd see the and immediately look down to the bottom of the article or page, trying to find the footnote, eventually wondering why so many footnotes were apparently going missing. Am glad that little fad ended.

But after The Acronyms That Must Not Be Spoken were banned, the overwhelming response from women on here was ‘bloody hate the c word but fine with it not being banned, I’d rather have free speech.’

These words were not banned because of women on here putting pressure on MNHQ. Plenty of women, myself included, spent time and text telling The People Who I think We Still Dont Have a Permitted Acronym For that the c word was a stupid thing to call women because it’s othering, and only has correct meaning in stereochemistry and genetic promoter regulation.

But we weren’t baying for it to be banned. Let it stand, let the argument be out there.

ALL these new rules have come from pressure from outside.

I agree totally on the space issue. As far as I’m aware transwoman is still allowed. I’m sure that’ll be the next demand though, because nothing but womamnis good enough. *the demand after that will be user IDs - have you all seen the ‘priming’ posts mentioning that yet?’

It's called sementics

;)

Sementics