Are we arguing about the wrong thing?

[DonkeySkin]

Inspired by a Glinner Twitter thread...

In which Graham Linehan stated that Stonewall advisor Alex Drummond was not female, and that anyone who believes otherwise is 'nuts'. He was inundated with people arguing this point, including some accusing him of 'defining women by gender stereotypes'. Someone else tweeted separately in another thread (paraphrasing), 'I had no idea this many people were this crazy.'

But the thing is... they're not crazy, are they? All the people who espouse the ideology of 'gender identity', which that holds that male and female are a feeling-state, rather than a physical fact.

GC feminists often describe such people as 'delusional', but this is ascribing a level of good faith to them that is undeserved. People who are willing to state outright that a male person can be female if he says so aren't delusional. THEY ARE LIARS. They are lying when they say that sex is a social construct, and no one can tell the difference between male and female human beings, and they need to be called on this lie, not indulged with esoteric arguments about linguistics, metaphysics and (inevitably) intersex conditions.

Every single person on that thread arguing with Linehan knows as well as he does that Alex Drummond isn't female. So even arguing the point with them is attributing a weird legitimacy to this lie, by assuming that the people repeating it are making a good-faith argument.

Let me reiterate: nobody actually believes this. Every politician and high-profile person who smugly intones: 'Trans women are women' is perfectly aware that male human beings aren't female human beings. No one is truly confused about the difference between the class of persons who have the potential to impregnate, and the class of persons who have the potential to get pregnant. Nobody has lost their ability to tell the two sexes apart, and there is no way anyone can cognitively trick themselves into perceiving an obviously male-looking person as a woman.

So the disagreement about whether 'trans women are women' isn't a real disagreement. It's a cover for a different argument altogether.

This isn't a dispute between people who believe that male human beings are really female if they say so, and people who don't believe it. Because NOBODY believes that. What we are actually arguing about is whether female human beings should be permitted to define ourselves separately from males.

When people say 'trans women are women', they are not expressing a sincere belief that adult human males can become adult human females. They are asserting men's right to claim membership of the same ontological category as women, on their terms whenever they so wish. Conversely, and just as importantly, they are also denying the right of human females to have a separate ontological category to ourselves.

Feminists should not be reduced to arguing that women and girls exist as a real material thing in the world. Everyone already knows this. We need to stop arguing about whether 'trans women are women' and move the argument onto its true ground, by putting the case that women have the right to define ourselves – in language and in law – separately from males. Female human beings have the right to an ontological category to ourselves, a name to ourselves and the language to define our physical and social reality. And let the trans ideologues and their 'feminist' supporters argue the opposite, in all its stark brazen misogyny, if they wish.

I keep re-reading this so that I can use it whenever the situation arises.

As to 'what about trans men' - the reason not many people are arguing about that is that women who choose to identify and live as men are no threat to anyone. As far as I know, they aren't demanding access to places where men need to be alone for their own protection and well-being. No-one makes a fuss if you do something eccentric or potentially illogical if it's what you want, and doesn't tread on anyone else's toes. If/when it does, THAT is when we'll hear arguments about trans men.

Bumping this for the excellent OP that has been mentioned elsewhere.

When people say 'trans women are women', they are not expressing a sincere belief that adult human males can become adult human females. They are asserting men's right to claim membership of the same ontological category as women, on their terms whenever they so wish. Conversely, and just as importantly, they are also denying the right of human females to have a separate ontological category to ourselves.

Feminists should not be reduced to arguing that women and girls exist as a real material thing in the world. Everyone already knows this. We need to stop arguing about whether 'trans women are women' and move the argument onto its true ground, by putting the case that women have the right to define ourselves – in language and in law – separately from males. Female human beings have the right to an ontological category to ourselves, a name to ourselves and the language to define our physical and social reality. And let the trans ideologues and their 'feminist' supporters argue the opposite, in all its stark brazen misogyny, if they wish.

I agree that the conversation needs to shift to the right of women to define ourselves - in language and law - separate from males.

Regarding the assumption that they all lie, I will say this: Those who work hard to make everyone adopt the TWAW mantra lie and know it, but many who follow believe it, just like they believe anything authority or the 'in' group tells them. 70% of US citizens and 80% of US soldiers serving in Iraq honestly believed at the time that the Iraq war was retaliation for 9/11.
This is why totalitarian regimes are so successful. You can make the majority of people believe pretty much anything, if authorities and media repeat it often enough, I think.

deepwatersolo - It feels like we're caught up in a very large scale social conformity experiment - one in which we're expected to forget that the pre-conditions for successful propaganda are reasonably well understood.

Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism argues that a: “mixture of gullibility and cynicism... is prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian movements":

In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true... The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness. (I had to delete the final " for formatting reasons.)

Aside from the obvious, horrible parallels with EA and DV, compelling others to repeat your lies is a well established interrogation technique that is known to break the spirit of those being interrogated. It's also a means to assert your dominance over subordinates.

I think Cialdini and various social psychologists argue that when individuals can be coerced into abandoning their integrity by being compelled to repeat untruths they can then be bound to the coercive force by a need for consistency, mixed with shame and complicity.

Jacob T. Levy's piece about Authoritarianism and Post-Truth Politics highlighted this:

[The] great analysts of truth and speech under totalitarianism—George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Vaclav Havel—can help us recognize this kind of lie for what it is. Sometimes—often—a leader with authoritarian tendencies will lie in order to make others repeat his lie both as a way to demonstrate and strengthen his power over them.

Saying something obviously untrue, and making your subordinates repeat it with a straight face in their own voice, is a particularly startling display of power over them. It’s something that was endemic to totalitarianism.

arranfan exactly!
I have read some stuff of Arendt ans some analyses of what she wrote, and this part about forcing people to submit and repeat the obvious untruth, which breaks their integrity and makes them complicit (to a point, where they may deny to themselves that it is really bullshit) - that really explains this whole drama so persuasively.

It is, indeed, a scary social experiment. But I believe they'll fail in the end. The question is, how much damage will have been done until then. And will some of the large scale damage have irreversible consequences for society.

I have read some stuff of Arendt ans some analyses of what she wrote, and this part about forcing people to submit and repeat the obvious untruth, which breaks their integrity and makes them complicit (to a point, where they may deny to themselves that it is really bullshit) - that really explains this whole drama so persuasively.

It really does.

This is a cracking thread that I missed at the time.

So much brilliance, but this is my thinker of the day:

"They make that misogyny explicit when they say that people who stick to the biological definition of woman 'reduce women to vaginas and wombs. How insulting.' What they are expressing here is the belief that is there is something reductive and insulting about being a human being with female reproductive biology, such that any category which contains ONLY those persons must necessarily be a degraded and inferior one. It is only by including by including people with male biology in the definition of 'woman', they believe, that women can achieve full humanity. They actually argue this openly."

Wow, how come I have only just seen this thread. Such a great reminder of that is really going on here.

Fantastic post DonkeySkin.

Yes they are all liars.
Yes it's the Emperor's New Clothes.
Yes it's a total exercise in exerting power over others by compelling them to lie.
It is egregious gaslighting.
And it is unbelievably misogynistic to pick on woman as the category to be colonised when no other category gets this treatment ('I identify as black' doesn't wash in the slightest, for example). It shows what the true deepest prejudice is and who the most despised, disrespected people actually are.

It’s funny how when woman meant man’s property, or person with fewer rights no one wanted to expand the people who were women.

The last century has whittled away at the many ways men could legally subjugate or abuse women. Girls and young women are outperforming boys and young men. Post children- different story.

Men are angry that women can do without them and refuse to be their unpaid PA, sex worker, housekeeper, nanny while the same men are happily benefiting from women’s wages. It’s the male equivalent of little girls believing they will marry a prince and live happily ever after. And then you’ll get married and never have to do anything that isn’t something you personally benefit from. All that necessary stuff, that’s what women do but she has to work too.

Men do not automatically get job status and head of house status above women anymore. The “hero” doesn’t get rewarded with a subservient female partner just for turning up and being a man.

Incels want to kill women for rejecting them. The supposedly woke bros want women to move over and centre men, lose the ability to even have words to name our class and oh those women’s rights, yeah include men in them. That’ll teach us for not understanding that men are innately superior and behaving accordingly. Gay men need women to gestate their children, here comes commercial surrogacy.

It’s got absolutely nothing to do with being nice. It’s the structural strike back at women for not being under male control.

Shared parental leave is a perfect example of colonisation. Women had the right to take 12 months maternity.

The partner of the mother can now have up to 50 weeks to parent a new child. But that comes out of the mothers maternity leave. The two week difference is the legally required time off for post birth recovery.

It’s not a new form of leave for partners of mothers. It’s women - share what you fought for.

I know this is an old thread, but I have to congratulate DonkeySkin for a fantastic OP. It's spot on.

And yet. I do know someone who believes, literally believes, that it's possible for a woman to be born in a man's body. She has a trans woman friend and she wholeheartedly believes that the friend is really a woman who had the misfortune to be born in a male body. And that something happened during pregnancy or conception or something that caused a mix up (sorry, vague on what she believes because it's so bonkers). She'd be extremely indignant if you accused her of bad faith.