If we made new labels, would they be co-opted too?

[PurpleOva]

My main issue around the trans debate is accuracy in language and the loss of the labels for biological.sex as meaningful labels.

Everything else is a product of that anyway.

So, I thought, what if we come up with new labels for the biological sex groups? Ova and Tes were words I thought might work as they either don't mean other things or are related to what they would mean (not the opposite anyway!).

But if we did that, came up with new words to describe the two sub-groups of people who have to come together for reproduction to occur, would those words be co-opted by the trans community too?

Is there any way to get meaningful sexed labels back?

Would you be able to let go of the current labels as "gender" only ones? And if we did have to come up with new meaningful terms for the subgroups of human who have to come.together for reproduction, what would you call them?

Nope. Any new labels would be appropriated, because it is a deliberate poke in the eye to GC feminists and also because TRAs are too dim to devise their own labels.

Mostly the former, though.

Transwomen are transwomen.

Women do not have penises.

Women are adult human females.

They're already working on getting the dictionary re-written.
Once we've lost exclusive use of "woman" they'll work on "female" and then whatever new word we come up with they'll work on that too.

We have to fight for our own definition, they can’t have our language! The words they are trying to change, break down and redefine are

Women

Female

Lesbian

Would shifting the focus away from women and feminist rights, to the human right to have a meaningful definition of biological sex be the way to combat this issue?

The way we are right now is just entrenching the sides.... I can't see a way that the current battle is won without shifting tack.

Yes they would. This is about domination not just validation.

Once we've lost exclusive use of "woman" they'll work on "female"

This is already happening.

Influential TRAs eg Sarah Brown (Stonewall & Lib Dems) & Sue Pascoe (Channel 4 & Conservatives) assert that they are female.

Scottish Bill earlier this year redefined both woman & female:
fairplayforwomen.com/scottish_stole_woman/

It is feeling more and more like that to me too... I don't understand how we got here really. It's really depressing.

They already aren't satisfied that we can call ourselves female and try to appropriate that, because this is about power. If we even accept "cis woman" they would come after that too. So no. Hell to the fuck no. Hold the line.

Sorry my reply was about it being about dominance.

The word "female" is very much already being co-opted. The sex marker on documentation is "female", so when people can change their documentation, it will state "female".

We've got clear words for the biological sex groups, but they're already being appropriated and misused. 'Ova and tes' wouldn't work ... they'd be denounced as horribly transphobic, carped at for not including all intersex people and people with medical issues (eg cancer victims who no longer have their gonads) - and fully transitioned people wouldn't have either.

Nope. We have to keep on asserting our right to words retaining their clear existing meanings. Transwomen are transwomen , they are male. Women are 'adult human females'. Words whose purpose is to denote a specific group are not meant to be 'inclusive'. Words used in legal documents must retain (or in this case, too often, regain) clear unambiguity.

Yep. As I quipped once, if women called themselves squirrels there’d be men stuffing their cheeks with acorns and boasting about their superior hibernation.

It’s a lack of imagination. For men, women have always been the “other”, what de Beauvoir called the shadow sex. Or, as Germaine Bunbury called it, the evil twin.

Straight men are attracted to women, but equally repulsed by what they see as women’s inferiority. Women are the repository of those things men find both shameful and arousing (because they can’t express them within masculinity).

Men read women as submissive and emotional and slyly sexual and delicate and all those bullshit stereotypes. Anything masculinity feels ashamed of being, they read into women.

It makes tragic, psychological sense that men floundering to enact appropriate masculinity should choose to appropriate femaleness. In a Cartesian sense, if you are not one thing, you must therefore be another. Instead of stretching the stereotype, you just choose another box.

Feeling wrong or uncomfortable in your biological or psychological self is a common human experience. But if all you can see is a choice between box F and box M, then that’s what you do.

Short of some scientific evidence, I don’t believe men “feel” like women because they have no idea really. They just know the box they are in doesn’t suit them and gender stereotyping has blinded them to anything other than social constructs.

And of course there are those who see women as a fetid playground of forbidden sexual thrills and desire that space.

Neither group actually see women as people, we are terra nullius for men to inhabit as they see fit.

I'm pretty sure we can't have anything that excludes trans people because that would be mean. But trans people can have labels that exclude us like "trans", "non-binary" (except this is everyone who's not a cartoon), "gender fluid" etc.

I've not connected the dot about "trans" not being inclusive before... LOL.

I'm a normal, not gender conforming, person. As is every other person I have ever known. So for me, this is very abstract, but now impacting me by impacting the definition of my biological sex.

Nobody I have ever known has fitted gender stereotypes to the nth degree.

I get very confused about how gender and sex have become so conflated and how so many people don't, or can't separate the two.

I'm here to learn more and try to wrap my head around it all.

There's a recent thread here with the Hansard info from the first parliament discussions of the first GRA in 2004, where it's clear that the conflation of gender and sex was quite intentional. In part, to disguise and avoid confronting that changing sex isn't possible.

I've not connected the dot about "trans" not being inclusive before

If you read the stonewall definitions, it is... which is a lot of the problem! My favourite line:

'Anyone who chooses, for whatever reason, to self-identify as transgender'

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/transgenderbooklett_2004.pdf

'In the broadest sense, transgender encompasses anyone whose identity or behaviour falls outside of stereotypical gender norms. '. By their own definition, most GC feminists are transgender.

If you decide to refer to women as ova, then you’ve succesfully erased the word woman. You’ve done their work for them. Either they will use woman while we are relegated to “ovas” or they will co-opt “ova” too.

Woman is what we are. Don’t give it up. I know it’s a battle but this is one battle that is definitely worth fighting.

There's a recent thread here with the Hansard info from the first parliament discussions of the first GRA in 2004, where it's clear that the conflation of gender and sex was quite intentional. In part, to disguise and avoid confronting that changing sex isn't possible.

I can't find the thread but this is the collated information from Hansard that it refers to, really important work by twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1049289194370002945.html

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1053968824356274177.html

This is already happening.

Influential TRAs eg Sarah Brown (Stonewall & Lib Dems) & Sue Pascoe (Channel 4 & Conservatives) assert that they are female.

Yep. AC identifies as an adult human female. It’s a very deliberate and organised decision to co-opt the definition as a result of Posies campaign.

"By their own definition, most GC feminists are transgender."
This.
Its all ridiculous.

Does a bear shit in the woods? Of course they will appropriate it. There is previous form - Lesbianism, Childhood (Stephoknee), POC Civil Rights.

The group (who say they are only a fraction of the population and so are no threat) are the ones who can decide on new words, for themselves.

Their behaviour is straight out of 1984; control the language and you control thought. Control thought and you control people.

"We don't need no "re" education"
"We don't need no thought control"
"Hey Mermaids - leave them kids alone"

Ah #guardiansongs have me in a sing-a-long mood (that and the wine).
Stop judging it's Friday night.

Are you in Oz Dana?

Yep