That it's not just what you say, it's also how much you talk about it.

[NicolaHare]

Surprise, another trans thread! But the dynamics of online spaces fascinates me.

Take MWR. Some stats. Feminism Chat has been active since 2010. At this moment 364 pages of threads have been generated. 144 of those pages contain threads that were created or active since January this year. At the beginning of 2018 a significant portion of threads were trans themed and these threads tended to contain the most posts, and the board has only grown more fixated with the topic since then. You have to go quite a ways back to find a page of threads that isn’t 90-95% to do with trans people.

Nowhere else on the site is so obsessed. For example: on the LGBT themed boards you only have to go back 1 or 2 pages to find threads from 2017 and earlier. There aren’t any trans threads in the 1 and a fraction page of threads from 2018 on the politics board. There are, I think, about 2 in the half dozen pages of threads from this year in the currents affairs and news forum. And in 2018, all the education forums combined have generated about 5 trans threads.

This is weird, right? Why is a general feminism board with an overwhelmingly non trans userbase so fixated on a group of people they don't belong to and the issues surrounding them? It would be weird regardless of what anyone in any thread had to say on the subject.

Not surprising, though. Trans sceptical feminism ironically almost always ends up focusing on the transgender question to the exclusion of all other topics that its proponents believe that trans inclusive feminisms are neglecting, and so neglects them to an even greater degree. Honestly, I’m sceptical that they are being neglected at all: it seems to me that conversations about pregnancy, menstruation ect are happening in public view at far greater volume than ever before, taboos surrounding bodily functions are increasingly discarded by the discourse and pop culture, and that when we talk about erasure we’re actually quibbling about terminology, the trappings of language and not the substance of the conversation. To assign a motivation to the common theme on feminism chat of “We are being silenced elsewhere!” a significant part of it might be the catharsis of imagined persecution. “We are saying the truths THEY don’t want you to hear! We are rebels!”

(This interview with a former gender critical trans woman is worth reading. It’s American and several years old, but it describes the many of the other toxic intellectual cul-de-sacs you can observe in MWR. www.transadvocate.com/is-sadism-popular-with-terfs-a-chat-with-an-ex-gendercrit_n_18568.htm)

But to set aside the discussion of substance. Do you think that the mere volume of trans threads in feminism chat is indicative of a kind of transphobia? If it were a forum of straight people talking about nothing but same sex attracted people, even if what they had to say was positive would we not be inclined to see in it's users a troubling insecurity with regards to queerness. If it were a forum of white people talking about nothing but people of colour in the most effusive terms, would we take this at face value or would we assign sinister motives (as the resonance of Get Out suggests many would)?

What’s the correct form in our brave new world?

Brain dead senile dried up old hag, I think is the ism approved version. Add appropriate religion or skin colour if applicable.

Cos language doesn't matter and objections to euphemisms are over reactions.

littlbrowndog Tue 13-Nov-18 11:55:54
"Jeez I read 3 of them essays you touted on the unruly bodies site
Just saying to anyone else. Don’t bother. They were tedious and dull.
Wafty bollocks"

Eternally in your debt littlebrowndog I skim read it, and came to the conclusion that: it's like watching a child saying " bum" "tit" and "poo" words to try and shock the grown ups. User name is of a lead woman medical doctor too, clearly not the same person.

Enjoying the contributions from the women
Bunbury would be so proud.

My OP includes a long interview about how trans people are dehumanised in spaces like this. No one has engaged with it yet.

We don't have to engage with it, this is not a classroom and you are not a teacher.

But a translation of the above is: be nice women, use the language I say you should use, I will decide what you can and can't talk about and how you talk about it because my feelings and wants are far more important than yours and if you don't comply I'm going to scream and scream, bully you and then play the victim and accuse you of bullying me.

There was no need for a conflict, it was not caused by GRC Feminists, MN FWR or MN. We were expected to roll over and play nice and accept being dehumanised by having the language we use to describe ourselves and our issues changed, our single sex spaces and services re-purposed so they are no longer single sex or safe and having our rights and those of young girls stripped away. We were not asked nor did we ask for any of this, it was just assumed that we would be too weak, not intelligent enough and too compliant to oppose it and now there is shock and horror that we have refused to meekly submit. None of this is of our making.

mmm

first things first, I'll talk about whatever I fancy, so piss off with that policing women's speech shit

second, do you subscribe to Serano's belief that transwomen are women?

if so, can you please supply a definition of 'woman' that includes Theresa May and Jane Fae, but excludes Bernard Manning?

you see, I'm reluctant to accept pedagogy from someone who can't define the terms they use

Well we're begin exclusionary if we talk about issues related to being biological women, so what the hell do you expect us to discuss? Cheese sandwiches?

I think you've got a bloody cheek actually. You didn't have the good grace to post in FWR, so you could have a juicy moan about us in AIBU and garner all the cookies from the posters who also like to moan about us because they can't be bothered to engage.

Then, when your word salad pose got inexplicably moved here and we all posted to underline why trans is posted on so much, because guess what, your complaint is not original, you have the gall to get snippy that no one has responded to your satisfaction to the links you didn't actually have the chutzpah to post here in the first place.

Not only that, but one of the links is to a 'provocateur' saying pretty damned offensive things about lesbians that you think we should waste even more time reading for some new thoughts none of us have come across before.

If you've got any gumption at all, you'll be polite enough to explain what it is you think we've missed without directing us to homophobic provocation.

Shhhh we get deleted for talking about cheese sandwiches, or breakfast. The conversation ends up getting far, far too edgy.

Would be way more interesting than this too. Sigh.

This constant claim that not sharing another person's beliefs about themselves is 'dehumanising' them.

We are a pluralistic society containing many religions and belief systems. I'm a materialist and an atheist. I don't believe in souls created by any deity, I don't believe in ghosts, I don't believe in dualist philosophies and I don't believe in gender identities that exist independently of sexed bodies. I nevertheless believe that Christians, Muslims, Spiritualists, dualists, trans people and everybody else exist, are human beings, and should have human rights including the right to freedom of belief, as should I.

What floral said

Sides...the OP isn't engaging with anyone elses post

OP Your posts have been non stop sneery criticism, don't be surprised you get short thrift in response. If your intention was to achieve anything along the lines of the two wrongs etc you keep saying then do you really think you used the right tactic?

There have been lots of your comrades pop by over the years to give us a lecture, some stay for months repeating the same old bonkers delusional stuff over and over. You have brought nothing new or original to the conversation.

We, meanwhile, have made some great progress and will continue to do so.

Well we're begin exclusionary if we talk about issues related to being biological women, so what the hell do you expect us to discuss? Cheese sandwiches?

Wouldn't that be exclusionary regarding ham?

CHEESE SANDWICHES EXCLUDE VEGANS.

deepwater I didn't say it was a legitimate redefinition, but shifting the definition is redefining. The attempt is in progress.

Totally understand your point that the replacement is, shall we say, inadequate, and but I'm cynical enough to think it's not as simple as "women is just a feeling".

"Woman is a feeling" is only the gateway drug. TWAW is contradictory, so "women has to be defined to include me and bits that don't include me have to be defined out of existence".

That's why, IMO, we see so many dehumanizing terms applied. (I didn't come up with "not men" but it did thoroughly piss me off).

if so, can you please supply a definition of 'woman' that includes Theresa May and Jane Fae, but excludes Bernard Manning?

Don't hold your breath!

Here's the offending lesbian quote in the context of the full paragraph:

Today lesbian is kind of almost an anachronistic term because everyone is, like, queer. Lesbian sounds sort of old fashioned, and kind of dowdy… like you’re middle aged and you hike a lot—that kind of thing. (Not that there aren’t lesbians to whom that applies.) But I was just reading the Lesbian Tide, which was this magazine from (I think) ’71 to ’74. And this particular issue of the magazine was right after this infamous conference known as the Second West Coast Lesbian Conference of 1973. The fascinating thing about this issue is that it’s got pieces by different people who were at the conference; none of them agree with each other—there’s so much infighting, it’s incredible. And one of the things that they’re infighting about is the word lesbian. Like, this is called the West Coast Lesbian Conference and no one agrees on what a lesbian is! We wouldn’t argue about this now—we would argue about for instance what trans means, or potentially what queer means. Those are the terms in which people are storing their political optimism, but in the Seventies, among a certain group of feminists, the term that housed that optimism temporarily was lesbian.

She isn't being prescriptive with this, but descriptive. A lot of recent studies of LGB youth show that many are reluctant to pick a definite label, particularly youth of colour or from lower class backgrounds (gay and lesbian are seen as carrying a lot of white and middle class baggage).

She is also a lesbian herself, and it'll be a sad day when gay people aren't allowed snarky self-deprecation at the expense of their identity group.

Woman is a feeling" is only the gateway drug. TWAW is contradictory, so "women has to be defined to include me and bits that don't include me have to be defined out of existence.

Yeah, that might be the end game. My point was that they try to destroy the term 'woman', but you are right, this might well be the first step to some alternative, not yet formulated defintition on top of the ashes.

That quote is from Andrea Long Chu?

I have no problem with word lesbian to define women - XX women - attracted to other XX women.

I put in the XX just to offset the "TW can be lesbians too". No, they fucking can't.

Oh God Red I'm sorry. Should have been a trigger warning.

I'll turn myself into the Woke Yorks Police quick before they send the horses out.

OP your OP seems to have generated lots of just the type of traffic you were intent on analysing. Have you refreshed your model with the latest traffic data and can you enlighten us on the exciting results.

Though tis a school night so it can wait, I’m sure you have homework to finish.

A lot of recent studies of LGB youth show that many are reluctant to pick a definite label, particularly youth of colour or from lower class backgrounds (gay and lesbian are seen as carrying a lot of white and middle class baggage).
Crap
Sources?

That quote is from Andrea Long Chu?

That is what happens, when you talk to people who can't define the words they use. When they say 'lesbian' do they mean a lesbian, or do they mean a hetero male?

Or a hetero male with a fetish?

gay and lesbian are seen as carrying a lot of white and middle class baggage

Or is it just that they exclude the cool kids who want to identify as gay despite being heterosexual (Never in any danger of being thrown into prison for being gay, able to have their relationship recognised in any country on earth).

Hello to @ComfortablyLurking in Scandinavia .

Thank you for lurking, it does get a bit scary here.