A word on the shifting of language

[FloralBunting]

I've been saying for some time that there is another shift in language coming. You see it in changing definitions of existing words, the invention entirely new pronouns, gaps being mandated between words, etc.

This manipulation has a number of functions. It's meant to destabilise people so they are unsure of the correct terminology. It signals to those who are deep in the cult that they are speaking to another member, and shores up feelings of belonging which is important to maintain the cult's power. It acts as a means to dampen dissent.

So, the narrative used to be that some people feel they were born in the wrong sexed body. It evolved into some people are born in the wrong body. From that we get the notion of 'transition' from one sex to another. This leads on to definitions of 'woman' being challenged because we start with cosmetic surgery, and then there is this curious change to focus more on inner identity so that the male body isn't the sex marker, but the 'female' feelings are. Transsexual goes because it mentions sex. Transgender comes into favour instead etc.

So the current situation is that 'trans women were never men, they have always been women' which obviously completely erases women as a distinct biological category.

Now, I predicted that the next move would be the elimination of the word 'trans' because that word drives a rather large truck through the idea that something has always been something else. There is no need to 'transition' if someone has always been a woman.

But I questioned how they would be able to jettison the word as it now has a kind of talismanic quality. I should have guessed that they will just change the definition. I was reading this Twitter thread earlier, and this tweet I've linked jumped out at me.

twitter.com/LennartVM/status/1090426165804843013?s=20

I'm putting all this here because I think language has been a key element of how the ideology has gained traction (Well, it's how any idea gains traction traction) and it's genuinely empowering when people can start to see for themselves how the manipulation works.

I should have guessed that they will just change the definition

I have seen transpeople simply drop the "trans" as you suggest. As you say, the new thing from some transwomen is that they are specifically adult human females (in those words) and that they always have been female. Not so much shifting language as appropriating and obliterating

There’s an irony in all of this. Even if they achieve the dream of there being “women and ciswomen”, it won’t bring them what they want, which is to be women.

Next thing they’ll be claiming they’re ciswomen and we’ll be called something else entirely.

@AnyOldPrion yes. If all women started calling themselves ciswomen, you can bet that would be appropriated next.

I had an argument with someone recently where they were saying it was unkind to refer to people along the lines of "used to be a man/woman". And I said no, actually, you can't just take words that used to refer to sex, unilaterally decide they now refer to gender, and then be offended when people use them in their original context.

I like how they can't answer what trans means if it doesn't means transitioning and they just start to attack.

Ironically, it is poststructuralist discursive approaches that drive the focus on what language does.

The people who think they are postmodernist or poststructuralist in their approach to sex and gender, just heard a claim that these approaches = a free-for-all in claiming whatever they like, and just ran with it. A careful analysis of language in use, as Floral is doing, is far more poststructuralist than awa’s have ever been (I have poststructuralist leanings myself, and despair at what is being done in it’s name, so I mean that as a compliment, Floral )

This is a really helpful thread. thanks Floral.

I get confused why people say that they are trans but at the same time say they are a woman just like me. These concepts are chalk and cheese to most people. So maybe it helps to ease the cognitive dissonance to a small extent if the ‘trans’ label can be gradually dropped?

Yet where would that loss of a label leave the whole advocacy position that revolves around being able to point to trans people as a distinct group?

It would be ironic if the TRA lobby groups finally realised there are down sides to not being able to describe yourself or people like you...

I don't believe most of them even have hurt feelings anyway. It's just weaponised offence. The real goal, which they do a piss poor job of hiding, is to attack and subjugate women.

Ova this is so true. Undermining women as individual people but also undermining the accepted idea of what ‘women’ as a group are, or how they can be defined.