So, could we just change words?

[NotMySquirrel]

I've been thinking about this since I saw the OP a while back accusing everyone who doesn't identify as Barbie of actually being a man. It got me thinking, if 'woman' now means 'Barbie circa 1970' and anything non-Barbie is male, no matter how many Barbie boxes are ticked, could we just concede the fight over terminology and make a new term? After all, it's not about stereotyping or pink, fundamentally the question that should separate us, as far as I can see, is 'Do you have a vagina?' I'm aware some MtF trans people have their penises removed and vaginas created out of them, but imo anyone willing to do that can share women's facilities as they're clearly very committed (and as far as I can tell there aren't many of them).

Could we do all equality statistics, all separated spaces, sporting events etc on the basis of vagina/no vagina? Let people with penises call themselves women if they like but they're going to need to use the no-vagina changing rooms? And you can switch between male/female (read non-Barbie/Barbie) twenty times a day if you like but for equality statistics and sporting events you're a no-vagina or a vagina-haver (we'd have to come up with catchier names though).

Have I totally missed the point?

Bingoitsadingo, lots of activist spaces or training (including community activism in areas very unrelated to ID politics), LGBT spaces, educational space, feminist events (younger crowd). Could be more specific but it would be identifying. I have even been automatically called "they" despite reluctantly saying my pronoun was she/her because ppl seemed to think that my androgynous look meant that I must be "non-binary" rather than a nonconforming female.

I see, thank you!

I maintain that if we have to ask everyone their pronouns, we may as well do away with them completely and just use names all the time..

Yes names seems best. I wish pronouns didn't exist, it's daft to be constantly referring to peoples sex anyway.

(except when you need to be fighting sexism or protecting females in a partriarcal world that is...)

The problem is that laws have been written on the assumption that everyone agrees woman = adult, human, female.

Losing the definition of the word woman means that all these laws are now at best ambiguous, and at worst meaningless.

Which is why we need to fight to retain woman, otherwise we have to start over from the beginning on Equalities legislation, Maternity provision etc.

@bingoitsadingo

I haven't been asked for my pronoun yet either. I struggle with using they for one person though. I was taught it as a plural pronoun. 'This is Susan. They are a vet,' just sounds like a shaky grasp of the English language to my ears.

Or is it supposed to be, 'This is Susan, they is a vet.'

I've never actually had to use they as a pronoun for one person before.

I used to think along these lines. Infact I made a post a while back along the same type of line. Basically saying maybe we should just give up 'woman' and declare ourselves female or something. But alas, female was the next term appropriated by males, so no...nothing would work. I now tend to just use male trans people when speaking about any male person who says they are trans. Its easier that way, and doesn't confuse newbies as much...so many people I have found, thinks a transwoman is a female person with a male identity. Which is the way it makes sense really?

Butteryellow, that's a good point.

I actually think 'male trans person' is more inclusive than the many other labels, as it covers all male people with a trans identity, non binary etc

Although, 'They is a vet,' to me reads like it should be followed by 'innit'.

Barracker hits the nail on the head

And man, that Twitter thread!! I'd actually like to thank you mad vipers who are on Twitter and share links with those of us who are too scared to go on it aren't. Your blood pressure must suffer.

Change words? Absolutely. Fucking. Not.

Notmysquirrel, you get used to it when most people you know are 'they singular'. I have a lot of complicated thoughts about non-binary as a distinct "gender" category, but getting my head round simply the word usage has been easy with practice.

'Definitely the idea of the cishet (unlabeled of course) is a western colonial construct enforced on the world. It's why responses to LGBTQI+ people are so violent.'

I am utterly perplexed by statements of this sort.

The next tweet agreed and stated that the idea of men and women =babies and heterosexuality as the most common orientation started in the 19 century. Someone needs to update the animal kingdom that they are bang out of date and Poss transphobic

Nothingontellyagain, they tie themselves in knots don't they. The harmful construct is gender - the idea the men and women are expected to do/think/feel x.y.z. in accordance with gender norms. Sex is something that just... is. Heterosexuality and homosexuality are colonial constructs in terms of those categories of human not being thought of as distinct groupings in the past until one group wished to medicalise or problematise the other. But pretty much all species have pairings of all kinds between the sexes (note not between the genders... because gender is an oppressive and culturally mediated construct).

The next tweet agreed and stated that the idea of men and women =babies and heterosexuality as the most common orientation started in the 19 century. Someone needs to update the animal kingdom that they are bang out of date and Poss transphobic

They would have difficulties even outside the UK and US. I lived in Germany for over 40 years and such language gymnastics would be hard to imagine in that country, where even things have strict "genders". As for any country with a non-white majority -- impossible to imagine. This is an entirely anglo-echo-chamber.

I have a Facebook friends who is a very popular non-fiction US author. She has a huge friends community who are always quick to applaud anything she says. She is extremely "progressive" like almost all of this community.
Recently this woman spoke of her 11 year old daughter who now refuses to use the pronouns she and he and substitutes "they" for everyone until she knows their "preferred gender". She (the duaghter) apparently expressed sympathy for all the millions of people in the past who ave been misgendered. She mentioned Abraham Lincoln -- "what if they were really a woman"?
She had hundreds of comments congratulating her on raising such a woke daughter.

"They" singular seems relatively normal to me, as it's commonly used when you don't know the sex of the person being referred to, either because it's ambiguous or you just can't really see them.
"Can you see that person on top of the hill, they're so far ahead of us"
"did you see that person who walked past? What on earth were they wearing?"
etc. Using it to talk more closely is clunky I agree, but not incorrect. You still use "they are" even if it's singular (unless you also use the word innit )

Having a penis or vagina doesn't separate males from females as there have been men and woman born without and in rare cases both.

A man is a person with the potential to create sperm.

A woman is a person with the potential to create an egg.

The word potential is important to exempt those without the ability to do either of those.

Every single person on the planet falls into one of these two categories bar none so separating them shouldn't be difficult.

@bingoitsadingo

Thank you, that helps.

Both Shakespeare and Chaucer used "they" as a 3rd person singular pronoun in circumstances where sex was unknown or irrelevant. That's not a usage that bothers me. (Though I fundamentally disagree with the idea that having a personality capable of being covered by more than one sex stereotype at once makes you a different sort of person from the rest of us).

Zie, xir, etc on the other hand - anyone who wants me to remember that alphabetti-spaghetti nonsense can fuck right off.

ImFineThankYouSusan

What was even worse for me with that tweat was that it put (what they consider natal) women second, and as a subset of (trans) women!

“I support both women and cis women” [mad]

Opps

No, we can't just change the meaning of words so that they become meaningless.

Women are women.
Men are not women.

And women can generally spot men, whatever they call themselves.

It is not just the visuals - e.g. clothes or makeup or hairstyle or shoes.

We can see, and we can hear, and also we have a sense of smell.

No because I am a historian and it would render the past incomprehensible.

As well as what everyone else said.

Absolutely. I'm sure if we all gave up and accepted the (horrible, insulting) term 'cis' it wouldn't be long before we heard 'I've finished transitioning, so I'm 'cis' now too...'

That already happened a couple of years ago.