The shifting language around the T issue.

[FloralBunting]

Ok, strap in for this one. I share it for the purpose of examining the language, as I try and keep tabs on the way AWAs use terms to shift their argument, and this is replete with things I have been noticing for a while, and some new trends. It will also befuddled and frustrate you, and that's what it is written to do, so you might need a glass of something to get you through it.

First thing - the scorn poured on the 'born in the wrong body' phrasing. We've recognized this one coming for a while, knowing that the Trans movement would be jettisoning the older understandings of gender dysphoria as quick as it could. But the way it's being enacted is to say that the phrase 'born in the wrong body' is the term trans people used because cis people were too stupid to understand the deep concepts involved in 'transness'.

That's significant because 'transness' appears to be an emerging buzzword that I suspect may supplant 'queer' in due course. Cislation is another newer coinage you may come across.

Also, if you really can't face wading through the whole thing, and I wouldn't blame you, this particular bit will tell you the most important message:

Who we are as trans people is often complex, always beautiful, and infinitely boundless. As we have shown, to have our transness codified and limited through the phenomenon of cislation, which substitutes our limitless natures for cisgender peoples’ coherence, is problematic on multiple levels. We also understand that our arguments may be challenging for readers in that we stray from easy solutions and digestible understandings of our trans selves for others to consume. This is intentional, lest we fall into the traps of cislation. Thus, we close our essay with a call for people of all genders — and especially cisgender people — to embrace complexity over a false sense of readability of trans realities.
Embracing our call means focusing not on cis-readability via cislation, but on trans humanity via centering transness in all its boundless potentialities and possibilities. If we care deeply about trans lives, then we need to recognize that the promotion of a nonbinary/binary trans dichotomy does more harm than good.

Yes, that's right, please remember that trans people are so very much more complex and beautiful than 'cis' people, and the most important thing that cis people can do is centre transness in everything.

medium.com/national-center-for-institutional-diversity/not-another-gender-binary-a-call-for-complexity-over-cis-readability-d9eaefdcefc2

Now, as tempting as it is to rip this into confetti, it is useful to be aware of what is going on out there is the land of meaningless babble, where the removal of women's rights is just one glorious step in the boundless vision of transness.

It just shows that whenever babble like that occurs we need to go back to basics. They can talk as much as they like about their perceptions and feelings but none of that trumps biology.

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

Cake! Cake! Cake!

(Did nobody ever tell them that you can't have your cake and eat it?)

Lang, you so and so, I still haven't worked that one out.

And yes dancingcamper, this isn't about discussing the merits of these ideas - clearly it's all fucking bananas. But I've always found it useful to know how the cult language shifts as a control mechanism - because if you're still arguing about 'trans' being born in the wrong body, for example, you need to know that the adherents are leaving those terms behind.

It is very cultish language. The thinking behind it is clear. Only the faithful (i.e trans) have the esoteric knowledge necessary to unlock the divine mysteries (trans whateverness). Secular (cis) people are not blessed with this secret knowledge so are unable to comprehend the the mystical beauty that is the reality of the faithful.

Unbeliever and secularists should stop demanding a coherent narrative but should accept that the believers just have sooper seekrit speshul knowledge and because of this should be centered in all things and at all times.

You. Couldn't. Make. This. Shit. Up.

Except you could, and we call it established religion. Everyone seems to understand that it's ok to reject the authority of religion. But they still need their priests and gurus and idols to bow to.

Scary how it works, isn't it?

I admire your persistence with the babble Floral, I just can't be bothered to follow the latest stuff. I just stick to the point that everyone can identify other's sex pretty easily and everyone knows you need a man and a woman to make a baby.

Pretty much everything else is just... well I don't know what it is exactly, but I do know it's not my issue to worry about.

This actually is wonderful. The more they move from a medical model people can at least create analogies to, the more they move into mysticism, the less sense it will make on a legal and legislative level.

The vast majority of the populace are grounded in material reality.

No, you're quite right to do so dancing There are so many aspects to knocking down this cobblers, I don't think everyone has to take the same approach at all. I offer this sort of analysis to those who find it useful - not as any kind of prescriptive knowledge.

Indeed, that's half the point, you can't be prescriptive because they change their terms so much, which is part of the game of control - they use secret language to exclude those outside the cult, and to enforce compliance on those drawn in. There is no inherent, coherent meaning to any of this that can't be simply summed up in the word 'Submit'.

I wont do that, and I own one of Posie's Women Will Not Submit t-shirts to prove it

What a load of codswallop (not you, the incoherent babble you quoted).

Imagine if some poor unsuspecting foreigner tried to learn English from reading this drivel.

Bicker, yes, totally agree. The fact that they can't seem to grasp that is remarkable, and that last paragraph is hubristic over reach if ever I saw it.

Ooh I should get one of those - love my adult human female hoodie.

Red is very me

When I first saw and read about Stefonknee I was floundering in my head for words to describe my perception of they. Beautiful fits perfectly!

Why always beautiful? Arent there less attractive trans people just like there are degrees of subjextive physical attractiveness in everyone else?

The reality is that transwomen are sometimes beautiful and are.often, not. Just like everyone elae.

And how can you be limitessly boundless?

we call it established religion. Everyone seems to understand that it's ok to reject the authority of religion. But they still need their priests and gurus and idols to bow to.

Yes to this.

The more they move from a medical model people can at least create analogies to, the more they move into mysticism, the less sense it will make on a legal and legislative level.

Yes to this

There is no inherent, coherent meaning to any of this that can't be simply summed up in the word 'Submit'

Yes to this.

Basically just yes. Yes yes yes... unless it's to the person who wrote that steaming pile of shite. To you sir I say no and I fart in your general direction.

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elder berries!

Sorry. I know it's not seemly for a woman to be so abusive on FWR, but sometimes the temptation to live up to the negative expectations gets too much.

Boundless is such a beautiful word. Did anyone else think of Tennyson?

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

lsa.umich.edu/ncid/research-scholarship/public-scholarship.html

This is the organisation who published that piece of cultish propaganda. I linked to their public scholarship page because it has this sentence.

''A critical component of public scholarship is determining the most effective ways to disseminate and communicate with a broader public audience.''

Hmmm.

Very interesting, thank you for putting this up here FloralBunting. I'd also noticed this repositioning on the born in the wrong body rhetoric in the Contra Points video on gender critical arguments.

Only problem there is that TRAs were so insistent on the concept, it is now being taught at our schools. Rejecting it to further marginalise those with gender dysphoria is an act of self-sabotage for the movement.

If there is nothing tangible to pin being trans on, and if they can be any one of many things at any given moment in time, there is less and less justification for special treatment and the privilege of self-id.

We are all of us complex and beautiful and limitless. And because this is not only entirely subjective and esoteric, but also mostly incomprehensible, largely indescribable and most definitely unverifiable, it will be an extremely hard sell to our politicians.

If this new flavour of the church of gender takes off, transgender ideology and legislation may suffer a serious setback.

That made me laugh RiversDisguise - out in Twitter land the TRAs, supposedly on the left, are wishing for our murder, whist the apparently "alt right" MNers are on here responding to this nonsense by quoting Tennyson. There's another thread going about a TRA plot to flood MN with extreme porn, where people are wondering if we should retaliate by flooding their sites with references to The Archers. Every time someone says this place is full of violent right wing oppressors I piss myself laughing a little bit and not even because of my birth injuries

Pseuds Corner will never be short of material will it.

I'm a bit lax about keeping up these days so had to resort to t'interwebs:
Helle V. Dam, ‎Matilde Nisbeth Brøgger, ‎Karen Korning Zethsen - 2018 - ‎Language Arts & Disciplines prefix I suggest the term cislation, meaning carrying the reader − not the text − hither, cis, into the world inhabited by the particular work in question.
Right. So we have othering vs hithering. I might be able to get the hang of this.

I dunno though: if you can translate a text, can you cislate it? Would you ever need to? Or is cislation something that can only be done to something that isn't actually a text? Or does it just mean 'explain for the ignorant peasantry uninformed'?

I really need to see this word in context in the wild. I will report back in a few weeks if I survive.