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.

No translation can ever be complete in itself.

There is always something left over, left out, erased, remaindered.

It is the ineffable.

That's why there can be no proper dialogue and hithering is just a fantasy.

(I can do this).

As far as I can make out, cislation is how the grand poobahs of the trans elite explain their wondrous life experience to the mundanes (as in, you and I). They really don't want to have to do it, because, like a language from an undiscovered tribe, so much of the concept of 'transness' just cant be fully grasped if you're not experiencing it yourself.

What they would like very much is if we simply conceded that it's all far too complex to be explained using cis ideas like logic and clarity, and accepted that transness is uniquely wonderful and important and nothing else matters as much as those who are trans.

So cislation is essentially when they have to dumb it down for the thickos.

But cis isn't a slur. Oh no.

Cislation sounds like some sort of geometry thing to me.

a false sense of readability

never was there a truer description of this extract!

FWIW I reject, totally, the idea that I should describe myself as 'cisgender' just because a bunch of other people choose to use that term. I find it maddening. I'm 'straight' - love it or shove it.

So cislation must mean the opposite of translation.

Translation is the process of changing words from one language to another, or moving something from one place to another.

So the opposite of changing words from one language to another, or moving something from one place to another, is..?

Not changing something from one language to another?

Leaving something where it is?

Do we need a word for doing nothing that ‘doing nothing’ doesn’t cover already?

Cislation sounds like some sort of geometry thing to me.

Or something to do with optical isomers that wasn’t covered at A Level.

Have you noticed TRAs have started objecting to 'TRA'?

But it's just a neutral acronym as they say about 'terf'.

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously Finally my brain chose to grab that one Cleg [I had to detour through Soylent Green, Logan's Run and most Philip K. Dick to get there]

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07x6mf3

Lowering the intellectual tone from Tennyson (which I have sung, set as a hymn, by Parry - last time at a DF's funeral) the R4 half hour comedy on Thursday was "Deborah Frances-White Rolls the dice" with material about her time as a JW and explains the changing language thing with cults rather well. "new light" "new understanding" after 07.55

7 minutes in is better.

Hmm... I'm a translator. I wonder if my clients would respond well if I said I'm switching to being a cislator, i.e. leaving texts in the original language. Must try it.

New light: "If you can't change what you say, change what what you say means"

”Deborah Frances-White Rolls the dice" with material about her time as a JW and explains the changing language thing with cults rather well.

Doesn’t she think TWAW though? Or has she made the connection?

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously

I had some "fridge poetry magnets" and that was the sort of thing we used to come out with

As far as I can make out, cislation is how the grand poobahs of the trans elite explain their wondrous life experience to the mundanes (as in, you and I). They really don't want to have to do it, because, like a language from an undiscovered tribe, so much of the concept of 'transness' just cant be fully grasped if you're not experiencing it yourself.

Thinking on the religious theme - it's the language of the anchorite with none of the humility, isn't it?

Julian of Norwich they ain't.

So basically, what that load of old bollocks amounts to is 'we're SO MUCH MORE SPECIAL than you but we can't explain why or how by reference to any accepted reality so have to take refuge in meaningless word salad' ?

Okay then.

Finally my brain chose to grab that one Cleg smile [I had to detour through Soylent Green, Logan's Run and most Philip K. Dick to get there]

Ha!

YY to the JW concept of 'new light'. That is exactly what this is. I recall visiting a JW conference with a school friend, many years ago, at The Molineux football ground. I found it all as fascinating as I do most religious expression - if your religious nature tends towards expressing it via being part of a faceless, dry corporation, JWs are exceptional.

I recall sitting, as a key component of what my friend's parents had been explaining to me for months as the most important factor about the end of the world - the words 'this generation shall not pass away' - was completely re-explained so that instead of meaning the specific people who were alive in 1914 would not die until the end of this world came, 'generation' was a much more general term that covered a bigger, undefined period of time.
So yes, the world was still going to end soon, and 1914 was a special kick off date, but the uncomfortable looming possibility of everyone alive in 1914 dying and there still not being an apocalypse which would be embarrassing and show it all up as false prophecy, had been completely sidestepped.

I saw the linguistic sleight of hand for what it was, even though I was only in my early teens, and I was astonished to see everyone around me nodding and smiling at the 'new light', instead of being really ticked off that they had been duped and had spent so much of their lives focusing on an imminent apocalypse that wasn't imminent at all.

It was at that point I knew I'd never become a JW, despite being a total nerd about collecting the pocket sized illustrated religious texts they produced.

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously

I just thought, ‘Ooh that Langcleg, she’s a clever ‘un.’ I only looked it up when I saw Melrose’s tweet.

I see what you mean, Floral about how the discussion has changed. I think Mermaids still seem to stick to the ‘wrong body’ argument and are quite attached to the medical model. It goes down well in the media and is likely to attract sympathy.

Others are more Butlerian, seeing gender as performative and fluid. However, the complication arises when people also want services or treatment that costs money. If you move away from a ‘wrong body’ argument then hormone treatment or facial feminising surgery etc are no longer strictly medically necessary and become like other forms of aesthetic surgery that people are expected to pay for themselves.

Yes, the medical model serves a purpose, but it doesn't give them that particular wrong footing advantage, because you can follow the medical argument and then talk about evidence and best practice etc. and pick holes pretty quickly in the ideology.

If you add in the mystical cislation stuff, even though it contradicts the medical model you started with (there doesn't need to be internal consistency, remember, the language here is meant for control, not illumination or clarity) you can short circuit the use of investigation and evidence.

Seen objectively, as a tool of control, it's a clever system, and it clearly works very well, or we wouldn't have to be battling so hard against a creeping dystopia.

I have been thinking about this thread on changing the language/Mermaids and police/Jehova's Witnesses.

Who gets to decide what the language is? Queer theory is a bit of a headache to understand and I am sure that many of those commenting on the Mermaids twitter thread only get it in terms of what it means to them and how it appears to give them what they want. If there is any change in the law (or the misinterpretation with the background threat of legal action takes a firm hold), they will be dropped and those who are in control of the language will just change what they mean. Then where?

Then where?

Which is precisely why I do periodically start these threads to examine the current state of play with the language, because it is such a feature of the cult, and you really can see trends emerge and make reasonable guesses about what might be the reaction to some of the things we say in response to their propaganda.

The 'born in the wrong body' is a case in point. A year ago, that was still a reasonably common 'in' phrase. Feminists had started to chip away at it by pointing out that it is a phrase which assumes the reality of souls separate to bodies, which is a religious argument, and not scientific or provable. Along with the idea of 'transitioning' being moving from one defined state to another, the AWAs began to realise these were not useful concepts anymore because we were quite effectively taking them apart.

So I'm not in the slightest bit surprised to see them changing the meaning of 'born in the wrong body' because we predicted it would happen. It's a win, really, because it shows we have won that particular round and they are retiring it from their arsenal.

I have noticed the line "Oh we only say born in the wrong body, so that you less enlightened, simple cisfolk can get a glimpse of what we really mean, we don't actually mean that, what we mean has no actual understandable words, so we made some up, then you just need to accept our demands...."

Riiiiiight.....

Where is the boundary between Cis and trans, what is it's marker? Can you be partly Cis and partly trans?

Serious question. (N.B. I don't subscribe to bring Cis but I'm just interested here in the reasoning).

If someone is 'boundless' they can go anywhere do anything comfortably - they have no boundaries. So it shouldn't then hurt, should it, to respect other people's boundaries? They would be just as happy one place or another, doing one thing or another.

So they can be easily be compassionate to others considering their 'boundless' selves...A boundless person would have no problem not using a defining term such as CIS if it offended someone else. A 'boundless' person is in a position of privilege.