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.

I think there is a clear demarcation between cis and trans, yes. Because cis functions as a marker for the mundane underclass. Those who adopt it willingly are signalling submission to the higher class of trans. Those who reject it are thereby signalling their outside status (and therefore automatic 'cisness' by default).

To move from trans to cis seems like it would mostly have the same function as becoming a heretic (detransitioners, most likely fall into this category).

Moving from cis to trans seems like it would be the more popular option - I'd suggest it would work as a kind of 'enlightenment' experience, and be quite a popular thing in the cult generally, because obviously you'd become part of the elite class.

But no, I can't see how it would work in the scheme to be a bit cis and a bit trans, because the purpose of the terms is to mark who is in and who is out.

Does that help?

Gender assigned at birth -

New Light: This does not mean a gender is assigned, nor at birth. Who knew.

(there was a re-explanation of this on twitter yesterday but there is so much going on there, I cannot find the tweet. We have understood it all wrong, apaz )

So Cis is anyone who rejects the enlightenment of trans or is identified by trans people as having rejected it? And is very definitely second place in the hierarchy.

Gosh, that's convenient.

Thanks for answering Floral and for starting this thread, it's very interesting.

It seems not coincidental that as others have pointed out so much of what passes for discourse amongst the pomo woke was prefigured clearly, not just by George Orwell (with serious intent), but also earlier by Lewis Carroll (with, perhaps we might say, seriocomic intent).

For instance,
"When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all."

Through the Looking Glass is apt. Remember, too, that Carroll was a mathematician/logician in his day job -- and that he is not endorsing Humpty Dumpty's semantic nihilism; he is taking the piss.

Appropriate response for the National Center for Institutional Diversity at good old UMich? Certainly for at least some of their productions. Certainly; though but also, sadly.

But anyway, Humpty Dumpty is alive and well -- and busy 'align[ing] with the University of Michigan’s Public Engagement & Impact initiative.'

You might like to add this one to your apt Lewis Carrol quotations:

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Because cis functions as a marker for the mundane underclass. Those who adopt it willingly are signalling submission to the higher class of trans.

So trans would be the 'privileged' class by that reasoning. It would then be their duty to protect the underprivileged 'mundane underclass' and compassionately respect their vulnerability, even though they may see it as 'peculiar inhibitions'. Otherwise they could be detrimentally effecting health and well-being.

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

Basically: "We know what we are saying makes no sense whatsoever, but we uphold our right to talk in ever decreasing circles. Furthermore, don't come looking for us. We don't exist"

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

People already do. It is why they don't accept being defined as 'cisgender'. When, then, will this label cease? It's why people don't accept the term gender as it is a socially defined construct that does not fit the complexity of real people.

How long can this violent agreement go on?

So trans would be the 'privileged' class by that reasoning. It would then be their duty to protect the underprivileged 'mundane underclass' and compassionately respect their vulnerability, even though they may see it as 'peculiar inhibitions'. Otherwise they could be detrimentally effecting health and well-being.

This is an excellent counterpoint, yes. However, it relies on an understanding that an underclass needs protecting, and I'm not sure that is a given in this scheme. I think the cis underclass is in the mould of a 'slave' class, which is why you find lots of stuff based on notions of duty towards those who have transness.

The West only began to see the slave class as vulnerable once we started to embrace ideas of equality and humanity - before then slaves were property or cattle, which is where 'cis' fits in the trans system right now. Not least because those in the trans movement wouldn't admit to the hierarchy.

It doesn't really need saying but I'm sure transactivists would not like to be seen as endorsing a form of slave and master ideology, though, Floral.

Unless it is more than that. Unless you can be boundless and still underprivileged. Enlightened but vulnerable. Have power but no responsibility (ability to respond...).

We stray from easy solutions and digestible understandings

Yes, because that would just be altogether too uncontroversial and boring. No one wants a simple easily understood solution. What would there be to talk about?

wowowowow I take ‘boundless’ to mean like you they have no boundaries but also that they are not bound by other people’s boundaries. They can do what they want. No I know very little about these so may be wrong but isn’t this anarchism?

then we need to recognize that the promotion of a nonbinary/binary trans dichotomy does more harm than good.

I've been squinting at this, trying to get some kind of anything out of it.

Promotion of people being either nonbinary or binary does harm.

But what's that got to do with trans? Doesn't trans necessitate a binary? This side or that side?

Non-Binary is also trans I thought (even though that makes no sense given the words) - so who's doing this separation of binary and non-binary anyway? Isn't it the people talking about trans and cis?

If we're doing harm by calling people binary (trans/cis) or non-binary, aren't they saying that feminists were right all along, and we're all just people? They just don't want to admit that?

How do they square any of that with the reality of sexed bodies?

Birds, yes could easily become anarchism. However, if essentially a person truly has no self imposed boundaries and are free and happy to be anywhere, then they can be free and happy respecting other people's boundaries. It would be 'no skin off their nose'. They can be super chilled about everything.

How do they square any of that with the reality of sexed bodies?

Reality is irrelevant. Sex is an irrelevant construct. Only the gender-feelz are relevant.

Trans ideology is inherently anarchistic (the rules by which society functions do not apply to me) and embraces the master/slave philosophy of enforcing participation in fetish behaviour.

If we're doing harm by calling people binary (trans/cis) or non-binary, aren't they saying that feminists were right all along, and we're all just people?

Exactly.

Reality is irrelevant. Sex is an irrelevant construct. Only the gender-feelz are relevant.

Honestly, this is what makes it clear it's a men's movement.

The only people who will suffer from this opinion are women - who as much as they wish and believe they are male, or non-binary, unless they take active steps to avoid PIV sex or use contraception (and are lucky with no accidents) are going to have reality hit them with a little bundle of joy bringing the fact of biology back with a bump (haha.)

Butter true female devotees of transness will either be donating their reproductive organs to men or, if they are cis-slaves, offering their uterus up for use in situ

If the trans nature is so beautiful, boundless and limitless to be indescribable, how does anybody come to realise they are trans?

If there is no language to describe trans realities, how would a group of people who identify as trans know they are all sharing this reality?

How do they know 'cis' people are incapable of experiencing these boundless realities?

"With a bump"

How do they know 'cis' people are incapable of experiencing these boundless realities?

How can they allocate the term 'cis' to anyone else? A person could easily internally be one way and externally another...

No I know very little about these so may be wrong but isn’t this anarchism?

It’s nihilism, not anarchism. Anarchism means no rulers, not no rules.

Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed features an anarchist society and, if anything, it is more rule-bound than the capitalist society it is contrasted with.

I haven’t experienced a boundless reality since the Nineties.

You just can’t get good psychedelics anymore.

This is so interesting to me. Back in the day I studied classical history and did a lot of research on Plato's Cratylus and the concept of "name magic" through history. It's a rabbit hole well worth going down. The Cratylus is based around a discussion of natural correctness in names - whether words have true names which describe their essence, or whether they're just assigned by custom/ culture and can therefore be easily changed. Hermogenes, who basically serves as the straw man for the point Plato is trying to get to, is very much of the Humpty Dumpty school of thought "When I use a word (...) it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” The whole conversation is more or less a vehicle for Plato's ideas about meaning and reference (i.e. the distinction/ connection between language and what that language refers to) which culminates in his proposed "theory of forms". This is all about the idea that in order to reference something, the thing you're trying to reference must a) exist and b) be unchangeable. It's an early version of Wittgenstein's set theory in a lot of ways - see also Peach Yoghurt's bicycle analogy. We know what a bicycle is - even if it gets a flat tyre, or loses it's seat, or get's chopped in half. We still call it a bicycle because we are (according to Plato) referring to the perfect whole concept of "what it means to be a bicycle". We make similar arguments ourselves about the words women and female - we know that someone is a woman, even if they are infertile, or don't menstruate, or have a female DSD because we are referring to a template of "what it means to be a woman" which centres around a typical biological pathway. In this case our "theory of forms" is grounded in physical reality, just as Plato's chosen example of "what it means to be a hammer" can be reproduced with an actual physical hammer. But Plato uses this theory in a metaphysical sense as well, to try and ground language about love, justice, peace etc in reality. The point of this is to protect it from changes in language - the words we use to point to justice may change, but "justice itself" is a real thing that never changes. He knows there is no such physical thing as justice, but he posits that it exists in an abstract world of perfect forms. The concept of justice, for him, is a literal and fixed reference point that language points to, rather than a social construct. Religion often uses this idea as well to point to systems of morality as being objective. This is my best guess about what trans people are trying to get to when they talk about an innate gender of "woman-ness" or "man-ness". Where our concept of "what it means to be a woman" references a normative biological modal, their's (which must by necessity transcend both biology (material reality) and stereotypes (social constructs)) points to a metaphysical idea of " woman-ness" as a reference point. This woman-ness or Man-ness is accessed by gender identity, in the same way that Plato thinks "justice" is accessed by an innate sense of "being just", or religion thinks that "morality" is accessed by an innate sense of conscience. This fixed template can then be actualised through social constructs like appearance stereotypes as well as physical transformation. That's the closest I can get to understanding what they mean when they claim that something can be both biologically innate and culturally relative, both internally understood and yet without reference to anything in the physical world.

These arguments have, of course, been dismantled many times over since Plato first wrote about them. I don't believe in a metaphysical template of woman-ness any more than I believe in a objective morality handed down from God, but there seems to be a very strong human urge to ground what often feels like a rather slippery and unsatisfying physical reality in something complete, unchangeable, and untouchable.

The subject of "name magic" - the adopting and assigning of "true" names as a form of control and power - is fascinating, and takes you through religious texts, paganism, fantasy, physiology, and right into modern day ideas about "dead naming". It's especially important as a form of ritual and I think it's a huge part of the success of the trans ideology. But since I've just written an essay I'll bore you with my theories on that another time.

Ursula Le Guin has based a lot of her fiction on name magic as well AlwaysComingHome. She's one of my favourite authors and a lot of the connections I've made about this trans thing have come from ideas I first found in her work.