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.

Can anyone name a Trans Ally who is capable of being a spokesperson?

No. Neither can I.

Academics have made tits of themselves, while radical feminist academics have blown their batshittery out of the water.

When the Trans Allies tried to steal the terms and descriptions of intersex people, (eg assigned at birth) they were exposed as insensitive, offensive frauds by Intersex Advocates.

Black women take them to task for their racist view of the position of black women in the female category.

Pink News will have to live with the words from Julie Bindel that have reverberated across the world thanks to Twitter.

I despise your woman-hating, anti-lesbian rag, and would rather give Donald Trump a massage than speak to you.

When Stonewall tried to bolster the trans narrative with so-called 'research' and surveys, they were taken apart by the likes of Transgender Trend, Fairplay for Women, WPUK, and some very clever Mumsnetters. (Yes, our lurkers and contributors have day jobs and expertise that trans allies would envy).

Where is the Trans Ally that can match and debate with Sharron Davies?

And finally, what are we to make of the spokespeople that have so impressed our MPs and peers (Bradley, Challoner, James et al). That's right - they couldn't help themselves and a whole heap of kinks came tumbling out.

In their own bubble, the Trans Allies and spokespeople might sound convincing to themselves. Outside the bubble, they daren't speak for fear of embarressing themselves.

P - U - L - L !

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.

Transness can't be fully grasped by the not-trans because they do not experience being trans. And there's no use to try and explain it, because the unknowing cannot understand because this requires the knowing that comes from living it.

But, via a mental and emotional mechanism that only the trans have mastered, those not born female can know what it is to be female without being born into and inhabiting a female body. Here the unknowing do not need to experience being female to know what it is to be female. And because of the magnificence of those blessed with transness, their knowledge of what it means to be female is superior to that of the mere females who have experienced it from birth.

As Louise Moody pointed out though at the Edinburgh event, what is entirely unclear is whether any given individual male's conviction of being female is founded in a collective trans knowledge of being female while male or whether the knowledge each and every man claiming womanhood possesses is different.

An answer to this question would, I suspect, be counterproductive to their cause. Because a collective trans knowledge of being female while male will undoubtedly be based on sex stereotypes of expression, appearance and behaviour, of prejudice and sexist notions of femaleness. If it is individual and distinct, it will probably come back to nothing more than a question of personality. Neither will do them any favours in their campaign for legal privileges.

I honestly can't believe that anybody is even giving this nonsense the time off day. I'm supposed to be retraining for a new career after babies nuked my old one, but instead I'm defending my right to not undress in front of men, specifically men who are so fucking stupid that they think women are nothing but a figment of their own imaginations. And policy makers are entertaining this! That is what female oppression by men looks like. These men have absolutely no fucking clue.

What I read in this demand for centering transness and boundlessness and limitless possibility is: infantile demand.

The eternal puer, or Peter Pan syndrome.

I don’t s see how anything can be both centred and boundless. A centre is the point equally distant from the boundary, eg the centre of a circle is a point equally distant from the circumference.

Lest you all become wearied by the ineffability of the system, I will point out that my view is that you can waste a lot of time trying to piece the concepts together.

It's worth examining the actual way the AWAs are using their terms - but it only makes any sense if you apply mundane concepts like logic and analysis. If you're trying to get 'inside' the mindset and put it all together with clarity, you will end up frustrated and overtaken by the tedium, because that is simply not how it supposed to function.

That's why I keep tabs on it - not really to see if it makes sense (It doesn't. It's not meant to.) but to be aware of how the influential adherents will operate in the future.

So, I can explain to you how specific terms currently function in the cult, which is useful if you have a woke teen knocking about the house, or maybe have a tricky I&D work situation to navigate. But other than the comfort psychology of being in a cult, I can't really tell you why someone would find this a satisfying belief system.

My best advice is just to keep in mind that you are not meant to understand their terms, quite the opposite. You are just expected to nod along and say what fine, beautiful fabric the Emperor is wearing.

I will point out that my view is that you can waste a lot of time trying to piece the concepts together.

Yes. There's a magpie element to it. Grabbing bright and shiny things and using them, even though together they make no sense.

No! Wait! David Attenborough is calling! Not magpie! Vogelkop bowerbird!

They also collect shiny, successful analogies like magpies. 'It is like gay marriage' is one that seems to have been pushed to the back of the nest and forgotten about with a few others.

It is no surprise that philosophical arguments are similar.

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

Thank fuck you translated, i read the first three words and nearly lost the will to live

This all makes sense in the context of my own ROGD daughter - now a physically transitioning 'gay man' who for the past year has refused to see or be in contact with us.

Her mantra is: I don't need you to understand, just accept.

I persevered with reading all of this article and felt quite ill afterwards because it reminded me of the gaslighting and incredible levels of delusion we were subject to. Which nearly sent me over the edge - because if you actually do try to understand you literally send yourself mad. Nothing can make it make sense.

This ideology actively does NOT want anyone to understand. The whole unstable tower will simply collapse if logic, reason and critical analysis is applied by enough people.

The tone of this piece is so shite - offensive and deeply unpleasant. I should laugh at it but unfortunately this ludicrous non-sensical drivel is brainwashing vulnerable young people and dismantling them body, mind and soul.

But since I've just written an essay I'll bore you with my theories on that another time.

Bore away. That is to say, your essay wasn't boring at all. It was interesting and informative. Please do go on.

SisterWendy You have articulated very well the reality of the cult mentality for those affected by it, inside or out.

Thank you so much to everyone engaging here, there is so much knowledge and wisdom represented on FWR, which is why I share this crap, because I know bright minds will be able to expand on my tentative initial thoughts.

And because of the magnificence of those blessed with transness, their knowledge of what it means to be female is superior to that of the mere females who have experienced it from birth.

Yes and we know this is exactly what they believe because whenver a transwoman and a woman clash on what it means to be a woman, it's the woman who must give way, who must submit.

I think the shifts in language indicate amove away from the TWAW mantra, and the associated demand that TWs be allowed access to women only spaces.

The slur ‘truscum’ has been around for some time.

I think transwomens time at the top of the hierarchy within trans communities is coming to an end. They will obviously still rank above plain old cis women, who lack the insightfulness that comes with being trans. But I think the fluids and nonbinaries are taking top spot now.

Florals link harks back to times not all that long ago, when women were not seen as fully human, as we lack the interiority that men have.
This logic is now being used to seperate the trans who have insightful complexity, from the cis chaff who do not.

But the most insightful and complex are the nonbinaries, who now rank above the old binary trans people, who are still complex, but not quite at the level of the fluids and those who are truly capable of nonbinary thinking.

The demands will very soon shift from demanding transwomen be given access to womens spaces, to a demand that all spaces become mixed sex. Unfortunately I think they will have more success with this, as it is already happening.

Furthermore, they can claim enlightenment and transcendence till they are blue in the face, the internal hierarchies still have XY chromosomed people on top.

These men don’t have to make any changes to their bodies, while the women who try to claim nonbinary status usually have double mastectomies. There is an element of a price to pay, perhaps as a kind of proof they need to supply to be granted access to the enlightened class.

The power structures remain the same as they always were.

I also find this turn to a focus on the inner life of individuals very interesting in a wider societal context. We have seen increasing individualism since at lest 1980s when neoliberalism really took off (remember Thatcher and her claim that there is no such thing as society?).

We areliving through a time where there isn’t much left to conquer for white middleclass men, colonialism is frowned upon, and white men are not automatically treated as little kings of their own castles anymore. So they look inward, and if you cannot claim superiority by virtue of sex, class and colour anymore, you can try to demand special status by virtue of your superior mental enlightenment.

If material reality doesn’t grant you superiority, create a new hierarchy with you on top. Being white middleclass male still grants you enough power to have a good chance of implementing this.

There is still a chance that those men can succeed with the arguments that cis people lack interiority, where ‘cis’ will very quickly just mean ‘women’. After all, making the whole world gender neutral and abolishing refernces to biological sex, doesn’t impcat men the way itdoes women, so men could musch more easily adopt the ‘nonbinary’ lable. They don’t even have to have any surgery.

Empress

”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?

Maybe one swaps one cult for another? JW is an obvious cult, but the same methods used apply to other groups, organisations and also to individuals. Are some people more susceptible to the demands of cults?

I don’t s see how anything can be both centred and boundless. A centre is the point equally distant from the boundary, eg the centre of a circle is a point equally distant from the circumference.

This kind of image is used quite often in philosophy and philosophical literature. Dante describes God in the Paradiso, "enclosed by that which It encloses," or Boethius describes the nature of divine intelligence as being the relation of the centre to the circumference.

So, transness is like a divine first principle, seems to be the message.

Dante describes God in the Paradiso, "enclosed by that which It encloses,"

So like when a Tardis lands inside another Tardis and the second Tardis is also inside the first Tardis...

Fallingirl, yes, you've pointed out a trend I had noticed too, and I think you're right that it does point to the end of TWAW as a focal point.

I recall quite some time ago noticing that Fox and Owl, while they still called themselves trans, had added non binary to their little collection of priestly titles and that really was where the power lay - because it was so much harder to define than 'transwoman' or 'transman' and therefore much easier to use as a power play.

It seemed apparent, even then, that non binary was definitely the most useful long term leverage, and I think that is definitely playing out now.

So what you have is this mystical 'transness' that indicates the chosen, and non binary as the gold standard by which any sex segregation is deemed exclusionary and unnecessary.

You'll notice it in conversations and opinion pieces by AWAs - when they visit here, there is a persistent downplaying of the need for single sex anything.

The obfuscation of what is abundantly obvious when it comes to men and women serves men exceptionally well, of course.

Jaysus, when you examine it, you can't miss what wily fuckers they are.

Absolutely spot on Floral.

It sounds like brave and stunning with knobs (LOL) on.

The male ego is infinitely boundless. We're seeing a fine example of it here.

As if these illiterates have read Dante!

As if these illiterates have read Dante!

I would be shocked if they had. It struck me as funny though that this guy is using a similar kind of language in this way.

It has blown me a way a little, the speed at which the language and concepts have moved in this discussion. It makes it very difficult to talk to people about it. Someone like my mother, who just isn't spending her time interacting with these ideas, still thinks in terms of body dysphoria. My father on the other hand is in a position where he is supposed to be keeping up on it because it impacts policy decisions, and he is still mainly familiar with a medicalised or concrete type of language. Almost no one I talk to other than students really knows the queer theory stuff, if they have heard the terms at all they tend to misunderstand them by a fair margin.

This is literally narcissism being very literally and directly expressed through cod-mysticalism, isn't it?

I cannot be defined or limited, and certainly no one can ever put boundaries on me in any way! Anything you say I am, I am better than! The normies will never understand the sheer power of my outstandingness, but I understand about them. Trans is short for transcendent (continued page 94)

It's basically a long paean to the author's failure to develop a functional sense of identity. Instead of the ego shrinking into one-with-everything-ness as in a person who has attained some form of "enlightenment" the dysfunctional ego has bloated to become identified with everything.

I have tended to think that a lot of what is supposedly "transness" is some form of identity disorder. Not all the same - these guys are one example that reminds me of NPD, some remind me more of BPD, teenage girls are another maybe more related to adolescence, maybe there could be many types that are showing themselves this way.

The mistake people have made recently seems to have been to think that this is a sexual disorder. Which is new, not long ago it seems to have been understood that it was a disorder around gender identity. But now its even moving on from the sex disorder idea to something new.