Slogans!

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This thread is about slogans, and the need for them.

I've commented previously that one of the great strengths the TRAs currently possess is that they have had several years to frame the debate on their own terms, before most feminists were even aware that there was an issue, and in particular, to devise and propagate widely used and certain easy-to-remember slogans.

As others have pointed out, TWAW is extremely effective at ending discusssion. It pithily expresses an easy-to-understand point, but requires dense and not-easy-to-follow text to argue against.

Given that most social media interactions are brief, people are busy, and not necessarily particularly bright, and given that TWAW has been out there as a 'truth' for years, GC feminists are facing an uphill struggle to explain in similarly pithy, simple language why it is wrong.

Which brings me to SLOGANS.

GC feminists need to be redefining the debate with our own, equally, or more effective slogans. These need to explain our key points using simple words that everyone understands, and they need to be repeated relentlessly- as TWAW has been. The success of 'Get Brexit done' as a slogan - and the Tories religiously on-message use of it throughout the election campaign- was a big part of their recent success. Just as 'Take Back Control'was a hugely effective slogan before the referendum in 2016.

The importance of slogans should not be under-estimated.

FWIW, I don't think 'Women are Adult Human Females' is a successful slogan at all. Because:

a) It sounds utterly batshit to anyone not already following the debate - of course women are adult human females!
b) It allows TRAs to continue to frame the debate in terms of a discussion over who is a woman. When actually, this is something that has been known for thousands of years and even a toddler could tell you. We should not be arguing primarily on their territory. It does us no favours.
c) Most importantly, it ignores women's main issues with TRA claims. We are not arguing over terminology, we are arguing over women's and children's SAFETY and RIGHTS.The terminology matters only insofar as it is being used to undermine that safety and those rights. But by putting the cart before the horse, we have lost most of our audience, who don't follow us long enough past the batshitttery to find out WHY we care about the terminology.

So I think we need slogans that go back to basics.

We need slogans that fight on our own territory and frame the debate through our own eyes, not through the eyes of those intent on dismantling women's rights.

I would suggest that what we need are slogans that simply and clearly point out and go on the offensive over misogyny and attacks on women's rights - as feminists have always done.

Please suggest your effective slogans below. Sure that we can crowdsourced some better slogans than we have currently.

Over to you...

Themyscira - thanks, good points.

I mean mildy offensive in common parlance, not in itself of course.

Penis is catchy...

You can catch all sorts of things from one.

Fillies Don't Have Willies

'Girls just want to have spaces'
Not good at this but agree we need something that isn't attacking trans but pushing them onto the defensive. Why should they demand what they want at others expense.

I love EVERYONE IS BORN IN THE RIGHT BODY.

How about...
What is autogynophilia?
In a special font across noticeboards everywhere.

I'll be getting my Dyno label printer at the ready.

Attention, Google Please

None of us live inside a 'GC feminist echo chamber' do we? We all have family and/or friends and/or colleagues and/or acquaintances who don't know what's going on, or who do, but disagree with us.

It's true that most people still don't know, but the numbers that are finding out and going 'hang the fuck on a minute ...' are rising all the time and have been rising increasingly rapidly over the last couple of years.

I just don't think sloganeering is the most effective way to get through to people who don't know what's going on. Quiet, calm, one-on-one chats in real life, away from social media, have been much more effective IME. Or asking the simple questions as Twistables suggests: 'How can you be born in the wrong body?' Plant seeds, encourage thought.

Slogans have their place but they are necessarily simplifications of what are really complex issues. In order for them to work, the reader has to either already have a lot of background knowledge, or have their interest piqued enough to go and find out (usually in response to the tra reaction).

You used the brexit debate as an example earlier. I am also a remainer, devastated by the result. I don't think it was caused by a failure to come up with the right slogans so much as a failure to actually engage with people and have a proper discussion about the issues, including listening to and addressing their concerns.

How can you be born in the wrong body?
What is autogynephilia?
Why should women have penises?

Mind the AGP
=Gap

Does autogynophilia offend you?

Will this post be deleted because I keep mentioning it?

this chocolate identifies as low calorie

Missing the point but there was a fascinating thread on Twitter from someone with Diabetes Type 1 who was using a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) to observe her response to supposedly 'safe' chocolate bars (keto rather than ostensibly diabetes friendly but should theoretically not have perturbed her blood glucose level much). Her response was the same as to a 'normal' chocolate serving for some and scarcely perturbed by others (so, did what they said on the wrapper).

Longwinded way of saying that some chocolate does identify as (say) low-sugar/keto chocolate and can be harmful to others while leaving others unperturbed.

There's a book all about this, about framing, by a USA democrat person, about why the right is so much better at messaging than the left

The All New Don't Think of an Elephant! www.amazon.co.uk/dp/160358594X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_D6kbEbTFMT7HD?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

It's fascinating and lays bare how right wing messaging is so much more successful and why. Well worth a read for anyone with an interest in this.

I like lesbian's don't have penises and some of the others as well.

As a person with a congenital birth defect leading to lots of surgery as a child etc I do find the ones around everyone being born in the right body a bit, well it makes me twitch and feel a bit sad. That's my personal perspective though, obv people must do as they think best, just wanted to say that though.

You made a good point there Fraggling, we don't want to be focused on what is right or wrong about our bodies.
None of us is perfect and nobody can make us perfect.

That's a fair point, Fraggling, and it's another delicate issue that has been bulldozed by the TRA narrative, imo. Many parents of disabled children have fought against the idea that there's something wrong with their DC, and find it galling that their efforts are being twisted into some SJW ideology. I am the parent of more than one ASD child and do not like the concept that something needs fixing in my DC. They are who they are. But I also see why other people would feel differently, all our experiences are different.

My husband likes to dress as a woman, do you mind if he sits next to your daughter?

Thing is again these messages are not so snappy and come back to less sellable ideas in this day and age

That you get the hand you're dealt and have to deal with it as best you can
That there's no short cuts in life
That facing up to things rather than pretending they don't exist is important
Etc
But these all sound like things my dad would say, unlikely to appeal to people these days!
And also could be applied to the other side of the debate, as it were.

Sorry not very helpful, maybe I need to re read the book! In a nutshell it says people have set ideas around their values and will hook onto messages that meet their values and discard ones that don't. That the left have always tried to appeal to logic and reason with more long winded arguments, which are then just ignored. EG abortion is killing a baby! Vs great long essay about women dying through backstreet ones etc etc. Oh and that the right don't care about lying if it gets their point across.

The TRAs have successfully hooked into people's values around tolerance and kindness and compassion, with their messaging. This is where the other side are losing and why, I would say. So messaging around these values for women and girls might be a good bet, problem is in a patriarchy, are we important enough for people to care? Maybe a bit of a pessimist view there.

Are transwomen ciswomen?
Should we deny truth?
What's wrong with therapy?
Should sexual fetishes be publicly displayed?

If it is a challenge to find the right words then we must continue the search for the right words.

Origins of words from Greek and Latin patriarchies may be hindering the search.

Perhaps looking to other cultures that have might have better words and meanings we could adopt.

I'm thinking of the way Inuits have many words for snow, that sort of thing.

This body is neither right nor wrong #thisbodyis

women have rights too

christmas cracker inspired:

whatdoyoucallamanwhoinsistsonusingwomensspaces?

christmas riddles inspired:

if transwomen are women then are women transwomen?

Born in your own body.

I think Pencils ‘hang the fuck on a minute’ point is vital.

We don’t need to change people’s minds in the way TRAs need to, we just need to remind people what they actually already think.

Something that alludes to the blindingly obvious...

My husband likes to dress as a woman, do you mind if he sits next to your daughter?

Doesn’t that undermine the message that we can all wear what we like without changing sex?

There’s a contradiction with trying to remove the stigma and stereotyping associated with men wearing traditionally female clothing, and at the same time drawing attention to men wearing those things as being potentially suspect.

I don’t get how we can have both those things at the same time.

Biology isn’t bigotry
Women don’t have penises
Save women’s spaces
Woman: born not made
Single sex space isn’t bigotry
No men in my daughter’s changing room