Why are Trans Rights Advocates suddenly repeating "It costs you nothing" as if they're reading it off a script?

[Durgasarrow]

Just that. I have been finding this phrase increasingly irritating. After it was used twice in another thread, I wrote,

"It costs you nothing" is an incredibly insulting and demeaning phrase. It devalues the opinions and feelings of the person to whom it is spoken. It is a chiding, superior, condescending turn of speech used to invalidate and dismiss another person's reality. It is also a phrase that is a dead giveaway that a trans rights advocate wants to tell women what they need to do and how they need to be controlled."

After that, two TRAS still used it in posts! Poster Erishkegalangcleg's brilliant riposte? "Is "it doesn't cost you anything" the new TWAW?"

It would cost women the rights we have fought for for decades, it would roll them all the way back to a century ago or more, it would introduce new 'offences' which would potentially take us back to the days of witches and ducking stools.

What kind of blinkers do you have to wear to view that as 'nothing'?!

Three word answer from the above replies: truth, integrity and representation.
I can’t wait to be challenged now

You can add another three: safety, privacy, dignity.
And another: sports medals, shortlist places, and freedom of speech.

The problem is that nobody is ASKING "What does it cost you?" They are TELLING you, "It costs you nothing." There is no question. The question is off the table. It is a rebuke.

In fact, it doesn't deserve an answer. We are not naughty children. We do not need to bargain. We do not need to account for our pennies. We do not need to show our egg money to our chiding husbands.

They are the ones who need to account for what they are asking. They bring up the word "cost," not us. They need to show their account book. As many smart women here pointed out, there are costs they want us to pay. They want us to pay those costs, but they explicitly want those costs to be valued at nothing. They are making a blank assertion that is a lie: it should cost you nothing to sacrifice the truth and pretend that men are women. That your sense of who you are includes people who are literally the opposite of you.

Durgasarrow 👏👏👏

Something just occurred to me: By telling us that the COST of sacrificing our personal integrity to lie about is "nothing," then the value of it must be "nothing" as well. Which means a couple of things.

1. If showing signs of agreeing with an opinion is something that "costs nothing," then why would TRAs want people who didn't to "die in a grease fire," etc. Why would they care, since agreeing or disagreeing is valueless, and it would literally cost them nothing to allow women to have other opinions?

1. Who says you want to do anything that "costs you nothing" I personally could do things that cost me nothing all damn day long. I don't need some beardy bro from Twitterland to give me more items for my to do list fresh from his mother's basement.

1. Another word for "it costs you nothing" is FREE. And I, for one, believe in FREE WILL.

To be a person for whom it costs nothing to lie to themselves and others about the material reality they perceive?

Yikes. The cost of that is not nothing

I like "Those that can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. '

Or something like that.

Thanks Michelle, you do have a way with words. Some people are totalitarian nutcases and have stolen your rights and right to protest; get over it...

I wonder if Posie would consider printing it on a t-shirt? I'd love one. I think it would look spiffy worn with a "radicalised by mumset" badge.

I think there's an implicit threat in there as well: it costs you nothing to comply.

The implication is that it will cost you if you don't comply.

Because cash is the only thing that matters.

It costs men nothing to leave womens rights alone! No successful civil rights movement has EVER demanded that others lose their current rights, like this one. Its just wrong. Yeah, have 'rights' the same as other males, but womens rights are not for men, and once they are given to men, they cease to even exist.

"Well I'm still not buying it".

We have a winner!

(Plus there'll be no snappy comeback as they don't do comedy / think on their feet).

No successful civil rights movement has EVER demanded that others lose their current rights, like this one. Its just wrong.

I have realised in the past couple of years that women don't have rights - not the set, inalienable rights 'humans' have where human actually means men. Under laws made by groups who were massively disproportionately men, made for people like them. Men. What women have is whatever the men of that generation choose to give them. This illusion of 'equality' is actually indulgences in the gift of men.

Females may have official recognition of their privacy and dignity if and only if this does not conflict with the interests of males. As we're seeing, once it does, how easily that recognition is just melted away by men who are baffled and indignant that females should protest their inalienable right to do this.

Females may have official protection under safeguarding if it does not conflict with the interests of males. Particularly powerful males or difficult males.

Females may be a 'thing' if this does not conflict with the interests of males.

'Rights' would be protected, would be untouchable. Males are just lobbying and changing laws at will to slip away what females have gained and Whitehall is just watching it happen. Because they don't see them as 'rights'.

The definition of oppression - the group not allowed to speak. To meet. Not published. Considered stupid, less than human, too taboo to engage with. Without access to equal law and justice because they're too untouchable to listen to and society is against indulging them with things like police protection. Without resources permitted to them that don't belong first and foremost to their betters (like toilets, refuges, shelters. Words. Funding.). The providers of service and labour to others.

This is shame for every single politician and civil servant whose had a hand in this by direct action or by looking the other way to allow it.

Great analysis Michelle.

Yeah absolutely spot on, and fucking terrifying tbh.

"It costs you nothing" has got to be worth hearing if gives us all a break from the sodding trans-script phrase "educate yourself".

Perhaps a suitable response to "it costs you nothing" would be "That's for me to decide, not you".

I like that one. Throw the gaslighting back at them.

Excellent riposte

How do you know?

If you dont even know what a woman is, how do you know what price I pay for anything?

The problem with "educate yourself" was that we did, and as a result we're far more concerned about the threat to our rights and to the wellbeing of children than we were before. So a new slogan was needed.

We're not going to meekly stop asking questions when this one is thrown at us either.

When ds was 14 years old, I began earning the same amount as I earned when I became pregnant with him.

You weren't there when I paid. You weren't there when I walked away from my first marriage without fighting for money because my first husband frightened me. You weren't there when I sweated in a supermarket looking up the phrase for 'pregnancy test' because I was in a country I barely knew a word of the language of and I was 18 years old and didn't know the abortion law in that country and I was so afraid I felt sick.

You dont know what I pay for ANYTHING.

When ds was 14 years old, I began earning the same amount as I earned when I became pregnant with him.

I've just arrived at this point, also with a 14yo eldest. It's such a slog.

permanent that is an excellent, eloquently put post. "You weren't there when I paid". Exactly how I feel. And I still do pay. Therapy is expensive.

The best less-than-ten-words response is "It costs men nothing." As in the comment earlier. Says it all.

"You weren't there when I paid" is also excellent.