"Transphobic dogwhistle"

[SoftlySoftly123]

I've been watching the TRA/GC debate for a couple of years now and have noticed that recently a new term has entered frequent usage when dismissing GC concerns: "transphobic dogwhistle". I find it infuriating! It seems to be used any time someone expresses a specific concern (e.g. transwomen prisoners assaulting fellow inmates) that others have also expressed. The implication I guess is of bigots repeating other bigots / "signalling" themselves to each other... rather than multiple people pointing out the same thing perhaps being a sign of genuine concerns?

It seems the conversations go like this: a GC commenter is asked what specific rights they fear women could lose if self-ID comes about. They mention specific things, but those are dismissed because they are "dogwhistles".

Can we pick apart where this term originated and how to challenge it when it is used?

@CourtneyLurve

It's like when people used to say "causation is not correlation!!1!" all the time. They think it makes them sound intelligent, when really, they haven't got a clue.

Do you mean correlation is not causation (but does raise possibility of causation)? How is that misused @courtneylurve ? Curious.

It's not used accurately.

For comparison, talking about a worldwide conspiracy of people involved in banking/the media is an antisemitic dogwhistle because its a coded link to antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Criticising Netanyahu for his policy on settlements is not an antisemitic 'dog whistle' - it is just a criticism of a politician's policy on settlements.

JK Rowling's essay said exactly what she thought and why. There were no 'dog whistles' and no secret code.

YgritteSnow. Thank you for the article. I didn't think I could be shocked any more. I was wrong.

@YgritteSnow I find that article terrifying. The massive wealth which will be able to override democracy can only be countered by the numbers of citizens speaking up.

I had been trying to work out how all of this happened so quickly and did consider money/healthcare (US) but couldn't equate this with the small numbers of transwomen.

We should be very concerned that any trade deal with the US which involves NHS, would end up obliterating women, changing our language and removing our rights. It's already gone too far.

Of all of the things that worry me, this is the bit I would lose sleep over

I wonder if Covid-19 will change any of this. The impact will be massive and could. Will it help or hinder our cause???

I associate it with the bad doctor, who uses it in about 82% of his tweets (*guesstimate disclaimer.) Ergo, I also associate it with complete meaningless twaddle.

@AbsintheFriends which article are you talking about? I was referring to the one by Jennifer Bilek (female)

Sorry - didn't make my post clear highame I meant I associate the phrase 'transphobic dogwhistle' with Harrop. Most of the times I hear it used it's by him.

😁

I think it was Oliver Burkeman who talked about "dogwhistles" being a convenient way to accuse someone of bigotry without the inconvenience of having to provide evidence for your accusation. That idea has stayed with me.

It's a brilliant way of shutting down any opinion, no matter how feebly expressed.

I might be guilty of dog whistling right now. Best say nowt

I have zero interest in codes messages, if accused of that then I would reply I am happy to say exactly what I think that transwomen are entitled to the same rights as anyone else but they are not women.

And there is irony in TRAs accussing others of sending out mixed messages, their entire ideology is gobbledy-gook. If they now wish to speak in plain English then that is absolutely fine.

It's like when people used to say "causation is not correlation!!1!" all the time.

MRAs do this. Only, 'correlation does equal causation' if it ever reflects badly on women.

My rebuttal is ''Using terms such as 'dogwhistle' or 'transphobic' to stop women talking about their own lived experience is sexist.''

And it is everywhere. I have a 20 year old (gay) son. He is very tall and people comment on his giant hands. When I compared my, large for a woman, hands to his, saying, "Look at my giant lady hands" he called this a transphobic dog whistle.

I tried not to get angry and questioned it. He saw how ridiculous he had been and apologised but not before trying to explain that referring to big hands / long legs / a lady moustache were all "transphobic tropes" designed to show how transwomen are not real women.

So, I - an actual woman. Tall, with large hands, long legs and a last moustache can't talk about these because (even in my own home) I might be expressing transphobia.

This, in microcosm, is what we are up against. Any description of ourselves, our periods, body parts, spaces, hair, anything is all us drawing attention to the fact that transwomen are not women.

*lady moustache. I wish it was my last but the fucker keeps growing back.

What it really means is: We won't let you talk openly about a subject that should not be controversial. And you will also be punished if you roll your eyes.

It's a way of dismissing lucid counter arguments without having the ability to engage with the ideas or coherently refute the point being made. It's part of the cancel lexicon; like delegitimise. It's a way of silencing dissent while signalling total submission to the new orthodoxy. It is cliched, lazy intellectually bankrupt, mindless cant.

This 'dogwhistle' denunciation is a way of accusing someone of bigotry even though they have never expressed any. It goes hand in glove with 'crimes of adjacency' and denouncing the media source that reports cancel culture, while ignoring the report itself.

It's a sign of abject misogyny and of course narcissism. They can't imagine even the possibility of someone caring about women, so anyone who says they care about women is REALLY doing it to be mean to trans people.

I think a good counter is that dogwhistles are meant to be heard only by the in-group they are signalling to. In this case the purported dogwhistle is inaudible to GC feminists and can be heard only by TRAs.

It's this article about the medical-industrial complex pushing transgenderism, and the money behind it:
thefederalist.com/2018/02/20/rich-white-men-institutionalizing-transgender-ideology/

Anything women are concerned about is written off as a 'transphobic dogwhistle' these days. Hell, I have even seen using the word female in a sentence to be called a transphobic dogwhistle! Its ridiculous tbh.

oh it might look fine but actually it’s full of transphobic dog whistles that you don’t understand so you need me, who does understand, to tell you it’s not fine.’

Indeed.

TT school guidance looks suppportive and looks to make sense, but its actually just full of hidden transphobia, so hidden that most cannot even see it, only a special chosen few who understand everything so much more than everyone else..

Someone using the term dog whistle thinks they know what you're thinking better than you know yourself. So if you say "Traumatised women need female-only spaces to recover" then they know you really mean "I'm a secret transphobe using any excuse to attack trans people."

The term dog whistle being used by gender lobbyists as a thought terminating cliche is only going to confuse people more than they already are.
The irony is that Trump just deployed a dog whistle when he said he would keep the suburbs safe from low income housing.
Trouble is, that particular dog whistle is broken and no longer works as intended.