The strategy of relinquishing the word "woman"

[GratedExposure]

This is something I wonder about in a number of contexts (I'm not advocating it, just wondering): is anyone thinking that the best strategy here is to leave the word, and begin to label certain awards/events as "natal female" awards/events?

I know there are many arguments against this (first, why should we be having to start fighting anew for things which should never have been taken?). But at what point do we walk away and start again? The most obvious example is sport, because if there were "wom*n's" events (increasingly colonised by males) and "natal female" events, most of the strong female athletes would surely opt into the latter?

Are any organisations working towards this?

It's basically the same as the third space idea, but we'd be having to be the ones moving to a third space (wrong, but maybe better than the alternative...)...?

Is this crazy talk?

oh yes OP we are deep into "claim to be female" tactics and have been for a while now

I can only imagine the sheer outrage if POC were being forced to rebrand themselves as cis black or cis Asian.

I still dont understand why appropriating someone else's ethnic diversity would be intolerable, but appropriating gender is fine. What's the logic?

Just came back to this thread to find it was Swiss cheese and my (as far as I remember) fairly innocuous boost deleted. I didn't get any notification of the deletion from MMHQ so I have asked for clarification. As far as I remember most of the posts after mine were pretty innocuous too.

I'm also seriously pissed off about this, even though I wasn't directly affected. I admit that typically when I see deletions, I tend to shrug and move on. But not this time.

This wasn't a thread about an individual, it was about the meaning of a word. If we can't discuss what words mean without walking on eggshells then we're in deep shit.

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

Just came back to this thread to find it was Swiss cheese and my (as far as I remember) fairly innocuous boost deleted. I didn't get any notification of the deletion from MMHQ so I have asked for clarification. As far as I remember most of the posts after mine were pretty innocuous too.

Your post - the second one in the thread - was the one I nearly quoted. I'm glad you've followed it up.

Hi all. We've removed several posts from this thread for breaking our Talk guidelines on making generalisations.

Comments along the lines of 'they're doing this' - make it look like a whole group of people are being represented as doing something undesirable. This type of comment is likely to be deleted.

Our intention is to encourage civil debate in the hope of keeping the conversation flowing. And please do continue to report anything you'd like us to take a look at.

So, if we preface it with 'some people are doing this' is that acceptable then?

I definitely did not reference any particular person or use any officially forbidden vocabulary. I made a tongue-in-cheek reference to my government’s prominent policy, oft-repeated by Presidents, that we do not negotiate with ... people who make unreasonable demands ... lest we encourage them to make further unreasonable demands.

Amazed that “unreasonable” is the strongest word I can think of that might not be deleted...

Comments along the lines of 'they're doing this' - make it look like a whole group of people are being represented as doing something undesirable

I'm confused. If there is a whole group of people doing something undesirable we are not allowed to use the pronoun they to refer to that group?

Well for me, (a) the word woman is already taken, thank you very much and (b) experience has shown that give and inch and a mile will be taken (e.g. the insistence by some that post-op individuals become "cis" [sic]).

The end game seems to be to leave no form of words which could be used to refer to the class of people formerly known as women, which of course has profound political and personal implications for that class (historically and geographically fairly universally and systematically disadvantaged relative to the class still allowed to call themselves men). This end game, curiously enough, seems to work to the advantage of the class of people still allowed to call themselves men.

Blimey - I'd not scrolled back, I hadn't realised how many deletions there were. I don't remember seeing much other than women asserting their rights.

Me neither!

So we're not allowed to use 'they' when the correct word is 'they' but we are required to use 'they' when the correct word is 'he' or 'she'?

My ironometer just broke.

The deletions have been explained.

Not the first two comments after the OP, which I saw, when I then posted as number 4 saying they had summed up my reasons. I didn't see anything which could be construed as objectionable!

Generalisations are a normal part of discussions in real life. It's quite hard to always avoid, in particular if you think the parameters of who is meant by 'they' is obvious enough with a little thought.

We've had it over the years - never generalise about men, else we get 'NAMALTed' (though rarely deleted). So, we painstakingly have to try to adjust our normal modes of speech - always use that 'some' or 'men as a class'. It's laborious.

No, all trans people aren't making the same incursions into women's language as others. Some are. Some of the people claiming trans women are actually females aren't trans people (example of an SNP MP has been cited).
The 'they' in this context is 'the people who are doing this thing which is wholly unscientific and contrary to the interests of women'.

The 'they' in this context is 'the people who are doing this thing which is wholly unscientific and contrary to the interests of women

This^

Yet it seems MNHQ read "they" and substitute "trans people" if the context is negative which seems a tad transphobic to me.

(It has just occurred to me that maybe my general ability to avoid deletions is because I write code - computers are pretty stupid and don't deduce context; precision and adherence to rules is necessary).

I've had a copy of my original offensive post from MNHQ so I am doing to post it again and substitute in Errol's excellent definition of they:

"[The people who are doing this thing which is wholly unscientific and contrary to the interests of women would] just appropriate natal female too."

It's a tad wordy but the meaning is exactly the same.

We're still aiming for civil debate and we hope that you can support us to that end.

If there were an entire demographic who could be shown to be doing an Undesirable Thing then a generalisation would probably be fine - but we think it's very unlikely to apply to all trans people.

We hope you can see this from our point of view too - given the pressure and scrutiny that we take on by hosting these discussions, we think it's incredibly important that posts on the boards are really clear wherever there's the potential for misinterpretation.

If there were an entire demographic who could be shown to be doing an Undesirable Thing then a generalisation would probably be fine - but we think it's very unlikely to apply to all trans people.

The demographic is as posted by Errol above. I didn't mention or imply trans people in my original post, and I'm sure others who were deleted didn't either.

OK, thanks for explaining. So what I wanted to say was the term 'natal woman' is not safe from appropriation anyway, under the premises that some people work from.

Some people believe that the defining feature of a woman is a feminine gender essence, rather than physical sex. Some people also argue that gender essence is innate in all humans. Following these two premises, some people already think that your biological sex has nothing to do with whether you are a 'natal woman' or not.

{ begin context
Define they = [some trans people]||[some postmodernist queer theory types] ||[some MRAs in disguise]
}

Something like that, anyway.

Errol: refinement - "some X AND not all X".

Thank you for the clarification Michael. If I am reading you correctly, and posts are actually being reported to MNHQ for using the word 'they' instead of 'some', then I think my brain has just blown a fuse.

Is it okay to use the term TRA? (Trans' Rights Activist.)

I use it to refer to anyone (trans or not) who is pushing this ideology at a cost to women. I do not classify all trans people as TRAs. My use of 'they' is a reference to TRAs.

Linguistic shifts, especially when driven by people with an agenda, will result in a change in the demographic using them. Time was when 'trans women are women' would not have had wide acceptance, let alone become a dogma. It's almost although not ubiquitous for trans people (and virtually all trans activists) to claim that as a truth. Can we use 'they' in this case?
Whereas the next stage of incursion is at an earlier stage but it's growing. The 'they' who claim that transwomen are females, or even biological females, is maybe small now, but growing.

'We' is a generalisation too - on this board at least, I'd hope it wouldn't ever be considered deleteable to say 'we say no. Woman means adult human female. Female is defined by science in terms of reproductive role in sexed species.'