ACLU on sex and biology

[andyoldlabour]

According to the American Civil Lberties Union

"The ACLU went on to explain that, first of all, “trans girls are girls,” and that the idea of sex being rooted in biology is a “myth.”

Wow, where do we start, or indeed finish with that statement?

www.dailywire.com/news/aclu-issues-twitter-thread-allegedly-debunking-myths-about-trans-students-in-sports?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=benshapiro&fbclid=IwAR2qZtgBD9IwAaOlMf6C6B_xFJ907VsBtwtyFmV3Pthgd1UMIdBhlOXcbYw

That's really kind, CharleyParley , thank you. It does feel like the pattern of seemingly lovely men who change, Jekyll to Hyde style, as soon as you are trapped into a relationship. Society is trapped by organisations like the ACLU's reputation as extreme doers of good and harbingers of justice - to oppose them feels almost unthinkable to anyone who believes themselves to be liberal. And now, it feels like they are re-writing your history, screaming in your face and laughing at your "madness" when you object - and who will believe you over them when you complain?

Yes, Nauticant and QueenofAir it is all those feelings combined. It's misogynist abuse 101.

Having said that, I am very much of the school of, "if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger", and i can take heart from the feeling that these fuckers are starting to overplay their hand and have thus exposed themselves to a much wider and less credulous audience. And I am happy to have learned everything I have from this discussion board. Have had my mind blown so many times. The post upthread about animal husbandry potentially creating the patriarchy being the latest! So thank you all for such interesting and informative threads. (Am going to stop hijacking now).

I think it's interesting Jaime that the Mills start their discussion of the subjection of women, by first talking about slavery (they''re writing after 1865).

QueenoftheAir:
'... just pointing out that there is an element of "truth" (whatever that is ...) in some of Butler's starting points .

Can I, in my turn, point out that there may be some who are not so interested in "truth" (whatever that is). Some are interested in whether or not what Butler says is true.

[Long ago, I was advised to beware of scare quotes. When you write "truth", are you talking about truth, or something else? If you are talking about truth, why the quotes? And if of something else, then what ? -- Please say. So I was advised; I pass on the advice.]

Do we know what it is for something to be true? Well, pace Tarski & co., yes, more or less, we do. Since Aristotle, at least: ' ... to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true .'

OK, I am being a little disingenuous, perhaps. There may be more to all this. Was Aristotle a Correspondence Theorist? The debate continues. Things may be complicated, including in the history of ideas.

It may even be possible to be a poststructural deconstructionist and still think sex is real (Jane Clare Jones comes to mind in this context; sure there are others too). For myself, I suspect such endeavour is ultimately whistling in the dark. (Too much metaphysical baggage leads to a mistaken appreciation of what is signified by the loss of the transcendental signifier, since you ask.) But of course if you are serious you should track it down and argue with it.

Be all that as it may. For those who are trying to get to grips with this from the beginning, as it were, it is important that you approach it with common sense. If a philosopher tells us sex is not real, or that science is just another text with no more factual content than a novel, we know that philosopher is at best mistaken, no matter how she wraps things up in polysyllables and subordinate clauses.

Most of what Judith Butler writes (and, yes, Queen, I have read much of it too, for my sins), is just plain silly. It is not intellectually disreputable to notice this -- or to point it out.

Jennifer Bilek writes on ACLU's involvement with body dissociation / big pharma. It's no coincidence really that ACLU are pushing this.

twitter.com/bjportraits/status/1357707568362250247?s=21

Which is a bit of an issue if your ability to act depends on the wider public believing that your opinions have credibility.

Well, yes. There's a reason Trump's "Fake News" shtick stuck. Clearly a huge number of organisations in the U.S., including media, have been captured by a weird ideological authoritarian clique, and have their own Trumpian disregard for reality if it's ideologically inconvenient.

It drives me nuts as a lefty classical liberal who would quite like rational media + organisations.

Can't imagine how actual right-wingers must feel seeing this circus. There's no end of source material to be blown out of proportion by ideologues on the other side.

There is definitely a sense of 'multiple realities' for me when I watch the news about Trump and Trumpery on different US and UK news outlets.

I want a democratic material reality back. Not the multiple realities of petty tyrants and their barons or the insidious mission creep of organisations like the ACLU and Stonewall.

Just coming back to this thread, to recommend the Savage Minds podcast with a discussion between Julian Vigo and Heather Brunskell-Evans on Mill, Foucault, and their discussion on the mis-readings (or non-readings) of Foucault and Butler, et al.

Really really interesting & invigorating to hear two experts who've actually read this stuff, and come to it as radical feminists.

I find Dr Brunskell-Evans's comment that Foucault offers tools to think with, to be pretty much what I'm trying (far less expertly) to say upthread.

Anyway, it's an excellent listen.

Quoting the ACLU:

"According to Dr. Adkins, “When a school or athletic organization denies transgender students the ability to participate equally in athletics because they are transgender, that condones, reinforces, and affirms the transgender students’ social status as outsiders or misfits who deserve the hostility they experience from peers.”

www.aclu.org/news/lgbt-rights/four-myths-about-trans-athletes-debunked/

Of course it doesn't logically mean anyone "deserves hostility".

But what the ACLU wants to say, is let them on the team, because we are trying to affirm them in their self-identified gender.

And that's enough to lie and pretend it's not unfair...

I guess we can only be grateful, that the ACLU don't have a way to sue people if they refuse to sleep with a trans-person.

I mean, if you really want to affirm their gender, that has to include dating and sex yes?