The word 'woman' is misogynistic, racist and transphobic, apparently.

[notwhatineednow]

From one of the podcasts from "The Family Sex show".

This is from one of the (I assume pretty young) contributors.
Such muddled thinking, although the anti-woman feeling is clear. Who is teaching our young people this shit? Be a 'girl' or a 'lady' as it's more fun than 'woman' like those evil old TERFs.

My 12 year old niece reckons the word "female" is transphobic. This kind of thinking is in schools.

Woman

It’s like wearing a pair of jeans right. They look fine, because they are tucked underneath a top, but as soon as you lift up the top, they aren’t really done up properly or they’re rolling down. Or they’re fine when you’re stood up, but as soon as you have to be in them for a long period of time - like sat down at a restaurant or something - they just dig in. They really restrict your enjoyment because all you can think about is how you wish you’d spoken up before and gone back and got changed. And that’s how I feel when someone calls me a woman, that I just want to go back and put on something more comfortable.

I’ve not been misgendered… I know, for myself that ‘woman’ is mostly right, I just want some space for that to be more flexible. That’s why I prefer other words, like girl or lady even.. (laughs) Partly because they’re funny and partly because for me, they leave more room for the imagination. For the grey space where I feel like I exist more.

The word ‘woman’ feels so loaded with so many connotations that I don’t want anything to do with. I have seen too many women using that word as a disguise for violence. Google the term ‘TERF’ if you haven’t done so already - trans exclusionary radical feminism. Not very radical as far as I’m concerned.

And they use the word woman to continue to perpetrate misogyny or racism or transphobia, or all of the above. As a result, that word sort of feels tainted for me by other things that I want absolutely nothing to do with. I feel like identifying as a woman makes me complicit in these super shit things.

I was trying really hard to find this Instagram template, you know one of those things you put on your story and, I don’t know, insert a gif to represent your star sign or favourite pasta shape or sex position or some shit. And a little while ago, there was this one which I can’t now find for the life of me, that had a bunch of gendered words. Some were super specific like dyke or fag, that people have reclaimed for their identity, and some were more general like guys or dude, and basically you could tick and cross the words which people could use in reference to you. I fill in so many forms where I have to define my sex and my gender - and those are two very different things - and I think it would be a lot easier and more inclusive if maybe alongside this we could have an Instagram template instead. Or something like it; where you could choose which words you did or didn’t want to be used, about you.

So, if I could find it, there are lots of words I would circle or put some sparkly GIF on, but – for now at least - the word woman gets a big cross from me.

What a load of navel gazing tedious twaddle.

Jezus. Shake some sense into your niece would ya

@WinterTrees

Agree about the internalised misogyny. Also ageism.

Social media, ruled by porn-addled incels with anime avatars has declared the word woman, when used to mean female people, as unfashionable as a pair of sensible sandals. Ugh. Fugly and pointless because it doesn't feed their fetish fantasies. Females who get the seal of their approval must call themselves 'girl' (so much more flirty and fun and compliant) or 'lady' (ooh - all powerful and ice-queen appealing!) Come on females, label yourself in a way that makes the men happy!

Thanks for that reference to ageism!

That was a "Eureka!" moment for me.

The social media Karening of women who speak up at all on any topic now is based on initial ageism), and all those profile pictures showing Japanese anime cartoon girls of roughly five or six years old also try to redefine 'woman' as something extremely young, almost pedophilic

And the alternative connotations which would be more empowering (does anyone use that term anymore?) for girls and young women are now poisoned by being tagged as transphobic and just not at all woke.

It's important to teach derision and rejection of older women, it's essential to the success of this.

Kids such as this one have been trained in they're old and stupid and disgusting and wrong so you must never listen to them when they tell you how you're being fooled and taken advantage of .

Step one of destroying safeguarding: separate your targets from female protectors.

Wow

Why have words with meaning when a gif will suffice lol

[quote mrziggycoco]@notwhatineednow Surely schools are the places to correct this, along with medical professionals, as truth tellers who we trust with our children?[/quote]
Yes, you would think so, wouldn't you? But the opposite is true IME. Schools are being used to push gender identity ideology on children.

Step one of destroying safeguarding: separate your targets from female protectors

Nail on head.

It's so effective too. As young women so many of us go through that natural phase of rejecting our mothers. It's an important life stage, and a part of the teenage years to separate ourselves off and create our own identity, distinct from our mother. This movement seizes upon that and shoves a chisel into that crack to wedge it wide open and make it so much harder to bridge.

@Artichokeleaves

It's important to teach derision and rejection of older women, it's essential to the success of this.

Kids such as this one have been trained in they're old and stupid and disgusting and wrong so you must never listen to them when they tell you how you're being fooled and taken advantage of .

Step one of destroying safeguarding: separate your targets from female protectors.

It undermines the safeguarding of children and the vulnerable.

It works for isolating those who are subjected to domestic violence.

When is society going to stop colluding in this isolation that makes some groups so susceptible to exploitation, coercion, and abuse?

@Artichokeleaves

It's important to teach derision and rejection of older women, it's essential to the success of this.

Kids such as this one have been trained in they're old and stupid and disgusting and wrong so you must never listen to them when they tell you how you're being fooled and taken advantage of .

Step one of destroying safeguarding: separate your targets from female protectors.

Exactly this.

There is a word for them.
Transactivist.

Oh bloody Nora!
The narcissism is so virulent now with these types, they really do seem like they are becoming insane. People who constantly try to twist reality will eventually loose contact with it completely, like an unmoored boat!
Word salad!

@2Gen

Oh bloody Nora! The narcissism is so virulent now with these types, they really do seem like they are becoming insane. People who constantly try to twist reality will eventually loose contact with it completely, like an unmoored boat! Word salad!

I think that's exactly the point tbh.

It's not just narcisists though, it's also young people who have been brought up in an online world that they see as just as real, in terms of the friednships they make and relationships they forge, as this one out here.

I think our fight with transactivism is literally a fight for reality. If reality can be unmoored from the physical world, then it can be manipulated by those with power (and those with power are likely to be entities such as tech companies, rather than governments).

groan

A PP said this awful show has been cancelled.
I can't say how happy this makes me feel.
Although, obviously, the utter madness of it all is still out there, somewhere.
Likely to raise its ugly head somewhere else.

Surprised they didn't say it's Anti-Semitic too. When in doubt say something is racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic without any evidence.

Oh and throw the word Nazi around like confetti, (Al Quaeda too today).
It sounds good, it's highly dramatic and hyperbolic and its only seven million people and a six year appalling tragedy you're purposing in the manner of a flouncing thirteen year old without the faintest understanding of anything but wanting their own way.

Makes me think she needs some advice from the Style & Beauty board about finding better fitting jeans.

And thanks for this - I was concerned about a 'knee jerk' reaction to the Family Sex show on the other thread, but tis ...! Makes me see how the show could never be fit for purpose. My soft spot for young theatre makers is hardening in respect to this lot!

I just think that people like this can't possibly have any real problems. When I was a teen my family had very little money. My mum used to often skip meals so I could eat. We sometimes ran out of coins to go in the electricity meter and then we had no power. Try contemplating your navel in the dark when you haven't had any dinner and see how far you get.

The latest that I've been reading online that people I know have 'liked' (not shared, so I can't really comment on it without going out of my way to bring it up, somehow) is a long piece about how sex isn't black and white scientifically (endless stuff about how chromosomes don't determine it because of certain DSDs - though they don't say that, they just say things like how XX people could have testes; how hormones don't determine it because...; how external sex characteristics don't determine it because....; how reproductive function doesn't determine it because...) - all sorts of DSDs, edge cases, guff about people who can't have children or don't have periods, hormone disorders - trying to prove that determining one's sex is not black and white or necessarily easy to do. Once they've established that, they then go on to say how trans people's brains have been shown to be different in various ways, more similar to the sex they want to be. No thought to distinguishing whether that difference is something acquired/environmental, or present all along, and also no details about the study - so I don't know if there is anything reputable about it at all. But the implication is that we clearly don't know all there is to know about determining sex, and that trans people have something different in their brains, and because sex is not 'simple', they obviously must scientifically be 'really the opposite sex'. And teenagers are lapping it up. They are convinced that it's scientific, that anyone who disagrees is a far-right, conservative, bigoted stick in the mud who isn't open minded enough to understand that. There are loads of comments about how hard it is that people have been for years prevented from knowing who/what they really are, becasue people have had such fixed, old-fashioned ideas about what sex is, and how science is showing that they're wrong. The teens are full of admiration for this point of view, and that it's all about finding out yourself who you are, going on your journey, being free to be what you want, navel gazing to the nth degree about it all, rather than using the old-fashioned biology way.

They are liking and commenting on all these sorts of posts, and they're out there in droves, whereas there is not nearly so much about the 'other side' available online in the same way - not tons of memes, support groups, etc for people who just think biology defines sex. Far less interesting.

But it makes it hard to counter this stuff. they're convinced by the science, and it's hard to find clear rebuttals to it when it's the logic that is so wrong. It's hard to say that DSDs are irrelevant as there's no evidence that trans people have any higher rate than anyone else - when they then cite dubious studies that say trans people have brain differences that show they're more like the sex they want to be. They feel sorry for anyone who isn't being believed about their real identity, because science has in the past been too rigid - and so of course there is this huge drive to want to believe them, champion the underdog etc.
it's been very well played, and teens have bought into it hugely.

@BotCrossHuns

The latest that I've been reading online that people I know have 'liked' (not shared, so I can't really comment on it without going out of my way to bring it up, somehow) is a long piece about how sex isn't black and white scientifically (endless stuff about how chromosomes don't determine it because of certain DSDs - though they don't say that, they just say things like how XX people could have testes; how hormones don't determine it because...; how external sex characteristics don't determine it because....; how reproductive function doesn't determine it because...) - all sorts of DSDs, edge cases, guff about people who can't have children or don't have periods, hormone disorders - trying to prove that determining one's sex is not black and white or necessarily easy to do. Once they've established that, they then go on to say how trans people's brains have been shown to be different in various ways, more similar to the sex they want to be. No thought to distinguishing whether that difference is something acquired/environmental, or present all along, and also no details about the study - so I don't know if there is anything reputable about it at all. But the implication is that we clearly don't know all there is to know about determining sex, and that trans people have something different in their brains, and because sex is not 'simple', they obviously must scientifically be 'really the opposite sex'. And teenagers are lapping it up. They are convinced that it's scientific, that anyone who disagrees is a far-right, conservative, bigoted stick in the mud who isn't open minded enough to understand that. There are loads of comments about how hard it is that people have been for years prevented from knowing who/what they really are, becasue people have had such fixed, old-fashioned ideas about what sex is, and how science is showing that they're wrong. The teens are full of admiration for this point of view, and that it's all about finding out yourself who you are, going on your journey, being free to be what you want, navel gazing to the nth degree about it all, rather than using the old-fashioned biology way.

They are liking and commenting on all these sorts of posts, and they're out there in droves, whereas there is not nearly so much about the 'other side' available online in the same way - not tons of memes, support groups, etc for people who just think biology defines sex. Far less interesting.

But it makes it hard to counter this stuff. they're convinced by the science, and it's hard to find clear rebuttals to it when it's the logic that is so wrong. It's hard to say that DSDs are irrelevant as there's no evidence that trans people have any higher rate than anyone else - when they then cite dubious studies that say trans people have brain differences that show they're more like the sex they want to be. They feel sorry for anyone who isn't being believed about their real identity, because science has in the past been too rigid - and so of course there is this huge drive to want to believe them, champion the underdog etc.
it's been very well played, and teens have bought into it hugely.

Those arguments about sex are quite typical, sadly. Almost all intersex people are actually still either male or female (it's the presence or absence of the y-chromosome which determines that), and sex itself is binary. One sperm and one egg are required, and there is no third sex that is somehow involved in reproduction. Secondary sexual characteristics can, of course, vary a lot in that some women have bigger breasts, some men bigger penises and so on, but that does not make people who have smaller breasts or smaller penises some other sex. And none of the very rare borderline cases always brought up here has anything to do with 99.99% of those who claim a trans identity.

The brain scan stuff that I have read doesn't actually demonstrate that transgender people's brains look like the sex they identify with rather than the sex they are, though of course there may be some which are clearer in their findings.

But the ones I have skimmed which argue that they did find some such differences either compared transgender people who had already been on opposite-sex hormones for a long time to people who are not trans or found results for one sub-group but not for the other (like for trans men's brains looking like men's brains in some small area but not for trans women's brains in that same small area looking like women's brains or vice versa), or the studies failed to take into account sexual orientation which sometimes seemed to explain the results better.

Besides, our brains are changed by the way they are used, so even if such differences/similarities were found, they might not mean that they are somehow biological or innate in origin.

It's been known for quite a while that our brains are partly affected by how they are used (London taxi drivers used to have much enlarged long-term memory parts in their brains when they had to memorise all those addresses, not sure if that is true today, and people who speak English have slightly different looking brain pics when using language than people who speak Chinese as the latter uses pitch, too, long-term depression changes the way our brains look in scans, and so on).

The problem with this topic is that by the time Truth gets its shoes laced up the Lie has run half-way around the world. In other words, explaining what is wrong in all those slogans and memes takes lots of time and when that explaining work has done, new slogans are running all over social media.

oh I know how ridiculous and unscientific it is, and if I had the actual papers in front of me, I could probably find some of the flaws in them and/or other explanations, but the problem is being able to explain them simply enough to people who have a vested interest in believing what they've been told elsewhere, especially when it supports the underdog. And it's such warped logic to start with that it is hard to counter with logic!! The fact that not one single thing can completely determine sex is not an argument against sex being simple, but to them it is. And once you've agreed that sex determination isn't simple, they are away...

Yes exactly to all the slogans and memes and stories and support groups and so on - so easily to like and share and believe (and they interspere it with lots of nice, feel-good messages about believing in yourself and being strong and being kind and all that, that they all want to support) - it's really clever. And it allows everyone to go on a journey and be interesting and find themselves, and turn away from what older people are saying, as is always the way at that age!

I'm old enough to remember a time when using the word 'woman' was considered vaguely inappropriate or rude and so women were always referred to as 'ladies' or 'girls' to de-sex us. You still get it from men of a certain generation who always say 'girls' or 'ladies' when talking to women. It annoyed me as a kid because it seemed we females only had the choice to be infantilised as girls or given the vaguely patronizing dainty term of 'ladies'. No term worked to convey the sense of an adult human female, like the way 'man' means adult human male.

And now here we are, full circle, with trans activists trying to abolish the word 'woman' again. It feels like when I go into shops and see that crop tops and palazzo pants are back in style, same old fashion but with a slightly different spin on it. In this case, TRA's discomfort with the word 'woman' is just the same old misogyny but with a different spin put on it.

@FOJN „The grey space can only exist because black and white exist which means this special person needs to put me in one box or the other for them to able to claim such fascinating uniqueness for themselves.“ - that’s a very good point!

Now woman isn't womany enough? FFS!

They then cite dubious studies that say trans people have brain differences that show they're more like the sex they want to be.

Easiest rebuttal for that is to say that in that case we should diagnose trans status by brain scan. Of course they all change their mind then because they know it's BS.