People with the capacity for pregnancy... would that be, women?

[PaddleBoardingMomma]

https://twitter.com/gregprice11/status/1546891926997188608?s=24&t=XMXJzvWWonOzM4sYUG56g

I mean... what can you say 👀

Jesus Christ, I had to switch that off in sheer irritation after the suicide canard was brought up apropos of nothing.

It’s so unlikeable to behave that way. Threatening suicide by proxy to avoid answering awkward questions! I don’t think even America is going to stand for much more of being controlled and manipulated in this way. The more TRAs use that line, the less power it has.

It’s no surprise that TRAs and allies are thrilled at how she brilliantly thwarted the evil transphobe - twatter is abuzz.

That tweet is from Greg Price whose handle says "God is real and dudes rock". Is that the same Greg Price who writes for The Daily Caller by any chance? I only ask because he has more tweets about crisis pregnancy centers. You know, the ones that take government funding to help

Pregnant women and then harvest their contact information and dox them without providing any medical services beyond confirming pregnancy. You know that they are planning to set up pregnancy registrations in some states here like they do in Poland. The same crisis pregnancy centers that were the subject of the testimony covered by the next witness? Any cute tweets covering that subject that you want to share? Or do we feminists not care about any of that?

Are you really incapable of separating the tweet author from the obvious idiocy in the video, or are you just trying to derail this thread?

@FireFlyBoogaloo why do you question my intelligence?

So many times on this forum I see proclamations about the value of speaking to people with a different point of view in order to promote free speech and how important debate is to democracy.

Why would I separate the tweet from the author? Trans ideology cannot be separated from the greater culture wars and neither can abortion. Isn't that what all of this is about?

The thread is about abortion rights, as was the hearing. The right is getting a lot of traction over derailing the discussion into trans ideology. That's because they they don't care about trans women while at the same time they don't care about women either, so their victory is a race to the bottom. It's a win win.

They seem to have found some aiders and abettors.

That is the same Greg Price isn't it. Do you follow him?

Are you implying that I'm stupid somehow? Are you one of those elites? Isn't that what they do?

Ironic, considering the tweet gloated about a successful derailment of the abortion debate.

No, no one loves him(or knows who he is that much tbh, the post is about the video content) , but he wouldn't get as much airtime if he didn't have nonsense like this to point out to his followers...

So by babbling this incoherent nonsense, the left in the USA are handing this to the right on a platter, so they can use it to fuck up women's rights even more.

“It takes nothing away from me to recognise this”

What it has taken away from you is the ability of this woman, and anyone, to defend abortion rights. The conversation slides right off that and onto trans rights.

I feel sad that here on a feminist website people are cheering on the powerful, sneering man who set her up.

I feel sad that here on a feminist website people are cheering on the powerful, sneering man who set her up.

There's no doubt that she's a woman and the powerful sneering man is a man, is there?

You don't for a second actually need to ask either his or her gender identity, do you?

No-one is cheering him on, we are in despair that a woman is pretending that "man" is a meaningful description for some people who can get pregnant. It isn't.

Only women (and girls) can get pregnant. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

You can't claim to be a man or non binary then do the most female thing in the world and get pregnant and/or have a baby.

And if erasure is such a problem then why is it that its now OK that there's no word fir adult human females who don't want to be defined in a way that forces the ideology onto us..

No one needs to play along its not our job.their identity their problem and their problem only.

So by babbling this incoherent nonsense, the left in the USA are handing this to the right on a platter, so they can use it to fuck up women's rights even more

Yes it just makes their jobs easier doesn't it. I mean if ya don't care that you can't even define yourself and there's no word for your sex class then no ones gonna think you care about abortion etc. Its over before its even started with that crap.

It takes nothing away from me to recognise this.

But this woman will not even acknowledge the word woman anywhere in her argument - then goes on to assert asking for clarification of her terminology (normally a perfectly reasonable request) causes 'violence', then, as pp pointed out, segues into trans suicide stats apropos of nothing. And it means something is being taken away, before our very eyes. This was a discussion about abortion, not trans rights.

How can it be that this dogma must somehow never be questioned, and indeed must dominate, everything it touches?

This was a discussion about abortion, not trans rights.

yup. The key statistic in the context of the abortion debate isn’t how many trans people attempt suicide. It’s how many women will die because of a lack of legal abortion. She was unable to make that point because she was caught up in gender ideology. When you can’t even name the group who are impacted you can’t defend their rights.

I totally get not all women have “the capacity for pregnancy” but there are better phrases, depending on which group you want to focus on. Pregnant women. Women of childbearing age. Both of those make it clear this is a womens rights issue. A point this supposed advocate entirely lost.

Make the word "woman" taboo and it's a lot easier to remove women's rights. Quite clever really.

How does it benefit women for the word "women" to only be used when it includes males?

Or do we feminists not care about any of that?

i think that feminists probably care as much as you do

Genuinely, here's what I think it takes away from you: the ability to draw a clear line and analyse the connection between the class of people who were denied the vote, who were denied equal education, career opportunities and economic independence, who could not obtain a mortgage in their own right even if they managed to scrabble some of those things to themselves, who were defined as chattels of men, whom it was legal to rape within marriage until the 1980s in the UK (etc. etc. etc.) and the people now being denied abortions.

All of those things were done to women because they are women and all of that history and those societal attitudes were visited on women because they are women. It is desperately important context for what is currently being done around abortion rights in order to analyse and understand the reasons this is happening and what it has led to before. Abortion rights are under attack as much because they affect women as a class (regardless of whether or not all women can become pregnant) as any other consideration, and traditionally it has been fine to outrageously disadvantage women without any second thought, particularly if it serves men, and that attitude remains very relevant and insidiously pervasive.

An analogy to my mind is acknowledging that the Holocaust was genocide of Jews but then suggesting that the Labour party recently had a problem with "people who smash glasses under foot at weddings, people who wear a kippah and people who are circumcised". I mean...sort of correct as far as it goes, I suppose, but it misses out a lot of the class and includes some people in it who shouldn't be in it and makes it fucking difficult to be able to conduct a class analysis and clearly state that what we're dealing with is exactly the same old prejudice - against exactly the same class of people - that's been kicking around for hundreds or thousands of years.

It's the same problem for many of the same reasons and we need to be able to clearly articulate that if we have any hope of solving the ever-recurring issue.

In a way she was ‘set up’ by the questioner and boy, did she walk into the trap! Everyone who is remotely interested in sex and gender issues, as she obviously is, knows that these questions are routinely being posed to politicians and other public figures. She should have been prepared to be questioned on her choice of words. Then all she needed to have said was something along the lines of
‘I prefer to use that wording, because a small minority of those who can get pregnant don’t identify as women and I respect that’. But no, she leapt straight to accusations of transphobia, using spurious suicide figures, accusations that he was denying that trans people exist, mocking him for not believing that men can get pregnant – in doing so, she made herself (and by implication her university) look stupid.

Thank you for articulating that so beautifully and clearly.

I’d like to add the much less eloquent and intelligent, but I think still important, point that this imposed language makes the people who are defending abortion rights sound like absolute morons, like this woman did.

you can’t produce a persuasive message when you aren’t allowed to use clear, simple language.

(Relatedly, Planned Parenthood and other big names organising protests in America have banned simple and emotive symbols that actually worked to reach people, like coathangers and Handmaids Tale outfits. It’s almost like sabotaging the protests is their actual goal.)

So what it’s costing American women is their rights. People aren’t allowed to defend women’s rights without beclowning themselves, what effect do you think that’s going to have?

This is exactly the point.

Genuinely, here's what I think it takes away from you: the ability to draw a clear line and analyse the connection between the class of people who were denied the vote, who were denied equal education, career opportunities and economic independence, who could not obtain a mortgage in their own right even if they managed to scrabble some of those things to themselves, who were defined as chattels of men, whom it was legal to rape within marriage until the 1980s in the UK (etc. etc. etc.) and the people now being denied abortions.

All of those things were done to women because they are women and all of that history and those societal attitudes were visited on women because they are women. It is desperately important context for what is currently being done around abortion rights in order to analyse and understand the reasons this is happening and what it has led to before. Abortion rights are under attack as much because they affect women as a class (regardless of whether or not all women can become pregnant) as any other consideration, and traditionally it has been fine to outrageously disadvantage women without any second thought, particularly if it serves men, and that attitude remains very relevant and insidiously pervasive.

What a fantastic post Officer. Thank you

Abortion rights are under attack as much because they affect women as a class

This.

Compartmentalizing women into bodily functions (birth givers, uterus owners) removed our collective class and power. Divide and conquer.

I've already seen comments along the lines of 'if you haven't the capacity to give birth, this doesn't concern you'. This leads to women with experience being shut out of the conversation, their knowledge seen as irrelevant.

An analogy to my mind is acknowledging that the Holocaust was genocide of Jews but then suggesting that the Labour party recently had a problem with "people who smash glasses under foot at weddings, people who wear a kippah and people who are circumcised". I mean...sort of correct as far as it goes, I suppose, but it misses out a lot of the class and includes some people in it who shouldn't be in it and makes it fucking difficult to be able to conduct a class analysis and clearly state that what we're dealing with is exactly the same old prejudice - against exactly the same class of people - that's been kicking around for hundreds or thousands of years.

Thank you Officer, that whole post was so well stated.