Man/Woman, male/female, male bodied/female bodied

[TheWitchesAreBackInTown]

When I speak to people about sex and gender, I tend to use man and woman because I refuse to give ground on those words. But it can get a little confusing when talking to someone who doesn't know a lot about the topic.

My partner says that using males and females is straight to the point eg don't say trans identifying men, or trans women, or men, just say male (males in female toilets). Everyone knows what it means. There's no ambiguity, no confusion. It shocks and informs. When I talk about sports or prisons I do automatically say male and female.

But it's beginning to get blurred because TRAs are pushing the boundaries again and appropriating female and male.

Now, I never say male/female bodied people because, well, I just don't like the term. Probably because it feels too far away from the words man and woman.

What words do you use to describe men and women, especially if they identify as trans? A month or so ago there was a thread by a poster about what she thinks we should call TW and TM (used for convenience) but I can't find it and I can't remember if there was a consensus reached.

Woman/ man are nouns relating to sex, female/ male are the adjectives related to those nouns. Masculine and feminine are adjectives relating to gender.

Using female and male as nouns sounds a bit icky to me, sort of dehumanizing, as though you are talking about livestock or a nature documentary.

There is no need for "female bodied".

I think the term mentioned was eg ‘men who identify as women’ or it might have been ‘men who pretend to be women’ , which I do like, but it’s a bit of a mouthful. I just use men and women, and clarify if it’s absolutely necessary (you know, the old fashioned kind)

Check out #justsaymen on Twitter. I say men everywhere apart from on here, where reality is policed by Monitors and pandered to.

I think we should, where we can, baldly say man and woman, boy and girl.

However, if you think you will be censored, it can sometimes be less contentious to say male and female.

If you are talking to someone who is a bit #bekind brainwashed and who shuts down saying “TWAW, TWAM, NBPAV” like a malfunction alarm, at any sign of intellectual threat, it is better to say ‘male-bodied/female-bodied’.
Bringing them down to Earth, picturing something real like a human body and not just a made-up abstraction, helps to calm them down and bypass their programming.

Of course the fellas who are desperate to be us and to leave us no linguistic means to distinguish ourselves from them, now talk about ‘trans female’, ‘becoming female’, etc.

They will do the same with any words we use, so it is now a hard line, back to man and woman, or ‘man who pretends to be what he imagines a woman is’ and ‘woman who pretends to be what she imagines a man is’.

One of the articles about the stalker called him a 'female trans person' and I've seen a lot of things in sports, especially in America using 'trans female' to describe males instead of 'transwoman'

It's very deliberate and was predicted by everyone here. They took woman then came for female.
They are still neither of those things though and we shouldn't have to police our own reality/sex based language in order to pander to a male's fantasy of womanhood.

Male and female can be nouns as well. It's just they're not specific to humans, or even animals. "The female indicates to te male she is ready for mating."
Woman = adult (mature) human (species) female (sex). All those words take the same form whether used as adjectives or nouns.

I say
man/woman
man who claims to be a woman/woman who claims to be a man
people who claim a special identity

I think my issue with "male-bodied" is that it carries the implication that you are talking about a type of body which might belong to a male or a female person. Like endomorph/mesomorph/ectomorph.

endlesstea is that why I see male bodied and female bodied so often? Makes sense now. Sometimes concrete for them to focus on.

*something

Although I still wouldn't use it.

Yes. I think enough people are able to see sense now, we may as well leave the brainwashed mugs to their own stupidity.

We had to say male bodied and female bodied for a long time on here otherwise we’d be censored/banned.

I refuse to play along with the shit show/travesty now and just state actual fact: there are women (female) and men (male) and that is that.

Tangled

I see it on Twitter a lot too. Still see it, I mean.

Ugh Twitter.

We’ve spent enough time playing pretzel word games.

I’m done with it. I simply won’t stand for it. I’m not frightened, not one bit, to state the truth.

A man is male, and will always be male. Ergo, he will always be a man in ways that very much matter.

People can scream, shout and threaten as much as they want. Tough.

Trans Identified Male (TIM)
Trans Identified Female (TIF)

Men who think they are women and women who think they are men.

Men and women for those of us who are quite sure of what we are.

Men who want to be women, or women who want to be men would be much more accurate. IMO.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4727490-language-bank

We’ve been starting to puzzle some of this through on the thread linked above.

’Men who say they are women’ seems to be a favourite at the moment (because we do sometimes need a way to differentiate between standard men and men who are entitled enough to think the rules about single sex spaces do not apply to them.

’Men who have altered their appearance with surgery and hormones’ is a useful way to describe a subset of the bigger group ‘men who say they are women’.

Thanks cloglady. I hadn't seen that thread.

I like men who say they are women.

I usually say male/female bodied because my arguments are based on the undeniable historic disempowerment of the female-bodied and its long echo still built into our culture, and so are valid even if you believe trans women are women.

I'm not going to leave a loophole for someone to avoid engaging with the substance of my arguments by deploying a bad faith tactical buttergasp and an attack of the misgender conniptions.

Men who want to be women, or women who want to be men would be much more accurate. IMO.

But then again, they don’t really want to be women do they? The mental load, the donkey work, the low social status, being judged for everything. It’s the fantasy of being a woman they want.

So men who say they are women is more accurate than that.

True enough!

But always, they are men.

It's important to get it right, whatever term you use, and to be clear what other people understand by it.
People who haven't been paying attention sometimes assume that a 'trans woman' is a woman who identifies as a man. They hear the term 'woman' and that seems to establish the basis with 'trans' as a modifier. Cue all kinds of misunderstanding. Which of course was the intention all along.

You can be sure that whatever terms we use will sooner or later either be colonised or outlawed.

I know someone who uses the terms 'small gamete person' and 'large gamete person' but that only works for people with a basic knowledge of biology and a sense of irony.

Men.
Men who claim to be trans - to distinguish them from men who don’t claim to be that.

I have no way of knowing whether a man who identifies as a woman sincerely & wrongly believes that’s what he is, or just wants me to believe he believes he is.

I can have my suspicions. I suspect Jazz Jennings is the first, and Adam “Isla” the rapist is the second. But I don’t know.

All I know is that they’re making that claim and are trying to place an obligation on me to act as if I agreed with it.

What words do you use to describe men and women, especially if they identify as trans?

Men, or women 🤷‍♀️

Men, or women. Or men who think they are women or pretend to be women. I am not of the view that misdescribing reality is "kind". I think it is the opposite for all involved. Especially children and young people.