It's language isn't it

[CaptainWarbeck]

After listening to the Witch Trials podcast, I've been trying to get my head in the space of trans activists. I am trying to see their point of view and find any common ground, in the spirit of checking your own beliefs.

So essentially what I can see is that it boils down to the use of language first and foremost.

If you say 'woman' and by that you mean 'feeling feminine, feeling that many female stereotypes are more your thing, rejecting masculine things', then feminists saying 'you're not a woman' WOULD be hurtful and also 'denying that you exist' right?

Because you are saying you're all of those things, and someone is telling you that you are not. And they're personal things that no one else can really see - so I understand how it would feel rude and invalidating for a feminist to tell you you're not experiencing them.

And if by identifying as a 'woman' (also read nonbinary, asexual etc) in this sense means that you feel you fit into the world better and feel more accepted generally because people make less stereotypical assumptions about you, then that would be helpful, right?

And if feminists say 'no you can't do that - because of biology you are not a woman' - that would feel reductive, and like you were being put back into the box you're trying to escape from I imagine.

The issue is that when each side uses 'woman' we mean entirely different things. Defining the language we're using in order to have a conversation is essential. We're talking at cross purposes.

And the other thing which is impossible to fix but which would help enormously is waving a magic wand and eradicating gender stereotypes. There's no need for 'gender' if you can present/dress/behave however you want regardless of sex.

That's my best understanding right now. I think feminist rhetoric does hurt trans feelings. The issue is that following trans ideology saves hurt feelings, but has far worse consequences for biological women. No one really wins here. That is unless society (patriarchy) miraculously becomes more accepting of gay, lesbian and gender nonconforming people.

Their point of view boils down to "what is mine is mine what is yours is also mine. Give it to me now."

The young kids are confused, lied to about what is actually possible in life and puberty is shit. If you are in anyway not happy they see the rainbow gubbins as a way to instantly find happiness.

It's cruel.

It's literally magic op.

They believe (or pretend to believe because it's much the same thing since saying something makes it true) that changing language changes the world around them.

Saying "I am a woman" makes you a woman. If someone says that you're not a woman that is literal violence (they've said it's violence so that makes it true).

Throughout history there have been people who believe in magic, from shamen, wizards, magicians to mainstream religions (cf transubstantiation in the Catholic church).

But it's not true. They are not women, the wine is still wine, the shamen has not literally become a bear.

We have to hold the line.

The word for what they're feeling is feminine.
Our sex is female.
The definition of woman is adult human female not adult feminine person.

You're absolutely right, this is a fight about language. Postmodernist feminism (think Judith Butler) changed the meaning of 'worman' from a biological sex class to a 'gender'. The original thought behind it was that 'woman' was simply a performance, in much the same way that drag is a performance. Typically we think that drag is a copy of the 'real thing', but Butler's big idea is that there is no 'real' woman - everyone who performs the 'woman' gender just IS a woman. There's nothing deeper, no essence, no criteria to being a woman. All you have to do is play the part of a woman and you are one.

Butler also argued that you can't base womanhood in biological sex becasue even sex is unstable and unreal. It isn't an objective concept. There's no necessary and sufficient conditions for someone to be female, and there are all these exception (like people with DSDs). Sex doesn't exist, so we can't found womanhood on that.

The best solution, says Butler, is to ground womanhood in something which she does acknowledge is real which is people's beliefs and feelings. There's a kind of radical autonomy going on here. Reality doesn't dictate if you are a woman, nor does society. It's a free choice, entirely up to the indivdiual. If you say you are a woman you just ARE one. And going even further, there's no rules about womanhood so anything can constitute it. You can be a woman if you are a 6 foot male with a beard.

The big problem with this is very few people actually believe in postmodern theory. Most people believe in science and reality. They don't think that reality reduces to language. And this is where this curious tension arises. We are supposed to accept transgenderism as this factual thing, when in fact it is based on a very obscure, academic theory about reality which no one really buys into.

The other thing that's weird about this is Butler and her ilk are entirely happy to destroy womanhood and reduce it to a personal whim or choice, but she does NOT advocate the same treatment for any other social category. Race and ethnicity are still very much real things, to Butler. Black people are being oppressed by white people, and white people can't just declare they're black. Palestinians just are being oppressed by Israelis, and you can't just identify as one or the other. But no one ever answers this question why only womanhood gets the postmodern treatment.

Control of language is not about words. Its about control of society.

Thats why transactivists want to control the word woman, because in doing so they control women and have power over them.

Orwell will tell you lots about this.

There is no cross purpose for this reason. There is a clear political agenda. This is why there can't be 'common ground', because the purpose of deciding what a woman is, is to remove the power of a women to say no to men in women's spaces.

If you can't see sex, you can't see sexism.

Those were the days sighs nostalgically

I agree, but I think there is a link in the current inability to say 'no'. Setting boundaries and saying no are seen as being unkind, there's this constant push to understand, to listen, to respect, to allow. I don't think it is kind, in fact I think we are doing a disservice to young people. I also think this does link the abusive transactivist and the young kids being sucked into this.

Re: Trans activists; Politicians, the police, schools etc. should be firm in setting boundaries. The authorities should have remained clear about the reality that you can't change sex, the reality that men shouldn't be in women's changing rooms and that ganging up and shouting 'fascist' at a peaceful group of women is unacceptable.

Re; Kids; Schools should be clear that schools are for education, safeguarding is paramount and 'gender expression' is for your free time. Sex education should be factual and biologically based. If children are going to parents, teachers, gps demanding puberty blockers because they 'are trapped in the wrong body' they should be told in no uncertain terms that you cannot be in the wrong body and they should be given professional, proper mental health treatment, autism diagnosis and support, protection from sexual abuse, encouraged to develop a life outside the internet and be allowed to develop normally.

It is not kind to allow people to destroy their bodies, it is not kind to allow people to develop obsessions and escalate bad behaviour. The more I see about this gender ideology movement, the more I think it damages the people involved just as much as everyone else.

It's like trying to be kind to a toddler by understanding their point of view and giving in to every tantrum. It doesn't end well!

I don't think that's what the OP is saying.

It can be good strategy sometimes to "know the enemy". And it's not childish.

I this your post is one of the best summaries of where the other side is coming from that I've read.

@liwoxac

Thanks for your thoughtful post and for giving me ^tergiversations" which I am now going to go and practice saying.

Formatting curses!

I don't think it's language, I think its a mental health problem. It doesn't matter what you give it will never be enough.

There is a language element OP. I wouldn’t put it at the top of my list, but it is there. English, as a language, was already far more loosely gendered pre-pronounism etc. than many others where gender runs far deeper, with more gendered word endings, agreements and so on.

I have been thinking this for some time.

I'm having an uncomfortable awakening to the fact that some of this trans movement i.e. you are what you feel to be, started with the nineties/noughties feminists. There was (is?) a section of feminism devoted to eradicating gender. They brought up their children with genderless names, clothes, read them books that were non-gender conforming, told them we can't know if someone is male or female unless we see their genitalia. They wouldn't tell outside people the sex of their child. The children grew up to define themselves.

Not all of this movement was bad but it was done to excess and rode roughshod over the reality that there are differences between sexes, that sex matters and that we cannot ignore sex as though it were an inconvenient blemish.

Those feminists thought they were liberating the true inner selves of the next generation. They did it with the best of intentions. They couldn't have predicted it would lead us to where we are today. But here we are anyway.

Eradicating gender stereotypes is not the same thing as denying sex.

No feminist would be denying sex, because otherwise you could not identify which cohort is the victim of sexism.

Eradicating damaging gender stereotypes is a cornerstone of feminism.

Women are oppressed on the basis of their sex, and gender is the means by which it's done.

OP, I think your explanation of (some people’s) trans position is spot on, and I would add that many young men with these feelings also feel that they aren’t accepted as men by older men. There is immediate sexism that, when not accepted by men, their response is to bully what they see as the weaker sex-class to accept them. Hence why women’s acceptance of transwomen as women is their aim.
For these (mainly young) men, I absolutely agree with pp’s that men’s full acceptance of these gender non-conforming men as men is the key.

I am a woman, who really doesn’t do ‘feminine’ things like make up/heels/dresses. Consequently, I find any man’s assertion that he is a woman because he likes these things, to be deeply personally insulting. Maybe this is why women who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, when sex-based stereotypes were less pervasive, are the group who has reacted quickest and most strongly to this sexist narrative. Well, that and safeguarding children and vulnerable adults!

I feel unclean now!

Shudders.

Eradicating gender stereotypes was exactly the same as denying sex or as close to it as was possible without getting laughed out of the room (oh how times have changed). They said the external genitalia were an anatomical feature with no less or more meaning than being tall or broad. Eradicating damaging gender stereotypes is indeed a manifesto every true feminist can agree upon. These feminists didn't stop there though. They wanted to make all the girls wear grey and boys wear sparkly tutus (never the other way around). I knew a girl who had literally been forbidden to wear pink and hair grips because 'gender stereotypes'. I mean ... 🤷‍♂️

So why are men so non-accepting of gender nonconforming males, when like previous posters say - women don't seem to care much if there are masculine presenting women around?

I can't see that women are somehow less homophobic. I'm generalising but could it be that men, being the more violent (and sexually aggressive) sex, see other gender non-conforming men as a physical/sexual threat and so refuse to accept them on this basis? Whereas women just don't tend to be intimidated by each other physically.

There was (is?) a section of feminism devoted to eradicating gender. They brought up their children with genderless names, clothes, read them books that were non-gender conforming, told them we can't know if someone is male or female unless we see their genitalia. They wouldn't tell outside people the sex of their child. The children grew up to define themselves.

Do you have any more info on this? I've been around the block several times and never heard of it outside of trans activist circles.

I think it's untrue to say no feminist back in the 90s would be denying sex. You might think it's illogical, but there were absolutely people who thought of themselves as feminists and for women's rights who were basically saying sex was a tiny think that made virtually no difference to anyone, and this was the reason we should support legal equality, believe women should be firefighters as often as men, that female action movie stars should be shown beating the crap out of male action movie stars, and so on. We have feminists now who think males can be women, so being realistic about reality or intellectually coherent is not necessarily a requirement of the label.

I don't think men are less accepting.

I think transwomen would like us to think that is the case so that we let them into our spaces.

"These feminists didn't stop there though. They wanted to make all the girls wear grey and boys wear sparkly tutus (never the other way around). I knew a girl who had literally been forbidden to wear pink and hair grips because 'gender stereotypes'. I mean ... 🤷‍♂️"

I don't think that is that uncommon in my generation as a knee jerk reaction to avoiding stereotypes. I wanted my son to know typically feminine stuff was open to him just like masculine stuff. He wanted to wear hair clips like his sister and toted round a handbag at playgroup and no one cared. He also wore grey/blue dinosaur clothes. I regularly dressed my daughter in great stuff from the boys' range too - it took me time to realise that the girls pink sparkly stuff she usually gravitated to was equally valid and not 'lesser' because it was girly.

I was raised with the unconscious messaging to mostly avoid girly stuff - pink, homemaking etc to prove you were smarter, stronger, better than all that. Then I had kids and realised any way of trying to engage with gender stereotypes is nonsense - you can't change your biology and beyond that do what you please.