The words that have been pulled over your eyes

[FlirtsWithRhinos]

I initially wrote this as a reply to a thread in relationships, but rather than derail the thread I decided to post it in FWR as a thread in its own right about a common accusation made against gender critical feminists.

It is a response to the claim that the only people who object to the word "cis" are people who deny the existence of trans women, and that such people are transphobes.

"Transphobe", like "trans woman" and indeed "cis woman", are just the words trans activists use to hide what is really going on.

These words exist to hide one simple truth: Trans women are not, in any objective, real way, in any way outside their own heads, in any way that is real to anyone else, any closer to being a woman than any other man is.

"Trans women" in reality are just men who for some reason feel compelled (or sometimes just really want ) to adopt a cross-sex persona playing out whatever their idea of what a woman is.

The words exist to make it sound like a reasonable thing when such men demand that their wives, children, friends and family, colleagues, officials, all of society pretend they are women, let them enter private spaces for women, let them touch or counsel women in roles reserved for women, let them take prizes for women, let them speak for women.

Because we'd never accept that as ok from men. But it's ok for trans women, and if it's not ok that's transphobia.

And we'd never say women in general are more privileged and powerful than men, but call the men trans women and the women cis women and suddenly everyone nods along. And if they don't it's transphobia.

But I don't believe the thing that makes men and women different is our minds. And without that belief, the whole thing falls apart.

🙌

Do you remember the political advisor who had an elf fantasy life ? And swords ! So many seem to be into immersive sword dramas.

There was even that one who took his sword into the female toilets for a selfie. Nothing intimidating or threatening there apparently. Nothing to see.

But swords and war dramas seem common.

Just on the theme @Helleofabore raised about swords and acting and some prominent male trans people. Some of these males see themselves (and no doubt get validation in their groups as) as fantasy warrior maidens, while the rest of us simply see them as male nerds who like live action role play, like the many other men who don’t identify as women to do it.

Oh indeed! The ol’ warrior maiden live action role play.

I don’t have to lie to be myself

I don’t know what thoughts go on inside your head.

But I do know that you expect other people to lie for you, from your already mentioned friends to the total strangers on the street expected to play along with your belief that you are a woman no matter what their instincts and eyes tell them.

There's some Whovian nutcases out there in political circles too. They've been known to stalk these quarters.

You are lying Butterfly because you are a man.
I think you need some closure to accept this and are trying to get support here. You have to understand that many of us struggle to be patient with your dysphoria because we don't have it.
People like Keira Bell have been through it so it's possible for it to pass and to have an honest life.
Look into the reasons it started - why are you running away from yourself and your honest version of maleness (did someone make you feel you weren't good enough, are you struggling with being honest about being gay)?
You can get that peace you need Butterfly but the honesty has to start from within.

If I remember correctly the male tweeter that posted those pics of JK Rowling as a gotcha (an abusive act in my opinion) liked some of that warrior live action role play. Arrows, I think. I noticed because I have done archery lessons before myself.

It really seems to be a commonality.

Anime too.

So much anime.

Oh yes. That is huge or was. Is it still?

Is still.

It is a bit of a weird one. The shared characteristics between a lot of men who identify as women.

The anime, the often uber masculine jobs or pastimes, being tecky, etc.

Yes to Anime. This is my daughter's life. Creating illustrations and entire life histories for each character. Hundreds of varying genders and sexual preferences. I don't get access to much but from the little she shows me her and her friends creations are tame compared to much darker storylines out there.

The gender gingerbread man.

Genius.

You've been beating this drum here for like, four years now.

Do you feel it's working?

It does.

I have been thinking about the OP and of all the posts where we have discussed how words are one of the major tools of gender identity ideology. It is not so many words. But some really key words though that provide significant power.

Some have been changed now to include the very opposite of the originally intended meaning:

Woman
girl
man
boy
female
male
lesbian
gay
her
she
him
he

loving
tolerant
inclusive
kind
progressive

On the sport’s side we have :

fair
competitive

I am sure there are plenty more that we can add.

I could put bigot up there because it probably fits the bill.

Of course, then there is cis.

Which is really a meaningless word in its repurposed use. That is a special case as it doesn’t mean the opposite to the original intention. But it has been appropriated just the same as the other words.

I think though that appropriation is a word that can describe this ideology. From the very beginning it appropriated. It appropriated stereotypes to define what it meant to be a woman when you are a man. It appropriated language which had the added bonus of then quickly signalling all the values and needz. It appropriated political tactics and other political movements.

I think as a paradigm shift concept , it will be studied in decades to come. It is both clumsy and lazy and yet powerful. It is like the tweaked cultural elements that became quite clear in creating the Star Wars universe.

However, it really is concerning when you track it all back. Reading the words of Robert Wintemute brought it all back. How it all got so far because people weren’t looking and assumed the best. Because it was a strategy that was taking advantage of the inherent misogyny that remains in society, leveraging the campaigns of LGB people, but keeping a low profile strategically as long as it needed to be to gain power.

And it also used familiarity through language strategically. You only have to look at media reporting even now to see how it was done. How much goes under the radar when we see crimes reported as ‘woman jailed for assault’ and it remains in the local news section. Nothing to see here… just one of those uncommon occasions of a woman assaulting someone. Oh! Look how nice, a woman won cricketer of the year. Well done that woman!

Language really has been an important tool for this political aims of this group.

That doesn’t even include the words that have become misused in as exaggerated political tactic.

Words like

abuse
life-saving

And then come the hyperbolic catastrophisers

genocide
far right
fascist

Which one got a lot of use yesterday on another thread? Detonate. Maybe we should call this last group the ‘Detonator group.’

‘Consent’ is another to add to the word list of words that now mean the opposite.

Woman
girl
man
boy
female
male
lesbian
gay
her
she
him
he
loving
tolerant
inclusive
kind
progressive
consent

Maybe we should call them the Upsidedowner group? The Polar opposite group?

And ‘human rights’ needs to go on the ‘politically exaggerated’ list.

Was 'lying' on the list?

'Expert' should be on the list somewhere.

The Humpty Dumpties group.

Yes, it’s spread through twisting words and meanings to confuse people.

It forces you to make points longer and more complicated and the point you’re trying to make gets lost.

The accusations of bigot or transphobia force people to start with ‘I’m not transphobic’ or ‘I’ve got nothing against trans people doing about their lives’

So a simple point like ‘men shouldn’t be allowed in women’s spaces’ which is quite obvious to most people and hard to argue against becomes ‘I don’t care what anyone wears, but transwomen shouldn’t be in women’s single sex spaces’ which they then say ‘transwomen aren’t dangerous to women, men are dangerous to women’ which becomes ‘transwomen are men’ and so you go on in circles.

If their argument only works by twisting words and changing meanings then the house of cards will come falling down sooner or later.

Gender reassignment should never have been made one of the protected characteristics, men wearing women’s clothes is for sexual thrills and people shouldn’t be forced by law to be co-opted into someone else’s fetish.