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.

"nuance" should also be on the list

@NoKnittingAllowed
trans identified men are vastly over represented as sex offenders in prison compared to non trans identifying men. This is bad enough but what I think you’re driving at is “what’s so bad about a man who calls himself a woman?”. Well a hell a lot of women find this deeply offensive, compelled speech, driving a false narrative, misogynistic, shutting down free speech, capturing the workplace, cancelling careers, driving the social contagion that mutilates and medicalises children, prevents lesbians meeting, ruins a trip to the swimming pool 😮‍💨. There’s more but I think you get the idea

How about we call for a Supreme Court ruling to clarify each and every one of those words? 🤔

There was a thread on here recently where a poster was convinced that "share a protected characteristic" could mean "each have one of two separate protected characteristics" meaning that it would be legitimate to have spaces for women plus trans women, because the Supreme Court hasn't said that is not what "share" means.

Twisted words:
Truth (my truth)
Boundaries (now can cause literal death)

Then there's happens, but ignored:
Sexual reproduction
Sexual discrimination

Oh yes, I remember that! As you say, they were utterly convinced that if two separate people had two different protected characteristics, that meant "share".

The current toilet thread is pretty similar to that. As the exact age group of "male" hasn't been defined, 6-year-old boys are obviously a threat to women in women's toilets. And that means all men should be able to enter women's spaces. Or something.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5343172-are-toilets-still-allowed-to-be-cleaned-by-members-of-the-opposite-sex?page=17&reply=144603979

Sexual characteristics was used yesterday.

There was a shit attempt to twist MY truth yesterday too.

They will say anything to justify getting their own way and 'win'.

They would argue black was white if it suited them.

So in terms of a list of words, it's any word used with the most commonly used words at the top of the list.

Nothing is off limits

I mean:
We are at "Neo nazi" for anyone who disagrees...

"Reality" = totally and utterly made fantasy nonsense

"Law" = something we can pick and choose whether we accept or not

They will say anything to justify getting their own way and 'win'.
They would argue black was white if it suited them.

This was exactly the case with my abusive narcissist ex. In the end, you notice the pattern. They'll swerve and switch whenever they think they're losing - they want to WIN at all costs, and are not interested in getting to the truth of anything.

It all starts with "trans woman". It sets the playing field as "trans women are men" at one end "trans women are women" at the other end and all the reasonable people start scrambling around trying to find a place in the middle based on just how much of a woman a trans woman is.

But take a step back and it's ludicrous.

Woman was never anything more than the female side of humanity. The fact there's a whole load of sexism laid over the top of our bodies doesn't mean there's an empirical "woman" type of human that's separate from being female, and nor does it mean that adult human females wouldn't empirically exist if we didn't have a word for them.

A trans woman isn't a special type of man who is a bit closer to being a woman in any way other than his own self image.

The "woman" he feels in himself isn't connected to real world women, it's the image of womanhood in his own mental library which his subconscious has seized on to label and explain something he is feeling.

To anyone outside their own heads, to the people they share their existence with in the real world, they are by any empirical measurement just bog standard men.

Maybe many are very nice men, maybe some are men who demonstrate how much more there is to men than commonly allowed, but still just men. There's no real world difference that means these biological men are not biological men for the purposes of biological women's comfort, safety, privacy, or protected roles and opportunities. When a trans woman lays his hands on a woman they are still a man's hands in her reality whatever he believes them to be in his.

So where reasonable people should be starting with is not "how close to being a woman are trans women, how far do we treat them as interchangeable with female people" but "how do we accomodate these men's problem finding their place in society?"

It translates as 'some men are women'.

It's so nonsensical it seems to knock out all critical thinking. Because people think that it cant' be that stupid, there must be more to it. And yes, go scrabbling about to find out what that secret is.

There is no secret.

No men are women. Not in any way.

The real magic is in how it has been decided that to state 'no men are women' is blasphemous and must be punished.

'Misgendering' has been declared a sin.

Which is to say, using one's own assessment to ascertain someone's sex and state that sex as observed is verboten. Instead, we are to deliberately refrain from using our eyes, brains and understanding and await instruction.

Worth thinking how bloody mad that is.

Exactly this.

The efforts yesterday were vile.

But also the ignorance was astounding. The other poster who honestly believed that their male breast development made their breast exactly the same as a female breast came across as naive. But both male posters seemed to be ignorant about female breasts, yet both were sneering and patronising about how they were the same and I don't realised just how many women would be reading that thinking.... you ignorant men.

They didn't even know enough to know that they were wrong, but obviously believed the superficial level information that they had been fed.

It reminded me just how superficial those who believe in gender ideology believe that if you just use the right words, then it must be true. So, if people just call this cavity inserted into my groin a 'vagina', then it is the same as a female body part. I mean, they insert stuff into that cavity, so it must be fucking true. Near enough is good enough.

If a male breast can produce a liquid, then it must be exactly like a female breast. Near enough is good enough right?

And that is it. If what they have is a representation of what they believe something is, that is all that is needed. Hence we get all the sex is a spectrum and accusations of 'you are saying that women without a functioning [insert body part] isn't a women type of fuckwittery.

Someone made a very philosophical post around adherents to gender ideology feeling that the look of a thing is more important than its function. It was someone trying to understand what the heck Deborah Francis Wright was on about with clown bus drivers I think.

The ‘it looks like a female breast so it is a female breast, just ignore function’ stuff on this thread was a demonstration of that in action

We learn to interact with the world and other people by using language as a tool to communicate our thoughts, using words as labels based on observation.

So, we learn there are two human sexes, and what characterises either sex, and how to describe them.

The creed of gender tells us that this is sinful, and instead we must perform a dance of asking and receiving information that is entirely subjective and not based on any observable characteristics. 'Man' means only an indescribably inner feeling. 'Woman', ditto. Body parts are irrelevant, and there is no way to connect the words to material reality. New labels are created - 'cakegender' - 'nonbinary' - 'femboy' - that cannot be used as tools to point to anything, but are holy words created by individuals, with meanings specific to individuals. Contemporaneously, we are berated for suggesting that words should be tied to material reality (they mistakenly call that 'biological essentialism' - that's a sin!). We're condemned for sinning. ('terf', 'transphobe').

Then, we recite catechism.

It has entirely untethered language from the material world. It destroys the point of language, as a means of communication, a tool, and turns it into a means of manipulation, coercion, and control. We have to memorise the creed, recite the mantras, obey the instructions. We can no longer use our own ability to observe or judge to interact with others; it can only be a system of listening to a set of arbitrary and ever changing rules. This is very destabilising.

Gender language floats on the surface and distorts like a marbled pastel hallucination, but meanwhile, in the real world humans continue to live their human, embodied, lives: breathing, eating, shitting, bleeding, breeding, and dying.

" yet both were sneering and patronising about how they were the same and I don't realised just how many women would be reading that thinking.... you ignorant men."

and I don't realised = and didn't realise

that was auto predict that I didn't pick up.

Well yes

you can spout all the ‘shifting constellation of data points’ guff all you like. But still only one type of human body can get pregnant, with all that comes with that. Reality just keeps going

Mind you, years ago when I saw Hatched try that definition, if I remember the post started with a condescending 'sigh' at the start too, but I realised that if you can destabilise a definition enough then you can make anyone believe anything. If they are susceptible at the time. And that susceptibility could be due to having a lack of knowledge, or it could be that the person is invested in needing to accept a definition shaped by theory rather than established fact. There are many reasons to being susceptible.

But some people are deliberately susceptible. They need to adopt a belief that is not based on material reality to explain their own demands.

And everyone else can just be dismissed as ignorant, not being open to new theories that expand one's mind, ie. close and/or narrow minded, and outdated.

If a male breast can produce a liquid, then it must be exactly like a female breast. Near enough is good enough right?

Good point. 'Milk' as produced by TIMs = 'drug-induced moob secretion'

💯

💯 this

Yes. Yet, when asked to detail how a male breast becomes the fully interactive feeding system backed by a female endocrine system, there was nothing but crickets.... I asked three or four times.

Maybe they realised that they exposed themselves as fucking ignorant. But I suspect that they simply don't care. Near enough is good enough.

It is like the endless linking to a study that scanned brains. It didn't control for a few significant things such as sexual orientation, and the results were not 'in the female range', they were still in the 'male range' but tended to be grouped skewing to towards female. Like male testosterone levels can skew 'towards' female naturally but there is no overlap, just that male range is huge and female range is narrow.

But this is where the 'near enough is good enough' concept fits. To them, it data and conclusion integrity doesn't matter. They read something and see that the results are 'towards' or sometimes as in the breast scan 'similar' and they look no further, they don't want to. They have enough misinformation to keep them in a happy zone.

@Helleofabore

it could be that the person is invested in needing to accept a definition shaped by theory rather than established fact.

Which I think is where a lot of TWAW feminists come in. If Woman isn't a physical reality but a matter of personality, we are not subject to hard constraints because of our inescapable biology.

While no one would think that consciously - bodies clearly exist - I can see why that narrative is more appealing psychologically, offering as it does the possibility of a future where female biology is just a passing feature and not a fundamental difference that creates inescapable inequality in some things, where equality is a simpler matter of just treating women the same as men rather than a complex negotiation of what extra or different provisions women need to have the same social/political/financial/cultural power and agency as men.