"We have always been here"

[DiamondThrone]

Been noticing this a lot. It seems to be the new #TWAW #nodebate #bekind, after those didn't work.

I mean - lots of things have "always been here". Like women, for instance 😄

Just interested in new terms that arise, and how they are used to try and shut down comment.

I think material truth must be irrelevant when you are the oppressor class. Domination, at any cost, is what is important.

I think it goes "I am right, therefore this is what reality must be to make me right"

I think the point being made here is that:

• A man thinking he's Cleopatra would be treated as being mentally ill, and he would be given mental health treatment/support,

but

• A man thinking he's a woman (not a particular one) means we have to change society to indulge his delusion

I have been wondering about this for the last couple of days.

I agree with both of you. As MissScarlet says, they are both men who are wrong. As Diamond says, one would be thought of as needing support due to having a delusion, the other would be stunning and brave. Yet the difference between the two is tiny.

And there we actually see another paradox (I think?) of the movement.

Humans empathise more easily and immediately with the individual than the group. Similarly, the claim of the man-who-thinks-he's-Cleopatra has an absurd specificity, an emotional immediacy, that creates a visceral reaction - er, no, you're not! The claim of the man-who-says-he's-a-woman, though, is relying on the generic - woman-as-class/-group - as this, from one perspective, may be seen as sufficiently wide-ranging to accommodate him (indeed, someone - I forget who - actually said something very similar in defence of such men claiming our word, perhaps referring to "woman" being capacious enough, or similar, to embrace such men as an act of generosity).

But right there is the paradox:

1. The man's perception of himself as "woman" reduces the wonderful breadth and variety of what "woman" means to a feeling, a perception, in his, and other men's mind

2. The onus on women to "be kind" and accept that is, itself, a gendered expectation reducing women to a nurturing stereotype

3. Each individual woman experiences this appropriation of her word and identity on an individual level. So yes, there's some different in the responses. But, for many of us, to say he's a woman - to accept that he is, in some ineffable way, what I am - Me - is to force us to submit to his redefinition, and, as such, feels as viscerally absurd as any pretension to be Cleopatra could be: from the individual woman's perspective, it actually has that specificity, that immediacy, and that viscerally offensive impact.

I hope that makes sense. Stream-of-consciousness rapidly typed.

VERY nicely put. Really hits on some points I hadn't thought fully about. If that is your "stream of consciousness" then I am very jealous of your brain! 😆

@Catiette’s brain is very envy-worthy.

I have re-thunk it a bit since, with a few edits. 😅

But I'm glad it makes sense to you. I've not thought of it that way before, but it very much does to me, now I reflect...

Certainly, I personally experience the idea that my word (what I am, what I understand myself to be - that word that has such historical weight, that generations of women have fought to expand society's understanding of in resisting "actual" so-called biological essentialism, winning the vote, breaking down gendered stereotypes... can, at the very peak - hah! - of our progress...) be abruptly reduced right back down to a man's (self-)perception (and with that, in many cases, bound right back up with the trappings of pink lipstick and heels we've been fighting for so long) as utterly offensive and deeply distressing.

(Painfully long sentence).

Right back at so very many posters here. It gives me confidence and hope to see the thought and care behind our arguments - and the wit keeps me smiling despite everything!

(Oh laughter emoji, where are you? 😢)

'A black trans woman threw the first brick!'

Marsha P Johnson: 'no I fuckin didn't'

<Hits @Catiette over the head>

<Rummages around for a bit>

There you go Two loons

I should hasten to add it's not actually Catiette's brain as AI wouldn't let me do that as it "...nudged up against some content boundaries due to the brain removal element. If you'd like, we could reinterpret the scene to keep the humor and drama while easing off the surgical specifics—maybe the beetle accidentally grabs a jelly mold instead of a brain,..."

So yeah, have a brain shaped jelly!

It must be true that throughout history people have conformed to a greater or lesser extent to whatever notion there was of being male or female in whichever society existed at the time. And I think it is also clearly true that these notions have changed over time too - and various societies have had alternatives. It could be misleading to refer to these as 'gender' because they would have had their own terms and attached sets of concepts.

It's also true that feeling unable to measure up to an ideal of masculinity or femininity hurts - everyone feels that to a greater or lesser extent, and I - male, but with diminutive stature and silly little forearms feel it every time I run onto a sports field, and it's not a nice feeling.

But to say that trans people have always existed a) imposes present values on the past and b) imposes values in individuals in a way that doesn't fit modern gender theory. Modern gender theory is based on how one feels - you are a woman or a man, or other, because you feel one. If I'd died and been buried at 20 an archeologist in the future might have found evidence of, say, long hair and nail polish and assumed I was trans though I never felt that way. We don't know how any of these dead people felt.

Different societies in the present and part are ... different. There's no one authentic way of being that just happens to match what we think is right.

Ooo, nice. We can enjoy that at the peak-nique over on the other thread!

That was me. I said that 😁

Transsexual is not an accepted term any more, probably not since the early to mid 00s. Obviously it is an accepted term in some places, like on here, but in general it is not.

You clearly don't know this but evidence shows that transwomen commit sexual offences at much higher rates than other males. Transwomen are far more dangerous than any other male (perhaps look up AGP for some understanding why for some of these). Those of us on here have seen your arguments at least one thousand times before.
PS The "Violent offenders and those with a history of sexual offences" is from Canada. So there are statistics here from the UK, the US and from Canada.

Transsexual is the legal term used in the Equality Act

Gender reassignment
(1)A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

(2)A reference to a transsexual person is a reference to a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

(3)In relation to the protected characteristic of gender reassignment—

(a)a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a transsexual person;

(b)a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to transsexual persons.

Why not when people widely know what it means?

Transexual needs to be accepted as that is the term used in the Gender Recognition Act & Equality Act. The terms "trans" or "trans woman" or "trans man" are ambiguous plus have no definition in law so are best avoided.

Why is that, do you think? Is it because groups like Press for Change campaigned for there to be no distinction between transsexuals and transvestites? Then children were recruited to the 'trans' cause, and they knew that most people wouldn't buy the concept of transsexual children, so they needed a term which was not so obviously sexual, so they started using the words trans and transgender.

I agree OldCrone.

I don't think that the public would have bought into 'Transvestite Children' either.

Trans people must believe in a gender binary, otherwise why the insistence on changing from one gender to the other? Why not just accept you’re a man who gets off on wearing lipstick?

Why was it so important to drag those mouldy old sex stereotypes, which we thought we’d got rid of back in the 1970s, back from the grave? With the horrible 21st century update that if a child doesn’t conform to the stereotype, they can be physically modified to try to resemble the other sex.

Of course anyone can change gender, the same as you can change your religion or your favourite colour.

The thing you can’t change is your sex.

the 'Moche Lady of Cao' who was given the burial of an elite male warrior.

I hadn’t heard of this one, but Wikipedia is my friend:
The richness of the burial site, as well as the presence of weapons, suggest that the woman might have been a high ranking priestess or even a Moche ruler, possibly governing what is now known as the Chicama District region of northern Peru.[3]Prior to this discovery, it was believed that only men held high rank in the Moche culture.

So, it’s possible that she was simply a high-ranking woman buried with symbols of power. Or perhaps a renowned female warrior, like many other women throughout history. Women have often had to fight to defend their homes and families.
Nothing to suggest she lived as the other sex.

A man thinking they are Cleopatra would of course be marrying their brother.

Personally if were an archaeologist, no matter how pretty my hair, I'd be wary of building entire civilisations on the backs of single graves. It's not unknown in history for the nasty menz to bury other menz as women to humiliate them in the underworld.

There is a reason grown up archaeologists are very hesitant to use the word "ritual" to cover what they can't explain.

DurinsBane · Yesterday 14:05
You know what I meant. The accepted terms are CIS males and trans women, but I know that isn’t liked here (and I don’t like the term CIS) so I was using other terms

PrettyDamnCosmic · Yesterday 15:15
The accepted terms are CIS males and trans women
No. These are not accepted terms. The correct terms are "males" & "male transexuals" which leaves no ambiguity that they share the same male sex.

DurinsBane · Today 00:10
Transsexual is not an accepted term any more, probably not since the early to mid 00s. Obviously it is an accepted term in some places, like on here, but in general it is not.

And here we have that fudging of language again, with the jump from
The correct terms are "males" & "male transexuals"
to, in the response,
Transsexual is not an accepted term any more

It's a little thing compared with photoshopping placards on historic marches, but it's all part of the problem. Language matters.