feminism or transphobia?

[giraffezoo]

Long time lurker of this forum, first time poster.

I have read through many of the threads on here and I have to say there are lots of views that I find quite shocking.

There almost seems to be two sides of the ‘gender critical’ movement on here that I can see.

The first seems quite reasonable. They wish to have protections in place for women and their rights. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree (e.g. trans folk in toilets, transgender prisoners etc) they are stating a view based on safety and women’s rights.

The second bunch are the ones who I find myself disagreeing with, and who post things that I personally consider as transphobic. Some examples of this would be: refusing to use someone’s pronouns or citing being transgender as a mental illness which needs to be cured.

I feel that the first group are genuinely feminists who are concerned with women’s rights, and feel as though they need to speak out on their own concerns. The second group are masquerading under the pretence of feminism to say hateful or controversial things.

I am interested to hear other views on this point (and I’m sure there will be a lot here who don’t agree with me!)

This is a bit off track, but as a young woman I had an almost existential shock and grief when I suddenly realised that I would always be seen as a woman.

I’d already had the usual experience of hating puberty, having awful periods, teased about breasts etc.

But I vividly remember experiences of:

1. Realising that if I were ever in a musical, I’d be expected to take a female role - because I’d always sung along to male parts, I’d kind of seen myself as the male characters
2. Working abroad, my male travelling companion had been doing stuff together, but when I went along with him to a local bar at night I was the only woman there and it was seen as very weird that I went. At the time I felt embarrassed, as if I was an idiot not to have realised.

I have every sympathy for young women today, but surgery and hormones really isn't the answer.

Yes. What I really will never fully understand is the inability of "the other side" to empathise with women in that (and often, seemingly, any) respect. We express concern about trans-identifying people - your post does. But in threads like this, that thought and care largely tends to go just one way.

Use of the em-dash is a give away too. It’s rarely used in British English, but is very common in AI output. Well, Copilot 365 anyway which is what I use at work.

Oh dear. I use dashes and brackets interchangably.

I also use dashes and brackets quite a lot and was wondering if I was mistakenly giving the impression that I'm a robot but apparently an em dash is the width of two hypens.

I use dashes all of the time. I'm an ex English teacher and to my mind it is a stylistic device; and the 'power of three' is a rhetorical device which adds emphasis, but also a pleasing aesthetic, to one's writing.

The em-dash is different to the hyphen. It's not as easily accessible on a keyboard. Hence humans tend to use the hyphen when they really "should" use the em-dash

hyphen -
en dash –
em dash —

i use dashes all the time to break up sentences - particularly as an alternative to brackets. Its often referred to as an en-dash. An example of the em-dash:

it’s not enough to just control women in practice—you need a system of beliefs that makes that control feel natural, moral, even inevitable.

AI output also follows the US convention of not leaving a space between the dash and the words either side of the dash (both en and em dashes)

I also use dashes all the time. On my phone the dash is the same button as the hyphen, mind.

And politicians use the three word/phrase rhetorical device all the time - "blood, sweat and tears".

AI learns from stuff created by humans. If there's a lot of dashes and tricolons in AI-written pieces, it's because there's a lot if them in human-written material.

It's coming to something when being able to write with literacy and fluency and using rhetorical devices gets you accused of using AI. Don't schools and universities teach people how to write essays any more?

Can't say I've ever heard of an em dash, but then I left teaching in 2010.

Also, I don't own a smartphone, and never have......I have a desk top IMac and that's it.

I use it a fair amount, as a result of reading "The Mac is not a Typewriter" back in the '90s: I used to to have to make up my own worksheets and notes when I was still teaching. [ETA I also use the en-dash.]

I admit that simply plunking space-hyphen-space as we were taught in "O" Grade Secretarial Studies is a lot quicker, however. My online posts tend to be a mixter-maxter since I'm no longer publishing for a school audience.

Exactly! It's really annoying. I feel like I'm being pushed to be more sweary and careless, all while taking paradoxical care to include some spot-the-deliberate mistakes as well.

Huh - maybe AI's all an evil scheme to legitimse dodgy writing as 'truly human'.

Thanks for the education in dashes. I've always quietly avoided bothering about which type I should use when. I've got, though, a bit of a weird aesthetic fondness for what I now see is the em-dash. I just find the shorter ones... itchier, somehow (I also hate that tendency to not leave a space by a dash; it's a bit stressful...) Do I have punctuation synaesthesia? Or is it just mildly obsessive pedantry... 😅

Also: why are they called em and en etc. What's that all about?

PS Excellent way to end a bit of a volatile thread.

(Yup. Definitely a sad passion for punctuation).

To my mind, a bracket does not serve the function of breaking up a sentence; a semi-colon does. A semi colon permits an expansion or development of the sentence starter or subject. Brackets, to my mind, serve the purpose of literally 'bracketing off' a bit of information you want to 'plop' into the middle of a sentence. I use them when I get very excited and my brain is going off on tangents.

Also: why are they called em and en etc. What's that all about?

@Catiette i believe the origin is back in the days of manual metal typesetting. The em-dash is double width, i.e. the width of the m, compared to the en-dash which is single width like an n.

Oooh... who knew that dashes were so interesting.

Agreed!

Never knew this!

Cool (and I really mean that!) Thanks. :)

There was also a P.C. version and I've just discovered that there is also "Beyond The Mac is Not a Typewriter".

This is the one I used.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/306785870249?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=710-177437-600370-0&mkcid=2&itemid=306785870249&targetid=4585513253118840&device=c&mktype=&googleloc=41471&poi=&campaignid=555737408&mkgroupid=1310619155623742&rlsatarget=pla-4585513253118840&abcId=10644537&merchantid=87779&msclkid=5bbf84db7392168ddb24ed012a312a3a

I must admit I didn’t until I realised that liberal use of em-dashes without spaces between the surrounding words was a dead giveaway that AI has been involved in generating or refining the text.

I’m not snobby about AI, I use it daily in work (which is how I spotted it). AI’s great if you feed it a 400 page study report and ask it lots of questions about the document. Always have to get it to cite its sources and then double check them myself, but still a huge timesaver. Also good for improving my language when I’m in the middle of brain fog not very clear. Treat it like a junior research assistant and ask the right questions and it’s great. Use it to do your own thinking for you is not a good idea, especially in a professional environment. You’ll get found out pretty quickly. (Looking at you Big Sond).

I use space hyphen space a lot, and never realised - until just now, after some fiddling around - that I even had the option of using en or em dash on my phone—I'm not going to, though, because it's ugly.

I don't think en dashes are ugly – do you really think they are? I do think em dashes are excessively long though—whether or not they are preceded and followed by a space — still too long. A hyphen now looks too short - like that – but an en dash is just as I like it.

It's still true. Font (typeface) designers obey this rule when creating the character forms.