Ageism often lurks within the ideas and rhetoric of trans activists - Victoria Smith

[IwantToRetire]

... In a recent interview to celebrate 80 years of Woman’s Hour, programme editor Karen Dalziel was quizzed on its handling of the “what is a woman?” question. When asked why the programme didn’t simply reflect the law as clarified by the Supreme Court, she offered a rather convoluted response:

One thing we have to remember here is that you’re on Radio 4. Many of our audience are over sixty. They don’t understand the terminology and part of our role in the preceding years has been to help people understand the terms and what all the different terms mean.

A generous interpretation of this could be that this is about complex legal terminology (who wasn’t an expert in case law when they were in their teens and early twenties? Funny how you forget!). Except Dalziel goes on to say that the Supreme Court judgment has “helped listeners have some clarity about what is meant, but this is moving”. For many people, she argues, it’s “a beginning”:

People said that women couldn’t vote. Other people have different ideas and continue to campaign. We follow the story. ...

Full article https://thecritic.co.uk/you-dont-have-to-be-young-to-understand-gender-identity/

Also at https://archive.is/Ye7A0

Many of our audience are over sixty. They don’t understand the terminology

All I can say to Karen Dalziel is "F the fing f off with that patronising ageist bsh*t. I hope you understand my terminology."

Something took the asterisks out of that imprecation, but I think it's still f*ing intelligible.

Quite. But the good thing about the Greens wanting to call us non-men is that it makes their view very clear. There are men, who are human beings and rule the world. Then there all kinds of other things which don't make the grade, including those female things etc.

You said first it was identifying as a woman, now it's not identifying as a man. Which is it?

In your first definition, 'cis' would only mean a woman who identifies with all the sexist crap which has been foisted on women.

In your second definition it would mean all women who don't identify as men, so women who identify as nonbinary would also be 'cis', and women who identify as one of the other 100s of genders would also be 'cis'. And women who don't have a gender identity but don't identify with all the sexist crap which goes with being a woman would also be 'cis', even though they don't believe in cisness.

Perhaps I should have written identifying as not a man but if you believe that sex is binary as I do then identifying as a woman, not identifying as a man and identifying as not a man all mean the same thing to me.

How can you come to that conclusion when I have written that CIS is a superfluous word because sex is binary and woman means adult human who was born a female?

You'll all be shocked to hear no-one has yet been able to give an example of any of these despite repeatedly saying how simple it is to understand woman and man as these unnamed behaviours (or roles, or expressions).

Not even a sad attempt at a Chat GPT answer!
For which I'm grateful, I suppose.

You also said that a 'cis' woman is a woman who either identifies as a woman or doesn't identify as a man. If you agree that a woman is an adult female human, then how she identifies is irrelevant, and 'cis' doesn't exist as a description of any human.

The idea that billions of women don't have individual agency in that in this instance are just slaves to the sexual needs of men is a conservative one.

No - it's the collective experience of an entire generation of left-wing activist women, something you're possibly too young to realize. The 1968 revolutionaries proclaimed war on conservatism while continuing to relegate women to making coffee and fulfilling their sexual needs. A popular slogan in the respective German movement was "wer zweimal mit derselben pennt, gehört schon zum Establishment" (sleeping with the same woman twice makes you part of the establishment; goes without saying there was no equivalent line that had women as actual subjects), while some of the most forward activists such as the West Berlin "Kommune 1" were busy reinventing the harem (never polyandry). Of course sexual liberation was a boon to a whole generation of women. But at the same time, it also became a new vehicle for Patriarchy 2.0.

Oh stop gaslighting us. In the direct words of one of your own lot, the lovely "Rachel" Saunders, "to be cis is to accept the role thrust upon us in accordance with our body; to be trans is to queer it". At least he's honest. From the perspective of women, to accept the "cis" moniker inescapable requires submission to patriarchy.

Some of the patronising mansplaining claptrap on this thread about the etymology of the word Cis rather illustrates the point made in the OP by Victoria Smith (love her work).

Ol chopper would no doubt be astonished to learn that some of us old biddies have studied science and even speak a bit of Latin.

What you mean you didn't get your memory wiped when you turned 40?!😱

The 'explaining until the other side just gives up in despair' dynamic reminds me of being in a relationship, where constant verbose explaining was used to exhaust me and grind me down until I agreed with whatever the latest demand was. If I ever stuck to my guns, the 'you don't listen' accusation was leveled against me. I was listening. I just had a different opinion (which wasn't acceptable to him).

This is the exact same dynamic in play with the TRAs. Its used to shift the goal posts, dodge accountability and is code for 'obey me'.

And if we don't? Well it must be cos we're silly shrivelled crones. I'm surprised we don't get accused of 'being on your period' when we disagree, that's a usual male tactic. Perhaps that's because that's what the TiMs would love to be, but never can - whereas they don't want to be old.

We are on the same side and you are arguing about the meaning of words like identify which can have a very broad meaning.

Women are women and men are men however they present themselves.

CIS does exist, you cannot pretend that it does not. It is used by a body of people for whom it has meaning. For the gender critical it is unnecessary but it makes the gender critical sound a bit nuts to say it "doesn't exist" when people use it.

People use the word psychic and that doesn't exist.

Because you seem to be using your own definition of Cis.

CIS says nothing about gender. It means born biologically female and identifying as a woman however that woman presents her gender.

I'm just confused, because this is the Stonewall definition, and clearly, for the people who use 'cis', it does say something about gender.

Cisgender or Cis
Someone whose gender is the same as the sex they were assigned at birth. For example, a cis(gender) woman is someone who was assigned female at birth and continues to live and identify as a woman.

It strikes me that another reason older women are less susceptible to this ideology is because we are more likely to have experienced an abusive or manipulative relationship play out.

This all day long.
GI is based on coercive control and abuse. The pronoun bullying, the upside down language, the choice to target children and young people without the life experiences to spot the control, intimidation, sinister threats, seething derision and outright bullying.

Many of these blokes who spend endless hours on here exhibiting all the above are identical to the abusive men seen in threads in the Relationships board. Once you see it it can't be unseen.

Yep.

This is very true.

gosh, thank you, i find it hard to get my ditzy girly brain around all that complex thinking...

as i have said, repeatedly, in other places: women in their 60s were likely 2nd wave feminists who did a LOT of the heavy lifting that allows modern day women to do things like vote, own property, have a bank account without their husband of father countersigning it and not to be raped in marriage.

you're fucking welcome.

Cis is just a descriptive term to distinguish natal women from trans women that has a legitimate association to what it is describing in both:

I find describing natal women as women and transwomen as men works without all that meaningless jabberwocky you just came out with.

I think you need to be more careful with your terminology or grammar.

The word psychic exists.

The existence of people who are psychics is a matter of debate which varies in strength from one culture to another.

Lots of words exist, humans are good at inventing words, telepathy, teleport, god, zodiac, horoscope, all words for things that don't exist. It doesn't matter how much something is debated, if it doesn't exist words won't bring it into existence.

The prefix 'cis' does exist - as a Latin term which is used in chemistry.

It's also used by transactivist nutjobs to try to put people into gender boxes. It may have meaning for them, but since they are insane I don't see why I have to pay any attention to them.

No of course you don't but I'm baffled why you are arguing so hard with someone who agrees with you!

The thing is with all these arguments that attempt to bring in social ‘associations’ that go along with stereotypes, is that the stereotype holds no signifier to biological sex. Meaning that it can be detached from biological sex. a male person who is adopting stereotypes some people associate with female people is not female, but just a male person who is adopting with stereotypes that some people associate with female people.

It also becomes meaningless too because a male who can have adopted some female stereotypes, may have just as many male stereotypes that they may also have adopted. So what then? What % of their entire stereotyped choices has to be female so that they fulfill this description where they can claim and acquire female reference language for themselves?

The entire argument about ‘cis’ being about gender identity and not sex just continues to fail. Because a male person who has demanded that female language be used to describe him, is still male. The language used with this prefix is sexed language. Yet the male person remains male at all times.

Using the language that was adopted for use in science for a group of people with a particular philosophical belief really is a misuse of the language. And the application of it forces every person in the world to be categorised according to the group’s philosophical belief. Of course, there is very few people in society who share that philosophical belief.

The use of ‘cis’ forces identities onto people who reject identities. The very people who wish to self identify, force identities onto others.

@Heggettypeg

"That's why older women are inconvenient; they don't know too little, they know too much."

Just in case it hasn't been gratefully quoted earlier. 👏