Hard to think of
Now here’s a guy who spells it all the way out, which they mostly avoid doing, probably because it shows too clearly how stupid the whole thing is.
Man tells woman that men who call themselves women are “far less powerful as a group” than women and men.
One, it’s a sly move to say “than you or I” as if women and men were on a level when it comes to power. Women and men are not in the same group when it comes to evaluating power, status, rights, freedoms, fairness, basic respect. Women don’t have the same power and status and rights and freedoms as men have.
Two, and most obviously, no of course men are not “far less powerful” than women. Even if they put on woman face and a skirt, they’re still not far less powerful than women.
Three, he cheats by making trans women one group and women and men another group. That’s connected to One but not exactly the same.
Four, it’s hard to think of a minority group lower down the pecking order? Really? Try African migrants trying to escape violence or poverty or drought or all three by piling into a tiny boat and heading for Spain. Try working class migrants in general. Try women in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan. Try Uighurs in China. Try schoolgirls held captive by Boko Haram. Try severely disabled people. Try people who combine two or more disadvantages of that kind. There are literally billions of people lower down the pecking order than trans people.
How do people get as soft in the head as this guy?
This guy has been arguing for three straight days now, morning noon and night. Predictably, it’s a trainwreck and he has been taken apart, over and over again,in every possible way.
It’s OK, though: every time he’s asked a question he can’t answer, he just declares himself the winner of the argument and says he therefore doesn’t have to answer!
Of course Stephen is wildly uninformed on the trans issue and also, it seems on the history of his own party. Stephen is a Lib Dem councillor in Coventry, which does not have a stellar record when it comes to these matters, being the branch of the party Aimee Challenor was associated with.
Naturally, none of this ignorance prevents Stephen from knowing better than the dozens of women who have argued with him, nor does it cause him to take seriously any of the many accurate and well-documented accusations of misogyny and homophobia that have been levelled against him.
He’s quite a piece of work. He’s refusing to talk to me now, I suspect he has me on mute. This happens quite a lot: I’m definitely annoying enough to cause him embarrassment but nowhere near high profile enough to win anyone brownie points by association. I’m going to proclaim that group the most marginalised and persecuted ever! If Stephen can do it, repeatedly and obnoxiously, I can too.
Isn’t the simplest rebuttal to point out that he goes wrong right from the start in comparing the power of “transwomen as a group” with that of “you” (okay possibly “you-plural” with a hazy referent) or “I” (but assuredly “I-singular”)? How can “I-singular” be construed as a group?
It seems like it comes down to the notion that transness is an essential characteristic rather than an accidental or acquired one. To believe that does not strike me as warranted, yet for some reason it’s treated like the null hypothesis.
I think we know what the reasons are, at least from the proponents’ point of view.
Alan, the simplest, yes, but I’m not really so much interested in rebuttal (he’s not going to see this anyway) as in exploring why people believe this nonsense. The clumsiness of “as a group than you or I” isn’t really interesting in the way his claim that trans are the most lower is.
“…ultimately the place we will end up is equal rights, we always do in the end.”
Really? That’s a bold statement, given we have yet to arrive there.
Holms, I think that should be taken as “some animals are more equal than others” – i.e., wealthy white male dipshits achieve equality with other wealthy white male dipshits. The rest of us don’t matter.
Maybe? I dunno, I find the Whig Theory of History pretty bloody tiresome these days. Things are in many ways better than they ever were (even if I think Steven Pinker is too damn rosy about it) but nothing about our present age barring climate change was probably inevitable. There is no moral arc of justice to history and these fucksticks aren’t interested in morals or justice.
‘The point is ultimately the place we will end up is equal rights, we always do in the end.’
There’s a widespread notion that all liberation causes end up vindicated by history, e.g. support for gay marriage starts as a minority position and then gets supported by the majority. It’s a simplistic idea, and one reason why some people who should know better accept TRA views unquestioningly: trans ‘rights’ are just the next in a long line of righteous liberation movements.
It’s not so simple, of course–e.g. Derrida, Foucault, Sartre et al. fighting for the right of children to fuck middle-aged philosophers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of_consent_laws
Excellent! I’m glad we will finally be able to forget about those extra, additional, special rights that People of Gender are supposed to possess above and beyond the ones that the rest of us have. You know, the kind that’s best left unspecified, the kind that gender critical feminists constantly accused of denying.