Is this actually harming anyone?
Pretending not to see.
“Inclusive” language forsooth – it’s not inclusive at all, it excludes women from discussion of our own rights. Altering an existing (and quite famous) quotation defending women’s rights to remove all mention of women is obvious and grotesque exclusion of women. That guys like this pretend not to see it is infuriating. (He’s not stupid; I checked. He’s not stupid, he’s doing it on purpose.)
Wtf? They removed five of her words from a 54-word passage. They systematically removed “women” and “her” from a passage about women’s rights. How could anyone get a different “impression”?
Brackets commonly denote a minor change for reasons of clarity or accuracy, they don’t commonly denote swapping multiple words that change the meaning to its opposite. No newspaper or magazine editor would countenance that kind of “changing a word in a quote” unless it were introduced with “consider how the passage would look altered thus” or similar. So yes it fucking is a misquote, because it’s radically different from what RBG said.
“Brackets commonly denote the changing of a [meaning] in a quote. So it’s not a[n elephant].”
The “correction” isn’t made for clarity, it’s propaganda. You’ve got “transmen are men who can give birth” stuck into a justification of women’s rights. Where’s the harm? It’s in trying to impose a controversial view on people who are legitimately skeptical while redefining their own legal class out of existence, in order to win an argument.
It’s not benign. Watch it applied for other words.
“Abortion is legal almost everywhere, not because people all over the world love to kill babies for fun, but because a fetus is not a baby.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy
Becomes:
“Abortion is legal almost everywhere, not because people all over the world love to kill babies for fun, but because a [baby] is not a baby.”
looking forward to them supporting [all lives] matter
It’s like changing “Black Lives Matter” to “All Lives Matter.” It’s not that the latter sentiment is incorrect (sure, all lives matter), but it’s not the point.
RBG was clearly pointing out the contrast between how anti-choicers would have the government treat women — “as less than a fully adult human,” and men (the “fully adult humans”). Changing the quote to refer to “people” absolutely changes its meaning — now she’s just complaining that “people” aren’t being treated as “fully adult humans.” And sure, people should be treated as fully adult humans capable of making their own decisions, but that isn’t the problem she was addressing.
It may have most of the words that RBG used, but it is not a quote, an indirect quote, or a misquote. It also alters the meaning of the quote it was meant to resemble (as has been noted here and elsewhere). There are defamation laws that deal with this sort of thing, depending on who’s doing it and where it was published.
Furthermore, whoever is trying to transform RBG into a trans cult ninny should be sued. If it walks like a Chasio, and quacks like a Chasio…
I saw at least one woman claim to find the new version more affirming than the original, because it links “women” with “people” as the default, as opposed to men getting to claim neutral peoplehood. This *might* be an argument amenable to reason, except that, for one, *that was the entire point of the original quote*, and for two, that is exactly the opposite reason that the ACLU made the substitution in the first place.
They do not want to make women the default person. They, in fact, want to change language and culture so that women are never mentioned in order to keep trans men from feeling psychological distress at being reminded that they are, in fact, women. This is the simple truth of the matter; centuries of struggle by women is being dispensed with in order to play into the delusions of people who are at best simply confused and at worst actively mentally ill.
If the word “women” is not inclusive does it not also mean that transwomen are just “people”? TWAP!
No. Women are crap, trans women are special magic godlike beings.
I can imagine those who think up this kind of crap in ACLU and their allies feeding on the outrage, like the machines in the Matrix fed on humans as an energy source. It must make them feel righteous and powerful.
I read an article today about how the Labour Party waffling on transgender has lost women members. I have read the same about the SNP. I would guess the ACLU will lose supporters.
I doubt if the members they have lost will be replaced by a lot of wokies taking out subscriptions and carrying out foot-slogging campaigning. I wonder how much damage this issue will cause established organisations before it finally disappears.
I can’t help but think that the double-entendre Singal was using referred to neutering.
If using ‘person’ for ‘woman’ is inclusive because women are a subset of people, why did woman need to be changed to womxn for inclusiveness?
What a disingenuous person.