The language rules for women
Kathleen Stock has thoughts on the new language rules:
I reject the near-pathological zeal with which trans activists, ‘trans allies’, and ‘woke blokes’ generally, seek to monitor and control natal women’s language in this domain: not just with respect to discussing whether trans women are actually women, but also in uses of particular names and pronouns, and gender attributions.
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One basis for self-identifying as a trans person is the condition of gender dysphoria. It is assumed by many medical practitioners that, on diagnosis of this condition, treating a person ‘as if’ belonging to their self-identified gender is helpful to their well-being; whereas confronting them with their ‘birth-assigned’ gender, or the biological facts of their sex, is not. We might easily interpret this as a kind of benevolent role-playing or method-acting, extending from the medical practitioner out into the wider community: act as if a trans woman is a woman, in most social contexts. But this is completely compatible with denying that trans women really arewomen, in a more committed sense.
Somehow, though, in recent years, a respectful concern for the well-being of trans people has supposedly morphed into a literal claim about category membership: trans women really are women. That is: trans women belong unambiguously in the category of women; the concept of woman literally applies to them. For most trans activists, this is supposed to be true whether the trans woman is a post-operative transsexual, or a trans woman on hormones, or whether she belongs to the significant proportion of trans women who are neither. She ‘is’ a women, whether she transitioned in her teens, or in middle-age; whether thirty years ago, or yesterday. Moreover, for many trans activists, not only are trans women literally women, but if they have children, they can be mothers. If they have female partners, they can be lesbians. They can be victims of misogyny. And so on. One by one, the familiar words women have used to describe themselves tumble like a chain of dominoes.
Such claims are usually unargued-for. They are presented more as self-evident truths; the outcome of revelation, perhaps, or as some article of faith which it would be downright evil to try to deny or complicate. As this description suggests, agreement with such claims is ruthlessly socially enforced by trans activists.
And that’s putting it mildly. The enforcement stretches to threats and even outright violence.
It doesn’t matter if your subject matter is Labour party all-woman shortlists, what to do about children who think they are trans, medical discussions, biology teaching, or presumably, your own relatives; you are never, ever, ever supposed to describe trans women as men or male, ‘deadname’, ‘misgender’, or use the ‘wrong’ pronouns out loud. Even trans women themselves aren’t supposed to do these things: see the bullying treatment that trans women in the UK such as Miranda Yardley, Kristina Harrison, and Debbie Hayton get, when they deny that they themselves are ‘really’ women, and seek a different narrative.
This is in itself quite striking, as for other false claims about category membership, people are normally socially permitted to assert them. Take the claims: “Elton John is straight”. “Marvin Gaye is white”. Those claims are obviously false, but there was, presumably, no inward gasp of horror as you just read them. Now contrast with: “Caitlyn Jenner is a man”; “Lily Madigan is biologically male; he is a man”. Even though I mention these as exemplary sentences, rather than assert them myself, I assume that at least some readers think I just wrote something awful.
Or maybe they don’t, but pretend they do if anyone is watching.
Or not at all. If a trans-woman chooses to maintain an all male look, have no surgery, no hormone treatment, and walk through the world looking exactly as they looked when male, it is still considered evil and genocidal to assume this person you never met before who looks just like a man is, in fact, a man. Somehow you are required to know.
And if a transwoman looks exactly like a man, then they are in most ways still receiving the privileged treatment of being able to walk down the street without whistles, cat calls, or other harassment so common to women on the street. They are able to be treated with the respect given a man until such time as they speak their name, insist on their pronoun, or in other ways reveal to the person they have just met that they are, in fact, a woman.
It’s even worse when the womanhood some people assume for themselves is claimed to have no essential meaning whatsoever. “A woman is anyone who is a woman.” In which case, I don’t understand how anyone knows “woman” is what they feel like.
I must say that I find some transpeople’s terminology rather dumb. Like some transwomen wanting to be considered all woman, even down to a penis being a woman sort of feature. Some people even refer to “penis havers”. But that seems rather silly. Why not “somatically male” or “somatically female”? That would be preferable to “sperm makers” and “egg makers”, terms that I’ve thought up. We can then distinguish between somatic and psychological sex and note that transpeople have opposite ones.
I also note that many transpeople go to great lengths to give their bodies an approximation of the somatic sex that matches their psychological sex. This even includes surgery on their sex organs.