Basic human dignity
Slogans instead of thinking. Always, because that’s all there is. Jessica Valenti glaring at feminists who don’t want women and girls to have to share their sports with men who identify as women:
I hate to give oxygen to the kind of thinking that pits cisgender women against trans women, and so I can’t bring myself to link to the uninformed and often downright hateful arguments being bandied about by those claiming to be feminists. The short version is that there’s a fear that cis women and girls will be somehow harmed if they are in the same bathrooms or on the same sports teams as trans women and girls. That by protecting the rights of trans students, cis students will suffer.
It’s not “somehow.” It’s been stated very clearly a million times, and it’s obvious anyway. Of course women and girls will be harmed if they’re forced to compete against men and boys. It’s physical.
Let’s be clear: This is bigotry shrouded as feminism. Making sure that a violently oppressed and marginalized community is treated with basic human dignity does not take anything away from anyone else.
But “basic human dignity” has nothing to do with men competing against women in women’s sports. That’s never been part of what anyone meant by “basic human dignity.” The phrase applies to things like not living in squalor, not living on the street, having enough to eat and meaningful work and shoes and clothes, education and medical care and opportunities. It doesn’t apply to forcing girls to let boys take their places on sports teams.
It’s just cheap lazy jargon in aid of helping men displace women. Valenti should be embarrassed.
H/t Roj Blake
“Slogans instead of thinking.”
That sounds like a great slogan!!!!!!!!!!
GW, as the last four years proved over and over that the most effective, memorable and chantable slogans consist of three monosyllabic words, so….
Don’t Think, Sloge!
That’s some finely crafted quoted paragraph you’ve found. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that much dishonesty, gaslighting, strawmanning, poisoning the well, bad faith, and begging the question in so few words. This is beyond TRumpian levels of lying. If Valenti had tried to fit in any more dishonesty into that paragraph it would have collapsed into a singularity of mendacity.
Characterizing opposing arguments as so evil that you don’t want to even mention them.
Here we have the denial of any conflict of rights and interests. And actual human female adults are called “cisgender” women. Compare to “trans women.” NOT “transgender women”, which would match the construction used immediately preceding. Actual women are burdened with more modifiers; trans women are more purely “womanly.” And calling them trans “women” concedes contested ground, as trans “women” are actually men.
“I’m going to misrepresent and smear the arguments and claims of my opponents without giving my readers any links that would permit them to see for themselves whether my summary is accurate or thruthful. TRUST ME, they’re PURELY EVIL. I’m doing you a favour by not linking to their stated beliefs and positions because you would lose your very soul if I did. Really.”
They aren’t really arguments or beliefs that are strongly held or thoughtfuly supported and expressed. Thy don’t relly believe them at all. And because of these evil, wrongthink positions, held and voiced soley and expressly to cause pain and grief to trans women, who are the most vulnerable beings in the Universe, they have disqualified themselves from actually being feminists. Valenti gets to identify herself a feminist in her byline, while stripping that title away from other women whose beliefs and arguments she does not have the courtesy or courage to cite.
The link to the “short version” is not to anything written by a gender critical feminist, but to an article in Jezebel that says, amongst other things:
See Ophelia’s note above about “somehow,” where actual harm already done is painted as some unlikely, unimaginable, distant, hypothetical freak occurence. The acceptance of trans idenified males in the girl’s bathrooms and on girl’s teams is presented as a given; it’s women and girls upset at finding themselves in these situations that is presented as the unwelcome anomaly. They are the intruders.
And here we have moved from women and girls to “trans students” and “cis students” in general, while studiously avoiding the use of the word “sex” anywhere in the column, which is the actual basis on which sports are segregated. Lets linclude boys, because they aren’t really in need of protection (except perhaps from each other), unless they are claiming to be girls (in which case they get to do whatever the hell they want, or they’ll kill themselves, or something). And what rights are being “protected?” Do students have the right to compete on whatever teams they want, whether they meet the qualifications and standards required? Are nerdy guys and girls going be allowed a place on the football team? Don’t they have the right? If not, why not? What if they were nerdy trans students? Okay then?
Following not Bruce:
Even if while wearing every worthy emblem you can think of, and you have sworn on a stack of Bibles or whatever piled high on your Grandma’s grave to never do it yourself, it pays if you intend to become a serious card played to make yourself aware of as many as possible of the tricks cheats can get up to. Helps also to practice a few yourself, with understanding fellow players.
Now move to some of the tricks of debate. Chief amaong them, I suggest, is to assume the truth of what you are trying to verbally prove. Plato did it all the time. Perhaps he learned it from sophists like Socrates. But be careful not to be too blatant about it. Always slip things in from under the deck.
You want to get some blokes sporting male genitalia accepted as women? OK. Start by calling them just that. They are a kind of woman. Just divide the category ‘women’ into two (hugely unequally sized) sub-categoies, classes, call them what you will. Cis-women and trans-women will do for a start. The biologiclally female humans, (the ‘cis women’) will probably not object, as they are still there as ‘women’; and with the bonus that ‘cis’ is pretty close to the first syllable of ‘sisters’. And the ‘trans-women’ as noted above, are in there where they want to be, as women.
Whatever you do, don’t refer to them as trans-men, even though that is exactly what they are: men who wish to transfer, transition or transform themselves into women. That is the reality they are trying to get away from: with rights to use womens’ restrooms thrown in.
There was a video clip I saw recently from a hearing in which an ACLU lawyer was testifying. The lawyer had apparently just made the argument that there were only a few trans-identified males who wanted to participate in women’s sports. She was asked if, twenty years down the line, would she be perfectly fine with a women’s championship team consisting entirely of biological males. This, for some reason, required repetition and clarification. The lawyer then repeated that “transwomen are women” and other slogans, but never answered the question directly; the questioner said “I’ll write that down as a Yes”. Sorry, I don’t remember where I saw the clip.
I think this example supports Omar’s point above pretty well.
“some of the worst people in the world”, no less!
Amanda Gorman is clearly a very talented young woman, who has overcome a lot to rise to where she is now. And then she says this, which is sad:
“I think the gap is already closing. And it’s difficult to [maricize?]* it, because until we have someone in the White House [pause] who identifies as a woman, it will always — if you can’t see it, you can’t imagine it.”
*I didn’t understand this word.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpR7iELvVrI, at 14:45.
Sorry, I know, I just hijacked the thread, but at least it’s vaguely on topic.
Just say it. Just say the words. “Until we have a woman in the White House.”
Acolyte @ 2, I assume you mean that with a hard G?
So, maybe spell it: “Slogue, don’t think!”
Sorry, I mean: “Don’t Think, Slogue!” (Keeping your exact word order.)
Oh, the things she’s written over the years about which she should be embarrassed, but isn’t–they could fill a library.
GW, yes, a hard ‘g’. I was going to spell it ‘sloag’ but it looked too ugly, and thought that ‘slogue’ could be seen as ‘slog-way’, similar to how ‘segue is pronounced’.
I was going to spell it ‘sloag’ but it looked too ugly….
Ugly Is Beautiful. </slogan