If you think feminism implies anything else
Sackbut alerted us to Roy Speckhardt’s piece on signs you’re having unapproved thoughts. The piece is…flawed.
Even humanists, despite our commitment to critical thinking, are susceptible to disinformation campaigns, especially when we aren’t fully up-to-speed on the latest scholarship and are unaware of the campaigns calculated to use us to advance in-humanist agendas.
First sentence, and already…
This is style rather than substance, but style matters, dammit. It’s not “up-to-speed.” It’s just “up to speed.” There’s no rule that says all familiar phrases require hyphens. Decent writers avoid bonehead mistakes like that because they’re annoying. One of ten signs you’re an annoying writer: you insert meaningless hyphens where they don’t belong.
8) You think the word feminist excludes/antagonizes men.
Feminism is the advocacy for political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.
No. That would make feminism just as much for and about men as it is for and about women. No, feminism is a movement to end the subordination of women. The clue is in the “fem” part.
The rest of item 8 makes clear why he started with that stupid wrong manipulative definition.
Modern feminists recognize the need to elevate marginalized gender identities and the intersectional impact of race and gender. If you think feminism implies anything else, that suggests you’ve accepted sources for your information that are not credible.
Fuck off. Feminism has nothing to do with “marginalized gender identities,” whatever those even are. Feminism is for and about women, period. Men don’t get to bounce up to us and tell us it’s for everyone. And as for sources that aren’t credible – where did he get his idea that feminism isn’t for and about women? Who told him that “modern” feminists think it’s about “marginalized gender identities”? Look to your own sources, chum.
4) You fail to see the harm in questioning the validity of transgender identity.
Again – two can play at that game. You fail to see the harm in telling feminist women to focus on “transgender identity” instead of our own concerns. You also fail to see the harm in repeating stupid jargon about “validity” and “gender identity.” Men are not women, and feminists should not be bullied into thinking we have to “validate” men’s claims to be women. You’re not the boss of us.
What’s the difference between a member of the Flat Earth Society and those who seek to continuously question transgender identity? Both question facts people have long accepted for years, but the latter are contributing to a deadly environment where transgender people are facing bullying, harassment, rape, and murder over their identities.
That’s just embarrassing. People – all people? – have “long accepted for years” that men are women if they say they are? No they haven’t. Some people have signed up to the ridiculous belief system, and some pretend they have because they’re afraid not to, but most people still understand that men are not women. And declining to believe or repeat that men are women if they say they are is not comparable to believing the world is flat. Just for one thing nobody can take a plane from New York to London (or wherever to wherever) and look out the window and see that men are women if they say they are.
Let’s accept people’s self-identification when it isn’t harming us or others.
Dude, it is harming women. Try paying attention to us for five minutes. In any case no, let’s not – not without a lot of further particulars. Let’s not just blindly “accept” other people’s fantasies, because hello, remind you of anything?
The “fact that has been widely accepted for years” is that what’s considered masculine and feminine often differs by culture and not all men behave like stereotypical “men” and not all women behave like stereotypical “women.” Denying that would contravene anthropology, history, biology, and common sense. Those who “question the validity of transgender identities” not only don’t disagree with this, we endorse it. But men who dance delicately in paint and feathers do not entail that therefore some women produce sperm.
They are trying to erase the distinction between sex and gender by riding to credibility on the coattails of the Gender Critical.
I vote, as a man, that we as a sex stop trying to explain what feminism is and is not to a general audience. We seem to do a lousy job of it in general.
Wait a minute, I just noticed another problem with this — “of the SEXES????” Not “gender equality,” but SEX equality? Women are discriminated against on the basis of sex, that thing that’s so complicated and vague that it can’t be used to distinguish men from women so we need to call in the solid rock of scientific respectability which is Gender Identity??
Hoo boy, is Roy ever gonna be in TROUBLE …
Flat earthers believe that the earth is round. Like a disc. A round disc.
I’m a weirdo. I believe that the earth is an oblate spheroid and that sex is a real valid descriptor of biological divisions of reproductive functions – male and female.
Well they’re wrong. It’s actually a flat trapezoid.
On the subject of flat earth belief, a recent satirical novel has an interesting account of attempts to force it on people which has some uncanny resemblance to actual imposed ideology of late:
https://www.amazon.com/End-World-Flat-Simon-Edge-ebook/dp/B098KS95KX/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+end+of+the+world+is+flat&qid=1628714076&sr=8-1
I’ve got a really loud flat earther who works about ten feet away from me and if I ever have to engage with it I’m bringing up “thinking men are women” in that context. Also would ask him to explain how gravity works on the Disc.
Wait until you meet the crazies who reject the Germ Theory. Disease is because one has been naughty. And been naughty means eating meat, dairy, grains, fish, eggs. Basically anything that is not a fruitarian (or hell, breatharian) diet.
What’s the difference between a member of the Flat Earth Society and those who seek to continuously question that Feminism is for and about women? Both question facts people have long accepted for years, but the latter are contributing to a deadly environment where women are facing bullying, harassment, rape, and murder.
I reckon the second version actually makes a lot more sense.
Michael at 2, I second that motion. Quite how Speckhardt can be such a pompous and oblivious mansplainer and expect anyone to do other than tell him to fuck off, I’m just not sure.
Re #2
I don’t think I agree. “Feminism” is a political concept, and there’s no particular reason men are incapable of describing it, nor is there a reason women are especially capable of describing it. Poor people or workers are not better at describing Marxism, similarly. Women generally have direct experience of the oppression by men, but the political movement is a different matter.
I say this in part because I’ve read an awful lot of bad descriptions of feminism (or, perhaps I should say, of things better termed “liberal feminism” or “choice feminism” or “equality feminism”) from women, and I’ve read Robert Jensen’s excellent book on Radical Feminism. So I’m willing to give men a chance.
Sackbut, I think it is too simplistic to just say “women describe feminism”, for the reasons you describe. My husband could do a much better job of describing radical feminism than my mother or any of my sisters, and he could do it without sneering. Obviously he has to have some sympathy, or he couldn’t have lived with me for 20 years. ;-)
That does remind me of one errant biologist who likes squid and has a “horde” following him. During one of the many battles of the sexes, he said “Listen to the women. They know what’s sexism and what isn’t.” This is not a statement I could agree with. Which woman? Gloria Steinem or Phyllis Schlafly? Ann Coulter or Julie Bindel? Me or my mother? Of course, now his message is “shut up you TERFs” and he doesn’t want to listen to the women at all, only the men who claim to be women (and the women who reject being women).
Re the OP, I think characterizing the article as about “unapproved thoughts” is perfect. While Speckhardt talks about “do your homework and overcome these misperceptions”, and avoiding “disinformation campaigns”, but implies that all such “misperceptions” must be right wing, that it’s automatically an incorrect and illogical position if a right wing person or organization advocates it, that the crux of the problem is adopting “right wing talking points” rather than unreasonable positions. All positions, including those advocated by left wing people and organizations, should be evaluated carefully.
It is, what, ironic?, that he talks in Item 6 about accusations of agreeing with the “wrong” people, when the entire article is a warning about agreeing with the “wrong” people.
#12:
“I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks.” — Harry Potter [year 1]
Sastra:
Hell, I’m trying to erase the distinction between “sex” and “gender”, because it is that very distinction that allows genderist equivocations. They wouldn’t be able to be tricksy hobbitses with their wording without the introduction of the “social role” sense of “gender”. Which sense, I will point out, was introduced by John Money.
From the Wiki entry on gender:
Given what I know of that monster, I’d wager that the distinction was introduced for the purpose of confusion. That feminists adopted it is probably one of the reasons we’re in this mess.
I’m happy to hear that there are men who can explain feminism. I just think that we should be careful to make certain we know what we’re saying, at least.
Nullius in Verba #14 wrote:
But the distinction between sex and (the social construct of masculine and feminine roles, attributes, and behaviors) IS a real distinction, and absolutely critical for feminism. The sex-based class of women have been oppressed throughout history through the imposition and/or emphasis on (the social construct of masculine/feminine,) and teasing these two apart is what feminists do. The concept wasn’t introduced by Money, and “gender” as a label works well.”Gender roles” vs “sex roles,” for example: the second either suggests they’re innate, or that we’re talking about reproduction.
Erase that distinction between the words (“sex and gender mean the same thing”) and the entire TRA conceptual package follows (“women = womanly ways of thinking and behaving.”) Equating them leads to confusion. It’s the very opposite of what we want.
What term would you replace “gender” with, that would avoid confusion?
I probably read between lines more than is good for me, but:
What’s the difference between a member of the Flat Earth Society and those who seek to continuously question transgender identity?
Why so weasely?
It’s almost as though writing:
might be an insufficiently loaded question. Or, more likely, that the person who wrote the question didn’t really buy into any of this.
Making a distinction between [fe]maleness and social norms related to [fe]maleness is of course useful, and distinguishing these is no mistake. The mistake isn’t conceptual; it’s linguistic. “Gender” simply cannot work well qua label for norms of [fe]maleness, because both “gender” and “sex” have always referred to [fe]maleness. Its biological meaning is too entrenched to avoid confusion.
Confusion arises when people think, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means,” because they must disregard longstanding synonymy, especially when our literature and law were written presuming it. Forcing “gender” and “sex” apart necessarily forces us to review and revise every instance of “gender” in law. (Example: “Defines the term ‘sexual orientation’ as used in this Act as meaning choice of sexual partner according to gender.” H.R.14752 — 93rd Congress, 05/14/1974) Then every instance in art and fine literature, as well as in the literature of all history, anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, political science, engineering, and so on and so forth through all our cumulative written record for the past six centuries. At the minimum, it forces a “runtime” revision, a situation that brings a peculiar sort of confusion familiar to CCG players.
“Sex and gender aren’t the same thing,” is the foundation for the entire edifice of genderist nonsense, and they’ve found success because sex and gender are the same thing. They’ve been the same thing since the 16th century. (At least, that’s when “sex” is first attested in reference to being male or female. “Gender” had that meaning a hundred years earlier.) “But NIV,” you protest, “the TRAs say that TWs are female (sex) because they are women (gender). Equivalence of sex and gender is what they want.” Yes, precisely my point. The identity S=G was already in place for 500 years when Money decided S≠G. That innovation gave us (S=G)∧(S≠G`), which equivocation can use the weight of 600 years to turn into (S=G)∧(S≠G). This is a contradiction, so by the principle of explosion, everything follows—including S=G`. Avoiding infinite absurdity demands denying S=G, but that infinite absurdity only results from denying S=G in the first place. That is, the second step of the TRA argument does use sex-gender equivalence, but the first step requires sex-gender non-equivalence. In a world where people can’t fathom basic rules of inference, do you think that a little equivocation represents a significant obstacle to the obsessed?
Erasing the ridiculously prescriptive distinction between the words “sex” and “gender” doesn’t entail the entire TRA conceptual package. Gender ideology no more follows from rejecting the distinction between “sex” and “gender” than egoistic nihilism follows from rejecting the distinction between “morality” and “ethics”. The TRA conceptual package follows from erasing the distinction between the referent of “sex” and the contested referent of “gender”, and the TRA rhetorical package relies on laundering the prescribed definition with the one that’s been around for more than half a millennium. Yes, it’s fallacious, but it’s also entirely predictable. Like, “maybe don’t give an alcoholic the keys to the liquor cabinet” levels of predictable.
Literally anything that isn’t synonymous with a fundmamental term would be superior. How about “normative sexism”? I mean, it’s not a brilliant choice, but at least it’s better than “gender” in that it means what it describes and isn’t actively harmful.
#18
There are laws/customs/norms/policies in place that were formulated assuming S=G, so whether a law/custom/policy was expressed as relating to “Female” or “Woman” was irrelevant: they meant the same thing.
The assertion S≠G seems to me to have started out as an attempt to allow some males (S) to be (somehow) women (G).
Now, if you assert S≠G, you *should* logically work through all references to “females” or “women” and seek in each case to clarify whether they were relevant to S and/or G. It should be pretty obvious that sports, say, is entirely a matter of S and not G.
But of course this is not what TRAs want, they want TW to have everything relevant to either “Female” or “Women”. They then have only a few choices: either say TW are female “TW are biological females” (so S=G) or say S is meaningless “Sex is a social construct imposed by western colonisers” (so there is only G, and S is an illusion)
You see both these positions constantly, (perhaps because TRAs have no consensus on which of the two absurd positions to take.)
@17+18 We see this in the (relatively) recent move away from the term transsexual in favor of the term transgender. I see the trans cult claiming both sex and gender, yet when it’s convenient, as in cases where they try to convince people that gender is a social construct and in the mind, the term gender is preferred, as if it’s not the same thing. Then they take the further insidious step, after gaining acceptance that gender is a different concept, to then say that their gender is also their actual biological sex. It’s all part of the process of becoming trans, first the fantasy, say Gavin Hubbard with long hair and lipstick, to Bruce Jenner, who eventually got ‘bottom’ surgery. It really is a spectrum, but since they demand validation for all ‘transgender’ people along the spectrum, the complete process of trying to eliminate all characteristics and biological components of their former sex is the ultimate goal. It’s the same process for the activists who are not trans, first accepting gender ≠ sex, then graduating to gender *really does* = sex. It’s all horseshit, but it does prompt otherwise halfway intelligent people to proclaim that “some women have a penis.” Until they don’t? Until they complete the transformation, or what?
#18, #19, #20: All very good points, am thinking them through.
NIV wrote:
No, I wouldn’t say this because “woman” is a sex term, and “feminine” is a gender term. That may even be where the real battle and equivocation lies: not with the word “gender,” but with the words “woman” and “man.”
Dictionaries usually try to follow common usage, and, after a brief search, I didn’t find any major source equating gender with sex. The closest was “gender: either the male or female division of a species, especially as differentiated by social and cultural roles and behavior: the feminine gender.” Most of them just went right to the socially-constructed characteristics. The definition of “woman,” on the other hand, is still “adult human female.” If the dictionaries have been overly influenced by TRA propaganda, then they missed The Big One.
If the meaning of “gender” has evolved among the general public to be separate from “sex,”, then trying to equate them again doesn’t mean we’re fighting the TRAs; it means we’re fighting the general public. Not a good strategy.
I think the switcheroo is closer to
1.) Sex is not Gender (sex is reproductive class; gender is masculine/feminine)
2.) Woman and Man are Sex Terms
3.) Woman and Man are Gender Terms (And then a miracle occurs)
4.) Sex is a Problematic Concept (intersex! Reducing people!) and doesn’t matter
5.) Let’s just stick with Gender then.
I think they should be more explicit here in Step Three. It’s weak.
Nullius @18, I am not a lawyer, but I read the decision that Maya Forstater won (2021), and I learned a few things about how language works in law:
1) The Forstater decision includes text from the UK Equality Act 2010 (EqA) that effectively defines the word belief to include lack of belief (for EqA purposes). The meaning is clear, that when we read belief in a case, we may substitute lack of belief if it applies better in that case. But in your style of analysis, I suspect you might analyze that as a thing X defined as X including lack-of-X (simultaneously), creating a contradiction. I have not seen your analytical approach capture how natural language can let a definition depend on a case.
2) When I search the Forstater decision for gender and identity, the words almost always appear together as gender identity to mean a mental state. Maya Forstater also remarked that the decision upheld sex to mean the binary physical state. Your concern about sex and gender seems to be caused by collapsing the phrase gender identity to one word gender, then doing a symbolic analysis with sex (S) and gender (G). The Forstater decision avoids your logical explosion by maintaining the distinction between sex and gender identity being two different things.
3) Your comment #18 paragraph 2 says, “Forcing ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ apart necessarily forces us to review and revise every instance of ‘gender’ in law.” But I do not see that happening. As recently as the US Supreme Court Bostock decision (2020), SCOTUS still reads the word sex in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA1964) to mean the binary physical state of male or female. The Bostock decision (that incorporates the Harris Funeral Homes case about the firing of Aimee Stephens) protects transgender employees by reading CRA1964 Title VII to mean (in the majority opinion), “An employer who fired an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.” In my opinion, that reasoning was a big stretch, but at least SCOTUS still reads CRA1964 to mean sex is the binary physical state of male or female.
SwanAlien:
Precisely the case. Indeed, early feminist writing is filled with “feminine gender”, “female gender”, and so on.
That’s certainly the impression one gets from the early sources. Separating sex and gender allows failed male-children to be altered and raised as female. Oh, sorry, “gender” words. Failed boys to be raised as girls.
Well, there’s lack of consensus and also an incentive to be vague. If fallacious reasoning is rewarded, then there is an incentive to reason fallaciously. Unfortunately, this is the case, so they play around with their rainbow dildo monkeys in the bailey while well meaning people build mottes for them.
twiliter:
And attempting to fight their illogic on their preferred battleground is foolhardy. Sun Tzu and Miyamoto Musashi would be shaking their heads.
Sastra:
Am I lucky or just very skilled with the googles? Because I found this for “gender” in literally five seconds of searching:
But genuinely, English has multiple words for things. Possibly more than any other language, English adores and collects synonyms like souvenirs, ready to be brought out and displayed at any moment. We have oodles and lots and myriad and tons and many and I can go on in a slew and a smorgasbord and basically a veritable cornucopia of words for just about anything. So we’ve got multiple words for sex, and multiple words for woman, and multiple words for girl, and multiple words for blah, blah, blah. It’s one of the language’s peculiar beauties. It’s also a liability, for the more synonyms, both atomic and idiomatic, we have, the easier it is for people to play illicit word games in their arguments.
I’d say, “Well, kinda.” TRAs have been saying that “woman” and “man” are gender terms for a long time. The binary oppositional terms here would be “female” and “male”. It may have started with “feminine” and “masculine”, but that’s the thing that happens when we’re dealing with synonymy: drift. Because most people are not pedantic pedants purposely pontificating pedantically, distinctions get disregarded progressively between masculine and manly and man and male. If you’ve ever been the one calling out, “Ein minuten, bitte,” only to have the group shout you down for being a nerd or being mean, then you can understand how that works.
That’s interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it ordered that way. What I’ve seen is more like 2, 1, 3, 4, 2^3. This works out as
i. People think woman and man are sex terms,
ii. but gender is masculine/feminine, and sex is klatu verata ni-*cough*. There, I said it.
iii. Woman and man are gender terms. (and TW really are women, and TM really are men)
iv. Gender’s fuzzy like that, and don’t forget intersex, which means that sex is pretty fuzzy and
v. we can’t really distinguish the two, because there really isn’t any difference when you’re talking about spectra, so there really isn’t any difference between the two. Also, if Chewbacca living on Endor doesn’t make sense, you must rule in favor of the plaintiff. Did I mention that transwomen are female and that I HAVE FUCKING TIGER BLOOD?
None of this makes any got-damned sense, of course.
Dave Ricks:
Gender and gender identity are different things. I can only surmise that you found some wording in my comment unclear. Please show me where I wasn’t clear that gender and gender identity are different things or where I treated them as equivalent, and I will happily clarify, because my words hate being misgendered. It’s like, literal violence. (ba dum tss! No? Ah, come on!)
See, this is why I take literal hours to write my comments: SAD is a harsh master. I said, “revise every instance of ‘gender’ in law,” and your counterexamples are multiple instances of interpreting “sex” as referring to sex?
I mean, depending on the case we’ll let “woman” mean “man” if it applies better in that case, because some women have penises. Dworkin would totally be down with that.