What do we lose?
No it isn’t.
No, all the people who give birth are women, no matter how they “identify.” Pretending otherwise is not “making room” but deleting, denying, concealing. What you – and, much more important, what all women – lose by doing that is the ability to talk coherently about the issues that affect women. That’s a very big thing to lose.
Funny, TRAs frequently talk disapprovingly of making declarations about trans people, but never seem to hesitate before doing the same thing but about women.
Well that’s because women don’t know anything about their gender.
There’s a certain circularity to their argument. Trans men are men. Trans men can have babies. Therefore, men can have babies.
The problem is, they are assuming what they have not demonstrated with evidence: Trans men are men. And the argument that only women have babies is an attempt to deal with that argument, to say, yeah, trans men aren’t men. Then they argue back that isn’t true because some trans men have had babies. Totally missing what the woman was saying? Or deliberately ignoring?
The entire TRA dogma is a logical nightmare. It is logical fallacies “proven” by the use of other logical fallacies which are “proven” by the use of still other logical fallacies, and with very few true statements in the entire mix.
The trans cult ideology isn’t subject to arguments or logic, it’s in that realm of wishful thinking that’s impervious to reason, or at least it’s trying to be. And as far as needing some education in biology to understand what gender and sex are, that’s just bogus. We all learn what girls and boys, and men and women are as very young children, the overwhelmingly vast majority of us in fact, regardless of color, creed, nationality, or intelligence level. Rejecting these simple truths about common sense biology is self indulgent and asinine. There are, no doubt, a very small amount of people who will never understand how nature works or the world works due to some mental deficiency or other, but to wish you were that stupid, insist on it, and make it into a religion is a whole other level of stupid.
ikn,
A lot of people I’ve argued with plainly see the circularity but flat-out pretend not to know that their entire argument is based on the assumption that TWAW/TMAM. It’s when there’s fake confusion in response to an argument, then “but…. trans women are women so….” that I know it’s time to withdraw (if not before).
They know that I know that they know their argument hinges on that assumption, but they’re showing me that they’re going to stick to it no matter what and that argument is going nowhere. It’s where they feel comfortable, because they can dance around on that pin forever without having to concede a point, but not gaining any ground either. To me, that’s a waste of time. To them, it’s the entire point of playing.
My step grandson is about to become a father, but he is calling himself “mama”, while his partner, who is carrying his child is “papa”. They have announced they will raise their child without gender and will let the child decide gender whenever it is ready. He is a gay effeminate male, his partner is a woman presenting as male. Yep, I’m just as confused as you, dear reader.
It had better be ready before school begins because the other kids are going to know who is a boy and who is a girl and that kid is going to be confused, bullied, or more likely both. I hope they come to the senses over the next few years.
But my experience is that it’s a cogent point, not a silly argument. So what do you lose by creating room in the language that you use for taking account of me, and calling it a “cogent point?”
Remember: be kind.
@latsot;
I find asking for definitions of “woman,” “sex,” and “gender” to be one of the most effective ways to bring discussions on transgenderism onto the fruitful topic of my character, and why it’s a tricky, bad, dishonest one there’s no use engaging with.
Hahahaha, that must make you feel so useful.
On occasion, I rebut those typical remarks from TRAs that “not everyone who gives birth is a woman, you know!” with “indeed, some of them are still girls, and not even 18 years old yet”.
At some point their “arguments” always come ’round to BECAUSE SHUT UP!
You’re being much more polite and tactful than I would be. It’s bullshit all the way down.
i. Trans men are men. (all A are B)
ii. Trans men can have babies. (some A are C)
iii. Men can have babies. (some B are C) (from i and ii)
iv. Trans men are men. (all A are B) (from i)
This shit isn’t even circular. “The Bible is the Word of God. The Word of God is True. The Bible says it is the Word of God. Therefore, the Bible is the Word of God,” is a properly circular argument. Each inference validly follow from the previous and there’s a chain from A to B to C and back to A. The TMAM thing, though, is just straight up “all A are B, therefore all A are B”. C doesn’t even play a part. It’s just pure repetition.
Well, that and redefinition.
The one point I have been trying to make that I really wish would catch on is that redefining words like “man” and “woman” in terms of thoughts and feelings to make them include TIFs and TIMs respectively makes them no longer include any plain old boring biological male/female who fails to think or feel in the approved “masculine”/”feminine” manner (whatever that’s supposed to mean?*). Whenever TRAs and their allies parrot the TWAW/TMAM trope, the universal response should be “then I’m not”. There is no non-circular/non-trivial way of defining “men” so that it applies to people who can get pregnant – or the individual formerly known as Ellen Page – and me (clue: I have recently grown a very respectable beard) at the same time while excluding “women”. Even if we all agreed (which we don’t) to call TIMs “women” it still wouldn’t imply that they belong in the same bathrooms, sporting events, domestic abuse shelters, prisons etc. as biological females, because then there is no longer any justification for saying that those people are “women” in any sense of the word that’s relevant to the issue.
* It’s a safe bet that they exclude a general rejection of the whole framework in which “male” and “female”/”masculine” and “feminine” ways of thinking and feeling are even a thing though.
Bjarte:
The beard I have grown recently definitely disrespectable.
On a related note, one of the take-home messages common to authors who have studied the rise of authoritarian populism (Snyder, Mounk, Applebaum, Temelkuran, Levtisky/Ziblatt etc.) that I think applies to the Gender Wars as well is to not concede the other side’s language with its implicit framing of the issue (the “ordinary”/”real” people who vote for the populist vs. the “elite” who don’t etc.). This is why I cringe whenever gender critical people start talking in terms of “cis” vs. “trans” women etc. As I have previously written, “cis woman” is not another word for “biological female”. Indeed, referring to biological females in Genderspeak is no more possible than referring to political freedom in Newspeak. Even “cis” women are entirely defined in terms of “female”/”feminine” ways of thinking and feeling* (best left unspecified), while anyone who fails to think/feel in the ways required doesn’t qualify as a “woman” of any kind. The only relevant difference is that the “cis” women accept the “gender” they were “assigned at birth” (with all its implicit cultural “baggage”) while the “trans” women do not.
Buying into the “cis” vs. “trans” framework, concedes the idea that there is indeed such a category as “women” (once again, defined in terms of “female”/”feminine” ways of thinking and feeling) that “cis” and “trans” women are both different versions/subsets of, to the exclusion of both “cis” and “trans” men (defined in terms of “male”/”masculine” ways of thinking and feeling), but the “TERFs” are arbitrarily choosing to exclude one subset of “women” out of pure bigotry and hate (hence the obligatory attempts to lump in “trans women” with “black women”, “disabled women”, “working class women” etc.).
Instead of conceding their framing we should make it clear that TIM’s and biological females are not different versions of “women” any more than flying mammals and clubs for hitting baseballs are different versions of “bats”. There is no non-trivial definition that applies to both at the same time. Being a “man” or “woman” is about biological sex or it isn’t about anything at all. If biological sex is not a valid category, then neither is “man” or “woman”. There is no such thing as a “male” or “female”, “masculine” or “feminine” way of thinking or feeling, which means there is no “gender” which means there is no “gender binary”, which means there is no “cis”, which means we’re pretty much all “non-binary” or “gender non-conforming” or – even better – “agender”. If the gender concept applies to people on the trans spectrum (or their allies who will say anything to make the TRAs right and us wrong), they are pretty much the only ones to whom it applies as far as I’m concerned. If trans women are women, they are the only “women”. If trans men are men, then I’m not.
*They are women₂ rather than women₁ as I have previously put it.
latsot
The worst part so far is having sauce stick to my beard every time i eat and having to wash my face after every meal. Definitely not respectable. :-P
@Bjarte #13 & #15;
Beautifully put, and heartily agree.
The only thing I’ll add is the Doublethink (also common in totalitarian systems/ideology.) Even though they explicitly reject sex as a reliable and viable category for differentiating men and women (“but what about intersex? Gotcha!”) they rely on the fact that “cis” women ultimately identify as women because they’re female. Follow the “inner sense that you’re a man or woman” back far enough and you end up at sex. And, despite their desire to define men and women through gender, they insist they’re against masculine and feminine stereotypes. In fact, the way to eliminate those sexist gendered ideas is by placing the focus on gender.
Accepting the transgender framework apparently requires the ability to hold two opposing ideas at once. I think that’s one reason so many advocates seem to shy away from giving definitions: they can’t do so and remain clear and consistent. The definitions I’ve found given by TRA experts and organizations are neither clear nor consistent — in good part because theyre trying not to endorse sexist stereotyping. It can’t be done.
Thank you, Sastra. There is certainly nothing in my experience that fills me with urge to disagree :)
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