Guest post: Now that the words have been taken away
Originally a comment by Artymorty on Culture wars in a blender.
There’s something about all this ostentatious word-swapping that gives up the game, that exposes the distinction between the reality which transactivists can see just as clearly as we can, and the performance that they put on. The words are so jumbled at this point: if the words “transgender female” are just as likely to refer to someone like Eliot Page (a female who identifies as a man) as they are to Eddie Izzard (a male who, at least some of the time, identifies as a woman), the activists end up having to fall back on their senses to make out which is which: they look at an image of the person or they suss out from context clues what sex the person is. It’s always there: the fact of a trans person’s true sex needs to be known in order to correctly perform the collusion in the trans person’s fiction.
And now that the words have been taken away, it just emphasizes how easily we can all tell — trans activists just as much as the rest of us — what someone’s true sex is, usually just by looking at them.
I imagine a scenario with a police lineup: four men and one rather masculine-presenting woman are lined up for a witness to identify.
Cop asks the witness, “Is one of these five men the person who robbed you?”
Witness says, “Wait a minute. I see four men and a woman.”
Cop points directly to the woman and says, “No! She’s a man!”
Witness replies, “Well then how did you know which one I was referring to?”
Pronouns place people in a double bind. Damned if you ask them, damned if you don’t.
That’s exactly it! As I keep saying we know for a fact that many of the people now riding the gender ideology bandwagon used to say things that would now get them labeled as TERFs and demonized any time. E.g. I have personally been referred to as both “man” and “him” by “trans allies” who, in the absence of telepathic powers, couldn’t possibly know anything about my “inner sense of self”. I have also heard some of these same people say things like “douches are really bad for women”, talk about abortion rights as a “women’s issue”, refer to vaginas as “lady bits”, talk about the Bechdel Test and how a certain movie only had x “women” in it (when the movie in question didn’t offer any clue about the “gender identity” of these people) etc… etc… The list is practically endless.
This was less than 10 years ago, and even today they keep slipping up and making revealing blunders (e.g. Silent Bob’s taunt about Ophelia’s “overwhelmingly male commenters”) showing that even they are unable to consistently live up to their own demands. When specifically talking about trans issues words like “man” and “woman”, or even “male” and “female”, refer to an inner sense of self etc., but for all other purposes (in good Orwellian fashion) they still talk, think, and act as if they knew perfectly well how to tell a biological female from a biological male. It also goes to show that (despite claims to the contrary) gender critical feminists and their allies are not the ones who have betrayed their cause. My concern was for biological females whatever you prefer to call them ten years ago, and my concern is for biological females whatever you prefer to call them today. The “gender uncritical” side, on the other hand, may still claim to stand up for people called “women”, but that’s just a bait and switch since the people called “women” now are not the same as the people called “women” back then.
Indeed, as I keep repeating ad nauseam, everything about gender ideology ultimately comes down to a “bad pun”. If you have what it takes to detect a pun when you hear it, you know everything you need to know to debunk all of gender ideology: If the person formerly known as Ellen Page is a “man”, then I’m not. You can’t define that person in without defining me out, certainly not while insisting on a non-trivial distinction between “men” and “women”. After all, you have just taken the only thing that ever made me a “man” out of the definition of “man”. On the same note any definition (if they had one) of “woman” designed to make it true that TWAW also makes it no longer true that biological females are “women” in any sense of the word that’s relevant to the issue. Yet the whole justification for why
transwomenTIMs need to be included in all the spaces previously reserved for biological females ultimately rests on the premise that both groups are the same in some real sense (as opposed to in name only).And this explains, once again, why everything about gender ideology is “best left unspecified”. I have often invoked the metaphor of a boat full of holes where the water leaks in. You might be able to plug some of the holes some of the time, but there are too many holes and not enough plugs, so in the end the only way to stop a leak in one place is to remove a plug from somewhere else, thus opening up another leak. If they were upfront about which plug they are using to stop which leak at any given moment, the bait and switch would be obvious to everyone, so the compromise is to keep everything perpetually in the air and try to have it both ways, e.g.:
• For the purpose of making it true that biological females are “cis women”, “cis” simply means “not trans” and doesn’t come with any implicit claims about what’s going on inside other people’s heads. But for the purpose of making it true that “cis women” are whatever they have to be to make “cis women” and “trans women” subsets of the same group, there are distinct and identifiable “feminine” ways of thinking/feeling/behaving/”presenting” (best left unspecified) that both groups supposedly have in common, thus making them the same “kind” of people.
• For the purpose of arguing that TWAW, physical traits are totally irrelevant to “gender”, no body type is any more or less “aligned” with being a “woman” than any other, any body belonging to a person who identifies as a “woman” is by definition a “woman’s body” etc. But for the purpose of arguing for the necessity of puberty blockers, hormone therapy, surgery etc. changing one’s body into a bad imitation of the other (supposedly non-existent or at least totally irrelevant) biological sex is so vitally important that anything other than automatic and unconditional affirmation is “literal violence” or even “murder”.
• For the purpose of making TRAs a legitimate social justice movement “trans rights” simply means “the same kind of kind of rights as everyone else”. But for the purpose of making it true that “TERFs” are “denying the rights” of trans people, “trans rights” means 100 % blind, uncritical, unconditional, unthinking acquiescence to all their demands in advance.
• Etc… etc…
The story of Pope Joan, the woman who presented as a man, joined the Catholic priesthood and worked her way up to become Pope is relevant here. For a while there, Holy Mother Church had a test for all candidates for papal office, which involved the candidate sitting on a (no doubt gold-plated) dunny seat, while a cardinal got underneath and checked him out. Hence the Mediaeval Italian expression: ‘finda no donga, donta belonga.’
A few readers here may not have seen my earlier account of this on another thread. Trans issues somehow call for it; nay, demand it.
(Chortle.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Joan
I do think that is implied in many places by their ideology, but all too often, I have seen ‘cis’ identified as ‘someone who has a gender identity aligned with their biological sex’ or ‘someone who is in line with the role of their sex’. Which would probably remove almost all of us in this commentariat from our own sex. I know it would me. I suffer from body dysphoria, not necessarily an assumption that I should be the opposite sex, but a feeling that my body is at odds with who I am. I suspect for most GD people, that is the sense they have, and it isn’t pleasant or fun. They have interpreted it as meaning they should be the opposite sex, not as meaning they should be working on how to make peace with their body. I haven’t achieved that yet, and I am 61, but I have learned to move on with my life and not obsess over it. It is still difficult, because we put mirrors everywhere, which means sooner or later I’m going to see myself (the Zoom year was difficult because I needed to keep my camera on for classes so students could see me, and that meant I could see me). I do, however, know how to close my eyes, turn my head, or shut down the thumbnail picture, whichever is most appropriate for the occasion. And sometimes I stare at the mirror, trying to assure myself that is really me. In short, I don’t bother others to tell me things like “Oh, yes, you really are…” whatever you think you are. It’s my business, and no one else, except my therapist, has any role they are required to play.
Yow!
Not much left to say. Metaphors fail me.
I have seen it too except that “biological sex” was replaced with “gender assigned at birth” (I would include that under “ways of thinking/feeling/behaving/”presenting” etc.”). It had already begun falling out of favor by the time I left Twitter, though (which was before Brexit and the election of Trump). Indeed I have personally been accused of strawmanning for attributing such views to trans people. They must have realized that attaching any positive content to the “cis” label made it too easy for biological females to say “Well, by that definition, I’m not cis”. Like Ingsoc what was orthodox gender ideology yesterday may not be so today, and both may be Thoughtcrime tomorrow.
@2 https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/69406/have-you-noticed-that-trans-people-often-gender-each-other-correctly-even-though
On the language thing:
Yeah, the slipperiness of the language and the refusal to define are a double-edged sword; it can be a short-term strategy at best. You can only bamboozle everyone for so long and the moment you’re in a position to do anything useful like define actual policy, it crumbles. One of the things I’m hoping will come out of the Women’s Aid statement is a widespread sense of “oh…. is that all these evil TERFs wanted all along? That’s… quite reasonable, actually”. I’ve already seen quite a few TA-leaning fence-sitters say this. I hope the same sort of thing will happen when it becomes more widely apparent that the language is deliberately misleading and slippery.
On the sex-recognition thing:
Yes, I’ve been thinking about this a bit, too, and your example helps. I’ve been saying for a while that since it’s almost the case that we need to know a person’s sex to avoid misgendering them, it’s fortunate that we have such a reliable way of determining people’s sex. But then you went and put it a lot more elegantly.
I have more to say on this: I was working on a parallel between this post and the rape in the NHS ward, which wasn’t investigated for a year because the NHS staff were under orders to deny reality and say there were no men on the ward. I’ll try to remember to come back and flesh it out when I have time.
almost always the case?
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Speaking of Pope Joan…
One of the last lesbian bars in Toronto was called The Pope Joan. I confess, I used to go there sometimes, even though I’m a gay man. I loved the atmosphere there and I loved the people much more than the guys at Woody’s, the city’s biggest gay bar, which catered mostly to men. The problem of lesbian bars becoming overrun by gay men was very much the raging issue of the day, much discussed in the gay press and the gay community, and I completely agreed it was terrible, but confess I was so young and foolish then, I somehow thought little old me hanging out at them didn’t count.
The Pope Joan soon became a lesbian bar in name only — more-or-less just another gay men’s bar, and then the owners closed it down. (I wouldn’t be surprised if they closed it because they never intended to operate a gay men’s bar.)
The very last lesbian bar in the city held on for a few years after Pope Joan closed, and that was only because they had a strict door policy that would only admit a man if he’s in a party of at least two lesbians.
Now there are no lesbian bars in the city — possibly in the country. And even if there was one, it would surely be overrun by men — straight men this time.
Wait! I just remembered something! This past summer, I drove past a bar waaay outside of downtown, far from the gay village, whose windows and exterior were festooned with lesbian flags: red, orange, pink and white horizontal stripes. Almost no one on earth even knows that that’s the “official” lesbian flag; it’s practically a secret signal. Perhaps this is a covert lesbian bar! If so, no wonder they’ve set up shop far away from the LGBTQXYZ ghetto.
I wonder how many gay bars there are in Toronto.
From a quick Google – lots. Too many to list.
Oh well. Sucks to be women.
There’s definitely not as many gay bars as there used to be. Covid, condos and cruising apps have done a lot of damage. The one I bartended at is becoming a condo skyscraper, as is the one next door to it. The one that just spent a hundred thou deliberately removing the men’s and women’s washrooms for one big mixed-sex unprivate corridor of discomfort is in dire trouble now; the big be-disco-balled mega-warehouses where hundreds of topless men would dance all night on Ecstasy are long gone to condos, too. By my rough count, there’s maybe seven or eight true gay bars left (excluding, say, the odd Irish pub near to the gay village that tries to advertise itself as a gay bar for business), and they’re all pretty small. Shame, really. I loved to socialize at bars. I hate mingling and dating through apps on my phone. (But now that I’m out as critical of trans ideology, I’m a total pariah anyways…)