Guest post: Pronouns place people in a double bind
Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Now that the word’s been taken away. [Title by Sastra]
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 transwomen TIMs 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…
(I was actually commenting on Arty’s point about how TRAs have to be aware of the difference between males and females. Then again, I always enjoy commenting on Sastra’s thoughtful reflections, so that’s fine)
Tonight, in a story about recent anti-abortion legislation, the announcer (female) on NPR kept referring to “pregnant people.” It seemed rather Orwellian.
And now, apparently, I’m just Another Marge Greene for noticing.
Excruciatingly Orwellian I’d call it.
So biology is irrelevent, “presentation” is irrelevent. And though they have no way of knowing what’s going on inside anyone’s head with regards to any “identity” they may have, huge swathes of people are labelled “cis.” Wouldn’t that count as misgendering? Wouldn’t “cissing” someone who rejects the concept of gender identity altogether also constitute misgendering?
It’s always TiMs who are barging into places, claiming to be women, making a big stink when non-compliance is encountered. TiFs aren’t nearly as disruptive. Maybe it’s the absence of affronted male entitlement? The fact that they’re no threat to men? That they’re really, actually “just women?” How much real overlap of interests and needs of TiMs and TiFs is there? Apart from the need to obscure the reality of sex, not a lot that I can see. What real common ground is there (or can there be) between young women so esperate to escape the sexist cage of “womanhood” that they submit themselves to mutilation, and middle age AGPs getting their jollies by dressing up? That latter use the former as cannon fodder and human shields for their demands to invade female spaces. How many AGPs suffer from the all-pervasive “suicidal ideation” of “trans youth” that is wheeled out in defence of redefining “woman”?
And what about all the scores of genders we’ve been assured are out there in the Spectrum? Where are all the Femme, Demi-boy, low-fat, decaf espresso-gender people? Even the Enbees are pretty much an afterthought (pace, Sam Smith) What swim team do they try to push themselves into? Whose toilet facilities do they want access to? Who’s speaking up for them? Who really gives a shit? It’s only the needs of TiMs that are vitally important. Anything else is window dressing and lip service, a sop and nothing more. The rest of the alphabet soup is only there for forced teaming to inflate numbers and have more organizations for TiMs to take over, just as they have taken over so many organizations originally founded to promote and protect gay rights (as recently noted elsewhere on this blog). Why aren’t there people transing to all of those other sexes that make up the “spectrum”? Funny that we only ever hear about “transwomen” and “transmen”. Is it because, deep down everyone knows the only real destination for anyone who is “trans” is the opposite sex?
@4 This is an excellent rant.
How many AGPs suffer from the all-pervasive “suicidal ideation” of “trans youth” that is wheeled out in defence of redefining “woman”?
Good goddamn question.
YNnB? #4
As I like to say any “gendering” what so ever is misgendering, and anything that’s “gendered” in any way is “gender inappropriate” in my case. Never mind “cis”, even “man” is misgendering coming from these people. A sentence like “Bjarte Foshaug is a man” has no possible meaning that is both (a) true and (b) not thoughtcrime according to gender ideology at the same time. There is no non-trivial way to define “man” that applies to the person formerly known as Ellen Page and me at the same time.
I’m pretty sure Sastra doesn’t agree with me on this (which is fine!), but I still think the main reasons TIFs (or even the classical “effeminate-boy-likely-to-grow-up-gay” type of TIMs) get any attention at all from the TRA crowd are:
1, Keeping up a minimal appearance of “balance” and “even-handedness”.
2. To serve as a Trojan horse: It’s just so much easier to sell the AGP agenda if you pass it off as standing up for non-threatening girls in severe distress or sensitive and vulnerable gay boys than if you allow people to think of porn-crazed, loud, aggressive, intimidating, entitled, abusive and bullying straight male fetishists who revel in hateful, violent rhetoric against women and shout things like “suck my lady-cock!”.
Indeed another early red flag leading up to my “Peak Trans” moment (apart from noticing the Trump-level dishonesty of the accusations leveled at alleged “TERFs”) was noticing how the very same people shouting about “TERFs” were for the most part also the ones shouting about “SWERFs” (the similarity of the acronyms is of course hardly an accident), the people complaining about “transphobia” were the same as the people complaining about “sex negativity” or “kink-shaming”, and the people spouting “trans women are women” were the same as the people spouting “sex work is real work” or “blow jobs are real jobs”. This was shortly after I had learned about “incels”, so the connection could hardly be more obvious.
As I have previously written, I think the steps from autogynephilia to Gender Ideology as we know it go roughly as follows:
1. I want to be one of the people commonly known as “women” or “females” (i.e. people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers).
2. If I can’t be what they are, they have to be what I am, thus making both them and me part of the same group. I.e. “women” are whatever they have to be to make me one of them (and they don’t get a say in the matter).
3. However, since I don’t have innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers, the thing that makes them the same as me cannot be anything physical or observable.
4. Something entirely personal and “internal”, like a certain way of thinking or feeling, an “inner sense of self” etc. seems the most promising candidate.
5. However, many of the biological females might not appreciate having all sorts of specific mental traits attributed to them, especially if said traits seem entirely derived from sexist stereotypes, pornography, and male jerk-off fantasies.
6. To keep the females from protesting that this doesn’t apply to them at all and walking out in droves, better stick to tautologies and circular definitions (A “woman” is “whatever I happen to be” etc.) and avoid specifics at all costs.
Except Chase Strangio.
I identify my gender as plaid; what about me? Where is there a place for plaid otters?
iknklast @ 8
Yep, Strangio is severely disruptive. I’d add the TiFs like Gavin Grimm, but in the sense that they are being used as a proxy in the “bathroom bills” war so that it doesn’t appear to conflict with safeguarding women and girls.