The crass ignorance
I saw people talking about this guy and it reminded me of the days when I was on the same blog network as he was. Fun times.
The crass ignorance is it. So educated people all know perfectly well what “living as a woman” means? They fully grasp the distinction between being a woman and living as a woman, and understand it, and think it makes perfect sense? It’s only the crassly ignorant who think being a woman is all there is, and that “living as” a woman is just silly contemporary jargon that names an impossibility?
What “reality of the transgender experience” can change the meaning of the word “women” such that it applies to men?
Says the man, placidly. Easy for him. Easy for him to call it a “moral panic”; he’s not one of the people at risk if men can freely use all spaces marked for women. He’s not one of the people who will lose their full, equal participation in society if men who identify as women continue to push us out.
I vaguely remember thinking that this guy was an odd fit at FtB. Wasn’t he sort of sympathetic to the MRA types or something? Or am I completely misfiring here?
Sure Ally, ignorance. As in, you and others claim to know what it means to ‘live as a woman’ in a sense that can be applied to both male and female people. We don’t have that knowledge; more, it appears to us to be completely lacking in any coherent meaning. Why don’t you share that knowledge with us O wise sage?
Also, we know what gender is in some limited senses. Grammatical gender is one, and the idea that things like colours or clothes or hobbies can be gendered (i.e. associated more strongly with one sex than the other) is another. But what is gender as an identity? We keep hearing that it is some sort of internal sense of affinity, but descriptions of it regularly imply into mind-body dualism or religion or both. I have actually had it explained to me, by someone with a reputation to be knowledgeable about such things no less, as “like a flavour of the soul”!
So yes, ignorance in the sense of lacking some knowledge which you and others seem to think is basic. Why not share it?
Anyway, this tweet makes me vaguely sad for him. He was actually one of the rare men’s rights advocates that was not just a man spitting venom at women and I considered him a force for good, but now he is blind.
Screechy, he was often accused of being an MRA by the likes of Abbeycadabbra and similar shriekers. However there was no depth to their accusations – he advocated for men’s health, therefore he was an MRA. Technically true, but completely ignoring the fact that he was sensitive to women’s needs and had zero hostility to women’s rights or feminism. So yes he was an MRA, but not in the sense usually meant by that specific term – a flaming and rancid arsehole to women.
@Holms: He’s a flaming and rancid asshole now. He gets no slack.
Holms, that sounds familiar. Thanks.
I used to hang out in forums where Creationists regularly debated the Evolutionists. Whenever a Creationist demanded that we define a key term — evolution, natural selection, speciation, etc — not one person, from evolutionary biologist to interested teenager, ever complained that it was “too complicated” to explain in such a forum. Obviously, the specific details were glossed over and there was a depth of information not provided, but every person supporting the Theory of Evolution had a succinct but accurate definition ready to slap down. It was a solid start, a beginning to a more nuanced discussion.
It was the Creationists who would often play coy.
I know which side of the trans debate resembles the Evolutionists, and which side resembles the Creationists.
Sure, there is truth to this…but…the culture warriors that need to get bored are the TRAs. They need to learn what gender is…and even more what it is not. They need to learn what SEX is, too, and how it relates to the term “woman”.
I’m feeling a little grouchy right now because I’m at the FFRF convention, and the most recent speaker was a teenager who found it necessary to announce pronouns (he/him/she/her all acceptable as long as they are said with respect) and inform the assembly he was non-binary. No, dude, you’re not. You’re a gay male, and there is literally nothing wrong with that, but someone has sold you a bill of goods. And quit talking about being bullied to the point of nearly committing suicide; for those of us who were bullied (for being a girl who wasn’t what anyone thought I should be) to the point of actually attempting suicide, it sounds manipulative – especially said three times in a ten minute talk.
I never liked his blog posts much; he always had a tendency to lecture and scold like his readers were misguided children in need of his guiding hand. These tweets are certainly an echo of that. To be honest, there were a lot of less-than-capable thinkers/writers over there (and then later at whatever that take-our-ball-and-go-home aggregator that split off was).
That’s funny because from where I stand it looks very much like the gender-critical side keeps asking the gender-uncritical side to define and explain what they mean by ‘gender’ which is hardly indicative of any particular unwillingness “to learn what gender is” (How the hell are we supposed to learn except by asking?). But every time we ask, we’re told the question itself is evidence of “crass ignorance”, as well as “bigotry”, “phobias”, “hate”, and “a flat-out refusal to acknowledge or attempt to understand the reality of the transgender experience.”
“The crass ignorance of this question …”
What question?
I frequently feel like i’m walking into the middle of something here.
We’re supposed to give them a blank cheque and free pass into wherever and whatever they want, whenever they want it, based on their say-so. Do otherwise and it’s hatred, bigotry, and “violence.”
But they more than just “inclusion & full, equal participation.” They want us to accept and participate in lies. They demand special dispensations and privileges to access female only spaces when they are not female, and to be “validated” by everyone else as something they’re not, and never can be. They’re unwilling to accept that these are the “actual issues” of trans “inclusion.”
I don’t think I ever actually read Ally Fogg’s blog.
iknklast @ 7 – Ugh that sounds maddening. Freedom From Religion and Enslavement to Gender Ideology. Whoopee.
Re #10 “What question?” It seems the tweet linked in the OP is missing or protected. It was responding to this one:
https://twitter.com/francescrook/status/1585898622226354176
which asks “What does ‘living as a woman’ mean?”
Yes sorry he’s protected his tweets now, they were public when I did this post.
“What does ‘living as a woman’ mean?”
“Nothing, because a woman can live any way at all.”
“There you go again with that restrictive gatekeeping.”
Wow, definitely not someone I’d’ve thought would drink the Flavor Aid, but I guess there’s sufficient incentives to do so… Maybe not as much as there were…