Quick, everyone identify as Peter Tatchell
Blah blah blah Peter.
Rabbits aren’t same as other women but equally valid.
Shovels aren’t same as other women but equally valid.
Sailboats aren’t same as other women but equally valid.
In short, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s hurbleburble meant to cover up the absurdity of claiming that men are women. Men aren’t the same as women how? In the sense of being the opposite of women – of being the other sex in a two-sex species. Men aren’t the same as women in the same way that up isn’t the same as down or night isn’t the same as day. “Valid” is beside the point.
Women are women based on their sex. Men are men based on their sex. The end. “Gender identity” is just a thing in the head, which can be meaningful to the owner of the head but isn’t meaningful to anyone else. We can all have fantasies about our identities, but what we can’t do is order everyone else to endorse the fantasies, let alone live by them.
In other words Tatchell is talking about two different things but hoping that nobody will notice as long as he is referring to both things by the same name. It’s bad puns all the way down.
Wrong, Mr. Tatchell
People who are women are classified as such based on chromosomal sex and age (until adulthood, they are girls).
I don’t accept your re-defining the word ‘woman’ to apply it to men. Use a different one.
Somewhat curious which biological markers he has in mind.
Trans?
“Transwomen are women based on them being men while claiming to be women” is perhaps a reasonable translation.
I think that cracks it in one, as in gravitation. ‘Down’ and ‘up’ are opposite absolute directions for people on opposite sides of the Earth. But they are the same relative direction for both. So ‘up’ can be simultaneously ‘down.’
Einstein if he were still around would no doubt agree. His famous equation E=mc^2 can be interpreted as saying ‘Every man be what he chooses to be, and that again; as multiplied by himself / herself / itself, and taking whatever frame of reference in space-time he / she / it might choose.’
Plenty of food for thought there, IMHO.
Trans [women] — i. e., men — are NOT women, of any kind. Men do not have any “biological markers” that designate them as women. Their biology, and all of their ” biological markers,” identify them conclusively as men, i. e., as not-women. Just saying something doesn’t make it true.
One of the newer and most insidious misogynies perpetrated against women in the post-truth era is the erosion of women’s rights, the destruction of women as a political class, the erasure of women as a biological class, all perpetrated in the name of men, who falsely declare themselves to be women. There is nothing these men won’t cheat women out of, nothing they won’t take over and take away from women, nothing that they will allow women to have or do for themselves alone. The “trans rights” movement is a men’s rights movement. It misogynistic to its very core. THAT’S a misogyny not “shared” by women and men-who-call-themselves-women. It’s perpetrated by trans women and their allies against women — actual women — of all kinds.
Other biological markers? He must be talking about the head tilt. It’s biology, I tells ya.
As I try to understand the insistence that men be called women, this is the only benefit I can see for men. While it may seem a tired comparison to bring up the idea that one can change skin complexion and hair to mimic racial characteristics in order to claim to be a minority race (as in the movie “Soul Man,” which probably ruined C. Thomas Howell’s acting career,) the gains from being recognized as a woman are based on the fact that women have some protective benefits that recognize their oppression as the second sex in legal rights.
The best way to erode those protective rights is to make everyone believe that ascribed status of women is something that is actually an achieved status, and thus malleable. If those rights can be applied to anyone based on their internal self-description, then they carry a diluted protection for those whom they were actually designed to protect. It’s opportunistic for some males, while it’s a way to destroy women’s rights for the MRA’s who love to be progressive allies to men who claim to be women.
But what’s even worse is that men don’t even have to try to mimic the appearance of women, they can simply claim it and try to shame anyone who asks why they don’t “transition.” It’s as if white people could adopt any stereotypical cultural affectations of African-Americans in order to get an affirmative action preference on an application for a minority grant. That would be rightly denounced.
What’s strange to me is that races are not discreet, and African-American descendants of slaves have some white ancestry, and their are white people descended from black people. Sex is absolutely discreet, even in people with DSD’s (although it’s not as physically apparent.) Yet, we are supposed to accept male sex simulation of females, and the reverse, but reject blackface. Why is this such a difficult thing for people to see?
I can only think of one reason. Misogyny is a lesser offense than racism in patriarchal societies.
Should “adapt” be “adopt”?
Yes, men claiming to be women, so that they can demand access to women’s spaces and thus overturn the few rights to safety and fairness which women have struggled to win, is the ultimate expression of misogyny.
Everyone here can see it; why can’t Tatchell?
Yes, you are correct, Ophelia.
Fixed. I usually fix without asking but wasn’t sure about this one.
Thank you, I appreciate the clarification request.
Words matter!
Words eh? Well how about discreet vs. discrete? ;-)
Am I the only who saw the picture and had a flash of “Silence of the Lambs”?