This doc thinks she’s clever

Helen Webberley is out of her depth.

Women live as women – simple – it is not about dresses, heels, pinks, or body parts. Gender identity and expression is not a costume and exclusion is not clever, it is a civil wrong.

Being a woman is not about body parts?

I think you’ll find it is, actually.

If it’s not about body parts, how do you explain all the children who keep getting born? Where do they come from? Is it a pill? An incantation? Something people smoke? A miracle?

Women don’t “live as women”; women just are women. How people live is a very large and complex subject, but talk of people “living as” women or men or goats or tulips or food processors is just that: talk. Empty talk, pretentious talk, silly talk.

This poor woman is in way over her head.

Poor Carla Denyer pulls the trap door closed on herself. She doesn’t really know how to answer the question, she says – well quite, and that’s the problem. What does it mean? What does it mean to live as a goat, a clock, a strawberry, a handful of dust?

Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. There is pretending, which is pretty clear. There is living as if various things – as if one were healthy or ill, rich or poor, athletic or a couch potato – but living as something isn’t English idiom. It doesn’t make any sense. That’s why he asked. Her failure to think of an answer other than repeating exactly what he asked the question about is quite a pathetic display.

(We’ve seen and discussed this video before, I think, but it popped up again, and I found her irritable flailing both amusing and annoying. Plus Webberley.)

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