Ah yes the “habit” of thinking there are two genders and we know which is which. It’s just a silly frivolous thoughtless habit, like dropping your coat on the floor or whistling.
Hooray that we’re so enlightened now we’ve broken the habit, and are in a position to teach children “the right concepts” – that you’re a girl if you feel like a girl and if you don’t feel like a girl you’re a boy or nonbinary or one of leventy seven other flavors of GenDer.
Comments
18 responses to “Teach the right concepts”
If we don’t want two genders, then let’s go with 7 billion genders. Let’s each identify as ourselves.
And what’s this argument about pronouns? Those seem binary. Why are the non-binary people thinking they are important. We could just refer to people by their names.
Or perhaps I am just misunderstanding the whole thing.
Neil, I do have a problem with pronouns, not in general because they are useful, but because they are overused. (See, I used several pronouns in that sentence, so obviously not totally unaccepting). I try to train my students that there are many cases where a pronoun doesn’t convey enough information. They tend to start essays with statements like: “They sent a probe to the sun”. Of course, I have to come back with “they who?” My students think that’s unfair, because I know who.
And sometimes when they use a pronoun instead of a noun, the answer says the exact opposite of what they meant it to say, because there is a noun earlier that the pronoun then appears to reference, but that is the incorrect noun for that part of the answer.
So, yeah, pronouns. Useful…unless you start multiplying them, or making them mean things they don’t mean, or make it where they don’t identify what they are there to identify unless you have the handy gender-inclusive codebook (which is sold out all the time, of course, but you still better get it right, or we will descend on your twitter account and your boss’s email like a swarm of flies on rotting meat. You TERF.)
The pronoun argument has to do with policing and controlling language. use by others Pronouns are often used when the person being referenced is not present. “Misgendering” someone can get the person doing it into varying degrees of trouble. The getting into trouble part relies on somebody reporting you for doing it. This is where the policing and control enter the picture. The type of trouble depends on the person and the place. This sort of enforcement seems to be used more against women. This is important and telling, because women have a vested interest in being able to accurately refer to male-bodied people. Maria MacLachlan, a 60 year old woman who was assaulted at Speaker’s Corner in London, England, was rebuked by the judge presiding over the trial of her attacker, a trans identified male, for not referring to her assailant as “she” during her testimony. Here we have an official of the state enforcing the use of “preferred” pronouns in a highly charged and emotional environment. McLachlan was attacked by a male because she was a woman speaking in defence of her sexed-based rights. To be forced by the judge to agree to the lie that her attacker was a “woman” must have been very upsetting and traumatic. This is compelled, policed speach. Erasing women’s ability to accurately describe the world and their own bodies, erases their ability to organize and campaign to defend their sex-based rights, which are in place to protect them from the oppression that is imposed on them as a result of the material reality of their female physiology.
Usage of “preferred” pronouns should be a courtesy, not a right. I have no right to demand any particular pronoun anyone wishes to ascribe to me, particularly when I’m not there. I don’t get to put words in people’s mouth. I reserve the right to correctly sex somebody through the use of the terms I deem fit. Trans “women” are not women, which is why I use the term “trans identified male.’ Using the other term cedes too much ground, as many are no more women than I am. I have nothing at stake, but women do, and usage of the term “TW” itself is too much of a buy-in to trans ideology, and one I’m no longer willing to participate in. This essay helped change my mind. Pronouns are Rohypnol; https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/
The “right” to gender people is rather lopsided in its application. Trans people get to label the rest of humanity as “cis,” which is in itself a claim about “gender identity.” “Cis” people supposedly have “agreement” between their “gender identity” and their “sex assigned at birth.” I have never heard a definition of this concept that does not boil down to “conforms and is comfortable with, the gendered, sexist steretypes ascribed to one’s given sex.” Sorry, not soory, I don’t HAVE a “gender identity,” cis or otherwise. To insist that I do is as much of an imposition and “misgendering” as using the “wrong” pronouns when referring to a trans identified person.
Similarly, “non-binary” people only get to be special if everyone else is not. Their claim to be “beyond” the socially constructed categories and limitations of gender depends upon everyone else remaining trapped within them, and for that “unsaved” remnant to willingly accept this entrapent as inevitable and permanent. But “non-binary” people do not cease to be men and women simply because they no longer wish to comply with gender stereotypes. Don’t misunderstand me: to reject and deny the validity of sexist, gendered, patriarchal stereotypes is a laudable goal. But is that what they’re really doing? I don’t think so. (I used to think that the whole “non-binary” thing put Enbees in political conflict with trans ideology, which is dependent on rigid, gendered sex roles to remain coherent, but I now see that there is no such conflict). “Non-binary” people want special treatment for themselves: they want privilege. They’re hoping to escape regulation and confomity while leaving it intact and in place for everyone else. If they were to actually smash the gender binary, there would be no binary for them to step outside. No freedom for them without prison for everyone else. There is no “NB” without the binary; no “trans” without “cis.” This is a project of narcissistic individualism, not universal liberation.
For the UK Census, gender identity is to be included in the questions for the first time. I’m not sure if ‘none’ will be a ‘check box’ option but if not it is what I’ll be writing in the ‘other’ box.
I do question the wisdom of including such a subjective category in an official census, particularly as it pre-supposes that everybody actually knows the meaning of gender identity. My sympathies are with the poor souls tasked with evaluating the information who will have to make sense of the near-infinite combinations of the eleventy nine and counting possible gender identities.
Okay, here’s the money quote from the article:
There’s a big switcheroo in this description, involving “sex” and “gender.”
1.) Sexual anatomy – male & female. Should be called sex, but not made clear
2.) Gender — also male & female, but should be masculine and feminine stereotypes.
3.) Masculine & feminine stereotypes don’t fit everyone. True.
4.) Sex and gender aren’t the same. True.
5.) Both sex and gender are therefore fluid. What the f*ck.
Why can’t sex be fixed, but gender fluid? Males and females don’t all fall in line with “the stereotypes of gender roles and gender expressions. Men can wear sparkly clothes and cry over romantic movies; women can fix cars and wear sensible shoes. Sex isn’t the first domino. Gender is bullsh*t. Everybody happy.
Instead, it’s “I’m not a boy OR a girl, because I have a personality which is both masculine and feminine.” Sex and gender are the same. They go together like domino#1 and domino #2 — but you don’t have to play the game! You can pick a gender or make one up.
The rest of the article is irrelevant.
Good summary of the GCF position. One which is continually misstated (read: lied about) by trans activists.
Sastra:
Because as you hinted at later in your comment, fixed sex puts the lie to the trans-x are x nonsense. For such enthusiastic gender non-essentialists they certainly put a lot of store in the idea that sex and gender must align, to the extent that sex has to be fluid in order to achieve a match where there would otherwise be a discrepancy.
I wonder if it’s partly laziness.
One of the justifications they use for the need for hormones and surgery is that, when the mind and the body don’t line up, “it’s easier to change the body than the mind.” (Not really, but whatever.)
So they’re also dealing with a situation where the personality and the culture don’t line up. They don’t want to change their personalities (okay), but for some reason they aren’t considering changing the culture (“Free to Be, You and Me.”) Instead, they just accept that gender roles are inevitable, aligned with sex just the way society says, and thus they need to change sex. It’s the short term fix which focuses on them. They can be an activist with results right now.
Trying to change the sexist culture requires accepting delayed gratification, and looking outward.
It is even more confused and problematic than this. The guidance on the sex question is allowing people to refer to legal documents that can be changed to reflect people’s gender identity. So instead of two clear cut questions, one asking for sex at birth and the other, current gender identity, the sex question will allow “gender identity” answers, thereby making the “data” being collected a lot less accurate and useful. They have essentially changed the definition of sex in the census.
Women’s Place UK has a crowdfunder to back get an emergency judicial ruling to rescind this redefinition:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/sexinthecensus2021
#9 Bruce
The TRAs are so nearsighted, they don’t even see the harm for themselves in making that change. The census is the primary mechanism by which a government learns about the demographics of the nation, and trans people in effect become invisible if they are permitted to give a gender and sex that match.
Sorry in advance for the quote-bundle:
1. iknklast:
AT NIGHT.
I’ll get my coat.
2. Your Name’s Not Bruce
Maria has an excellent YouTube channel (Peak Trans) here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK3XxCZhU8l4tL7yRaYQX1Q
It’s proper old-skool point-by-point-rebuttal stuff with a lot of justified eye-rolling. She covers the assault Bruce talks about among many other things.
Yes, this article will rightly be referenced for as long as this fad lasts and it’s definitely worth reading.
3. Acolyte of Sagan:
The gender identity section of the census is optional. But of course, that raises more questions than it answers and causes problems for the accurate recording of trans people as well as everybody else. Is ticking “none” the same as not answering the question at all? And so on. Trans activists haven’t thought this through. Or if they have, they’re going for the immediate hit of validation rather than what would actually be best for trans people.
Jane Claire Jones is on the case. There’s a webinar covering it and other stuff on the political erasure of sex here: https://janeclarejones.com/2020/10/19/the-political-erasure-of-sex-sex-and-the-census/
I haven’t had time to watch it yet. She’s also suggesting that UK people request a paper version of the census form so they can write on comments the online form doesn’t allow but again I’ve been too busy to keep up to speed. Perhaps it’s covered in the webinar, must watch it.
4. Bruce again:
Yes, I was going to say that too,
And Holms, too, sorry I missed you off.
Jane Claire Jones will be talking about the UK Census on the Graham Linehan/Helen Staniland/Arty Morty podcast, The Mess We’re In, this very Wednesday afternoon as is.
https://twitter.com/MessWereInShow
Missed me off…?
…the comment that was delayed because of links.
Yes, that one.
Hopefully I have caused you some minor paranoia ;)
But accurate numbers might also weaken the trans activist position. Not everyone under the large and elastically defined “trans umbrella” is going to “identify” as trans. Finding out how few transpeople there are reduces the size of the tail wagging the dog. Being able to calculate an actual homicide rate per 100,000 will probably make it clearer that trans people are actually one of the safest demographics in that respect., rather than the most murdered, as is widely broadcast to anyone who wants to hear it or not. As many trans activist talking points rely on conflation and obfuscation, actual hard numbers and solid data might be a problem for their “arguments.”
“Gender shouldn’t be limited to only masculine or feminine, so it’s time to break the habit of expecting everyone to perform one or the other. The best place to start? Teaching this to our children.”
There, I fixed it.