It turns out you have to have expertise in “gender” to be able to say that men are not women.
It’s a very complicated, difficult, technical subject. You can’t just rock up and say that man is not a woman. You need to have, at least, read a book by Sally Hines first.
Comments
13 responses to “Mere amateurs”
I would like to think that my Ph.D in Biology and my bachelor’s degree in Political Science give me some level of expertise on what a woman is (though of course, poli sci really has no bearing on what a woman is).
I realize that isn’t the expertise Hines means, but what Hines means is idiotic.
I beg to differ. Girls and women have — of necessity — lifelong history of, qualifications related to, and actual expertise in distinguishing males from females.
Yes but that doesn’t count, you see. We know it doesn’t count because it comes up with the wrong answer.
Ah, takes me back to the days of the Gnu Atheists, where we were told that the only people who are qualified to opine on the existence of god are theologians.
Or the classic Catch-22 of “you can’t say something is nonsense unless you have devoted years of your life to studying it, and if you have spent years of your life studying it, why are you so obsessed with it?”
Well I’m qualified to speak here because. . . I’m human. There’s a radical political concept based on that idea but its name escapes me at the moment.
Wittgenstein said “Whereof one cannot speak, one must thereof be silent” but that’s not quite the case, is it. I mean that’s why God created social media, to disprove that very proposition.
There was an even spicier reply a little further down:
Screechy Monkey, #4.
Which takes me back to the, erm, days before PZ banned me, and particularly to the day I was engaged in a back-and-forth with Gilliel, who got more and more frustrated as I picked holes in her specious arguments until she finally snapped, posting ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. You haven’t even read Butler, have you? HAVE YOU?’
No dismissing the nonsense until you’ve wasted too much time reading every idiot who ever wrote in favour of the nonsense.
How ironic that PZ devised the “Courtier’s Reply” argument that he won’t use in reference to this one issue.
Sackbut, given that he’s taken to using they/them pronouns when referring to individual spiders I think he’s too deep into it now for logic to regain a foothold.
Couldn’t he just call them Itsy and Bitsy?
Speaking of PZ and his ability to apply rational thought to any subject bar transgenderism, today he has this to say about the supporters of drinking raw milk:
The primary victims are kids who don’t understand the risks and trust the adults, you say? Now where else have we come across that scenario? Oddly enough I’ve looked through the comments and there’s not a single sarcastic ‘Oh! Won’t somebody think of the children!’ to be seen.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/09/07/finally-a-cause-to-unite-the-right-and-left/#comments
Oh gawd. Physician heal thyself eh wot?