Peak stupid

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Julia Gillard explaining how men are women if they really really think so.

She’s asked if she can say what a woman is. Instead of saying yes of course I can she taaalllkks verrrry slowwwwly about how terrible it is that people keep asking this question. She calls it a gotcha moment – how original. She says, verrry slowwwly indeed, that we have to come at this from first principles. She burbles about rich diversity. She says it’s powerful. Finally at 1:39 [that’s a long time to say nothing relevant!] she gets to the myth.

There are a number of people who genuinely believe they are trapped in the wrong body, and they want to be recognized as the gender that their mind, their mind and soul have always told them that they are.

Ok. First of all, how do you know they genuinely believe that? It’s not knowable. Other people’s minds are a black box. This appalling ideology is based on an assumption that is negated by everything we know about people, minds, knowledge, rhetoric, politics and all the rest of it.

Second, and all too obviously, so the fuck what? People can “genuinely” believe all kinds of bullshit – just look at how many people think Donald Trump is a great guy.

Guess what: we could all claim we genuinely believe we are Julia Gillard. Would she make duplicate keys to her house for all of us?

It’s just staggering that this childish horseshit is allowed to cancel women’s rights.

Comments

6 responses to “Peak stupid”

  1. Holms Avatar
    Holms

    Such extensive squirming! Politicians have been pivoting any time the question is inconvenient for a long time, but now they also like to call the question a ‘gotcha’. No idea how they think that works, but it is a clear signal that they know the answer they want to give is risible in some way.

    Gillard has the welcome distinction of being Australia’s first female prime minister, yet she punted on women’s protections. Less known is that she is also our first atheist (or at least, non-religious) PM; she also punted on the question of religious entanglement with government.

  2. Alan Peakall Avatar
    Alan Peakall

    It seems to me bleakly ironic that the sort of pioneering female heads of government (Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher…) who would have had least truck with this sort of contemptible evasiveness were precisely those who were, in their time, denounced as “not real women”.

  3. twiliter Avatar
    twiliter

    Her dishonesty about biological sex is indeed a parlor game.

  4. Omar Avatar
    Omar

    “It’s just staggering that this childish horseshit is allowed to cancel women’s rights.”

    But… It could be good for garden fertiliser, maybe?

  5. Freemage Avatar
    Freemage

    Even if we take as writ the claimed feelings of transwomen, that means nothing in terms of how the law should look upon them. Many religious believers sincerely think their sky-daddy is the best (and only!) sky-daddy. But while they are free to profess this, and try to get others to agree with them, they cannot use the law to force this belief (or at least, the rote repetition of the belief) on others.

    This has to be doubly so in the case of trans, because the belief itself clearly cannot be examined. Just because someone sincerely believes they have a woman’s mind, how can they actually know this? One defense usually posited by trans believers in face of skepticism is that critics can’t possibly know what’s in the mind of the transwoman. But this is exactly the issue. Transwomen also have no ability to compare their internal mental structure to that of biological women. They may like things that are generally associated with femininity, but the whole crux of feminism is that femininity as a concept is a social creation, so while a transwoman might be falling into the roles and tastes their culture says women should do and like, they are not, in fact, capable of knowing if those things are what women actually like and want to do.

    Final bonus note: She does give the game away here when she adds “soul” after mind. This is a religious belief, and should be treated as such.

  6. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    Omar could you please follow the local convention on quotations? I’m tired of fixing yours for you.

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