so poetry and painting are the example given in definition 3. I must remember to send a wedding gift.
(Snark aside) it became rather big news when OED said that they may revise the definition of marriage to include same sex partnership. The OED had, at that point in 2013, a definition specifying one man and one woman. I don’t have a subscription to OED, and there has been an additional now that same sex marriage is recognized in some places.
It doesn’t matter to the law if two people of the same sex “feel” married, if legally they aren’t. And for a long time, and maybe still, the OED agreed.
@monstro has responded to your read on the author’s purposeful misgendering, so I won’t tread that ground.
What jumps out is that you seem more concerned about her choice of pronouns than the content of her argument or the evidence she brings with it. Here is a transwoman asking us to see the harm that comes with allowing fetishists refine womanhood and entitle themselves to female safe spaces, and you refuse to engage this.
What is so intellectually satisfying about finger wagging and language policing? This seems to be the only thing you feel qualified to contribute in this discussion, but I actually think you have the capacity to do a lot more than this.
It seems amazing how a redefinition of terms is now not… because you agreed with the redefiners aims. Of course LGBTQ+ people redefined marriage. For decades, if not centuries, marriage was between a man and woman (and if it was simply the traditionalists who were trying to redefine the term, please point me to the Gay and Lesbians marriages in the 1800s US). Let’s be honest, before the late 20th Century, no one in the English speaking world considered marriage to be anything other than heterosexual. LGBTQ+ people pushed for a massive expansion of the term (and yes, redefinition) ‘marriage’. I believe dictionaries literally rewrote the definition of marriage in wake of the gay rights movement. To claim otherwise is simply being disingenuous.
OK, let’s say I grant you that gay folks totally invented a new take on “marriage”. Turned it upside down, they did. Let’s say I believe this (obviously I don’t).
How does this compare to what’s going on with the trans movement? We’ve got “man”, “woman”, “gender”, “male”, and “female” being turned upside down. Do y’all not see how there is no parallel to this in any other social movement?
No one has a “marriage” identity. In contrast, half the world sees itself as “female”. Ergo, redefining “female” is nothing at all like redefining the legal concept of “marriage”. They aren’t comparable at all to each other. So I don’t know what you guys think braying about “marriage” is bringing to the discussion. It certainly doesn’t refute my point that the kind of language changes being pushed by the trans rights movement are nothing we’ve ever seen before.
I have to ask again if you followed the gay marriage debate.at.all. Because there were more than a few people who made (IMO laughable) statements about how redefining marriage would make their marriages be worth less. And how upset they were by it.
Maybe a little bit useful to compare to marriage, but the end result of SSM is virtually no difference to marriage, the way marriage is communicated, how people experience marriage, etc. That is absolutely not the case with the expansion of women to include anyone who identifies as women. We’ve seen examples of clunky medical recommendations, masculine-looking males identifying as women, genetically XY people dominating traditionally genetically XX sports, transwomen preying on ciswomen, transwomen chiding lesbians for not having sex with them, and so on. Allowing anyone to self-id as a woman without any sort of gatekeeping or conditional requirements will be a huge change to society and is not comparable to the effect of SSM on society.
Of course people were complaining about the degradation of “marriage” if the nasty gays got their hands on it. But that is analogous to people complaining about the degradation of the right to vote when the nasty blacks and women were clamoring for it. People have always complained about a right or a privilege losing its value when it no longer restricted to a privileged elite. That’s not them crying about a word change. That’s them crying about a legal change. (Marriage has always meant the joining of two people, things, or concepts).
“Female” has never been a label for the privileged elite. It has always described people possessing a certain anatomy. It isn’t a right. It isn’t a privilege. It is a label. It is a characteristic. “Marriage” is a legal concept. So of course it is subject to change. It is a concept with no concreteness. “Female” has always had a concrete meaning. The trans movement is trying to turn it into something with no concreteness.
It is very gaslighty for folks to act like we’ve ever experienced this before. Yes, words change. Legal concepts change. But what we are experiencing right now is truly something revolutionary.
I don’t know why folks can’t even agree with me on something so noncontroversial. It’s very frustrating.
The construction “even when” implies that the condition described is one that most people would assume meets the requirements laid out.
“I’m not going to let you in, even when you say the password correctly” is proper use. You did the thing, but even so, I’m not going to follow through. “I’m not going to let you in, even when you get the password wrong,” is improper use, and no one says this.
“Even when I work hard, I struggle to complete tasks” makes sense.
“Even when I slack off, I struggle to complete tasks” does not.
I’m not stretching, and I’m not viewing this with bias. It’s the “even when” (and what follows) that suggests that the best or closest a trans woman or man can come to being (for unclear and undecided- or agreed-upon definitions of “being”) a man or woman respectively is ultimately nothing more than LARPing.
Well, I don’t know. She(?)'s deciding to use pronouns exclusively based on biological sex, and refers to herself as a “man living as a woman” in this piece. Digging into her other work, Miranda seems to quite intentionally not use the word “transgender” to describe herself, but rather transsexual. I’m not clear what her preferred pronouns are, but I take it that yes, she believes she’s a man living as a woman, and does not think that she is a woman.
No, it doesn’t, and this is a convoluted sort of gotcha. It seems clear that Miranda’s experience around themselves and their gender is different than how a lot of other trans people experience their gender (and also is likely aligned with some as well). Good for her. No one is disputing that men “who live as women” but still think of themselves as men, or women “who live as men” but still think of themselves as women don’t exist. If you want to classify them, maybe these are sub-sets of trans women and trans men. Maybe they’re sub-sets of men and women. Or something else. These folks self-identifying as however they want to identify doesn’t change the fact that there are also people whose experience in their bodies is one in which their gender does not match the one assigned to them at birth based on their genitals.
You’ve added an “all” to the slogan, to enhance its incorrectness, even though that’s your addition and not anyone else’s. I’ll remind us all that slogans and sound bites are not always and generally shouldn’t be expected to stand up to rigorous debate, and it’s not useful to use them as stand-ins for your opposition’s position.
The fact that there are “men who live as women” who identify as men does not undercut the position that trans women (who believe they are women) are women.
They are denying all trans women feminine pronouns, because they have male biological parts. That’s literally what they said. I think that’s an understandable position (even if I disagree with it), but you’re fabricating a more supposedly-polite or middle-ground reason that runs counter to the author’s stated intent, which, again, was:
They’re not gate keeping, or laying down the law against bad actors, they’re just being “factual” and “precise”.
I’m a married woman. When I tell people I’m married, they understand this means I’m in a serious long term relationship with another person.
Prior to SSM, the assumption would be that I’m legally married to a man. Post-SSM, folks might assume I’m married to a man or a woman. But the fundamental concept is the same: being in a serious long term relationship with another person.
Now let’s do this for “woman/female”.
Prior to TWAW, the assumption would be that I’m an adult member of the sex class that produces large gametes, carries pregnancies, and has the anatomy associated with these functions. Post TWAW, the assumption would be that either I’m an all of the above, or I’m the complete opposite.
TWAW changes the fundamental concept of “woman” to include adult males. Trying to act like this is comparable to tweaking marriage laws to include gay couples is like trying to act like decapitation by machete is comparable to a paper cut.
You can try to draw these false equivalencies, but you aren’t fooling anyone.
The original objection was that the LGBTQ+ rights movement did not change the lexicon, nor did it demand changes. It did. Let’s slightly move away from marriage for a moment and into general LG and Q rights (leaving aside T rights) for a second, quite recently the SCOTUS ruled that businesses cannot discriminate against LGBTQ+ persons in employment. There are numerous people on the right who are freaking out. They are saying things like we were told gay people just wanted to be left alone and they wouldn’t try to make us do things. And now they are talking about how people can’t refuse to bake wedding cakes for gay marriage; how people who believe in ‘traditional marriage’ due to their religious faith are being ‘canceled’; how people are claiming religious objections to same sex marriage are bigoted and those religious should be denied tax benefits because they hold those views.
In all of those instances, folks on the religious right (and not merely evangelicals, but Catholics, and Orthodox) are decrying a massive change to society that is forcing them to submit rather than being able to keep their religious faith. It has led some, like the Orthodox writer, Rod Dreher, to discuss heading for the hills in faith restricted communities to fight against the massive change to the society that they are witnessing. Perhaps people just don’t understand the viewpoint of some of these conservative religious communities as we don’t tend to interact with them all that much (except to mock them) - they legitimately feel under siege.
I know this is a long-ass thread, but I’ve never denied that there are transwomen who are women.
My objection is with the slogan “Transwomen are women”. If you believe there is a subset of transwomen who are merely role-playing and aren’t really women, then you should be able to understand why I object to this slogan. Instead of sitting up here arguing with me.
I’m not playing “gotcha”. My whole point here is that TWAW sounds good when shouted from a bullhorn, but it is problematic in practice. If you don’t agree with me on this, then maybe you should avoid attributing nefarious intentions to a transwoman from a sentence you’ve pulled out of context.
Maybe she doesn’t define “man” or “woman” the same way you do. Why should we assume only bonafied transwomen are gender ideologues? Maybe she’s an old school robot and simply defaults to old school definitions for these words. I see no need to gatekeep this person out of her own community just because her thoughts and observations portray some transwomen in a bad light. As a woman, I’m glad she’s speaking out and has let other women know what’s out there. We need more of this from all women, not less.
So as you see hardly any distinction between pre and post SSM as to the viewpoint of marriage (whereas there are some who see quite a significant change - there was a reason it took so long and if it wasn’t for a SCOTUS case, I don’t know if some Southern states would have had it by now), I see very little as to the concept of women when transwomen are added in. And yes, I’ve skimmed over a lot of this debate, so I’ve read your arguments. They just simply don’t sway me.
And apparently, I guess ‘my side’, as it were, has “fooled” plenty. That’s why you are upset, no?
To add to my point about the religious right in #4653, I’d note that the conservative religious folks who see there was a significant change in the concept of marriage (and are hoping it gets reversed - Justices Thomas and Alito just said Obergfell was wrongly decided and potential Justice Barrett will as well) also see the Trans right movement as an obvious path on the slippery slope of redefining traditional family norms, and aren’t surprised by this at all - they do shake their heads at folks like JKR for not realizing this was the obvious result for support for gay and lesbian rights.
“A woman came by the other day. You know, a person whose phenotype strongly suggests they have a female anatomy.”
versus
“A woman came by the other day. You know, a person who says they are a woman…although I guess you can say they act like one too, but let’s not say that too loud.”
Because I see a big difference between these things.
Currently, 99.9% speak like the first person. They use “woman” to signify adult female or someone who strongly resembles an adult female.
The trans movement is pushing for us to speak like the second person. I’m not talking about the transwomen you personally know and love. I’m talking about the gender ideologues that are doing a lot of shouting on behalf of the movement right now. They wish to divorce “woman” from its biological underpinnings so that it is solely about identity with no testable criteria.
Is it really just the slogan? I mean, does this come down to, for you “if they just shouted something else into the bullhorn, I’d actually agree with 90% of what they’re saying/what they want”? I don’t think that’s true.
At any rate, I didn’t take a position on the slogan, and don’t really want to get on that merry-go-round. I jumped in here because the author you quoted stated that the factual way to describe people is with pronouns based on their genitalia, and that trans men who think they are men and trans women who think they are women are, in fact, just role-playing.
Ultimately this is why it is almost impossible to engage in this conversation. You (and some others, to lesser degrees) raise really useful points about the complications around this issue, how we’re wielding language with imprecise and ever-changing definitions, and how there’s a lot about sex, gender, and the patriarchy/contemporary culture that we seem willing to close our eyes to in the name of these newfound understandings/beliefs about gender. This is stuff I wish we talked more about.
But when these issues come along with the insistence that trans women are not women and trans men are not men, when my trans friends tell me they are indeed men and women, there is no way I’m going to engage in the nuances in a thread like this when the underlying arguments are grounded in the position that factually, trans people are wrong, and society should treat them as if they are wrong.
Miranda Yardley (as the most recent example in this thread) makes strong and intentionally inflammatory remarks designed to illicit maximum outrage and to hurt those who disagree. When wrapped in those kinds of statements/language, it’s clear that there is not a good faith effort to reach understanding or compassionate co-existence. When you share stuff like that, you enter the argument on her terms.
I’m sure she may not, which was exactly my point. I am not gatekeeping her, nor do I think she should be. She can decide and articulate her gender for herself. This has nothing to do with her “observations [that] portray some transwomen in a bad light.” I made no such suggestion.
Also, haven’t there been multiple arguments thus far that trans women’s voices are really men’s voices in disguise? But now that there’s a trans woman saying the right stuff, it’s a woman’s voice who needs to be lifted (and if I’m misattributing those arguments to you, my apologies).
I don’t think most people really care about the difference. The only time it comes into play is if a woman looks too “man-ly” or “butch” - but that applies to the first statement women as well. And to be fair, transwomen (as well as transmen and gender fluid folks I know) I do know do believe that biological underpinnings should be unmoored in some fashion. Meaning the activists will lead a vanguard on that, and then things can rest on a different level that ends up being a compromise on both sides.
I will note, that gay marriage is actually a compromise. Back when Andrew Sullivan wrote his “The Case for Gay Marriage” around 1990, he got a lot of push back from the gay community. A lot of his friends as well as activists were explicitly anti-marriage. The activists were more likely to argue against marriage benefits (some of the less radical ones pushing ‘civil unions’). And we came to a compromise where we are now - which pissed off the radical gay activists and the conservative religious folks.