I accept your words just fine. My point is that an assertion by itself is not persuasive.
You’ve essentially said a definition for woman that only includes biological females doesn’t seem all that different to one that includes biological males and females. I don’t believe you believe these are equivalent because you haven’t helped me to believe that. Again, it’s like the whole machete slice vs paper cut thing.
I’m not sure how to specifically describe the difference, but conceptually these seem like different kinds of definition expansions:
The first type is expanding a concept to include new things under that same umbrella. The second type is fundamentally changing the concept the word was conveying. I view adding SSM to marriage as being more of the first type, and TWAW as more of the second. For thousands of years, woman essentially meant someone who was genetically XX. It wasn’t an abstract concept. The word feminine is more of a concept and it seems to be more correct to say TWAF. TWAF doesn’t change the concept of feminine into something new, but rather it is including something new that fits with the existing concept. TWAW fundamentally changes what has traditionally been meant by the word woman, which is an adult person who is genetically XX. And since much of our society is delineated along these genetic differences, having someone switch from one side to the other is going to have significant impacts.
And @mostro ignored it, and my read is right, and if you disagree, your read is incorrect.
Her choice of pronouns is her argument. From the get go, Miranda said that she was using “precise and factual descriptions”. I’m not that interested in reading beyond the first few paragraphs. Miranda says “The framing of any discussion or debate is all important,” and I agree. So, in other contexts, I might engage with other points Miranda makes in a more thoughtful manner, the framing makes it impossible to do so without tacitly accepting her framing.
Also, I find it interesting that Miranda does not clarify her own pronouns anywhere, and, as I pointed out earlier, never calls herself a woman, but rather a “man living as a woman”. As you’ve spent much of this thread insisting that (some) trans men are using their privilege to drown out the voices of real women, I feel like this is an author you’d be hesitant to elevate.
This whole thread is about “language policing”. I could care less what language Miranda Yardley uses in her articles. What I’m concerned about is what that language means.
As I said in my most recent reply to @monstro, if you’re starting with the position that “trans men are really women, and trans women are really men,” I don’t know that there’s much discussion to be had. If you’re not open to the idea that “man” and “woman” each have multiple overlapping, conflicting, and changing meanings, then how can there possibly be common ground?
I’m all about interesting and practical philosophical discussions about what it means to be a man/woman and how those meanings can and should play out in society, but those conversations have to start in a place where trans people can sit at the table and have their experiences and self-descriptions accepted as truth.
Is that better or worse than “shrieking”? Important question - is this braying also “shrill”?
And I would argue that both SSM and TWAW are more akin to definition 1 to me. I hope you can see where that is possible. (And there are people who think SSM and TWAW are definition 2, of course).
Ok, so even digging more into Miranda Yeardly, it’s clear that Miranda is an intentional asshole and provocateur. I’m not sure why we should take anything Miranda has to say at face value or in good faith.
And further reinforces the clear signal that the main point of Miranda’s arguments is that trans women are really men.
No it’s not. That’s what you’re choosing to argue. What you are completely ignoring are the material facts the author is pointing out, that explain her point of view as a transwoman.
Maybe you can add more context around why you think TWAW are more like the first case. I’m honestly more confused now than when the thread started about what transwoman mean when they say they identify as a woman.
In some ways I can see that TWAW, but that is more in the classical sense of a TW, where she is highly conforming to feminine and gender norms. In that situation, a TW does seem to fit under the concept of women. But I don’t feel that way universally. With TW being just a state of mind and not anything to do with appearance or behavior, I’m not sure if it makes sense to have a masculine-looking and masculine-acting genetically XY people under the umbrella of women. I’m confused what such a person means when they say they identify as a woman. I don’t see any issue with them saying they are a transwoman, but them saying they are a woman doesn’t seem to fit with the concept of what a woman is.
Here, read this bit from the article. I mean really read it.
We are finding ourselves in a dystopian world where we are unable to talk about biological sex, sexual orientation or even name the reality of these in relation to the small number of perpetrators of harassment and sexual and other violence against women and girls. Just think what it means for all of us, should our sources of news and information and our discussion channels make it impossible for us to have real conversations about these things. Where will this end?
The irony of you going on and on about pronouns in light of this statement…Jesus.
The vast majority of TW present as to current social ideas of feminine (or at least as feminine as they can - considering the exorbitant price of hormone therapy). There are those who believe themselves inherently to be women - their belief that nature made a mistake and they are in a body they don’t belong in - but they aren’t interested in hormones or conforming to social notions of feminine. On the other hand there are plenty of women who don’t either and are called butch and are perfectly fine to exist that way, dressing ‘manly’. I would argue that feminine fashion norms are still evolving so it’s difficult to make judgements on whether someone is looking feminine ‘enough’.
Are there likely to be a few who decide I’m a woman while not feeling gender dysphoria and wanting to act as manly as possible? Sure. But I am not going to judge a whole group based on those tiny subset of people.
This is really the difference between women as a concept versus women as a noun. We have other things which fit under the concept of women, such as ships. Ships are often referred to as women and use female pronouns, but no one thinks of a ship as equivalent to a genetically XX person. No one calls you a homophobe if you’re attracted to women but you don’t want to have a relationship with a ship. I think it’s okay if TW are under the concept of women, but I think some TW are taking advantage of that and saying they therefore are equivalent to the noun meaning of women. When modern TW can cover the whole range from extremely feminine people who you’d be shocked to find out are genetically XY to extremely masculine people who you can’t discern any feminine traits at all, I don’t think we can just make a blanket TWAW admission.
Taking it from the other side, is there anything that would make you say a particular transwoman is not a woman? Say this person sincerely identifies as a woman. Is there anything about that person that would make you say they do not meet the definition of a woman? Or is it enough to sincerely state “I am a woman” and things like appearance, bodily features, and behaviors are irrelevant?
I would start from the premise that if you sincerely define yourself as a woman, I would accept that definition. The only way they’d lose that definition is if there is evidence they aren’t being sincere. I may initially get the pronouns wrong, but I’d make sure I’d never make that mistake again. Interestingly enough I know more Transmen than Transwomen, and some of those TM come across as very feminine.
So you’re okay with woman being defined as a person who believes they are a woman.
It doesn’t take a transphobic bigot to object to this definition. Some of us want “woman” to follow the same rules that govern other states of being. To be an American, you must meet certain criteria. To be a doctor, you must have certain qualifications. To be woman, you can’t simply say you’re a woman; there has to be objective standards for it to mean something.
Can you agree this is not a transphobic position?
How would you deal with sex-segragated activities and spaces? Do trans people automatically go to the prison of the gender they identify with? Do they compete in sports as that gender? Is any sincere trans woman eligible for scholarships or awards created for women? And how do you know who is sincere? What about dating? Should people expect others to be attracted to them based on gender identity, or on general appearance, genital type, and personality?
My problem is that this slogan is the only thing I’m hearing from people on your side when concerns are brought up. It is being treated as a guiding principle rather than a mindless protest chant. And if we were dealing with any other kind of slogan, it wouldn’t matter so much to me. But it does matter because “woman” matters. It isn’t just a word to me. I want people to care about words and not allow them to be changed just because their friends say that’s what they want.
I don’t know why you don’t trust me on this. It’s frustrating, but I’m not going to try to convince you that I’m not a hateful person gunning for trans people. I have nothing to prove to you.
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.
Why can’t you see that you (and others like you) are over-personalizing this to an unproductive degree?
When I question whether all transwomen are women, I’m not thinking about the people you love and respect. Not unless those people are the scary freaks I see on social media, who are threatening to hate-rape TERFs.
I also don’t see why it should matter to you whether everyone sees your friends as “women” or “men”. As long as your friends have their pronouns respected, are treated with kindness and courtesy (no one is telling them they aren’t a woman or kicking them out of places), and no one is discriminating against them in the workplace, education, housing, healthcare, etc., why is it so important to you that everyone see them the same way you see them. Why is gender identity that important? Why does it bother you that a rando transwoman characterizes herself as a “man living as a woman”? Why can’t it just be one transwoman’s take on her identity? Why give such emotional heaviness to the words a person uses to describe herself, when we’re being told that those words don’t have any meaning anyway?
I admire allies for being so passionate. But it is hard for me to not see it as passion seated in reactional outrage more than real understanding or empathy. Lots of allies are like this. I experienced a very mild non-incident incident at work last year. A trainer was teaching us on how to handle diverse stakeholders. She singled me out as the only POC in the room of 40 or so students. A couple of coworkers were in the class with me and flipped. the. fuck. out. One guy tore into the instructor right then and there, and later registered a formal complaint with the training office. Another coworker sat me down afterwards and tried to convince me to do the same thing. “They need to know how bad that was, monstro!” she pleaded. The two of them went around the office and told everyone what happened so that everyone would be just as worked up about it as they were. Meanwhile, I’m shaking my head at them. One part touched that they cared so much, five parts cringing hard for them. Their white-knighting pissed me off, not gonna lie. They must think I’m a super fragile person if they think I’m bothered by someone pointing out my race. Was the trainer perhaps not as woke as she could be? Sure. But did she commit a crime of humanity against me? No. Did she oppress me for simply pointing out something everyone in the room already knew? Did she do something categorically wrong? No. Her only crime was not knowing there were passionate allies in the room. They weren’t even hurt by what she did. They just stupidly assumed that I would be.
Allies should defend their friends and fam. But y’all need to be careful not to see offense in. every. single. fucking. thing. Seeing offense in every single fucking thing doesn’t hurt you. It hurts the people you are defending, since it promotes the perception that those people are mentally fragile weaklings who must have their feelings catered to all the time. I don’t think trans people are like this, but allies certainly seem to think so. Like, maybe instead of assuming every transwomen is crushed when they come across a health pamplet targeted at women rather than “people with cervices”, we should be assuming it is just minority who upset and assume that the vast majority of transwomen, being reasonable people, don’t really want or need for every single sentence to include inclusive language.
I find it interesting that you won’t comment on the content of Yardley’s piece. Just her tone and diction. You don’t like what she is saying not because you disagree with what’s she saying, but because she’s not saying it with enough kindness and courtesy. Even though her entire piece is about people who don’t deserve any kindness and courtesy. She isn’t talking about your friends. She’s talking about the enemy. The oppressor. Oppressors don’t deserve kindness and courtesy. They don’t deserve to have their pronouns respect. They don’t deserve the courtesy of being called women.
TRA allies need to allow transwomen and women to speak the way we want to speak and stop trying to make us be “kind and courteous” all the freakin’ time.
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).
If by “right stuff”, you mean insightful thoughts about a subject matter that we’re currently discussing, OK. But if you mean something else, I can’t even with that. I’m not the one here turning a blind eye to accounts that make me feel uncomfortable. I’m absorbing all the information that’s out there and judging it based on how crazy it sounds. I’m not judging it based on the warm fuzzies it generates in me or my friends.
Actually, she literally is. Julia Serrano is a friend of mine. She’s a lovely woman, very kind, friendly, and generous. Excellent karaoke singer. Exteremly feminist. I urge you to read her books herself, and not rely on passages cherry-picked by an obvious internet troll.
Can you provide the greater context of her passages? Because they sound very awful to me. I’m not doubting that they could be cherry picked. But I’m not going to take your word for it just because you’re her friend.
If only you’d advised such caution when judging lesbians who wear shirts with “transphobe” on them…if only.
You can read her whole piece on dating here. It’s not all that long.
This link doesn’t appear to work for me.