The issue has nothing to do with the substance of this mod announcement. R/PCOS has always been explicitly trans inclusive, so this statement is not new.
Why must 99% of the population who have vaginas, who identify as adult females, start referring to themselves as “biologically, anatomically female” just so less than 1% of the population who have penises but perceive themselves to be adult females will be happy? What are we gaining by bending over backwards just to cater to the feelings of such a tiny percentage of the population, when we do not do this with any other minority group?
I’m all for keeping transwomen safe from violence and discrimination. I’m not OK with changing how I describe myself just so transwomen will have maximal self-esteem. I’m going to call a transwoman what she wants me to call her, but I’m not going to change how I describe myself, thankyouverymuch. My body isn’t “biologically female”. It’s female. Just like my skin is brown. Just like my butt is flat. It isn’t biologically flat. It’s just flat. Everyone knows what I mean when I say “flat”.
Trans rights should be about rights. No one is entitled to extra adjectives in words that have widespread meaning as they already are.
And I’m totally fine with morphing of language. Words are dynamic. I get it.
But there’s organic evolution and then there’s forced evolution.
If enough people disagree that “female” and “male” are just as unreal as “woman” and “man”, then it doesn’t matter how hard trans rights activists holler into their bullhorns–we aren’t going to collectively shift to “biological female” and “biological male”. We might evolve to “artificially female and male”, but I just can’t see the dominant group (outside of scholarly work) changing how they describe themselves. That’s not how natural evolution works, and there’s nothing inherently offensive or wrong about this.
Imagine if black Americans had told white Americans that they would have to call themselves “Melanin-Deficient Americans” for black Americans to feel fully accepted as first-class citizens.
Black Americans would have been laughed off the fucking stage if they had made that demand. Progressive white folks would have been like:
“We were with you on the whole ‘stop enslaving us’ thing and the whole ‘stop discriminating against us’ thing. We didn’t object when you demanded we stop calling you ‘colored’ and ‘negro’, even though we didn’t really get why those terms were so offensive. But now you’re asking us to change our names. Don’t you think you’re taking this too far? Focus on the shit that really matters, yo! If you keep pushing for bullshit, we’ll stop supporting you.”
I get that a lot of folks in this thread are ride-or-die trans supporters. But that’s not me. I’m not ride-or-die anything. If I feel like people are making unreasonable demands, I have no problems with not giving a fuck about their cause. Telling me I’m obligated to see someone identifying as a woman as a female even when their bodies are male, with not a drop of estrogen flowing through their blood stream, is pushing me away from the cause of trans rights. This language stuff isn’t about making people feel safe and secure. It’s about indulging every little whim of a very small percentage of the population.
That’s an epic achievement in circular reasoning. I’d like to point out that I called, earlier in this thread, that conceding “Women” didn’t mean anything would soon mean “female” wouldn’t mean anything.
So tell, us, Acsesnray; what does “female” mean?
Sorry for the delay, I had kind of checked out of the thread and forgot I had a response that might get quoted.
you claim that mental state alone isn’t enough to resolve the conflict by itself, which is evidence that physical bodies are more real. However, physical state is also not enough to resolve the conflict by itself, as otherwise they would just be cis men, which is evidence that mental state is more real. Clearly both matter, but I think there needs to more to determine which is more real.
Your other premise is that the fact that trans women transition physically is evidence that physical is more real*. I view this as evidence that the mental state is more real. Almost all of the examples I can think of where something bothers you, people change the “something” not the “you”, unless changing the something is impossible to change. If there was a conflict between my hat size and my head size, I’d transition hats, but no one would say that hats are more real to me than my head.
*The fact that people can’t transition mentally could be used to say that the fact that people transition physically can’t be used as evidence, but I believe that if mental transition existed, and was all else equal with physical transition, very few to none trans people would choose mental transitioning (same amount of work/cost/risk and imagine sexism and transphobia don’t exist in this example). I’ve had some physical surgeries (not gender related), and none of them felt like they changed who I was as a person, but if you changed anything about my mind, I feel like it might.
There’s no circularity in what I said.
As for what “female” means, it seems to be in transition. As I said before, I don’t entirely understand what the current role of gender is developing into. I’m not going to say I—or anyone else—has the definitive answers.
But I also don’t see the benefit to society or to women or to any individual of telling a transgender woman “you aren’t a real woman.” Or telling a transgender man “no matter what you think about yourself, you are female.”
Gender hasn’t always been about the biological functions of sexual reproduction. There are plenty of pre-industrial cultures that recognized some degree of gender fluidity.
As for why society should accommodate a tiny minority. Well, why shouldn’t we? We would gladly make accommodations to even tiny racial or ethnic or religious or disabled or sexual preference or other kinds of minorities to feel included and welcome in society.
Even if transgender people make up only 0.6 percent of all people, that’s potentially 3 million people in the world.
As we struggle against unfair barriers against women, racial minorities, disabled people, and struggle for inclusion and acceptance, why not consider their point of view?
How many of you think that transgender acceptance is really a conspiracy of men to throw roadblocks in front of equality for women?
Is that claim made sincerely? Because I have not been included in such a conspiracy. Just as my views on many issues, including things like legal abortion and homosexuality, have evolved over my life by listening to people. I have become open to transgender issues simply by listening to people, mostly on these boards, talk about their experiences.
It baffles me that people who might be suffering societal barriers based on being black or being a woman or for some other classification issue could hear what transgender people are saying and consider them a threat.
You realIze we’re having a group discussion about free speech, women’s rights, and the intersection of these two things with gender ideology, right?
If we were having a cocktail coffee table chitchat with an individual trans woman, I agree that it would be rude to them male. Etiquette is etiquette.
But we aren’t having that kind of conversation. I don’t see any benefit to society if we allow references to biological sex to become taboo and ideologically loaded.
Who is this “we” you’re talking about?
Can you cite any other group that comprises 0.6% of the population that has been able to change the lexicon so that 99.4% of the population is no longer the unmarked category?
Like I said, keep pushing this kind of bullshit and expect trans folks to suffer because sane people will say “fuck it” to their more reasonable demands. Fight for the shit that matters to trans folks’ safety and security, and you will always have lots of people supporting you. But fighting for who gets to call themselves “female” when that word has always meant “individual with the anatomy and physiology of the sex class capable of laying eggs or carrying a fetus” is NOT a fight for safety and security. It’s a fight for warm fuzzies and self-esteem. It’s a fight to play genderfuck games with no benefit to anyone who doesn’t like those kind of games.
Y’all can say “woman” is as unreal as you want, but the bleeding that happens between my legs every month is a constant reminder of the very realness of “female”. That bleeding isn’t caused by my mental state. It’s caused by the interaction of my genes, hormones, and a specific suite of organs. I want to be able to talk about my physiology and anatomy with other individuals with the same physiology and anatomy without some rando genderfucker yelling at me that I’m excluding women with penises from the conversation. Less than one percent of the population should not have that kind of power.
Transfolks aren’t a threat. But if someone is telling me my anatomy and physiology isn’t real and that the problems that face people with my anatomy and physiology aren’t real, then I feel like they have swallowed propapangda that is a threat to me. You may not be saying those exact words, Ascenray, but the decoupling of what it means to be female from reality will no doubt be what happens if “anyone who says they are a female is a female” becomes treated like fact. Femaleness is not a bandwagon. Our society can still be accepting of trans folks without making femaleness a goddamn bandwagon. Trans activists have already stretched the definition of “woman” so much that its meaning has been lost. If you insist that “female” has the same fuzziness as “woman”, you will lose me and others like me. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, but I think it should if your goal is to make this society a better place.
If some groups are asking that language relevant to biological sex be adjusted to accommodate ideas of inclusiveness, is that making all references to biological sex taboo? I don’t think so. Things are in transition; sometimes transitions are bumpy.
And sometimes people ask for too much, and it’s totally fine to tell them to pump their brakes and at least wait until we’ve come all come around to the “men” and “woman” stuff. Seriously, let everyone get on board with treating transwomen as women, and then we can talk about who gets to claim “female.” Maybe one day that might happen, but it doesn’t need to happen right this second for transfolks to be treated with respect.
It took black Americans more than 100 years to get Confederate memorials dismantled. It took way too long, but I’m glad civil rights activists back in the 1940s and 1950s didn’t lead their arguments with that request. It was down at the bottom of the list of requests. They started with the reasonable ones first–the ones that actually dealt with the dignity, safety, and security of black people. That’s what rights pertain to. They don’t pertain to validation of one’s identity in every single fucking way.
Doesn’t this sound exactly like the kind of people who said that homosexuals can do what they want behind closed doors, but if you say they can be married then you’re denigrating my real marriage and I will stop supporting you?
monstro:>
Like I said, keep pushing this kind of bullshit and expect trans folks to suffer because sane people will say “fuck it” to their more reasonable demands.
Ascenray:
Isn’t this classic tone policing?
This is the same kind of argument I have heard with respect to racial equality, women’s equality, and same-sex marriage: “Push too far and normal people will reject all your complaints.” Inevitably, it turns out that those people are the ones who were going to reject equality no matter what.
No, tone policing is “I agree with what you’re saying; I just don’t like how you’re saying it.” Tone policing is telling women they shouldn’t burn their bras because that kind of stuff disgusts Middle America, even though Middle America is disgusted by the feminist message even when it is delivered in a three-piece business suit.
I’m not talking about respectability politics. I’m talking about the trans rights message shifting away from rights. It’s now about making our language so super inclusive and validating to a very small percentage of the population, with no benefit to anyone else, without any care about how those changes might affect the political interests of another minority group–who that is still oppressed, stigmatized, and marginalized. Despite it representing more than 50% of the population.
It is obvious to me that you and many male-bodied people sincerely believe that “female” has no objective meaning. It’s no different than biggetyboop or wrahwran to you, apparently. But “female” really is a big deal to me. I can roll with “woman” being a social construct. But “female” is “female” all day long. I don’t care if you’re shouting the message in a bullhorn while you’re butt naked in the town square or if you are dispassionately writing the message from your keyboard. The way you deliver the message will have no affect on how I receive it. I will always receive it as harmful and dangerous bullshit. If you insist that trans rights won’t be fulfilled until we decouple female from reality, then you’re pushing me away from supporting trans rights. I’m not policing your tone. I’m telling you the content of your message is horrible and undermining your efforts to get me on your side.
You are only one hair way away from seeing the issue exactly like I do, sis. Lol.
“Woman” is just an adult female. They are synonyms, adjusted for age. The same argument for clinging to “female” applies to “woman”. Once you make one meaningless jibber jabber, it follows that the other becomes jibber jabber too.
This ridiculousness is too much to indulge anymore.
I think my position is a tad more moderate than yours. I’m totally okay with having a social constructedness to woman that doesn’t include adult females, as long as there are some rules. I’m not fine with an open door policy, but I’m fine with it being looser than “adult female”.
I’m not okay with turning female into a social construct. I want to be able to say that I’m female without anyone asking me what I mean by that “identity”. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
No, it doesn’t. “Marriage” has a fixed meaning. It might meant something slightly different now, but it still means something. You yourself cannot define “female” or “woman” at all, because your position necessitates those words meaning, in effect, nothing.
Do you assert that the words “son” and “daughter” have lost their meanings, because we now accept that they cover both biological and adopted children? In the same way, we are discussing whether “male” and “female” can cover both biological gender and adopted gender. Where’s the catastrophe in language here?
I said the meaning seems to be evolving, like many words do. It’s no more meaningless than any other identity word, which tend to change over time, or even have co-existing multiple meanings, such as “British” or “Indian.”
Even scientific terms can have very broad definitions. The most general definitions of biological maleness and femaleness is that one produces a smaller gamete than the other. In some species, an individual can spontaneously change sex.
All words have whatever meaning that some given segment of people wants them to mean in context.
Even in this thread we have an example of clashing definitions of “American.” To me if means “of the United States of America.” To another poster, it includes Canadians. They are inconsistent, yet neither is wrong.
Son = male (boy or man) in relation to his parents.
Daughter = female ( girl or woman) in relation to her parents
These definitions are not circular and they apply equally to adoptive and biological parents.
It is impossible to come up with a workable definition for female or male that covers biological females/males and their trans counterparts.
It is amazing that we are so far into this thread and this still needs to be pointed out.
Impossible? You just did it in one sentence. “Male covers humans who are biologically male and those who are trans male.” There you go. That’s a definition, as solid as any word in the English language.