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Trans women are not women (Part 8)

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lionking said:
As a life long (Australian) Labor Party supporter I’m ashamed and embarrassed about this policy stance.
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Increasing numbers of us in the UK feel politically homeless because of this issue. The Lib Dems and the Greens are appalling. The Tories – let's just say I'm not a natural Tory – have been the only party taking what amounts to a stand in biological reality; to the extent it's a cynical move doesn't concern me. You take what you can get.

Trans issues didn't show up on my radar until a few years ago. Like many who consider themselves liberal+progressive, and without any real skin in the game (outing myself as male), my first take was more #BeKind than not, e.g., try to use the right pronouns. I was never full on TWAW, but Trans Women Are Trans Women seemed fair enough.

I'm now completely Trans Women Are Men. TWAW is a foundational lie which makes all the other lies and nonsense possible, and the middle way doesn't help the cause either, as it still uses the W word where it doesn't belong. I do however dabble in a bit of cognitive dissonance myself: I'm unlikely to put my money where my mouth is in a social situation, except for chancers like Veronica Ivy or Riley Dennis, neither of whom I'm likely to meet anyway.

I sometimes wonder where I'd be on this issue if I hadn't moved to the UK from the US long before all this kicked off. I'm now grateful to live on TERF Island: at least we're getting this right, or trying. Speaking of which, something else to do a search on until my linking privileges kick in - "Mumsnet trending on twitter". Hilarious and horrific.
 
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shuttlt said:
Their is an anchoring assumption that there is an inclusive and tolerant utopia out there in which everybody is free to live as they want and respects everybody's culture and religion. How long has that idea driven progressive-liberal thought? 80 years? Longer? It's too politically useful an idea to give up even if it's been obviously false since the beginning.
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I fear that you are right, but "fear" is indeed the correct word to describe what I'm thinking.

I would like to think that people can somehow manage to coexist without telling everyone else how to live their lives, but that might be wishful thinking.

Trying to limit myself to on-topic examples, what I see a strain of in the trans rights debates is that, for some people, it's not good enough that we are perfectly willing to let some guy wear a dress and be called Colleen, but if we express the slightest reservation about whether that person is actually a woman, we get reported to the Thought Police. Maybe that instinct toward tyranny is so built into our psyches that we may as well just live with it, and try to pick a side where we are on the side of the tyrants instead of the victims.

ETA: To clarify, though, I fear your are right, but I do not believe you are right. At least, I believe that the tyrannical impulse can be checked, so that movements which seek to impose ideology on others can be constrained, and people can live their lives mostly as they wish. There will always be fights as various people insist that you living your life is actually imposing on me living mine, but that kind of debate is something I can live with, as long as it doesn't get to the point where people are thrown in jail or deprived of their livelihood for having Wrong thoughts.
 
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905 said:
Increasing numbers of us in the UK feel politically homeless because of this issue. The Lib Dems and the Greens are appalling. The Tories – let's just say I'm not a natural Tory – have been the only party taking what amounts to a stand in biological reality; to the extent it's a cynical move doesn't concern me. You take what you can get.
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Are the Tories really anything beyond the "natural party of government"? As to the rest, I think people have been politically homeless for a long time and have only just realised it.

It's probably not a popular take on the forum, but I keep remembering back to Enoch Powell. Since the war you've had this vision of multiculturalism and immigration combined with some kind of Fabian idea that we need to discourage people from having kids. From time to time the Tories dip their toe in that, but they never actually do anything. Back when Powell made his famous speech he had huge public support, yet it ended his career.

In as much as the Labour Party ever actually represented the views of the working class, they shifted away from that intellectually with the New Left in the 60s and then turned their back on it completely with Blair. I have a relative who worked in a factory in the North of England while studying at University in the 60s and still talks about the reactionary views of the factory workers.

Those mugs have been politically homeless for decades, they just didn't realise until recently. They've had politicians talking out of both sides of their mouths to them, just like the MP you posted. The game works, and progress moves slowly forward.

905 said:
Trans issues didn't show up on my radar until a few years ago. Like many who consider themselves liberal+progressive, and without any real skin in the game (outing myself as male), my first take was more #BeKind than not, e.g., try to use the right pronouns. I was never full on TWAW, but Trans Women Are Trans Women seemed fair enough.

I'm now completely Trans Women Are Men. TWAW is a foundational lie which makes all the other lies and nonsense possible, and the middle way doesn't help the cause either, as it still uses the W word where it doesn't belong. I do however dabble in a bit of cognitive dissonance myself: I'm unlikely to put my money where my mouth is in a social situation, except for chancers like Veronica Ivy or Riley Dennis, neither of whom I'm likely to meet anyway.
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Sure, and yet just like people who agreed with Powel back in 1968, your views are hardly fringe if you look at ordinary people. The thing is that the sentiments of ordinary people don't matter, and have never really mattered. If they did, Powell would have been Prime Minister, yet in the popular recollection he is some kind of demonic fringe ideologue.

This is just the issue that has woken you up, but the process has been going on just like this for ages.
 
That's what I get for not being completely honest. I included myself in that 'us' ("Increasing numbers of us in the UK feel politically homeless because of this issue") out of a sense of solidarity, but rest assured I realised I was politically homeless long before this came along.
 
905 said:
As a newbie I can't post links just yet, which is fair enough, so I'll just ask any interested parties to do a search on "Julia Hartley Brewer's transgender clash with Labour MP" and marvel at the cognitive dissonance on display.
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Hmmm.....has anyone noticed we've never seen Julia Hartley Brewer and Rolfe in the same picture? Just saying.....


In all seriousness, I think Julia is right. I, personally, am willing to go along, for three years on the internet, sometimes accepting statements for the sake of argument, sometimes going along out of politeness, sometimes just exploring positions. However, in the end, no matter what words you use, there really is a fundamental difference between male and female, and that difference matters. I think Julia could have been more diplomatic in the exchange, but I can definitely understand her perspective, including, at the end, when she says "I think we should have very heated discussions about this."
 
Meadmaker said:
ETA: To clarify, though, I fear your are right, but I do not believe you are right. At least, I believe that the tyrannical impulse can be checked, so that movements which seek to impose ideology on others can be constrained, and people can live their lives mostly as they wish. There will always be fights as various people insist that you living your life is actually imposing on me living mine, but that kind of debate is something I can live with, as long as it doesn't get to the point where people are thrown in jail or deprived of their livelihood for having Wrong thoughts.
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The problem is that the movement that wants to impose its ideology on others is the one whose niche in politics is championing the cause of multiculturalism and society letting people be who they truly are. Really it's been a dishonest lie, very much like the MP in the interview, from the start. The Fabians who set up the Labour party were elitist snobs from the start and were never interested in bringing into being a world that the working class wanted, at best it was the world that they thought the working class should want.

I've said this before, but if you go back 100 years or so, the Marxists were aware of this issue. It goes back to the contradiction between liberté and égalité. The solution they found is that they would favour égalité and use their totalitarian power to remake man such that he would only want to exercise his liberté in ways that were compatible with égalité.

The only other solution anybody has ever come up with, so far as I am aware, is to downgrade égalité to something rather minimal like equality before the law. Pretty clearly that isn't what society is going for at the moment with all the demands for "representation".
 
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905 said:
Increasing numbers of us in the UK feel politically homeless because of this issue. The Lib Dems and the Greens are appalling. The Tories – let's just say I'm not a natural Tory – have been the only party taking what amounts to a stand in biological reality; to the extent it's a cynical move doesn't concern me. You take what you can get.
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This really echoes something I said recently to SuburbanTurkey. I don't care if I am forced to agree with a Republican. If they're right, they are right. I don't care whether they happen to be wrong elsewhere.


For what it's worth, I've also contended since 2016 that this specific issue is what pushed Donald Trump over the top into the White House. People deny it because it doesn't show up in the polls, but I think that 2016 was an extremely close election, and at least 1% of the people in American who were "natural Democrats" were made to feel "politically homeless" by this issue, especially when Democrats rushed to condemn North Carolina's "bathroom bill". I remember listening to Hugh Hewitt trying to rally the faithful on Election Day saying, "Come on, North Carolina! Are you going to let the NCAA tell you what to do?" It gave me a sinking feeling, because it just sounded so much more effective and more sincere than anything I heard from Democrats in the closing days of the campaign.
 
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shuttlt said:
The only other solution anybody has ever come up with, so far as I am aware, is to downgrade égalité to something rather minimal like equality before the law. Pretty clearly that isn't what society is going for at the moment with all the demands for "representation".
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True. Doesn't seem very "minimal" to me, but I definitely get what you are saying.
 
905 said:
As a newbie I can't post links just yet, which is fair enough, so I'll just ask any interested parties to do a search on "Julia Hartley Brewer's transgender clash with Labour MP" and marvel at the cognitive dissonance on display.
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You can totally post URLS, as long as you leave off the leading "http://" or "https://" bit that makes it a link.

"www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/index.php" works just fine, and is easy enough for others to plug into a browser.
 
I don't know if anyone mentioned it, but the witches won a fairly significant legal victory yesterday. It was ruled that the Scottish government does not have the power to change the definition of "woman" to "anyone whose electricity bill is addressed to Tracy". The definition is and will remain "a female of any age" despite the attempt to sneak something else into a bill about equal representation on public bodies.

So a public body cannot appoint 100% men and still claim to be "gender-balanced" if half of its members put on a skirt and some lippy. The Scottish government is said to be "disappointed" and considering the judgement.

It's a legalities thing. It remains within the power of Westminster to change the legal definition of "woman" but at the moment it doesn't look as if it's going to do that. The point is that the definition of "woman" is somehow reserved (due to the Equalities Act being reserved I think) so the tartan wokerati can't do anything about it.
 
Meadmaker said:
Hmmm.....has anyone noticed we've never seen Julia Hartley Brewer and Rolfe in the same picture? Just saying.....
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Not to suck up or anything, but Rolfe was one of the attractions of this place. There are others…

Meadmaker said:
For what it's worth, I've also contended since 2016 that this specific issue is what pushed Donald Trump over the top into the White House.
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I didn't vote Trump (or Hillary - yes indeedy, I'm a veteran of squandering the franchise), but have friends who did. Or at least friend singular, nobody else has admitted to it. I can totally understand why people did, and was privately (and, well, semi-publicly*) willing to give him a chance.

Not long ago I wandered over to the Orange Satan, aka Daily Kos, where I will admit to spending a fair amount of time during the reign of POTUS #43. Specifically I wanted to see what coverage was like as regards the topic at hand. The articles are cul-de-sacs of bias, and it seems impossible to have a discussion about this without repeated screams of transphobe! and TERF. A few clearly want to be on side, but are unwilling to cross the line into final spittle-flecked incoherence. It's a sad and frankly scary sight.

theprestige said:
You can totally post URLS, as long as you leave off the leading bit that makes it a link.
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Cheers
*prettygoodbritain.com/wp/?p=6351
 
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Another thing you can do is go into Forum Community and post some rapid-fire posts about nothing in particular to some random thread - there used to be one that was actually meant for that. You'll soon get the post-count.
 
p0lka said:
I don't get the point you're making here?

Female.

If it's a trick question I'm missing it. They're not mutually exclusive or anything. Humans are a subset of mammals.
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"Female" refers to that sex of any species at all. How do you specifically and explicitly refer to a female of the HUMAN species?

Let's try this from a slightly different angle: How do you refer to a female of the equine species? How do you refer to a female of the ovis species? How do you refer to a female of the vulpine species? How do you make sure that what you're referring to is explicitly identified as both female AND of a specific species?
 
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shuttlt said:
This is what will happen Rolfe. It's just like 1984. The word "woman" changes it's meaning, and then people forget it was changed, and people who use the old meaning will be corrected.... then you will be in the position of wanting to reject the newly established meaning that everybody thinks it always had and then the concept of "woman" they use to understand the world will be one that includes penises and you will have lost. Maybe someday the word "woman" will be done away with entirely.

To paraphrase 1984 - If you are a woman, Rolfe, you are the last woman. Your kind is extinct; they are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are alone? You are outside history, you are non-existent.
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Rolfe said:
In the TRA's dreams. Women don't give up that easily.
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Ditto.

I am not about to give up without a fight on this. And I mean to fight hard and to the bitter end.
 
Emily's Cat said:
Let's try this from a slightly different angle: How do you refer to a female of the equine species? How do you refer to a female of the ovis species? How do you refer to a female of the vulpine species? How do you make sure that what you're referring to is explicitly identified as both female AND of a specific species?
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I saw an elegant expression of this on twitter today.

"Woman" is the intersection between "human being" and "female".

And the Scottish government have just been told by a court that that's the way it has to stay. (They're making noises about trying to change the definition ot "female" next, but the witches have their number.)
 
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