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Trans women are not women (Part 8)

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Change over time is one thing. It's gradual and it's unforced. It grows naturally. We gave you some examples. Suddenly and unilaterally declaring that a word means something else over the outraged protestations of the people the word applies to is entirely different.

Nobody can dictate a change in usage, or force it on others. Stop doing it.
 
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p0lka said:
I'm not stuck on anything,
I think the people that refuse to accept change over time and where it goes are the ones that are stuck on a thing.
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There has been no change. We all know what we mean by "man" and "woman" in this context. We all know Emily's Cat isn't confusing anything. We all know Rolfe has been consistent in her usage, and we all know what she means by it.

We all know there's been an effort in some quarters to ambiguate not just "man" and "woman", but also "male" and "female". We all know who in this thread is and is not interested in playing along with that effort. I know it. You know it. Emily's Cat knows it.

We all know Emily's Cat isn't mixing up her words. We all know she's using them in conventional, well-established ways, with conventional, well-established meanings.

You know it, but you keep taking her to task for it. Why? You've raised the point before, and had it addressed before. But here you are, circling back to it like that never happened. Why? What benefit do you see, in repeating the canard that Emily's Cat is "mixing up" her terms? You know she's not. But here you are. Why?
 
Rolfe said:
Change over time is one thing. It's gradual and it's unforced. It grows naturally. We gave you some examples. Suddenly and unilaterally declaring that a word means something else over the outraged protestations of the people the word applies to is something else.
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Who is making the unilateral declaration? Who is outraged?
Youth versus boomers? Culture and language change can be rapid. Every year the kids get older and take positions of power vacated by earlier generations. Most of us here are older than those driving this cultural change who exist in the arts, media - traditional and new, academia and non crusty politics.
 
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Sideroxylon said:
Who is making the unilateral declaration? Who is outraged?
Youth versus boomers? Culture and language change can be rapid. Every year the kids get older and take positions of power vacated by earlier generations.
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I think Rolfe is under the impression that the meaning of words is supposed to change organically bottom up, rather than top down as part of an attempt to socially engineer society. Obviously this isn't the first word that this has been done with.
 
Olmstead said:
Because it's kind of arbitrary to consider it an identity when it's just the biological background? It affects my life, but so does the fact that I'm 6 foot tall instead of 5. I can say I'm a man from a biological point of view, but what does that actually mean from the perspective of identity?
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What do you think “identity” even is?

From my understanding of the word, things like “biological background” are very much part of your identity. So is the fact that you are 6 feet tall. How important that is to you may vary, but why wouldn’t that be part of your identity?
 
shuttlt said:
I think Rolfe is under the impression that the meaning of words is supposed to change organically bottom up, rather than top down as part of an attempt to socially engineer society. Obviously this isn't the first word that this has been done with.
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This change is organic isn’t it? Government policy on this issue has lagged organic cultural attitudes.
 
shuttlt said:
I think Rolfe is under the impression that the meaning of words is supposed to change organically bottom up, rather than top down as part of an attempt to socially engineer society. Obviously this isn't the first word that this has been done with.
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Not so much "supposed to" as, that's what happens. One side unilaterally declaring that very basic words in the English language no longer mean what they have meant for centuries, in such a way that they then get to declare "and so I win!" isn't it.

Women are not going to give up their very language on the say-so of men who want to usurp their identity.
 
Ziggurat said:
What do you think “identity” even is?

From my understanding of the word, things like “biological background” are very much part of your identity. So is the fact that you are 6 feet tall. How important that is to you may vary, but why wouldn’t that be part of your identity?
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It’s always contextual with different elements coming to the fore or vanishing.
 
Rolfe said:
Not so much "supposed to" as, that's what happens. One side unilaterally declaring that very basic words in the English language no longer mean what they have meant for centuries, in such a way that they then get to declare "and so I win!" isn't it.

Women are not going to give up their very language on the say-so of men who want to usurp their identity.
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These kinds of top down manipulations of language have been going on for something like 100 years, since advertising and propaganda really got going. You've got an explicit plan to make exactly these kinds of language manipulations for exactly the purposes you are seeing going back just as long. As far a I'm aware the idea of how you would go about doing this to change people's behaviours was originally based on Freud.
 
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shuttlt said:
These kinds of top down manipulations of language have been going on for something like 100 years, since advertising and propaganda really got going. You've got an explicit plan to make exactly these kinds of language manipulations for exactly the purposes you are seeing going back just as long. As far a I'm aware the idea of how you would go about doing this to change people's behaviours was originally based on Freud.
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Is this the case in gender language and meaning?
If so, who is the top-down driver?
 
Rolfe said:
Not so much "supposed to" as, that's what happens. One side unilaterally declaring that very basic words in the English language no longer mean what they have meant for centuries, in such a way that they then get to declare "and so I win!" isn't it.

Women* are not going to give up their very language on the say-so of men who want to usurp their identity.
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* #notallWomen
 
Sideroxylon said:
This change is organic isn’t it? Government policy on this issue has lagged organic cultural attitudes.
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Do you think so? I don't. I think organic cultural attitudes are mostly still "stuck" on the traditional definitions of "man" and "woman".

I think the majority, at least in America, would agree with the statement of the thread title.
 
Meadmaker said:
Do you think so? I don't. I think organic cultural attitudes are mostly still "stuck" on the traditional definitions of "man" and "woman".

I think the majority, at least in America, would agree with the statement of the thread title.
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Among the youth I don’t think so. Would love to see some studies. I am sure of the disparity in views between generations. Medical science is advancing faster and well beyond when boomers only had to deal with the assault on gender constructs in clothing and hair length.1
Do you think this is top down? Who is the driver?

1. D. Bowie, 1972, et al


The title itself seems to both beg the question and exist as a tautology.
 
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Sideroxylon said:
Among the youth I don’t think so. Would love to see some studies. I am sure of the disparity in views between generations. Medical science is advancing faster and well beyond when boomers only had to deal with the assault on gender constructs in clothing and hair length.1
Do you think this is top down? Who is the driver?

1. D. Bowie, 1972, et al


The title itself seems to both beg the question and exist as a tautology.
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It's an interesting way to ask the question.

I think the role of academia is huge, especially their indirect role via media. A bunch of journalism majors head off to college and get indoctrinated, and end up writing style guides for newspapers that say to use "women" in ways other than the biological. People go along because they don't want to be seen as the bad guys.

Also, the political parties themselves drive division, some of which involves the trans agenda. Politically active people tend to be more ideologically driven that people who aren't so active. That tends to mean that the parties are more extreme than the average citizen, so in this case Democratic leaders do not want to alienate their base, so they support the trans agenda. The Republicans do the same, so they don't want any compromise, so they promote an anti-trans agenda. The people in the middle end up having to pick a side.

For a while, in America, the libertarian streak prevailed, and the anti-trans side was seeing the traditionalists as telling people what to do. I think the trans rights movement was riding the coattails of the gay rights agenda, which was pretty popular, especially among youth. Meanwhile, though, I think people didn't really pay attention to what was going on, and woke up to find people with penises in the girls' locker room or on girls' sports teams, and are now standing up and demanding some answers. They thought they were promoting the right to have a sex change operation if you wanted to. They are finding out now it's something different.

As a result, you're seeing the beginnings of the backlash. Lia Thomas is wildly unpopular outside of media circles. The trans rights lobbies are bemoaning setbacks in legislatures. Those setbacks aren't some weird change or heart. What's happening is that people got the memo about what is being asked for, and they are saying no.

At least, that's my take on where things are right now. It is, indeed, the youth that will matter in this, and I, too, would love to see more information, but it's hard to gather, and it just seems to me the media isn't all that keen to present it. That fact alone makes me think that maybe the traditionalists are a lot more present than the progressives on this issue. I think if the majority of high school students were supportive of males in the girls' locker rooms, the news would feature an awful lot of coverage of students supporting males in the girls' locker room. I don't see it, so I suspect it isn't there.


For my part, if you are right, and that comes out, that the youth support trans inclusion in private spaces, I'll go along. I've said that my position is based on supporting the wishes for privacy for women and girls. If you convince me that most of them don't want it, I'll change my position.

(Similarly for sports fairness.)
 
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Meadmaker said:
It's an interesting way to ask the question.

I think the role of academia is huge, especially their indirect role via media. A bunch of journalism majors head off to college and get indoctrinated, and end up writing style guides for newspapers that say to use "women" in ways other than the biological. People go along because they don't want to be seen as the bad guys.

Also, the political parties themselves drive division, some of which involves the trans agenda. Politically active people tend to be more ideologically driven that people who aren't so active. That tends to mean that the parties are more extreme than the average citizen, so in this case Democratic leaders do not want to alienate their base, so they support the trans agenda. The Republicans do the same, so they don't want any compromise, so they promote an anti-trans agenda. The people in the middle end up having to pick a side.

For a while, in America, the libertarian streak prevailed, and the anti-trans side was seeing the traditionalists as telling people what to do. I think the trans rights movement was riding the coattails of the gay rights agenda, which was pretty popular, especially among youth. Meanwhile, though, I think people didn't really pay attention to what was going on, and woke up to find people with penises in the girls' locker room or on girls' sports teams, and are now standing up and demanding some answers. They thought they were promoting the right to have a sex change operation if you wanted to. They are finding out now it's something different.

As a result, you're seeing the beginnings of the backlash. Lia Thomas is wildly unpopular outside of media circles. The trans rights lobbies are bemoaning setbacks in legislatures. Those setbacks aren't some weird change or heart. What's happening is that people got the memo about what is being asked for, and they are saying no.

At least, that's my take on where things are right now. It is, indeed, the youth that will matter in this, and I, too, would love to see more information, but it's hard to gather, and it just seems to me the media isn't all that keen to present it. That fact alone makes me think that maybe the traditionalists are a lot more present than the progressives on this issue. I think if the majority of high school students were supportive of males in the girls' locker rooms, the news would feature an awful lot of coverage of students supporting males in the girls' locker room. I don't see it, so I suspect it isn't there.


For my part, if you are right, and that comes out, that the youth support trans inclusion in private spaces, I'll go along. I've said that my position is based on supporting the wishes for privacy for women and girls. If you convince me that most of them don't want it, I'll change my position.

(Similarly for sports fairness.)
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More in the response than I have time for now but will try to do this more justice later. Seeing university as a place of indoctrination and not a place where ideas and concepts are scrutinised, rebuilt and discarded with intellectual vigour sounds like what I am used to hearing from the homeschool Bible crowd. Universities in the liberal arts tradition seem rooted in the very idea of concepts and movements organically grown.

The whole idea of gender is being questioned, evolving and in revolution perhaps. A clash of ideas is to be expected. Science and medical tech is not only challenging our ideas about gender but what it is to be human. People with different ideas about their identity, genitalia and social expectations exist and are taking advantage of both that as well as Western liberal freedom to create and assert their own identity themselves. And more power to them I say.

On the flip side how much are others being imposed upon? Is the new language an unacceptable imposition as Peterson might argue? Is the others’ assertion of gender a zero sum game?


I think there are more important fundamental ideas that need to be addressed before the fairness in sport issue. For some it looks like a talking point to sanitise a bigoted argument especially when coming from the Christian lobby. A red herring.
 
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Matthew Best said:
Linking to your own C: drive isn't going to work!
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Oops

Try this

https://www.essex.ac.uk/blog/posts/2021/05/17/review-of-two-events-with-external-speakers
Over the last 18 months we have had to address the very serious issues raised by the cancellation of a seminar, a decision not to re-invite the external speaker who was due to speak at the cancelled seminar, and the failure to invite a chosen external speaker to another event, although this decision was subsequently reversed. These events might be seen by some as a small number in a very full programme of over 1,500 events with external speakers each year. However, they raise very serious issues about how we deliver on our legal obligations and our values.
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Included on that page is a link to a detailed report on the issues.
 
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