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Cont: Trans women are not women (IX)

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How about "conceivable people?" I'm sure no one will have the least bit of difficulty with any alternative interpretations.

It's just a fact of life that some people are bearable and some just aren't. Nothing there that anyone should take personally.

As long as it's understood that just because someone is inconceivable or unbearable doesn't make them inscrutable or insurmountable. A PSA campaign might be needed.
 
Emily's Cat said:
In the interest of fairness, I'd really love to see as much effort put into dismantling the term "man" and redefining them based on body parts and functions.
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The mania to deconstruct gender has largely come from women. Now it's "trans-women" doing it for the same reason. They were the ones that took the ideas of deconstruction that Marxist men had created to deconstruct society and applied it to gender. It's always the group that expects to gain from the process that dominates these things. You've got this different type of attention dedicated to the "oppressed" and "oppressor" groups in all of these schools of thought. When it is applied to the "oppressor" it is the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, whiteness, CIS-normativity. When this process is directed on you as "victim", it is about finding all the different ways you can express yourself and normalising them and changing the world to make them all valid. When the process identifies you as an "oppressor" it will seek to problematise you, to queer you, to shut you up, to categorically erase you. All you are experiencing is the flip side of the liberation movement.

If you go back to the origins of these ideas, they aren't really an attempt to understand things by deconstructing them. Whether Judith Butler is incoherent word salad doesn't matter. It's a vehicle for political action. These theories are tools to change the world, not to understand or explain it.
 
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shuttlt said:
The mania to deconstruct gender has largely come from women. Now it's "trans-women" doing it for the same reason. They were the ones that took the ideas of deconstruction that Marxist men had created to deconstruct society and applied it to gender. It's always the group that expects to gain from the process that dominates these things. You've got this different type of attention dedicated to the "oppressed" and "oppressor" groups in all of these schools of thought. When it is applied to the "oppressor" it is the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, whiteness, CIS-normativity. When this process is directed on you as "victim", it is about finding all the different ways you can express yourself and normalising them and changing the world to make them all valid. When the process identifies you as an "oppressor" it will seek to problematise you, to queer you, to shut you up, to categorically erase you. All you are experiencing is the flip side of the liberation movement.

If you go back to the origins of these ideas, they aren't really an attempt to understand things by deconstructing them. Whether Judith Butler is incoherent word salad doesn't matter. It's a vehicle for political action. These theories are tools to change the world, not to understand or explain it.
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The ostensible goal of feminism is, roughly, to allow women self-determination, as distinct from socially-mandated roles. You say that trans folk are now doing the same thing, wanting to self-determine their gender, including self-determining, therefore, which bathroom to use, which team to play for, etc. This would seem to be an argument against the principle of self-determination, given that, eventually, others will self-determine to the original liberationists' [ETA: = self-determiners'] detriment. Do I have that right?
 
Emily's Cat said:
No, I and those who share my views have not changed our minds on this. A female who identifies as a man IS on par with a human who identifies as an attack helicopter - Their belief may very well be absolute, but their belief does not change reality. A female who identifies as a man is still a female and does not actually become male, just as a human who identifies as an attack helicopter remains a human and does not actually become a helicopter.

A female who identifies as a man has my full support in dressing like and presenting as a man in society. A human who identifies as an attack helicopter has my full support in dressing like and behaving like a helicopter in society.

You persistently do this, LondonJohn - you conflate a person dressing and presenting in a certain way with them ACTUALLY FOR REALSIES being the thing they're dressed as.

Do you genuinely believe that if a person dresses and behaves like something, that makes them into whatever they're dressed as? Does that extend to all situations, or is it special pleading for the singular case of humans changing sex?

Not that I expect a response to my question, seeing as you have never managed to respond to any question I've asked.
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Indeed!

If I identify as "Policeman", does that automagically mean I am a Policeman, with all of a Policeman's attendant rights such as, dressing up in a Police uniform, pulling over drivers and giving them tickets, arresting and detaining suspects etc?

Under London John's stated logic, I absolutely do... but I wouldn't be trying it!!
 
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Paul2 said:
The ostensible goal of feminism is, roughly, to allow women self-determination, as distinct from socially-mandated roles. You say that trans folk are now doing the same thing, wanting to self-determine their gender, including self-determining, therefore, which bathroom to use, which team to play for, etc. This would seem to be an argument against the principle of self-determination, given that, eventually, others will self-determine to the original liberationists' [ETA: = self-determiners'] detriment. Do I have that right?
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I'm not sure we should get hung up on the "ostensible goal". As to things progressing to the "original liberators detriment", isn't that how all processes of continuous revolution go? Sooner or later you find you are the Girondins shocked that the revolution has come for you.
 
d4m10n said:
Pretty sure the trans rights folks are reifying gender identity rather than deconstructing it.
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Not sure I agree with that. Previous iterations of feminism have said that there is no right way of being a woman, no behaviour is any more womanly than any other. What is left of "woman" beyond the word and the entrance criteria. The trans-activists are just taking the obvious next step of undermining the entrance criteria. Sure it sometimes takes the form of mimicking of stereotypical manifestations of femininity, but it can also be a hairy man squaddie who makes. 2nd wave feminism got us to the point where a hairy squaddie was just as much of a valid expression of womanhood as being a mother, so long as you are female, all the trans-activists have done is taken the next step.
 
shuttlt said:
What is left of "woman" beyond the word and the entrance criteria. The trans-activists are just taking the obvious next step of undermining the entrance criteria.
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The criteria for womanhood used to be biological (sex/age) now they are psycho-social (identity/affirmation).
 
shuttlt said:
I'm not sure we should get hung up on the "ostensible goal". As to things progressing to the "original liberators detriment", isn't that how all processes of continuous revolution go? Sooner or later you find you are the Girondins shocked that the revolution has come for you.
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Do you see self-determination playing any role in feminism and trans rights? If so, how do we not throw that baby out with the bathwater of continuous revolution?
 
Paul2 said:
Do you see self-determination playing any role in feminism and trans rights?
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These things are very muddled bags. I don't doubt it's in there somewhere. It's like a mission statement. Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains; liberté, égalité, fraternité; don't be evil; antifa. I don't think these kinds of thing are a reliable guide to what the actual ideas are that are driving things, or what is actually going to be delivered.

If you look at the history of the movements that modern trans-rights has evolved out of, you find an awful lot that is antithetical to the idea of self-determination. Lots of this goes back to Gramsci and the realisation that the people were relatively content and not about to rise up and bring on the revolution. They were getting American movies, mass produced goods and so on. So they had to be changed so that they would not enjoy them. The liberty in Marxism comes for a new type of man called Communist man who will be fundamentally different to the lumpen mass of the pre-revolutionary workers and will want different things. You have the same things in JS Mill, and the Fabians. There is a through line from them to Foucault and all the things we are talking about. It's a vision of self determination that only works if people nudged, encouraged, and eventually compelled to go along with it.

I'm trying to find the interview this De Beauvoir quote supposedly comes from (so I'm hoping it isn't immediately debunked):

No, we don’t believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorised to stay at home to bring up her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction
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There are plenty of other similar quotes by related radicals.
Paul2 said:
If so, how do we not throw that baby out with the bathwater of continuous revolution?
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This is sort of what anti-liberal/anti-enlightenment thinkers have been discussing for the past few hundred years. One answer would be that any revolutionary movement that thinks it is going to fundamentally change the nature of Man is a bad idea. Ultimately it is people who will be standing in the way of utopia, and so much the worse for those people.

Communism imagines Communist Man arising who doesn't want more than he needs and works without compulsion. Feminist Man will be freed from socially defined gender roles and women will stop wanting high status men, while men will stop wanting young attractive women, and everything is going to be equal and wonderful. Metro-Sexual-Man will be accepting of people regardless of their genitalia, be attracted by gender rather than sex, and self identified trans-women will not sexually assault CIS women at an elevated rate. It works like the underpants gnomes to obfuscate the issue that the hard problem of making the world better, given the nature of man, has been swept under the rug. Coming up with a model for society that works if you can remodel the nature of man to fit it is like coming up with an economic system that will work in the absence of scarcity.

The thing that stands in the way of the trans-activists utopia is the same thing that stands in the way of Emily's Cat's feminist utopia, is the same thing that stands in the way of the Communist utopia - nice idea, wrong species. It's a strong environmentalist view of the world that is simply wrong.
 
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d4m10n said:
The criteria for womanhood used to be biological (sex/age) now they are psycho-social (identity/affirmation).
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Certainly more like that. I would say in a tribal sense it is more like having been through a rite of passage and being accepted by those already initiated as one of them. I'm not sure that a Caster Semenya would necessarily be cast out of such a system, but it is certainly not about self ID. I think something like that is still what is really going on.
 
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shuttlt said:
These things are very muddled bags. I don't doubt it's in there somewhere. It's like a mission statement. Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains; liberté, égalité, fraternité; don't be evil; antifa. I don't think these kinds of thing are a reliable guide to what the actual ideas are that are driving things, or what is actually going to be delivered.

If you look at the history of the movements that modern trans-rights has evolved out of, you find an awful lot that is antithetical to the idea of self-determination. Lots of this goes back to Gramsci and the realisation that the people were relatively content and not about to rise up and bring on the revolution. They were getting American movies, mass produced goods and so on. So they had to be changed so that they would not enjoy them. The liberty in Marxism comes for a new type of man called Communist man who will be fundamentally different to the lumpen mass of the pre-revolutionary workers and will want different things. You have the same things in JS Mill, and the Fabians. There is a through line from them to Foucault and all the things we are talking about. It's a vision of self determination that only works if people nudged, encouraged, and eventually compelled to go along with it.

I'm trying to find the interview this De Beauvoir quote supposedly comes from (so I'm hoping it isn't immediately debunked):



There are plenty of other similar quotes by related radicals.

This is sort of what anti-liberal/anti-enlightenment thinkers have been discussing for the past few hundred years. One answer would be that any revolutionary movement that thinks it is going to fundamentally change the nature of Man is a bad idea. Ultimately it is people who will be standing in the way of utopia, and so much the worse for those people.

Communism imagines Communist Man arising who doesn't want more than he needs and works without compulsion. Feminist Man will be freed from socially defined gender roles and women will stop wanting high status men, while men will stop wanting young attractive women, and everything is going to be equal and wonderful. Metro-Sexual-Man will be accepting of people regardless of their genitalia, be attracted by gender rather than sex, and self identified trans-women will not sexually assault CIS women at an elevated rate. It works like the underpants gnomes to obfuscate the issue that the hard problem of making the world better, given the nature of man, has been swept under the rug. Coming up with a model for society that works if you can remodel the nature of man to fit it is like coming up with an economic system that will work in the absence of scarcity.

The thing that stands in the way of the trans-activists utopia is the same thing that stands in the way of Emily's Cat's feminist utopia, is the same thing that stands in the way of the Communist utopia - nice idea, wrong species. It's a strong environmentalist view of the world that is simply wrong.
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Surely there's a form of feminism rationally articulable, starting from self-determination, that can engage with trans rights in a way that doesn't require the formerly oppressed (early feminists) to now become the oppressors?
 
Paul2 said:
Surely there's a form of feminism rationally articulable, starting from self-determination, that can engage with trans rights in a way that doesn't require the formerly oppressed (early feminists) to now become the oppressors?
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You're begging the question of oppression.

In what way are transwomen being oppressed by feminists/feminism?
 
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