theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Already addressed, in the parts of my post you ignored.
-
Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more
Cont: Trans women are not women (IX)
- Thread starter Emily's Cat
- Start date
- Status
Already addressed, in the parts of my post you ignored.
d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
Well, it was a slippery slope argument after all. If you believe the slope is so slippery that a medical form which leaves no doubt as to the patient's birth sex will somehow "equivocate between sex and gender" then I'm not sure what else there is to say. It seems like you're just pushing back for the sake of the culture war itself, rather than averting any particular harm.
d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
Imagine her confusion, given that it's a form given to parents of newborns.
https://twitter.com/salltweets/status/1549268832518254592
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
I'm pushing back to avert the general harm, which will manifest as a widening range of particular harms, enabled in part by normalizing ambiguity about binary sex, and by making taboo any clear reference to binary sex.
I think you are making a mistake by looking at the issue so narrowly. I think lulling you and the rest of us into such mistakes, by such narrow framings, is exactly the point of the strategy.
If you want to go with the war metaphor, then your defense of this narrow framing casts you as a fifth columnist or useful idiot.
I have no idea of the point you are making here.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
"It's okay to normalize ambiguity about binary sex, if you can't point to any immediate harm in a specific instance", is how I read it.
d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
An adoptive parent won't be handed a form designed for patients who just gave birth.
There is nothing sexually ambiguous here, you already know the biological sex of the person who just gave birth (and you don't really need to know anything about their gender identity).
Last edited:
Reminds me of this:
This change makes the next change easier. Well, we use this terminology in case A, why not also in case B? Where's the harm, so now we use it in case B and move on to case C. Slice by slice.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Salami tactics seem less funny when you're actually seeing them in action. E.g., Ukraine.
Last edited:
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
It's not about who gets this particular form. It's about normalizing sex-ambiguous language across as many forms as you can, until it's taboo to talk about binary sex in clear terms at all. The significance of this normalization happening in medical settings, where clear speech about binary sex matters most, should not be lost on observers of the process.
ETA: I will note that your argument appeals to theprestige of Part 1 of this thread. theprestige who naively supported full trans-inclusion, who naively thought we should give trans folks as much aid and comfort as we possibly could, in as many areas of social interaction and public policy as we possibly could. That theprestige would have championed language like that on forms like those.
This theprestige, the one of Part 9 of this thread, has seen where this is going. This theprestige has seen how trans-activists think, and what they're really advocating for. This one recognizes the thin end of the wedge, the stalking-horse, the bait and switch. This one has no qualms about making a slippery slope argument. Because some slopes really are slippery. Some slopes really do need a guard rail at the top, and big signs saying, "Warning! Someone has slathered grease all over this hillside! They're standing behind you ready to give a good shove the moment you get too close to the edge!"
Last edited:
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
It's forced revision of language, with the consent of those being revised.
Mother is the word that means birthing parent. And it's the term that most female humans WANT to be called. It's a tiny number of female humans who don't want to be female humans, but still want to give birth, that are insisting on the "inclusive" change.
I'll also point out that transmen are the ones who excluded themselves from the category of women in the first place - other females did not exclude them. We are quite happy to continue including transmen in the category of women (adult human females). It's beyond absurd that they demand that we change our language so that they can be re-included in the category that they excluded themselves from in the first place!
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
What about those "birthing parents" who identify as birds? Do we need to change the term to "Egg-creating parent" in order to make them feel included in the category they excluded themselves from?
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
There's a lot of harm in the obfuscation of sex, especially in medicine. And there's a lot of harm to females of the human species when they leverage coercive language in order to rob us of our full humanity and reduce us to functional parts.
I suspect that you, as a male who is NOT being redefined out of your humanity, are not harmed by this. That does not, however, mean that females are not harmed by it.
d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
I'm still not seeing anything sex-ambiguous here; we all know birthing parents are female by definition.
I'm still not seeing anything sexually obfuscatory here; we all know birthing parents are female by definition.
Last edited:
Are you not seeing an attempt to erase the word “mother”? It’s served us pretty well for a long time.
d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
As Emily's Cat says "Mother is the word that means birthing parent."
The two phrases are substantively identical, except that one of them (at least arguably) implies gender while the other one is genderless.
So far the only argument I've seen for preferring the more traditional (gendered) term is that letting progressive gender ideologues win any given battle helps them win the overall culture war.
Last edited:
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
My view is that efforts are underway to change the definition of female, and that the change in terminology on forms like this is a part of that effort.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Hrm. Maybe Damion has a point...
---
"... and take one of these every twelve hours, or as needed to ameliorate certain kinds of post-partum discomfort."
"Why would I need that?"
"Oh! I apologize for the confusion, Mr Smith. It looks like one of our staff mistakenly put you down as the mother."
"No mistake. We don't believe in traditional gender roles. I am the mother."
"Ah. Well, this form is intended to identify the birthing parent."
"Then why doesn't the form say birthing parent?"
---
"... and take one of these every twelve hours, or as needed to ameliorate certain kinds of post-partum discomfort."
"Why would I need that?"
"Oh! I apologize for the confusion, Mr Smith. It looks like one of our staff mistakenly put you down as the mother."
"No mistake. We don't believe in traditional gender roles. I am the mother."
"Ah. Well, this form is intended to identify the birthing parent."
"Then why doesn't the form say birthing parent?"
Correct, and it’s good to see the progressive, liberal Australian government is responding in the way it is.
- Status