The normalization of misogynist epithets
There’s disagreement – highly charged disagreement – over whether the label “TERF” is a neutral descriptive label or a loaded pejorative one. The BBC has let us know what it thinks.
https://twitter.com/K_IngalaSmith/status/1052894983244668928
https://twitter.com/ThrupennyBit/status/1052895493242671104
Updating to add:
https://twitter.com/K_IngalaSmith/status/1053262037223137281
Result!
Why do I get the feeling that this is going to be explained with that classic ‘total wanker’ explanation we’ve all heard before: “It’s not an insult, it’s an observation… and it’s true!”
Like “cunt” which many in the UK try to pass as a neutral (in all senses) endearment in public, while acknowledging in private that it’s a nuclear option in the misogyny arsenal.
What is the context for this?
Is it, “ha ha, look at these disgusting TERFs”?
Is it, “some opponents call them TERFs, which stands for…”?
Something in the middle? Something even more extreme?
It would be nice to see a couple seconds of the video before and after the screen cap…
The context was they were presenting the debate and different voices from it, and felt the need to define the term terf to inroduce the debate. They should have either not used this uneceasary term or made it clear that it is widely used as a slur. But the BBC makes these mistakes all the time in its clumsy attempts at ‘balance’
I noticed the Pink News guy in the program defined sex as a biological category and gender simply as ‘how you feel’. I don’t even know what that means. I don’t know what my gender is now. I don’t think most people feel male or female in some non-sexual sense. I would have thought this would imply that most people are non-binary and that ‘cis’ people are in a minority?
Except you have no right to define yourself as non-binary unless you happen to accept one particular dogmatic position. Most “cis” people do not define themselves as “cis”. That term is applied to us by trans-activists who wish to put women in a position of privilege over a group of very entitled bullies.
I once saw an activist explain that “cis” people are those people who were comfortable with the gender they were assigned at birth, and comfortable with the way they were raised in that gender. If that is true, then I am not “cis” since I was never comfortable being told I needed to “be a girl” and “do girl things”. I was never comfortable having to wash dishes while my brothers got to do fun things. I was never comfortable having to take Home Ec instead of Physics. I was never comfortable being trained for being “Mommy” and being prepped for having many children and staying home while dear, intelligent, head of the household hubby went to work. I was never comfortable being told I needed to be a “lady” while my brothers got to be hooligans and were excused with “boys will be boys” (not that I wanted to be a hooligan, but I didn’t want to be a lady, either).
But I never had the urge to be a boy. I wanted girls to be allowed to do the things they could do, and to wear jeans and t-shirts to school, and to not have to have babies all the time. I sort of got my way, because I carved out my own space and all the training didn’t take, but there are still expectations of “female” that exist in my brain no matter how I try to root them out. And I am still overlooked, ignored, talked over, assumed incompetent, given crap jobs, and in general treated poorly because I am a woman.
This is what they call privilege.
“I once saw an activist explain that “cis” people are those people who were comfortable with the gender they were assigned at birth, and comfortable with the way they were raised in that gender. If that is true, then I am not “cis”…”
Same here. Except i don’t see the point in identifying myself as ‘non-binary”. If anything needs to be described as non-binary here, it’s gender. It’s not me.
But i guess people prefer to personalise things rather than talk in abstracts. This is a problem because some persons seem to think they are under attack from people with opinions about concepts.
Karen reports that the BBC have now removed that bit, so her objection worked. Result!