Rules are rules
It’s like this.
The rules are:
1. People are whatever gender they say they are
2. Cis people are comfortable with their assigned gender
3. Cis people may not reject the word “cis” as describing them
4. Only genuine trans people can be trans, and only genuine non-binary people can be non-binary
5. Cis people who say they are non-binary are wrong
The question is how it’s possible to reconcile 1 with 5, or 5 with 1.
Or 1 with 3, or 1 with 4.
I also have questions regarding definitions. Such as, the word “ gender.”
I just finished watching a video about parents raising their two children as “non-binary.” The names could fit either sex; they use “they” instead of “he” or “she;” they don’t let other people ( or possibly even the children) know if they’re boy or girl. The goal is to avoid stereotypes, to end up with adults who weren’t shaped to fit social preconceptions — who just are who they are.
Ah, I get it! What a great idea! No gender norms, no pressure to conform to expectations.
And then it’s like a needle scratched over a record: “ when they grow up, then, they can each decide if they want to be a boy, or a girl.”
How? Because they’ve learned boys are strong and tough, girls soft and sweet? Wtf. Wouldn’t it be “ when they grow up, they’ll realize that their being a boy or girl doesn’t limit them, or anyone else?”
It’s as if the concept of non-binary has a split personality.
The “rules” just so obviously don’t make any sense. What’s amazing is how many people who should absolutely know better — academic philosophers in particular — play along with this ridiculous game.
We’re living in such a bizarre time, aren’t we. Watching real life right now feels like when I’m reading the Handmaid’s Tale and I’m just waiting to get to the part at the end where it jumps to the future and everything’s gone back to normal and a bunch of academics are gathered at a conference to dissect how the hell everything went so wrong and society fucked up so badly. The back-to-normal future cannot come soon enough; let’s just get to that part already! (Right now I’m relying on faith (or some secular equivalent to the word) that such a back-to-normal future will come.)
Well, with 1:4, one can resolve the apparent problem by saying that anyone who claims a non-assigned gender is a genuine trans person.
1:3 can be resolved by saying that “cis” is not a gender. It’s kind of a weaselly resolution, but it works.
More stupidly, 1 & 2 are not mutually exclusive. That is, “cis” doesn’t mean that you are comfortable only with your assigned gender. So you could be comfortable with your assigned gender and claim to be lunagender (your gender only comes out at night). Because I’m comfortable at 78 degrees inside, but I’m happy at 72. Similarly, you could be “cis” and claim multiple genders (because what the fuck ever, you are Bullrog, and you have lots and lots of genders).
Rules are to be stated and obeyed, not questioned, Ophielia.:)
I am really confused over why we need anything more than rule #1
Curious, that is because rule #1 is so difficult to defend rationally, so they need the other things to shut people up.
Rule #2 is simply wrong. ‘Cis’ people are people who can accept that they are what they are.
Nullius, I’m not convinced. Detransitioners, desisters, predatory or opportunistic trans people, all get dismissed as being not “really” trans. That’s why Rule 4 was stated, to differentiate “real” trans/NB from “fake”. But if people are to be taken at their word, then lying is impossible.
Re Rule 3, I disagree here, too. I am male, but I am not “comfortable with my assigned gender” because I don’t believe I have an assigned gender, I think the concept is fatally flawed. Thus, I reject the label “cis”. If the definition were “you do not demand that people avoid referring to you using grammatically correct terms appropriate for your sex”, or some such, I might agree with it, but that isn’t what they want, is it?
So much this. Cis is used as a pejorative, intended to label us as privileged because we were born female. I do occasionally see people reference cis-men, but the term is thrown at women right and left, and seems to mean that we “feel” like our gender, with all that entails, and we are in fact lucky to have been born women. To the extent that they believe we are lucky to menstruate. We are lucky to get cervical cancer. We are lucky to get to be treated like a woman. Yes, I heard that one from someone I am very close to, who cannot understand what a ridiculous statement that is. I do not feel lucky to be “treated like a woman”, but for some reason, a lot of otherwise educated, intelligent trans* are unable to recognize that.
My *friend* tells me about “euphoria” whenever he is treated like a woman. He seems to believe that I feel that same euphoria when I am treated like a woman. Not hardly. Because when I am treated like a woman, I get spoken over, interrupted, ignored, verbally or physically abused, treated like a child, condescended to, not hired for a job that a less qualified candidate got, told it is “my” job to stay home with my child even when I make more than my husband so we had more to lose, expected to keep my house clean no matter how many hours I work…need I go on?
This is not what trans women are talking about when they talk about being “treated like a woman”, because they are not actually dealing with this. They mean “someone called me she” or “someone validated my identity by calling me the name I chose for myself that indicates I am the gender other than the one to which I was born”. So, no, the euphoria doesn’t come from being “treated like a woman”. It comes from someone being willing to buy into your own view of yourself, even though that doesn’t fit like reality, even though you look like a man and therefore receive the privileges of being a man (at least until you inform people that you are really a woman, at which time you will still not be treated like a woman because you still look like a man).
So, no, i am not comfortable with being my “assigned” gender and all that entails. Yes, it is assigned in the sense that the suite of gender roles was assigned to me immediately after observing my sex. But it was not assigned based on some random throw of the dice. It was “assigned” based on a real, true, observable reality. I have female reproductive organs, a female physique, and can be confidently identified as a female by any observer who has learned the difference between the sexes.
If someone is a biological woman who spent her whole life constantly running into people who regularly mistook her for a man, if she transitions is he now at risk of becoming ‘ cis?’
Oooh I love discussing theology!
“I love being treated like a woman.”
Funny, isn’t it, how this never means:
consigned to doing most of the housework
placing their needs second (or last)
taking care of the children
deferring their careers to take care of the children
tending to ailing parents
earning less
being minimized and trivialized
and so on
One almost gets the feeling that—not having been raised as girls and then treated as women—they don’t know much about the lives of women.
“I love being treated like a woman.”
Like a young, pretty, dressed up woman in a Western country i.e. like about 0.5% of the female world population.
iknklast, #10
Whilst I agree with you on that aspect of the ‘cis’ label, it doesn’t really sit well with the ridiculous notion that a transwoman has always been a female, but I suppose it fits with the rest of the confused, contradictory dogma of the wokefolk.
There is, I believe, another rather insidious reason behind the label. Instead of having ‘transwoman’ alone sound like a sub-category of ‘woman’ (which would actually be correct – if transwomen were women in anything but name), the use of ‘cis’ clearly suggests that ‘woman’ is an overarching category with both ciswomen and transwomen as sub-categories. The goal is to have the ‘cis’ label applied as often and as consistently as possible in order to create the impression that ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ is a difference without distinction; opposite sides of the same coin.
There’s a lot of this type of ‘mission creep’ going on. It’s the same with the pronouns. The more ‘moderate’ TRAs will tell us that it’s only a matter of good manners to refer to transwomen using female pronouns, even if we don’t really believe that they are woman. That sounds reasonable(ish) enough, but….the more commonly accepted the pronoun use becomes, the more that people will automatically but incorrectly equate the gendered pronouns with the actual sex of the transwomen.
And the more they will associate the transwomen with the characteristics of women – nurturing, caring, feeling, etc – plus the association with the ways in which women have been oppressed. Never mind that many women are not nurturing, caring, feeling, etc, but instead have characteristics more commonly identified as masculine. Never mind that these transwomen do not embody those characteristics. Never mind that these transwomen have grown up bathed in male privilege which is part of what is making them act like entitled sh**s. No, they are women, and women they must be.
In addition, it leads to the side effect of increasing the statistics of violent crime by women, because the likes of Karen Anderson (Name correct? Can’t remember, too early, not enough coffee, Google finger tired). And it increases the statistics of women as sexual predators ala Jessica Yaniv.
And sooner or later it leads to monstrosities like “menstruators” (what are those of us approaching 60? No longer women?), uterus-havers (ditto those of us no longer possessing a uterus), front-holes, and non-men.