Your concern for lesbian visibility
The conversation seemed to start well.
But it didn’t go on well.
…”you drawing the lines of who gets to be one” – well if there are no such lines then what are we even talking about? What even is a lesbian?
This is laughably basic but apparently not everyone gets it – the reality is we can’t talk about anything if we don’t have common meanings for the words we use to talk about things. One broad hint at this state of affairs is that we can’t go prancing all over the globe striking up conversations with everyone we encounter, because the world contains many different languages, and it takes time and effort to learn new ones.
The word “lesbian” has a meaning. Lesbians are women attracted to women. That’s it, that’s the meaning. It’s not an issue of who gets to be one, it’s an issue of who is one, who can be one. It’s not a country club that the members can hand out guest passes to, it’s a word with a specific narrow meaning. Some words have broad meanings, like “beautiful” for instance. There’s room for argument there, and people do argue over what is or isn’t beautiful. Are the Sainte Chapelle and the Chrysler building both beautiful or do you have to pick one? That kind of broad meaning. But “lesbian” isn’t like that. It isn’t evaluative, it’s just factual. Men can’t be lesbians, because that’s not what the word means.
I feel like we are in Alice in Wonderland, where words mean whatever we want them to mean. Because our own personal opinions, our own individual “feelings” are ALL that matters, even when involving a social reality like language.
“Dictating others’ identity to them” ah, no. It is not people that we are defining and delimiting, but words.
I think it comes down to the change in the meaning of the word “woman”. For those who argue that trans women can be lesbians, woman refers to gender (whatever that is), not to sex. Therefore, since trans women are women, trans women who are sexually attracted to women are, by definition lesbians. That “woman” now refers to gender, not sex, is justified by pointing out that the meaning of words tends to change over time. We all accept this (that words can change their meaning, not that “woman” should refer to gender, not sex). The problem is that the new definition is now retrofitted to concepts where “woman” clearly refers to sex, not gender. Lesbians are sexually attracted to women the sex, not the gender. Women’s sport and women’s prisons are for women the sex, not the gender. If we’re all going to use the new-fangled meaning of “woman”, then we need a new term for the old meaning, then rename everything that now refers to women with this new term. Why not stick with the original meaning? If you want a term that refers to gender identity (when and how did that become a thing?), come up with one. “Woman” already refers to something else.
Let’s see… something that means “similar to, but not, woman”… maybe something with a Latin prefix… “nonwoman”? Hm, sounds like that might be taken to mean “man”… let’s try something more obscure or poetic as a prefix… like “across” or “beyond”… ooh “beyond gender” or maybe “dressing up as the other sex” or “dressing across from one’s sex” could be appropriately dramatic… it’s on the tip of my tongue… :-P
;-)
@Carmichael #3
It’s even worse than that. If we start classifying people by gender as opposed to sex, we will end up reinforcing gender stereotypes.
@Colin #5, end up? We’re already there. “Trans women” present the most mawkish, absurd gender stereotypes — lipstick, head tilt, duck face, all the way to “feminizing” facial surgery. The trans radicals hate feminists so much because feminists believe women can be anything, not that anyone can be a woman.
The trans ideology being enforced in schools is retarding an entire generation by concretizing their gender stereotypes. Once upon a time, if a boy was gentle and didn’t like getting his hands dirty, they called him a sissy. Now they say he’s a girl trapped in a boy’s body. This an intensification, rather than a reduction, of the gender stereotype, from being a boy unlike other boys to not being a boy at all. Without gender stereotypes, there is no transgenderism – a trans woman is just a man acting out female stereotypes – and they want to prevent the rest of us from escaping gender stereotypes too.
Dorothy Allison, in at least one essay, wrote about getting letters from college girls who felt obligated to call themselves lesbians without regard to their actual feelings. LUG, ‘Lesbian Until Graduation,’ was a real thing then. As a real, to the bone, lesbian, Allison was cringing in horror at the self-suppression and sex-negativity that this involved.
There’s a serious problem with mixed messages here, and it comes down to a deep-seated conflict in Gender Identity ideology. On the one hand, the goal is to eliminate sexism, stereotypes, and gendered expectations. People should be free to “be themselves” regardless of what religious conservatives think. I read a GI program written for the schools which honestly began by trying to tell kids that girls and boys could dress and play any way they wanted. There were no “boy things” or “girl things.” Michael could like dolls and Jessica could like trucks. It read like a GC curriculum. There were even notes in the teacher’s manual warning that sexism is entrenched in young children.
And then — wham —- Michael might be a girl, internally. Your real sex doesn’t have to match what people see on the outside. Gender Identity theory is presented without any explanatory content regarding how people know what gender they are.. No examples like “Michael knew she was a girl because she liked playing with dolls.” It was more like “Michael knew she was a girl because thinking of herself as a girl and joining the girls made her more comfortable.” Nothing specific, and no more references to the sexist stereotypes kids already have.
No, see — they’re getting rid of the sexist stereotypes so that children are more comfortable identifying as the opposite sex. Or so they seem to see it.
That’s an excellent summary.