A better line in manners
Speaking of Christine Burns (who participated in that cozy chat about terfs on Al Jazeera)…here’s a think-piece from 1996:
On a Saturday afternoon in a pleasant English University suburb I went along to find out the hard way. To argue, as both advocate and plaintiff, that transsexual women have more in common with the experience of their sisters than they blandly imagine.
Sorry for being bland, but I still get to think that we don’t have the experience of being a woman in common with men.
Under debate was the question of whether the group I was visiting should argue the case with their peers for other women like me to be admitted to their women-only space.
The air was thick with irony as I politely answered question after question. Corrected lie after lie. Defended my client’s very existence and justified their (and my) course in life.. as though I should be expected to succeed in communicating a personal experience that’s no easier to describe to the uninitiated than a panic attack or childbirth. … As though the court before me, drawing its’ authority from the shape of genitals they were born with, had the intellectual right to weigh up and judge the evidence which I’d spent much of my life studying and experiencing first hand. At stake, not just my client’s but my own self image and status as a woman in a club which I didn’t personally want to join. The charge, that my client (and by implication I) would make them feel uncomfortable.
It’s not a question of “drawing authority” from one’s genitals, it’s just a matter of definition. The disdain and hostility are noted however.
That majority would join with me in being horrified by the notion that, after being raped by a man, a woman like myself would be turned away from a politically correct Rape Crisis Centre. Told, in the ultimate act of cruelty, that she was a man. That she should seek counselling from a man. That she made her sisters feel uncomfortable. In a bizarre way rapists have a better line in manners. At least they treat their victims, without prejudice, as women.
Those last two sentences are currently being passed around on Twitter by some of those wicked heartless women who don’t think men can magically become women.
Typography International is bringing a suit against her in the International Criminal Court for abuse of italics.
Imagine rape victims having the nerve to be uncomfortable! They’re worse than rapists in many respects!
Is that where we’re at now?
Stonewall’s own briefing paper on LGBTQI+ in Qatar.
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/global_workplace_briefing_qatar_final.pdf
H/T @simonjedge on twitter.
My god, I think reading that sentence caused every irony meter within a mile of my house to explode… Yes, I fully believe that transwomen have a life experience that I, as a non-trans male, will never fully comprehend. But unlike this nattering nitwit, I also recognize that women have experiences I will never fully comprehend, and that it is almost dead certain that while there might be an overlap of Venn diagrams there, they are by no means congruous. Burns’ unwillingness to accept that women do have experiences that Burns never did, or will, is a manifestation of utter narcissism.
Yeah, hilarious that that does not seem to apply to trans people and their total lack of knowing what it is like to actually be the other sex.
You were not called upon to justify anyone’s existence. Nobody doubts that people who declare themselves to be the opposite sex exist. The issue is whether or not the claim is true; manifestly, it is not. Being a girl or woman is not a “club.” Nobody can volitionally “join” or repudiate membership. The sex of humans, like most other animals, is a brute fact that can be objectively observed and determined.
Your “course in life” is entirely up to you, but none of it changes your biological sex.
Panic attacks and childbirth are experiences that are capable of description. You should be able to describe your personal experiences in words. That you complain about being unable to communicate your personal experiences to others is on you. N.B., perhaps your difficulty is that clear communication will lay bare the defects in your claims and arguments.