A Christian invention
It isn’t my womb that makes me a woman, Natasha Devon writes
Because it’s the large non-motile gametes?
Hahaha no don’t be silly.
Trans people have always been present in human society. Famously Marsha P Johnson, an American activist and trans woman, threw the first brick during the Stonewall riots in June 1969.
“Famously” inaccurate. Johnson was a drag queen.
Binary notions of gender – the idea that there are only men and women and everyone fits neatly into one of those two categories – are also a Christian invention, which spread across the globe as Christian countries colonised it.
Huh. So how were there humans before Christianity? If they had no idea which was which how did they reproduce?
Yet, there is an additional layer of complexity when it comes to the trans discussion, which is confusing even some people who would consider themselves liberal and progressive – Namely, that trans women are erasing the rights of cis women (people who were born with a girl’s body).
That is indeed a complication; good that she admits it.
As a cis woman, I am supposed believe trans women are a threat to my rights to sex-specific healthcare, as well as being terrified that men wearing dresses are going to invade my private spaces (like toilets and changing rooms) to assault me. I’m also meant to worry transwomen might beat me at sports with inherent superior ability.
Oh I see, she wasn’t admitting it, but she’s too bad at writing to say that.
All very well to be glib about these obvious drawbacks to trans ideology, but the facts remain what they are.
Which, amusingly, she goes on to admit, while waving it away with “but surely we can figure out some way to have everything we want.”
Trans people in sports is more of a nuanced discussion in my opinion, particularly when considering physical education in schools. Pre-puberty, it shouldn’t be too much bother to just let anyone of any gender play any sport they like, with anyone they like.
Yes, we know.
However, factors such as male bodies having (on average) stronger skeletal structures post-puberty, larger lung capacity and of course the impact of testosterone all make this more complex with teenagers.
And adults. Laurel Hubbard is 43.
I don’t think it’s unresolvable, however, if we really put our thinking caps on.
Ohhhhhhhh cool, that’s that fixed then. If only we’d thought of that!
I think we’ll never reach satisfactory conclusions if we allow ourselves to be side-tracked by a combination of blatant transphobia and the fabricated notion that cis and trans women’s rights are at odds.
She says, having just admitted that in at least one area they are.
After all, that’s not how right’s work: They aren’t a zero-sum game and we should always be cautious when we’re led to believe that showing humanity towards one demographic comes at the expense of another.
She says, having just admitted one area where “showing humanity” to men who say they are women decidedly does come at the expense of women.
There is zero thought or argument or effort here, it’s just repetition of three or four stupid mantras plus oops an admission that even she knows they’re not true.
But LBC thought it worth posting.
This is just wrong. There are many cases where one person’s rights might conflict with another person’s. Sometimes it requires going to court to resolve.
And, of course, as we all know here, the right to be seen as the opposite sex is not a right. The right to be seen by others as you see yourself is not a right. The right to call yourself a new name? No problem…and no conflict. The right to wear what you like? No problem…and no conflict. I could give myself a new name, do the paperwork to make it legal, and it would be my name. I could wear men’s clothes all the time (I often do), and they would be my clothes. But I cannot become a man just because I wish to (fortunately, I don’t).
But how can we “put out thinking caps on” and resolve the issue of trans people in women’s sports if even discussing the problem gets you accused of transphobia?
And yeah, the “Christians invented everything” nonsense is just as tiresome when the left does it for things they dislike (“Christians invented the idea there are two sexes!”) as when the right does it for positive things (“Christians invented logic and science and philosophy and goodness!”).
What’s LBC? LBC Views doesn’t say.
maddog:
If you look at the logo at the top of the page, it reads “Leading Britain’s Conversation”.
Which admittedly doesn’t explain much.
Issa talk radio station.
This doesn’t work for sex or gender, since rigid sex roles existed in virtually every culture around the “globe” since recorded history.
Devon’s whole “let’s sit down and work out a compromise” position falls flat, because many of the Gender Critical have already endorsed a compromise or two: supplement women’s single-sex spaces and activities with a third category, either specifically for trans people or unisex. Maybe make some allowances for men who’ve been castrated. Set up campaigns or programs normalizing gender non-conformity, and encouraging people to accept themselves, their bodies, and others without imposing sexist notions of masculinity and femininity. And let’s work on getting men to be less violent and annoying when a man in a dress comes into the Men’s Room.
After we do that, let’s see if the conflict has improved.
If the trans people are screaming that they ARE women or ARE men and NONE of that will work, then Devon needs to consider where the obstruction lies.
If we just completely ignore biological reality, we’ll all get along just fine! What a simple solution for that nasty old blatant transphobia! :P
No. I don’t believe this for a moment. Transness is a very recent, incoherent Western invention. I do believe, however, that there have always been gender non-conforming people, because gender is bullshit, and there are always going to be people who chafe at the injustice of being kept from rights, activities, professions, etc. because of stupid, arbitrary rules based on sexist stereotypes. The recognition of this fundamental injustice is not the result of affronting someone’s innate “gender identity”. It does not follow that anyone resisting gender restrictions is doing so because they believe that they’re having the wrong set of stupid, arbitrary rules applied to them, but because of the stupidity of the rules to start with. It’s not a complaint about being put in the wrong box, or a box with the wrong label, it’s a rejection of boxes altogether.
Similarly, women and men who disguised themselves in the gendered trappings of the opposite sex in order to escape the restrictions placed on their own were not rejecting their sex, but the sexist, gendered restrictions placed upon it by their societies. I’m sure the vast majority of these gender non-conforming women and men would have preferred to live their lives without the subterfuge and pretense forced upon them by gendered rules and expectations, to follow the paths of their choosing without the camouflage and secrecy that patriarchal sexism necessitated. The fundamental truths these heroic women and men were living and enacting was in aid of sexual justice, not gender identity. For modern gender activists to “trans” these people after the fact, turning them into props used to bolster the box-making project of gender reification, is cruel and appropriative. They would burn those boxes down.
The problem is that this is a very particular thinking cap, one that admits of but one answer: any other is rewarded with a jolt of righteous electricity for your having dared think it at all. It’s the trans activist’s version of Ford’s “You can have your car any color you like, as long as it’s black.”
“Trans” people have been around for a long time, under the ever-expanding “trans umbrella” that seems to cover everyone except the boringly normal (and even those can join by just calling themselves “queer”), and which is constantly being pushed back in time and further away from English-speaking society, ignorantly and imperiously.
How ridiculous that “always present in human society” is accompanied by an example from a mere few years ago, within my adult lifetime.
From what I have read, Johnson wasn’t even there, including according to Johnson!
Bruce wins the internet. That is an amazing comment that should be highlighted, Ophelia!
“The way I winded up being at Stonewall that night, I was having a party uptown. And we were all out there and Miss Sylvia Rivera and them were over in the park having a cocktail.
I was uptown and I didn’t get downtown until about two o’clock, because when I got downtown the place was already on fire. And it was a raid already. The riots had already started.”
– Marsha P. Johnson.
What’s a ‘girl’s body’?
Hey, does anyone else find it weird that there are depictions of humans as a binary dating all the way back to paleolithic petroglyphs if the binary was only invented ~2,000 years ago?
This reminds me of that tendency for people to say “It could be argued that ____” without bothering to present the argument at all.
Room 101!