Even academic writing
From the abstract of an academic article by a sociologist…
This article examines the development of anti-transgender debates within the United Kingdom, which have gained traction due to proposed amendments to the country’s Gender Recognition Act (GRA). A group of determined lobby groups, taking their lead from like-minded organizations in the United States, has protested vigorously against the proposed changes to the GRA, especially with respect to “single-sex spaces”. As a result of this furor, the lives of transgender people have become the subject of open debate.
“The lives of transgender people have become the subject of open debate”? Is that academic language? Is it the language of sociology? Surely “the lives of” various categories of people is a core subject in sociology? And thus a subject of open debate? That sentence sounds more like a Twitter blurt than an academic truth-claim.
And anyway, of course they have, because changing the meaning of “single-sex spaces” to “not-single-sex spaces” is naturally subject to open debate. Why wouldn’t it be?
Trans people now see their legitimacy questioned, and their ability to access services increasingly being placed under the microscope.
What does “their legitimacy” mean? What does it mean within the discipline of sociology? Going back a step, what does “trans” mean?
This article argues that the literature on radicalization – developed in response to domestic terrorism – can explain these developments. UK lobby groups are successfully pushing a radical agenda to deny the basic rights of trans people…
It’s not a “basic right” for men to be in women’s spaces. It’s the other way around – the basic right is that of women to be away from men when they need privacy. Women are vulnerable to men in ways that men are not vulnerable to women. It’s repellent for some smug academic to pretend otherwise in order to berate women for wanting to be safe.
Why do I get the feeling that this “argument” will contain no examination whatsoever of the position and concerns of gender critical feminists? Poisoning the well to portray their concerns as strictly anti-trans, and aligning them with “domestic terrorism” is not a promising start, or demenstration of good faith.
Trans activist tweeting this as proof of TERF fascism/Nazism in 3, 2, 1….*
*Not that they’ve ever felt the need to show proof, or ever had any to show, but “study” this will be cited as such.
Reading just some of the paper, it’s clear that its foundation is “trans women are women.” If you don’t buy into this, then much of the following is gibberish.
Yes, and? Please explain how this is not actually the case?
Also, define “woman”.
Here’s where we can apply the Foshaug question. What sort of definition of “woman”a allows you to lump men-claiming-to-be women in with natal women in any sort of useful, meaningful way? Well, somehow Craig McLean has managed to convince himself that his definition of “woman” draws a clearer, cleaner distinction between trans identifying males and the remainder of the human male population, than the conventional definition can between “women” and all human males. That’s a pretty neat trick, given that the old-fashion, traditional definition needs just three words, requires no advanced degrees to explain, and is easily recognized by everyone from Taliban to terriers. Outside of his pseudo-scholarly, self-righteous, morally superior, ideological stance, I’d bet he doesn’t even believe it himself.
This really terribly ironic., given Craig’s bio:
He is completely blind to the fact that women are mobilizing on the basis of “the precautionary principal.” Women are saying, EVEN IF every TiM was safe and unthreatening (which is not obviously the case), predatory, non-TiM males WILL use the loopholes afforded by self-ID to access female-only spaces in order to victimize women and girls. BECAUSE there is no sure way to distinguish between TiMs and predatory males pretending to be TiMs, as a precaution, it is best to exclude ALL males from ALL female only spaces. That is entirely reasonable. If that is not falling into the area of “the precautionary principal”, I don’t know what is. Trans identified males are male. They do not suddenly become harmless by changing wardrobe and putting on lipstick. Women have no way of determining if any given man’s wardrobe selection is a matter of “identity” or camouflage. The two are not mutually exclusive
Normally a male’s desire to enter female only spaces is rightly seen as a red flag, one that Craig here is telling women to ignore. Somehow women are expected to disregard the “precautionary principle” of Schroedinger’s Rapist, universally justifiable in all other situations, in cases where the man “identifies as a woman.” Women are supposed to let their guard down. Why? In the interests of “kindness” and “validation?” To avoid “demonizing” a group (men, of which TiMs are a part) which has done a pretty good job of demonizing itself? Women are expected to accept an increased vulnerability to harm so Craig can indulge in the luxury of his ideologically sound redefinition of “woman”, the risk and cost of which he will not have to bear himself.
Given the fact that his arguments to this point require the tacit redefinition of “woman” to include “men,” I’m not really interested enough to invest the time required to watch him tacitly redefine “feminist” to include bigoted, right-wing, religious extremists.
A decline in the quality of academic writing? Who could have predicted that?
My professors would have kicked my butt had I ever turned in something with so many unexplained assumptions. When I was working on my BA. PhD, fuhgeddaboutit.
I don’t know if they are allowed to tell students they are “wrong “ anymore. May be too triggering.
Whether by accident or design??
People cannot identify out of their birth sex.
Transwomen are people.
Therefore, transwomen cannot identify out of their birth sex.
That third sentence — the conclusion — might have been stuck there by accident, since “therefore chocolate chip cookies are best eaten warm from the oven” also fits. Or else .. it was put there for a reason. Probably hate. That’s what it appears to be.
Ffs.
“From Taliban to terriers” would be a good title for something.
Seriously though, I do wonder how this thing got published.
Wow. What is this doing in a journal? Here, from the conclusion:
(Emphasis mine. MH)
Yeah, no debate is exactly what they’re saying because if people debate it, the unreality of the issue is exposed. But, I find that sentence about the insurrecton even more disturbing, in large part because I can’t make the connection between the debate over the GRA and the insurrection. He seems to be saying that the mens will storm Parliament if they can’t use the women’s loo, right? Is he saying that the insurrectionists tried to stop the electoral ballot from being counted because they only wanted to pee? It’s shit artitcle by a shit writer with a shit position.
No I think he’s saying the violent murderous terfs will storm Parliament if they can’t murder trans people with their words.
But but but… That’s not biological essentialism. The idea that interests, behaviors, and abilities are pre-determined by biology, that’s biological essentialism. What he’s describing is something like: biology determines biology.
That’s a tissue of lies from beginning to end. There are no “anti-transgender debates.”
There’s nothing anti-transgender in any of that.
Why scare quotes around “single sex spaces”? Sex is real. Women’s need for some spaces without men is real.
The “lives” of transgender people are not being debated.
What’s open to debate are the claims of transgender people to be a sex that they are actually not. What’s open to debate are claims of “rights” that are not rights. No one has a right to lie about their sex to gain access to spaces reserved for a sex they are not.
The answer is…not quite. We can kinda sorta give them grades that they deserve, but cannot say “you shouldn’t be going into this field” or “this is a crap paper”. And in at least some high schools in the US, you cannot give zeros, even if the student doesn’t turn in their paper. You have to give at least a 50.
And even if you are theoretically allowed to give bad grades, you may be subject to being called into the office to explain why three students failed your class…even though you can demonstrate that they did shitty work, rarely attended, and didn’t take three tests out of four. “But why didn’t you engage them?”
I cannot engage someone who will not engage themselves.
I’m with maddog on this. As soon as I see “anti-transgender movement” it’s not worth bothering with. Should have saved that until later, not title it so. The trans cult has been pushing for including men in women’s spaces and endeavors, with the wrongness of it being so obvious, and if there are people with basic common sense that oppose that it constitutes a “movement???” What about auto theft, is there an “anti-car-theif movement?” No, it’s just that when something is wrong, intelligent people oppose it. It’s like the acronym/slur ‘TERF’, there is no actual group of people that it points to. Feminists who oppose men in women’s spaces are not transphobic, trans exclusionary, and I would venture to say, not even radical by the basic definition of radical. Any clear headed, ordinary feminist (or supporter of feminism and women’s rights) would oppose men being allowed in women’s only spaces and endeavors. There is no special faction of feminism, and just because the trans dogmatists ‘identify’ as trans, it doesn’t mean the rest of us need an unnecessary, redundant, and absurd adjective to describe how we’re not trans. I don’t know how anyone uses this type of phony jargon in any serious way, and if the trans cult had not gained so much attention and support in the last decade, I would have thought it was an elaborate hoax, or a monumental joke. The absurdity of it is confounding.
Nor are they likely to be advocates of the specific branch of feminism called Radical Feminism, which is what I think the acronym was originally intended to reference, but which got garbled, along with everything else you aptly point out.
But feminists include trans identified females as women, so the charge is not even true. That TiFs no longer “identify” as women does not prevent them from being female. It is telling that the use of this slur is centered around the so-called “exclusion” of males from female only spaces.
In the course of learning about this issue, my stance has changed, and become firmer. I used to be one of the “go along to get along, let’s be nice” crowd. “What’s the harm in that?” I thought. To be honest, I didn’t actually think much about the issue at all beyond good, reflexive, “progressive” lip service, until Ophelia and “l’affaire de FTB.” I’m no longer quite so “nice”, or naive: the cost is too high, particularly for women. Now? Trans “women” are not women at all. Never have been, never will be; surgery, hormones, and lipstick, or not. The more pushback there is against the idea that they are, the better. The politeness of the legal fiction accorded to some is a legal fiction too far. Someone might have legal documents solemnly proclaiming that they have changed sex, but they have as much force and power over the facts of material reality as a permit exempting one from the force of gravity.
Yes exactly, and the way the trans cult conflates both males and females in the trans amalgamation only confuses the issue, and allows them to be non-specific in the way they are included or exempt from any serious or nuanced discussion. That’s their sleight of hand. There is no real transphobia, it is not fear or hatred of trans people in general, but more simply the fact that men should not be allowed in women only spaces or endeavors. If trans “women” would admit that they are not biological females, and more accurately identify as trans “women”, without insisting that they are actual women, then there would be no problem, as they would be regarded, and rightly so, as a subset of males, not females. It’s a category mistake. This simple mistake, and the insistence that it’s true, is the real problem. Instead they want to shout everyone down who sees scientific biology as primary and superior to “feelings” or “performative gender” or whatever the bloody hell. It’s dishonest and self indulgent fantasy. This is why people like Judith Butler who spout the trans orthodoxy are either phony con artists, or daft, or both. I don’t think Judith Butler is stupid, but she could sure make better use of her cleverness than to waste it pushing the trans agenda to it’s ultimate absurdities.
But what better way to prove your cleverness than to get people to jump to the absurdities you publish? Is the Gauardian going to have you on speed-dial as go-to Queer Theorist if you fill your days regurgitating boring old facts about material reality? This is pretty heady stuff. It must be difficult to be hailed as a path-breaking, revolutionary, iconoclastic, cutting-edge, so-advanced-you’re-incomprehesible public intellectual, without taking advantage of Lysenko-lite power when it is so reverentially offered to you by eager minions and acolytes.