Never okay to not include
More “include trans women in EVERYTHING” from Nora Imlau:
Damn that’s a huge claim. Even if you think trans women should be “included” in the definition most of the time you can still think there’s no need to “include” them in discussion of bluntly physical matters like pregnancy and childbirth and genital mutilation.
It’s so officious, this interrupting of women to shout “INCLUDE MEN WHO CALL THEMSELVES WOMEN” any time anyone has the temerity to talk about women. Who made Nora Imlau, or anyone else, the boss of what women get to talk about when we talk about women?
That just reads like parody, but the rest of her lecturing doesn’t, so I think she means that one literally. Who says it’s “correct” though? Who is the official in charge of all this? How does Imlau know what the official has ruled about how we’re required to talk about women and men who pretend to be women? How can the rest of us take that official to court?
Why? Why is it important to say that?
I can tell you why it’s important not to say that. It’s important because people “with a vulva” have historically been subordinated by people “with a penis,” and if we suddenly can’t call the first set “women” and the second set “men” then we can’t get rid of that subordination. If we’re forced to pretend that some men are women and some women are men, there can’t be any feminism any more.
Lots of folks on that last post pointed out that she only remembered trans boys after everyone jumped on her for talking exclusively about trans women.
At first:
The subject is ‘males get to be called women’. But then:
She appears to know that this is a matter concerning the female sex only, but when she is in danger of admitting that trans women can indeed be excluded from this bit of activism, she switches gears and suddenly the topic is about ‘some females aren’t women’. She probably doesn’t even notice the transition.
The TRANSITION. Geddit?
Bullying on this level causes me to make stupid jokes.
Funny, that. I was thinking something earlier that played on ‘transition’. I was wondering when and how the definition of woman had transitioned from the single category of adult human female to a category containing two sub-categories of cis-woman and trans-woman, and how the first sub-category can no longer be defined as adult human female because we are supposed to believe that those of the second category are also female. That there is no clear definition of trans-woman, nor even a blurred definition, but one that constantly shifts to suit the occasion serves only to confuse the issue.
AoS, and another irony being that defining woman as “someone who feels like a woman” actually disqualifies a large portion of us, who don’t “feel like a woman” or even know what the hell that means. What does a woman feel like? I feel like I am living in a 60-year-old body, but my brain feels like it’s 25. I feel like I am talked down to and condescended to and treated with disrespect. I feel a lot of things, some of them because I am a woman, I suppose, but which of them actually translate to “feeling like a woman”?
Does that make me non-binary? Or does it just invalidate my existence?
Iknklast, now you’ve got me confused. I thought you were an otter? Or is it just that you feel like an otter? Is there a difference? What does it feel like, being an otter, anyway? I am hoping it makes you playful, at least. You deserve that much, I am sure.
Otters a multifaceted. Remember the old saying: if it’s not one thing, it’s an otter.
A woman isn’t someone who “feels like a woman.” A woman is someone who “senses they are a woman.” Totally different. An individual might feel like a man but nevertheless sense they’re really a woman. It’s sort of like being aware that you’re you, even when you don’t feel like the person you used to be.
In which case, Aristotle’s claim that there are some truths so obvious that any attempt to prove them would involve evidence less obvious, comes into play. No debate.
Harald, I am an otter. Now what is my gender as an otter (sorry, should that be sex? I’m confused, but then, otters are not usually known for their good grasp of the nuances of the English language).
I wanted to write something multi-order recursive about how feeling like a woman is feeling how you’re told to feel but people are unreasonably (and unrealistically, as it turns out) demanding that I meet some work deadlines.
And how is it that we don’t see trans-men pouring threats of murder and rape at anyone who fails to submit to their whims?
The Facebook page The Boxer Ceiling documents some pretty vile verbal abuse aimed at gay men, especially (but not limited to) against those who insist that same-sex means same-sex, from TIFs who claim to be gay men. I don’t recall there being threats of rape and murder, though.
Threats of rape (and even murder) are largely (not exclusively, of course) the province of biological males. Even if they think they are really deep down inside women.