Amazing but not in a good way
It is an amazing speech, but not in the sense Kirsty Blackman seems to mean.
But it’s not about the right “to simply be who they are.” That’s the whole point. They’re claiming a right to be recognized, treated as, embraced as, who they are not. There are two lies in this formula, not just one. The first lie is that it’s about who they are when in fact it’s about who they are not, and the second lie is that it’s just about them, doing their thing, when in fact it’s about forcing everyone else to endorse and support and help with their personal fantasy. That is not a right. Compelling all other people to “validate” your personal private fantasy is not a right.
“…fighting other women just because their experience looks different to your own gets you nowhere.”
Maybe so, but that’s not what this is. They’re not other women, we’re not fighting them, our refusal to obey their orders is not because their “experience looks different” from ours.
I’m so fed up with all this baby talk from legislators.
A movement that relies on such transparently false characterizations of both their own aspirations and the views of their critics isn’t something that I can really get behind.
Lately progressive writers have taken to mocking voter concerns about drugging and surgeries on “trans-kids” and women’s concerns about male violence as simply an absurd refusal to use “they/them” pronouns.
There are three lies in this formula. The first one is that it’s about “who” they are when it’s really about “what” they are. Are they a man or a woman? Are they male or female? Those are “whats.” A “who” is Joe or Jane.
By substituting the word “who” the topic subtly shifts from sex classification to self-actualization. The implication is that they can’t be themselves — their loves, hopes, dreams, talents, flaws, history, and future— if they’re not included in the right sex category. And that seems to place us under a moral imperative to let this person live the life they choose by letting them do what they want and choose their sex (not “gender,” that’s an equivocation.)
Shifting from an impersonal pronoun to a personal one is the perfect setup for the third lie — that it’s all about them.
I would make the modest suggestion that trans people be taught to accept who they really are and not who they think they are.
And AGPs practice in their own homes.
Sastra @ 2
Very well put; I like the “three lies” analysis.
I have come to dislike most of the “who I am” or “not who I am” formulations. “I am (or am not) acting in accordance with the way I would like to act or would like to be known for acting” is not at all the same thing as “it is (or is not) who I am”.
Oh yeah well what about my two lies analysis??!?
Jk. Excellent point about what not who, and self-actualization. This whole assumption that we all have to assist with the self-actualization of this one set of people at the expense of our own is…well, I don’t admire it much.
Well spotted. This shift would be much more obvious if men were claiming to be a particular individual (like Napoleon), (or another species, or phylum) rather than women, the definition of which has been deliberately obscured and fuzzified to the degree that even men can be said to fall within it. They’re trying to do an end run around the unavoidable fact that it is as impossible (and absurd) to claim to be the sex one is not as it is to claim to be a different individual (or species or phylum). We’re supposed to accept the impossible and the absurd. It’s the “kind” thing to do. Supposedly.
If an attempt is made to itemize the anatomical particulars that typically characterize the female sex (which men never posses), it is met with accusations of “reducing women to their genitals.” Similarly, functional definitions are said to “exclude” post-menopausal women. These supposed “gotchas” are not meant in good faith, but are intended as a means of removing the definition of “woman” from the material realm, allowing the
smuggling“inclusion” of people (i.e. men) who are not physiologically women into the category. Never mind that some of the same people decrying the “reduction” of women to body parts and functions cheerfully do exactly that in order to avoid using the word “woman.” (Hello U. of C. Nursing Faculty!) Never mind that up until five minutes ago, the only definition of “woman’ was purely physiological. Never mind that there is no equivalent pressure to redefine and simultaneously erase men.