In practice
What’s wrong with this claim?
How does one be a woman “philosophically”? I suppose he means ontologically. How does one be a woman “in practice”? I suppose he means by doing all the playacting things – wearing skirts, simpering, tilting the head, bellowing “IT’S MA’AM!!” But of course playacting isn’t how one can be a thing. It’s how one can pretend to be a thing, and it can maybe for some thoughtful people be a path to understanding how others feel. Pretending to have a physical handicap and then trying to navigate the physical world for instance can be an eye-opener. It’s funny how pretending to be a woman doesn’t seem to work that way at all.
Anyway. My main dispute is with “we are affected by all the same stuff.” No we’re not, asshole, and saying we are is such a dudely thing to say. Men are not affected by menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, systematic preference for men in most occupations, being smaller and less muscular, having less sonorous voices, and I could go on this way for hours. No, men who dress up as women are NOT affected by all the same stuff, and this claim that they are is why the whole “trans women are women” campaign is such a fucking insult.
This person clearly isn’t ready to understand common sense, much less philosophy. Sheesh.
I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t understand, I think it’s that he bullshits. The whole thing is based on bullshitting…aka gaslighting. They know it’s bullshit, they know they’re telling absurd lies, they know they’re mocking us – that’s what they like about it.
Actually, I think men are affected by all that stuff – but they are affected in a positive way. Because of preference for non-menstruating, non-child-bearing, non-menopausing people, men have not had to kick at the obstacles in the same way. They have been ushered in the door that is shut to us, and having women out of the competition was a great boon to men.
I really wonder how more people don’t see how full of it he is. The stupid Judith Butler quote at the top of his twitter and all, it’s absurd. But the way he uses ‘philosophically’ tells me he knows nothing about philosophy, or practicality for that matter, yet uses these terms to mansplain feminism. Irksome. And if he really does understand, then he’s creepier than he looks.
I suspect that this person cares very much about whether other people think she’s a woman “philosophically” when it comes to drumming someone like Kathleen Stock out of her university. Then the philosophical beliefs are quite important.
To me, the most serious issue with Gender Identity doctrine is with the foundation: the sloppy, conflicting concepts; the undefined and/or undefinable terms; the over reliance on subjective verification while overlooking evolutionary history and what skeptics have learned about self-deception. I put the same emphasis here I put on “God.” It’s not actually necessary to argue over suicide statistics or carbon dating if it falls apart way before we get to all that.
And yet atheist Genderists made the same accusation that Monty does: this philosophical, metaphysical, cold-blooded resort to reason and logic was a distraction. It’s a red herring. It’s only introduced to draw attention away from the REAL issue: “ whether or not we’re going to have the freedom to live our lives as we please.”
“It’s only introduced to draw attention away from the REAL issue: “ whether or not we’re going to have the freedom to live our lives as we please.”” — Which of course, is what they already have. These people are not oppressed, it’s a first world problem. Tell me “Katy Montgomerie” isn’t free to live as a “transwoman” in her current life circumstance. Right. The rest is a crusade, and a wretched one.
I meant ‘his’ life circumstance. :D
He claims that he’s been catcalled, so he knows what misogyny feels like, so that’s why he’s a real woman.
Wow. Catcalled. I bet it that’s true, he loved it – so affirming. But our problems go deeper than catcalls. Has he been denied promotion because of his sex? Has he been talked down to, talked over, required to do menial shopping, water the plants, make the coffee? Has he had his butt pinched, an erect penis rubbed against his ass (through pants, but still…), grabbed, mahandled, etc?
I don’t think he knows what misogyny feels like. It takes more than catcalls to get that. I suspect he knows what HE feels like when someone catcalls HIM. It doesn’t feel the same to every woman. I know what I feel when some man tells me to smile, but I don’t know what Ophelia feels like when some man tells her to smile. (Actually, I sort of do, because my introduction to OB was a post she wrote about that…but that’s an intellectual knowing, not the visceral knowing “Katy” refers to.)