Their struggle to define the term
Blurgh urgh urgh urgh what do words mean let’s just pretend we have no idea and never have had. The Telegraph:
Stella Creasy is clarifying her position on the word ‘woman’. “Do I think some women were born with penises? Yes”, she declares. “But they are now women and I respect that.”
What other words shall we ask people to clarify their positions on? How about “pear”? Shall we decide it means “vegetable similar to broccoli”? Or “ocean”? Can we clarify that it refers to an amount of water that could fit in a thimble? Or “night”? Should we alert the world that it means the time starting with sunrise and ending at sunset?
Zero women were born with penises. People born with penises are called “men.” In French it’s hommes, in German it’s Männer, in Spanish it’s hombres. It’s silly to ask people what they “think” about it; it’s not an opinion, it’s just a small simple fact. There’s no such thing as men who “are now women.” There is no such metamorphosis. There’s also nothing to respect.
…as with all conversations with politicians these days, particularly Labour politicians, any discussion about women quickly turns to their struggle to define the term in the first place. Many of her colleagues have notably declined to even try.
Because suddenly way too many people have decided that women don’t get to go on being women and saying they’re women and men aren’t women – suddenly we have to change all that, and punish women if they say no.
Surely, as a fellow feminist, she and JK Rowling aren’t too far apart on the issue? “No, I don’t agree with her and I’m told I am a bad feminist because I take a different view,” she reveals.
Of course you are. You’re a terrible feminist if you think men are women the instant they say they are (or any other instant).
“As an old fashioned feminist, I’m still fighting the patriarchy. I’m not interested in fighting amongst ourselves. And one of the things that happens to trans women is that they are oppressed because the patriarchy goes, ‘Oh well you’re a woman, right that’s it, let’s pick you apart’. So it’s right for me to stand with my trans sisters and say: ‘Let’s fight these battles together’.”
But they’re not your sisters, and the patriarchy doesn’t “go” the way you claim it does, and above all, those “trans sisters” have zero interest in fighting those battles with us. Their battle is all about bullying us to let them take over and shutting us up.
I checked the article to see if she was similarly confused about the word man. No mention. Strange!
I would say trans women are vilified not on the basis of being women (because they aren’t women), rather because they are men who are doing manliness wrong.
Some of them are not doing honesty, decency, or civility very well either. DARVO they’ve got down pretty good, though.
Arguably, some women are born with penises—women with severe congenital adrenal hyperplasia may be born with pseudohermaphroditism, which is more or less what it says on the tin. Exactly zero (0) women, however, are 46,XY with no DSD.
Some garbage bins start out in this world as cathedral bells. Some cows start out as horses. Some dogs as cats. Some rats as rabbits (and others as people.) In the above animal cases, and with men cf women, thinking makes it so. It’s pure magic.
Judith Butler influence:
If you put a part of the ocean in a thimble, is it no longer the ocean? It was at least a part of the ocean. “The Ocean” is a mental construct. A combination of spaces on the map (drawn by European imperialist MEN) and actual, existing salt water, animal and plant life, the ocean floor (“and there is in fact more earth than sea”).
In the same way “Woman” is a mental construct. If you ask a CIS woman what she is, she’ll say “a woman.” A transwoman would give the same answer. So there’s that. Plus a lot of women wear make-up. So do a lot of transwomen.
So please pay me my speakers’ fee and allow serial-rapists with penises to be housed in women’s prisons.