It doesn’t get better any more
Oh come ON.
She actually says that – the damn fool in the clip.
“The misconception that lesbian means a woman who loves other women um and actually the definition is non-men who are attracted to and love other non-men.”
Is the definition of gay man non-non men who are attracted to and love other non-non men?
Second question: has it been officially ruled that the word “woman” is now 100% taboo?
“Throughout history there have always been gender-nonconforming lesbians? um and it’s interesting to see nowadays that there are folks who kind of try to gatekeep that identity? and only include folks who identify as women um and that’s not what being lesbian is all about, there are trans men who identified as lesbian for many many years and still feel comfurble in that communinny and that idenniny – there are non-binary folks of all kinds who identify as lesbians, there’s just, there’s like a zillion different ways to be a lesbian? ann if that word is comfurble for you then nobody can they can’t gatekeep it from you.”
Suddenly she mashes her hands together.
“I am non-binary transmasculine and I am a lesbian.”
The stupid the stupid the stupid. We’re drowning in it.
Would she accept it if my (straight) husband and my (straight) self identified as lesbians? Because why can’t a heterosexual couple be lesbians? It’s all how you identify, right?
Humpty Dumpty is in charge, and the grownups have left the building.
iknklast,
Your husband just has to say some magic words (like, “I’m a woman!”) and you will both be lesbians.* It’s that easy!
* Or “queer.” I used to be friends with a straight woman who started calling herself “queer” after her boyfriend transitioned. The relationship didn’t last, but the queerness lingered.
Stop gatekeeping.
Does the magic work the other way too? If iknklast says “I am a man!” do both she and her husband become gay men? If women are erased and are simply “non-men,” do they enjoy the same power and ability to transform their male partners into homosexuals by simple declaration, or is this skill reserved for bepenised women only, like the ability to turn the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist?
I honestly do not understand how anyone takes this shit seriously. ‘Non-man’. These people are imbeciles.
‘ACTUALLY the definition is’…I can’t imagine ever speaking with as much authority about anything as I regularly hear from this cohort. And that is the least ‘masculine’ person I’ve seen or heard in a while.
I know. “People think lesbians are women but that’s so wrong and incorrect, lemmee fix it for you, lesbians are non-men duh, you’re welcome, enjoy the diversitee and incloosion.”
Sappho was a transman?
I’m sorry. I just can’t deal with the enby transmasc. It’s utter horsepuckery.
Let me get this straight (hur hur):
Lesbians aren’t women, they’re non-men.
So women aren’t non-men, right?
So what are men?
Naif @ #8 – “Sappho was a transman?”
χλωροτέρα δὲ ποίας
ἔμμι
‘I am greener/paler than grass’
(Sappho, Fragment 31, ll. 14–15)
Sappho, writing in the first person and referring apparently to herself, uses a *feminine* comparative form of χλωρός (meaning: pale green; yellow; pallid).
Well, you did ask…
I watched the little film “Gender Wars” too. Thanks for posting it. Following that, I watched the rest of her speech at the same event. The shifts from her head microphone to microphones in the audience, which pick up the shouting outside, are jarring.
I am perennially surprised that the most common tactic used to counteract women’s arguments that typical male violence may pose a threat to women no matter how men identify is … typical male violence.
Doctor Stock was chased out of her profession by the repeated and credible threat of violence against her by men, combined with institutional misogyny that refused to guarantee her safety. Everywhere women speak we see the same, again and again: men exercise, or threaten to exercise, violence against them to make them stop.
That young bully Kass acts so smug, insisting in the most male way possible that his aggressive ambush of a marginalized woman represents some sort of bravery on his part. It’s some special bravery to bring the shouts of a mob inside to confront a woman who needed security escorts to appear. When Kass insists that Doctor Stock disgusts him, his male-typical violence appears so close to the surface that it seems an almost imminent physical threat, delivered with casual, confident, everyday dominance. He obviously rattled her, and we must consider that was one of his goals: he wanted her to feel unsafe. He succeeded; the mob, through him, succeeded. She is obviously frightened as she speaks.
Nothing could be a stronger proof of the vapidity of his theythemness and the reality of his maleness than his successful deployment of the male threat of violence to frighten a woman.
The following speakers are well worth watching, for example Arif Ahmed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJHq5RB-UfQ
Professor Ahmed was apparently not frightened by the belligerence of the bullies inside or outside the hall. It is not directed at him, and it likely wouldn’t concern him as much as it does Doctor Stock if it were.
Very well said. I don’t think she was exactly frightened though – not in the sense that she thought he was going to punch her. It’s something else…rattled, stressed, unsettled. I’ve mentioned several times here that it’s a thing men do to women, and I’ve had men do it to me (and it makes me furious). The intimidating loss of temper – the implicit threat of violence even if literal violence is most unlikely. Using male anger by itself to cow women. Funny how men don’t identify out of that.
Ophelia, you’re quite right. It’s something subtly different than the actual threat of violence. It’s like the aroma of violence. It’s the nip an alpha dog gives to a pack member to keep him in line – he doesn’t cause harm, intend to cause harm, or threaten to cause harm, just lets the beta know it’s his right to cause harm if he so chooses.
I was talking about this with my teenage son about it, and he was interested to see the debate, which he watched in order on the Cambridge Union YouTube page. My son also perceived the ambush by the young bully Kass Kaldicott as unseemly, simultaneously ungentlemanly and typically male. It’s not hard to imagine Kaldicottt’s forefathers berating suffragettes in the same manner.
Young Master Kaldicott seems to think that “nonbinary” is a get-out-of-dick-free card, entitling him to any and all dickish behavior without challenge or censure. Perhaps he thinks he doesn’t have to act like a gentleman, because he’s non-binary, so expecting him to act like a gentleman is transphobic. After all, Kaldicott has spent countless hours looking over his shoulder because of something or other which is not just him being a whinging ninny. It was heartening him booed at the end, though it’s not clear whether that was for his poor behavior or his poor argument.
My son mentioned a phenomenon perhaps related to the entitlement of men to rattle women with their display of anger. He’s been taking care of himself physically lately, which has included working out, eating well, and even running regularly, none of which he did as a child. He disclosed to me an unsuspected motivation: men, perhaps instinctively, respect other men they see as physically fit. The reaction of other men to him previously, when he was slack and pudgy, was different to what it is now that he is strong and fit. Fitness makes my son feel safer, and more effective.
“the aroma of violence” is very good. All the more so since literal aromas really can trigger fear and other emotions. The smell of medical offices – not unpleasant in itself – always zooms me back to my childhood terror of the needle. (There are also scents that trigger pleasant emotions of course.)