Oops he forgot to pretend
Hoooooooooo-boy.
Sarah Pascoe really does really “correct him” to say that. She does it at high speed, aka a gabble, so you have to listen closely to catch it.
Ince: …how much further d’you think we’d be with understanding embryology if it was [sic] men that gave birth?
Pascoe: [cozy chuckle] Um well first [??] really boring [??] trans men can have children n give birth so just [??] make sure I know we’re talking about something that is such a gendered thing we end up saying men and women but um
Sorry about the three places where she gabbles so fast I can’t make out her words, but we get the idea.
She gets Ince’s point about “if men gave birth” – the old old old point about how easy it is to dismiss the pain and effort and danger of other people if you’re completely safe from it yourself. We know she gets his point because she gives that little point-getting complicit chuckle – but then she instantly stomps on his point by pretending he Did a Naughty by saying it’s not men who give birth. Oooooooooooh you did not just say that.
I wonder how furious Ince was. He goes to all this trouble, for years, to pretend that men are women if they say they are, and here this bitch is on his BBC show and she corrects him for saying “how much further d’you think we’d be with understanding embryology if it was [sic] men that gave birth?”
I bet he was livid.
It must be hard to try to keep repeating the lie when it is so contrary to both reality and experience. I can imagine an infinitude of better uses to which all of that mental energy could be directed.
I agree with not Bruce, and would add that it seems to be even more important to the fantasists to correct one another than it is to correct anyone else – because although it’s important to sound superior to the general public, it’s even more important that they all repeat the same mantras, else the public might notice the discrepancies and deduce the big lie at the centre of their religion. Once that happens, of course, those who weren’t particularly invested in the fantasy, but have been going along with it to avoid censure, might decide to abandon the pretence – and a cult which loses members faster than they can recruit new ones is doomed. Then what will the fanatics and fantasists do? After sinking their reputations and sense of self-worth into it?
I’m actually surprised that Pascoe corrected him. I’ve been seeing this phenomenon from time to time, where someone who’s an acknowledged progressive, says a standard progressive thing, like Ince does in the above example, but rather than being corrected because the statement *could be interpreted as a “transphobic” statement*, everyone breezes past, somehow settled on the idea that this particular person didn’t mean it *that way*. The meaning of the words is somehow informed by assumed intent, and no one’s feelings are hurt. Meanwhile, if JK Rowling, Graham Linehan, or Kara Dansky had said the same thing, the ACLU would have decried it as bigotry.
Examples from recent times include a “trans inclusive” women’s rights page on Facebook promoting t-shirts with the slogans “Gay sex prevents abortion” and “Without us, you don’t exist” (over a rainbow themed uterus, vagina and ovaries). Other examples would be anything that identifies that men pose a threat to women, or overstep women’s boundaries in ways that produce danger and discomfort.
I call these instances Schrodinger’s Allies, in which they’re allies statements, or not, and actually opening the box to determine the actual status of the statement usually finds women’s rights is dead inside.
(My upfront apologies to those who actually understand Schrodinger’s Cat; I’m confident my comparison doesn’t quite wash.)
Don’t worry, Arcadia, nobody (including quite a few physicists) does so just go with it.