Definitions
Arguing about this again n again n again
A woman, for me, is someone who feels that they are a woman.
— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) March 26, 2019
Sally Hines, remember, is an academic.
First – what’s this “for me” shit? It’s not a “for me” thing. A “for me” thing would be, say, the best novel or the worst brand of toothpaste or the ideal career. Other examples of not “for me” questions:
What is a
- bird
- car
- cactus
- library
- star
- map
- orange
Definitions will vary depending on the asker and the answerer; they will be less or more technical, less or more basic, less or more precise – but they won’t start with “It depends on who you are.”
Second – it’s just so stupid. “Feeling” you are something doesn’t make you that thing except when the thing is purely subjective. You can “feel” you are spiritual and that probably means you are, but other than that catgory, just feeling your way into being something doesn’t work. It’s as if Sally Hines, academic, believes in magic.
https://twitter.com/uberman21/status/1110653443302215685
https://twitter.com/DeborahJaneOrr/status/1110654070761635842
You can say it when it’s okay, but not when it isn’t. You can’t say it when someone has just shouted “TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN.” It’s very forbidden to respond with “Trans women are trans women.”
What does that even mean?
I don’t “feel” I’m a woman. I know I’m one based on physical evidence. There’s no feeling that goes along with it though.
Well quite; it doesn’t mean anything. There’s not something it feels like to be a woman, and “feeling like” a woman (or claiming to) doesn’t mean you are one.
Some days I feel like a 25 year old. That doesn’t change the reality that I am 58, it only means I am feeling good, my back and shoulders don’t hurt, and I’m in a 25-year-old mood (whatever that is; it means one thing for me, and something else for someone who was 25 a different way than I was).
What if someone “feels like” a Ph.D. in Ecology? Does that mean they can demand that they get my job and I get bupkis? In spite of the fact that they know nothing about the field? In spite of the fact that they are 6 years old?
No one really believes that nonsense about everything being what you say it is. For instance, I doubt Sally Hines would decide that a cactus is a chair, and that would mean she could sit on it without getting spines in her butt. I doubt she would decide that a car is an orange and is good to eat. But defining away a physical reality so many of us have lived with, in some cases suffered with, is A-OK, even if it means defining rights away from women.
And even if it renders the definition utterly vacuous.
If all we know is than an X is an X (or an X is someone who feels like an X), then we don’t know anything.
Time for a little levity?
Just saw an advert starting with this:
““Sally” is a 13 hand 10 year old appaloosa/roan molly mule (who identifies as a Labrador retriever). …”
As the trans activists (and their allies; we mustn’t forget them) already falsely and dishonestly equate the exclusion of transwomen from women-only spaces and events because they’re not women, with the exclusion of people of colour from places and events because they’re not white, it is, I suppose, only a matter of time before one of them realises that the perfect ‘shut up’ tactic would be to get the word ‘trans’ on an equal footing with the ‘N-word’. Just as it is rightly deemed racist to use the latter unless the user is black, it is, I think, nearing the stage where it will be wrongly asserted that the use of the former by anybody not-trans (or an ally of, of course) is an act of transphobia.
I might have said this before, but the only time I ever feel like a woman is when someone treats me differently than they would treat a normal person- I mean, a man. “Feeling like a woman” inevitably means feeling some combination of anger, humiliation, fear, revulsion, or in the best case scenario, amusement (for amusement I refer you to when I worked in a supermarket and a co-worker exclaimed “all the girls I know scream and run away from those!” when I picked up a tiny beetle that came with a box of bananas)
Well, I’m a man, and I have feelings. But I can’t see how anyone could ‘feel that they were a man’ out of the clear blue sky. I’m right handed, but ‘feeling’ left-handed would be pointless. I’m heterosexual, but feel no potential interest in ‘women’ with beards and penises.
What does someone who feels that they are a woman, with no experience of actually being one, really feel?
This is the Shania Twain theory of gender: all you have to do is say “Damn! I feel like a woman!”
And then, hilariously, she cut the ground from under her own feet.
A reply: “Do you “feel” like a woman Sally?”
Her reply: “Well I don’t feel strongly that I’m not so yes.”
!!!!!!!
In other words no, not really, because what would that even mean, but I don’t “feel” I’m a bat or a xylophone or Tahiti instead, so yes, I accept the reality that I’m a woman. But those other, special people, they reeeeeeeally do feeeeeeeeeeeel they are women, so that must mean they are. It must, I tell you!
An exchange ensued.
https://twitter.com/sally_hines/status/1110665692804714497
Freaking wonderful responses. I actually laughed at work reading ‘She who must not be named – vulvamort’.
Those responses are priceless. ‘Do you feel weakly that you are? How’s that feel?’
Such savage transphobia! :-)
I forwarded the twitter link to a colleague who is rather more politically right wing than me, but doesn’t tolerate post-modernism of wishy washy thinking from anyone including right-wingers. Just now we were discussing by email possible changes to our disclaimer on reports. He threw this at me out of the blue…
“its not that its not not accurate, its is whatever it wants to be, and nobody should be allowed to create a social construct where inaccuracy is demonised for simply being inaccurate”
Yes, he was channelling Sally Hines.