Define your terms
For some reason Laurie Penny thought we needed to hear the formulas from her too, in case we hadn’t already heard them enough times from enough other fools and cowards.
What happened to sisterhood?
Good question. What happened to yours?
Last week, beloved children’s author J.K. Rowling became the world’s most famous transphobe.
Second sentence, and already in the ditch. Calling her a “transphobe” assumes what needs to be argued, aka poisons the well. Who says she’s a “transphobe”? On what basis do they say it? Is it true? Is it true even in the terms of people who go along with most of the dogma?
After the Harry Potter writer spent days defending transphobia on Twitter and in her blog, writing that she was “worried about the new trans activism,” millions of distraught fans and confused bystanders were left wondering what the hell was going on.
That’s more frankly just a lie. If I were Rowling I’d be considering sending in that lawyer again. Rowling did not “defend transphobia.”
But Rowling’s public spasm of self-delusion isn’t unusual.
Oh we’re the ones with the self-delusion, are we – we who don’t believe men magically become women by saying “I am a woman” – we’re delusional.That’s persuasive.
Britain is the epicenter of a strange, savage, and specific cultural backlash against trans rights. That backlash is doing real harm to people whose lives should not be up for debate.
What does that mean? If she means “whose right to live should not be up for debate” then of course they shouldn’t, but then no one is arguing that they should, so why say it? If she means “whose claims about their identity which contradicts their physical reality should not be up for debate” then that’s just absurd. It’s a useful trick, putting it ambiguously like that, because it makes people shy of disputing it.
I’d do the rest but…it’s long, and LP is not an interesting writer.
And she didn’t ‘spend days’ defending anything–she wrote a few tweets, then elaborated her thoughts in a blog post (which, granted, is so carefully and clearly worded that she probably spent days working on it).
TRAs are reminding me more and more of phonies pretending to be psychics or mediums. They also refuse to have their claims examined too closely because the truth only has a thin veneer to hide it.
Even when the TRAs do pretend to give evidence for their claims it comes amid a confused jumble of words interleaving fact and fiction which, as with stage magicians’ acts, relies on people missing the carefully disguised ‘switch’.
It’s all smoke and mirrors.
It just struck me (I know, I’m slow) that all the transexuals I know are honest that they have changed their gender expression (through modes of dress, hormones and surgery) but not their sex; it is those who call themselves ‘transgender’ who are claiming to be the opposite sex to the one which they obviously are.
“Why do we park in the driveway and drive on the parkway?” — George Carlin
Love the “one idiot” claim:
“Nobody is actually saying there is no such thing as natal sex. Nobody is demanding that cis lesbians literally have sex with trans women to prove that they are not prejudiced. Nobody is seriously suggesting that it’s transphobic to say the word ‘vagina’. Well, I say ‘nobody’, but I’m sure there’s at least one person out there saying all of those things, because one of the only absolutely iron-clad unbreakable rules of progressive politics or, indeed, any politics, is that there is always one idiot.”
Seems her problem is she doesn’t know how to count past one because thousands of people pushing the TRA line has claimed all this and more many many times. This is why I could not support the trans cult even if I was a man — the unending torrent of lies.
southwest88, maybe all those thousands have been assimilated into the Borg, so they really are just one idiot now, all one mind even though different bodies and Twitter accounts.
Men happened to it. A bunch of them declared themselves women, and just look at the mess they made with everything.
Pedantry: Assuming the thing to be argued is begging the question. Poisoning the well is a pre-emptive ad hominem. A question-begging argument is formally valid, but its conclusion depends on at least one premise whose truth is not previously established.
Poisoning the well: “Before we begin, I want to make it clear that my opponent is a misogynist. Keep that in mind while you listen to him criticize the Star Wars sequels.”
Begging the question: “Transphobes hate trans people. She’s a transphobe. Therefore, she hates trans people.”
It’s heartening that Laurie can’t find an outlet willing to pay for her twaddle. I didn’t read the whole thing, obviously, not having 26 mins to waste, but I liked the bit where she admonished JKR with the words: “it’s not about you”, as if Laurie’s own writings were ever other than autobiographical.
Nullius @ 8:
Pedantry in return: “aka” is not always literal; it’s often sarcastic. It often takes the form “polite version aka crude version.” I was using it that way.
More basically…I’m not a philosopher and I make no claims to say anything in philosophical language. I didn’t say “Calling her a “transphobe” assumes what needs to be argued” as part of a formal or technical philosophical argument, but as part of a conversation. It’s safe to assume nothing I say is correct as a formal or technical philosophical argument, but that’s not what I’m trying to do.
I’m not understanding what this non-literal “aka” is. (Really and honestly—my mind is just “that way.” It’s why I have an engineering degree.) Halp?
I believe you; I realize some minds are that way. Mine is too much in the other direction – aka shit at math. (There it is again!)
There’s a whole family of expressions like it, I think…”in other words” “or, being interpreted” “or to put it another way” and so on. Sometimes they are just straightforward but sometimes they’re not. I use “or to put it another way” quite a lot, I think, and then it’s almost always (or always) a progression from polite to rude, or tactful to blunt. I didn’t give it much thought when I said aka yesterday, but I wasn’t offering a synonym, I was upping the rudeness. Mind you I then focus on the begging the question aspect for the rest of that para so I see why it looked like offering a synonym.
I’m reading it as the inverse of strikethrough replacement:
“Good evening, Your Assholeness (oops strike that) Holiness!”
I don’t know if this will render, and we have no preview, but I’ll try it:
“Good evening, Your
AssholenessHoliness!”As in simply a phrase replacement, with one of the phrases being polite or formal and the other less so. No consistent formal relationship between the two phrases.
Yes, exactly.