Gasoline on the flames
The dogma:
Please don’t erase “trans men” and “nonbinary people” and the rest of the list of navel-gazing narcissism, instead erase women, because let’s face it, women are garbage.
Use the preferred term. Apparently the “preferred term” for women is “people who menstruate”…which seems an odd preference.
Lots to notice here. One, the guy is a medical doctor. [shudder]
Two, he claims that ridiculous and insulting phrase is “the preferred term” – preferred by whom? Who the fuck prefers to say “people who menstruate” instead of women?
Three, he says it costs nothing. It costs fucking everything, you clueless male-centered oblivious creep.
By “today” I’m assuming he meant “today as Texas ends abortion rights” – in other words today when women abruptly lose basic rights over their own bodies and futures and lives, we have to shut up about women and talk about “people who menstruate” instead.
Texas is apparently no country for women.
Funny thing, I google the phrase and find that my friend Taslima Nasrin has a book of essays with that title.
And Texas and Bangladesh are beginning to have much in common wrt women.
This makes a mockery of the whole “preferred pronouns” thing. If they want to argue that “menstruators” or whatever is the term preferred by sane people, over the old bigoted term “women”, and what the signified people themselves say is irrelevant, then by the same argument we can argue that the pronoun preferred by sane people for, say, Grace Lavery is “he”.
And recently topping the list of Utterances That Will Get You Written Off As Ignorant is “it costs nothing”. It’s so naive and unconsidered that it’s almost unfathomable how an ostensibly educated person could even begin to say it.
Especially atheists. When you stop to think about it, the phrase and its ensuing argument function very similarly to Pascal’s Wager. To wit, they urge action in contravention of belief, justified by juxtaposing an undemonstrated “infinite” good with a dishonestly dismissed/minimized cost. One would have you act as though you believe in the Christian God, for the outcomes in the afterlife are infinite and cost of belief in this life is negligible. The other demands you act as though you don’t understand how babies are made, justified by comparing infinite benefit/harm to transfolx and enbeez to the insignificant cost of using preferred pronouns. Both hide the full costs, which inevitably follow. Both hyperinflate the rewards and punishments of compliance.
They’re the same argument.
@Nullius in Verba #5:
Very good.
Or, following the template more closely, if it turns out that Transwomen really ARE Women, then we’ll have been part of the new civil rights movement destroying the Patriarchy, whereas if we later discover Transwomen are actually Men, we’ve lost nothing because we still looked all kind and progressive. Don’t decide what to believe based on weighing the truth of the issue in your mind; look at what’s in it for you — and choose the bigger payout.
I suspect that many of the self-proclaimed’feminists’ supporting this nonsense would, in the long run, rather be nice than right.
But if I include all the terms like “people who menstruate,” “people who are pregnant,” “people who have a cervix” etc etc and try to come up with a name for that collection, I’m back to the word “Woman.”
@GW #4
Good point. It violates their idea that people determine how they are referred to. So does “cis”, for that matter.
You saw nothing of the kind. There’s no such thing as “cis” women, and none of the women protesting the erasure of women said they are protesting the erasure of “cis” women. Trans men are included in the term “women.” So-called non-binary women, or women who adopt any other exotic bespoke gender label for themselves, are still women. That’s the difference between gender and sex. Women of any gender are included in the word for their biological sex. “Women” is the inclusive term.
But…how can it be inclusive if it excludes men? And it probably excludes Irish terriers, and potatoes, and wool socks!
GW:
Oh, you’re not allowed to say preferred pronouns, any more. Haven’t been for ages. They’re just that person’s actual pronouns and always have been, even if they’re different every day.
I’m shocked that you aren’t keeping up to date with this vital issue.