This imbecile conversation
For your reading enjoyment, a comment by philospher Daniel Kaufman in reply to a comment on a guest post at his blog Electric Agora:
Let me just be very clear, since I keep getting pulled into this imbecile conversation with the Manne Fan.
1. If you think that the abortion catastrophe we just experienced calls for referring to women as ‘impregnables’, you are either batshit crazy or too stupid to count your toes.
2. If you think this is a good idea politically; that it will strengthen the pro choice coalition, you are a fool and should be kept far away from politics if the Democrats are to have a chance of winning.
3. Telling your elders and betters that they should heed you or be “held accountable” will only earn you the following: contempt; mockery; and dismissal. Ditto with calling them ‘phobes and ‘ists of every variety.
4. No one deputized you for jack shit.
Enjoy your Saturday.
So in order to placate a tiny minority of people who might be “triggered” by the mention of the words “girl” and “woman”, you deliberately erase the words “girl” and “woman” from communications that are vitally important to the health and safety of girls and women. Not upsetting this tiny minority (and making it clear that you are prioritizing the feelings of this tiny minority above all else) is more important than the health and safety of girls and women. You raving loons. Just fuck off.
Kaufman has a good sense for when to engage in nuanced philosophical argument, and when to call bullshit bullshit.
And it is only this tiny minority that is worthy of “kindness.” Women? Girls? Phht. They’re wallowing in cis privilege. Fuck ’em. They deserve what they get.
Anti-abortion laws are examples of how sexual oppression works, and if we allow women to be named as the target then trans ID males will not actually be “the most oppressed,” They can’t allow the focus to be on women, not only because it’s another way that they are not women, but because it will expose their relative safety from oppression.
Of course, they are not actually the “most oppressed” anyway, they just identify as the “most oppressed”. But when those who are more oppressed, such as people of color, see through the bullshit, they just term them “white cishetero-privileged” even if they are not white, even if they are not hetero, and move on. Well, they don’t move on, actually. They work to get them harassed, perhaps even fired. All too often, they succeed.