What is a definition?
Interesting…
“Well, it’s an adult human female, but Neil our laws have changed and attitudes are changing where there are people now who identify differently to their biological sex. And what I have always wanted is to respect that and include people.”
This “include” thing – it’s a puzzler. Sometimes “include” is neutral and passionless. You can include tomatoes on your shopping list, you can include socks when you pack a suitcase, you can include chairs when you furnish a room. Sometimes “include” has to do with human relationships – you can include people among your friends, or not; children can include classmates in their birthday party invitations, or not. But it’s a new and confused idea that we can “include” people in definitions in defiance of the meaning of the definitions, and that we ought to do so because if we don’t we’re failing to “include” those people the same way children fail to “include” the nerdy kids in their class. Definitions are not birthday parties or clubs or picnics or circles of friends. Definitions cease to function as definitions if we start “including” items in them for the sake of not hurting someone’s feelings.
So it is with this idea of “including” men who pretend to be women in the definition of women. It’s not necessary, and it misses the whole point of a “definition.” It’s beside the point that some men may feel hurt or angry or dissed if they’re not “included” in the definition of “women,” because the meaning of the word relies partly on the fact that men are not women. The two words are mutually exclusive. Men are not women; they are not-women. Women are not men; they are not-men. “Including” some of each for the sake of “including” people because that’s the nice kind non-bullying thing to do just doesn’t make any sense. You don’t add a few token giraffes to the definition of “lion” and you don’t add a few token lions to the definition of “giraffes.” It doesn’t matter if some giraffes or some lions will have hurt feelings about this. You can invite them to the parties, but you can’t “include” them in all the definitions.
Again I am baffled. Pesutto is a politician on the conservative side, who appears to believe that the political costs to himself of offending a whole lot of genuine women by his fence-sitting on trans issues will be worth it, and will gain him more votes from phoney women than he stands to lose by offending genuine XX chromosomally-equipped real women.
Well, stuffed if I can see how. Maybe he has special sources of uncontaminated information. Maybe not. But I would like to know what he has been smoking, or swallowing; apart from pure bullshit.
Inclusion in critical social justice isn’t inclusion in the normal sense of “allow to be part of”. This particular sense of “inclusion” involves actively making welcome and supporting the people to be included. Now, there’s not prima facie anything wrong with making people feel welcome or supporting them, but there is something prima facie wrong with using a word that doesn’t mean that to mean that. That’s called lying.
It’s not just the definition of the word “woman” that’s rendered useless. It’s also the definition of “include.” To “include” a group of people who are not women in the definition of “woman” is also to exclude women from their own definition. That’s a funny kind of “inclusion” that actually means to give priority to a miniscule number of non-women, over actual women, who comprise half of all the people.
The fact that women make up over half the people is the problem. By the reckoning of CSJ, that makes women necessarily the oppressor group. It’s just the Conflict Theory madlib. Cis women exercise systemic power by controlling the concept of what it means to be women, excluding other knowledges of womanhood and thereby maintaining their own hegemonic dominance.
Well excuuuuuuse uuuuuuuuuuus.
Ugh.Just ugh NiV. One is not a conservative by finding such concepts pure bafflegab?
@4: But if TWAW, and there’s literally no difference between trans_women and cis_women, then doesn’t that make TW part of the majority oppressor group? Hmmm.
Men like Pesutto love doing this shit. They can get social media points for being “progressive” while they carry on with one of their core conservative activities- promoting the needs of men over women.
Brian: Liberals and conservatives alike have a distaste for this nonsense, because it’s incompatible with liberty. We understood this during the Cold War but have somehow forgotten it.
GW: It would, which is why they have to divide women into cis and trans. Without cis, there’s no oppressor group for Marxian Conflict Theory to vilify. Cis is the lever. They actually can’t do anything without it and so cannot abide those who say, “I’m not cis. I’m just a woman.”
And yet it’s interesting that some TiMs claim to be “cis” women. Hasn’t India Willoughby started calling himself that? I think he said something like: “We need to support rights for trans women! Not that it’s personally relevant to me; I’m a cis woman. A cis woman with a trans experience, but nonetheless a cis women.” Or something bizarre like that.
So, “cis” women are the oppressors, but nonetheless at least some TiMs want to claim “cis” status.`
Those that try to call themselves cis don’t understand the ideology’s core logic, such as it is.
Omar, I think I know why he’s doing this. It’s not just the twittershere and woke leftism that has been parasitised, the nonsense has burrowed deep into managerial culture and the Liberal Party is nothing if not managerial.