The meaning of words naturally changes over time. I perceive that "trans women are women" is (on one level) an attempt to assert a new and modified definition of the English word "woman"; they are trying to change the (socially constructed) boundaries of the categories described by those words.
The meaning of words naturally changes over time. I perceive that "trans women are women" is (on one level) an attempt to assert a new and modified definition of the English word "woman"; they are trying to change the (socially constructed) boundaries of the categories described by those words.
There is nothing in the objective universe which requires that the English word "woman" has always and will always mean "adult human female"; a cultural shift in usage would be consistent with some other language changes over time. The question isn't "is it true?" in this case (which is not something objectively determined), but more like "is this new definition more useful for clarity of communication?".
As I see it, a key purpose of replacing the traditional meaning of "woman" is not to enhance communication, but to weaponize it as a back door tool for creating a whole suite of social changes in one fell swoop.
This is hard to discuss when the same word has multiple meanings in the same discussion. So let's temporarily call the word associated with the traditional definition "woman1" and the word for the new definition "woman2".
The political activist are asserting that "trans women are women2" (ie: under some new definition). But part of their goal is to confuse woman1 and woman2 - by implying that if trans women are women2 (new definition "women"), then they must automatically be treated exactly like women1 (old definition "women"). So in one that one fell linguistic swoop I mentioned, trans women (women2) would automatically have all the rights as women1 - playing on women1's teams, going to women1's prisons, etc.
It's clear to everybody that "women's sports" originally referenced women1 (ie: biological females), and the distinction about who they were designed and implemented was defined as women1. But if we use the same word for both women1 and women2, then trans women automatically qualify, right? It's a word game.
Part of why I see this as devious is that "trans women are women2" is promoted as simple acceptance, being kind to them since it's the right thing to do, live and let live. But then once you've kindly agreed with the polite fiction that trans women are women (ie: women2), that acceptance will be weaponized to make it seem like you've agreed that they are women1 and must be treated as indistinguishable. Every human regulation or law that was written for women1 should then be bulk transferred to women2, rather than debate each such possible transfer of rights on its own merits (like which prison a trans woman2 should be sent to, which need not have the same answer as, say, bathrooms.)
But opposing the idea that "there is no meaningful difference between biological women and trans women" is also treated as doing harm to them. At the least, it's being mean to an oppressed person and thus a social justice sinful act (let's use the word closest to the moral weight they assign it). But that's harming them psychologically, and causing harm is violence, and we don't tolerate violence, we punish it. Just pretend, it'll make them feel better about themselves and they'll be less likely to off themselves; so why wouldn't every decent person take that small step?
That is a long ways from "seeking to enhance communication through forming a new consensus around more useful meaning associations". It's arrogant and coercive manipulation of language as a back door means of gaining more power over others.
And all this was not necessary. My early DEI trainings told us that gender and sex are different (and CSJI folks were constantly 'correcting' people about that). Sex is biological/physical/objective while gender is mental/psychological/subjective. And being transgender was defined as a disparity between those two, while being cisgender was having them aligned. I didn't like the way there were coercing that language change (sex vs gender as new distinct and non-overlapping categories), but it was a useful change for communicating so I was willing to adopt it (and still do). And it would allow us to say, eg, that women's sports were for biological females, because the distinction between sports leagues is based on biology, not mental state. Somebody giving a workshop on women's issues could choose whether to use sex or gender as their dividing line, depending on which made the most sense in their context. (This was the approach used in a sacred sexuality community I was involved in at that time; if an exercise involved dividing people into such groups, we'd think about whether sex or gender should be the criterion this time).
That framing would still allow us to be kind to trans folks by accepting their Gender Identity as real (at least subjectively "real", like somebody being in love could be subjectively real), and having empathy for their disconnect between sex and gender. We could meaningfully debate whether prisons would most logically be segregated by sex or gender (with both sides agreeing on the meanings of the terms). In those days a trans woman might even say that they were biologically male but their gender felt like a women's (which is what made them trans vs cis).
But just a few years later and the same CSJI people have abandoned their former "truth" about sex vs gender. Now trans women often claim to be women in terms of sex and gender, and it's considered transphobic to focus on the distinction between sex and gender. Newsrooms are banning the words "biological sex" or "biological male/female" - because they don't want it to be acceptable to even discuss the distinction between biological sex and mental gender which they recently promoted so hard. Trans women are calling themselves not just women, but claiming to be biologically female, and to have periods. The prescribed response it that one must support delusions and agree with every framing or demand, lest one be transphobic.
This sudden shift from "decent people must distinguish sex and gender as different" to "decent people shall not speak of any differences because a trans women is of the female sex if they say so" is one of the signs for me that we are not seeing good faith attempts to clarify language to aid in understanding each other and seeking reasoned compromises, but more a devious weaponization of language to achieve political supremacy and compel compliance.
“The meaning of words naturally changes over time. I perceive that "trans women are women" is (on one level) an attempt to assert a new and modified definition of the English word "woman"; they are trying to change the (socially constructed) boundaries of the categories described by those words. “
We’ve reached a point where every time some idiot uses a word mistakenly we have to endure some Smile horseshit about “language evolves.” The word "unique," for example, is supposed to mean “singular,” but now it’s a synonym for “distinctive.” You hear people say "very unique" which sounds so amazingly wrong, since the correct meaning is an either-or, and has no degrees like "very."
This isn’t evolution. This is error. There are such things as errors, and we are too tolerant of them.
The redefinition of the sexes is as erroneous as any could be, driven by no expansion of freedom, and harmful in every way.
(awaiting the inevitable and turbo-charged tedium of "who gets to decide")
Yes, words do change. Any word for odor comes to have negative connotations; Shakespeare actually wrote
𝐴 𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑏𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑡
because back then "stink" was a pleasantry. "Smell" is already suspect and even "aroma" is getting it.
But changes should be motivated, just look how much trouble the altered meaning of the Second Amendment has put us into. "Well-regulated militia" now means "any retard who can afford a gun."
My favorite example of a motivated redefinition: the strong nuclear force. It was once believed that atomic nuclei, with positive charges unbalanced by negative ones, should fly apart from electrostatic repulsion, but they don't. The SNF was supposed to be what held them together. Now we know they exchange pions to hold together, but the term remains and now Strong Nuclear Force (more properly called chromodynamics) is the force inside protons and neutrons, which are another kind of "atom" in their own right. And very, very weird.
That change was motivated. Referring to men dressing as women and saying they 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑒 women is not motivated. It's illness.
I will happily and unapologetically be cast as “transphobic” under that revised definition and I will boycott and shun all those who play along.
It isn’t kindness to reinforce a dangerous delusion. It’s dishonest and it reinforces where real support would be to get these addled people into psychiatric treatment.
Because, and I keep repeating this, only one in a thousand “trans” actually have Gender Identity Disorder, a round number taken from the statistics, not from hyperbole.
The rest are fad-following attention-grasping fakes and I for one am not playing along.
While hijacking movements is real, in this case I might describe it more as shifting rhetorical tactics. The clarity that distinguishing sex and gender was bringing turned out to sometimes play against the later demands that there be no meaningful distinction between trans and cis "women", so it was dropped - for the most part silently, as if the "truths" taught in earlier DEI sessions had never been spoken, the scripts just changed and now a new unquestionable "truth" becomes mandated by mostly the same group of people. (ie: Activists and DEI "educators", not speaking of all trans people, many of whom are pretty sane but quieter)
The meaning of words naturally changes over time. I perceive that "trans women are women" is (on one level) an attempt to assert a new and modified definition of the English word "woman"; they are trying to change the (socially constructed) boundaries of the categories described by those words.
There is nothing in the objective universe which requires that the English word "woman" has always and will always mean "adult human female"; a cultural shift in usage would be consistent with some other language changes over time. The question isn't "is it true?" in this case (which is not something objectively determined), but more like "is this new definition more useful for clarity of communication?".
As I see it, a key purpose of replacing the traditional meaning of "woman" is not to enhance communication, but to weaponize it as a back door tool for creating a whole suite of social changes in one fell swoop.
This is hard to discuss when the same word has multiple meanings in the same discussion. So let's temporarily call the word associated with the traditional definition "woman1" and the word for the new definition "woman2".
The political activist are asserting that "trans women are women2" (ie: under some new definition). But part of their goal is to confuse woman1 and woman2 - by implying that if trans women are women2 (new definition "women"), then they must automatically be treated exactly like women1 (old definition "women"). So in one that one fell linguistic swoop I mentioned, trans women (women2) would automatically have all the rights as women1 - playing on women1's teams, going to women1's prisons, etc.
It's clear to everybody that "women's sports" originally referenced women1 (ie: biological females), and the distinction about who they were designed and implemented was defined as women1. But if we use the same word for both women1 and women2, then trans women automatically qualify, right? It's a word game.
Part of why I see this as devious is that "trans women are women2" is promoted as simple acceptance, being kind to them since it's the right thing to do, live and let live. But then once you've kindly agreed with the polite fiction that trans women are women (ie: women2), that acceptance will be weaponized to make it seem like you've agreed that they are women1 and must be treated as indistinguishable. Every human regulation or law that was written for women1 should then be bulk transferred to women2, rather than debate each such possible transfer of rights on its own merits (like which prison a trans woman2 should be sent to, which need not have the same answer as, say, bathrooms.)
But opposing the idea that "there is no meaningful difference between biological women and trans women" is also treated as doing harm to them. At the least, it's being mean to an oppressed person and thus a social justice sinful act (let's use the word closest to the moral weight they assign it). But that's harming them psychologically, and causing harm is violence, and we don't tolerate violence, we punish it. Just pretend, it'll make them feel better about themselves and they'll be less likely to off themselves; so why wouldn't every decent person take that small step?
That is a long ways from "seeking to enhance communication through forming a new consensus around more useful meaning associations". It's arrogant and coercive manipulation of language as a back door means of gaining more power over others.
And all this was not necessary. My early DEI trainings told us that gender and sex are different (and CSJI folks were constantly 'correcting' people about that). Sex is biological/physical/objective while gender is mental/psychological/subjective. And being transgender was defined as a disparity between those two, while being cisgender was having them aligned. I didn't like the way there were coercing that language change (sex vs gender as new distinct and non-overlapping categories), but it was a useful change for communicating so I was willing to adopt it (and still do). And it would allow us to say, eg, that women's sports were for biological females, because the distinction between sports leagues is based on biology, not mental state. Somebody giving a workshop on women's issues could choose whether to use sex or gender as their dividing line, depending on which made the most sense in their context. (This was the approach used in a sacred sexuality community I was involved in at that time; if an exercise involved dividing people into such groups, we'd think about whether sex or gender should be the criterion this time).
That framing would still allow us to be kind to trans folks by accepting their Gender Identity as real (at least subjectively "real", like somebody being in love could be subjectively real), and having empathy for their disconnect between sex and gender. We could meaningfully debate whether prisons would most logically be segregated by sex or gender (with both sides agreeing on the meanings of the terms). In those days a trans woman might even say that they were biologically male but their gender felt like a women's (which is what made them trans vs cis).
But just a few years later and the same CSJI people have abandoned their former "truth" about sex vs gender. Now trans women often claim to be women in terms of sex and gender, and it's considered transphobic to focus on the distinction between sex and gender. Newsrooms are banning the words "biological sex" or "biological male/female" - because they don't want it to be acceptable to even discuss the distinction between biological sex and mental gender which they recently promoted so hard. Trans women are calling themselves not just women, but claiming to be biologically female, and to have periods. The prescribed response it that one must support delusions and agree with every framing or demand, lest one be transphobic.
This sudden shift from "decent people must distinguish sex and gender as different" to "decent people shall not speak of any differences because a trans women is of the female sex if they say so" is one of the signs for me that we are not seeing good faith attempts to clarify language to aid in understanding each other and seeking reasoned compromises, but more a devious weaponization of language to achieve political supremacy and compel compliance.
“The meaning of words naturally changes over time. I perceive that "trans women are women" is (on one level) an attempt to assert a new and modified definition of the English word "woman"; they are trying to change the (socially constructed) boundaries of the categories described by those words. “
We’ve reached a point where every time some idiot uses a word mistakenly we have to endure some Smile horseshit about “language evolves.” The word "unique," for example, is supposed to mean “singular,” but now it’s a synonym for “distinctive.” You hear people say "very unique" which sounds so amazingly wrong, since the correct meaning is an either-or, and has no degrees like "very."
This isn’t evolution. This is error. There are such things as errors, and we are too tolerant of them.
The redefinition of the sexes is as erroneous as any could be, driven by no expansion of freedom, and harmful in every way.
(awaiting the inevitable and turbo-charged tedium of "who gets to decide")
Yes, words do change. Any word for odor comes to have negative connotations; Shakespeare actually wrote
𝐴 𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑏𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑡
because back then "stink" was a pleasantry. "Smell" is already suspect and even "aroma" is getting it.
But changes should be motivated, just look how much trouble the altered meaning of the Second Amendment has put us into. "Well-regulated militia" now means "any retard who can afford a gun."
My favorite example of a motivated redefinition: the strong nuclear force. It was once believed that atomic nuclei, with positive charges unbalanced by negative ones, should fly apart from electrostatic repulsion, but they don't. The SNF was supposed to be what held them together. Now we know they exchange pions to hold together, but the term remains and now Strong Nuclear Force (more properly called chromodynamics) is the force inside protons and neutrons, which are another kind of "atom" in their own right. And very, very weird.
That change was motivated. Referring to men dressing as women and saying they 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑒 women is not motivated. It's illness.
I will happily and unapologetically be cast as “transphobic” under that revised definition and I will boycott and shun all those who play along.
It isn’t kindness to reinforce a dangerous delusion. It’s dishonest and it reinforces where real support would be to get these addled people into psychiatric treatment.
Because, and I keep repeating this, only one in a thousand “trans” actually have Gender Identity Disorder, a round number taken from the statistics, not from hyperbole.
The rest are fad-following attention-grasping fakes and I for one am not playing along.
Well articulated. It sounds as if a movement was hijacked by power-seekers. Any idea when and by whom?
While hijacking movements is real, in this case I might describe it more as shifting rhetorical tactics. The clarity that distinguishing sex and gender was bringing turned out to sometimes play against the later demands that there be no meaningful distinction between trans and cis "women", so it was dropped - for the most part silently, as if the "truths" taught in earlier DEI sessions had never been spoken, the scripts just changed and now a new unquestionable "truth" becomes mandated by mostly the same group of people. (ie: Activists and DEI "educators", not speaking of all trans people, many of whom are pretty sane but quieter)
That makes sense. Although all the language policing is starting to feel more and more like a hijack of common sense!