Note that it was not so long ago that the "Trans" Canon was good for a few months in a mental institution. A man in a dress is a woman? Call the ambulance.
Per another piece of yours and 80 percent desisting when they become adults, in the case of boys, many grow up to be well-adjusted GAY male adults. I wonder if a lot of dads, whether consciously or not, would rather have a boy who somehow "might be a girl" rather than being gay. https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2020/07/green-party-cracking-up-over.html
I love Orwell, but the antagonists in 1984 overestimate the power of language. Strong Whorfianism has been discredited, and Weak Whorfianism is weaker than many think. (This doesn't necessarily mean Orwell was wrong. A friend pointed out that while the Ministry of Truth believes they can control thoughts by controlling words, that does not necessarily mean Orwell did.)
"I love Orwell, but the antagonists in 1984 overestimate the power of language"
I'm really not so sure. Having spent the past few years talking to people who are deep into this cult, I'm regularly struck by how genuinely incapable they seem of thinking clearly about issues of gender/sex.
If, in your mind, a woman is "anybody who identifies as a woman," and you're brainwashed into believing that any examination of this obvious tautology is hateful and transphobic, you're forced to shut a few doors of reasoning in your head. Otherwise the cognitive dissonance becomes unmanageable.
I think Orwell's Newspeak is so relevant here because it's not so much about the free, natural evolution of language shaping thought, it's the conscious suppression of thoughts/words/ideas deemed unacceptable.
Orwellian corruption of language clearly has a purpose of limiting/controlling thought. Putting the unnecessary cis or biological prefex on male & female while pretending that the trans prefex is not necessary is a purposeful attempt to limit thought. It will work if people don't refuse to participate.
Oh, I agree identitarian neoliberals are committed to the idea that words change the way we think. But if that was true, black people would've won full equality when the polite name was changed from Colored to Negro.
“ But if that was true, black people would've won full equality when the polite name was changed from Colored to Negro”
Hmm, not really seeing how this follows. The various changes in the way white people refer to black people *have*, generally speaking, marked an increase in societal respect for black people.
Full equality will be reached when we all stop thinking that we *need* a term to refer to black people. “People” works just fine. “Black” when it’s useful as a descriptor.
But that’s separate to the effectiveness of obfuscating language.
Just 10 years ago, nobody would have hesitated to define a woman as an adult human female. Today, there are a shocking number of people who sincerely can’t define it in coherent terms. And this leads to all kinds of other confusion like “non binary.”
This couldn’t have been achieved without a conscious effort to change the meaning of the word in peoples minds.
I should count up how many names have been the respectful name for black Americans, only to be discarded in the belief that the new name would change reality. I don’t think any of them did. Laws changed, and opinions changed, and people adopted the new names, but the new names followed the social changes. If the names mattered, the NAACP should’ve changed its name a century ago.
Agreed that colloquial terms like white and black should be adjectives, but when they’re used as nouns, they should be no more meaningful than “the redhead”.
I also agree it’s ridiculous that the gender crowd is trying to erase sex. Gender and sex are very different, which would be clearer if we had different pronouns for them.
“ I should count up how many names have been the respectful name for black Americans, only to be discarded in the belief that the new name would change reality. I don’t think any of them did”
Ah, yes I agree. I should have been clearer. I don’t think the change of word created more respect, I think the thought about how to be more respectful , and the societal willingness to change the language yet again, is a sign of growing respect.
The chicken and egg were the other way around.
But again, I think the trans ideology language changes are very different to the “what to call black people” language changes.
Even here, you say that gender and sex are very different. But what would you have said 10 years ago? Likely that they were synonymous. But now, to some degree, the idea that there’s such a thing as a “gender identity” has crept into your mind.
I’m not criticising you or anything here. I say this because I noticed the change in myself a few years ago and wondered why it was there. After all, I don’t have a gender identity, nobody I knows has one, no trans person I’ve ever spoken to has been able to describe it beyond misogynistic stereotypes. But somehow I’d accepted that there was this thing called a gender identity, that was somehow comparable to sex in its significance, just because I’d heard the “sex is different to gender” slogan often enough and wanted to be kind.
Not for nothing, but sex is different to gender has now been almost completely abandoned by the ideologues as they try to erase the distinction between males and females in law.
I've been close to this nonsense for longer than you, so I have been aware of the difference between gender and sex for decades. My current best explanation is that just as race is built on a superficial understanding of ancestry, gender is built on a superficial understanding of sex. That both are social fictions can be seen in how they vary so much from time to time and society to society—obviously, women's gender roles are very different now than they were a century ago in the US or than they are today in many conservative religious societies.
I wish I could just announce that I'm using sex pronouns instead of gender pronouns and ignore the whole issue, but I can't. Besides, using different gender pronouns is ancient--drag queens went by she and butch lesbians went by he long ago. I agree with you that it's very odd to try to legalize a social convention, but then, the law has always been subect to fads.
The attempt to control words is real in the novel. That does not mean it will be effective. Authoritarians try to make people do all sorts of things that don't work.
I've probably read the novel over a dozen times, and the appendices alone many times more.
Some people have a mastery of language that enables them to circumvent unrepresented concepts.
Most people don't.
But authoritarianism isn't the only justification for controlling language or resisting stupid mistakes' promotion to new meanings. If I managed a group of coworkers and one of them used "reveal," "invite," "react," or "ask" as a noun, he'd discover hell, without dying first, in my office. And don't even let me get started on the singular they.
Controlling language is all about authoritarianism. English is a bastard that evolves willy-nilly. You can't stop it. You can only object to the stupider changes and hope they don't catch on. Ones that start in the working class are probably here to stay. Ones that start in the owning class--like a lot of the language of liberal identitarians--can be fought. I'm still annoyed that "impact" has become a verb, but I've accepted that that fight's lost.
"Invite" is probably lost, but I will never accept any of the four I mentioned and I will shiver to death in a Maytag box under an overpass before I will use the singular "they," or let it go by unremarked.
I learned Russian when I was 13. I was a smart 8th grader and the school allowed me to take the course even though it was for 9th grade on up, because I was going out of my mind as an 8th grader. Anyway.
I drew a little table; rows, 1st, 2nd, 3rd person. Columns, singular and plural. Where is the other "you?" OK, now I know that "thou" is deprecated.
Then I heard someone say a sentence pairing "someone" and "they" and instantly I had a splitting headache. Realized everyone did this. I never used they as a singular ever again; I am 56 years older now and have never once had to come up with any awkward grammar to avoid it, in fact I can usually use fewer words.
Along came "trans" and those "nonbinary" retards and suddenly "he" and "she" have all but vanished. No, I am not giving in to that.
I am certified in ESL all the way to teaching C2 and for eight years I taught my students (Vietnam) that "they" was used incorrectly by most Americans and not to adopt it.
The "trans-women are women" mantra isn't the mainstream any more. Anyone who is flying that flag is already in a small minority. That's only believed by the vocal left. HRC doesn't even take that position.
Their position that "trans-woman includes the term woman" instead of "trans-woman are woman" is a great first step on facilitating discussion versus fanning the fire. That is a better response to people who insist on saying "trans-woman are woman" including pointing them to the HRC website.
I have been sending HRC responses when they send me email with their positions and asking for funds. If they have a ridiculous position, I respond saying they need to focus on facilitating discussion not inflaming.
I get tons of political spam. I got a few purportedly from Nancy Pelosi titled "I have an ask."
I wrote back that if they couldn't tell the difference between a noun and a verb, they were getting nothing from me. Now I almost never see "invitation" anymore.
And you can always count on some perky Smile Smarty to pop up with "language evolves!"
I regard anyone who recites the canon as below the salt.
Trans women are men impersonating women and I have no respect for people who can’t talk about anything but themselves. Trump and his audience size.
"I regard anyone who recites the canon as below the salt."
Yep, agreed. Even I don't engage with people who chant the mantra anymore. It's exactly as futile as trying to reason with any fundamentalist.
You can't argue with propaganda.
You can't argue with fanatics.
Note that it was not so long ago that the "Trans" Canon was good for a few months in a mental institution. A man in a dress is a woman? Call the ambulance.
Per another piece of yours and 80 percent desisting when they become adults, in the case of boys, many grow up to be well-adjusted GAY male adults. I wonder if a lot of dads, whether consciously or not, would rather have a boy who somehow "might be a girl" rather than being gay. https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2020/07/green-party-cracking-up-over.html
🎯
Here’s the former head of prominent “trans kids” charity, Mermaids, literally admitting this during a TED talk.
https://youtu.be/dci9rhN9dOY?si=Doex_G1usrOHrzNe
I love Orwell, but the antagonists in 1984 overestimate the power of language. Strong Whorfianism has been discredited, and Weak Whorfianism is weaker than many think. (This doesn't necessarily mean Orwell was wrong. A friend pointed out that while the Ministry of Truth believes they can control thoughts by controlling words, that does not necessarily mean Orwell did.)
"I love Orwell, but the antagonists in 1984 overestimate the power of language"
I'm really not so sure. Having spent the past few years talking to people who are deep into this cult, I'm regularly struck by how genuinely incapable they seem of thinking clearly about issues of gender/sex.
If, in your mind, a woman is "anybody who identifies as a woman," and you're brainwashed into believing that any examination of this obvious tautology is hateful and transphobic, you're forced to shut a few doors of reasoning in your head. Otherwise the cognitive dissonance becomes unmanageable.
I think Orwell's Newspeak is so relevant here because it's not so much about the free, natural evolution of language shaping thought, it's the conscious suppression of thoughts/words/ideas deemed unacceptable.
Orwellian corruption of language clearly has a purpose of limiting/controlling thought. Putting the unnecessary cis or biological prefex on male & female while pretending that the trans prefex is not necessary is a purposeful attempt to limit thought. It will work if people don't refuse to participate.
That's exactly it: conscious suppression of thoughts/words/ideas.
Oh, I agree identitarian neoliberals are committed to the idea that words change the way we think. But if that was true, black people would've won full equality when the polite name was changed from Colored to Negro.
“ But if that was true, black people would've won full equality when the polite name was changed from Colored to Negro”
Hmm, not really seeing how this follows. The various changes in the way white people refer to black people *have*, generally speaking, marked an increase in societal respect for black people.
Full equality will be reached when we all stop thinking that we *need* a term to refer to black people. “People” works just fine. “Black” when it’s useful as a descriptor.
But that’s separate to the effectiveness of obfuscating language.
Just 10 years ago, nobody would have hesitated to define a woman as an adult human female. Today, there are a shocking number of people who sincerely can’t define it in coherent terms. And this leads to all kinds of other confusion like “non binary.”
This couldn’t have been achieved without a conscious effort to change the meaning of the word in peoples minds.
I should count up how many names have been the respectful name for black Americans, only to be discarded in the belief that the new name would change reality. I don’t think any of them did. Laws changed, and opinions changed, and people adopted the new names, but the new names followed the social changes. If the names mattered, the NAACP should’ve changed its name a century ago.
Agreed that colloquial terms like white and black should be adjectives, but when they’re used as nouns, they should be no more meaningful than “the redhead”.
I also agree it’s ridiculous that the gender crowd is trying to erase sex. Gender and sex are very different, which would be clearer if we had different pronouns for them.
“ I should count up how many names have been the respectful name for black Americans, only to be discarded in the belief that the new name would change reality. I don’t think any of them did”
Ah, yes I agree. I should have been clearer. I don’t think the change of word created more respect, I think the thought about how to be more respectful , and the societal willingness to change the language yet again, is a sign of growing respect.
The chicken and egg were the other way around.
But again, I think the trans ideology language changes are very different to the “what to call black people” language changes.
Even here, you say that gender and sex are very different. But what would you have said 10 years ago? Likely that they were synonymous. But now, to some degree, the idea that there’s such a thing as a “gender identity” has crept into your mind.
I’m not criticising you or anything here. I say this because I noticed the change in myself a few years ago and wondered why it was there. After all, I don’t have a gender identity, nobody I knows has one, no trans person I’ve ever spoken to has been able to describe it beyond misogynistic stereotypes. But somehow I’d accepted that there was this thing called a gender identity, that was somehow comparable to sex in its significance, just because I’d heard the “sex is different to gender” slogan often enough and wanted to be kind.
Not for nothing, but sex is different to gender has now been almost completely abandoned by the ideologues as they try to erase the distinction between males and females in law.
I've been close to this nonsense for longer than you, so I have been aware of the difference between gender and sex for decades. My current best explanation is that just as race is built on a superficial understanding of ancestry, gender is built on a superficial understanding of sex. That both are social fictions can be seen in how they vary so much from time to time and society to society—obviously, women's gender roles are very different now than they were a century ago in the US or than they are today in many conservative religious societies.
I wish I could just announce that I'm using sex pronouns instead of gender pronouns and ignore the whole issue, but I can't. Besides, using different gender pronouns is ancient--drag queens went by she and butch lesbians went by he long ago. I agree with you that it's very odd to try to legalize a social convention, but then, the law has always been subect to fads.
Orwell never heard of Sapir-Whorf
The control is not absolute but it’s real.
The attempt to control words is real in the novel. That does not mean it will be effective. Authoritarians try to make people do all sorts of things that don't work.
I've probably read the novel over a dozen times, and the appendices alone many times more.
Some people have a mastery of language that enables them to circumvent unrepresented concepts.
Most people don't.
But authoritarianism isn't the only justification for controlling language or resisting stupid mistakes' promotion to new meanings. If I managed a group of coworkers and one of them used "reveal," "invite," "react," or "ask" as a noun, he'd discover hell, without dying first, in my office. And don't even let me get started on the singular they.
Nothing to do with authoritarianism.
Controlling language is all about authoritarianism. English is a bastard that evolves willy-nilly. You can't stop it. You can only object to the stupider changes and hope they don't catch on. Ones that start in the working class are probably here to stay. Ones that start in the owning class--like a lot of the language of liberal identitarians--can be fought. I'm still annoyed that "impact" has become a verb, but I've accepted that that fight's lost.
Impact and target.
"Invite" is probably lost, but I will never accept any of the four I mentioned and I will shiver to death in a Maytag box under an overpass before I will use the singular "they," or let it go by unremarked.
I learned Russian when I was 13. I was a smart 8th grader and the school allowed me to take the course even though it was for 9th grade on up, because I was going out of my mind as an 8th grader. Anyway.
I drew a little table; rows, 1st, 2nd, 3rd person. Columns, singular and plural. Where is the other "you?" OK, now I know that "thou" is deprecated.
Then I heard someone say a sentence pairing "someone" and "they" and instantly I had a splitting headache. Realized everyone did this. I never used they as a singular ever again; I am 56 years older now and have never once had to come up with any awkward grammar to avoid it, in fact I can usually use fewer words.
Along came "trans" and those "nonbinary" retards and suddenly "he" and "she" have all but vanished. No, I am not giving in to that.
I am certified in ESL all the way to teaching C2 and for eight years I taught my students (Vietnam) that "they" was used incorrectly by most Americans and not to adopt it.
We do what we can.
And now there's this - https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/buy-a-gun-trans-activist-warns-women-who-try-to-stop-her-from-going-into-ladies-restroom-it-will-be-the-last-mistake-you-ever-make/ss-AA1fZgeg
The "trans-women are women" mantra isn't the mainstream any more. Anyone who is flying that flag is already in a small minority. That's only believed by the vocal left. HRC doesn't even take that position.
https://www.hrc.org/resources/5-things-to-know-to-make-your-feminism-trans-inclusive
Their position that "trans-woman includes the term woman" instead of "trans-woman are woman" is a great first step on facilitating discussion versus fanning the fire. That is a better response to people who insist on saying "trans-woman are woman" including pointing them to the HRC website.
I have been sending HRC responses when they send me email with their positions and asking for funds. If they have a ridiculous position, I respond saying they need to focus on facilitating discussion not inflaming.
I get tons of political spam. I got a few purportedly from Nancy Pelosi titled "I have an ask."
I wrote back that if they couldn't tell the difference between a noun and a verb, they were getting nothing from me. Now I almost never see "invitation" anymore.
And you can always count on some perky Smile Smarty to pop up with "language evolves!"
Balls. Wrong is wrong.