@babybeginner #transphobia

@babybeginner #transphobia twitter.com

A 🧵 about language.

1. How many times does someone says “including others doesn’t hurt you”? We hear it all day long.

They are wrong. They know it. They don’t want you to know it.

2. Let’s start here. When women are a subset of women they cannot lay claim to anything that was separately a woman’s. In one linguistic sleight of hand, women have lost their individuality that determines who has control of something. Be it sports or prison or their name.
image

trans women are women and
are as entitled to women's
spaces as cis women are.

3. Now the woman is just a grumpy member of the group trying to keep something away from other WOMEN.

EVERY reason why we have separate spaces women is instantly wiped out with this trick. We are stunned.

We try to explain. We are sure it’s a misunderstanding.

4. We try to justify why we have separate spaces. We explain desperately about things we all knew five minutes ago.

We are sure they just don’t get it. As we explain power differential we

5 are called shrill or mean. Or worse they get endless accusations of NAMALT (not all men are like that).

And why are we doing this? To justify our right to get our OWN stuff. We beg for our own stuff back. We try to explain why we should have our own stuff.

6. And all because with one linguistic move, women have ceased to be an entity entitled to their OWN things. It’s the ultimate takeover.

Property belongs to the owner. If you get the clerk to add a name to the title of your home, you no longer own it.

7. This is actually a thing thieves do. They change the title on your home. (Check periodically). It’s sinister because it is effective.

That’s what TWAW does. It changes the name on the title.

8. And since the phrase is trans women are women and women are cis women, the TW now gains the prominent and controlling place on the title. The women are just cis women. A subset. A minor player. With no rights at all. Full control has been turned over.

9. But the game is not complete. For women are powerful and can speak up. Who would let them take their stuff without complaint?

So now we get to the second genius move. The way to shut women up. We are told we are hateful if we object to having our own stuff taken.
image

[...]

8 comments

What the fuck are you even talking about?

@babybeginner: “If trans women are recognized as women, ending real women’s MONOPOLY on being called women, then before you know it The Handmaid’s Tale
has become reality!!”

Or maybe you're just a pissy little whiner who acts offended about everything.

“Now the BIGOTED woman is just a grumpy member of the group trying to keep something away from other WOMEN.”
There, fixed it.
Well, change happens and people tend not to give a shit about preserving the privilege of bigots. So, yeah.

All identities boundary stomp on at least a few other identities, to varying degrees. To give an extreme example, a KKK member who believes that they are superior because whites are the only real humans, versus a black activist who believes that black people are just as deserving of human rights as anyone else (and makes that a significant part of their identity) - they’re both boundary stomping each other just by existing.

In theory you could easily identify bigots by who treats their identities as inviolate and demands to redefine other people’s identities. In practice that’s a bit too pat of an answer; the KKK person in the above example could (and would) claim that legal and social consequences for treating other races as subhuman is considering the identities of those subhumans as inviolate, while also allowing those people to invalidate, if not actually redefine, their own identities. This kind of thinking is, I believe, at the core of the statement “anti-racism is anti-white”. Most people would probably consider that kind of thinking to be insane once actually spelled out, but identities don’t necessarily have to be considered sane by the majority of the public to be valid.

A bit better way to think of it is that bigots tend to claim their *own* identities for other people - for example, the KKK member might claim all white people as sharing their identity aside from a small number who they instead consider to be “race traitors”. But that’s not the whole picture, as some bigoted identities are exclusionary: a lot of Christians, for example, consider a lot of other Christians to not be real Christians, due to not sharing what they consider to be “core beliefs”. Which occasionally has a point - to give a ridiculous example, someone who calls themself a Christian because they eat chocolate cake on Thursdays is going to get a lot of weird looks, at best, and for good reasons. And the fact that there occasionally is a point means that exclusionary identities aren’t necessarily bigoted, and there probably isn’t a perfect way to define this.

Back on subject: TERF/GC identities are pretty clearly bigoted, as they’re claiming fairly specific, sex/gender essentialist definition of womanhood on behalf of all the people they consider to be women, and excluding everyone else. Not everyone, not even all cis women, believe in gender essentialism or sex essentialism and we’d really rather not have them speak for us, thanks. They’re also defining trans people’s identities, as things along the lines of “delusional crossdressing men” and “poor lost lesbian sisters”.

TL;DR they’re partially right on one specific level, but entirely missing the big picture and still fundamentally bigots.

(Semi-off-topic point raised by my previous post, but you don’t need to read it first)

So then what should society do about fundamentally bigoted identities? The usual answer is “you can believe whatever you want, so long as you don’t act in ways which harm others” (with an implied “overtly” and/or “purposefully” as people aren’t all-knowing when it comes to the consequences of their actions). That’s certainly good in a general sense, not just when it comes to identity-related issues, but there are a couple of caveats.

The first, and most obvious, is that “harm” is somewhat subjective and has no universal definition. In addition, most people are willing to tolerate certain harms so long as they’re for the greater good, but “greater good” is even more subjective. [To head off any debate, there may be an objective concept of “harm” and “good”, but if so humans don’t know what they are, so it’s still subjective for all practical purposes. And no, you can’t claim it’s known due to guidance from a higher power either, since people still disagree on whether such beings exist, and also on what said higher power(s) are saying.]

The second is that by focusing entirely on harm to others, it neglects the issue of involuntary self-harm. As an example, it’s common to say that “it costs you nothing to use people’s chosen pronouns”, but I’ve also seen the counter that they don’t believe that this is how pronouns should be used, and/or that doing so gives the appearance of respecting an identity which they don’t actually respect, so they’re facing the situation of “lie or face negative social consequences”. Lying is a form of mild self-harm (unless you’re a sociopath) and facing negative social consequences for doing what you believe is right is, at minimum, a cost. Avoiding dealing with other people all the time so that it rarely comes up is also a cost if you’re not an extreme introvert who would do that anyway.

The common response to that is “then just don’t be a bigot”. Aside from being patronizing (and occasionally, flippant), most people don’t consciously choose their identities. It’s based on a mix of their innate nature, their life experiences, and their worldview (and the latter two may have been partially forced on them by others). You can’t really purposefully claim a new one, at least not honestly, without willingly changing who you are. Occasionally broadening your experiences might be enough to claim a specific label, but most of the time it’s a lot harder than that, and we shouldn’t expect anyone to do that just to better conform to society or sacrifice themselves to a greater good which they don’t believe in, as that doesn’t always lead to good places.

Ultimately I believe we should work towards a future where everyone is empowered to find the right place for themselves and to cut off the influence of individuals in their life where dealing with them comes with too high of a social or psychological cost. Those are just not realistic options for most people, or at least not in all areas of their life. But until then, the best possible approach is probably Karl Popper’s solution to the paradox of tolerance; reframed to this particular subject, we don’t have to validate bigotry or fundamentally bigoted identities. That’s still a bit imperfect because it essentially privileges non-bigoted identities, and we should probably be doing away with privilege altogether (excepting within subcultures where intra-culture privilege is part of the appeal), but most people today would consider that a good thing, or at least a lesser evil.

And now show us by touching the “Land of the Lustrous” character figurine where teh nasty ebil trans people touched you personally, OP.

…oh, and by doing so, you’ve just proved that you would do more than just touch an actual trans person: and not only there if it wasn’t for all teh nasty ebil laws which deny you bigots of your right to actually persecute those you think - in your paranoid delusional way - are persecuting you. But either way, you still lose the argument.

PROTIP: Don’t so much as think of touching the figurine: one of the characters who are humanoid representations of gemstones who are genderless, because when actual trans people would never so much as think of touching you - and why should they? - ergo…!

Bigotry is like ‘Global Thermonuclear War’ in “WarGames”: because when an AI says ‘A strange game. The only winning move is not to play’, you lost the moment you started thinking the way you did then: leading right up to now.

Fuck me, but you don’t need to be Tzeentch to figure that one out. When the way to win is simple:

Don’t be a Bigot.

We already have.

A TERF trying to convince readers that they're a victim.