on the fiction of tru-trans and the importance of clear, unambiguous language"
https://uncommongroundmedia.com/a-meaningful-transition-julia-long
"If you can’t change your sex, why are the terms ‘transsexual’ and ‘transwoman’ lent credence among British gender critical feminists?"
Jennifer Bilek’s important recent article on ‘good transwomen’ has initiated a long-overdue conversation about the role and influence of ‘transsexuals’ within gender critical spaces. In this piece I continue the conversation with a consideration of the inhibiting effects of their presence on critical thinking and language use in the British context.
Language determines what is perceptible, thinkable, possible and knowable within a culture. Language develops to support and enable different ways of thinking, or is suppressed in order to discourage them. The speed and ease with which new terms are established determines how quickly new social realities become normal; ‘social distancing’ and ‘self-isolation’ are obvious current examples. The relationship between the words we use and the lives we live is, to borrow Andrea Dworkin’s phrase, an umbilical one.
This relationship is nowhere more obvious than in the phenomenon of ‘transgenderism,’1 which has over the past decade or so introduced a dizzying and seemingly endless proliferation of patently absurd new terms and concepts: ‘gender identity’, ‘trans woman’, ‘non-binary’. Given that these terms are based on false premises and easily exposed as fictitious, it is strange that the British gender critical2 movement has shown very little willingness to reject wholesale the pernicious language of transgenderism. High-profile groups such as A Woman’s Place UK (WPUK) and Fair Play for Women insist that they are in favour of the rights of ‘trans people’, habitually use the terms ‘trans woman’ or ‘transwoman’, and use ‘she’ pronouns for men who demand it. Paradoxically then, much of what is written and spoken in the name of British gender critical feminism in fact does the ideological work of transgenderists for them, promulgating their fictions as legitimate and valid through speaking their language.
The terms ‘transsexual’ and ‘transwoman’ are particularly glaring examples of this. It is striking that while gender critical feminists correctly insist that it is not possible to change sex, many breezily continue to use the term ‘transsexual’ or ‘transwoman’3 as if such a change were possible and as if such individuals exist. This oddly contradictory position is thoroughly normalised – mandated, even – at events held by groups like WPUK and Filia, and in the writings and speeches of media feminists like Julie Bindel and Sarah Ditum and academics such as Kathleen Stock and Selina Todd. Dissenters who point out this contradiction and straightforwardly name so-called ‘transsexuals’ as men are misrepresented and denounced as deliberately provocative, disrespectful and unkind.
Ultra Anon @JAC_FOXX_
https://twitter.com/JAC_FOXX_/status/1754971027744927766
#FreeSpeech #GCUltra #LetWomenSpeak #TeamTERF #OccupyWoman #GenderCritical #SexNotGender #GenderWoo
#GenderAtheist #RadicalFeminism #RadFem #PeakTrans #TransCult #DropTheT #LGBAlliance #cults #skeptic #GetTheLOut
