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[Travis B.]

Fundamentally, the difference between these two gender-essentialist positions is that the TERF one wants the traditional rights and roles of men to be available to biological women, while keeping the traditional rights and roles of women for biological women alone (which is why I think claiming that it is "gender abolitionist" is dishonest, because if that is what one really were for, then one would want to truly abolish the concept of rights and roles belonging to particular sexes as the idea of rights and roles of such sort are precisely what gender is), while the traditional reactionary one wants biological women to act like traditional women and biological men to act like traditional men. (Note that here I use the word "traditional" in the conservative, reactionary sense of the word.)

[Travis B.]

Buh-bye, bros.

Rage-quitting, but taking the opportunity to accuse those you disagree with of being MRA sympathizers and referring to them with an anti-male slur on the way out...

Meh, MRA is as much of a slur as TERF is, which is to say, it's not.

Actually, the slur I was referring to was "bro", which I see used so much with negative connotations that it is essentially a slur by this point.

[Torco]

"bro" is not a slur, bro, come on. it can be used pejoratively, of course, but so can, I don't know, "ghoul".

I think Nortaneous is spot-on in this. of course conservas and terfs believe in what we denote when we utter the word "gender": we denote "the set of social expectations that accrue to people on the basis of their perceived sex" or something like this. and yeah, they believe in those expectations, the difference is that they believe in those social expectations in the sense of believing in god, whereas we believe in them in the sense of believing the germ theory of disease.

Additionally, our usage of gender is relatively new, and there are much older ways to use the word in other ways, like using it to just mean sex, or the set of people that are of some sex. the conservatives have not agreed to use gender the way we use it, and honestly fair enough to them, and this all leads to endless confusion and talking past each other.

but words are not just denotation. "terrorist" as a descriptor does not obtain on the basis of an actor or person fulfilling any objective set of criteria but at last also on whether or not one approves or disapproves of the person doing those things. our glorious kingdom their dastardy tyranny and all the rest of it. same with genocide, same with a lot of words. "murder", "theft", etcetera.

when we say gender we connote, to be blunt, bullshit: gender is some silly thing some idiots came up with back in the day to opress people for the hell of it. i think this is the correct position, overall: we connote that there's no good reason people with cocks and balls can't wear dresses if they want, or change their name to Merlina, or piss in the women's toilets, or take off said cock and install a neovagina in its place. there's no reason why women have to do all of the household work, or make less money or whatever else, and there sure as hell isn't any good reason why people who feel the need to do things that go against those expectations should be hurt, or relegated to legal inferiority or be otherwise punished for it. well, they disagree with this connotation: just like we deny that taxation is theft not because of what theft denotes, but because of what theft connotes, so it is that they deny that gender exists cause of what we denote when we say it. we believe, with butler et all, that gender is performance: they do not. i think it really is that simple

this is of course what confuses me about terf gender 'abolitionism'. these debates are very much about details (olympic sports or whatever silly little thing) but to think methodically one must go in proper order. obviously the sexes have traditional roles attached to them: the basic fact is that trans people exist, i.e. that some people want to occupy the role traditionally assigned to the other sex. people's reaction to that is disapproval, approval or indifference, cause they either think gender is normative (i.e. we should behave as those expectations dictate and not switch) or they think that it's not (that no such duty exists, and that therefore changing roles is, while maybe unusual, sure, why not, go right ahead suzie... what? oh, sorry, go right ahead bob).

[Travis B.]

Denying the reality of gender is like denying the reality of race ─ just because it is a social construct does not make it any less real. And if one wants to truly deny the reality of gender, one does not get to pick and choose whom one wants to deny its existence for. This is where TERF's err ─ they want to have their cake (i.e. having womynhood all to themselves) and want to eat it too (i.e. they want to occupy the gender roles traditionally occupied by men). They want to deny the reality of gender when it is inconvenient for them, yet they want to reinforce traditional gender when it is convenient for them. A good measure of this is asking one of them what they feel about the idea of whether women ought to be conscripted, and subject to all the same roles in the military up to and including combat, if men are subject to conscription. Or even if they insist on the wrongness of conscription and cannot be budged by this argument, they still want everything from wearing pants to equal pay and all that (which is perfectly right in and of itself) but at the same time they object to things like biological men wearing dresses, using female pronouns, and using womens' bathrooms (because they cannot abide by the idea of biological men in traditional womens' roles as much as they want biological women to be in traditional mens' roles).

[Ahzoh]

Denying the reality of gender is like denying the reality of race ─ just because it is a social construct does not make it any less real. And if one wants to truly deny the reality of gender, one does not get to pick and choose whom one wants to deny its existence for. This is where TERF's err ─ they want to have their cake (i.e. having womynhood all to themselves) and want to eat it too (i.e. they want to occupy the gender roles traditionally occupied by men). They want to deny the reality of gender when it is inconvenient for them, yet they want to reinforce traditional gender when it is convenient for them. A good measure of this is asking one of them what they feel about the idea of whether women ought to be conscripted, and subject to all the same roles in the military up to and including combat, if men are subject to conscription. Or even if they insist on the wrongness of conscription and cannot be budged by this argument, they still want everything from wearing pants to equal pay and all that (which is perfectly right in and of itself) but at the same time they object to things like biological men wearing dresses, using female pronouns, and using womens' bathrooms (because they cannot abide by the idea of biological men in traditional womens' roles as much as they want biological women to be in traditional mens' roles).

I mean there's a reason why people boil down TERFs as just being closeted misandrist and woman supremacist. Most transphobic feminists really just hate men and there isn't more to to it. This is also why they, such as JK Rowling, are paradoxically perfectly willing to buddy-buddy with outright misogynists.

[Nortaneous]

[snip]

I think Linguoboy's point was that none of that is possible if no one thinks of themselves as belonging to a gender in the first place.

I rather read Nort as saying that conservatives consider gender = sex, in which case there is no need for a concept called ‘gender’ separate to that of ‘sex’.

Correct. My impression is that "gender ideology" in the derogatory sense refers to the belief that there is such a separate concept at all.

of course conservas and terfs believe in what we denote when we utter the word "gender": we denote "the set of social expectations that accrue to people on the basis of their perceived sex" or something like this. and yeah, they believe in those expectations, the difference is that they believe in those social expectations in the sense of believing in god, whereas we believe in them in the sense of believing the germ theory of disease.

There are different gradations of belief.

In some cases, it's held to be literally prescriptive: for the social order to function, or for mankind to obey and glorify God, or whatever, biological specimens of humanity of the female sex must do X, and biological specimens of the male sex must do Y. (Caricature: any moral philosophy textbook's treatment of divine command theory.)

In some cases, it's held to be statistically true: preferences are substantially biologically determined (by genes, details of fetal development, formative experiences in early childhood, chemicals in the water, microplastics, etc.) and most mutations are deleterious. The organism is failing to function in accordance with the norm of its species, and this is itself almost certainly a problem, like how (here I will use but disavow examples that I have seen this type of conservative use many times) Askhenazi Jews underwent rapid and recent evolutionary selection for intelligence in a way that led to higher rates of Crohn's disease and other genetic conditions, or how averages of many faces are rated as more attractive than most individual faces because they abstract over deleterious mutations and developmental issues that cause facial asymmetry and other signs of less than ideal biological health. (Caricature: "it's an intersex disorder to listen to Lana Del Rey as a man.")

In some cases, they just believe the world should conform to their sexual fetishes (remember the "antes/depois da federal" Twitter account? it was very popular among online conservatives in a certain era) or disgust reactions (with whatever underlying psychological causes, up to and including "these things are associated with what I've decided for other reasons is my outgroup"), or - worse - believe that it is within the proper remit of the state to determine and put its full weight behind enforcing the "proper" sexual fetishes and disgust reactions, whether out of a misguided belief in democracy (common conservative joke: we live in a liberal democracy, where democracy means democracy and liberal means not - note that it would be rude but not unidiomatic to use this about Brown v. Board) or out of a conviction that, without some standards, however arbitrary, society will lack common ground and fall apart. (Caricature: Donner Party conservatism, or a thinkpiece by some Sohrab Ahmari type in defense of North Korea's policy of state-enforced haircuts. For social cohesion, you understand.)

In a surprising number of cases, the conservative position on "gender ideology" is either that The Wokes invented Trans in (without loss of generality) 2016 in order to Trans Your Kids and make them hate you, or that this is some Democrat thing so fuck them. (Caricature: none, but a search term is "bioleninism".)

[Ares Land]

Nort, your descriptions of conservatism are excellent. As for TERFism -- from what I see, it seems to be a way for kind-of conservative women to be conservative while denying they're conservative at all. At least part of it.

---

On a lighter note, the Académie Française came out with a new edition of its dictionary, and it's so out to date as to be hilarious.

My favourite is their definition of mec: https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9M1449
For non-French speakers: mec means 'dude', basically. The Académie claims it means 'recognized member of the mob', or maybe 'pimp'. (That meaning may have been current in 1924)

[bradrn]

On a lighter note, the Académie Française came out with a new edition of its dictionary, and it's so out to date as to be hilarious.

But do we really expect anything else? Plus ça change, plus ils sont la même…

[Man in Space]

My favourite is their definition of mec: https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9M1449
For non-French speakers: mec means 'dude', basically. The Académie claims it means 'recognized member of the mob', or maybe 'pimp'. (That meaning may have been current in 1924)

It doesn’t mean ‘Gundam’ or ‘Jaeger’?

[Ares Land]

On a lighter note, the Académie Française came out with a new edition of its dictionary, and it's so out to date as to be hilarious.

But do we really expect anything else? Plus ça change, plus ils sont la même…

No, it's exactly what I expected I did learn an interesting bit of etymology!

[zompist]

On a lighter note, the Académie Française came out with a new edition of its dictionary, and it's so out to date as to be hilarious.

My favourite is their definition of mec: https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9M1449
For non-French speakers: mec means 'dude', basically. The Académie claims it means 'recognized member of the mob', or maybe 'pimp'. (That meaning may have been current in 1924)

I had to check this with two now-old dictionaries of argot I have-- one by J. Marks (1970), one by Perret (1984). Both give the 'dude' meaning, which is thus at least 54 years old.

[Ares Land]

I'm pretty sure Céline (so early 1930s) uses it with the 'dude' meaning. But most Céline characters are pimps(*) so that doesn't help.



(* not actually true, they're just immoral; but the joke is funnier that way!)

[Torco]

what about a guy that's good at everything?

[Linguoboy]

Actually, the slur I was referring to was "bro", which I see used so much with negative connotations that it is essentially a slur by this point.

LOL, I just self-designated as a "bro" for the purpose of a snarky comment to a FB post.

[Man in Space]

The drums are mostly done for the album (I still have to do some programmed drums for part of one piece) and I’ve been doing some preliminary work on the album art and packaging. One thing I’ve been doing of that is typography tests. I have to say, YWFT Avant Modern is fantastic. The only issue I have with it is not with the font itself; it’s that GIMP for some reason has spotty font support. It does not seem to like OpenType very much, so when I need to do text I sometimes have to mock up the text in TextEdit, screenshot it, and then paste, color-to-alpha, and other edits as needed. This was somewhat more vexing than I’d first thought because YWFT Avant Modern has a glorious array of variants and ligatures that is wiped out when pasting text into GIMP.

[keenir]

what about a guy that's good at everything?

I'd say more Marty Sam than a Chad, but i probably be wrong.

[Raphael]

what about a guy that's good at everything?

I'd say more Marty Sam than a Chad, but i probably be wrong.

I think Torco might have been responding to the debate about the French term "mec".