In debates people intentionally use words that advance their position. After all, your choice of words greatly affects your chances of getting people to agree with you. Politicians whom you support “invest” billions and “do what the vast majority of voters want,” while those you dislike “spend” billions and “pander to populism.” A politician can either “do what the elite wants” or “do what the experts advise.” Never mind classical examples like “Falklands” versus “Malvinas,” or “Derry” versus “Londonderry.”
One tactic is to use different words that advance your position. A somewhat similar and equally manipulative tactic is to assign your preferred meaning to some word. Thus words like “woman” or “man” can be used with different meanings in various contexts in order to promote bigotry (misogyny and transphobia).
In logic, equivocation is an informal fallacy resulting from the use of a particular word or expression in multiple senses throughout an argument leading to a false conclusion. For example:
Since only man [human] is rational,
and no woman is a man [male],
therefore, no woman is rational.
Of course, written like this, the manipulation is very obvious, but it can be much more subtle in an actual conversation, which allows word definitions to be intentionally manipulated and skewed for the purpose of justifying bigotry. Here’s how it works:
Society: “The word ‘woman’ means ‘a person with a vagina.’”
Me: “Okay then, that makes me a woman.”
Society: “Women match and willingly embrace female cultural expectations, they use female pronouns, they have female gender identities, they make babies, they are emotional, they are bad with mathematics, they prioritize relationships over careers, they love pink, they wear dresses, they use make-up, they wear high heel shoes, they have feminine mannerisms and body language, they…”
Me (angrily): “Wait, what? No, in that case I’m not a woman.”
Society: “But you were born with a vagina, that means you must be a woman.”
For years the society has attempted to force womanhood upon me against my will, and that has been a bait-and-switch scheme. Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud used in retail sales but also employed in many other contexts. In the retail example, customers are “baited” by merchants’ advertising products or services at a low price. When customers visit the store, they discover that the advertised goods are not available and are instead pressured by sales people to consider (“switch to”) similar, but higher priced alternative.
In some conversations people will present me such a definition for the word “woman” that I am forced to agree that I am, indeed, a woman. A while later they will start telling me how a woman ought to behave and how she must live. In some conversations, conservative people will use words like “man” and “woman” with one meaning. In other conversations, the meaning of the same words will be different.
Whenever people are talking about trans rights, cisgender supremacists (aka transphobes) want to define the word “woman” as “an adult person who was assigned female at birth.” They may offer definitions, like “an adult human female,” but that’s just a circular definition. (What does “female” mean? Personally, I’d say trans women are “female” human beings.) Upon some poking, they will admit that for them a “woman” means “an adult AFAB person.”
Trans women are women but they aren’t “adult AFAB people.” Thus cisgender supremacists try to redefine the word “woman” so as to exclude trans women.
In various other contexts, the same people will use the word “woman” with a very different meaning. The culture we live in expects women to be at least somewhat feminine. There are plenty of cultural expectations attached to the word “woman.” Even in more liberal countries, where women aren’t forbidden from leaving their home, there are still some expectations about how a woman ought to live. She is supposed to use female pronouns, she is supposed to consider herself a woman, she is supposed to have a female gender identity. And this is the bare minimum that exists in a textbook progressive society. In many less than ideally progressive societies women are expected to wear female clothes, use make-up, remove hair from their legs, be emotional, love children, and so on.
Besides, it is impossible to equate “a woman” with a list of anatomical facts about some person. Some AFAB people have XY chromosomes, some are infertile, some never utilize their female reproductive system or sex organs due to being childfree by choice or asexual or whatever other reason, some women lose their breasts or uteruses due to cancer or other illnesses, some women never grow breasts, some women have never menstruated. There’s an immense anatomical variation even among people who are assigned female at birth.
Thus it is ridiculous to treat the word “woman” as if it only described some anatomical facts about a person. The society doesn’t see womanhood as just having a collection of body parts and organs.
Personally, I am fine with statements like:
“Andreas has XX chromosomes,”
“Andreas was born with a uterus and a vagina,”
“Andreas still has a uterus” (this statement is still true only due to transphobic surgeons routinely kicking me out of their offices).
All of those are factual statement about the anatomy of my body. I’m not delusional, and I can accept the existence of facts.
Nonetheless, I strongly dislike it when somebody says, “Andreas is a woman” or “Andreas is female.”
It’s odd to see self-proclaimed feminists equating biological sex with gender. The latter is a social construct, it’s a performance that people do throughout their daily lives. Demanding that every person who is AFAB must also live in accordance with female gender stereotypes is just, well, gender discrimination. TERFs will allow me to wear male clothes or have short hair, but they don’t want me to go any further. Basically, they are saying: “You can only be this unfeminine, but not a step beyond that.” The moment I choose to use male pronouns and openly admit that I don’t feel like a woman, that’s somehow unacceptable.
In my opinion, feminists ought to promote gender equality and women’s freedom to choose how they want to lead their lives. Enforcing “appropriate gender expression” upon AFAB people is what misogynists and religious authorities do.
I was initially confused when transphobes claimed to want to “abolish gender” because it seemed to me that if someone actually wanted to abolish gender then they ought to be staunch allies of trans and non-binary people. Of course, they don’t actually want to abolish gender, just enforce their own bigoted ideas of what gender should be.
mathymathymathy @#1
In my opinion, “abolishing gender” means abolishing mandatory norms about what constitutes acceptable gender expression. Basically, every person would be free to express themselves as they see fit. Everybody would be free to pick and choose among all the various forms of expression that are currently associated with some gender. I don’t mind living in a society where some people wear pink dresses while others wear navy pants. I just want each person to be free to choose what they like.
That’s what I thought as well, because there isn’t any reason to restrict certain forms of expression based purely on what someone was assigned at birth. In that sense, I would agree completely. What I noticed was that it wasn’t just “gender” (and similarly “man”, “woman” etc.) that transphobes were using a bait-and-switch on, but also the phrase “abolish gender”.
I’ve been mulling over this post for several days, as I am unconvinced and a little confused.
To start, I think you’re being a little manipulative yourself. for example, when you wrote
You were headed in the right direction. But from there, you diverged into cultural stereotypes that fit some fairly narrow cultural groups. And therein lies the problem. You say you don’t fit any/all of those stereotypes, therefore are not a woman. What we need is a way for women to exist as women, without following these prescriptions. A few women have achieved it, and a few men have managed to succeed by stepping out of the confines of what it means “to be a man”. We need more Tim Minchin’s. 🙂
You then continue using highly emotive and loaded language. “cisgender supremacists (aka transphobes)”, and calling people “TERFS” is not the way to advance the debate. Nor are the weasel words “assigned XX/XY at birth”. Just what does that mean? A child is (with a very few exceptions) born male or female, based upon the characteristics you have described and say you accept. Everything from there is a social construct. A child born into a fundamentalist religious family will grow up with a very different idea of what is “is to be a man/woman” compared to a child born to a less religious, more rational family. The same goes for all the rest. In the past men, especially men of power, have worn powdered wigs and makeup. There are families that enforce gendered child-raising, and families who don’t. Then, there are families where getting enough to eat is the battle.
Andreas, I don’t know where you live or what the medical system is like in your country, so it is hard to comment on your desire for a hysterectomy. Suffice to say, I believe that regardless of where you see yourself on the gender spectrum, that should be your choice. In my country, my daughter needs and wants one to alleviate endometriosis, a disease that has crippled her and is costing her jobs and relationships. The “system” will not do the operation as they think she is too young at 30. I think they’re crazy, but we have to persevere. Of course, if you live anywhere near Jessica Yaniv, then the pitch is queered with her demands for gynecologist appointments, even though she has none of the organs gynecologists specialise in. I assume that you are intelligent enough to go to a gynecologist and not a Urologist.
Then, at the end, I am totally confused as to whether or not you want to be accepted as male or female. You rail against “TERFS”, manipulating language, as being the ones who want to prevent you from adopting male clothing, when it seems to me, that your problem is not with women at all, but with men who want to enforce the norms of what it is “to be a man” and a society that tries to put people in boxes neatly tied with pink or blue bows. As I understand it, “TERFs” are women who want to preserve women’s sp[aces for women and don’t worry about women who want to “invade male spaces”. The problem, as I see it, is that you cannot dress as you want, speak as you want, get the medical care that you need, because you live in a society where asking for a bigger box and a different colour ribbon is unacceptable.
Instead of trying to force tarns men into “being men”, and trans women into “being women”, we need to build a society where people can be themselves. Where a man can wear makeup and use a male toilet without fear, where a woman can wear overalls and stop shaving and not be harrassed as a “bull dyke”.
servalan @#4
I started this blog a week ago. And today I already have the first TERF comment. Lucky me!
My commenting policy (found here: https://freethoughtblogs.com/andreasavester/2019/12/10/commenting-policy/ ) clearly states that people who comment here are forbidden to promote any form of bigotry. You just tried to promote transphobia.
From now on you are forbidden from commenting on trans issues in my blog’s comment section. You are welcome to comment about other topics, but you are clearly incapable of talking about trans issues without offending people and without acting like an entitled asshole. For now I won’t delete this comment, I haven’t banned you just yet either. But if you try to post any more transphobic comments, you will be banned from commenting on my blog.
I have no intention of talking with transphobes who treat me as subhuman. My blog posts about trans issues are meant to educate people who are trans-accepting and don’t attempt to discriminate me or outright erase my existence. You appear to be a trans-hostile online warrior. My blog isn’t written for people like you, and I have no interest in talking with people like you. And I happen to wield the ban hammer here. So you might as well stop trying to piss me off. With a few clicks I can deleted all the transphobic comments you worked so hard to type.
The fact that I’m not deleting your comment just yet means that right now I am forced to waste half an hour of my life typing a detailed rebuttal of all that crap you just posted. And I’m seriously not enjoying this.
Anyway, here we go.
No. I am not a woman not because I don’t fit various cultural stereotypes about how women are expected to live, but because I am a man. I am a person who was unlucky to be born with a female body. I am not a woman. I use a male name. My preferred pronoun is “he.” I do not have a female gender identity. I hate being forcefully shoveled into female only spaces against my will (I want gender neutral toilets and dressing rooms). I don’t live as a woman. I dress as a man, I live as a man. I want my preferred gender identity to be respected, I demand other people to treat me as a man. If I had more money, I would also love to surgically remove my breasts.
I am fully aware that there exist agender or genderqueer people. That there are drag kings and queens who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth. That there are butch lesbians. That there are cis women who simply have somewhat masculine lifestyle preferences. That there are men who love wearing pink clothes. I want all of these people to feel free to present themselves as feminine or as masculine as they like. I fully approve everybody’s right to break the old fashioned “rules” about how either a man or a woman is expected to look like or lead their life.
The fact that there exist cis women who merely want to have more masculine lifestyles while still having a female gender identity doesn’t mean that I am also such a person. I do not want to “exist as a woman, without following prescriptions about gender norms and expectations.” Instead, I want to live as a man. And I want to be respected.
Right now you are trying to erase my existence. By telling me that I am a woman, you are disrespectful towards me. You are insulting me, you blatantly ignore my clearly stated preferences. Moreover, don’t you dare patronize me! Don’t you dare imagining that I am “a stupid, confused woman who doesn’t know what’s best for her.” By treating me like this, you act exactly the same way as all the patriarchy supporters have acted for centuries. As far as I’m concerned, you telling me that I should “exist as a woman, without following prescriptions about gender norms and expectations” is equal to patriarchy defenders telling me that I should “wear pink dresses, get married, stay at home, and make babies.” Both you and patriarchy defenders blatantly disrespect my choices about how I want to live, and ignore my statements about who I am.
By the way, here https://jayhulme.com/blog/transmen is another trans man’s words about why TERFs aren’t on our side. Trans men hate being patronized and treated like we do not exist.
I do not want to have any debate with you. You are an asshole who is trying to erase my existence. That’s as abusive as it gets.
Assigned female at birth means that in my case doctors who declared me “female” made a mistake about who I really am. Suck mistakes happen whenever some child is born with the wrong body that doesn’t match their gender identity.
Sure, I do not deny that gender is a social construct. For example, if AMAB people wore pink dresses while AFAB people wore neckties, I would want to wear pink dresses instead of neckties. However, we live in a world where AMAB people wear neckties, hence I also choose to wear neckties.
Incidentally, I was born in a liberal atheist family. Strict traditional religious gender roles were never forced upon me. I felt free to live as a masculine woman. Yet that wasn’t what I wanted. Instead, I wanted to be a man.
You might stop treating me like an idiot. If you had done that, I wouldn’t have responded with calling you “an asshole” either.
I am male.
I have been wearing male clothing for years. Nobody is preventing me from doing so in any way whatsoever. What I dislike is that transphobes in general (and also TERFs who are a subset of transphobes) disrespect my gender identity, refuse to refer to me with male pronouns, want to force female identity upon me against my will, try to hinder my access to various medical treatments that would make my body more masculine.
As a matter of fact, the overwhelming majority of people who have abused me and tried to force femininity upon me were cis women. Never mind all those arguments with female surgeons who treated me as insane for wanting to live as a man.
Right now my problem is an assholish TERF who posts annoying comments on my blog and tries to put people in boxes neatly tied with having been born with a penis or a vagina.
There being no gender neutral toilets or dressing rooms makes it hard for me to engage in various activities that other people take for granted. Have you ever wanted to go to a gym only to find out they have no dressing rooms for a person like you? I suppose you haven’t since you appear to be cis. That’s the cis privilege you don’t even notice you have.
I can dress or speak as I want. Nobody is policing my fashion choices in any way whatsoever. I have been wearing male clothes for years, and nobody has criticized me for that. My legs are hairier than those of most men, I routinely wear shorts in summer, and nobody has ever dared to comment about it.
Access to healthcare is a problem. I was denied a hysterectomy. My plans for more distant future involve also a breast removal surgery.
Incidentally, I’m not asking for “a bigger box and a different colour ribbon,” instead I want complete freedom to do what I want and live as I see fit.
Yes, I really want a society where every person can be themselves. I fully support cis women’s right to present themselves in a masculine manner. I also support cis men’s right to be as feminine as each person likes to be. I want this freedom.
But I also want to be free to go beyond merely dressing like a man. I am not a cis woman. For me “being myself” means being a man.
And I want unisex toilets. Stop telling me where I should pee.
Nobody has ever harassed me for looking like a butch lesbian. Instead TERFs like you are harassing me for being a man and demanding respect.
Male/female are terms for genetic sex differences, and apparent sex at birth or even later is irrelevant to that genetic distinction. Sex is a binary spectrum of genetic expression that is only relevant socially in the possibility of producing offspring and secondary sexual characteristics that effect physical performance and appearance that influences sexual attraction. Man/woman he/she are terms for human genders. Genders are social constructs that are prescriptive to a persons apparent sex, and consist of countless traits, preferences, behaviors, and appearances. Since gender is prescriptive it can be and is typically assigned at birth based on the apparent sex. There are 3 important aspects that define gender use. First is the social definition of gender, which is important as all words need defined to be useful in communication. Secondly is the individuals understanding of the definition and how they feel they fit that definition. Finally is the individuals expression of their gender. Obviously this is useful as it communicates the individuals identified gender to society. An individual is always the highest authority of their own gender and while it is necessary to make assumptions for the purpose of communicating, the social contract between people necessitates that we recognize the individual as having primary authority of how they are recognized. Each persons gender identity is unique to them and it is the duty of society to acknowledge it the same way they acknowledge someones proper name.
People often misuse gender and sex terms to one purpose or another, but primarily it is simple ignorance. It is wrong to assume ill intent from someone mixing the terms, which is why I always explain the differences when people misuse them and their reaction to the correction usually informs their intent.
pavelov @#6
I agree that it’s wrong to automatically attribute to malice that which might be explained by ignorance. When I don’t know some person and their opinions, at first I will try to be generous with my assumptions.
However, there exist TERF online warriors who intentionally twist word meanings so as to promote their version of transphobia. Therefore, if I notice potential signs of malice, that can be another potential explanation.
Also, servalan, nice tone trolling. Andreas’s tone is both entirely understandable given the subject and how it affects (effects? I continually confuse those two) him and utterly irrelevant to the point he’s making.
I’m sure that, if you’re thick enough to comment again, you’ll get even more bothered by tone, but how about you just take the hint and go away.