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Oliver Denker
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 18 August 2018
Location: Germany
Posts: 232
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| Posted: 15 July 2020 at 2:33am | IP Logged | 1
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"Are we seriously entering a world where the term woman/women is
getting phased out?"
If we follow a comparatively small percentage of activists an social media...yes.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136691
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| Posted: 15 July 2020 at 5:17am | IP Logged | 2
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It all reminds me of a recurring gag on WILL & GRACE. Jack, a Gay man, took the attitude that homosexuality was the natural state, and anything else was weird and even perverse.
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Petter Myhr Ness
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 02 July 2009
Location: Norway
Posts: 4268
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| Posted: 15 July 2020 at 7:46am | IP Logged | 3
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We keep inventing words and phrases to improve accuracy, and quickly find that they're not sufficient, so we have to invent even new ones. I try to make it easy and simply call people what they like.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136691
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| Posted: 15 July 2020 at 11:25am | IP Logged | 4
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The current surge in language manipulation seems more Orwellian than simply improving accuracy.
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John Harrison
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 July 2007
Posts: 1456
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| Posted: 15 July 2020 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | 5
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I recently saw womxn being used ....which is an updated version of womyn
neither of which I had ever heard of.
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Steven Brake
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 January 2016
Posts: 732
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| Posted: 15 July 2020 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | 6
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Here in the UK, the issue of TRA seems to preoccupy a small but extremely vocal and passionately committed minority, but I don't think that the majority of people, male or female (or mxle or fxmxle) care that much either way - or perhaps don't understand the issues concerned. I've tried talking to my mum, who's 67, about terms like "CIS" and "TERF" and she just shakes her head in confusion.
I would say that I do get concerned when women who express concerns over transwomen being allowed into women's/girls spaces - showers, bathrooms, etc - are shouted down by men, or accused of being bigots by them. If women decide they're happy to allow this access, fine; if they're not, there's no argument to be made.
Edited by Steven Brake on 15 July 2020 at 1:14pm
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Eric Sofer
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 31 January 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 4759
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| Posted: 15 July 2020 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | 7
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Orwellian... ah, there's the PERFECT word for it, Mr. Byrne.
I have a very hard time of this. See, when I was growing up, there were boys and girls. The grown ups were men and women. At 18 or so, I was still a boy (sometimes a guy) and females were girls if they were my age. I learned hard about that at Ohio State. I was asking about this or that, and I referred to someone as a girl. She got haughty and said, "I am not a girl. I am a WOMAN!" And I blindly answered, "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were that old."
Well, I didn't.
Sadly, I am so old that I still think of genders as men and women, and I'll never stop. Oh, I'll call females what they want (if my silver age memory can remember)*, but I feel that the vast majority of this discussion is sexually oriented, not gender oriented. (Hope that's clear.) So it's likely I'll keep unintentionally, and with no insult intended, screwing up what people want to be called.
*I thought I could try "mostly two bags of water", but some of my slender friends might be offended anyhow. Lordy, how some o' them wants to be offended.
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David Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 3228
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| Posted: 16 July 2020 at 11:53am | IP Logged | 8
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Orwellianism implies power, and I feel like trans people (and women in general) are too marginalized to effectively enforce language in a way that deserves the term.
Orwellian language defies meaning, while as far as I can tell, the intent (and outcome) is to define meaning. Efforts towards gender language have more in common with the linguistic and rhetorical shift from "Colored" to "Negro" to "Afro-American" to "African American" to "People of Color" (which has also been criticized as Orwellian, although I don't agree with that characterization, either).
By contrast, when Republican call their efforts to arbitrarily reverse Obama-era protections and mass deport more than one million undocumented adults who've lived in the United States since being brought into the country as children "conservative," to me that's outright Orwellian.
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David Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 3228
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| Posted: 16 July 2020 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | 9
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Another interesting shift: for years, the standard for drag queens was to use female pronouns only in reference to their stage persona, but now all the Millenian drag queens I know use female pronouns in their day to day life, even as they identity as male and have no interest in transitioning. Meanwhile many classic 20th century performers who once asserted their male identity have now transitioned entirely to female.
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Steven Brake
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 January 2016
Posts: 732
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| Posted: 16 July 2020 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | 10
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David Miller wrote:
Orwellianism implies power, and I feel like trans people (and women in general) are too marginalized to effectively enforce language in a way that deserves the term. ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- I'm not sure how true that is. Jordan Peterson seems to have first come to public attention due to his criticism of, and refusal to adhere to, the long list of terms he was obliged to use when describing various genders.
Here in the UK, it seems to be women, or feminist activists, who are particularly concerned and indignant about terms such as "cis", and to whom accusations of being a "terf" are usually directed.
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David Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 3228
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| Posted: 16 July 2020 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | 11
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Jordan Peterson is a perfect example of somebody who claims he's fighting oppression when he's actually just fighting to be a rude asshole. Given he reportedly grifts $1 million a year from crowdfunding off the issue it's hard for me to muster sympathy for his right to snarl students into what he perceives as their place. We should all be so oppressed.
The TERF thing I've struggled with. Assuming good faith, abused women in shelters for example shouldn't be forced to compromise their feelings of safety. However given how the US right-wing has insincerely adopted their arguments as yet another All Lives Matter tactic against accommodating yet another subgroup (side note: I suspect a manifestation of feminism that ideologically allies with anti-choice conservatism is likely inherently compromised and deservedly doomed), it's an argument I as a cis white male can feel pretty good about staying the hell out of.
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Neil Lindholm
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 January 2005
Location: China
Posts: 4944
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| Posted: 16 July 2020 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | 12
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I know a few older women who were strident feminists in their day (still are) and they are not impressed with the attacks on J.K. Rowling but are too scared to say anything due to the absolute vitriol spewed at them if they dare challenge the current orthodoxy. I was called a "piece of human garbage" (not by them but by a young activist) when I said that Rowling made an articulate argument for her side of the debate. That's it. Way to win people over to your side.
People still misunderstand Peterson's initial reasons for becoming well-known. He vigorously is against the idea of compelled speech, which his University was attempting to force through. This gets turned to "he is transphobic!" (whatever that means). A huge number of people understood what he was fighting against, which is why he gets so many accolades. I don't feel he is saying really anything new but he has a very eloquent and rational method of getting his opinions across.
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