Yesterday, I published a blog post about female only spaces. One of the comments for that blog post (written by Ridana) suggested that I unfairly applied a gender stereotype to women as a group. Actually, I semi-expected such criticisms to appear in the comment section, because I myself have been wondering about whether my unwillingness to enter female only spaces constitutes sexism. [Read more…]
Female only spaces, the oh so precious thing that TERFs want to protect at all costs from a certain subset of women. Yet for me female only spaces are the bane of my existence. I routinely get shoveled into these places against my will because of how my body looks like. The end result always is a miserable experience for everybody. It’s not just that I hate it—all the women don’t want my company in these places either. [Read more…]
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). [Read more…]
Some people object to saying that “trans rights are human rights,” the idea being that some group of people, namely those who are trans, shouldn’t have any “extra rights” that the rest of the society does not have; basically, nobody should have more rights than others. The problem with such attitude is that currently trans people are being discriminated. The status quo is that they have fewer rights than the rest of the society. Trans people aren’t asking for any extra privileges, they want the same rights that are already there for cis people. They demand things that cis people take for granted, things that are considered universal human rights yet somehow still remain inaccessible for those people whose gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth. [Read more…]