Using “biology” as a cheaply made, poorly understood label by bigots


Nancy Mace poses with a crappy paper label added to a restroom sign as if it’s something she’s selling on the home shopping network, and I cringe. I’ve said this before: this makes no sense. There is no such thing as a non-biological woman, making the phrase redundant. Mace is just appropriating a complex term to assign it to some narrower, more ideological interpretation that she leaves unstated — it’s reducing biology to a meaningless term which bigots can abuse, expecting you to read more into it than is appropriate.

Be honest, Nancy. Spell it out. You really just want to exclude Sarah McBride from using the restroom. Don’t cloak your meaning in bad biology.

Alternatively, I’m going to have to protest this baseless anti-synthetic humanoid bigotry.

Comments

  1. says

    Funny how the “biological” basis always shifts between chromosomes, plumbing, gametes, and hormones whenever one of them fails to produce a consistent binary categorization.

  2. mathman85 says

    I just don’t, and probably never will, understand why these people insist that the territory conform to the map rather than the other way ’round. Their internal model of reality is absurdly oversimplified, but instead of adjusting the model, they dig in their heels and demand that reality conform to their delusions about it. It’s abjectly enervating.

  3. raven says

    I just don’t, and probably never will, understand why these people insist that the territory conform to the map rather than the other way ’round.

    You are overthinking this.

    Nancy Mace is just a mindless hater.
    She hates Trans people.

    I’m sure she hates a huge number of other groups as well.
    The usual GOP list of gays, atheists, nonwhites, nonxians, scientists, children, liberals, progressives, Northerners, etc..

    I’m sure Nancy Mace hates me. And you. And PZ. And…

  4. says

    I’d love to ask her what she thinks of an XY woman with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome using the bathroom, but, of course, she probably doesn’t know enough biology to realize that such people are not “trans.” They develop as female in terms of body structure and are properly considered as girls or women in just about every respect with the exception of reproduction. And then, of course, there are examples of XX males to consider. The categories are not as clear-cut as she thinks in her haste to condemn a fellow member of Congress.

  5. raven says

    Nancy Mace is biologically a mindless hater.

    There, that is done.
    She isn’t worth paying any attention to.
    Can we move on now?

  6. brucej says

    Something I saw in passing, and I forget where:

    “It figures that a Southern Conservative would love to segregate a bathroom”

  7. HidariMak says

    kenmiller @4:
    There are also the individuals who are XXY, as well as those whose testosterone and estrogen levels put them more at the level of the other sex. And statistically speaking, I imagine that there are at least a few of these internationally known, strict binary definition of sex “experts” who fit one of those categories. Too bad we’ll never know who they are.

  8. rietpluim says

    I’m starting to believe that Mace and her ilk know this. They know and they understand. They just don’t care. Like people know that we know that they know that Trump is a liar and they still vote form him. Their use of silly arguments is just a dress-up. They know they’re silly. So it’s no use to try to convince them otherwise. They already know otherwise. They don’t care. They are haters and they want to hate. That’s all there is.

  9. crimsonsage says

    @2 love the use of map and terrain, i use this analogy all the time.
    @9 its about hierarchy and dominance, logic, reality, kindness, etc, are irrelevant to that end goal. This is one thing that liberals fundamentally misunderstand about the petite bourgeois. Like the grand bourgeois are very much constrained by the pressures if capital to generate returns so their agency us much more limited. This is why, paradoxically, big business is often more willing to make accommodations with labor if it keeps the system turning over. For the petite bourgeois on the other hand, it is all about power and dominance of the owner over the worker because the owner largely has direct relations with those they exploit and therefore the daily material reality of that relationship engenders that mentality. Like so many petite bourgeois would happily see the economy collapse so long as their personal power over their workers was enhanced and “those people” “learned their place.”

  10. Marissa van Eck says

    Nancy has a…very wide jaw. Are we sure she isn’t one of the horrible transes (hatesssss the transessss, we do~!)? Have they found out? Why don’t they make her prove she’s a woman?

    Because that is where this is going, eventually. Goddess almighty, while I have not had good experiences with transwomen on a personal level, I would not CARE if one came into the bathroom I was using and went into the next stall to take care of biology. Everyone has to do it no matter what their sex or gender or chromosomes.

  11. seversky says

    Perhaps someone should point out to here that they’ve had sex-neutral toilets on aircraft for many years without any issues.

  12. Dennis K says

    Wish there was a simple way to read these posts without having to see the disgusting mugs of these freaks in the masthead.

  13. says

    rietpluim: It’s like fictional retired Nazi propagandist Howard W. Campbell Jr said: “I had tried to be merely ridiculous, but that is hard to do when people are so unwilling to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me. Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider the capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.”

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