( VestalVirgin )
No idea what they want to say with this, either. No one demands that gender specials change their genderfeelz, after all. We aren't the ones persecuting thoughtcrime. We just refuse to play along.
You know damn well what we want to say.
Sure, you’re not “persecuting thoughtcrime”. But you sure do want to make it impossible for us to live our lives according to who we are.
You want to remove any possibility of us actually living accordingly with the gender identity which we are, including but not limited to making it impossible for us to change gender markers, go to the appropriate spaces, and being taken as anything but predators and liars.
You want to take away our medical care, piece by piece until there’s nothing left but the conversion therapy your kind euphemistically call “gender exploratory therapy”.
You want to have us marked, othered and vilified to such an extent that we’re unable to exist in public other than by being in the deepest of closets.
You want to have the inalienable right to say whatever the fuck you want about us, including straight-up blood libel, while being free from any consequences.
You openly dehumanize us, cheer when awful things happen to us, and create an atmosphere so inhospitable to us that we dread every moment we exist in it, and others feel emboldened to assault us in every way possible.
Oh, also… “No one demands that gender specials change their genderfeelz, after all?” No one demands that?! Have you been living under a rock?!?
And you, you wash your hands of it all, claiming innocence.
And say how you “just refuse to play along” with “genderfeelz”.
Fuck you.
Just… fuck you. And everything you stand for.
I can't change who I am, and I happen to be able to tell the difference between women and men. Gender specials demand that I change this, so if anything, they are the ones demanding that people change who they are.
That is not “who you are”, you disingenuous asshole. Instead, that is an ideological tenet which you happen to subscribe to. Gender-critical dogmatism, shrouded in the thinnest veneer of claimed ‘objective truth’.
And as you yourselves say, we are not all beholden to someone else’s ideology, now are we?
(AsterRising )
God, I hate this argument so much. Trans activists will say "people can't change who they are" but then admit their entire identity is based around cultural gender norms.
Except they don’t, and it isn’t. This is not at all a prevailing view among trans people or “trans activists”.
I really wish someone would tell them you can't have it both ways - you can't claim to be "born this way," like gay people are, and then insist that your identity is culturally specific
Aaah, and there we have it.
“Your identity is culturally specific.” Rather than “their entire identity is based around cultural gender norms.”
Suddenly, the terms are no longer so absolute, now are they?
Well…
Gender isn’t simple. And the problem is that the term doesn’t have a single consistent definition, and it is used differently based on specific context.
It can mean “gender norms and stereotypes”.
Or it can mean “gender identity”.
It can be used as a synonym for “sex”.
Or it can refer to “gendered cultural practices,” also known as gender expression. Which is NOT the same as “gender norms and stereotypes,” by the way.
But the thing is… our gendered experience isn’t the simplistic story TERFs want us to believe.
It’s not just that there are biological attributes, “sex classes” based on them, and everything else is mere sexist oppression or trauma.
Sex and the various aspects of gender are in complex interplay.
And humans understand ourselves in relation to them in many different ways at once.
Our gender identity is somewhat tied to our biology and bodies, yet not solely to them.
It’s also connected to culturally-coded gender expression, yet in very varied and differing ways.
These things are deeply tangled together, and are nigh impossible to tear apart into discreet and perfectly separate categories the way TERFs insist they must be.
But suffice to say that gender expression is not the same thing as gender norms, or gender stereotypes, or the enforcement of those.
Sexism is the enforcement of gender norms and stereotypes through societal violence that comes in many forms. It’s not gender expression that is the problem; it is the socially mandated adherence to a particular form of it that is.
Just like culture as such is not a problem; it only becomes one when you introduce force and violence into it.
Gender expression is just a part of human culture, and human culture is an intrinsic part of who we are. It cannot be abolished without destroying something that makes us human.
