The thing you get into with TERFs a lot is this tedious castle-in-the-air argument "But why do you have to LITERALLY BE a woman? Why couldn't someone just DRESS like a woman and ACT like a woman and so on but not say they ARE a woman?"https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1379659102259867650 …
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Jesse Singal, himself, is a hypocrite about this, he tries to slice this distinction very fine "I think you should let children dress any way they want, and play with any toys they want, and act however they want But *social transition* for young children is *dangerous*"
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But all of that stuff is what "social transition" means Jesse "No, social transition is telling the kid they literally ARE a different gender, and changing their name and pronouns to match" Okay well I hate to break it to you Jesse but no one really cares
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Changing your name and your pronouns is a decisive step -- because of what it symbolically represents to gatekeepers like you -- but in the grand scheme of things it's just one aspect of gendered presentation among many
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Hence, you know, people who *don't* treat names and pronouns as clear and unambiguous "markers of transition" Plenty of kids these days who go "Pronouns: any", plenty of "he/him lesbians" from way back in the day
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The fact is most people in the "trans community" as it was in the past and as it is now have for the most part been far less dogmatic about what it means to "really" transition and to specifically nail down exactly what your gender identity is than their attackers
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Hence the TERFs clinging to Eddie Izzard as an icon for decades of "a man who proves you can do feminine things without being a woman", only for her to "betray" them by saying "Well... no, I kinda *was* doing them because I felt I was a woman"
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"Transvestite and transgender and just plain 'trans' were all different words for the same people You said whatever you needed to say to be understood enough that they'd let you live your life as you wanted"
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Look Jesse even leaving this philosophical concept of "gender identity" completely out of it that seems to make your brain smoke trying to compute it If you "let" AMAB people wear dresses and makeup and grow their hair out etc a lot of those people will also want estradiol
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It's just an obvious and observable correlation It's not a universal rule -- nothing in human nature is -- but if you actually paid attention to the history of the "trans community" rather than imagining them created from whole cloth in 2014 you wouldn't be trying to argue this
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Trying to draw this line around it -- "present your gender any way that you want, just don't challenge 'biological reality' with drugs and surgery!" -- is defending territory no one occupies
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It turns out all your fans and followers absolutely DO have a problem with "men in dresses" regardless of their position on the philosophical construct of "gender identity" and regardless of whether they've ever taken a single pill or injection And everyone but you predicted it
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End of conversation
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