Just like, contra what my mom (and the writers of Sliders) thought, our world isn't the result of some inevitable evolutionary pathway where everything about "femininity" and "masculinity" ended up a specific way
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It's tied deeply to the TERF obsession with what they call "passing women" -- the Sweet Polly Oliver/Mulan narrative, the woman who in all ways presents socially as a man and therefore accrues all of a man's power and privilege for herself
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And when they grab a real historical figure to fill in for that narrative -- someone like Albert Cashier or James Barry -- and trans people say "Okay but a more accurate definition for such a person would be a 'trans man'" -- they become incensed
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Assuming all the details historians have deduced about James Barry's life are accurate -- supposing his stretch marks in death really did mean he got pregnant and gave birth in secret -- isn't he exactly what the OP was fantasizing about?
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A man -- a respected doctor and military officer, known to everyone as a man, with all the privileges thereof -- who got pregnant and gave birth? And therefore, speculatively, pioneered the first surgical C-section -- as a man with a man's privilege who "knew how it felt"?
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But that's the whole, like, seething writhing contradiction at the heart of TERFism "Why can't men get pregnant? It'd be so much better if they could!" is this plaintive and fervent desire for the power and privilege accrued with manhood to be decoupled from reproductive biology
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But the idea of this *actually happening* is a huge threat A shock to the system, a cut to the core Like they experience being directly told "Okay, if you want to you can be a man who gets pregnant, and we'll fight to make society respect that" as a horrifying violation
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"I was a tomboy and I would've been transed as a child and that would've been the worst thing!" etc. Like there's something precious and vital about the name "woman" belonging to you, even as those "What if MEN could..." questions reveal how much harm that label carries with it
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Just saying TERFs bang on about how circular and inchoate and ephemeral the definition of "gender identity" is Fine, but they're apparently not free of it themselves
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End of conversation
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