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So I recently noticed that my state has quietly removed the word "mother" from every official documentation I've seen, replacing it with "birthing parent" or some other euphemism. Iirc Colorado has already switched its language the same way, as have most Dem-run states.
Wasn't it only a few months ago we were told this was an insane conspiracy theory and only a few weirdos would ever try to abolish "mother"? Now it's been done so neatly and without fuss or any sign of resistance. Things that only last year would have sounded like insane paranoid delusions just... Happen with unanimous support.
What is there to even say? The insanity keeps coming so fast they hardly need to gaslight you any more. Has anyone here been "corrected" for saying the M-word yet?
There’s also some Celebration Parallax in the mix: “That’s Not Happening and It’s Good That It Is.”
Replacing “mothers” with “birthing persons” is a totally brave and stunning practice if you’re supportive of it, otherwise it’s but a paranoid rightwing conspiracy theory.
Sure, when progressives call women “bodies with vaginas” they get an “awww, how sweet,” but when I do it I get a “hello, human resources?!” Hmph… ruuude.
I feel like some of the "celebration paradox" could come down to nuance around what is considered to be a specific thing happening.
I could see something like:
In this case, Person A may either consider X' to be basically the same thing as X, and so feel like Person B is basically saying, "X is not happening, but it totally is and that's good."
I feel like a good instance of this would be:
I think part of the perception of Person A that Person B is basically saying "ROGD isn't a thing. Also it's happening and it's good", is likely due to the fact that what Person A is saying isn't their true objection. I suspect that most people raising concerns about ROGD specifically are actually concerned more generally about the rise in trans people, and are happy to go to fringe theories to justify that concern. But if ROGD had never been conceptualized, it would have been another fringe theory, since trans skepticism has to be skeptical of the "mainstream medical opinion" of organizations like the APA.
Basically, if you don't believe you can find the truth in the authorities, you are going to rely on fringe sources. You see the same thing happening in reverse with trans activists and the Cass Review.
Uh, is ROGD fringe? I thought it was a topic which made pro-trans doctors uncomfortable but was documented as a thing.
Take it with a grain of salt, but the Wikipedia article for ROGD currently opens:
Which at least seems like a decent indicator that ROGD is currently considered a fringe position, since once the dust is settled most Wikipedia articles tend towards whatever is considered "mainstream" opinion of experts over time.
Doesn't mean that ROGD isn't true, just that it is considered fringe.
On the transgender issue in particular, Wikipedia seems fully ideologically captured by radical trans activists. On the article about women, the third sentence explains that women are only "typically" of the female sex (meaning at least some women are not female), and the fourth paragraph is entirely about trans women.
I actually think the Wikipedia page on women walks a fair line on the topic. The very first sentence uses "adult female human" as its core definition, and the second paragraph starts:
I don't view the use of the word "typically" here the way you do. I think it is an appropriate amount of nuance for a reference work, since it makes room for discussion of intersex women. Now, I acknowledge that there's various decisions about how and when to include references to atypical examples in an encyclopedia, but I maintain that including mention of intersex women somewhere in the article about women is appropriate. Given the article's sections:
I could see the argument for keeping discussion of intersex women to the biology section, and creating a subsection for trans women under Culture and gender roles or something. But I don't really think that the Wikipedia article on the whole screams "captured by trans activists" to me.
Gonna have to disagree with you. While you're correct that the article is right to acknowledge the existence of intersex women, the language around trans women screams ideological capture to me, such as the use of the phrase "assigned male at birth". Sex is not "assigned". A male baby born in an unsupervised natural birth in which the mother (excuse me, "birthing person") dies in childbirth without ever laying eyes on her child remains male, in spite of the fact that no sex was ever "assigned" to him by anyone. Humans are not subject to Schrödinger's chromosomes, both male and female until directly observed, and it takes a remarkable level of Butlerian solipsism to even consider the possibility.
This demonstrates the motte-and-bailey fallacy at the heart of the trans movement. They insist that they're not trying to collapse the distinction between male and female people, of course they recognise that sex exists, they're just arguing that something called gender identity also exists. But if that's the case, why are they so keen to insist that males are not "male" but simply "assigned male at birth"? Is "this baby is male" not a factually and uncontroversially true statement about a baby born with a penis, Y chromosome etc.? Why are you trying to water this definition down by using language that implies a mistake was made somewhere?
I believe that was originally a term used for intersex people; the transgender activists appropriated it.
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