Some Things Are Not Up for Debate
Some conflicts really don’t have “two sides”
I have been reading some opinions recently that have not helped my blood pressure to remain in a normal, healthy range. Written by women who I am sure have the most wonderful of intentions, who are upset by the hurt feelings of others and are trying to reconcile the differences of those who have very different views on important issues that affect everyone in general and women and children in particular.
Attempting to summarize the debate, let’s call these “men in women’s spaces” arguments. (Spaces, for this argument may be physical, such as changing rooms or they may be more metaphorical, such as awards set up for women or men breastfeeding.)
Simply put, there are usually three positions that people take:
1) Men who identify as women are women, so they are not men in women’s spaces,
2) If you were born with a penis, you will be a man forever, even if you don’t appear to be one, and
3) Aarrgghh I don’t really know, but surely, I can’t go wrong if I am just kind and nice to everyone?
I believe that the largest proportion of most populations is encompassed in #3, and most of the writing I’ve been reading is, I suspect, written by those who just want everyone to get along.
Queer theory vs. Reality
Another way to approach this vexed topic is by comparing and contrasting what you can observe in your own life. Are you grounded in reality, or do you live in some nebulous universe where truly anything is possible?
Do you believe in the validity of scientific endeavors, or do you believe that we make our own realities, however farfetched these may appear?
Adherents of queer theory believe that it, “has a moral imperative to reject, disrupt and subvert scientific claims and common sense about gender, sexuality and even sex. Queer theorists spend no time acknowledging that biological realities exist and almost all of their time rejecting them and asserting the social construction of those categories.”
A shorter way of explaining what queer theorists believe is that there are no such things as facts. Nope, none of those pesky rules apply once you decide to queer everything; it’s social construction and oppression all the way. Did you know that words are “literal violence”? Go read some Butler and educate yourself, you bigot! If this makes no sense to you, go read this book and it will become clearer.
Queer theory and sesquipedalian speech
Sesquipedalian speech is used to describe someone or something that overuses big words. Sesquipedalian speech is often assumed to be smart, especially if the audience doesn't really know what it was about because they can't understand the words.
Since starting to write about all this mess, my spell checker has undergone a revolution in adding new words to its dictionary. “Heteronormative” was perhaps an early addition to my computer’s lexicon. This word just means that the mammalian expected sexual pairing is one female and one male. Which of course is the only combination that works reproductively, so is the expected outcome for all sexually dimorphic life forms on our planet. (Yes, I know that cultural norms may differ.)
Of course, queer theory has made this a highly pejorative term, as if the only opposite to “norm” is abnormal, which is far from the only antonym for this word. Equally valid words are “variation”, “difference” and “exception”. I would also like to point out that it is only because it is true, that we have a highly overpopulated planet. If homonormative relationships were our species’ usual sexual coupling, we would already be extinct.
“Intersectionality” is another must have buzzword. Not in good enough physical shape to compete in Paris in 2024? Hey, anyone can join the Oppression Olympics! Intersectionality is no more than a contest to see who is the most oppressed/vulnerable/deserving of extra special consideration. If you are a hetero, white male, you are totally screwed, but don a dress and call yourself a woman and you are back in the game. If you want to learn how intersectionality works against women’s rights, this book is a great explainer.
Then there is “nonbinary”, which I find to be one of the most ridiculous terms that has gained traction here. People who are truly nonbinary are as common as unicorns. If they have sexual intercourse with another nonbinary person with non-matching genitalia, only one of them risks becoming pregnant. A nonbinary person born without a penis will never need screening for prostate cancer but may need to be treated for cervical cancer.
Not all of the fancy new terms are long and convoluted. Take “cis” for example. Those three little letters hide an enormous untruth, which is that there are more than two categories of women and men, with the other type being “trans”. Nope to that shit too.
My personal (un)favorites would have to be AFAB and AMAB, which are “assigned female (male) at birth”. I have been in the room when many, many babies have been born and not once have I assigned or seen anyone else assign a gender to any baby, ever. I have observed and recorded babies’ sex every time though as human genitalia are so markedly visually different that this is not hard to do. No special training is required to accurately record a baby’s sex. And nothing that is done to them later can change the sex they were born as to anything else because like it or not, every cell in our bodies forever more will confirm our sex by showing on testing either an XY chromosomal arrangement for boys, or an XX combo for girls; our sex can never be changed because it is literally part of our DNA. Even the very rare variations on the XX/XY theme only confirm the binary nature of mammalian sex, rather than as the trans agenda states creates some additional “spectrumy” thing to choose from.
OMG, you aren’t EXCLUDING anyone are you?
One of the things that those attempting to placate both sides of the gender woo wars often do is focus on inclusion. Who wants to feel left out? Who even wants to feel a bit bad because they are not practicing wholesale inclusivity?
More and more women are not feeling even a tiny twinge of guilt about not wanting to include biological males in women’s spaces and activities.
While having fun is the most important aim of children’s sports, winning the competition is what elite and would be elite athletes are working towards, with their often-grueling training schedules and sheer hard work. Women are denied the winner’s podium more often than not when competing with men who cheat not by training harder or smarter but by claiming a womanly identity.
The problem is that identities don’t play sports, bodies do, and male bodies make their start towards physical superiority when they are fetuses. No amount of post pubertal testosterone suppression rearranges a man’s skeletal/joint construction, decreases his greater heart and lung capacity or lessens his faster muscle twitch response.
When it comes to sports, you can be “inclusive” or you can be fair, but in regard to women, you can’t be both.
Breastfeeding her baby is a woman’s physiological birthright, not a gender affirming procedure
Birth and breastfeeding the next generation of human beings is not an equal opportunity employer. All those calling for more support for male lactation and the general right of trans women (men) to breastfeed babies are ideologically captured and are proving that they place more value on the feelings and egos of cosplaying men, than on the health and wellbeing of babies.
I have written at length what babies expect to find and need when they are born; one place is here, which ends with: “Babies are human beings too and their real needs, expectations and indeed their human rights are at least as important as any adults.”
Arguing for the “right” of men to be included in breastfeeding a baby and receiving help to induce lactation is making a false case because no man has the right to do this. Male calls to be treated as mothers and receive help with breastfeeding simply do not fall within the scope of universally recognized human rights.
A baby on the other hand, does have rights, and one of them is the right to be breastfed by his or her mother.
One commentator, writing on the conflict of rights, observes, “The balance between the needs and demands of groups of people has to be mediated through what earlier generations saw as “wisdom” – knowledge of what actually matters and what counts as good intention. It is, for example, our love for children – which goes beyond reason – that prevents paedophilia from becoming a legal right rather than a calculated estimate of a child’s right to be protected vs an adult’s right to happiness.”
Many women fail to meet their own breastfeeding goals, but now in addition to all the other culturally imposed, societal barriers to breastfeeding they are expected to be accepting of research monies diverted to male lactation because this is helpful for autogynephilic men who get off on producing some drops of fluid that babies will suckle. Yeah, sure.
You know, if grown men were making babies suck on any other part of their anatomy, we would call this child sexual abuse. I have not seen a good case for why male breasts are not seen as an exception. Breastfeeding mothers sometimes get sexual feelings when feeding their babies at the breast as the hormone oxytocin, released in pleasurable sex and breastfeeding is the same. Their reaction is often guilt, as if they have done something wrong. In contrast, men covet this aspect of their “womanhood”.
Not everything has a “both sides” position worthy of consideration
The strongest rationale for “men in women’s spaces” arguments seem to be that both sides of every public debate merit having a discussion.
I disagree with this stand. There are literally thousands of issues where no further public debate is required to sort out what should be done. We are very selective in the risks that are deemed to be acceptable in our societies. From requiring baby and child car seat restraints to the health warnings on cigarette packaging, our societies have created legislation dealing with harms that our otherwise laissez-faire cultures have deemed necessary for public safety.
If you really believe that somewhere, somehow men breastfeeding has validity, please read this excellent analysis.
And, if you still think that men deserve absolutely everything their little hearts’ desire, let’s talk about both sides of men who are convicted sex offenders taking on a female identity and being held in jails with women (who have often committed crimes after being abused by men). This charmer was moved back to the men’s prison after impregnating two inmates incarcerated in a prison that is for women only.
Some people can think of some reason why this situation needs more compromises from women, but I can’t. Some things are just wrong.
I agree that “both sides of the debate” in the matter of men expropriating women’s and girls’ spaces, sports, words, and bodily functions is dead in the water. There is no ‘both sides’, and never was, it just took us a while to realise it. These men want it all their way, because their feelings demand it, and they’ve never had any compunction about imposing those feelings on us. My position is now ‘no debate’ that they have no right to expropriate our stuff.
"Some things are just wrong." Yes, exactly!