Read on Twitter
This is my hobby horse. There are many aspects of gender ideology that trouble me; the harm done to young people with puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, binders, surgery and the like and the intrusion into women’s sex based rights, but all troubling aspects depend on the power https://twitter.com/franceslumsden/status/1350362025650761728
of naming, the power to define reality. When we define objects and actions according to observable, repeatable empirical knowledge we create a framework of thinking, both individual & collective, which gets close to how these objects and actions actually ARE. Our cognitions at
bear some resemblance to the physical reality of things. Collectively we can act in the world in a way which makes sense. Words like women, man, girl, boy, mother, father; these all have a specific dearly held meanings which accurately described both object & relationship between
But along come gender ideology or queer theory which seeks to throw out all our sex based words, and we are thrown into a world where a woman claims to be a man, insists we must call her thus, demands to be known as her child’s father and abuses anyone who denies her this ‘right’
Along comes queer theory and demands that men are women and women have to add extra qualifiers like ‘natal’ women in order to distinguish themselves. We are told to STFU, threatened and socially shamed. Told we have no right to define ourselves because our definitions are archaic
Queer theory takes us down the rabbit holes to a dark world where those who have the power to abuse will abuse. Women will always be on the back foot in this language game. Men can define reality in any which way they choose. We know where this ends; history is replete with it.
It is therefore of the utmost importance that women and our male allies defend sensible accurate language. To defend signifiers which are based in empirical truth. To not allow the slightest slippage in the meaning of man and woman. It is a philosophical war and truth must win.
