OT "I'm Dealing With A Few Transgender Issues"

Discussion in 'Blazers OT Forum' started by ABM, Jun 29, 2021.

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  1. ABM

    ABM Happily Married In Music City, USA!

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    OK, I'll play. What's your definition of a woman?
     
  2. Chris Craig

    Chris Craig (Blazersland) I'm Your Huckleberry Staff Member Global Moderator Moderator

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    What is, go find a dictionary for $500 Alex
     
  3. ABM

    ABM Happily Married In Music City, USA!

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    Too easy.
     
  4. SlyPokerDog

    SlyPokerDog Woof! Staff Member Administrator

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    Republicans thought defining a ‘woman’ is easy. Then they tried.
    Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn opened their mouths and accidentally showed how complicated it is to define womanhood

    Before we get to the fact that I spent my lunch hour emailing with an editor of the Oxford English Dictionary to find out whether “tallywhacker” was an officially recognized euphemism for “penis,” a brief recap of how we got here:

    Last month Republican lawmakers went fishing for a “gotcha” at Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and thought they’d found one when Jackson declined a request from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to “provide a definition for the word ‘woman.’” Jackson replied that she was “not a biologist.”

    Of course, this wasn’t a biology test, it was a culture-war test, and conservatives were more than willing to inform Jackson she had failed. “The meaning of the word ‘woman’ is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition?” Blackburn marveled, setting off waves of complaints about woke liberals and activist judges, and presenting Tucker Carlson with Christmas in March.

    All that set the stage for this week, when several Republican lawmakers who had previously mocked Jackson’s answer set out to show just how simple and uncontroversial defining “woman” could be.

    “I’m going to tell you right now what is a woman,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) informed the audience at a GOP event after namechecking Jackson. “This is an easy answer. We’re a creation of God. We came from Adam’s rib. God created us with his hands. We may be the weaker sex — we are the weaker sex — but we are our partner — we are our husband’s wife.”

    Meanwhile Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), already in the news cycle for implying that cocaine and orgies were par for the course on Capitol Hill, decided to extend his moment in the sun by lecturing Nancy Pelosi from the House floor. “Science isn’t Burger King; you can’t just ‘have it your way,’” he said. “Take notes, Madame Speaker. I’m about to define what a woman is for you,” he said. “X chromosomes, no tallywhacker. It’s so simple.”

    And this is where I got the poor OED editor involved, just to make sure I understood exactly what Cawthorn was talking about. She explained that “tallywhacker” is likely an Americanism, a variant of the word “tallywag,” which means “the testicles; the male genitals,” though Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “a sea bass of the Atlantic Coast.”

    Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was asked by a HuffPost reporter to define “woman,” and replied, “Someone who can give birth to a child, a mother, is a woman. Someone who has a uterus is a woman. It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.” When the reporter asked him whether a woman whose uterus was removed via hysterectomy was still a woman, he appeared uncertain: “Yeah. Well, I don’t know, would they?”

    So, to review, here’s the GOP tip sheet: If you want to know whether someone is a woman, you should simply walk up to them and say, “Pardon, are you of Adam’s rib?” Alternatively, you could demand to see either a uterus or a “tallywhacker.”

    These attempts at defining womanhood are not only weird (“weaker sex” is retrograde even by the standards of Republican gender politics), they are also unhelpful.

    Let’s assume some basic things: that Marjorie Taylor Greene believes that all humans, not just women, are “creations of God”; and that Greene considered herself a woman long before she became her “husband’s wife.” Presumably she is not suggesting that a woman who is unmarried is in fact a man.

    Greene is known for her vigorous workouts and her sculpted biceps. Such a strong woman would certainly acknowledge that “weaker sex” often depends on the category in question (mental, physical, emotional) and on the individual specimen. Does Greene believe she is inherently weaker, on any of these dimensions, than, say, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)? How about President Biden?

    That leaves us with the “Adam’s rib” bit, an allusion to the biblical origin story of women. Which, fine. But I’m not sure how much closer this gets any of us to a definition of womanhood that we can actually use in The Year of Our Lord 2022. How is a women’s college or women’s athletic team supposed to incorporate the Adam’s rib test into their eligibility policies? Is there a swab for ancestral rib residue?

    Again, this definition was the very best that Greene could come up with two full weeks after gloating on Twitter that Judge Jackson, “can’t define ‘woman’ so can’t say for sure whether her own two daughters are women.”

    Cawthorn’s definition (XX chromosomes, tallywhacker-free) made me wonder what the congressman would make of the millions of women who have had Turner syndrome, a genetic disorder defined by a missing X chromosome. I wonder how he would determine the gender of an intersex individual who had reproductive characteristics of both sexes. Via a coin flip? A ruler?

    As for Josh Hawley, I’ll say only that I can’t wait to inform my mother that since her uterus was removed when she was 35 via a medically necessary hysterectomy, she hasn’t been a woman in 26 years. Perhaps she will be consoled if I add that the senator sounded like he hadn’t really thought very hard about it: In the same exchange reported by HuffPost, he seemed to change his definition of “woman” to require not a uterus but a vagina: “I mean, a woman has a vagina, right?”

    (Please note that by Hawley’s new definition he would be forced to accept trans women, post-gender affirming surgery, as women too.)

    I’m not trying to pick at Greene, Cawthorn or Hawley for the fun of it. They had suggested that defining “woman” was simple, and I’m here to say that it’s not. Not when you take the question seriously, and look for answers outside your own immediate experiences and intuitions. Which is why when these lawmakers attempted to show how much smarter they were on gender science than a judge who takes things seriously for a living, what came out was gobbledygook.

    These lawmakers are known for incendiary rhetoric. (Case in point, Greene is now accusing everyone who votes to confirm Jackson of supporting pedophiles.) But I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that I don’t actually think Greene, Hawley and Cawthorn were trying to be deliberately inflammatory when offering their definitions. I think they were trying their best and falling short. I think they were showing that providing a definition for “woman” isn’t a task that can be determined via checklist, no matter how hard the list maker tries to make it so.

    I think what they were expressing was not a knowledge of biology, but rather a fear of living in a world they could not easily categorize based on what they already think they know. One in which women might not look or sound or behave exactly as they believe women should, and so the best way to define “woman” is to ask the woman in question. Does she live as a woman? Does she undergo the trials and tribulations and joys of a woman? Does she believe she is a woman?

    “Provide a definition for the word ‘woman,’” Blackburn dared Biden’s Supreme Court nominee.

    Ketanji Brown Jackson could not do so. And neither could the people who said it should be easy.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/04/06/republican-woman-definitions/
     
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  5. Chris Craig

    Chris Craig (Blazersland) I'm Your Huckleberry Staff Member Global Moderator Moderator

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    I'm not a biologist
     
  6. ABM

    ABM Happily Married In Music City, USA!

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    LOVE IT!!
     
  7. tlongII

    tlongII Legendary Poster

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    wom·an
    /ˈwo͝omən/
    Learn to pronounce

    noun
    1. an adult female human being.
      "a drawing of a young woman"

      Similar:
      lady

      adult female
      female

      girl

      person

      lass

      lassie

      wife

      colleen

      Frau

      Signora
      Mrs. or madam." data-ex="good night, Signora" data-hw="Signora" data-lb="" data-tae="true" data-te="false" data-tl="en-US" data-tldf="" data-url="/search?rlz=1C1GCEB_enUS974US974&sxsrf=APq-WBtlEf7E1y5XmCi-NpFvMoCl6Df-Hg:1649463697572&q=define+Signora&forcedict=Signora&dictcorpus=en-US">
      Señora
      Mrs. or madam." data-ex="Señora Dolores" data-hw="Señora" data-lb="" data-tae="true" data-te="false" data-tl="en-US" data-tldf="" data-url="/search?rlz=1C1GCEB_enUS974US974&sxsrf=APq-WBtlEf7E1y5XmCi-NpFvMoCl6Df-Hg:1649463697572&q=define+Se%C3%B1ora&forcedict=Se%C3%B1ora&dictcorpus=en-US">
      the female of the species
      member of the fair sex

      member of the fairer sex
      bird

      gal

      Jane

      sister

      sheila
      femme

      Judy

      dame

      broad

      frail

      maid

      maiden

      damsel

      demoiselle

      gentlewoman

      bint
      mare

      offensive
      bitch
      • a female member of a workforce, team, etc.
        "thousands of women were laid off"
      • a female person associated with a particular place, activity, or occupation.
        "a Princeton woman was recently named the Young Lawyer of the Year"
     
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  8. crandc

    crandc Well-Known Member

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    Damsel? I never referred to myself as damsel in my life.
     
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  9. tlongII

    tlongII Legendary Poster

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    You have to be in distress first.
     
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  10. crandc

    crandc Well-Known Member

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    Oh, is that it? Guess I haven't been distressed enough. Too independent.
     
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  11. SlyPokerDog

    SlyPokerDog Woof! Staff Member Administrator

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  12. ABM

    ABM Happily Married In Music City, USA!

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    upload_2022-4-9_7-37-11.jpeg
     
  13. EL PRESIDENTE

    EL PRESIDENTE Username Retired in Honor of Lanny.

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  14. julius

    julius I wonder if there's beer on the sun Staff Member Global Moderator

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    I don't understand why it is that people care if someone identifies as a woman or not. There are much bigger REAL issues we need to concentrate on.
     
  15. Chris Craig

    Chris Craig (Blazersland) I'm Your Huckleberry Staff Member Global Moderator Moderator

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    No shit
     
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  16. ABM

    ABM Happily Married In Music City, USA!

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    To me, it's really only a factor in bathrooms and sports. jus sayin

    But, yeah, I agree, there are much bigger REAL issues to be conentrated on.
     
  17. SlyPokerCat

    SlyPokerCat cats rool dogs drool

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    Like republicans wanting to marry children in the great state of Tennessee.
     
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  18. ABM

    ABM Happily Married In Music City, USA!

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    No kidding.

    Apparently, there's now an age restriction of 18. Took a bunch of backlash, though.
     
  19. crandc

    crandc Well-Known Member

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    Why an issue in bathroom? I don't peek under door of stall to verify genitals of my neighbor.
     
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  20. SlyPokerDog

    SlyPokerDog Woof! Staff Member Administrator

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    Maybe he does.
     
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