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  1. None of this bullshit is about “defining what a woman is”.
    It’s about prescribing what the WORD “woman” is allowed to mean – and then enforcing that meaning with implied threats of violence against any departures from the ‘correct’ usage. It’s extraordinarily authoritarian.

    Like all words, “woman” can quite legitimately have multiple meanings that depend on social context. It can validly mean different things for prison authorities, sports administrators, or HR departments trying to build harmonious workplaces with a diverse range of people.

    Note: you can’t define what anything “is” without using language – other than by raising your arm and silently pointing at what you believe to be an example of the thing in question. This is of necessity an argument about language and what language is allowed to mean.

    1. And for clarity – this nonsense comes from both radical biological essentialists who insist that “woman” must always mean biological adult female in all social contexts, and from radical anti-essentialists who insist that “woman” can mean whatever they want it to in all social contexts.

      1. it’s oat milk territory. these attacks are ghastly with their gaslighting bullshit. ghouls. it’s a fucking hate crime. so called conservatives in this country attacking fellow citizens are a sham and a disgrace. a few eco-cons will shut them up with their snowflake bullshit. print that in your report and smoke it.

  2. I wonder if any here have seen the cartoons of Ronald Searle in his Non-Sexist Dictionary (he has searched for some routine words with ‘men’ in them and replaced with ‘women’, he embracing she as the saying goes.
    Searle had encountered real brutality in his war service and that no doubt aided him in his views about the terrible sexism of language affecting females badly.

    https://www.comicsreview.co.uk/nowreadthis/2018/08/12/ronald-searles-non-sexist-dictionary-2/
    …During the Second World War he was a Japanese POW at the infamous Changi Prison. The second St Trinian‘s cartoon was drawn in that hell-hole in 1944 and it survived along with his incredible war sketches to see print once peace broke out. Searle was a worker on the Siam-Burma Railroad (a story for another time and place) and risked his life daily both by making pictures and by keeping them…

    …despite being 30+ years old [pub 1989] – this sharp and immaculately depicted slice of satirical buffoonery still affords a chuckle or two, but the truly magical aspect of this book is the unforgettable collection of black and white cartoons delivered with stunning absurdist candour and the peculiarly tragic warmth that only Searle could instil with his seemingly wild yet clearly-considered linework…
    You will laugh, (it’s impossible not to) but you will also grieve and yearn and burn in empathised frustration at the marvels in this lost supply of ordinance in the Battle of the Sexes.

    Sorry I can’t find my copy to demonstrate the pathos and bathos of this book.

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