My cats are looking at me strangely since I've been hooting and slapping the table while reading this. “Lived experience - The definitive rebuttal to evidence, reason, or consistency.” Indeed. Or "The feeling that wanting a pony makes you a centaur." I can't pick just one as my favorite!
However, I question the gender abolition definition. I want to get rid of attaching stereotypes to sex categories and so I consider myself a gender abolitionist. I think the trans ideologues want to abolish sex, not gender. Keep 'gender' simply as a linguistic term.
And if you don't agree with me then you're a bigot! Joke. Sorry, couldn't resist.
I would have agreed with you 100% - if you hadn't dangled the "being called a bigot" carrot!
I want to delete the word entirely from the law along with the putrid meaningless "GI". My main gripe is that by raising it constantly we keep breathing life into the corpse of a word that lost its way in around 1980 when it became about performance. Usually irrelevant words die if left alone like: Doovalacky, Cassette, Mimeograph & Rolodex...
Oh hell yes, 'gender' should not be anywhere in the law, nor should 'gender identity.' They are two meaningless words but are treated as sacramental nouns.
Never heard of 'Doovalacy' (do enlighten me) but calling the other 3 nouns 'irrelevant' tells me you're young. Haha.
They are all irrelevant in most modern day usage. I still have boxes full of cassettes. I produced many of my classroom handouts for students using a Mimeograph or the good old Bander Machine & thought Rolodexes were for posh people. I was trying to give examples of words that lack linguistic currency anymore. That is to say, would be widely understood by ALL... A doovalacy is/was an Australianism for a thingamajig or what my dad called a yocypus, or yoke...
Language is a negotiation and for meaning to occur both parties need an agreed meaning. That was my point.
Thanks for the "you must be young", although on second thoughts, we both share a good understanding of what young now means, so I'll stick to old and thoroughly pissed off!!!
Ah! Good to know the Aussie idioms. Thingamajig is used in the States but not the others. I did get rid of my cassette tapes years ago. I'm hanging on to my CDs, and my car is old enough to have a CD drive still. I don't quite trust accessing the "Cloud" -- corporate server sucking up power out in the middle of the desert could go down, or Big Tech Corp could start charging for access. But I do download books and audio from the library to read or listen to -- they're temporary.
I'm reminded of this:
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
My cats are looking at me strangely since I've been hooting and slapping the table while reading this. “Lived experience - The definitive rebuttal to evidence, reason, or consistency.” Indeed. Or "The feeling that wanting a pony makes you a centaur." I can't pick just one as my favorite!
However, I question the gender abolition definition. I want to get rid of attaching stereotypes to sex categories and so I consider myself a gender abolitionist. I think the trans ideologues want to abolish sex, not gender. Keep 'gender' simply as a linguistic term.
And if you don't agree with me then you're a bigot! Joke. Sorry, couldn't resist.
Hehe...
I would have agreed with you 100% - if you hadn't dangled the "being called a bigot" carrot!
I want to delete the word entirely from the law along with the putrid meaningless "GI". My main gripe is that by raising it constantly we keep breathing life into the corpse of a word that lost its way in around 1980 when it became about performance. Usually irrelevant words die if left alone like: Doovalacky, Cassette, Mimeograph & Rolodex...
Oh hell yes, 'gender' should not be anywhere in the law, nor should 'gender identity.' They are two meaningless words but are treated as sacramental nouns.
Never heard of 'Doovalacy' (do enlighten me) but calling the other 3 nouns 'irrelevant' tells me you're young. Haha.
Me young? Why thank you... I certainly feel it.
They are all irrelevant in most modern day usage. I still have boxes full of cassettes. I produced many of my classroom handouts for students using a Mimeograph or the good old Bander Machine & thought Rolodexes were for posh people. I was trying to give examples of words that lack linguistic currency anymore. That is to say, would be widely understood by ALL... A doovalacy is/was an Australianism for a thingamajig or what my dad called a yocypus, or yoke...
Language is a negotiation and for meaning to occur both parties need an agreed meaning. That was my point.
Thanks for the "you must be young", although on second thoughts, we both share a good understanding of what young now means, so I'll stick to old and thoroughly pissed off!!!
Ah! Good to know the Aussie idioms. Thingamajig is used in the States but not the others. I did get rid of my cassette tapes years ago. I'm hanging on to my CDs, and my car is old enough to have a CD drive still. I don't quite trust accessing the "Cloud" -- corporate server sucking up power out in the middle of the desert could go down, or Big Tech Corp could start charging for access. But I do download books and audio from the library to read or listen to -- they're temporary.
I'm reminded of this:
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass