marnanel @marnanel@queer.party
- pronouns
- she/her or they/them
- languages
- en cy la
- privilege
- white
The dreams I plant in someone's mind may bloom as hope for humankind
queer, trans, autistic, Anglican, anarchist, poet, and full-time carer
Joined Oct 2017
Welsh original:
Nid oes gennym hawl ar y sêr,
Na'r lleuad hiraethus chwaith,
Na'r cwmwl o aur a ymylch
Yng nghanol y glesni maith.
Nid oes gennym hawl ar ddim byd
Ond ar yr hen ddaear wyw;
A honno sy'n anhrefn i gyd
Yng nghanol gogoniant Duw.
THE DARK BLOT
by Hedd Wyn (1887-1917), my translation
We have no right to starlight,
nor moon that moans so lonely,
nor golden clouds a-rolling
through boundless blue, for only
this world so worn and weary
is ours in truth, that lies
discordant in God's glory
to stain the starry skies.
marnanel
boosted
computer / systems rambling
something i think i've learned over the last 20 years:
competence in infrastructure has a centralizing tendency, and that tendency has a way of sapping or destroying _distributed_ competence.
as a concrete example, i've rambled before about how how there are no good normal-person mail clients left because all of the people who would write them are just using gmail (or satisfied with mutt / emacs / whatever).
marnanel
boosted
MH- ukpol
For my birthday, the government is "debating" whether I am allowed to have the rights every cis person can take for granted. (And many of the rights binary trans people can, at the moment.)
It's predictably turning into the kind of uneducated, openly hostile, "Won't someone think of the children?" conspiracy-invoking posturing that passes for public discourse.
I'm trying so hard to keep going, but I've just got no reason to hope any more.
This is a fallacy of equivocation.
https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/Equivocation.html
It works to their advantage to keep this confusion in people's heads— so, do stay aware of it.
/end
I'd said that I couldn't give a definition of "woman" of the form they wanted. This is because, as with almost all other words, there *is* no prescriptive definition of "woman".
But they think they have a prescriptive definition. So you point out that they don't, because there isn't one. Then they dismiss your objection because you haven't given one.
I was reminded of this because a TERF reblogged the previous post on Tumblr, and added:
> “Terfs are stupid because they can’t define man or woman!”
> *fails to define woman, claims it’s not possible*
Do you see what they're doing?
When TERFs define "man" and "woman" in ways which suit them, they are using prescriptive definitions.
They intend them as phrases which can be used in 100% of cases to distinguish everyone in the group called "woman" from everyone not in that group.
Descriptive definitions just describe the meaning: they don't cause the meaning to exist.
Almost all definitions in everyday life are descriptive, including all the definitions in a standard dictionary.
Prescriptive definitions force the meaning to be what they say.
For example, the Football Association rules define the touchlines to be the long sides of the pitch and the goal lines to be the short sides.
Oh hey, I found another point.
4. They will equivocate over different types of definition.
There are two kinds of definition: descriptive definitions and prescriptive definitions. They both have their place.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/descriptive-vs-prescriptive-defining-lexicography
marnanel
boosted
Let's say you hate washing dishes and so you procrastinate. But eventually you get started and as you go, the stack of dirty dishes gets smaller and the stack of clean ones increases and so there's a reward function.
Now, instead, imagine that the first dish to wash looks fine, but the ones below that are all encrusted with the worst vileness, the stack never gets smaller, the clean stack is still weird and gross and a grounding issue means the washing gives you constant mild electric shocks.
Over on Twitter I have a weird fascist calling me names. It's v odd.
https://twitter.com/marnanel/status/1528522414581239809?t=Ixc5clmQQkKG5lv3kd7wTA&s=19
I read "un film belge" without glasses on, and thought "I know about film noir, but film beige is a new one for me"
Terrorism (Manchester Arena)
The Manchester Arena attacks were five years ago tonight.
Nobody here will ever forget the horror of that night. RIP, all of them. Lost needlessly. But those who hate us will never divide us.
A city united. Keep buzzing. 💜🐝 #ManchesterRemembers
marnanel
boosted
Have confirmed that my family owned an egg cuber, possibly obtained at the Easter Show
marnanel
boosted
Also, what is bucco-lingual copulation? Do they just mean French kissing?
3. They claim to have science on their side. This is a fundamental error.
The question of what "man" or "woman" means is a question of terms. There is no position on these terms which is falsifiable, so no there is no position on these terms which is scientific.
What *is* scientific is questions about the observable medical and social effects of believing people about their own gender. And on these questions, the TERFs are on the wrong side.
/end
2. They believe they know what "man" and "woman" mean, even though they can't define it to you consistently.
So what do they believe trans people mean by "man" or "woman"?
They assume it has to do with gender stereotypes (yes, really).
This is why they talk about trans women as men in lipstick or dresses or wigs. They think that we think that that's what a woman is.
It's also why they assume trans kids get told they're trans because of their behaviour.
- pronouns
- she/her or they/them
- languages
- en cy la
- privilege
- white
The dreams I plant in someone's mind may bloom as hope for humankind
queer, trans, autistic, Anglican, anarchist, poet, and full-time carer
Joined Oct 2017
