i dream of being possible

on oranges, apples, gender, and race by @mxbees

2017-03-14

#race to the bottom #transmisogyny is fun for the whole family #tweetthread
  1. ah. because in a conversation about apples, its totally relevant to bring up oranges. https://t.co/F8QjGVZmx7 2017-03-11 13:17:06
  2. i had a thread not too long ago about false equivalancies bw race and gender. radfems and conservatives love to pull it. 2017-03-11 13:20:28
  3. like. that person totally thought she had pulled out a magnificent ‘gotcha’. poor whites still have white privilege! 2017-03-11 13:24:22
  4. don’t all males still have male privilege? huh? i admit that poor whites have white privilege. 2017-03-11 13:25:14
  5. then i, a male, must admit that i have male privilege. of course, i’m not actually male. but whatever. 2017-03-11 13:26:11
  6. in any case, let me say it again: gender and race are different domains of discourse. they are not analogous. 2017-03-11 13:27:24
  7. they are structured differently and are governed by different logics. we all know this. we do. 2017-03-11 13:27:45
  8. we know this in the same way that we know that apples are not oranges. they are simply not the same thing. at all. 2017-03-11 13:28:45
  9. now, they are not the same magnitude of difference as say, an apple and a chair. 2017-03-11 13:30:00
  10. they are sadly just similar enough for spurious arguments like, ‘if u can say ur a woman, why can’t i say i’m Black’ to sound reasonable 2017-03-11 13:30:29
  11. thing is, to most rational people, this sounds absurd. which is actually the point of the argument. (its reductio ad absurdum) 2017-03-11 13:31:43
  12. conservatives and feminists who use it think that it entails that the absurdity lies in trans women claiming we are women. 2017-03-11 13:34:05
  13. eg. since it is absurd for a white person to claim to be Black, then it is absurd for a ‘man’ to claim to be a woman 2017-03-11 13:34:39
  14. in order to draw this conclusion, the premise must be: race and gender are analogous. if one is absurd, so is the other. 2017-03-11 13:35:19
  15. but if that premise is false. eg. race and gender are not analogous, then the proper conclusion is: 2017-03-11 13:36:15
  16. race and gender are not analogous, since one claim is absurd and the other is not 2017-03-11 13:37:44
  17. of course, i get to a certain extent this is subjective since to your average radfem/conservative ‘trans women are women’ is absurd. 2017-03-11 13:38:13
  18. but even if we take this as true, race and gender are still different domains of discourse which still renders the premise false 2017-03-11 13:40:57
  19. which renders the argument as a whole false (and thus their conclusion false). 2017-03-11 13:41:21
  20. so while they might be right, this argument? isn’t sufficient proof. and they need to do better. 2017-03-11 13:42:20

nina de jesus © 2017