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‘She’s Not a Woman’
I find it difficult to understand how anyone could seriously formulate the sentence that is the title of this post. “She’s not a woman.” It seems like madness, to me. If words have meaning, that sentence has to be false.
The offending party here is Megyn Kelly. Kelly is supposedly a conservative and appears to be an intelligent woman. Yet she has somehow adopted a view of the world, or a definition of terms, that led her to make that statement, “She’s not a woman.”
What, pray tell, does the word “she” mean? For almost my entire life and, as far as I can tell, for the past several hundred years in the English-speaking word, “she” has been the pronoun used to refer to a woman (or female animal). “She is not a woman” is an irrational, contradictory sentence, as logically incoherent as “this statement is false.”
This quote comes from Kelly’s interview of Matt Walsh, reporting on Walsh’s interview of an anonymous female college swimmer who is a teammate of William Thomas. William Thomas is a roughly 20-year-old man who calls himself “Lia” Thomas, claims to be a woman, and has been competing in women’s collegiate swimming. He has ambitions of competing in women’s swimming at the Olympics.
Here is the interview (about eight minutes long):
I actually find myself in agreement with a statement that Thomas made, in an interview clip in the middle of this video. He said:
You can’t go halfway and be like, I support trans-women and trans-people, but only to a certain point. Where if you support trans-women as women, and they’ve met all the NCAA requirements, then I don’t know if you can really say something like that. Trans-women are not a threat to women’s sports.
I think that he’s right about the first two sentences here. There is no halfway. Of course, his statement is absurd, as one would think that meeting any sensible requirements for women’s sports would involve, you know, actually being a woman.
Kelly’s response strikes me as something out of a Monty Python skit. I do think that she is serious, and it makes me think that she is deranged. I do believe that she is deranged, in a specific way — for some reason, Kelly has accepted a completely incoherent redefinition of terms. This redefinition leaves her without the vocabulary to express herself, leading to the formulation of logically incoherent sentences. Kelly’s response to the clip of William Thomas is:
OK. Then I won’t go halfway. Then I’ll stay on zero, and I won’t meet you halfway at all, cause I’m not going to ten. She, like, the nerve of that man, for her, how does she know? She’s not a woman. She doesn’t get to say, after 20 years living as a man that now she’s a woman, and anyone objecting isn’t really supportive of trans. Like, did you swim in the pool, like all of your teammates did, when they were going through puberty, and they started getting their periods, and it’s a terrifying event for a young girl to get into a damn pool because you don’t know what’s going to happen, you haven’t managed things yet? Did you swim with breasts growing off of you, and try to figure out how to move your arms and still win? You didn’t. You went overnight from male to female, and your accomplishments on the women’s leader board are not that of a woman. They’re not. But she says we’re not allowed to meet her halfway. just out of, to be polite, or to be kind, or to try to be loving and respectful. It’s zero or ten.
Hearing this, I think to myself, self, this is satire, right? John Cleese is surely about to chime in with a funny line, don’t you think? What in the world is wrong with Megyn Kelly? This harangue is just incoherent.
I think that it’s worse. Kelly is a big part of the problem, in my view, and so are all of you who go along with this linguistic dance of pretending that some men are women, and some women are men. I think that Kelly actually identifies the problem. Kelly wants to “meet her halfway” to be “polite” or “kind” or “loving and respectful.”
I dissent. It is not impolite, or unkind, or unloving, or disrespectful to tell a man that he is not a woman. Or to refuse to refer to a man as “she” or “her.” Or, for that matter, to refuse to refer to Matthew Thomas by the female name “Lia” that he wants to use in support of the lie that he is a woman.
I’ll tell you what is impolite, and unkind, and unloving, and disrespectful, in my view. Calling me any of these things for speaking the truth. William Thomas is a man masquerading as a woman and insisting that everyone call him “Lia.” I say no.
I do credit Matt Walsh for refusing to refer to this man, William Thomas, as “she” or “her.” I am critical of Walsh for referring to him as “Lia.”
Guess what we got when we were persuaded, or browbeaten, to engage in this nonsense. A large outbreak of dreadful confusion about sexual identity among teens, especially teenage girls. Nice job, people.
I think that this is an example of what you get when you accommodate a lie.
Published in General
Funky Cold Medina.
I have noticed a couple of occasions recently when I have been accused of something like this. I state a forceful position, and back it up with a decent argument (I think). The responses are along the lines of this — accusing me of being “condescending” or of “telling other people what to think.” This has been coupled with, in my view at least, the absence of an actual rational argument on the other side.
This is an understandable reaction when I am critical of your view, and someone on the other side doesn’t have much to back up his position. Here, it is merely an assertion of “politeness,” which I reject (and explain why).
It is also possible that I’m a jerk sometimes.
I think in this case it’s less of a rational argument than an assertion that people just need to get through the day peaceably sometimes. One can stipulate that the trans phenomenon is meretricious and damaging while at the same time just graciously accepting one’s coffee at Starbucks from the 6-foot-tall dude with she/her pronouns on his name tag and walking away.
Often when I am in a classroom format, the teacher will begin by asking each person how they would like to be called. “Would you like me to call you Ray or Raymond?” “Would you like me to call you Bob or Robert?”
So, out of habit, I think people get it into their heads that if you aren’t a jerk or someone who is always on their high horse, you call people by the name that they ask to be called by.
If someone asks you your opinion on transgenderism, you can always say, “I don’t think someone can transition from male to female or female to male.”
But in most of life, unless we are running for political office, no one really wants to hear about your political views. So, most of the time it’s best to make sure that getting coffee from Starbucks doesn’t become an hour long debate over transgenderism. By the time the debate is over, the coffee will be cold.
For the Star Bucks tranny handing you your coffee, a simple “Thank you” would suffice.
Did you mean “bitch”?
Why should we suppress perfectly good English?
I figured I would not test the limits of the COC. You make a good point. Reminds me of an anecdote I heard in law school.
Many years ago (50? 60?) the Virginia high court was hearing a case that somehow involved homosexuality. During argument, the lawyer was repeatedly referring to the one party as “gay”. One old justice kept getting more and more puzzled by this, and his colleague leaned over and whispered in his hear. The old justice then exclaimed, “Well, they’ve ruined a perfectly good word!”
That always struck me as pretty funny.
It is a funny story.
I do think that the linguistic change had important effects, though. This is a judgment call. I’m not sure how it could be empirically proven. I suspect that if we continued to refer to homosexuals as “sodomites” rather than as “gays,” this would have changed the trajectory followed by our country on this issue.
I do think that, as with the issue addressed in this post, the concession was made on the basis of “politeness.”
Like most things, Monty Python got there first with their Loretta skit As one of the comments on YouTube says:
“You know you are in trouble when reality is even more ridiculous than a Monty Python movie…”
I understand what people feel or what a specific religion supports at this time but what matters is what the US government defines a woman as. It seems that the government is going to go for the definition that trans are full woman for whatever that seems to mean. So we are going to have to get used to the pronoun thing or go to jail.
I used to believe that what I wanted or what history said or what medical facts are mattered. SSM and COVID has shown all that matters is government force and the will to use it.
What this means is that the totalitarians have successfully taken over the Federal government. If so the choice is to leave. If the takeover is not total we have to win a couple of elections and undo all of it. Return power to the States and break up states that are too big. We act as if the destrucion of the Untied States constitution is unpleasant but can’t be undone.
And go where? No, we’ll fight them here.
It’s not a Constitutional issue at the federal level. It is a statutory issue, coupled with a radical interpretation of the anti-discrimination laws based on “sex” to apply to homosexuals and trans-thingies. We have Justices Gorsuch and Roberts to thank for that decision.
And Kennedy. Lawrence v. Texas was another Constitutional abomination. Especially relatively close on the heels of Bowers v. Hardwick. But then who cares about stare decisis, especially when the case was rightly decided the first time.
I am open to suggestions on where to go.
Conservatives and others seem more interested in flight than fight.
Sort of the say I see it. The federal government is a Democrat organization.
At one time there were departments that seem open the the citizenry no matter what their perspective. Now it seem not so.
In 2020 we say Trump election stolen followed by two other federal elections stolen. Conservatives response seems to be nothing much. If anything they back the theft.
And then continued in The Meaning of Life with the hospital scene. “Is it a boy or girl?” “I think it’s a bit early to start imposing roles on it, don’t you?”
Because it’s in my media library.
That guy in the middle is definitely Willie Nelson.
Yeah, I went back and saw Megan was interviewing Walsh on a different topic. Thanks.
Jessel’s audition was hilarious.
It’s not a Constitutional issue at the federal level. It is a statutory issue, coupled with a radical interpretation of the anti-discrimination laws based on “sex” to apply to homosexuals and trans-thingies. We have Justices Gorsuch and Roberts to thank for that decision (called Bostock).
The reasoning of Gorsuch’s opinion has little or nothing to do with Kennedy’s reasoning, or what passed for reasoning, in Lawrence etc. Gorsuch did a technical parsing of the statutory language, which was technically plausible (in a post-Modern way, I think), while erroneous because it evaluated the words without context.
All of these opinions were bad, in my view. But they were significantly different.
And before that, the mother asks “What do I do?” and the doctor replies “Nothing dear, you’re not qualified!”
I agree that Kennedy was bad on the sodomy issue, but it is a slightly different issue. Lawrence and its progeny invalidated various state and federal laws, but did not impose any requirements on private citizens. Those were imposed by the Gorsuch/Roberts decision that I referenced (Bostock).
The reasoning of Gorsuch’s opinion has little or nothing to do with Kennedy’s reasoning, or what passed for reasoning, in Lawrence etc. Gorsuch did a technical parsing of the statutory language, which was technically plausible (in a post-Modern way, I think), while erroneous because it evaluated the words without context.
All of these opinions were bad, in my view. But they were significantly different.
One reason why I will be supporting Governor Ron DeSantis for president in 2024 (if he is a candidate) is that he was very straightforward in calling out the NCAA for allowing a man to compete in women’s swimming.
Too many other Republicans are unwilling to speak out on the issue.
In many companies and schools you will be disciplined for “dead naming” another person.
I think DeSantis also organized a ceremony for the actual female winner of an event.
So the Girly Show is not a performer but a member of the audience??
Mistakenly to this thread, I was referring to another video of Megan and Walsh in which Walsh interviews a (I think) psychologist who is a man acting as a woman.
That’s close to where I am with this. You have a right to any name you want. (To quote Shakespeare: A rose by any other name is still the same freaking flower.)
When we start calling “Roberta” someone formerly called Robert, we’re respecting that person’s right to choose his name. When we start calling him “her”, we’re saying we believe people can be a gender that isn’t their sex