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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
Why yes, he did! Good for him. Here’s a story about it.
The story includes the following:
Wolfe would be so correct about this, if he were talking about himself.
The story about DeSantis makes another point. Florida adopted a law last year, the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, banning trans-thingies — men claiming to be women in this case — from competing in women’s sports. But a federal lawsuit has been filed claiming that this state law violates the federal Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in school programs (including sports) that receive federal funds.
I expect that federal claim to win, because of the decision of Justices Gorsuch and Roberts in the Bostock case that I mentioned earlier. In Bostock, the four Leftists plus Gorsuch and Roberts ruled that discrimination against trans-thingies was sex discrimination under federal law. It was a terrible decision — almost Orwellian, in my view.
The result is truly Orwellian. Under Bostock, it is unlawful sex discrimination to prevent a man from competing in women’s sports.
You see, it’s discrimination on the basis of sex, because if he were a woman, he’d be allowed to compete in women’s sports. I am serious — this is the legal argument made by Justice Gorsuch, applied to the facts of a case involving a man claiming to be a woman in order to compete in women’s sports.
Of course, the existence of having women’s sports, at all, violates the principle that one may not discriminate on the basis of sex. That is not the actual ideological rule, of course. The actual rule is that you cannot discriminate on the basis of sex, unless it benefits women, in which case you must.
I do not oppose women’s sports. I like women’s sports. I just think that the antidiscrimination concept, as applied to males and females, is a bad idea. A proper rule needs to be more nuanced, I think, treating both men and women fairly and appropriately, while recognizing significant and important differences between the sexes.
I’d still like to know who that is. It seems like from other comments that it’s someone at least slightly famous, but I don’t recognize the photos.
Amen, Jerry. And until a year ago, everyone would have agreed with you. Communist discipline is shocking in how it works.
Remember back in 2016 when North Carolina passed its bathroom bill. Companies like PayPal and Deutsche Bank cancelled planned expansions in North Carolina in protest of the law.
Trump said that North Carolina shouldn’t have made changes restricting trans peoples’ bathroom use.
When Trump was asked whether he would let Caitlyn Jenner, a trans woman, use the bathroom for her gender identity at Trump Tower, Trump said that he would.
Where’s the leadership?
Well, Trump Tower isn’t an elementary school or middle school, or high school, so maybe it’s less important? Have there been any trans-committed rapes in the bathrooms at Trump Tower?
Yes, in the movie, What is a Woman, Matt talks to two people, the doctor in California who does plastic surgery to repurpose a man’s penis into something that resembles a woman sexual organs. This person presents very distinctly as a female. The person named Scott who is an activist trying to thwart the transgender philosophy (having suffered it themselves) presents very distinctly as a man. When I was discussing the film with @joalt and my friend Dan, I found that I was having a difficult time using the reality pronouns as opposed to what these individuals presented themselves as.
I think that is why Matt Walsh uses the name “Lia” instead of trying to use pronouns to describe the person that he is talking about.
I think calling anyone by their last name is a decent way to avoid the femal name for a male or vice versa.
Not to mention the subsidiarity of the bolded response to the question. This isn’t a federal law issue. No laws should be made at the federal level. This should be a freedom of conscience thing.
That is what was so impressive about him. He has lefty preferences in several things, but he does not think any of it has any right being codified in federal law.
Trump makes a GREAT president. DeSantis makes a GREAT Governor. Different roles. I would not want DeSantis doing what he is doing in FL at the federal level. I want less federal, more state.
You’re taking her out of context. She was stating that she wasn’t a woman in the same way that Joe Biden could tell a black man who didnt vote for him, he’s not black. If you dont conform to the approved politics of your demographic you get kicked out of your demographic group.
You only looked at an 8:30 clip of an interview that’s roughly an hour long.
I don’t care what she says. She has eyes you can positively swim in and that’s all I see.
I believe it’s Amy Winehouse.
Oh, must have been before she went completely off the edge.
Even that is an impingement on free conversational speech, how it impinges on fluency of speech and thought — thinks “Mustn’t… mustn’t… use… pronouns!”. And this is only for binary pronouns. Think of how hard it would be for 57 different pronouns.
I take it you mean Megan.
Megyn.
And people in jail are going to have to get used to penised women impregnating female cons.
If I ran a business, I would let Jenner use the ladies’ room because if I didn’t know who she was, I would have no idea she wasn’t a woman. I guarantee you, men have been using the ladies’ for years because they were passing as women. And I don’t ever remember a problem. That’s how it was back then; transvestites made a real effort and could easily pass as women. And I don’t remember any dudes dressed as women who were hitting on women.
But just saying that anyone can use the bathroom or changing room assigned to the gender where they “identify” is obviously stupid. Whenever I object, people think I’m claiming that transsexuals are more prone to sexual abuse. I don’t know if that’s true about transsexuals, but I do know that if someone is a sexual abuser, (or creep, or pedophile, or voyeur), they’d certainly take advantage of everyone’s newfound sensitivities.
I had a guy show up at my door looking for signatures for Greenpeace (or some such). He/she/it claimed the name of Kristina. Was wearing a dress with a t-shirt over it, had a full beard, and army boots. I felt like saying: honey, make an effort! Who let you leave the house looking like that? I have a friend with an adult used-to-be-son – now – daughter. Laziest “she” ever. Don’t throw on an ill-fitting sundress, a headband and earth shoes, then claim people are transphobic when they act confused. You want me to call you “she”? Then spend a fortune on your hair cut, get that damn dress to a seamstress, spend miserable hours wearing heals like the rest of us and shave your damn legs.
While I’m here, the whole pronoun thing is ridiculous. People rarely use your pronoun in front of you. I was taught it was bad manners to do so. I have a friend whose wife has struggled with some health issues, and he has fallen into the habit of referring to her as “she” when she is sitting right beside him. It grates, and I’m planning on saying something to him about it.
If someone wants to change their name? I’ll respect that. But respect me when I slip and use the old one.
And of course it would be different if it’s someone you’ve known for years, versus someone you’ve never met before.
Of course! Why would it even be an issue for someone you’ve just met?
Edited to add: this is an issue that has touched my life. I’ve slipped up and used the wrong name. In one instance it caused some outrage. My response was: this is a difficult situation that everyone has tried to handle with grace. Grace goes both ways.
Agreed, Megan clearly stated a person doesn’t get to just decide they are a woman after 20 something years of being a man. I get the irritation with referring to a male as “she” but perhaps calling someone WHO AGREES WITH YOU “supposedly conservative” over it is pretty nitpicky. Maybe save it for people with an opposing viewpoint?
Remember when the left was all ‘Chilling effect thisss’ and ‘muh liberties that’? Yeah, that was great.
That’s a relief.
Was there another woman in the story?
Depends.
That’s my view. I have a bipolar friend who keeps changing her name by deed poll. That’s inconvenient to her friends but not much different to a woman who takes her husband’s name or someone who prefers a diminutive of the name on their birth cert. If she does ever go the trans way and it is possible, I will still refer to her as she, as she would be asking me to pretend something is true when I know it isn’t.
There are some exceptions I’ve noticed in myself. I watch Blaire White on YouTube and have referred to White unconsciously to friends as she. While I know Blaire White is a man, and large hands and exaggerated feminine body language aside, Blaire White comes off as feminine to me so it doesn’t jar to use she. I correct myself because I don’t want to mislead anyone else but my mind would seem to be filtering in favour of feminine pronouns.
Married women often take their husband’s name. They are almost never unpleasant when people forget.
Especially if it’s just in the beginning.
When Biden leaves the White House he won’t be able to cash in by “writing” a book. But he could earn a fortune endorsing adult disposables.
And maybe Viagra or Cialis or something.
Talk about creepy…
Joe and (“Dr”) Jill in those side-by-side bathtubs…
Brrrrr….