It has long been discussed here in the US, on all sides, that the way abortion became a right in this country made it vulnerable, as finally did come to pass, but I disagree that it was bad. The problem with deciding abortion by legislation, at this moment in time, is that partisan legislators are pushing through laws that much of the country, and people in their states, don't agree with. And courts are still trying to set the limits of things, if you're not familiar with the
Texas judge who has banned the "abortion pill." A lot of these new laws, and judgements from the bench, are having profound and deleterious affects, as I got into a bit above. But I'm ok if you're not interesting in discussing that.
Partisan legislators? Do you have anything in America that’s not partisan? Anything at all? Ice cream? Beer? Sportswear? Is there anything in America not infected by partisan politics? And yet, even if you’re right about the negatives of legislation you don’t like, it doesn’t change the fact that unelected judges, should not be making laws. Because they can be partisan too. This has always been considered bizarre in Europe, where we elect people to govern. We may not like their decisions - and so then we vote them out. And though I don’t follow things too closely with regards to American politics, I have seen it said here that republicans suffered in the midterms because votes they had counted on went against them due to the abortion issue.
That’s how it should be.
You know what "verbiage" means, and you described some yourself: "people with cervixes," and "pregnant people," I think were two of your examples. I am going to agree with you that some of that is a bit ridiculous, and bends itself over backwards to accommodate the very small minority of trans-men that may be pregnant. Let's face it: most people with cervixes consider themselves to be women, and most people who find themselves pregnant likewise consider themselves to be women. Sometimes language sensitivity tips a bit far, but language tends to settle on what works. As a counter to your language worries, consider this, (though I don't know how terms changed in Ireland, so you may not be able to answer in the way a man in the US would): some time in the 70s, we, in the US began to replace male-centric words with gender-neutral ones: "chairperson" for "chairman," "spokesperson" for "spokesman," etc. Those were good choices, in order to make women feel more included in the workplace, in particular, and went some way to aiding women. Did it "erase" men? It did not. Other terms that overreached, like "her-story" for "history" never caught on, which is all well and good.
Language is important. It’s a tool we use to accurately describe things, and I’m sure George Orwell has a billion quotes about how if you control the language you control the minds. So it’s not the same as changing chairman to chairperson because if the person in the chair is a woman then she can’t be the chairman. That’s actually an example of language being used to clarify something. It couldn’t erase men, because it wasn’t referring to a man. And to use these terms to better reflect reality isn’t the same as using terms to better dismantle reality.
Being truthful matters, and yet we’re being told, cajoled, and threatened into believing something that isn’t true. You even did a bit of it there yourself when you said ‘a very small minority of trans men might be pregnant’.
These are women you’re talking about. They’re not men. Men cannot become pregnant.
And when you said that ‘most people with cervixes consider themselves to be women, and most people who find themselves pregnant likewise consider themselves to be women,’ you were talking about people who
are women, no matter what they consider themselves to be.
They are women. The truth is important, and yet not only are we’re being threatened to believe lies, we’re being forced openly repeat lies. No civilisation can survive if it decides to replace the truth with lies. You might as well be forcing children to believe that 2+2=5. You’ll have a nation of cowering idiots once you go that route.
When you dismiss all this violence against women and abuse of little little kids by left wing activists as ‘verbiage’ you’ve only done what activists and partisans have done since time immemorial. They try to make their destructiveness seem as though it’s nothing, it’s not a big deal. You’ve shown yourself resistant to ‘the other side’ on this and that’s because you’re not willing to accept that the abuse is being brought to us by
your brand of partisans.
You're also telling me that I'm not worth my "salt" as a feminist if I don't consider this a danger, just because it outrages you. At the risk of causing offense, you are kind of "mansplaining" to me, which I will say is offending me, a bit. You're trying to alert me to a "danger" which I have already told you does not seem like one to me, and you're telling me/us what proper feminists "ought" to be concerned about. It's your right to have your concerns, but I think it goes a bit far to judge me that I don't share them, especially as I have explained why. What I AM concerned about is the imminent threat to women's health and well-being in the US, which I think is very real, and not a passing phase. I do genuinely fear it's going to "erase" some women by killing them.
You’ve never explained why you think that activists abusing young children and attacking women at marches where they demand to be heard as women is
not something that feminists should be concerned about. In fact, you take the side of the oppressors.
And by the way, using the word ‘mansplaining’ sounds like evasive verbiage. I’m not telling women how they should insert a tampax. I’m talking about things which affect the whole of society, men included…
