Thread by @HairyLeggdHarpy

I respect Lachlan. A great deal. His support has been and still is much appreciated. He is a good man, of integrity.

So I have read his thoughts on this carefully and will continue to do so.

But we are diametrically opposed on this and always will be.

https://twitter.com/Lachlan_Edi/status/1412182643739967490

We do not have an Act to recognise racism - for it would indeed be racism - to 'identify' as a race we are not, based upon racist stereotypes we treasure of race 'psyche' or race aesthetics.

We would understand it is demeaning to people of genuine ethnicities were we to ratify false, stereotypical, racial characteristics into law about them, as a means to facilitating entry of an imposter into their group.

Would we feel sorry for the imposter? No.

Would we debate and ratify his cherished racial stereotypes?
No.
Would we care more about his need to have stereotypes recognised, than we do the group he demeans with them?
No, we would not.
We see the humanity of the real group, and we reject the false claims made about them.

Does that mean such an imposter cannot live out those insulting stereotypes in his own life to please himself?
No, it does not.
He is free to adopt any stereotypes for himself, and also to believe they belong with his envied group, although it hurts them to perpetuate this.

Yet, although he may find his offensive actions are perfectly legal, he will also find they are not immune from social criticism.

And that's as it should be.
Legal is different from ethical.

He may believe something offensive and provably untrue.
But not have it ratified.

Does it deny his human rights, or his right to privacy to recognise him correctly as a member of his own class?
Of course not. He has no right of privacy for that which is already public.
'Privacy' here is a direct proxy for 'lie'.
And it's extrapolated to 'force others to lie'.

And extrapolated again to
'punish those who don't lie'.

We're already there, although the GRA debates promised us we never would be.

But of COURSE this is where any lie leads. It's utterly inevitable.
You carry it forwards, all the way forwards.
Or you go back to the beginning.

There are no other groups, anywhere in the world, that we have rewritten from a previously factual, fair recognition of their existence, into a demeaning, legally recognised stereotype like this. Corrupted recognition of one group for the sole purpose of benefitting OTHER people.

But that is what we have done to women.
We were recognised in law fairly, once.
Before 2004.
As members of a physical sex class. Chromosomes, gonads, genitals. It was true.
That is what we are, and that is how we were recognised in law.
That is how we still should be recognised.

But we aren't.
Not any more.

Because in 2004, men successfully argued that there was a 4th, ultimate, truest measure of a female which must be written into the legal recognition of women.

'FEMALE PSYCHE', they argued, an as yet unrecognised characteristic.

'Female psyche', this feature women have which was so powerful a determinant of women, of me, that when such a mythical presence was declared in any man, it gave him such immense psychological commonality with our entire sex that we should instantly recognise ourselves in him.

We literally created a degrading law to amend the state of being female from physical, to psychological.

These words, they are not my own hyperbole.
This is how the case was argued in our Houses of Parliament.
Female psyche.

This is what our laws hold to be true about women.

Women are compelled by law to agree we are the same as some men in that most important characteristic of womanhood, the thing so fundamentally different from men; our 'female minds'

And now that is law. Female by virtue of female mind, of 'female psyche'.

By virtue of 'gender'.

Never has a more outrageous, preposterous, demeaning lie about an entire class of people been thrust upon such an enormous number of people in a law as this one.

I still wear this lie now, to this day, and so do all women, because that is what 'Gender Recognition' is about.

Gender is nothing more than a lie told about a sex. My sex.

It's a lie about myself I now have to wear, a wholly unwanted, ill-fitting, uncomfortable garment, so that a man can wear it too and announce it suits us both equally well, and we're now the same.

We are not the same.

There will never, ever be a way of reconciling this.

We should never have 'recognised' men's stupid, degrading ideas about who we women are, how we live, what importance aesthetics hold to our existence, and how our minds are supposed to be fundamentally different from men.

What it means to be female is not what that law claims. That law is a lie.

These are the lies about women the GRA ratified. Women are confirmed to be these false things first, so that men can be them second and claim commonality with us.

It's intolerable.
And it's irredeemable.

There are no 'trans' people.
There are only people.
People of either sex.
People willing to accept their reality, or not.
People willing to respect the opposite sex for how we truly differ, or ready to selfishly subsume the true existence of others under an Act of Parliament.

People willing to misappropriate a name they aren't entitled to, to prevent my rightful differentiation from them.

No, we should not recognise gender.
Gender is nothing but a man-made lie about sex.
A lie about me, about my daughter, my cousins, my mother, and about every woman.

Gender is a man-made lie about my sex, woven into a handmaid's cloak by politicians, that I'm now forced to wear to serve men.
I don't recognise your gender.
The law does, but I don't.
I'm not a mirror reflecting back a pleasing image to a man.
My sex is not recognisable in a man

I don't recognise this lie.

I'm not what this law says I am.
The men that this law 'recognises' as female, are not female. And I reject their claim. They wear the word for my sex like it was a garment they fancy.

But it isn't, it's my body, and my existence.
They aren't female.

The law has corrupted me and my sex into a gender so that men could wear me.

Enough.
It cannot be redeemed because it's rotten to the core.

So.
If anyone should wish to weigh up the unhappiness of any man who wishes he was a woman?
Don't forget to do this too:

Weigh up the distress, anger and anguish of women, girls, and generations of girls not yet born, who have had an entire Act of Parliament written that has redefined us into a grotesque lie purely to please men.
Men who refuse to surrender the hideous stereotypes they worship.

No.
Just no.

We deserve the truth about ourselves more than he deserves the lie.
That's the sum of it.

Gender is heinous.
Insidious lies about sex.
I reject it unreservedly, every last speck of it.
I would salvage none of it.
Let it sink for good.

We'll find another way.
🔚

Postscript

One day, it would be useful to brainstorm what our country would look like without any gender recognition, and to discuss how we can protect what is fair and right to protect, without enshrining what is harmful.

Lachlan is definitely someone I'd like to do this with.