Reading this book I have been by turns bemused and astonished at his belief system and effrontery. This chapter made me angry. Many /Most of you will have heard the acronym deployed D.A.R.V.O. in this “debate”. It stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse,Victim and Offender and it was coined by J Freyd. You can read it here:
This except gives a flavour and it should be a recognisable pattern, by now.
This whole book is an extended piece of D.A.R.V.O. This chapter exemplifies his technique. He misuses feminist arguments, feigns to care about women and oppose sexism while campaigning against them, similarly with gay rights. If you read one chapter this is the one!
He opens this chapter with this quote from Kurt Vonnegut. This from a man whose pretence is that he is really a woman. He is toying with us.
He begins by complaining that the language of “sexual apartheid”, that is using male /female “infects” our vocabulary. His choice of language implies our lexicon is disease riven and of course, in that case, it must be “cleansed”. This is the language of “cultural genocide” as pointed out by Dr Julia Long; specifically in relation to Lesbian culture. At the time Long wondered if she was being hyperbolic but on examination of the phenomena she concluded she was not. I am strongly inclined to agree with her now we have seen the widespread erasure of words to describe women and women’s experience. Think “Trans Women are Women” versus Women are “Cis-Women”. It is now verboten to use Transwomen because males must not have any suggestion their inclusion is subject to qualification or uterus-haver, gestator or pregnant person.
Rothblatt makes it clear that he believes language is critical in achieving his project and questions whether the existing language may have been forced on an unwilling populace, rather than emerged as a simple response to the fact we are a sexually dimorphic species. This language, as he makes clear, has to change to make way for a “continuum of sexual identities”. This is where the project pronoun comes into play.
Rothblatt makes an appeal to authority by referencing Chomsky’s theory about the innateness of the human instinct to develop language. However he claims, because the words used to describe “gender” vary across time and cultures this is not innate. He also the way we describe “gender” may have emerged to enforce class divisions. I have no idea how he makes that leap and he doesn’t show his workings out.
Newspeak: Project Pronoun
There follows a section where Rothblatt plays around with the best way to de-sex language. He identifies for potential routes. One of them is to ask the recipient of your interaction what is their preferred mode of address. Rothblatt, correctly, identifies the difficulties with this. People may forget and inadvertently cause offence. Another alternative is to avoid any reference to language rooted in the reality of biological sex. We could invent a new lexicon. Rothblatt gives some examples of the newspeak.
The other option is to use existing words but change the way they are used.
Nobody can be unaware of the spread of pronoun propaganda. So many intelligent, otherwise thoughtful people are proclaiming their pronouns. This is not a neutral act. It signals agreement with an ideology that has now seen national media print statements like this:
This is not an isolated case. It is in fact because of IPSO the Independent Press Standards Organisation. Media reporting is only one issue. There is now an issue with male crimes, even rapes, being actually recorded by the criminal justice system as if they were perpetrated by females. What follows from this is the housing of male sex offenders in the female estate. This is where your virtue-signalling, pronouns in bio, leads.
Also no way am I calling my other half after a drug wreaking havoc in the prison system. In fact many women and men use “partner” anyway and lots of this changed language already evolved following feminist campaigning.
Rothblatt instructs his readers to call their vagina-having relatives by their preferred terms even if this is old-fashioned, sex revealing, language like “Aunt” or “Mom”. Superficially this sounds eminently reasonable but he can’t resist comparing those clinging to this language with the architects of apartheid; referencing Nelson Mandela. So you can call her “Auntie” but she is akin to a racist.
In New York you can be fined $275,000 for misgendering, in Ireland a man is in prison for breaching a court order which directed him not to return to the school where he worked; he is currently suspended, pending a disciplinary hearing, for refusing to use opposite sex pronouns for a boy. Whether you wanting it, or not, Martine, this is the world your authoritarian ideology has created. This is a classic reversal of victim and offender.
Deborah Tannen.
Rothblatt takes issue with a statement from Tannen by, in my view, wilfully misunderstanding the point she is making. Stating that women experience a male dominated society differently to men should be uncontentious. This does not mean we accept sex stereotypes as an accurate depiction of what it means to be a woman. Men do need to speak to women in a way that shows some appreciation of how we are obliged to navigate the world.
Martine, instead, makes the patronising assumption that anyone who opposes his gender identity propaganda just doesn’t understand. Tannen is not claiming Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus like a sexist man. She is simply saying we are not the same as men and the universal human is always a default male. A world built on the assumption we are the same is why office temperatures are always set a little bit lower than is needed for a female’s comfort or heart attack symptoms are overlooked. In this section we see some of Rothblatt’s motivation. Irritation that his need to perform woman face is rooted in a disorder. Why does he cling to the word “woman” and claim he wants to eradicate sex based language?
Women fighting for sex based rights = Racism
The theme that women defending the words to describe our lives and experiences is akin to racism is repeated Ad nauseum throughout this book. The repetition is designed to embed this thought process and trigger it whenever women defend their rights.
And
D.A.R.V.O on Steroids.
This has to be the most egregious lie at the heart of this book. Rothblatt is arguing that women asking for sex based language are causing females to identify out of their sex. Only a sick mind could blame feminism for the rise of girls identifying out of their sex and not Gender Identity Ideology but he really goes there. 👇
And this 👇
Not to forget our boys here a boy wanting to be a “mummy” is presented as a boon for children needing adoption. Rothblatt’s womb envy is off the scale. It is the utmost cruelty to pretend a boy can be a “mother”. We are not all earth mothers but we are the sex that carries babies and gives birth. Calling us “gestators” or “uterus-havers” or talking about “pregnant people” is seizing the forces of reproduction and erasing women’s labour, literally. I will forever despise men on the left for going along with this.
We used to know how to satirise this nonsense.
Sexual Orientation
In case you have not woken up to the aim to eradicate sexual orientation, Rothblatt makes it abundantly clear in his writing. Here he returns to Chomsky and theories of in an innate language instinct. He has already argued that “gender” cannot be innate because we have no consistency of language to talk about sex/gender. Now he turns to sexual orientation. Is it innate?
He argues against it being innate, as some homosexuals do. There is a split on the issue. Early campaigners judged that arguing for it being innate would lend impetus for the campaign for equal rights. Some expressed concern that a “gay gene” would make natal gays vulnerable.
So, where does Rothblatt go with this argument? That’s right if you are motivated you can overcome your same sex orientation even if genetically predisposed.
Census Data & Femicide
Not for the first time Rothblatt uses extensive census data to document the phenomenon of aborting female foetuses/female infanticide. Remember Rothblatt’s wants to eradicate all sex based data including the census. If he gets his way we would t know the extent of this practice.
He then proceeds to express his horror that any biotechnology can be in the hands of sexists. Sexist man says what! (Only dogs can hear me now).
He does his usual trick here of switching from sex to gender. He is using the disappearance of the female sex to advance his own argument which is really about “gender identities”. He thinks if we stopped talking in terms of “sex” tweet will solve aborted, female, foetuses/female infanticide.
It’s not a coherent argument but he will use anything to justify his own need to cos play as his opposite sex stereotype.
Transhumanism
He then extends the discussion of bio-ethics to talk about engineering transhuman subjects. He argues that there is a race to engineer a sentient “robot” and in order to make them resemble humans their consciousness must be designed to have the full range of human emotions, including “angst and dread”. In this race, he argues, mistakes must be made and we have to developing a new ethics to decide how we confer rights in those new “cyber-conscious” beings.
He then draws comparison with the abortion of a “horribly retarded or autistic” foetus. (His words not mine).
Right Side of History?
He finishes with a recommendation for an ethical panel to review decisions about terminating the “life” of these new beings.
I will return with Chapter 7. The final chapter. If you are not convinced this is a a dangerous man, by now, I don’t know what will persuade you.
If you want to tip the balance in favour of women and against these crazy billionaires you can donate here:
Researching the history and the present of the “transgender” movement and the harm it is wreaking on our society.
£10.00
I so admire you, Trish.
Thank you! This is much appreciated.