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[–]BiologyIsReal 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think this goes beyond the trans issue. Some people think that language shapes society and that by policing language they can change society itself. Transactivists just takes this view to the extreme and they believe (or at least want to believe) they can change reality itself. It's a lost battle, though. They could redefine woman and other words however they want. They could lobby every goverment in the world to make "legal sex change" possible. They could lobby to make "medical transition" legal and covered by the health systems everywhere. They could force everyone to "validate" them. And yet that won't make their "identities" more real. A male is still male regardless of how much he insists otherwise.

Furthermore, because sex exists and we need a way talk about it, people eventually would come out with new words to refer to the things that transactivists made nameless. The superstraight thing may have been a joke, but I think it shows pretty well how focusing so much in language leads nowhere.