>"If cancel culture actually existed, there would be many examples we could point to. But there aren't."
>"Cancel culture isn't random individuals telling you to shut up, or drowning out inanity. That's just free speech."
As a point of order, it's not profound to say that no examples of "thing" exist when you apply your own definition that frames all instances of "thing" as something entirely different.
If there wasn't an element of cancel culture then Brendan Eich would be Mozilla's CEO and not the incompetent CEO they currently have.
Don't get me wrong, I profoundly disagree with Brendan Eich's political views, I am for same-sex marriage and I'm very much a liberal when it comes to any moral leanings. That doesn't stop the fact that Brendan Eich being ousted of Mozilla for his intolerant political views is a shame and set back Mozilla considerably.
You don't seem to know what cancel culture refers to. It's not the celebrities you listed. It's women being deplatformed for expressing traditionally feminist positions; it's students calling for biology professors to be fired because the professor teaches that the sexes are fundamentally binary in Homo sapiens.
> Though abortion is conduct, it does not follow that the State is entitled to proscribe it in all instances. That is because the liberty of the woman is at stake in a sense unique to the human condition and so unique to the law. The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear. That these sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist she make the sacrifice. Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman's role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society.
For the overwhelming majority of women in the world, feminism is still inexplicably intertwined with issues unique to women because they involve pregnancy, birth, raising children, and the vulnerability that comes from differences in physical strength compared to men, etc.
If suddenly all women who got Covid (including the asymptomatic ones who never officially tested) were infertile. Would everything you said become moot since now a big chunk of the female population does not have the pregnancy and birth?
Raising children relates to every one who identifies as a woman. Same with physical strength for any one who transitions which includes estrogen et al. more so vulnerability in general specifically is an issue more for people not born female.
I appreciate your comment and the quote. Did you mean to write "inextricably" though? (Hopefully it's clear that that is a straightforward question and not rhetorical!)
What I mean by "traditionally feminist" is the view that feminism concerns the challenges faced by biological women as a result of physical differences from men, the fact that they give birth, and the millenia of abuse of women by men in human history for domestic work and sexual purposes. I.e. to be explicit, that feminism is not about the challenges faced by biological males who are attempting to change their bodies to be female and to live their lives as women. This is not to say that the challenges faced by transwomen are at all to be dismissed or treated unsympathetically; just that it is a distinct issue from traditional feminism.
Your question is also answered rather more eloquently by rayiner in the sibling comment.
I’ll mostly repeat what I responded to the sibling.
If all biological females who got Covid (including the asymptomatic ones who never officially tested) became infertile. Or let’s just say 30-40% of biological females became infertile. Does this make “traditional feminism” moot? The primary differences that are exclusive to biological females would not be true for so many of them then.
If so, that’s cool. Sometimes these talking points are obfuscation to gatekeep and discriminate. However if traditional feminism really would segment out infertile women to some degree like women who transitioned, then that’s cool :)
Every time a baby girl is born, a human being comes into the world who has
1. the potential to become pregnant and give birth
2. a statistical expectation to have weaker body strength than the average man
3. the potential to be abused by men due to a combination of their statistically greater physical strength and sexual desires
4. etc
Feminism concerns the fact that biology produces such human beings on 50% of all births -- production of female children is a pretty important phenomenon.
Feminism is in no way invalidated by a thought experiment whereby some proportion of women lose one or more of those distinguishing attributes. It remains a fact of biology that 50% of births produce female children. Your thought experiment does not describe the real world. You might as well say "what if humans had 3 sexes, then where would feminism be?" or "what if women were stronger than men, then where would feminism be?".
It sounds very much like you, or whoever you got that thought-experiment from, are starting from a premise that
> we do not like the fact that the vast majority of women in the world define "woman" to exclude transwomen, and define "feminism" to be concerned with the traditional definition of "woman"
and then you are trying to think up reasons to invalidate the concept of feminism. That sort of "desired conclusion first, argument second" approach has a history of not being terribly successful at aligning with how reality actually is.
Looking at the status quo as a defense has historically not worked out well. Similar resistance and excuses were said of gay men, lesbian women, minorities (IE dark skinned people in much of the world), slavery or indentured servitude, basic women’s rights, marijuana users, mental health issues like autism, bipolar, borderline, schizophrenia, physical disabilities or deformities, and more.
Most of those instances now have first world societies with a majority of people agreeing those people deserve [near] equality and basic human respect besides. For the instances where a majority has not been reached yet across the first world (racism, religious intolerance, sexism) the trend is getting there.
That’s not how things were before. How is what you are saying any different? For all the above, people had their reasons they believed to their core and were sure the detractors like myself were wrong. As you have noted in the moment, you could use the status quo and human tendency to be conservative (not in the political right/left sense but in the general definition) and having a hard time with change to show society does not want this progress/change.
I understand you believe this time is different. But isn’t that what all the people before believed too?
I never understand this question being used as a gotcha. Yes a sterile woman is a woman. Pregnancy and birth are just examples demonstrating womenhood. There's also lots of other things: XX chromosome, menstruation, bone structure, physical strength, and emotional intelligence just to name a few.
Obviously a male -> female trans person cannot menstruate. Are you pointing out that a female -> male trans person can menstruate? Yes, they can, because they are still biologically female. I didn't get your point re. menstruation here.
I mistyped. I meant can get some of the symptoms. I was wrong to write menstruation. I know this isn’t the exact pr or topic but since the overall point is about how the lines are blurred more than “tradition”, intersex people can menstruate and some have almost or every biological female issue. Intersex people are not a part of “traditional” feminism.
To my bigger point I sent to the other commenter, the status quo and how things have historically been for issues like identity, gender, sexuality, end up not being looked upon favorably and first world societies have consistently albeit slowly progressed on them.
I realize I am committing some fallacies by not sticking to the exact comment/topic. However I saw you edited your comment from being aggressive to respectful/kind so I thought I’d go for it.
Could be the political term 'cancel culture' you brought up. That really only gets used in one direction.