rydacted's home of curiosities

Rhetorical dogwhistles are things that most people would not be able to identify as bigoted because they're INTENDED to have plausible deniability.

The wording changes are meant to be subtle enough that people really can mix them up accidentally when they don't have much information!

So when the gender critical movement calls trans women "transwomen", they're hoping for 2 things.

this usage will spread enough among people who don't know any better, to give transphobes the plausible deniability of not LOOKING like a frothing bigot constantly.

the usage grammatically places trans women in a different category than other women; it's changing "trans" from an adjective to part of a noun to make this distinction.

The more we can avoid this usage, the less deniability have transmisogynists have when using it, and the less rhetorical ground we cede to the degendering and misgendering of trans women.

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ten years of letting the world come at you, love

ten years of your veins being empty of dust

ten years of knowing you bought your shoes from Oxfam

ten years of your hair looking better black

ten years of crying to that painted sky

ten years of a broken pot can still hold water

ten years of staring at the moon

ten years of it starting off like a pinprick, a trick of the light oil slick

ten years of showing the world we exist