all 8 comments

[–][deleted] 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Don't argue semantics with post-modernists. It's a completely futile effort because they will just move the goalposts because words mean nothing in their ideology.

[–]our_team_is_winning 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"Mother" is a role played by a female, whether she gave birth to the child or adopted the child. A mother can be a birth-mother (biological mother) or adoptive mother, or step-mother or godmother, or fairy godmother!

But all forms of "mother" are a role ONLY a FEMALE can fill.

Female is not a ROLE and is not playable. It just is.

[–]bolla_top 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It would still be correct to call an adopted child an "adopted son" or "adopted daughter" because there is a difference between adopted children and biological children. A lot of times the distinction is ignored because in most families it doesn't really matter. No one is being hurt by ignoring the distinction. It's not like the adopted children are demanding access to facilities intended for the opposite sex, or pressuring others into sexual relationships they're not comfortable with, or threatening to rape and murder other members of the family who mention that they were adopted. But if a medical situation ever arose where the actual biological relationship between family members became important (transplantation, marrow donation, etc.) it would be completely foolish to pretend like the adopted kids were actually biologically related to the family.

[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

It's not like the adopted children are demanding access to facilities intended for the opposite sex, or pressuring others into sexual relationships they're not comfortable with, or threatening to rape and murder other members of the family who mention that they were adopted.

But adoptees and advocates for them have demanded - rightly, and in most/many jurisdictions successfully - access to the truth about themselves, their births, their biological heritage. Adoptees around the world have fought to end previous practices and laws that used to allow adopted parents, agencies and governments to lie to adoptees about their origins, to alter the adoptees' BCs to reflect the lies, and to withhold from adoptees the names of their bio mothers and info about where they were born.

The end to lying and hiding the biological truth that adoptees and their advocates have fought for, and obtained, over the past couple of generations are precisely the opposite of what today's trans activists and gender extremists are seeking. So by bringing up adoption, they are undermining their own position. All they're achieving by making the comparisons are own goals.

[–]FlippyKing 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

SO:

"Hey you're a male, you're not a woman!"

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you're holding your penis, you perv."

"That has nothing to do with being a woman or not."

"Yes it does."

"What about this other word: mother. If you adopt a child are you the mother?"

"You are changing the subject."

"But you know sometimes words have two meanings."

"but Dude Looks Like a Lady, I can quote song lyrics too. That does not make it OK to change the subject."

[–]Sebell 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

72% of English words have more than one meaning. That's how "TWAW" takes off as a meme - when I first heard it, I thought no one could be stupid enough to think transwomen were actually, literally, women, it just meant that in certain contexts, we treat them as women. No one would think it's literally true right?

AhAhAHHhahaha

Anyways - Historically, adoptions historically were hidden. Children would be adopted, their birth certificate amended with a lie that their birth parents were someone else, and the child never told about it.

Today - we think that is horrifically and horribly wrong. We expect older children, teenagers, and adults, to be able to tell the difference between a birth mother and a adoptive mother. People avoid calling attention to the fact that they are adopted.

Changing someone's sex on their documentation had the same purpose: to hide the truth so people wouldn't know someone had a sex change. It does serve the same function - avoiding unwanted attention.

In both cases though - we know that an adoptive mom isn't a biological mom, just like we should know a transwoman isn't a real woman.

[–]levoyageur718293 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A "mother" is someone who mothers, or who has mothered and wants to still be identified by it. If you've never been responsible for a child (be that through the performance of care or through nurturing it with your body), then you have quite simply never mothered and thus are not a mother.

To translate it to "woman" suggests that a woman is someone who womans or who performs the act of woman-ing, which can only mean stereotypes.

[–]kwallio 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Its one of those idiot thought experiments that is meant to induce confusion and make people believe weird things. Its actually a cult recruitment tactic. The thing is everyone knows what the word 'mother' means. Its both a biological reality and a social role, and an adoptive mom is a real mom but just not a biological mom. It has zero relavance to trans anything.