ESSAY: The Overton Window and Male Women

The Overton Window is a concept from policy analyst Dr. Joseph Overton. You begin with the spectrum of all possible policy ideas. The Overton Window is the band of policy ideas that are either current policy or are considered acceptable deviations from current policy in a given political direction, typically constructed as right or left. The Overton Window shifts over time. What is considered unthinkable today may be policy in 5 years.

Let’s consider the concept of a male woman. Set aside for a moment the question of whether someone with CAIS is the one true exception to the general rule that there are no male women. You and I, reader, agree that, for the most part, there are no male women, with at most extremely rare exceptions. Right now, that makes both of us radical to unthinkable. Then I went a step beyond and a bridge too far, according to many. That is a risk you take when you think without constraint. It is a risk women ought always to be allowed to take in honest pursuit of truth.

Nevertheless, I resisted. Freethought was my point. I either began or ran atheist clubs in high school, college, and graduate school, because the right of an individual to freely exercise his or her reason unconstrained by censorship or social intimidation is very important to me. The safety of atheists to gather openly is the canary in the coalmine of secularism. I also believe that the churchless need a social support network, too, and that this sort of open inquiry and debate is inherently beneficial to personal growth and learning - no matter where you end up.* I will hold the line in the face of petty martinets, and root my position in my own sincere reason and the best available evidence.

The current policy is that any male who would like to be a woman, can become a woman via self-declaration, and that this should have the force of law and be medically enabled, for free. Further, due to propaganda and terror tactics, the Overton Window is currently narrowed to the point where “any male is a woman if he says he is” is essentially the only acceptable position and is also policy, in violation of the legal rights of girls and women. There is no longer a range of possible ideas that one is permitted to take on this subject. We are constrained. The Overton Window is too small for anyone to breathe.

We agree, then, those of us in this pro-reality movement, that males who were born with penises are not and cannot become women. You may find my stance unthinkable, but in taking it, I have done what I can to widen the Overton Window of acceptable political discourse. And I dug my heels in, for the same reason I argued with half of teenage Turks on Tiktok last year about whether Turkey had a history of imperialism that manifested as widespread regional language influence. Spoiler alert! A group of 35 languages is called the “Turkic language family” non-coincidentally. It’s called the Ottoman EMPIRE for a reason. Yet because of Article 301, since 2005, Turks have not lived with freedom of speech. It is a crime to insult Turkey/Turkishness/Turkish government and there are journalists who have gone to prison over it. These kiddos perceived that I was saying that Turkey was bad for being imperialist (no) and this was a very new experience for them, clearly.

It is 2022, meaning that children were born after Article 301 became law who are now graduating from high school. They have never lived in a country where you could just openly insult the government and continue not being in jail. By criticizing this law publicly, I know that likely I should not return to Turkey until it is repealed, even though I lived there in college, studied the language for many years, and love Turkish culture dearly. But it is important to hold the line, sometimes, and Turks deserve free speech and free thought, too. I chose Turkey because of their long history of secularism despite being a highly religious country (98% Muslim at the time according to the government, though I apparently met every Turkish deist at METU). A culture needs to simmer to eliminate the pathogens and stifling free speech turns off the fire underneath the melting pot. It is a radical attack on all of us, in other words, what has been going on. This is what we must do, however. We must speak the truth and we must root our language in nested definitions that are connected to reality. Women are adult female humans and there are no male women. Women are not anyone who looks like a woman. Women are women. It is the only way to stay sane.

I want to name the movement for rights for very feminine males to be femininism. I support the aims of femininism except where it conflicts with the aims of feminism, such as the legal and unquestionable right to female-only spaces for females. I would support a policy mandating some form of phenotype segregation for males from other males who appear female, perhaps on a CAIS-by-CAIS basis. The issue comes when their accommodation means I have to have a male roommate while incarcerated, and I am not even allowed to know. That means I do not have an unequivocal right to a female roommate. To that, I say no. At that point, you have compromised my legal rights as a female, as a disability accommodation for a male, and that is simply unacceptable.

*except Methodism