TERFs crash London Pride

[caveman1917]

For bonus virtue points: Come up with an alternative definition of "white person" such that he is a white person. Remember, nobody cares if your definition is circular or otherwise obviously flawed, this is for virtue points after all.

 

[caveman1917]

That isn't clear to me at all. Not even a little bit.

Either you claim that a person can be of multiple sexes or you're claiming that it's possible for a person to occupy someone else's social space.

 

[luchog]

I honestly don't see the point of these vocabulary wars. The same debate happens over what the "real" "true" definition of the word racism is, and it seems to counterproductive for all involved there, too.

It's a very popular game with bigots and radicals, the "redefinition fallacy", redefining terms to change the nature of the debate. Redefining "racism" as "prejudice plus power" enables the individual to deny their own racism and invalidate the arguments of opponents who would otherwise be able to prove said racism using the racist's own words and actions. As long as the "power" aspect is missing, they cannot truly be racist, therefore their opponents are not only wrong, but bad people for accusing them of something that they cannot possibly be.

It's an unfortunately far too effective a technique in real-world debates.

 

[kellyb]

Either you claim that a person can be of multiple sexes or you're claiming that it's possible for a person to occupy someone else's social space.

One's chromosomes and genitals are not their "social space".

I'm genuinely lost about what you're trying to argue.

 

[kellyb]

It's a very popular game with bigots and radicals, the "redefinition fallacy", redefining terms to change the nature of the debate. Redefining "racism" as "prejudice plus power" enables the individual to deny their own racism and invalidate the arguments of opponents who would otherwise be able to prove said racism using the racist's own words and actions. As long as the "power" aspect is missing, they cannot truly be racist, therefore their opponents are not only wrong, but bad people for accusing them of something that they cannot possibly be.

It's an unfortunately far too effective a technique in real-world debates.

I'm not sure it's ever actually effective overall. It might work to rile up the already "converted" and fanatical side, but to everyone else it's pretty obviously a "bad faith" form of argumentation, I suspect, even if people might have difficulty explaining why.

 

[caveman1917]

One's chromosomes and genitals are not their "social space".

I'm genuinely lost about what you're trying to argue.

You're the one who said that the social space is, specifically, that of a female. If person X occupies social space Y, and X is not female then Y is obviously not the social space of a female. And if you're going to argue that anyone of any sex can occupy the social space of a female, then what does "social space of a female" mean if not "social space occupied by someone who is female"? You've changed the second term woman in "a woman is anyone who says they're a woman" with "social space occupied by a female" but that doesn't stop it from being circular, you've just added one redirection.

 

[kellyb]

You're the one who said that the social space is, specifically, that of a female. If person X occupies social space Y, and X is not female then Y is obviously not the social space of a female. And if you're going to argue that anyone of any sex can occupy the social space of a female, then what does "social space of a female" mean if not "social space occupied by someone who is female"? You've changed the second term woman in "a woman is anyone who says they're a woman" with "social space occupied by a female" but that doesn't stop it from being circular, you've just added one redirection.

"Social space usually occupied by females", then.

 

[pharphis]

What does this mean, in relation to one's sex?



Your second, "could" definition is vacuous. Status and social space (i.e. which gender stereotype you act out and in) are social constructs (roles) and, as you state, have nothing to do with whether you are male or female, except by mutable social definition. The gender-defined characteristics we perform don't affect what sex we are. However good a man is at mimicking the traditional mannerisms and behaviors of women's political subordination, he still won't be a woman.
Being born intersex is irrelevant to the claim that a biological man (born male) can supposedly turn into a biological woman (female).

What does that mean?

 

[luchog]

I'm not sure it's ever actually effective overall. It might work to rile up the already "converted" and fanatical side, but to everyone else it's pretty obviously a "bad faith" form of argumentation, I suspect, even if people might have difficulty explaining why.

You're only seeing this from the perspective of a person educated in critical thinking. The masses generally are not, and I've seen this technique work far too often in the wider population. Politicians are fond of it, especially hard-right politicians, and the current GOP administration has been using it, among many other logical fallacies, very effectively.

 

[kellyb]

You're only seeing this from the perspective of a person educated in critical thinking. The masses generally are not, and I've seen this technique work far too often in the wider population. Politicians are fond of it, especially hard-right politicians, and the current GOP administration has been using it, among many other logical fallacies, very effectively.

Maybe, but I really do think anyone not decided on an issue is not going to be persuaded by word games. I remember being a pretty young Christian kid, and having "word game theology" shoved down my throat, like "The Bible says God is just. It doesn't say he's fair, but he is just" and it always struck me as some sort of obnoxious, poor thinking.

I think most people can distinguish solid arguments from flimsy linguistic trickery when the arguments are contrasted side by side.

 

[luchog]

Maybe, but I really do think anyone not decided on an issue is not going to be persuaded by word games.

Experience says differently.

I remember being a pretty young Christian kid, and having "word game theology" shoved down my throat, like "The Bible says God is just. It doesn't say he's fair, but he is just" and it always struck me as some sort of obnoxious, poor thinking.

Yet it is convincing to millions of Christians, adults and children.

I think most people can distinguish solid arguments from flimsy linguistic trickery when the arguments are contrasted side by side.

Again, our current culture says otherwise. Just listen to Trump's speeches, and to interviews with the numerous Independent voters who voted for him while asserting that he was not in any way racist, and anyone who said he was was "misinterpreting" him. Redefining language is very effective, especially if your audience is not fully aware that is what is happening.

And in real life, you're rarely going to end up with the arguments "contrasted side by side" that conveniently. Mostly what is going to happen is that you're going to be bombarded loudly and stridently by the extremists, while the more reasonable side is going to be playing a lot of catch-up trying to counteract the rhetoric with rational debunking. In American culture, at least, emotionally-charged rhetoric will win out of rational debate ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

 

[kellyb]

Experience says differently.




Yet it is convincing to millions of Christians, adults and children.




Again, our current culture says otherwise. Just listen to Trump's speeches, and to interviews with the numerous Independent voters who voted for him while asserting that he was not in any way racist, and anyone who said he was was "misinterpreting" him. Redefining language is very effective, especially if your audience is not fully aware that is what is happening.

And in real life, you're rarely going to end up with the arguments "contrasted side by side" that conveniently. Mostly what is going to happen is that you're going to be bombarded loudly and stridently by the extremists, while the more reasonable side is going to be playing a lot of catch-up trying to counteract the rhetoric with rational debunking. In American culture, at least, emotionally-charged rhetoric will win out of rational debate ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

I'm still thinking it generally only works to to rile up the already "converted". I don't think anyone genuinely wondering about God's supposed omnibenevolence is going to go "Oh, yeah, sure!" in response to arguments like the justice/fairness apologetics, and the "he's not really a racist" Trump-voting independents had good reason to believe Trump was misrepresenting his true beliefs and pandering to his knuckledragging "base". Hatred of Clinton which predated Trump's candidacy was their core motivation, not having been persuaded by his arguments about undocumented immigrants being criminals.

 

[JihadJane]

That is of course a strawman, as no one in this thread is making that claim nor arguing that.

Why did you add the word "biological" in the above sentence?

To support the argument that a man cannot become a woman. Adult human female and adult human male are biological terms.

Women's legal protections are based on women's biological sex.

 

[JihadJane]

the traditional mannerisms and behaviors of women's political subordination

What does that mean?

Things that signal their inferior social status, such as taking up less physical space (e.g. legs together, arms close to body), being primarily valued a sex object for other people to look at, hence hours spent (sometime painfully) manipulating one's physical appearance and adorning oneself, wearing tight and/or debilitating clothes (e.g high heels), pouting, acting like a child, submissive posture, selling one's body for other's sexual pleasure etc etc etc. ad infinitum

e.g. Are the men pictured below projecting an image of high social status?

 

[Darat]

To support the argument that a man cannot become a woman. Adult human female and adult human male are biological terms.

Women's legal protections are based on women's biological sex.

Woman in terms of legislation is as defined by that legislation or by legal precedent, there is no sacred definition of woman so it can be changed by society at any time. And of course such things do change, for example being a married woman these days doesn't mean the woman loses most of her rights etc. (See coverture - that was the traditional definition in law of a married woman in the likes of England, thank goodness married woman no longer means that.)

 

[kellyb]

To support the argument that a man cannot become a woman.

You're again just dogmatically asserting what you wish to be the only true and real definitions of the words "man" and "woman", when you're well aware of the fact that other people use those words in ways that have a meaning outside of biological sex.

Women's legal protections are based on women's biological sex.

Are you sure? In which countries according to which laws and statutes?

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17521483.2017.1320037?src=recsys&journalCode=rlah20

...legal sex has no explicit foundation in case law or statute, and that it was effectively brought into being by the decision in Corbett v Corbett (otherwise Ashley) [1971] P 83. In Corbett the judge could simply have ruled that the birth certificate was determinative unless refuted by medical testimony (ie a clear mistake on its face) – instead he embarked on ontological investigation of sexual identity. That decision, paradoxically, denied that there was a category of legal sex ‘at large’, and argued that it was primarily the law of marriage that reflected sex. In other legal domains, gender identity or psychological sex could be recognized.

Laws (and words as defined within them) are quite often not reflective of reality at all, much less subservient to the language of the biological sciences. Under DOMA, "marriage" between gay people could not exist, because it was defined as "between a man and a woman" strictly.

What specific legal protections do you feel like are under threat by transwomen being included as women in common usage of the word, or as an additional dictionary definition?

If it's prison housing, I have no problem agreeing that the laws should be rewritten to make female women inmates a separate category of inmates from transwomen inmates.

If it's bathrooms, you're on your own there. I've been noticing drag queens and transwomen in women's public bathrooms most of my life (probably by virtue of the city I live in) and it's never been an issue. I think ya'll are just being silly freaking out about that.

 

[3point14]

If it's bathrooms, you're on your own there. I've been noticing drag queens and transwomen in women's public bathrooms most of my life (probably by virtue of the city I live in) and it's never been an issue. I think ya'll are just being silly freaking out about that.

There's definitely a fear of there being a penis in the ladies room.

From what I read I think it seems to stem from fear of sexual assault.

My issue with it is that rather than deal with perpetrators, some parties want to exclude a whole class of people from ladies rest room simply because they're equipped for a more specific type of sexual assault.

 

[kellyb]

There's definitely a fear of there being a penis in the ladies room.

From what I read I think it seems to stem from fear of sexual assault.

My issue with it is that rather than deal with perpetrators, some parties want to exclude a whole class of people from ladies rest room simply because they're equipped for a more specific type of sexual assault.

My problem with the scenario of a bathroom rapist posing as a transwoman to get access to the bathroom is what I think of as "the paradox of the crossdressing bathroom rapist", and it goes like this: if it's a bathroom "deserted" enough to be a good place to sexually assault someone and be low risk for getting caught, nobody's going to be around to see if the person entering it was a man or a woman.

When I'm worried about getting sexually assaulted in a bathroom because it's a realistic situation for that to happen in, for example, using the facilities at a national forest when there aren't a lot of campers there, the theoretical rapist I envision is NOT dressed as a woman. Why would they be?

Of course, when you're recording incidents that happen over years with millions or billions of people, there are going to be freakishly rare things that happen, but we can't base policy/law on "one in 10 million" incidences.

 

[Lithrael]

e.g. Are the men pictured below projecting an image of high social status?

The one in red is. She looks like any number of badass ladies I've known.

OK I think one of the things that is bugging me about all this is the old gendered double standard that, since at least the 1970's, it's more or less OK for anyone to act more like a stereotypical man because 'men's' mannerisms etc are 'really the default and better' ones.

If you're a man acting more like a man's man makes you heroic and awesome. If you're a woman acting like a man's man just means ladies telling you you aren't going to attract a man like that, and fundies telling you you're screwing up the social order, quit it.

But anyone that wants to act more like a stereotypical woman is degrading themselves, because 'women's' mannerisms are stupid. If you're a woman acting like a woman's woman, well for starters the connotation isn't that you're kicking ass at being a mom or something positive like that, but rather that you're doing that stuff JJ just said, all the negative and being-a-pain-in-the-ass stereotypes. And if you're a man acting like a woman, whoa Nelly, everyone is instantly UP IN YOUR ****. WHAT ARE YOU DOING.

I could make a detailed and pointed argument here but instead I'm going to say I want this whole concept to just **** off. I think men wanting to do cool woman stuff that they enjoy is ******* great. Just like women wanting to do cool woman stuff that they enjoy if great. And if we could get ******* comfortable with that, trans folks could get the curb-cut effect out of the whole deal.

That and, photos like that just remind me of lineups of older ladies meetups where one or two are lookin really smokin and the rest are a little bit frumpy or just comfortably not trying to look amazing. It BUGS ME to see photos like that of 'hi we're all together and friends!' of ANYBODY, posted up for judgement. I know this one is for a finishing school for trans women etc. I don't care. And if these folks are too pretty or too frumpy or too feminine-performative or their hair/wigs look funny then all that applies to the women in all those old-friends-reunion photos. Knock it off, they're PEOPLE.

 

[pharphis]

Things that signal their inferior social status, such as taking up less physical space (e.g. legs together, arms close to body), being primarily valued a sex object for other people to look at, hence hours spent (sometime painfully) manipulating one's physical appearance and adorning oneself, wearing tight and/or debilitating clothes (e.g high heels), pouting, acting like a child, submissive posture, selling one's body for other's sexual pleasure etc etc etc. ad infinitum

e.g. Are the men pictured below projecting an image of high social status?

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/263895b754b6ada77d.jpg[/qimg]

I don't see how any of those things "signal their inferior social status". Seems totally made up.
You think women put on makeup or wear dresses or heels to "signal their inferior social status" ?

edit: any time a woman has spoken about why they do these things to me it has been some combination of the below reasons:
1) To look/feel good for themselves
2) To look good for others
3) To look good around other women who they perceive as more judgmental

Basically I think you have the reasoning all mixed up in your head as to why people actually do these things and what they're signalling with oppression olympics ideology.