Trans Women are not Women

[Mycroft]

Is it really just an opinion though? Do you believe that sex is a fact of biology, or something that someone can choose?

There are people who, from a very early age, identify with a gender that doesn't match the sex they were born with. This is more than just girls who are tomboys or boys who are a bit girlish, these people actually identify as the other gender. That's not my opinion, that's objective fact.

My opinion is that these people, and everyone, should be allowed to pursue their own happiness in whatever way they see fit so long as it doesn't harm anyone else. They should not be discriminated against, judged as perverts or particularly dangerous without proper evidence, and should certainly not be denied the things the rest of us take for granted, such as a safe place to go to the bathroom when they are in public.

As for "medical professionals," they are subject to the same social pressures as the rest of us (perhaps more so in many cases, since they could lose their employment if they say the wrong thing.)

And yet there is a whole field of medicine that is growing up around this issue. I think the idea that a large number of medical professionals are being silent so they don’t lose their employment is a conspiracy theory that needs a lot more evidence than what I’ve seen to be taken seriously.

 

[caveman1917]

There are people who, from a very early age, identify with a gender that doesn't match the sex they were born with. This is more than just girls who are tomboys or boys who are a bit girlish, these people actually identify as the other gender. That's not my opinion, that's objective fact.

So what? Some people identify as cats, that's also objective fact.

My opinion is that these people, and everyone, should be allowed to pursue their own happiness in whatever way they see fit so long as it doesn't harm anyone else. They should not be discriminated against, judged as perverts or particularly dangerous without proper evidence, and should certainly not be denied the things the rest of us take for granted, such as a safe place to go to the bathroom when they are in public.

Do you actually have an example of people not having a bathroom to go to in public, or is this all hypothetical? For example when have trans-women been denied access to the men's bathroom?

 

[Ziggurat]

Do you actually have an example of people not having a bathroom to go to in public, or is this all hypothetical? For example when have trans-women been denied access to the men's bathroom?

The claim is that transwomen who go to the men's restroom risk being assaulted for doing so. I don't have evidence to confirm or deny this risk.

 

[caveman1917]

The claim is that transwomen who go to the men's restroom risk being assaulted for doing so. I don't have evidence to confirm or deny this risk.

Yes I think I've addressed this earlier in the thread. When transwomen base their argument on this claim it is accepted as valid reason, but when women base their argument for sex-separated facilities on the exact same claim they get called bigots for it and "demonizing men" and what-have-you-not. Funny how that all works.

 

[Mycroft]

Complex is certainly not the same as circular. Complex definitions are hard to understand, but they are meaningful. Circular definitions are not meaningful.


Man - n. A person who identifies as a man.


That has no meaning, because it is circular.

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue against here. I'm not taking the position that any cis-man should be able to just self-identify as a woman to compete in women's sports or to use the women's bathroom, I think that's a silly straw-man that doesn't have very much to do with the real world.

I do think that trans-women should be considered a sub set of women, and trans-men should be considered a sub set of men. So when the issue is who should be considered trans, I can't think of a better indicator than what is going on in their minds, but I also assume that what is going on in their minds will also be reflected in what they do and how they behave.

So if you can think of a better or more practical definition, I'd like to hear it.

Not just miscommunication, but a very specific sort of miscommunication, which would not have occurred if the word "female" had been on the chart instead of the "correct" designation of "male"......in the maternity ward.

The correct designation in that circumstance would have been trans-male, which I’ve seen as an option on medical forms. Again, that person identified himself as trans when he went to the hospital, he did what he was supposed to do, he gave them the information they needed to know. He did not hide his trans-gendered status.

And it's for reasons like the above that I say any 12 year old can understand it, but if you went to college it might be more difficult. A 12 year old will say that men can't have babies. A college educated person will explain that this is based on a shallow understanding of the human condition, and explain why the inherited baggage of thousands of years of indoctrination must be shed for us to see the true, much more complex, picture.

In "The Emperor's New Clothes", the small child states the obvious and everyone admits that they were just playing along so that they would not be thought fools. Alas, it's just a children's story. No one ever studies that story in college.

Anti-intellectual clap-trap.

I saw this other meme on the internet that described this guy who went to trade-school instead of college, and another guy who went to college and studied philosophy, and the guy who went to trade school and became an electrician ended up shutting off the power for the unemployed philosophy graduate.

What’s it all mean? You can’t trust those college edumacated folks. They tell you all kinds of crap like we evolved from apes, abortion is normal, vaccines don’t give you autism, the Earth is a ball, mankind is causing climate change, gay marriage is just as valid as real marriage, and even people who don’t accept Jesus as their personal savior can be okay people. You know, stupid stuff.

 

[Puppycow]

And yet there is a whole field of medicine that is growing up around this issue. I think the idea that a large number of medical professionals are being silent so they don’t lose their employment is a conspiracy theory that needs a lot more evidence than what I’ve seen to be taken seriously.

OK, but there's also a "whole field of medicine" called naturopathy, as well as one called homeopathy and another called chiropractic. It's not a conspiracy theory and occasionally some of them do in fact speak out. I also don't mean to suggest that they all secretly think that it is BS, although some might in private. We know (as skeptics) that human beings have a great capacity for mass delusions. Just look at how successful organized religion has been. Mass delusions are not conspiracies and no conspiracy theory is necessary to explain all of them.

 

[Puppycow]

Listened to another podcast which took on these issue from a philosophical perspective this afternoon, thought you might take an interest:

https://philosophybites.com/2019/05/kathleen-stock-on-what-is-a-woman-.html

Decent podcast, btw. I listened on my way to work this morning.

Here is an essay by the same woman:

Ignoring Differences Between Men and Women Is the Wrong Way to Address Gender Dysphoria

 

[Rolfe]

So on a fundamental level, you just don't believe that trans-men are men. Presumably trans-women are not women either?

Hooray, you're beginning to get it. Hold that thought!

 

[Rolfe]

Sorry, what's that?

Jonathan/Jessica Yaviv. I linked to a bunch of articles about him a few pages back. A guy with a menstruation fetish who gets into conversations online about what to do if he's in the ladies' "changing his pads" because he has "a very heavy flow the first day" (he has male genitalia and even if he'd had surgery, men don't menstruate) and a ten-year-old girl on her first period asks him for a tampon and help to insert it.

He's currently suing about 15 women who offer bikini-line waxing services to women only and who refused to wax his lady balls on the fairly reasonable grounds that they only do women. This is discrimination, he says. There are businesses which offer this service to men, but he isn't interested in using one of these.

He's referred to as JY because of his habit of searching on his own name and then attacking people who have criticised his behaviour for transphobia. He had Meghan Murphy permabanned from twitter for a tweet that read "that's him!" in relation to him. Misgendering, you know. Even while his masculine Jonathan identity is all over the internet. He has boasted that he knows people high up in twitter and can get people banned.

I heard a radio clip of him trying to pass off the sickening stuff about ten-year-old girls and tampons as a joke. (It was actually posted to a teenage girl who became disturbed by the conversation and reported it.) He sounded very much as if he was sexually aroused and masturbating while he was talking about this on an audio stream.

 

[cullennz]

Jonathan/Jessica Yaviv. I linked to a bunch of articles about him a few pages back. A guy with a menstruation fetish who gets into conversations online about what to do if he's in the ladies' "changing his pads" because he has "a very heavy flow the first day" (he has male genitalia and even if he'd had surgery, men don't menstruate) and a ten-year-old girl on her first period asks him for a tampon and help to insert it.

He's currently suing about 15 women who offer bikini-line waxing services to women only and who refused to wax his lady balls on the fairly reasonable grounds that they only do women. This is discrimination, he says. There are businesses which offer this service to men, but he isn't interested in using one of these.

He's referred to as JY because of his habit of searching on his own name and then attacking people who have criticised his behaviour for transphobia. He had Meghan Murphy permabanned from twitter for a tweet that read "that's him!" in relation to him. Misgendering, you know. Even while his masculine Jonathan identity is all over the internet. He has boasted that he knows people high up in twitter and can get people banned.

I heard a radio clip of him trying to pass off the sickening stuff about ten-year-old girls and tampons as a joke. (It was actually posted to a teenage girl who became disturbed by the conversation and reported it.) He sounded very much as if he was sexually aroused and masturbating while he was talking about this on an audio stream.

Just did a bit of Googling on this Yaviv dude

Total fricken nutter.

 

[Belz...]

He was stating straight facts.

Shapiro? Facts? Stop, please.

You really should pay more attention.

Congratulations. That answer has nothing to do with the post you were replying to, which suggests you're responding out of frustration rather than reason.

Canada is even worse. Right now we're trying to avoid becoming Canada.

Ok now I have to call you on it: what in the blue hell are you talking about?

 

[Puppycow]

Thanks for the clarification, Rolfe.

 

[Belz...]

You all are saying that being labeled something that you don't identify as is causing painful dysphoria.

Maybe people should care about that.

Oh, you just made a major mistake: it's not about identification; it's about objective facts. It's an objective fact that I'm not a left-winger or a right-winger. The point being that people on both sides of the issue can't even consider any sort of disagreement on it, so much so that anyone who disagrees must be on the other side, entirely. It's a failure to think rationally.

As for "pain", you made that up, once again, because you're clearly not looking for a reasoned discussion. You're looking for a "gotcha" that'll earn you virtue points. "Oh, look! He's on our side!"

 

[Puppycow]

Just a general suggestion for this discussion (or any discussion):

I think it will be more productive if we all try to use the principle of charity and not assume the worst motives or the worst interpretation of other's posts, where possible.

https://theness.com/neurologicablog...error-straw-men-and-the-principle-of-charity/

I have gone back and forth on the issue myself. I don't want to be a bigot or unkind to anyone, but the skeptic in me wonders what is the underlying truth.

 

[Belz...]

Oh, being outed could get you fired, have adverse social effects, and in some cases result in violence against you?

Hey, pay attention: just like your self-idenfitication can be wrong, so can your labeling of other people. And it's not "outing" someone when you're lying or are mistaken about that person. This reflexive tendency to label people bigots at the first sign of disagreement is counter-productive and malicous. Remember when right-wingers accuse liberals or wanting to take all guns away or murder babies or turn the US into a marxist state? That's exactly what you're doing.

You only have your own experience of being born the gender you are

Everybody's born in the gender they are. Changing the definition of "gender" doesn't change reality. Dysphoria doesn't change gender.

That's a great question.

It's also a hard question. If you think about it, there are an awful lot of qualities that we identify as "male" or "female", yet few of them are absolute applying universally to every man or woman.

You're correct, but it's not that hard. We've been doing it very successfully for millennia. The only difference is that some want to add "self-identification" as THE quality that we should use to identify "man" or "woman". I don't see why this change should be made.

 

[Belz...]

There are people who, from a very early age, identify with a gender that doesn't match the sex they were born with. This is more than just girls who are tomboys or boys who are a bit girlish, these people actually identify as the other gender. That's not my opinion, that's objective fact.

It's also a fact that some people identify as Napoleon.

My opinion is that these people, and everyone, should be allowed to pursue their own happiness in whatever way they see fit so long as it doesn't harm anyone else.

I think everybody here agrees with that. But pursuing happiness doesn't imply that everyone has to agree with their self-identification. I don't know why this is so hard to understand.

I have the right to pursue happiness but that doesn't mean that people should agree with me on my own self-views. That doesn't mean that people should be jerks about their disagreements, either, of course, and they don't need to tell me they disagree just to spite me. But they shouldn't be legally obligated to agree, either.

They should not be discriminated against, judged as perverts or particularly dangerous without proper evidence, and should certainly not be denied the things the rest of us take for granted, such as a safe place to go to the bathroom when they are in public.

Again, agreed, but it doesn't follow from this that they can go into whatever restroom they want. It doesn't follow that they shouldn't, either, mind you, but "you're just a big meanie if you disagree" isn't a great argument, one way or another.

Is the solution unisex bathrooms? Or to go into the restroom that matches your biological sex? Or should trans people carry ID that proves they have gender dysphoria? Or should anyone be able to go in any restroom at will? I'm not sure. I'm really not. But the idea that it's self-evident is just not correct.

And yet there is a whole field of medicine that is growing up around this issue.

So far I haven't seen science claim that gender = self-identification yet, despite the claims of several posters on this forum to that effect.

 

[cullennz]

Shapiro? Facts? Stop, please.

OK then

Shapiro:

"It turns out every cell in his body are male"

"Apart from some of his sperm cells"

"It turns out he still has all his male appendages"

"What he feels like inside is irrelevant to his biological sex"

Jenner:

"You cut that out now or you will go home in an ambulance"

I invite forum members to point out which bits Shapiro says are not facts and who looks slightly less ...... reasonable

 

[Belz...]

Yes I think I've addressed this earlier in the thread. When transwomen base their argument on this claim it is accepted as valid reason, but when women base their argument for sex-separated facilities on the exact same claim they get called bigots for it and "demonizing men" and what-have-you-not. Funny how that all works.

Indeed.

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue against here. I'm not taking the position that any cis-man should be able to just self-identify as a woman to compete in women's sports or to use the women's bathroom, I think that's a silly straw-man that doesn't have very much to do with the real world.

I do think that trans-women should be considered a sub set of women, and trans-men should be considered a sub set of men. So when the issue is who should be considered trans, I can't think of a better indicator than what is going on in their minds, but I also assume that what is going on in their minds will also be reflected in what they do and how they behave.

What's the difference? In both cases the only relevant criterion is self-identification.

 

[Belz...]

OK then

Shapiro:

"It turns out every cell in his body are male"

Cells don't have a sex.

Anyway, sure, Shapiro probably can state facts from time to time. Doesn't change the fact that he's fundamentally a lying weasel. He even looks like a weasel, and he doesn't react well to facts he doesn't like.

 

[cullennz]

Cells don't have a sex.

Anyway, sure, Shapiro probably can state facts from time to time. Doesn't change the fact that he's fundamentally a lying weasel. He even looks like a weasel, and he doesn't react well to facts he doesn't like.

Don't get me wrong

I am no Shapiro fan boy

His views on religion and abortion I find particularly tedious, but was just pointing out his points in that particular video are pretty much straight up