Trans Women are not Women

[JoeMorgue]

Yes. So?

Errr.... segregated sports leagues are bad.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Errr.... segregated sports leagues are bad.

Why?

 

[Francesca R]

This whole debate about whether trans women are actually women is never going to end.

Maybe not. But that doesn't matter to (for example) Caster Semenya; she simply wants a ruling that she can compete in the W800m without having to dope herself. I don't think she even refers to herself as transwoman; and the media simply say she has DSD. If someone creates a new international 800m race where "Ms Semenya can compete as is", it will solve everything on the list of issues below:

1:

Er, that's it #PrivateEye

Here's a much simpler approach where we can all skip these debates: Everyone has a right to create their own game/event/club and define the rules of admission

Backatcha with the good luck with that, sounds about as promising as creating a new social media platform that will usurp facebook-instagram any time soon.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Why?

I don't know Bob.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

I don't know Bob.

If you seriously can't justify your position, don't expect me to take it seriously. Anyone can say something is "bad". But if you can't explain why, then you don't even have an argument.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Backatcha with the good luck with that, sounds about as promising as creating a new social media platform that will usurp facebook-instagram any time soon.

You may say it as a joke, but who knows... with the impact that social media currently has in our culture and our institutions, maybe that's exactly how it will be started.

 

[JoeMorgue]

If you seriously can't justify your position, don't expect me to take it seriously. Anyone can say something is "bad". But if you can't explain why, then you don't even have an argument.

Well "Racially segregated sports are just hunky-dory" certainly isn't a branch I expected this discussion to take.

 

[ponderingturtle]

1) It is not necessary to view trans women as (more) likely sexual predators in order to wish to prevent anybody self-IDing as female from using female segregated facilities. (Unless "anybody self-IDing as female" is the same as trans woman, then it is, and appropriately so)

2) Allowing anybody self-IDing as female to use female segregated spaces does not protect trans women from sexual predation anyway. Just like it doesn't protect women.

The problem with differentiating between self identifying and trans is the no true scottsman fallacy and gatekeeping. What metric are you using to determine if someone is trans other than self identifying? Are you going by "passing"? How far along in the transition does someone need to be? How much effort does someone need to put into appearing traditionally female to use those facilities?

Cis women are allowed to be far less feminine than trans women and not worry about being harassed and miss gendered for example.

So there is the mocking people do of the idea of transgender people by saying oh well I am trans now to get in there and so on. For some reason the goal of sexually harassing people with such statements are rarely held against those making it.

How much money and time does it take for a trans woman to earn the right of using those facilities?

 

[ponderingturtle]

They don't have to be sexual predators for the vast majority of the users of these facilities to feel (at the very least) unease at their presence. It's a point that's been made a hundred times in this thread.

And making people uncomfortable works to justify any form of discrimination you choose. Whites really were/are uncomfortable with sharing pools with blacks for example. Yet we refuse to cater to their discomfort, though we often do still cater to those made uncomfortable by homosexuality.

When should someone lose their rights to make someone else comfortable?

Am I selective in what discomforts I think it is acceptable to cater to? Sure,

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Well "Racially segregated sports are just hunky-dory" certainly isn't a branch I expected this discussion to take.

Right.... but aside from the fact that you didn't expect the discussion to go there, why is it bad to have an event where only people of a certain color can participate?

Is it because "It promotes racism"? Because by that logic, women sports promote sexism.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Right.... but aside from the fact that you didn't expect the discussion to go there, why is it bad to have an event where only people of a certain color can participate?

Is it because "It promotes racism"? Because by that logic, women sports promote sexism.

Splitting up events is fine when there are actual differences. It becomes a problem when there aren't. This isn't rocket surgery.

Again... that's been this whole discussion.

You just dump women into male competition using the traditional labels and men are gonna dominate to the point that women are forced out. That isn't good enough.

You split the women and men's competition and women's competition becomes a second rate sport compared to the men's in most cases. That isn't good enough.

You split the women and men's competition and let people identify as which gender they are... and biological men are gonna dominate and we're right back where we started.

We've being handed 3 standards and being told we have to, under threat of the "bigot" label, make all 3 of them work when... they don't.

I'm not sure what the equivalent to any of that would be for race.

 

[ponderingturtle]

It still applies. it's still a made up game. The only thing you're saying is that there are several groups of people who are weighing in on the rules. But it's still a game, made up by humans. I don't know who, amongst all those groups of people will end up having the final say about the issue, but the bottom line is No creator of a game is in the obligation to change their rules because a group of people want them changed.

And when these rules are things like No Blacks? We now know that simply having unusual hormone levels disqualifies one to play sports if they are a woman for example.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Maybe not. But that doesn't matter to (for example) Caster Semenya; she simply wants a ruling that she can compete in the W800m without having to dope herself. I don't think she even refers to herself as transwoman; and the media simply say she has DSD. If someone creates a new international 800m race where "Ms Semenya can compete as is", it will solve everything on the list of issues below:

She is not trans, as she was assigned female at birth, and any inter sex conditions are irrelevant because the ruling was not based on them it was based solely on the level of an individual hormone being in unusual levels.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Splitting up events is fine when there are actual differences. It becomes a problem when there aren't. This isn't rocket surgery.

Again... that's been this whole discussion.

You just dump women into male competition using the traditional labels and men are gonna dominate to the point that women are forced out. That isn't good enough.

Agreed. That's a problem.

You split the women and men's competition and women's competition becomes a second rate sport compared to the men's in most cases. That isn't good enough.

Wait... what? Wait, what are you talking about? Why would women's competition become a second rate sport under this scenario? By that logic, karate for children is a second rate sport compared to karate for adults, because adults are stronger and usually better fighters than children. The way I see it, women's sports are in no way diminished by the existence of male sports.

You split the women and men's competition and let people identify as which gender they are... and biological men are gonna dominate and we're right back where we started.

Correct.

We've being handed 3 standards and being told we have to, under threat of the "bigot" label, make all 3 of them work when... they don't.

Exactly. We're being told under the label of "bigot" to come up with a solution when, first of all, labeling one a bigot is not true and doesn't help the problem.

I'm not sure what the equivalent to any of that would be for race.

Ok, so here's a real life example: I used to take Comedy Improv Lessons at the Upright's Citizen Brigade. There was one of the teachers and improvisers there who was black. He decided to create a class only for black people. He did this because he felt there wasn't enough black people in comedy, so he opened this class where no white people were allowed to sort of incentivize having more black performers.

Is this racist? Some people will say it is: You're literally excluding people based on their race. Me, personally, if you ask me if this is racist, I don't know and I don't care. Here's what I know: he has every right to create a class only for black people regardless of what motivated him to do so. His motivations are going to be, at the end of the day, irrelevant because there will be people who will see this as racist and people who will not.

But that's my whole point, though: As a creator of an event, it is your right to create the rules of admission without having to justify why you made those rules. Since every human being on the planet has a right to create their own event and set their own rules of admission, this is a perfectly democratic problem.

One thing I can assure you: You will not solve the problems of racism and xenophobia by forcing people to include people from certain groups that they don't allow in their event, and by labeling them "bigots" for not agreeing to do so.

 

[Puppycow]

A couple of pages back I posted a long screed about the transing of children and young people, which generated pretty much no comment.

I read that post, just fyi. I just was a bit busy at the time and didn't really have time to compose the sort of well-thought out response it deserves. Also I'm still kind of mulling it over. I guess that different people can look at the same thing and see it in vastly different ways, and I try to look at an issue from various viewpoints before coming to a firm conclusion about it.

When I first read about so-called "puberty blockers" they were presented as something that's safe and well-tested, and that all you had to do was to stop taking them and then puberty would progress again naturally. Now I'm not so sure about that, and also questioning whether children that young truly know what they will want for the rest of their lives. If it renders them infertile or, for males, leaves them with a child-sized penis or impotence as an adult, that's something they might come to regret later. OTOH, it's said by the other side that the regret is more often not getting this treatment before they develop the sex characteristics they don't want.

There's also the question about how will they feel about it when they are 30 or 40 or 50 or 60. I guess we're seeing a massive experiment take place that will play out over the next several decades.

 

[ponderingturtle]

One thing I can assure you: You will not solve the problems of racism and xenophobia by forcing people to include people from certain groups that they don't allow in their event, and by labeling them "bigots" for not agreeing to do so.

Actually that does seem to be a really effective means of combating those, having people work and live alongside the people they hate is really quite effective. Once they know more gays/blacks and so on they really do reduce their racism and xenophobia.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Actually that does seem to be a really effective means of combating those, having people work and live alongside the people they hate is really quite effective. Once they know more gays/blacks and so on they really do reduce their racism and xenophobia.

I don't think it's as simple as you put it, and besides, I'm not talking about living and working near people different than us. I'm talking, specifically, about forcing individuals to change the rules of their events to admit people that are not allowed in the rules that they themselves created. We have the same issue right now with movie directors being labeled bigots for deciding to cast a specific ethnic group for a role. It's the director's right if he wants to make a movie with nothing but latinos. In fact, we see things like that all the time. Movies, Tv shows, featuring mostly if not entirely one ethnic group. To assume that these decisions are made out of racism and, moreover, that we must force them to hire all ethnic groups so that they cure themselves of their racism, is quite insulting.

Do you think the Improv Comedy teacher should not have created the Improv Class only for blacks then?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Wait... what? Wait, what are you talking about? Why would women's competition become a second rate sport under this scenario? By that logic, karate for children is a second rate sport compared to karate for adults, because adults are stronger and usually better fighters than children. The way I see it, women's sports are in no way diminished by the existence of male sports.

The average attendance at an NBA game is ~18,000 people.
The average attendance for a WNBA game is ~7,700.

The average attendance at an MLB game is ~20,500.
The average attendance for... never mind it doesn't exist. We don't have a women's professional level baseball league in America. The closest thing we have is National Pro Fastpitch Softball but the only references to any attendance, much less average, are 1,000-1,500 for their series finale in Chicago last year.

The average attendance at an NHL game is 17,300.
The average attendance at NWHL game is 954 and they only have 5 teams.

The average attendance at a Dallas Cowboys home game is a staggering 91,619. Again we don't have an exact equivalent women's football league, we have a couple of different ones that operate on different levels, but... safe to say their attendance numbers are nowhere near that.

There hasn't been a female sports league that's approached the success of the XFL or the goddamn Ultimate Frisbee.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

The average attendance at an NBA game is ~18,000 people.
The average attendance for a WNBA game is ~7,700.

The average attendance at an MLB game is ~20,500.
The average attendance for... never mind it doesn't exist. We don't have a women's professional level baseball league in America. The closest thing we have is National Pro Fastpitch Softball but the only references to any attendance, much less average, are 1,000-1,500 for their series finale in Chicago last year.

The average attendance at an NHL game is 17,300.
The average attendance at NWHL game is 954 and they only have 5 teams.

The average attendance at a Dallas Cowboys home game is a staggering 91,619. Again we don't have an exact equivalent women's football league, we have a couple of different ones that operate on different levels, but... safe to say their attendance numbers are nowhere near that.

There hasn't been a female sports league that's approached the success of the XFL or the goddamn Ultimate Frisbee.

Ok.... so? Is that the women's fault? The way I see it, women (or anyone for that matter) can't control how many people attend their events.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I don't think it's as simple as you put it, and besides, I'm not talking about living and working near people different than us. I'm talking, specifically, about forcing individuals to change the rules of their events to admit people that are not allowed in the rules that they themselves created.

What is an event in this context? How does this apply to businesses and public institutions?

We have the same issue right now with movie directors being labeled bigots for deciding to cast a specific ethnic group for a role. It's the director's right if he wants to make a movie with nothing but latinos. In fact, we see things like that all the time. Movies, Tv shows, featuring mostly if not entirely one ethnic group. To assume that these decisions are made out of racism and, moreover, that we must force them to hire all ethnic groups so that they cure themselves of their racism, is quite insulting.

Do you think the Improv Comedy teacher should not have created the Improv Class only for blacks then?

The outcry I tend to see is when casting someone of non marginalized status in a marginalized role. Like John Wayne as Ghengis Khan. So I would take issue with a whites only improve class but not a blacks only one as it is specifically to combat a marginalized status. That is part of why you can not look at things in pure isolation because larger society does effect the results of how people look at it.

People complain about all kinds of things like women even existing in film as real characters and not just sex objects.