Trans Women are not Women

[d4m10n]

Separate but equal has kind of a long history of not being terribly equal.

Good to see another vote for bathroom desegregation.

 

[Steve]

Good to see another vote for bathroom desegregation.

The world would be a much simpler place if people would just use the bathroom before leaving home. My mom always made sure we did when we were kids.

 

[JihadJane]

The world would be a much simpler place if people would just use the bathroom before leaving home. My mom always made sure we did when we were kids.

Yes, schoolgirls are risking damaging their health by not drinking anything all day so that they don't have to use "desegregated" toilets.

 

[GlennB]

"
...
A friend’s husband once averred that, statistically, it was extremely unlikely a woman in New York would come to harm in a city where murder and sexual assault rates have never been lower, and therefore there was no reason not to cut through the park late at night. The women in the room turned to look at him en masse. How bizarre to move through the world with this kind of oblivious confidence."


Full article in The Guardian

 

[Francesca R]

She [Caster Semenya] 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.

As far as I know that is not correct. If she was biologically female with no DSD at all (or specifically, if she did not present as 46XY genotype in this case) there would be no requirement by the IAAF for her to take antiandrogens.

Someone can correct me . . . .

 

[Francesca R]

Much of the media is still reporting the Semenya case as though she is biologically female with naturally high levels of testosterone (medically a hyperandrogenised female) and that this is what gets her caught by the IAAF rule.

That seems to be inaccurate, and if that was the case she would fly under the rule and none of this would be happening.

This article by Women's Running magazine that I came across seems to be among those that have got the wrong end of the (admittedly short) stick.

 

[Rolfe]

She's not trans because she never transitioned. She's still a biological male who identifies as female though.

Her genotype is 46XY which is the normal male genotype. She suffers from a reduced (but not completely absent) sensitivity to androgens, the male hormones, and as a result her male genitalia are underdeveloped and are mainly internal. Because of this she was believed to be a girl when she was born. However she went through male puberty, her voice broke, and she has testicles, not ovaries. With the correct treatment she could probably father children if she wanted to.

In the past this set of circumstances would have disqualified her from women's events. There is a famous case from 50 years ago when the then world champion in ladies downhill skiing, Erika Schinneger, was caught by the first sex-testing carried out at the 1969 Olympics and discovered to have the same condition. He was barred from competing and after thinking about it for a bit decided to have surgery to exteriorise his male genitalia and relaunched his career as Erik. Sadly, although he was good enough for the men's events, the sporting authorities didn't want to know him. He married and has children of his own.

However the IOC has always approached this situation in a cackhanded and insensitive manner and the way they dealt with female athletes who turned out to be actually male was appalling. They caused real harm and I believe there was one suicide. Instead of examining what they could do to minimise distress and harm they completely buckled and said that any intersex athlete could compete as the sex they were brought up as. This had the predictable results that a small group of female-presenting athletes with the same condition as Semenya started to dominate events.

So they decided that actual males would have to reduce their testosterone to continue competing. It seems that when Semenya does that she doesn't run so fast so naturally she's not happy. It seems unfair to her because actual females (XX) who have naturally high testosterone due to an adrenal abnormality do not have to reduce the level.

I think the IOC has got itself in a complete mess over this. Of course it's rough for young women who suddenly discover they're men, but the answer to that is to approach that problem with sensitivity and kindness, not to allow people with masculine bodies to run against women. If they made it clear that nobody with an SRY gene and bioavailable testosterone would be allowed to compete, and offered (or even required) girls to be tested while they were still at junior level before they were in the big time, women's sports would stay competitive and people like Semenya would be protected as much as possible from distress.

Instead, though, they're now opening women's sports to any normal male who fancies the idea of beating a bunch of girls. The whole thing is doomed.


ETA: They're now shouting about racism because the three women athletes who are at the centre of this row are all black, I think they're all black Africans. But this condition is not race-specific. Erik Schinneger is Austrian. The twist in the tale is that nowadays in developed countries such infants are recognised at birth and best practice recommendation is to bring them up as boys. So, surprise, it's the poorer countries with poorer neonatal medicine who discover they have these amazingly fast "girls". South Africa has actually taken on a sports director who is trying to find intersex girls to get the country more medals. Where's the incentive to so the right thing for these poor kids going to come from? But he's probably wasting his time now anyway. Forget PAIS, just get the slightly-less-than-stellar men to identify as women and you're sorted.

 

[Francesca R]

The above is what I thought in respect of the facts of the case.

The inaccuracy is media reporting Semenya's case from the perspective that she is being told by the authorities that she is "too manly" a woman to be admitted without self-medication, and that the IAAF wishes to exclude women who are too masculine and that this is an attack against biological women.

(Of course if the set of people who ID as women and/or are socialised as female and/or are legally female are all deemed to be "women" pure and simple, then I suppose it is. But that is not a presumption everywhere and should not be tacitly or implicitly assumed in reporting. It is decidedly not nor has it ever been a presumption of international athletics regulation so it is inherently dishonest in journalism)

 

[Rolfe]

This article by Women's Running magazine that I came across seems to be among those that have got the wrong end of the (admittedly short) stick.

They seem to have avoided the point entirely, possibly on purpose.

The rule is that an XX woman who has naturally high testosterone (because of adrenal hyperplasia) does not have to do anything about it, because she's a woman and the condition is part of her makeup as a woman. However an XY athlete who believes she's a woman because of being (mistakenly) "assigned female at birth", and whose testosterone is being produced by actual testicles, does have to reduce it. Semenya is in the latter category. This little fact isn't mentioned anywhere in the article.

It's a fudge to let XY (male) intersex people continue to compete as women, because they've been brought up and socialised as female. I don't think it was ever a good idea to stop requiring that athletes in women's events should be genetically female, just as technology became able to identify this to a high degree of accuracy.

It really is sad for people who genuinely regard themselves as women to be excluded from competition just as they hit the big time, and it can be personally devastating. But I don't think the answer is to devastate the chances of actual women by allowing them to compete. Far better to have a programme to identify XY PAIS and similar intersex conditions as early as possible and offer counselling and guidance well before anyone has their life invested in international athletics.

 

[Rolfe]

Hey, this just resurfaced from the depths of the internet. I thought it had been expunged. This was an actual official organisational submission to a government consultation by the group "Edinburgh Action for Trans Health". It's a real doozy.

http://archive.is/rkh57

 

[JoeMorgue]

I don't disagree with you, in principle, that there's no Universal Solution that will make everyone happy. I'm only stating what I think is the most reasonable solution, regardless of whether a lot of people will still disagree. So then, do you object to my proposal because you personally disagree with the solution I proposed, or because you claim that a lot of people will still yell "bigotry!" at that solution?

I'm saying that if my choices are between Rolfe screaming bigot at me with the scarred widdle woman routine, Arcade screaming bigot at me for misgendering the transgender person, or Ponderingturtle screaming bigot at the voices in his head and I can't please any of them because they hold contradictory position, I have no reason to please any one specific one of them.

Again the problem is it's unfair to expect someone to go "Oh well I'm a bigot I guess tra la la fiddle de dee." in today's environment.

 

[Puppycow]

We are indeed. An experiment with the bodies of children and young people.

The true test will be when these people are 70 or 80 and look back on their lives, will they think "if I had to do it all over again I wouldn't change a thing" or if they would want to not transition. I don't doubt that the people who are transitioning want it at the time, but there are at least a few who later regret the decision. I did watch that Swedish documentary "The Trans Train" which you posted earlier, about the two girls who took testosterone to transition and who later regretted it. I don't know how common this is, however. But it exists in at least some cases.

The problem is that this is being entirely driven by advocacy pressure groups who are not medical experts and who are quite frankly batcrap mental. Mermaids for example. They have succeeded in having themselves appointed as the advisers and the trainers on all things trans-related and are pushing their falsehoods and anti-science into schools, youth organisations and public bodies. So we get the lies about puberty blockers being harmless and simply buying time and the kids can just stop them any time they want. None of this is true.

First, puberty blockers themselves are not harmless.

It's not just groups like Mermaids though. From the Wikipedia article about puberty blockers, I found this, from (apparently) the American College of Osteopathic Pediatricians and the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Human Rights Campaign. So it appears to have the imprimatur of serious medical professionals, not just advocacy groups.

https://assets2.hrc.org/files/documents/SupportingCaringforTransChildren.pdf

There is no mention of the side effects of these drugs, however.

For children, pre-adolescents and early adolescents, gender transition is mainly a social process. Children beginning puberty may also use puberty-suppressing medication as they explore their gender identity. Both of these steps are completely reversible.

I wonder though, if the above doesn't leave out some important questions. If a child takes this puberty-suppressing medication for years, delaying puberty, will that not affect things like, how tall they will become as an adult? (In the event that they decide to not transition after all)

Or does it all just happen as it would have, albeit a few years later?

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

I was only musing what my thoughts would be if we lived in a perfectly non-racist world. Indeed, this doesn't have any relevance to how we handle the situation in the world we actually live in.

Ok, fair enough. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

I'm saying that if my choices are between Rolfe screaming bigot at me with the scarred widdle woman routine, Arcade screaming bigot at me for misgendering the transgender person, or Ponderingturtle screaming bigot at the voices in his head and I can't please any of them because they hold contradictory position, I have no reason to please any one specific one of them.

Again the problem is it's unfair to expect someone to go "Oh well I'm a bigot I guess tra la la fiddle de dee." in today's environment.

Hahaha, fair enough. But then again neither you (I think) nor I are in the position where we actually have to do something about the situation anyway. We're just random people on a forum giving opinions. I personally couldn't care less if people call me a bigot, since I know that's always gonna happen anytime I enter a debate like this where I hold a position someone else disagrees with.

Again, as you say, there is no one solution that pleases everybody. Which is why I wonder how naive it is to suggest that maybe this is the type of decision that should be subject to voting.

 

[Puppycow]

Hey, this just resurfaced from the depths of the internet. I thought it had been expunged. This was an actual official organisational submission to a government consultation by the group "Edinburgh Action for Trans Health". It's a real doozy.

http://archive.is/rkh57

 

[Francesca R]

They seem to have avoided the point entirely, possibly on purpose.

My suspicion is that it is on purpose yes, out of an editorial concern about reputational damage coming from trans-exclusionary blowback if the article hinted anything other than Semenya is female.

 

[d4m10n]

I wonder how naive it is to suggest that maybe this is the type of decision that should be subject to voting.

Fairly naive, unless you expect the average voter to be read up on various DSDs, the nature and function of SRY genes, the various forms of androgen insensitivity, not to mention the various ways in which HRT tends to level the playing field in certain physiological aspects (e.g. hemoglobin levels) but not so much in others (e.g. height, muscle mass). I say we leave should probably leave fairness in sex-segregated sport to the experts, since laypersons tend to muck it up.

That said, here's a layperson giving a fairly decent introduction to the topic:

 

[Butter!]

Yes, schoolgirls are risking damaging their health by not drinking anything all day so that they don't have to use "desegregated" toilets.

I think Steve was just making a joke.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Fairly naive, unless you expect the average voter to be read up on various DSDs, the nature and function of SRY genes, the various forms of androgen insensitivity, not to mention the various ways in which HRT tends to level the playing field in certain physiological aspects (e.g. hemoglobin levels) but not so much in others (e.g. height, muscle mass). I say we leave should probably leave fairness in sex-segregated sport to the experts, since laypersons tend to muck it up.

That said, here's a layperson giving a fairly decent introduction to the topic:

Well, you would think most voters in politics are well read about history, politics, economics, etc.... but they're not. And you can't expect everyone to be well read on all those topics to qualify to be able to vote for their President. Likewise, with this issue. Besides, being well informed doesn't change the fact that people disagree, whether on politics, LGBT or any subject. So it's also irrelevant at the end of the day if you're informed. What matters is: how many people want this, and how many people want that? The majority gets to decide.

But if even a simple solution like subjecting it to voting can't be applied, then it's fair to conclude there is just no solution to this problem. We'll just keep arguing and fighting forever.

 

[Francesca R]

I think Steve was just making a joke.

However, it isn't.