Cont: Trans Women are not Women II: The Bath Of Khan

[Belz...]

If we discard everything that might be an appeal to emotion this thread would be quite small.

Note that I'm not saying we should pretend to be Vulcans (and setting aside the fact that even Vulcans pretend quite a bit when it comes to emotions). We can't shed our emotions from our reasoning. But trying to con someone out of a debate by appealing to their emotions, or to their desire not to have a particular set of them, should be beneath us.

 

[Belz...]

But you are using the reasoning that was used to argue against equal rights for black people.

It was thought for a long time that there was "biological" reasons for black people being considered "inferior" so it was only right to keep white and black people separate.

I'm sure you'll be able to quote Ziggurat arguing that Trans people are inferior, then.

 

[p0lka]

I think this is probably a significant unstated component of the push to treat transwomen as women. If we treat them as mentally disabled (ugh - there really isn't a nice term for what I'm trying to express, I'm sorry), that opens up a whole can of worms we're used to thinking of as sealed up and locked away.

It may have been a mistake to lump transsexuals together with the sexual attraction categories. LGBQ makes sense. LGBTQ, perhaps not. LGBQ is about preferences in sexual attraction to other people. T is about gender-construct self-identity.

re: the highlighted. I agree, I posted this earlier in the thread (july),

I don't really understand why the T is part of the LGBT?

The LGB part are fighting against conformity, in the sense of 'Don't tell me who I should be attracted to, I'm gonna be who i want and not conform.'

The T bit is all about conforming,
'ooh I feel like a girl so I have to look like a girl',
or, 'I feel like a boy so i have to look like a boy',

or more generally, 'I want to conform to a gender role, so I need to fit in with that gender role',

Why is the T treated the same as the LGB? They're coming from completely different positions?
LGB ... don't care I'll do what I want..
T... I need to conform..I need to conform...form...m.

I still don't see why they are lumped together, other than for being a minority. In which case why isn't the initial for every other minority in there too?

 

[ponderingturtle]

re: the highlighted. I agree, I posted this earlier in the thread (july),


I still don't see why they are lumped together, other than for being a minority. In which case why isn't the initial for every other minority in there too?

Well history for one, there were a lot of trans women at stonewall including Marsha P Johnson who threw the first brick. Yet it was and still is regarded as having something to do with homosexuals. It is really only as cis gay men get more normalized that they are being distanced from the trans community who is still more marginalized.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gay-pride-transgender/tensions-between-trans-women-and-gay-men-boil-over-at-stonewall-anniversary-idUSKCN1TV0V0

See this on how distant the communities have become as homosexuality goes mainstream, suddenly trans women of color like Marsha are not welcome at stonewall like they were 50 years ago at the start of the riot.

 

[Ziggurat]

I agree in principle, but I think it might be worth the effort to examine why it's different. Flat denunciation of the proposed equivalency with no explanation of the reasoning is unconvincing.

I've touched upon the reasons already,k but given that Darat tried to dismiss my post without any explanation, I don't think he really deserved any more in response.

But OK, let's go into this a bit more. Race is pretty superficial. Outside of some pretty narrow circumstances (for example, Julia Roberts shouldn't play Harriet Tubman), race shouldn't matter at all.

But sex isn't equivalent. Sex matters. Sex determines, well, sex. The biological category is inseparable from the act. And I don't mean that males can or should only have sex with females and vice versa. I mean that sexual orientation matters. As Andrew Sullivan said, "But if a gay man doesn’t want to have sex with someone who has a vagina and a lesbian doesn’t want to have sex with someone who has a dick, they are not being transphobic. They’re being — how shall I put this? — gay." The dangly bits you have determine what kind of sex you can have with other people. And since people have preferences about what kind of dangly bits they want their dangly bits to dangle together with, preferences which are not superficial but very deep seated, this ends up affecting our interactions with each other in deep and personal ways.

There are contexts in which these differences aren't supposed to matter, where our sexual desires aren't supposed to come into play. I shouldn't be considering sexual desires when hiring a cashier. But there are other contexts, particularly ones involving a state of undress, where it's going to matter, where you can't simply pretend the issue of sex (both the category and the act) is irrelevant. This is also an asymmetric situation, since sexual desires manifest differently in men and women. On average, males are more easily sexually aroused than females, they pay a lower opportunity cost for having sex, and they have significantly more strength. These factors combine to make the risk of sexual assault from men against women particularly pronounced in situations where women are undressed around unfamiliar men, such as coed changing rooms. That is why we segregate based on sex.

There is no equivalent dynamic with race.

 

[Strawberry]

What is "my reasoning"?

That there's no difference between female only spaces and whites only spaces.

 

[Darat]

re: the highlighted. I agree, I posted this earlier in the thread (july),





I still don't see why they are lumped together, other than for being a minority. In which case why isn't the initial for every other minority in there too?

It's a matter of history and a common experience of being shunned for being yourself. (Which is also why as the gay rights movements were growing back in the late 60s and 70s peadophiles attempted to join the gay rights movements.)

It was also a matter of it only being in gay pubs and nightclubs that what we would now consider to be trans folk could dress and appear as they wanted to be. So the two groups had a lot of interaction when both were strongly discriminated against and formed alliances.

And it has been the similarities of experience of discrimination that has kept the two groups together.

 

[Ziggurat]

But you are using the reasoning that was used to argue against equal rights for black people.

It was thought for a long time that there was "biological" reasons for black people being considered "inferior" so it was only right to keep white and black people separate.

First off, the biological difference I'm talking about is not between trans and non-trans, it's between males and females. Do you dispute that they're different?

Second, are black people biologically inferior? Because if they aren't, then that argument fails right there, we don't even have to discuss what such an inferiority might justify. I am of the opinion that blacks are not biologically inferior to whites. If you agree, then we can dismiss your racial version of the argument out of hand on that basis. If you further agree that males and females are biologically different, then we cannot do likewise with my argument.

So again, are males and females biologically equivalent? Are blacks biologically inferior to whites? If your answer is no to both, then your comparison fails outright. I think the answer to both is no. If you feel otherwise, then which one do you think deserves a "yes" answer?

 

[Darat]

That there's no difference between female only spaces and whites only spaces.

But I haven't put any such reasoning forward.

 

[Strawberry]

But I haven't put any such reasoning forward.

Then why do you not see the difference between racial segregation and women wanting to get changed in female only spaces, be searched only by female police officers etc?

 

[p0lka]

Well history for one, there were a lot of trans women at stonewall including Marsha P Johnson who threw the first brick. Yet it was and still is regarded as having something to do with homosexuals. It is really only as cis gay men get more normalized that they are being distanced from the trans community who is still more marginalized.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gay-pride-transgender/tensions-between-trans-women-and-gay-men-boil-over-at-stonewall-anniversary-idUSKCN1TV0V0

See this on how distant the communities have become as homosexuality goes mainstream, suddenly trans women of color like Marsha are not welcome at stonewall like they were 50 years ago at the start of the riot.

Thank you for that. I didn't know the history so read your link, then I went and googled some more..... and now I feel bad for dismissing the T from the rest so easily.

 

[Darat]

Then why do you not see the difference between racial segregation and women wanting to get changed in female only spaces, be searched only by female police officers etc?

Of course there are differences.

 

[Strawberry]

Of course there are differences.

Yes, and that's why your comparison with racial segregation doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

 

[Meadmaker]

The proper analogy with racial segregation would be to imagine a society where some facilities, let's use schools as example, were segregated by skin color, but where some dark skinned individuals were allowed to attend the white school because those individuals were trans-white.

 

[Strawberry]

The proper analogy with racial segregation would be to imagine a society where some facilities, let's use schools as example, were segregated by skin color, but where some dark skinned individuals were allowed to attend the white school because those individuals were trans-white.

An even better analogy would be a society where racial segregation was in force for schools etc, but white people could identify into black places whenever they felt like it whereas black people couldn't.

 

[Darat]

Yes, and that's why your comparison with racial segregation doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

I spoke about the reasoning used, not that they were the same.

 

[Ziggurat]

I spoke about the reasoning used, not that they were the same.

The fact that some specific reasoning fails in one case doesn't mean it will fail in another. You have to examine why it fails, and see if that reason carries over.

You didn't, and it doesn't.

 

[Strawberry]

I spoke about the reasoning used, not that they were the same.

The reasoning used is not the same either. Your reasoning, however, seems to be that opening up female safe spaces to males is a good thing to do because it is being demanded by a small subset of males who are infinitely more important than the women and girls whose rights are being trampled all over. You also seem to think that only older women are objecting to this, despite most of the cases in this thread involving protests from high school girls.

 

[Sherkeu]

What to tell the children, like my 11yo daughter and her teammates who uses the showers after swim practice? Adult women use it too as it's a city facility.

She knows that a naked man exposing himself outside this space is illegal and meant to scare her. I tell her "Please run away and report it to an adult so he can be arrested".

But...in this space, these showers and lockers, I should say "a male exposing himself might be ok because he might be actually a woman. So please don't upset this person."
??

How will these young girls know when it's ok to be calmly inclusive and welcoming of the adult male bodied person, and when to be cautious and report it? Even the adults don't know.

Either way, they aren't going to shower there if it happens!!

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Why is it expensive?

It costs £140 to apply for a GRC, on top of that you have to get a medical report from one of the approved list:

https://assets.publishing.service.g...oads/attachment_data/file/770921/t493-eng.pdf

There aren't a hell of a lot of them so you are probably going to have to travel and take time off work to do it. The NHS don't pay for the reports so there will be a charge for filling in the form. I've seen £50 suggested but god knows. And that's putting aside the length of time you might have to wait to get seen.

Then there will be associated costs of getting things like notarised birth certificates etc.