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

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The Atheist said:
No sooner do the lockdowns lift than the trans/women debate rears its head yet again.

First off, J K Rowling makes the perfectly reasonable statement about using the term "people who menstruate" being a bit unnecessary, since "women" works fine: https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/j-k-rowling-accused-of-transphobia-over-twitter-commentary.html

And first out of the gates in ticking her off is Harry Potter himself, who, along with many others, seems to think that insisting women are different from trans-women is transphobic: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/daniel-radcliffe-jk-rowling-trans-tweets_n_5edee596c5b6948cbc5c685b

Period poverty is a real thing many women have to face, but no trans will ever have to.

It's so bad that the NZ government has just announced free menstrual products will be available at all schools, because up to 1/3 of girls have missed school while menstruating due to lack of access to those products.

This is a perfect example of why the claim that trans women are the same as biological women is complete nonsense.
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It's another example that TERF's never miss an opportunity to delineate trans women from "real" women, no matter how petty.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
It's another example that TERF's never miss an opportunity to delineate trans women from "real" women, no matter how petty.
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Would you expect a trans woman/girl pupil in one of those NZ schools to be offered free menstrual products just like the cis women/girl pupils?
 
GlennB said:
Would you expect a trans woman/girl pupil in one of those NZ schools to be offered free menstrual products just like the cis women/girl pupils?
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Is it worth caring about? God forbid a couple dozen people get sanitary pads they don't need.
 
The Atheist said:
This is a perfect example of why the claim that trans women are the same as biological women is complete nonsense.
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Nobody is claiming that trans people are biologically identical to their gender. That's a stupid straw man, and a moment's thought would reveal it - in the context of this particular discussion alone. If people were insisting that trans people were biologically identical to their gender, then how could the argument be made that trans men can menstuate?

But even leaving aside the whole trans vs TERF issue, Rowling's statement was stupid and wrong anyway. The article in question was about menstruation. Therefore "people who menstruate" is a better term than "women". Do you kow why? Again, just take a moment to think about it. You yourself referred to schools. Why schools? Because school pupils menstruate. An ex-girlfriend of mine started menstruating when she was 9. Did that make her a woman? Are you making the argument that the schoolgirls you referred to are women?

So, even if we were to accept the argument that trans people are only their biological sex, it's still not only women who menstruate.

There's a problem in Rowling's statement from the other direction as well. The implication that "people who menstruate" is synonymous with "women" is implies that people who don't menstruate are not women. So anybody who's gone through the menopause is no longer a woman. A relative of mine had a hysterectomy in her 20s. Did she cease being a woman then?

If you address an article to "women", and then exclude a large number of women, then you'd be better off using a term that better describes who the article is aimed at/talking about. Like "people who menstruate". Because that's what the article was about - menstruation, rather than gender or biological sex.

Rowling was being stupid and, judging by her history of being a TERF, she was also being bigoted.

Don't fall into the trap of reflexively agreeing with something stupid that someone has said just because it aligns with your prejudices. Apply some thought first. In this case it really shouldn't take much to see the obvious flaws in Rowling's tweet.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Is it worth caring about? God forbid a couple dozen people get sanitary pads they don't need.
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A few people who don't need pads getting them anyways is not very important. But the ability to tell the truth, even the truth about trivial matters, is vital. And that's under attack here.
 
Ziggurat said:
A few people who don't need pads getting them anyways is not very important. But the ability to tell the truth, even the truth about trivial matters, is vital. And that's under attack here.
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Trans-men also menstruate. There was nothing wrong with the verbiage of the article JK Rowling is crying about. There are people who menstruate who don't identify as women and it's just good manners to be polite about such things.

TERFs just making sure that trans-women know they aren't real women and will never be accepted.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
Trans-men also menstruate. There was nothing wrong with the verbiage of the article JK Rowling is crying about.
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Actually, if you think about it, the writer of the article was being even more exclusionary. She was the one talking about creating a more equal world "for people who menstruate." That specifically excludes transwomen.
 
Brainster said:
Actually, if you think about it, the writer of the article was being even more exclusionary. She was the one talking about creating a more equal world "for people who menstruate." That specifically excludes transwomen.
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It's an article about menstruation and menstrual health. It's not bigoted of it to exclude people who don't menstruate.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Trans-men also menstruate. There was nothing wrong with the verbiage of the article JK Rowling is crying about. There are people who menstruate who don't identify as women and it's just good manners to be polite about such things.

TERFs just making sure that trans-women know they aren't real women and will never be accepted.
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Well, they aren't real women. It's sometimes preferable to pretend otherwise, but it's still pretend. As for acceptance, what does that even mean? Seriously, that's a non-trivial question. Accepted as what? As women? Depends on the circumstance. Pre-op transwomen will never be accepted as women for the purpose of sexual partners by most heterosexual men. Most post-op transwomen won't get a lot of acceptance for that either, to be frank. That's got nothing to do with TERFs. And nobody deserves acceptance on every level that they might desire.
 
Heh. The other day I ran across a Reddit post that opened with the claim of being a fully-transitioned trans-man, and then explained that he was pregnant (the post was asking advice about keeping the baby).

I'm all in favor of accepting someone's claim of transition at face value. Even if it's just their state of mind, I accept that.

But having a pregnant uterus doesn't seem to me like a full transition to manhood by any standard.
 
Brainster said:
Actually, if you think about it, the writer of the article was being even more exclusionary. She was the one talking about creating a more equal world "for people who menstruate." That specifically excludes transwomen.
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You do know that not all women (whichever definition you are using that is actually used in the world) menstruate?
 
theprestige said:
Heh. The other day I ran across a Reddit post that opened with the claim of being a fully-transitioned trans-man, and then explained that he was pregnant (the post was asking advice about keeping the baby).

I'm all in favor of accepting someone's claim of transition at face value. Even if it's just their state of mind, I accept that.

But having a pregnant uterus doesn't seem to me like a full transition to manhood by any standard.
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Have to admit I do struggle with how to reconcile how I would use the word "full" in this context but since you are already happy to take someone at "face value" it's not much more of a stretch to accept they use the word "full" in a different sense as well.
 
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