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

[Emily's Cat]

I suppose to answer that question you could start off by asking yourself how women behave and whether those behaviours are shared by 100% of women.

I feel like you're tap-dancing around here Squeegee. Of course the behaviors aren't shared by 100% of women. But expected behaviors do actually exist, and those expected behaviors are actually a material barrier to women when it comes to executive and leadership roles, including politics. There most certainly exists a "template" of model feminine behavior, and of course not all women fit the template exactly. I certainly don't. But you seem to be implying that there is no persistent difference in clothing standards and styles for women as opposed to men, that there's no difference in hair styles, make-up, and other visible forms of presentation, that there's no difference in behavior and comport between feminine and masculine.

I notice you've also, once again, failed to provide any answer to my question.

The initiating comment was to the effect that "some transwomen don't want to pass as women".

You seem to think that makes sense, so please go ahead and educate me. I've already admitted that this is something I don't understand. So if there's some explanation for this that you think is meaningful, that allows a person born male to identify as a woman while still continuing the lived experience of a man... please fill me in. I can't wrap my head around it as a concept at all. If you understand it better than I, please share that knowledge.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Being a woman has been redefined as someone who performs a particular set of sexist stereotypes, and is progressing to being defined as "anyone who says they are, whether they bother with the sexist stereotypes or not". The people who benefit from this are men, and it should come as no surprise to see men so enthusiastically supporting it.

There's a lot of truth here. I'm fully supportive of transgendered people being treated fairly. I just don't think it's fair that women, as a group, end up set back, we end up with gender stereotypes being strengthened, and caricatures of femininity being the standard against which we're once more being measured. And I'm not particularly thrilled about women in generally being so casually sacrificed for the advances of people with penises.

I don't think I should have to give up my progress, and be told to take a back seat and be quite because the people with penises are talking in order to be supportive of equitable treatment for other people.

 

[Emily's Cat]

A perfect encapsulation of the TERF mindset, thanks for posting this.

Treating trans people with dignity is sees by TERFs as devaluing "real" women.

When you dig into it, all these panicked storeis about bathrooms or prisons or women's shelters are just pretexts for clear animus. That trans women must not be allowed to be treated as women, because doing so would sully the platonic ideal of womanhood.

OMFG. Seriously? There's a massive difference between treating transpeople with dignity, which I fully support... and placing women in danger, and losing the progress and strides that women have made.

What really ends up chafing is that the people most stringently supportive of transwomen specifically being granted every single aspect of "real women" despite the fact that it steps all over natal women are 1) not female and 2) not transwomen.

It is usually cis-men who are busy calling natal women names for not kowtowing to the desires and wants of other people with penises. It makes me think that having been born with a penis is an even greater advantage than I had previously thought.

Actually, it IS a massive advantage. And if you go familiarize yourselves with the experiences of transmen, it's blatant. There's a common theme of "I knew there was bias and disadvantage when I was living as a woman, but it wasn't until I was one of the men that I saw how big the difference really was".

 

[Emily's Cat]

Transwomen should not be allowed to usurp women's specific protections and provisions because they are men. You know that and I know that. You demonstrate it constantly by your failure to treat transwomen in the dismissive and derogatory way you treat women.

Amen.

 

[Rolfe]

One complaint I hear from transmen is that when they are in a group of trans people they're told to shut up and defer to the transwomen because they're men and men have all the advantages so they need to make way for the poor oppressed transwomen.

So having transitioned often because they bitterly resented being treated as second-class citizens as women, they now face being relegated to second-class status again because they're now told they're part of the oppressor class and only those who identify as women (that is, in this company, men) have the right to a voice.

 

[Belz...]

I didn't, it's just the opinion of every woman I've ever talked to.

Since we're doing the skeptical thing here and refuting poll data with anecdotes about women's real fears, I'd thought I'd contribute.

Deliberatey making disingenuous arguments is not making you seem like the rational party in this discussion. Just saying.

 

[Garb]

I have not seen trans men complain about being shouted down by others and to "defer" to trans women.

If there are people who tell trans men to shut up, then they are stupid.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I assure you, if cis-women were being thrown into male prisons to become targets of near-certain rape, I'd be equally unhappy.

The number of trans-women raped in men's prisons completely dwarfs the number of rapes committed by trans women in women's prisons. TERFs fight to ensure that transwomen remain in men's jails. So long as "real" women are protected, they don't care what happens to them.

I genuinely don't see the logic in your approach here. Nobody is saying that rapes by men in men's prisons is NOT a problem. On the other hand, I have a problem with your solution to it. Let me try to break it down some, and maybe you can see where I'm coming from?

1) Pre-Self-ID State of Men's Prisons: Cis-men and transwomen in Men's prisons are subjected to rape at fairly high rate. The rate is significantly higher than the rate of men being raped in the general non-prison population. Transwomen, per captia, get raped by men in men's prisons more often than cis-men get raped by men in men's prisons.

2) Pre-Self-ID State of Women's Prisons: Cis-women and transmen rarely get raped by women in women's prisons, but it does happen. Transmen, per capita, do not get raped more often than cis-women by women in women's prisons.

3) Post-Self_Id State of Men's Prisons: Cis-men still get raped at a very high rate. Transwomen get transferred to women's prisons where they don't get raped.

4) Post-Self_Id State of Women's Prisons: Cis-Women get raped more frequently as a result of transwomen getting transferred to women's prisons.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The transwomen in Men's prisons get raped by men. The transwomen in Women's prisons do the raping. You seem to think that the safety of transwomen put in jeapardy by men is more important than the safety of women put in jeopardy by transwomen.

And you don't seem to understand that I don't support and am not okay with the rape of ANYONE in prisons. I don't want transwomen to be raped. I don't however, think that the solution to that problem is to INCREASE the risk of rape for female prison inmates! To you, that makes me a TERF, which is ridiculous.

 

[Emily's Cat]

This has all been well researched with links and evidence and statistics. However the source will be dismissed.

Main page on women's prisons and the trans issue
How many transgender prisoners are there and where are they located?
Half of all transgender prisoners are sex offenders or dangerous category A inmates
The rising number of trans-identifying male offenders in women's prisons

The evidence is all there. However because it has been collated and tabluated by women it is routinely dismissed as not worth paying any attention to.

Those are just isolated instances, dontcha know?

 

[Emily's Cat]

I'm not dismissing anything because it's inconvenient. I'm dismissing that evidence because it's already been rebutted in this thread. If anything needs to be addressed, it's the rebuttals.

No.... It's already been dismissed in this thread.

 

[Emily's Cat]

What should be done with trans men? Which prison should they go to?

Honestly, unless they specifically request otherwise, I'm perfectly fine with allowing transmen to stay in the women's prisons, even if they've surgically transitioned. They will have had the lived experience of a woman prior to their self identification and/or transition. And given that their penises take a fair bit of effort to make them useful for sex, I'm betting that rape isn't nearly as functionally feasible for transmen. If they haven't transitioned, I DEFINITELY think they should be housed with other females.

I don't care if you call that a double standard. At the end of the day, facts are pretty straightforward on this: Biologically male people present a materially and significantly higher risk of sexual assault and rape to biologically female people than vice versa. People born with penises overwhelmingly commit more rapes and sexual assaults than people born with vaginas.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

I genuinely don't see the logic in your approach here. Nobody is saying that rapes by men in men's prisons is NOT a problem. On the other hand, I have a problem with your solution to it. Let me try to break it down some, and maybe you can see where I'm coming from?

1) Pre-Self-ID State of Men's Prisons: Cis-men and transwomen in Men's prisons are subjected to rape at fairly high rate. The rate is significantly higher than the rate of men being raped in the general non-prison population. Transwomen, per captia, get raped by men in men's prisons more often than cis-men get raped by men in men's prisons.

2) Pre-Self-ID State of Women's Prisons: Cis-women and transmen rarely get raped by women in women's prisons, but it does happen. Transmen, per capita, do not get raped more often than cis-women by women in women's prisons.

3) Post-Self_Id State of Men's Prisons: Cis-men still get raped at a very high rate. Transwomen get transferred to women's prisons where they don't get raped.

4) Post-Self_Id State of Women's Prisons: Cis-Women get raped more frequently as a result of transwomen getting transferred to women's prisons.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The transwomen in Men's prisons get raped by men. The transwomen in Women's prisons do the raping. You seem to think that the safety of transwomen put in jeapardy by men is more important than the safety of women put in jeopardy by transwomen.

And you don't seem to understand that I don't support and am not okay with the rape of ANYONE in prisons. I don't want transwomen to be raped. I don't however, think that the solution to that problem is to INCREASE the risk of rape for female prison inmates! To you, that makes me a TERF, which is ridiculous.

You have citation for that? The article discussed earlier listed 7 out of 124 reported sexual assaults against women inmates were from a trans inmate. Am I missing something here? Where the 100+ other assaults perpetrated by male staff? Because it sure seems like a lot of cis-women are committing sex crimes in the prison.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Sure, but it's largely an accurate description of an ideology. It's not a personal attack, it's a description of a viewpoint.

It's a baloney description that rarely is accurate. It gets thrown around as an insult and as an attempt to silence natal women who don't agree with allowing male-bodied people to compete in female sports, or who don't agree with allowing male-bodied people into female rape and domestic violence shelters, or who don't agree with allowing male-bodied people into female prisons, or who don't agree with allowing male-bodied people into female locker room sin high school and at the gym. It gets thrown around against those people REGARDLESS of how much they actually support equitable and fair treatment of transgender people.

It gets used to try to poison the well against any female who doesn't include transwomen in every single women's issue on the planet, even when those issues aren't relative to people who were born male, or have penises, or have the lived experience of a man.

What I find telling is that there exists no similar concept on the opposite side. You don't see transmen and ciswomen name-calling against cismen if they're not 100% inclusive of transmen in every aspect of manhood. You don't see transmen raising holy hell because a doctor refused to give them a prostate exam.

I personally think that the lived experience of a person has a lot more impact on their behavior than many people realize. So those who've had the lived experience of a woman prior to identifying as a man still have the socially enforced childhood lessons of being raised a girl. They're less pushy, less insistent on getting their way, and have no expectation of having their wants be important to other people (especially to men), because that's how girls are raised and that's the social lesson we are taught as children that carries through our adult lives. On the other hand, those who've had the lived experience of a man prior to identifying as a woman come into it expecting their privilege to carry through as well. They expect that women will place their feelings and their wants above their own, and they expect to get their way.

In short, many transwomen still behave as if their male privilege should be honored by women. And in my opinion, cismen trans-advocates also feel like the male privilege of transwomen should be honored by women.

On the whole, the trans community doesn't give much of a crap about transmen or about natal women.

 

[Emily's Cat]

You know as well as I do that these "TERFS" do not exclude trans-men and hence are not "trans exclusionary" - they exclude males, so the accurate term would be "MERF" (male exclusionary radical feminist) but that would make the blatant misogyny too obvious, so "TERF" is used instead to hide behind and pretend that misogynistic abuse thrown at women is somehow "woke" or "progressive."

Nah. It really should be MESF - Male exclusionary semi-feminists. Because the vast majority of people who get slathered with that label are nowhere near radical feminists at all. I wouldn't class either myself or Rolfe as radical feminists, just run-of-the-mill common sense feminists who used to believe that women had made progress, and now are seeing those steps slide back.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Where some see nuance, others see apologism.

That's kind of the problem, right there. If people don't agree with you on every issue, they're "one of them".

 

[Emily's Cat]

One thing that stuck out to me with the "Fair Play for Women" article regarding the number of trans women who were convicted of sexual assault:

https://fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-prisoners/

Why is the 4% and 1% coming from the 125 number? That math doesn't make sense.

I don't think they're coming out of the 125. I think they're using them to augment the 125, to gross it up for the unknowns - the short term sentences and the GRA people.

 

[Emily's Cat]

When it comes to people's civil rights, it's a high stakes matter. C'est la vie.

MM, yes, just not so much for the civil rights of natal females?

 

[theprestige]

When it comes to people's civil rights, it's a high stakes matter. C'est la vie.

I'm not sure what this means, but it sounds like you think high stakes issues excuse bad reasoning and bad behavior. Me, I think the opposite: The higher the stakes, the more important it is to insist on good reasoning and good behavior.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Those spaces already operate on a policy of self-identification, and it doesn't appear to be a significant problem,

I don't think this is completely true though. It operates on a policy of perception, not self-identification. Generally speaking, if a person shows up who looks like a woman, even a somewhat masculine woman, they'll generally be granted access. But that's not the same as self-identification. Self-identification allows anyone who claims to be a woman to have access, even if they are unequivocally male in body and form. Someone can show up with a full beard, and clearly masculine physique... and self-identification would grant those people access where they currently would likely be denied access.

 

[Garb]

I don't think they're coming out of the 125. I think they're using them to augment the 125, to gross it up for the unknowns - the short term sentences and the GRA people.

But the number they added to the 125 was 7, aka 5% of 125.

That is terribly misleading.