Cont: Trans Women are not Women 3

[d4m10n]

It's that whole feeding a bulldog mayonnaise thing going on down there...

A good friend of mine has a bulldog named "Dumbledog" and now I must feed that dog mayo in the name of science.

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[d4m10n]

Which reminds me of my favorite grammar error in a movie title: “Eight Legged Freaks”. The movie is about giant spiders. But as written, without a hyphen between the first two words, the title actually means eight freaks who have some unspecified number of legs.

So...basically The Pietasters.

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[The Atheist]

I'd be a lot more sanguine if someone could explain to me what a male-bodied person who has the lived experience of a man actually means when they say they "feel like a woman", and how the f--- they know what the hell a woman "feels like" in the first place.

They've read books.

But not ones by J K Rowling.

 

[Giordano]

Okay... and at that point, is it a clitoris? Or is it, as you term it, a penis?

ETA: Are we really genuinely at the point in the discussion where a couple of people are going to argue that there's no distinction between a penis and a clitoris? That they're the same thing and we're incapable of telling the difference between them?

I'd like to take a moment to remind you guys of the spectrum fallacy (aka heap fallacy if memory serves). I'll also point out that while light, as a whole, exists on a spectrum, it's remarkably easy to determine whether a given wavelength is blue or red.

Wow. The whole point is that there is no one point when “it” goes from being a clitoris to a penis. It is a continuum, which is why I am surprised some posters here insist it must be one or another. Yes, most often the result is much more to one side of the spectrum or the other. But is is not strictly binary. It is analog.

Your metaphor about light and colors is actually problematic for the same reason.. It is not remarkably easy to determine when something perceived as blue becomes perceived of as red. This is why there is the term magenta. But look at a color wheel in PowerPoint, etc. As you slide the mouse there are infinite colors (well, within the bites available) between blue and red within and beyond magenta for which I don’t even have names and for which I wouldn’t define as blue or red.

Different cultures perceive the transitions between different colors differently. There is a thread on this somewhere on ISF.

 

[Giordano]

What do you think is the difference here? You say that you're not proposing that males and females have different brains... but you do propose that they have a different physical set up and chemistry? What is the distinction there?

I am saying that different thoughts are caused by different neural activities in any one brain. Therefore people who think one idea have different thoughts and different neural activities than people who have other ideas.

Do women who like to cook have different brain activities than men who like to watch football? Yes. But so do women who like to cook have different brain activities from women who like watching football.

Are women’s brains inherently different from men’s in some ways? I don't know.

 

[Belz...]

That doesn't follow.



Because public restrooms are segregated by sex! If you are arguing in favour of unisex restrooms, then sure, it's not important.



What if they do care?



It has nothing to do with rights. Why do I have to deal now with a version of you that seems to be confused by the basic realities of human existence?

The whole discussion stems from trans-women competing in women's sports. If you are arguing that sex categorisation shouldn't be a thing, then there shouldn't be women's sports at all, should there? Great, now 50% of the athlete population can't compete.



Yeah I was responding to another poster. I even put his name there. What's ironic about it?

Would you mind answering my points, Giordano?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Are you open to the possibility that "philosophical belief" has a colloquial meaning that an author might reasonably expect laypeople to take from it when they encounter the phrase?

You're asking this after I've repeatedly said that I accept the possibility that her equivocation is the result of ignorance rather than malice. I am forced once again to request that if you're going to reply to my posts that you first take the trouble to read them.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

The first three examples were awful, it's not incumbent upon me to review the entire thread one by one.

You've not demonstrated the former. And as for the latter, no it's not. You're free to hand-wave away whatever you want in order to pretend it doesn't exist. It depends on how interested you are in actually casting a critical eye over this whole debacle, vs. simply accepting without question in order to reinforce your already-held beliefs - or even contorting yourself hugely in order to try to massage Rowling's words into something you can justify so you can avoid having to actually think about them.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

WRT brains, there are a few studies that show results like this one. The TL/DR version is that adolescent trans boys and girls were given MRIs while stimuli that are known to induce gender-specific activity in people's brains were introduced. What was observed was that the brains of the transgender youths displayed characteristics that were more like the gender they believed themselves to be than the one they were assigned at birth.

This is another study that did something similar, and which had similar results.

There is not enough research in this field yet to draw any conclusions, and some of the research is confusing or contradictory (as is the case in anything that is under-researched), but there are certainly indications that there is a biological, brain-based basis for how transgender people perceive themselves.

 

[d4m10n]

You're asking this after I've repeatedly said that I accept the possibility that her equivocation is the result of ignorance rather than malice. I am forced once again to request that if you're going to reply to my posts that you first take the trouble to read them.

Reasonable expectations aren't the same as ignorance. If you're going to reply to my posts, you should at least read them for the sake of comprehension.

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[Belz...]

WRT brains, there are a few studies that show results like this one. The TL/DR version is that adolescent trans boys and girls were given MRIs while stimuli that are known to induce gender-specific activity in people's brains were introduced. What was observed was that the brains of the transgender youths displayed characteristics that were more like the gender they believed themselves to be than the one they were assigned at birth.

This seems to reinforce the idea that there are, in fact, differences between men and women, and that we are, in fact, dealing with a binary.

 

[TragicMonkey]

This seems to reinforce the idea that there are, in fact, differences between men and women, and that we are, in fact, dealing with a binary.

I don't think it's logically necessary that the existence of differences requires binary-ness. There is a difference between romance and comedy and yet romantic comedies exist.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

This is silly.

Can you define "human" in a way that is unequivocal, clear, and includes every human being on the planet?

This is an odd request. I've never claimed that there is a strict demarcation between "human" and "not-human". In fact I've spoken many times, including on this board, about how the idea that "species" is a strict, rigid category with sharp dividing lines between them is a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary biology. Reality is more messy and complicated than that.

It usually is. Which is why statements such as that male and female are determined by which gametes you produce are ill-advised. It's not quite that simple.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Reasonable expectations aren't the same as ignorance.

Yes, I've also several times conceded the possibility that she knew full well what she was saying, and her equivocation was deliberate. Which is what you're saying here - that she used the term understanding what it meant in the legal sense, but intended for her readers to take a different meaning away.

That still doesn't make it not equivocation. Either she was using a legal term to refer to a legal ruling heavily reliant on that term to mean something other than its legal definition because she didn't understand what she was doing, or because she did. Either way, she's using a legal term to refer to a legal ruling heavily reliant on that term to mean something other than its legal definition, which is equivocation.

You just keep arguing back and forth about whether it was due to ignorance or malice. Well, now that you've stopped arguing that it isn't a legal term, anyway.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Wow. The whole point is that there is no one point when “it” goes from being a clitoris to a penis.

No the whole point is 99.99% of the population when shown 99.99% of clitorises and penis don't have any problem immediately figuring out which one it is.

Again you're pointing at the platypus trying to prove that all mammals lay eggs.

 

[JoeMorgue]

If we've looped back to "Men and women are wired differently in the brain" that's fine. If that's what the evidence says, that's what the evidence says. I'll pretend that wasn't a sexist thing to say a few years back since it has been retconned apparently.

But ironically the only context in which championed is transgenderism, not gender relations.

I'd wager if we start going "Oh no women can't do this, job, they just aren't wired for it" the feminist claws would come out from a lot of people despite that being equally valid.

I keep coming back to this and it has never been addressed. You can't have meaningful differences between cis and trans people without having meaningful differences between the sexes and people seem to be demanding we acknowledge the former while either not addressing or at best playing vague "Okay but don't bring it up again" lip service to the later.

But that's not what people want. They want trans-people to be able to subvert gender rules that don't want to actually exist.

I also notice people run full speed to get to "Well there's obviously a difference, you can't deny it!" and then start dragging feet hard when we try to clarify what any of those differences are.

 

[Meadmaker]

No the whole point is 99.99% of the population when shown 99.99% of clitorises and penis don't have any problem immediately figuring out which one it is.

Again you're pointing at the platypus trying to prove that all mammals lay eggs.

Moreover, the actual debates of how people ought to be treated in society concern, in almost every case, people whose reproductive anatomy is clear and obvious.

Some of the discussion about non-binary sexuality and intersexed conditions is illuminating, but when someone who is clearly possessed of male reproductive anatomy and male physique is attempting to register as a girl for the track meet, or enter the women's locker room, the existence of a hard to classify individual isn't all that relevant. That particular penis is rather obviously a penis, and the girls in the locker room would prefer that it go elsewhere.

 

[JoeMorgue]

The existences of rare edge cases does not turn an dichotomy into a spectrum.

Height is a spectrum because heights vary widely across the general population.

If 49.99% of the population was 5'3" or and 49.99% of the population was 7'10" and everyone between the heights of 5'4" and 7'9", 5'2" or less, and 7'11" or more made up only a tiny fraction of the population and they all had legit medical conditions that caused them to not fall into the 5'3" or 7'10" categories height would not be a spectrum, it would be a dichotomy with very rare anomalies.

 

[Giordano]

Would you mind answering my points, Giordano?

Probably I will mind because this is more complicated than what were the more straightforward ideas I presented that already led to a distracting debate. But I’ll start with public restrooms.

First I believe they should all be unisex: separate rooms for each person or at least adequately partitioned cubicles. Everyone should have privacy from everyone else. I’ve seen this even in poor countries. Don’t most women’s rooms already have this in the USA?

Second, as to what we already have. Most trans individuals heterosexuals are sincere and are not interested in peeking at the genitals of others of their trans gender. Just by numbers in the overall population there are likely many more gay and lesbian cis people who might have a theoretical interest in other cis people’s genitals than there are gay and lesbian trans people. Yet we don’t segregate trans gay people.

Plus even in men’s restrooms with unpartitioned urinals there is not much to see without making an obvious spectacle of oneself. Less so still for cubicles. Being a peeping Tom is still illegal. So I don’t see any real problem even if some cis people pretend to be trans just to get into a restroom to try to peek.

The threat of assault is a little more complicated but I don’t see it as unique to trans people. Cis gays use the cis restrooms; aren’t the current laws inadequate to prevent assaults in these more numerous population situations? Shouldn’t they be? Note I am not saying gay or lesbian people are more likely to assault people, just that there are more of them in the total cis population than gay or lesbian trans people. Is it a problem? Most restrooms are either occupied enough to prevent assaults or are so isolated anyone can wait for the right moment and slip in from outside, whatever their gender. Anyone willing to commit rape is willing to take the more minor risk of being found in the wrong bathroom under some current laws.

Finally how can one enforce a prohibition of trans people using only their birth sex restrooms? Does one ask each person entering a public restroom to strip before a bathroom cop? Do we challenge people based on how masculine their face appears?

BTW isn’t it as awful for person to be forced to use a shared birth sex restroom both in terms of embarrassment and potential assault?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

If we've looped back to "Men and women are wired differently in the brain" that's fine. If that's what the evidence says, that's what the evidence says. I'll pretend that wasn't a sexist thing to say a few years back since it has been retconned apparently.

But ironically the only context in which championed is transgenderism, not gender relations.

I'd wager if we start going "Oh no women can't do this, job, they just aren't wired for it" the feminist claws would come out from a lot of people despite that being equally valid.

You're making a lot of unwarranted assumptions, here, including that differences are between individuals, as opposed to on average between groups*, and that differences in brain structure and response necessarily leads to a significant difference in behaviour.

It's entirely possible for there to be biological differences between the sexes and for it to be sexist to discriminate on this basis in the vast majority of circumstances. For example, cis men, on average, have greater strength than cis women. This is partially down to the differences in anatomy, and partly down to the differences in testosterone levels (again, both on average). This does not mean that it's not sexist to say that women can't work as labourers.

To go in the opposite direction, most cis women of a certain age can lactate under the right conditions, and most cis men cannot. This doesn't mean that it's not sexist to say that men cannot care for children. Although it wouldn't be sexist to say that non-lactating men cannot care for babies without access to appropriate external sources of nutrition.

*Like the differences in height between the sexes, for example. Cis men are taller than cis women, on average, but that doesn't imply that if you picked any cis man at random and any cis woman at random that she would be likely to be shorter than he is.