Cont: Trans Women are not Women 3

[The Atheist]

Did he start presenting as a boy at age 15? Or did he begin hormone therapy? I'm assuming that someone aged 15 did not surgically transition, I hope.

Began hormone therapy & had breast-removal surgery !18 months ago.

Yes, you did get something wrong. You said "My daughter's friend, who transitioned from a boy to girl when he was 16".

Yeah, sorry mate - I figured I'd done something like that. Force of habit, I think - FtM trans appear to be a lot less common than MtF.

I don't want to pry too deeply, but I am interested in a few things, if you have knowledge and are willing to share. If I have understood you, we have a person with female genitalia in the boys' locker room in high school. I have said in the past that this is a very, very, bad idea. Based on your knowledge of the situation, would you agree?

Unquestionably.

I thought it was lucky he never got raped. May have been saved by that fate by being quite a tough character. He was very muscular and top school sports star as a girl, so had the physique to make boys think twice.

No chance he's ever going to suddenly dominate some blokes' sport, though!

Second, what was the nature of the bullying? Was it, "I don't want no girl watching my junk?"

None of those.

"Why are you different?" Why do you never take your shirt off?" "Are you queer?" and a lot of casual bumps and elbows.

Finally, you noted that people found out, even after he switched schools. Well, yes, they would, if he's using the boys' locker room. How could they not find out? Or has New Zealand gone the way of the US, where no one actually takes a shower anyway, or at the very least the one person not taking off his clothes, at least to underwear level, would stand out like neon sign?

Two things:

Very few NZ schools have showers for PE classes, so it's rare go beyond underpants.

Maori in NZ have a culture of not undressing in front of others, so Maori boys will generally wear underpants in the shower, so it's quite culturally normal to wear your pants in the shower, where they exist.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Woolyness is baked into reality. If one wants to classify things into categories there is going to be woolyness at the fringes. If I stretch a stool, is there are hard line before which it was unambiguously a stool and beyond which it becomes unambiguously a bench?


Do we? We've survived fine for thousands of years with wooly definitions. Somehow furniture shops survive despite there not being a hard internationally accepted demarcation between chairs and sofas.


Maybe sometimes, somewhere, at some time?


Maybe, somewhat... but the definitions and who counts as what in the edge cases will probably differ depending on the field. You are still going to have to deal with the possibility of edge cases.... Nature is wooly.


We've been using "man" and "woman" since long before we knew what a hormone, or a gamete, or a chromosome was. They are socially useful classifications. We may map them on to hormones, or gametes, or chromosomes for one purpose or another but that's because those scientific concepts map well to the colloquial meaning. All ways of classifying objects in the real world have a woolyness at the edges though. It's the nature of the world. That is true for scientific classifications just as much as it is for colloquial ones.

Take species if you want something scientific. Gallus gallus supposedly evolved into the modern chicken Gallus gallus domesticus. Surely you will have chickens that were clearly Gallus gallus, chickens that were Gallus gallus domesticus and chickens that are transitional forms. At the borders of these categories you are going to have ambiguous cases. Wooly ambiguity can't be avoided. That's not a reason to abandon objective categories though.

The whole point is that this isn't about being bigoted against trans people it is about being scientifically accurate to the biology so logically we should be rigorous with our biological definitions and let the hurt fee fees fall where they may. So Eunuchs are not men, people who have hysterectomies are not women and so on.

It is about the fundamental hypocrisy of many of the anti trans arguments. They don't want rigid biological definitions at all, but demand them when some trans person is involved not for any kind of consistency

 

[lionking]

The whole point is that this isn't about being bigoted against trans people it is about being scientifically accurate to the biology so logically we should be rigorous with our biological definitions and let the hurt fee fees fall where they may. So Eunuchs are not men, people who have hysterectomies are not women and so on.
It is about the fundamental hypocrisy of many of the anti trans arguments. They don't want rigid biological definitions at all, but demand them when some trans person is involved not for any kind of consistency

Who, apart from you, is saying this?

 

[ponderingturtle]

Who, apart from you, is saying this?

It is simple biology. Being able to sexually reproduce and fulfill the biological role of male or female is a great defendable definition. It puts it into clear biological terms and is easy to determine if someone is or is not male or female. It is a simple logical scientific definition.

 

[lionking]

It is simple biology. Being able to sexually reproduce and fulfill the biological role of male or female is a great defendable definition. It puts it into clear biological terms and is easy to determine if someone is or is not male or female. It is a simple logical scientific definition.

So only you are saying this. Thank you.

What you have posted is ridiculous. I have no idea of the point you are trying, and failing, to make.

 

[uke2se]

So only you are saying this. Thank you.

What you have posted is ridiculous. I have no idea of the point you are trying, and failing, to make.

I think his point is a rather neat deconstruction of the TERF position.

 

[lionking]

I think his point is a rather neat deconstruction of the TERF position.

Of course you do.....

 

[ponderingturtle]

So only you are saying this. Thank you.

What you have posted is ridiculous. I have no idea of the point you are trying, and failing, to make.

And the TERF are arguing for some absolute definition of sex, well that is one that is nice and simple, because when they try to actually post a definition they can never come up with one that actually fits with how they classify people.

It just others a few more people than they intend to, but for that to be a problem othering people would have to be bad. So the discomfort in classifying people who have had a hysterectomy as other than full women is meant to be illustrative of the discomfort they should be feeling about classifying trans women as other than full women.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Why is it that anti-trans advocates are dead-set in defining men and women by strictly clinical, biological terms. Why do they deliberately elide the obvious ambiguity of gender?

Which anti-trans-activists are you referring to?

Why do we need the word "Woman" defined strictly by biological fact when the word "female" already communicates this?

Because for most of my lifer referring to an adult human female as "a female" was considered rude, inconsiderate, and downright offensive. Adult human females viewed the term as essentially reducing them to their reproductive capacity. It's the same term one uses to refer to livestock. For my whole life up until very recently, adult human females very strongly preferred to be referred to as "women", which we viewed as encompassing the entirety of our being, rather than just our sex.

Now, however, we're back to square one... and a small cohort of people born with penises are insisting that we should be referred to as "females" again, and that the word "women", which us female-bodied people actually prefer, must be expanded to include anyone who is male-bodied who wants to be called that.

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

Also, because it's a trap. Cue Star Wars memes.

It's a trap. Because if natal women use the term "women" to refer to themselves... then trans-activists will assume that transwomen are necessarily included in that conversation, even if it's irrelevant to people without natural vaginas and cervixes. And then, if natal women say "Hey, this isn't about transwomen"... they get called TERFs.

 

[Emily's Cat]

So obvious that we've managed to miss them for thousands of yeard. I think "obvious", as usual, just means "it's my opinion".

There's a nuance that I think you're missing here. "Obvious" doesn't mean "it's my opinion". It actually seems to mean "It's my opinion and if you disagree with my opinion, it can only be because you're dumb or evil or both."

 

[Belz...]

There's a nuance that I think you're missing here. "Obvious" doesn't mean "it's my opinion". It actually seems to mean "It's my opinion and if you disagree with my opinion, it can only be because you're dumb or evil or both."

Yes, sorry for posting only the condensed version!

 

[ponderingturtle]

It's a trap. Because if natal women use the term "women" to refer to themselves... then trans-activists will assume that transwomen are necessarily included in that conversation, even if it's irrelevant to people without natural vaginas and cervixes. And then, if natal women say "Hey, this isn't about transwomen"... they get called TERFs.

Why not be specific then about people with vagina's and/or cervixes? That get to the exact grouping you want with out messing about with questions like "if a person is born without a vagina can that intersex person be considered a woman, or if a person has their cervix removed as part of a hysterectomy are they still a woman" Even with out trans women or trans men the maping of women and people with vaginas and cervixes are not perfect.

So saying people with vaginas and cervixes is both more precise and more inclusive than women.

 

[Emily's Cat]

And yet also reject it because it creates to many others like a gelding is not a man. So any man who has lost his testicles is not a man and should not be called as such. Strict biology is not the realm of anti trans bigot, rather they like a more pseudo science perspective to support their existing position. They want he veneer of science with out the complexity.

It only seems to imply this in the irrational argumentation of dogmatic trans-activists. In the minds of reasonable trans-activists, like myself, it doesn't imply that at all.

A gelding is still a male horse, but it's not a stallion. A man who has lost his testicles is still a man. A woman who has lost her uterus is still a woman. This is critical thinking 101.

Some A are B
All B are A
No ~A are B

Some female people have gestate babies.
All people who gestate babies are female.
No people who are not female can gestate babies.

Not all baseball players are professional baseball players.
All professional baseball players are baseball players.
No non-baseball players are professional baseball players.

 

[ponderingturtle]

It only seems to imply this in the irrational argumentation of dogmatic trans-activists. In the minds of reasonable trans-activists, like myself, it doesn't imply that at all.

A gelding is still a male horse, but it's not a stallion. A man who has lost his testicles is still a man. A woman who has lost her uterus is still a woman. This is critical thinking 101.

That is silly eunuchs were never considered men anymore than a steer is considered a bull.

The splitting of hairs you are doing is in differentiating man and male. Something that you then deny doing. A bit more internal consistency would be in order.

You do realize that you specifically defined woman in a way the excluded women who have had hysterectomies as it was synonymous with having a vagina and cervix? Clearly you do not view women who have had hysterectomies as fully woman as you exclude them from your own examples.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Why is telling someone they are not a woman because they were born with a penis no big deal, but it so outrageous to suggest that someone is no longer a woman from a hysterectomy losing the very defining trait of womanhood? Shouldn't this denial of their identity be viewed much the same as either a serious affront to them or a minor nothing that is just reasonable semantics?

 

[Cavemonster]

So obvious that we've managed to miss them for thousands of yeard. I think "obvious", as usual, just means "it's my opinion".

I'd argue that no one has missed anything for thousands of years. Many cultures have gender categories that acknowledge groupings beyond man and woman. People born with ambiguous genitalia have been surgically altered and/or had their parents raise them "as a boy" or "as a girl".

Culture has rigorously policed children and adults who had interests or ways of acting that didn't fit with gender norms.

No one missed the ambiguity of gender for thousands of years. Our societies have either been acknowledging or fighting against those ambiguities the whole time.

 

[Belz...]

I'd argue that no one has missed anything for thousands of years. Many cultures have gender categories that acknowledge groupings beyond man and woman. People born with ambiguous genitalia have been surgically altered and/or had their parents raise them "as a boy" or "as a girl".

Now you're talking about sex, not gender.

Culture has rigorously policed children and adults who had interests or ways of acting that didn't fit with gender norms.

Gender and gender norms aren't the same thing.

It's quite obvious at this point that "gender" doesn't really mean anything unless it's tied to another concept.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The concept of the tomboy has existed forever.

Holy crap... am I... Am I a transman and just don't know it?

 

[Emily's Cat]

What's the threshold percentage for minorities you decide don't matter? I'm curious, is it 80/20, 90/10, 95/5?

You seem to be basing your appeal to tradition pretty narrowly on Western civilizations that have taken a firm stance on the bipolarness of genders. You are aware that other civilizations did not share this idea of a firm divide between masculine and feminine, right? While Westerners where hacking, shocking, medicating, or murdering non-conforming people, other civilizations took a more nuanced approach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender#Transgender_people_and_third_gender

It's quite clear that gender roles involve several aspects of the human experience of sexuality.

I've seen this argument before, and you're right. Other cultures are more accepting of people who don't nicely fit one of the two dominant gender boxes. This seems to frequently be brought up as an argument that gender isn't strictly binary, and to add weight to the argument that transwomen are women full stop.

I find it baffling that the support for insisting that male-bodied people be accepted into the category of women without question... is to provide examples of societies that do NOT accept them into the category of women, but instead, accept them as "neither man nor woman, but something else or something mixed".

Those cultures brought up to support the insistence that transwomen be accepted as every bit as much and as legitimate a woman as a natal woman don't share your view. They are accepting of transwomen as something else, and they're allowed to share a lot of the same cultural aspects that women do... but there's clear cultural acknowledgement that they're something else.

 

[Emily's Cat]

His mindset is no different from the people who insist that homosexuals are secretly all a bunch of mentally ill pedophiles, perverted criminals, and other types of degenerates who should not be socially accepted or given legal protection because doing so is tantamount to an attack on normal healthy relationships and society as a whole.

They are of course never homophobic.

Bit of a side-note, but related nonetheless...

Do you feel that it's homophobic for straight men to refuse to allow gay male strippers to dance at the local strip club?

Do you think it would be reasonable and appropriate for gay men to demand that playboy and hustler include spreads of naked men in their magazines, because some men are attracted to men, and porn mags are required to cater to all men?