But to tie all this back to the OP, what does all of this mean in terms of segregation based on sex not gender? To put cards on the table, what if I salute an intact-penis-person for wanting to live life in the way we'd traditionally see a woman as doing, but not want to go so far as to say that <person> should be allowed on a woman's football team?
If you want absolution that one's opinion on
sports rules won't be disagreed with and called stupid, let me tell you the story of the designated hitter rule...
Seriously, if you want to know how gender should interact with all aspects of society that's a complicated and contentious topic
without even considering trans gender issues and expecting it to have simple, straight forward answers is bonkers. Most trans gender people couldn't care less about sports ball except when it's used as a cudgel to deny the validity of their gender identity 'because they can't play sports'. Which is a thing bigots absolutely do, which doesn't mean that having that conclusion makes one a bigot. More on 'but people on that side make some bad arguments' below. People with bad joints also can't play sports.
There are so many aspects of the sports thing that could be explored, but one thing that is useful to actually go into is that
context can change how one should/can interact with anyone including trans gender people. Self-id is how say public bathrooms work. There really isn't another practical way for them to work, and people suggesting anything else are dismissing the practical realities. Most all trans gender people agree with most everyone else on the 'gatekeeping' level there. Now with sports there is less of an agreement, but many (I'd say the plurality) think that trans women shouldn't be allowed to compete in women's sports until some time (a couple of years usually) of doctor monitored HRT. This isn't much more burdensome than steroid monitoring. Because of the way hormone therapy works for trans women, at that point they have
less muscle building hormones than most cis women and can be at considerable disadvantage. (Here is where people angrily demand citations they will neither read, nor understand, and then dismiss anyway.) The point is that in one
context, bathrooms, treating trans women as women just means letting them say they're in the right bathroom. In another
context, competitive sports, other measures including possibly barring, beyond simply gender identity of trans gender people could be appropriate. But using the context of the latter to deny their gender identity doesn't become reasonable, and using the latter context to insist on the same standard for the former is just moronically unworkable. Expecting that all the contexts of interactions be the same just, well, that's not how it works. That's not how anything works.
(Also if one's concerns are the viability and enjoy-ability of competitive sports in general is anyone's real concern, oh Odin, trans women shouldn't be on the first page of your list of concerns with things like the interference with nations, performance enhancing substances, corporate interference, data analytics, and the HUGE looming one, epigenetic activation.)
It's all well and good to say we should break down gender expectations, but when the subject turns to sexual expectations? Too often these days it seems like the arguments turn to Motte and Bailey techniques. "women don't have to be confined by your narrow view of things" becomes "lesbians are bigots if they don't want to service my LadyCock" in too many cases. Not all for a long way to be sure, but it's an equivocation which really ought to be dealt with.
Have you ever heard of 'Gold Star' lesbians? They are lesbians who look down on and otherwise disparage
other women who are sexually attracted to women if they've
ever been with a man. They react to news that a friend they thought to be a lesbian is actually bisexual with things like 'eww'. They often even actively look for partners who have never been with men, and have dumped people for being bisexual. (Straight people do that too by the way.) They sometimes argue that bisexual women just are bowing to the patriarchy, or have internalized misogyny. They even have argued that bisexual women don't really exist, or exist in much smaller numbers, and that most/all bisexual women just want to have their own
needlessly complicated special label to stand out.
Does that sound familiar to you? People should be absolutely allowed complete agency over who they would be in a romantic and/or sexual relationship with, but that doesn't mean we can't recognize some standards are much more silly than others, or much more likely to spring from bigotry than others. You wouldn't be surprised to know that there is a very large overlap between the 'Gold Star' lesbians and misandrists.
Now that you know that, what does that say about what we should do with lesbian rights? What does that say for the arguments for lesbian rights? I would say not a damn thing. That some trans gender people make silly and harmful arguments and DO label some who are not bigots as bigoted doesn't actually change the other arguments.
Claims are supposed to be judged on their own merits. Them wrongly claiming people should just be down to take some lady-d or you're a bigot doesn't mean that there aren't actually other bigots making other bad arguments on the exact opposite side (there is no such thing as some lady-d).
Yeah, things are complicated and hard. Not exactly different from most other things especially human psychology AND sociology, and that isn't a concept that should need endlessly explaining to skeptics. How would you view the argument that because pareidolia can be complex and there is a lot of underlying biology and psychology that could be gone into on it, the simpler explanation that gob put that image of white jebus on the toast is better?
I mean, what is the difference between gender identity and gender expression? At a practical level - how should the external world treat (the generic) you based on those? I can't stress enough how much I hate societies gender expectations, but I struggle to understand some of the stuff that gets thrown up in conversations like these. I want to treat you (generic) as a person. You insist "I'm not an <n>, I'm an <L> - fine - at a practical level, what does that actually mean?
Do you not understand
how many different 'practical levels' there are? Again, knowing that even removing trans gender issues from the topic entirely leaves a massively complex web of interrelated issues and problems, how would the
added complexity make a simple and clean answer available?
'How should I treat men and women in
all possible contexts' isn't meaningfully answerable apart from 'generally well'.
In your specific case hating gender roles and expectations, then the answer is almost certainly going to be
like you treat everyone else. Use the name and pronouns that you'd find reasonable to use with everyone else. If you wouldn't respect someone's name being 'Attack Helicopter AX001' if they are cis gender, then I guess you don't have to respect a trans gender name of the same. (Although I doubt that is the case because you're having no trouble referring to me by a screen name based on my affinity for justice and my lucky number.)
Ironically it's this perverse sort of binary. Someone saying "I don't accept you saying you're an <x>" doesn't also mean "therefore it's cool if Bubba drags you behind his truck for a while." And people saying "it's cool if you want to <x>, but that still doesn't mean you're a <y> are bigots who are queuing up behind Bubba's truck.
I get that you're not making the specific condemnations mentioned above but they're fairly commonplace in today's hyper polarized state.
Yeah, see above. Sucks being lumped together with people advocating silly things right? Well, don't lump the claims of bigotry for not wanting to take the lady-d with claims of bigotry for trying to defund a children's charity for their work which has been proven to drastically reduce trans gender teen and child
death, for example.
Also, don't use
extreme examples of violence and bigotry to handwave lesser examples. Different magnitudes don't actually dismiss each other. If I have to choose between a slap in the face and a shiv in the kidney, I'll argue for the slap in the face all day but I can still recognize them both as violence.
As we've seen in this thread, we don't seem to know how they're used at all.
This thread is populated by a very non-representative sample, many of whom like you are deliberately obtuse on the subject, so the use of the words here by old people isn't the descriptivist argument you think you're making.
Can people just stop saying "It's complicated" over and over while making zero attempt to uncomplicate it?
That's not an answer to anything being discussed.
More and more I'm starting to really get the vibe that intentionally having some part of your "identity" being something other people just don't get is the point.
And I want people to move beyond just saying, 'But biological sex!', but I doubt that's going to happen.
People have gone to great pains to uncomplicate it, which sadly takes the oh-so-unfair effort of reading and understanding citations, but broad and vague questions of 'how do we treat people?' aren't actionable in the way you demand they be. Want better answers? Ask better questions than, 'how do we treat women?'
It is complicated. You want to understand, put the effort in. Stomp your feet and demand it be simple all you want, that doesn't change anything.
