Cont: Trans Women are not Women 3

[Belz...]

Depends on what you disagree about, doesn't it?

Sure, and if someone were to argue that trans people shouldn't have the right to exist, or shouldn't have access to basic services, or shouldn't have the same rights, or should be expelled from the country, or put into concentration camps, or something along those lines, you'd have a point.

Rolfe is saying that she doesn't want to have males in her women-only spaces. Is that bigoted? Because if it is, then it's bigoted against men as well, and that would be ridiculous.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Okay ignore my request if you wish, but let me ask a question, and I apologise if it’s been asked before. Do you believe that each and every person who declares they are a woman have the right to be accepted as such? That there are zero cases of men simply pretending to be women for whatever reason? That refusal to accept someone’s declaration that they are a woman is misgendering?

Human beings are strange and unpleasant creatures, so I'm sure that there are some people who pretend that they are trans in order to gain what they think of as some advantage. I would think that such cases are vanishingly small, however, and do not constitute a valid reason to discriminate against an entire group of people.

 

[Rolfe]

Once upon a time I didn't believe it when my somewhat strident sisters talked about the propensity of men to take ownership of women, talk over them, make decisions on their behalf, and generally deride them as unworthy of any consideration.

This thread has sure corrected that misapprehension.

 

[caveman1917]

It's a label that allows you to brand someone as evil, and consequently to not have to put up the effort of addresing their arguments.

It's also demonstrably false, every time I've asked one of the people who got declared "TERF" whether they think transgender female people should be excluded from female single-sex services because they are transgender the answer was no, and that answer appeared to correspond to actual practice.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Nonsense and you know it.

Those referred to with the word TERF typically reject the term or consider it a slur; some identify themselves as gender critical.[4] Critics of the word TERF say that it has been used in insults and alongside violent rhetoric.[5][6][7][8] In academic discourse, there is no consensus on whether TERF constitutes a slur.[7][8][9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF

It's a descriptive term. Is calling someone a bigot a slur? TERFs are just a specific variant of bigot.

 

[Belz...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF

It's a descriptive term. Is calling someone a bigot a slur? TERFs are just a specific variant of bigot.

Context. It depends on context. And you're definitely using it as a derogatory term.

And yes, calling someone a bigot is a slur.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Context. It depends on context. And you're definitely using it as a derogatory term.

And yes, calling someone a bigot is a slur.

Calling someone who isn't trans exclusive a TERF would be an insult. But if the shoe fits, it's not a slur. If someone called me a socialist, I don't consider it a slur, but call some paleo-conservative that, they'll take offense.

I haven't referred to anyone here as a TERF, and yet a kicked dog will holler.

TERFs are what the OP is about. The thread title is explicitly trans exclusionary. I don't see how discussing TERFs and their wedge issues is beyond the scope of this thread.

 

[Belz...]

Calling someone who isn't trans exclusive a TERF would be an insult.

No one wants to exclude trans people specifically. The people you have labeled as such want to exclude _males_. Also, it's already been pointed out that "radical" also doesn't fit, and "feminist" is not clear-cut. How many parts of the acronym need to be wrong before you admit that it's not accurate?

But if the shoe fits, it's not a slur

That's nonsense. Slurs can be accurate. The question is not whether it fits but whether it's meant as a derogatory epiphet.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Yes, bad faith men could dress in costume in order to perpetuate some nefarious scheme. Wherever rights exist, bad faith actors will try to exploit them.

There is no evidence that this is happening in any scale to seriously consider curtailing the rights and dignity of trans women. I have a lot of trouble believing this tiny wedge issue is really the source of reluctance shown here to treating trans people as valid human beings.

I'm sure there have been straight men who have married in order to reap some undeserved benefit. Mentioning this in a thread about whether gay people deserve civil rights would strike me as... insincere.

TERFs absolutely use this scaremongering issue to try to drum up anti-trans animus. Unless you subscribe to a TERF ideology, I'd caution against being the useful idiots of bigots.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Intolerance and disagreement are not the same thing.

Yet people think merely disagreeing on things like Jim Crow laws being separate but equal was coming from a place of intolerance. Which lead to many fine Americans being wrongly viewed as bigots merely for having different views on if blacks should live in their community or not.

 

[Belz...]

Yes, bad faith men could dress in costume in order to perpetuate some nefarious scheme.

I didn't say men. I said males.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, you know, either the enormous list of men pretending to be women who have committed sexual offences iin women's prisons, DV shelters, bathrooms, changing rooms and so on are believed by posters in this thread to be "really trans", in which case that's a very big argument for excluding the "really trans" demographic, or they're just pretending, in which case there are a hell of a lot of them and this is a problem that needs to be addressed.

(I think it's a bit of both actually.)

 

[caveman1917]

TERFs.

Not everyone who advocates against self-ID, or who says that trans-women are not women, is a radical feminist. I don't think there are many radical feminists participating here. I can't think of anyone offhand that I would say is a radical feminist.

What's up with the TERF thing?

From its documented usage it appears to be a way to deflect blame for transgender people being oppressed onto a subgroup of feminists (who do not appear to be excluding anyone on account of being transgender for that matter), thereby justifying violence and threats thereof to people designated to be such feminists. The assumption here, that the people who actually attack or oppress transwomen (mostly men) are somehow tricked into it by this subgroup of feminists, was aptly satirized in the SKERFs sketch by StranglewankHitman ("these feminists have a huge influence on organized crime bosses, you know"):

 

[Joe Random]

Doesn't even need to be someone pretending for there to be a problem, IMO. You could have a male-bodied 17 year old who genuinely feels like a woman (however you want to define that for the sake of argument). Put that person on the girl's track team at school and the negative results are just the same as if the person was only pretending so they could dominate the competition.

 

[theprestige]

Doesn't even need to be someone pretending for there to be a problem, IMO. You could have a male-bodied 17 year old who genuinely feels like a woman (however you want to define that for the sake of argument). Put that person on the girl's track team at school and the negative results are just the same as if the person was only pretending so they could dominate the competition.

Not only that, but once you accept self-identification alone as the criteria, who has the standing to challenge whether it's genuine?

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Doesn't even need to be someone pretending for there to be a problem, IMO. You could have a male-bodied 17 year old who genuinely feels like a woman (however you want to define that for the sake of argument). Put that person on the girl's track team at school and the negative results are just the same as if the person was only pretending so they could dominate the competition.

Ahh yes, being trans in high school, a notably fun and easy social experience that people will endure for malicious purposes.

If there's one thing everyone knows about teenagers, they are very chill and polite to other teenagers about sensitive topics such as sexuality and gender presentation.

 

[Belz...]

Ahh yes, being trans in high school, a notably fun and easy social experience that people will endure for malicious purposes.

You're missing the point again.

Are you going to address my point that it's males being excluded, not trans women or men?

 

[Meadmaker]

There is no evidence that this is happening in any scale to seriously consider curtailing the rights and dignity of trans women. I have a lot of trouble believing this tiny wedge issue is really the source of reluctance shown here to treating trans people as valid human beings.

I love sentences like this. "treating trans people as valid human beings."

That's great.

Trans women are indeed valid human beings. Every part of them is valid, including their penises. You could even say that when a woman does not want to take off her clothes in the presence of said penis, the woman is actually validating them even more, by noting the actual existence of their very real bodies.

Of course, all this talk of "validity" is just word games.

When it comes down to it, some people have anxiety about how their body actually is, which is apparently "body dysphoria", and some people have anxiety about being treated a certain way based on their bodies, which is apparently "social dysphoria". Meanwhile, some women have anxiety about taking off their clothes in the presence of male bodied persons. Now we have to decide whose anxiety we want to dismiss.

Dismissing other people's anxiety sometimes all by itself causes unease, so a lot of people find it easier to dismiss that anxiety if they first come up with some explanation for why that anxiety is invalid. The explanation doesn't actually need to be an exercise in reason. All that's necessary is a negative label. Depending on whose anxiety you are trying to dismiss, you can use "pervert" or "bigot", or even "TERF". Whatever helps you dismiss their feelings most easily, pick that one.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

You're missing the point again.

Are you going to address my point that it's males being excluded, not trans women or men?

I'm all ears for a solution to bad-faith males that isn't just saying "tough luck" to trans women.

 

[Belz...]

I'm all ears for a solution to bad-faith males that isn't just saying "tough luck" to trans women.

I'm not talking about bad-faith ones. I'm talking about ALL MALES.

I can't explain it in more simple terms, man.