Cont: Trans Women are not Women 3

[Rolfe]

Still find it odd this whole argument seems to be almost confined to the women side of things.

I don't find it so odd. Transmen don't as a rule threaten men. They don't talk over and walk over men, with entitled demands to occupy male spaces despite discomfort and even fear being felt by men when they do this.

This isn't a symmetrical equation. Girls who want their breasts cut off because they hate their developing bodies are an entirely different thing from middle-aged men who decide they need to live out their lady feelz.

 

[cullennz]

I don't find it so odd. Transmen don't as a rule threaten men. They don't talk over and walk over men, with entitled demands to occupy male spaces despite discomfort and even fear being felt by men when they do this.

This isn't a symmetrical equation. Girls who want their breasts cut off because they hate their developing bodies are an entirely different thing from middle-aged men who decide they need to live out their lady feelz.

Probably true I suppose.

Just from a personal point of view, I have no probs with everyone using the blokes if easier.

Never seen anyone hassled trans female wise as the perpetrator would be splattered pretty quick by other blokes.

 

[zooterkin]

Nope.

There are women, with no "cis" required.

There are also trans women - people who were born male, but feel they are female. As I said in the thread title. they're not women. They can call themselves women, wear women's clothing and present as women, and have all of women's rights, barring access to women-only areas, but they're no more women than I am a kangaroo.

Using "cis" is a cop out and I absolutely refuse to use it or accept it.

The need for 'cis' arises if you swallow the mantra 'trans women are women', 100%. The term 'women' then includes trans women, and you then have to invent a term to replace 'women' for those who were born women.

My position is very similar to Tanja's, though I do know a couple of trans people. I am sympathetic and supportive, but my respect for facts mean I do not agree with the extreme position of some trans activists. I don't agree, for example, that birth certificates should be retrospectively altered. If someone was born a woman, that fact is not changed by later surgery, or simple declaration. If we need some other way to deal with the problem this is supposed to be addressing, so be it.

 

[MisAndreG]

By implication, trans women aren't women.

(This feels like an attempt to win the entire argument by simply taking offense.)

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

Yes, that’s very perceptive — trans women are men. If they’re hurt by this, then tough — reality hurts sometimes. If you feel like you need a working vocabulary to distinguish between men and women other than the trans prefix and the words man or women then maybe this isn’t the conversation you should be having.

 

[cullennz]

Yes, that’s very perceptive — trans women are men. If they’re hurt by this, then tough — reality hurts sometimes. If you feel like you need a working vocabulary to distinguish between men and women other than the trans prefix and the words man or women then maybe this isn’t the conversation you should be having.

Birth certs are based on sex and not gender any way so the whole retro changing thing is silly.

No one knows their gender on they day they are born.

In 99% of cases the officials know their sex.

If people's agenda is to replace sex with gender they might want to look at how statistics on sexes affects things like medical funding.....At least in NZ

 

[Rolfe]

Probably true I suppose.

Just from a personal point of view, I have no probs with everyone using the blokes if easier.

Never seen anyone hassled trans female wise as the perpetrator would be splattered pretty quick by other blokes.

I agree with LondonJohn that there needs to be some sensitive social negotiation over all this. That has not been the case recently. What has been happening is that transwomen (forget transmen, they have no political clout) have labelled themselves the most oppressed human beings in existence (which is pretty rich coming from a group that mainly seems to consist of white, middle-aged heterosexual men) and have therefore demanded that society should grant them whatever privileges they desire. To this end they have labelled anyone who disagrees with them as a bigot and a hater.

So far they seem to have been pretty successful in all this, but it can't last. Biology is an essential attribute of life forms, and sex is an essential attribute of all higher life forms. In mammals, sex is fixed and immutable. People's needs and desires have to be accommodated within this reality.

If it is indeed the case that men are cruel and even violent to their trans-identifying brothers, this is a problem that needs to be tackled head-on. Forcing women to move aside from the single-sex provisions that protect them, and allow males to enter as of right, is not an answer, it is only the start of another set of problems.

Believing you are, or can become, the sex you are not, is a mental illness. There should be no stigma about being mentally ill, but this seems to be the only mental health condition where the sufferers have persuaded the medical profession that the way to treat the delusion is to affirm it and to assure the patient that their delusion is true. I don't think it's working.

Talking to people who transitioned MtF over 20 years ago, part of the transition was rigorous psychological therapy which grounded the patient in the reality that they were not female and even surgery wouldn't make them female. They were trained in how to behave around women, how not to make women uncomfortable, and to retreat immediately if it appeared that a woman was indeed uncomfortable in their presence. And they were absolutely forbidden from attempting to enter any female-only spaces until they were post-surgery.

They say this treatment is what has allowed them to live happily and productively for decades. They know who they are and they know who they are not, they know the limits of what is permissible, and both sides respect that. Now we have great hairy-arsed bearded blokes with a cock and balls insisting that they're really, biologically female and women need to suck it up because they're going to do what they like.

This is not sustainable. Men need to take responsibility for their trans-identifying brothers and create the space they need. And people with delusional disorders need appropriate psychotherapy enabling them to come to terms with their condition. Telling somone he really is Napoleon and putting him in charge of the French army is not gong to end well.

 

[MisAndreG]

Let’s just be clear here: trans people are suffering some kind of mental issue — that’s the what it is, otherwise what is it? — and they feel like being stereotypically like the opposite sex alleviates this — this is dubious — and we accommodate them in many cases for their benefit. This is all not terribly complicated or controversial.

However, when people start playing games with words because they think words are reality, and also altering discourses so that the way we think about trivially obvious things like what is a man or a women? become confused and fraught, or when the law is altered in a way that compels people to think and speak in ways that are fundamentally at odds with reality, or when women and children have to bear the brunt of the consequences of the incoherent ideas powering a “rights” movement that’s when **** gets crazy.

That’s when people stop playing nice and start getting real disagreeable.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm genuinely not trying to "out" your real identity, but...... you're not Chelsea Manning, are you?!

(That's a question which definitely doesn't require an answer, btw!)

It is extremely common for late-transtioning transwomen to have a military or other hyper-masculine career history. One of my trans friends is ex-military, and a friend recently told me that the only transwoman she knows is ex-military. Chelsea Manning is only one of a pretty sizeable group.

 

[cullennz]

I agree with LondonJohn that there needs to be some sensitive social negotiation over all this. That has not been the case recently. What has been happening is that transwomen (forget transmen, they have no political clout) have labelled themselves the most oppressed human beings in existence (which is pretty rich coming from a group that mainly seems to consist of white, middle-aged heterosexual men) and have therefore demanded that society should grant them whatever privileges they desire. To this end they have labelled anyone who disagrees with them as a bigot and a hater.

So far they seem to have been pretty successful in all this, but it can't last. Biology is an essential attribute of life forms, and sex is an essential attribute of all higher life forms. In mammals, sex is fixed and immutable. People's needs and desires have to be accommodated within this reality.

If it is indeed the case that men are cruel and even violent to their trans-identifying brothers, this is a problem that needs to be tackled head-on. Forcing women to move aside from the single-sex provisions that protect them, and allow males to enter as of right, is not an answer, it is only the start of another set of problems.

Believing you are, or can become, the sex you are not, is a mental illness. There should be no stigma about being mentally ill, but this seems to be the only mental health condition where the sufferers have persuaded the medical profession that the way to treat the delusion is to affirm it and to assure the patient that their delusion is true. I don't think it's working.

Talking to people who transitioned MtF over 20 years ago, part of the transition was rigorous psychological therapy which grounded the patient in the reality that they were not female and even surgery wouldn't make them female. They were trained in how to behave around women, how not to make women uncomfortable, and to retreat immediately if it appeared that a woman was indeed uncomfortable in their presence. And they were absolutely forbidden from attempting to enter any female-only spaces until they were post-surgery.

They say this treatment is what has allowed them to live happily and productively for decades. They know who they are and they know who they are not, they know the limits of what is permissible, and both sides respect that. Now we have great hairy-arsed bearded blokes with a cock and balls insisting that they're really, biologically female and women need to suck it up because they're going to do what they like.

This is not sustainable. Men need to take responsibility for their trans-identifying brothers and create the space they need. And people with delusional disorders need appropriate psychotherapy enabling them to come to terms with their condition. Telling somone he really is Napoleon and putting him in charge of the French army is not gong to end well.

As I say. I have never seen anyone trans hassled in a dudes bogs.

It is something women need to sort out between women an trans women or just get the trans to use ours

 

[Rolfe]

Let’s just be clear here: trans people are suffering some kind of mental issue — that’s the what it is, otherwise what is it? — and they feel like being stereotypically like the opposite sex alleviates this — this is dubious — and we accommodate them in many cases for their benefit. This is all not terribly complicated or controversial.

However, when people start playing games with words because they think words are reality, and also altering discourses so that the way we think about trivially obvious things like what is a man or a women? become confused and fraught, or when the law is altered in a way that compels people to think and speak in ways that are fundamentally at odds with reality, or when women and children have to bear the brunt of the consequences of the incoherent ideas powering a “rights” movement that’s when **** gets crazy.

That’s when people stop playing nice and start getting real disagreeable.

This. Absolutely.

For many years I was sympathetic to transwomen (I didn't know any transmen back then). There were few of them, and being kind to someone with such fraught mental health issues seemed only reasonable. But now we're in the situation described above, I have findamentally reassessed my position on all this.

I will not do compelled speech, I will never accept a male person in a female single-sex space or category, and I will not deny reality.

 

[MisAndreG]

I feel like if we’re going to socially sanction this mental illness then we should just have trans people use male spaces, whether that’s bathrooms or sports or whatever.

 

[Rolfe]

As I say. I have never seen anyone trans hassled in a dudes bogs.

It is something women need to sort out between women an trans women or just get the trans to use ours

I am coming to suspect that all the flutterly rhetoric about "you can't make us use the gents, we will inevitably be assaulted" is so much bullcrap. You'll always be able to find an isolated incident of just about anything if you try hard enough, but an epidemic of transwomen being assaulted in male lavatories isn't something that ever hit the headlines. Some transwomen who use male facilities say they have no trouble, that men tend not to interact with other men in the gents, they don't even look at each other, and the most they've ever experienced is a slightly quizzical, fleeting glance.

We just want to pee, they said. Well you can do that in the gents, we said. Oh no we can't, we'll be assaulted! But that isn't true. You only start to see the agenda when you offer a third, private, unisex space. Oh no, I won't use that, that's discrimination! That's saying you don't see me as a real woman! And you don't have to look too far up this thread to see that exact statement being made. It's not about a safe place to pee, a third unisex space provides that, it's about validating the delusion that this person is a "real woman". But he's not a real woman, that's why we're having this conversation.

This is how it really seems to work.

[imgw=700]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfLTwxBWkAINhoy?format=jpg[/imgw]

This is not something for women to sort out with transwomen. It is something for society as a whole to get to grips with, including taking on board that forcing women to give up all their single-sex spaces and provisions in order to affirm the delusions of a small group of entitled, aggressive men is not a sustainable solution in the long term.

 

[cullennz]

I am coming to suspect that all the flutterly rhetoric about "you can't make us use the gents, we will inevitably be assaulted" is so much bullcrap. You'll always be able to find an isolated incident of just about anything if you try hard enough, but an epidemic of transwomen being assaulted in male lavatories isn't something that ever hit the headlines. Some transwomen who use male facilities say they have no trouble, that men tend not to interact with other men in the gents, they don't even look at each other, and the most they've ever experienced is a slightly quizzical, fleeting glance.

We just want to pee, they said. Well you can do that in the gents, we said. Oh no we can't, we'll be assaulted! But that isn't true. You only start to see the agenda when you offer a third, private, unisex space. Oh no, I won't use that, that's discrimination! That's saying you don't see me as a real woman! And you don't have to look too far up this thread to see that exact statement being made. It's not about a safe place to pee, a third unisex space provides that, it's about validating the delusion that this person is a "real woman". But he's not a real woman, that's why we're having this conversation.

This is how it really seems to work.

[imgw=700]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfLTwxBWkAINhoy?format=jpg[/imgw]

This is not something for women to sort out with transwomen. It is something for society as a whole to get to grips with, including taking on board that forcing women to give up all their single-sex spaces and provisions in order to affirm the delusions of a small group of entitled, aggressive men is not a sustainable solution in the long term.

I wasn't talking about women

Trans women can just use the dudes, but at some stage trans women and women need to get their **** together and work out their issues some how as it it not a dude issue

 

[cullennz]

Should have probably said in a gender sense

 

[Earthborn]

"Cis" is offensive because it implies that we are only a subset of our own category.

Truth hurts sometimes; but yes ciswomen are only a subset of women no matter how you slice it. Either you take the gender centered approach and have to share the category "women" with transwomen who may be biological men but who are not "cis" sexual, or you take a biological sex centered approach and have to share the category with transmen who may be biological women but are not "cis" gender. No matter your approach, there may be situations in which you might want to clarify whether you are "trans" or "cis".

What it comes down to is this: do you want to be in a category with people who also want to be in that category, or do you want to be in a category with people who want out of that category.

 

[Rolfe]

I wasn't talking about women

Trans women can just use the dudes, but at some stage trans women and women need to get their **** together and work out their issues some how as it it not a dude issue

Transwomen are dudes, so you can't wash your hands of them that easily. It is the (false) assertion that the "real dudes" will attack them that is used as the pretext for demanding access to the chicks' spaces.

What women need is for transwomen and men to work out their issues and stop demanding that women solve these problems for them. In particular women need to be allowed to have boundaries that exclude men without woke dudes telling them they're bigots and haters and they must budge up and let males into their spaces.

Dudes also need to realise that the desire for "validation" on the part of trans-identifying males is not sufficient reason to deny women their single-sex spaces. Nobosy has any essential right to be validated as something they are not. Find another solution that doesn't involve forcing women to pay.

 

[Rolfe]

Truth hurts sometimes; but yes ciswomen are only a subset of women no matter how you slice it. Either you take the gender centered approach and have to share the category "women" with transwomen who may be biological men but who are not "cis" sexual, or you take a biological sex centered approach and have to share the category with transmen who may be biological women but are not "cis" gender. No matter your approach, there may be situations in which you might want to clarify whether you are "trans" or "cis".

What it comes down to is this: do you want to be in a category with people who also want to be in that category, or do you want to be in a category with people who want out of that category.

What a load of post-modernist bullcrap. I am in a category with transmen because I am female and so are they and there's nothing either of us can do about it. Wanting has nothing to do with it. Reality doesn't bend to "wanting".

women
men
transwomen
transmen

You don't need "cis" on anything to be perfectly clear.

 

[cullennz]

Transwomen are dudes, so you can't wash your hands of them that easily. It is the (false) assertion that the "real dudes" will attack them that is used as the pretext for demanding access to the chicks' spaces.

What women need is for transwomen and men to work out their issues and stop demanding that women solve these problems for them. In particular women need to be allowed to have boundaries that exclude men without woke dudes telling them they're bigots and haters and they must budge up and let males into their spaces.

Dudes also need to realise that the desire for "validation" on the part of trans-identifying males is not sufficient reason to deny women their single-sex spaces. Nobosy has any essential right to be validated as something they are not. Find another solution that doesn't involve forcing women to pay.

I am not wanting to wash my hands of them.

They are welcome to just use the dudes.

It is you that has an issue. Which I understand and tend to have sympathy for. But it is your issue.

I've already said ages ago just have non binary gender bogs added to the m and f

 

[cullennz]

What a load of post-modernist bullcrap. I am in a category with transmen because I am female and so are they and there's nothing either of us can do about it. Wanting has nothing to do with it. Reality doesn't bend to "wanting".

women
men
transwomen
transmen

You don't need "cis" on anything to be perfectly clear.

Agree with Rolfe on this.

There is utterly no need for the prefix cis. And by the way it doesn't offend me

 

[MisAndreG]

It's just a classification.

If I were to speak about women in general, both cis and trans, I would just use women. But when distinguishing between us, it is helpful. The problem is that you still see us as men, so when you make the distinction between women and trans women, you are really saying real women vs. fake women.

Why is that his problem and not yours?