Cont: Trans Women are not Women 4

[Emily's Cat]

It isn't, you know.

I can't help but notice that you complain about not getting responses to your analogy, you insist that people need to engage with you. And when the people who engage with you are men, you thank them for engaging even if you disagree with them. When the people who engage are women, they get curt dismissals.

 

[Sherkeu]

Wow, that's a big baby! You grew a giant!

Yep...I was born 3 weeks early and 9lbs...her dad was over 11lbs. We sort of knew. And we are sort of tall people too. She turned 12 a few months ago and already over 5'8". We think she will be 5'11" by the end.

/off topic but not really.
I imagine my Ob/Gyn would not take someone, say a male on hormones, who had a 'constructed vagina that used to be a penis' as a patient in his practice- which is what some of them want. They say 'its the same'! Actually, some of those without the vagina want to go to the women's doctors too. they want the 'waiting room ' validation'. That is an insane request for medical care. they dont even want the 'right' doctors to care for them. (some of them...I wont say all)

lu by https://www.flickr.com/photos/155114068@N02/

lu https://www.flickr.com/photos/155114068@N02/

 

[TomB]

This is a difference yes, but it is an irrelevant difference because it doesn't effect anything.

It doesn't matter that it was specifically segregation, only that one group sought to deny rights to another group in some way.

No. It is quite significant.

You are not arguing to end segregation. You are arguing to change the nature of that segregation from being based on sex (as its understood to be now) to being based on gender.

That is different from the civil rights movement you cite, which was arguing to remove segregation/discrimination as unjustified and unfair. It's a different argument.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It's not privilege that is the reason that justified why whites had to desegregate, it was the irrationality of the racism and generated the segregation. Even in the ways that mattered to whites, it is irrational to think that there is something essential in blacks that make them more dangerous than anyone else. And, danger wasn't the only factor, either. There were miscegenation laws, too, for instance.

It was also the fact that the existing segregation was not equal. Black people did not have access to the same services as white people did. They couldn't eat at the same places, stay at the same hotels, attend the same schools.

That's not the case for transpeople. They already have all of those things available to them. I fully support making sure that people can't be fired on the basis of their gender identification. That is something that should not be allowed.

But that's not what's being asked for. Transpeople are demanding that they be entitled to things that are currently segregated on the basis of sex. Not gender - sex.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

No. Self-Id is a massive part of the problem. I would venture to say that self-id is the single biggest problem that most natal women have with trans-activism. So no, we cannot agree that self-id has nothing to do with these issues - it has everything to do with them.

No, it isn't. I don't know why we can't get past this. Your problem is with anti-discrimination legislation. It's important because muddying the waters doesn't help clarity.

Well, I dunno. If you are having a problem with your testicles, and need to describe the sensation that you're feeling, and how it's affecting you... do you think it might be important to have a doctor who knows what the hell testicles feel like in the first place? Would you rather have your balls handled and firmly squeezed by someone who has balls of their own and knows how to make sure not to hurt you... or are you fine with it being anyone rolling them around in a clinical setting?

Nope. Doesn't matter to me one bit and I don't think there is any evidence to support the idea that having a physician of the same sex leads to better medical outcomes. The only reason to ask for one is comfort levels - incidentally if a man asked for a woman physician to check his balls (personally i'd probably prefer it) would you be ok with that?

I mean, you might not care, but the majority of females care quite a bit about whether or not the person sticking up speculum up their coochie has an understanding of how painful that is. It's rather nice when you're getting a breast exam to know that the person massaging around your nipples know how delicate and painful areolas can be.

if there was objective evidence that having a same sex physician led to a better procedure then I would probably say that's a good reason to have one. Is there? Because otherwise it sounds a lot like trying to find a justification for 'personal comfort'

I don't disagree with you here, but it comes back to the specific phrase that you used above: "genuine transwomen". That's where self-id becomes a very serious problem for natal women. If "I say so" is the threshold for "genuine", then "genuine" has no meaning at all.

Then we can make it that self-id is not sufficient to get access to a women's prison or we can set X Y and Z criteria to allow access to women's prisons. Would that work for you?

Alright. I appreciate the recognition that there might need to be an increase, but let's explore this a bit.

Let's talk about diversity. The objective of diversity goals is to bring different perspectives and concerns into the mix, would you agree? Thus, it's important to have representation from a variety of races that are present in the customer base be represented, so you don't inadvertently disadvantage of offend those customers. It's also important to have a diversity of genders, so that the experiences and concerns of those genders are taken into consideration.

Step back from that a moment, and think about what gender means in that context. We have traditionally considered gender to be a more polite word for biological sex, as well as a way to differentiate biological sex from the act of sexual intercourse.

Now, let's say a company wants to increase their gender diversity, so they have decided that at least 3 out of 10 positions on their diversity council should be filled by women. Now, let's provisionally say that this company holds the view that transwomen are women, period. So out of 10 positions on the committee, 7 are filled by cismen of various ethnicities and sexual orientations... and the three remaining positions are filled by transwomen.

All of those positions are now filled by males. None of the members has an understanding of the biological realities of females. None of them have the lived experience of being female in society. None of them have experienced the social pressures and expectations placed on females that are distinct from those placed on males. None of them has any basis for thinking about how their decisions affect female bodies, the social relationship with females, or even affect implicit biases against females. None of them have a good understanding of what life is for a female... because not a single one of them is female.

Is it your opinion that transwomen - who have male biology, the childhood conditioning of males, and largely have the lived experience of males - should count as women in that context?

Is it your opinion that a transwoman can be a true and effective representation of the concerns, issues, and desires of women?

It is my view that transwomen can be a true and effective representation of the concerns, issues and desires of 'some' women. But I would say that for any specific woman you pick. Do 50-something socially conservative housewives give a true and effective representation of the concerns issues and desires of women?

Your hypothetical also assumes that somehow this company is going to fill 3 women's spaces with transwomen - i think this is highly unlikely unless it's deliberate and I can't see any motivation to do it deliberately.

If you are asking me for my solution then rather than having 7 middle aged white guys and 3 middle aged white women then the board should have an actually diverse make up. So rather than having 3 women on the board you get 5 and 1 of them is trans. I'm failing to see how that would be worse for women, in fact, it would be significantly better. Oh and you can have a transman on there as well so it works both ways.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

What's the rate of violent crimes committed per capita by black people, versus crimes committed per capita by white people?
What's the rate of violent crimes committed by male people per capita, versus violent crimes committed by female people per capita?

What's the rate of sexual assaults and rapes committed by black people, compared to the rate of sexual assaults and rapes committed by white people?
What's the rate of sexual assaults and rapes committed by male people, compared to the rate of sexual assaults and rapes committed by female people?

I find it interesting that you continue to use black civil rights as an analogy for transgender rights, while blithely overlooking that fact that women are not the oppressing group here, and also ignoring the fact that yes, actually, male people do represent a real and meaningful risk to the safety of female people. You keep presenting this as if the take-away is that it's all just in the heads of females, it's made up, it's an overreaction, there's no real threat, females are just being unreasonable about it all.

The math is all over the place here. Not sure whether it's going to be useful to tease this apart but can you see why 'rate of sexual assaults committed by male people' does not give you any meaningful data on 'risk of sexual assault committed by transpeople in female spaces?'

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

No - this is what YOU keep viewing self-id as. That's not what most of us view self-id as.

In the real world, when we talk about "self-id" we're not talking about a law that allows a person to change their legal sex without a diagnosis - that's part of it, but that's not the problem. When we talk about self-id, we're talking about the activist push that any person should be able to decide for themselves whether or not they are a man or a woman, without ever having seen a doctor about it at all, and without any transition-related activity on their part... and by dint of their declaration, they demand to be recognized as a woman and gain access to female spaces.

We're talking about the impact that has on society. We're talking about the decision to declare oneself to be a woman regardless of ones anatomy, and thereby insist that others must treat you as a woman at risk of being labeled a bigot. It's the demand that a person who bears no resemblance in any way to a woman gains the power to obligate other people to use female pronouns for them at risk of it being considered hate speech. It's the idea of making gender identification on the basis of self-declaration alone be a protected class that overrules the biology of sex and infringes upon the rights of women.

That is what almost all of the other participants in this thread consider "self-id" to mean.

Then it's an incredibly unhelpful way to discuss the topic. If everyone else in the thread means 'round orange fruit' when they say banana and then wades in on the EU's bendy banana laws can you see where confusion may arise?

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

No. Just no.

The subjugated people here are females and transgender people. Get that through your head.

The people being asked to give up rights, safety, and privacy are not male people. Cismen are not being asked to give up anything at all. They have nothing at risk. Allowing the small proportion of transmen into their spaces does not present a threat to their safety at all. Allowing the small proportion of transmen to compete in their sports presents no risk and no reduction in the accomplishments of males at all. None. Zero.

The people being asked to give up rights, safety, and privace are female people. Ciswomen are being asked to give up many things. They have much at risk. Allowing the higher proportion of transwoman into their spaces does present a threat to their safety - both because many of those (especially self-declared) transwomen are male-bodied and also because self-declaration allows ANY male-bodied person to access females spaces without challenge. Allowing the higher proportion of transwomen to compete in their sports presents a very real risk of reducing the accomplishments of females.

I have said this many times. In this situation, male-bodied people are insisting that female-bodied people sacrifice their rights, their safety, their privacy to the desires and feeling of affirmation of other male-bodied people.

A fair analogy is NOT black civil rights. A fair analogy would be white people insisting that black people must sacrifice some of their gains and rights in order to make white-people-who-identify-as-black feel better about themselves.

Actually if you are asking transwomen to give up privacy and safety then by your logic male people are being asked to give up something. You can't have it both ways.

But you seem obsessed with the tinfoil hat theory that somehow this is all about men stripping away rights from women. And I am seeing that nothing is going to change your mind.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

It's not privilege that is the reason that justified why whites had to desegregate, it was the irrationality of the racism and generated the segregation. Even in the ways that mattered to whites, it is irrational to think that there is something essential in blacks that make them more dangerous than anyone else. And, danger wasn't the only factor, either. There were miscegenation laws, too, for instance.

How have you determined that the white v black discrimination is irrational but anti-trans v transwomen discrimination is not?

I'm pretty sure that there would have been white people who were genuinely scared of black people, I'm pretty sure that they could have pointed to statistics on crime that would have shown black people are more criminal than white and I'm pretty sure that they could have pointed to many examples of horrendous black on white crime. They still do today.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The math is all over the place here. Not sure whether it's going to be useful to tease this apart but can you see why 'rate of sexual assaults committed by male people' does not give you any meaningful data on 'risk of sexual assault committed by transpeople in female spaces?'

Because it's not just about transpeople! It's about MALE people. MALES. Transwomen are MALES. And self-declared transwomen with intact male genitalia are still MALES.

 

[Olmstead]

Why are men and women segregated?

What changes when a man becomes a transwoman?

I would really like to hear two consistent answers to these questions.

 

[Sherkeu]

No. It is quite significant.

You are not arguing to end segregation. You are arguing to change the nature of that segregation from being based on sex (as its understood to be now) to being based on gender.

That is different from the civil rights movement you cite, which was arguing to remove segregation/discrimination as unjustified and unfair. It's a different argument.

I agree. The analogy fails. We do have sex discrimination and age discrimination for 'good ' reasons.

Sports
School
Prison
Medicine and Science

Racial segregation meets none of the same criteria (excepting genetic medical issues with in smaller ethnicities). For example, genetic differences are higher and wider within Africa than outside of it. So basically, it boils down to skin color? Ridiculous! That one single trait of how much melanin to produce is shared by the most diverse group of humans on the planet.

In contrast, you may have an adult with the mental ability of an 8yr old, but you do not put them in the normal public 3rd grade because they think as a 3rd grader. They have other differences that make this implausible.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I can't help but notice that you complain about not getting responses to your analogy, you insist that people need to engage with you. And when the people who engage with you are men, you thank them for engaging even if you disagree with them. When the people who engage are women, they get curt dismissals.

I speak how I am spoken to. If someone engages on the topic and presents arguments I will engage with them and I appreciate when someone does that. if someone posts bald assertions like 'no it's not' then generally i will treat them the same in return and say 'yes it is' not point out that all they are doing is asserting their point.

For the record, other than a few people I have no idea who is male or female here. I tend to assume the people I am speaking to are male unless there is something to suggest otherwise. There are a handful of loud voices on this thread that I do not know either way, two people i added to my ignore list that I presume are male. I have not added anyone that i know to be female to my ignore list.

So I would say you may just be experiencing confirmation bias.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

No. It is quite significant.

You are not arguing to end segregation. You are arguing to change the nature of that segregation from being based on sex (as its understood to be now) to being based on gender.

That is different from the civil rights movement you cite, which was arguing to remove segregation/discrimination as unjustified and unfair. It's a different argument.

No I am arguing to end DISCRIMINATION. Whether thats about segregation or not is neither here nor there.

In one example, a group of white people sought to deny black people access to spaces.

In the other example a group of people (i'm not even sure how to define it because it's not 'women' and it's lazy to say it is, even though i have been guilty of that) are seeking to deny transpeople access to spaces.

The segregation thing is not the important part.

I'm not arguing FOR segregation by gender, if the solution is to remove all segregation entirely then I'm cool with that also, if there is another solution then great. I don't care what the solution is. I am comparing two incidences of one group of people limiting the rights of another group of people.

 

[Olmstead]

No I am arguing to end DISCRIMINATION. Whether thats about segregation or not is neither here nor there.

In one example, a group of white people sought to deny black people access to spaces.

In the other example a group of people (i'm not even sure how to define it because it's not 'women' and it's lazy to say it is, even though i have been guilty of that) are seeking to deny transpeople access to spaces.

The segregation thing is not the important part.

I'm not arguing FOR segregation by gender, if the solution is to remove all segregation entirely then I'm cool with that also, if there is another solution then great. I don't care what the solution is. I am comparing two incidences of one group of people limiting the rights of another group of people.

Is your position that cis-men are also being discriminated against in this case?

 

[Emily's Cat]

No, it isn't. I don't know why we can't get past this. Your problem is with anti-discrimination legislation. It's important because muddying the waters doesn't help clarity.

No, my problem is NOT with anti-discrimination legislation.

Why don't you try actually listening to what I'm telling you my problem is? What makes you think you're in a position to somehow know better than me what my problem is?

Nope. Doesn't matter to me one bit and I don't think there is any evidence to support the idea that having a physician of the same sex leads to better medical outcomes. The only reason to ask for one is comfort levels - incidentally if a man asked for a woman physician to check his balls (personally i'd probably prefer it) would you be ok with that?

So... you don't care about it, therefore it isn't a big deal. For the record, this is the same dismissal that females have been hearing from males for thousands of years. If it's not important to males, then it just isn't important at all. The fact that it's important to females is irrelevant to males.

Then we can make it that self-id is not sufficient to get access to a women's prison or we can set X Y and Z criteria to allow access to women's prisons. Would that work for you?

It would work for me. No go convince the other transallies and activists to go along with it.

It is my view that transwomen can be a true and effective representation of the concerns, issues and desires of 'some' women.

Which "some"? Are any of those "some" natal women?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Then it's an incredibly unhelpful way to discuss the topic. If everyone else in the thread means 'round orange fruit' when they say banana and then wades in on the EU's bendy banana laws can you see where confusion may arise?

I don't care what the UK law on this specifically is. I care about how self-declaration of a person's internal identity is treated, and whether or not that person's internal view of themselves gets treated as a protected class that is more important than the protected class of sex.

Why do you keep assuming that your preferred view of what self-id means, determined outside of the context of four version of this thread, is more important and more correct than that being used by nearly everyone else?

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Because it's not just about transpeople! It's about MALE people. MALES. Transwomen are MALES. And self-declared transwomen with intact male genitalia are still MALES.

Shouting doesn't help. Even if this were true, which it isn't, your math is still wrong.

For example, a girl being sexually abused by her uncle, doctor, priest or whatever, as awful as it is, does not speak to the risk of a woman being sexually abused in a toilet. And it certainly does not speak to the increased risk of allowing transwomen to access female toilets (whether or not you insist on factoring in cismen or not).

You need to look at the actual situation and the actual maths if you want to have a genuine appreciation of risk.

If you are looking to find a justification to discriminate then broad brush data is great. If you actually want to make informed decisions, then not so much.

I'm already regretting writing this because i know it's not going to make a jot of difference, in fact, it'll probably make things worse, but what the hell.

 

[Paul2]

How have you determined that the white v black discrimination is irrational but anti-trans v transwomen discrimination is not?

I don't think I said that trans discrimination is rational or not.

I'm pretty sure that there would have been white people who were genuinely scared of black people, I'm pretty sure that they could have pointed to statistics on crime that would have shown black people are more criminal than white and I'm pretty sure that they could have pointed to many examples of horrendous black on white crime. They still do today.

My point is that the irrationality is not about statistics, it's about whether there is something essential - causal - in black people that make them criminals. There is not, so acting on that basis is irrational. That's what makes it unfair to segregate, claiming that it's just a matter of safety.

The problem is thinking that there is something about being black that predisposes one to crime, whereas, in reality, its due to other factors, even if there is a correlation. Being black may be correlated with lots of things, but the thing that makes discrimination irrational is that it assumes that being black is a *cause.*

There are *all* sorts of correlations one could find and use to discriminate. I just went to https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations and I see a great one: drowning by falling into a pool is correlated with Nick Cage films. We should *not* conclude that we should reduce Nick Cage films (at least, on that basis).

I can imagine, faintly, that there is a response to this position. But I'll throw it out here and I reserve the right to retract or modify it if necessary.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Is your position that cis-men are also being discriminated against in this case?

Here? No. I'm not sure how you got to that conclusion.

Ah actually, do you mean do I think cismen are being discriminated against by not being allowed to access women's spaces?

If so my answer is no, because there is nothing of any value being denied to cismen. Segregation does not always mean discrimination.

You can maybe argue that perverts are being discriminated against, but I think it's ok to discriminate against perverts.