Cont: Trans Women are not Women 4

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I reject LondonJohn's analogy wholesale. Sexual attraction is not a social construct based on a biological fact. What transsexuals are demanding is fundamentally different from what homosexuals demand.
 
theprestige said:
I reject LondonJohn's analogy wholesale. Sexual attraction is not a social construct based on a biological fact. What transsexuals are demanding is fundamentally different from what homosexuals demand.
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I'm waiting to see where he goes with it.

It doesn't seem very similar to me, either, but I'll let him provide whatever questions he wants and see how he gets to a therefore.
 
I think we should men named Albert who like tacos but not rap music and have had at least one surgery to repair joint damage should be allowed to enter women's spaces. There's no evidence that this subset of men follows the same patterns of violence toward women that men in general do, and we obviously can't make inferences from the general knowledge about the set of all men to this specific subset.
 
LondonJohn said:
There's an axiomatic paradox between

1) I do not deny your existence as a transgender person

and

2) I believe trans women are not women, and I do not believe that trans women should be treated within society as women.

(1), rephrased, tells us that the person accepts that transgender identity is a real, valid condition; but (2) tells us that the person does not accept that transgender identity is a real, valid condition.
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Bad logic.

First off, no one is saying (2) and you know it. At most, they are saying: “I do not believe that trans-women are women in the same sense as cis-women, but I believe they should be treated the same as women in most situations. Those situations where I do not think they should be treated as women are those where I believe that biological sex rather than gender is the reason for differential treatment”

Second, even with the false statement you provide for number two, it does not logically follow that they believe that transgender identity is a real valid condition. It would simply mean that that real and valid condition does not make them their target gender in all senses and circumstances.

No one has said that trans experiences are invalid. No one has dismissed their challenges and experiences as insignificant.

The biology related challenges of biological females, however, have been dismissed as unimportant. Watching my daughter grow up, however, I know that biology, particularly particularly the consequences of the female reproductive system, play an important part in the identity of biological women. It plays into their daily lives and the decisions they make. They bear the brunt of reproduction and birth control including societal pressures to reproduce. And, at the same time, societal pressure not to get pregnant. If they cant have kids, they are a failure. Ridicule for being a prude or for being a slut. Because of biology, their moods are characterized as PMSing, on their periods or post menstrual in order to dismiss them as only rational one week a month. (I knew one woman(!) on another message board who stated she would never vote for a woman president because they are emotionally unstable and might launch nukes due to PMS.)

And that’s just some of it. It’s stuff that you and I cannot fully understand because we cannot ever share that experience. So when you dismiss biology as unimportant, you are saying that the experience of biological women is invalid and denying their identity. I think there’s probably a word for that.

Now, most women, including the ones on this thread, are happy to treat trans-women the same as women in circumstances where biology doesn’t matter. But when you are removing the biological aspect from the identity set named “woman” you are removing something that’s rather large. And then you are telling them that it’s insignificant. You don’t even attempt to understand their experiences and how it shapes their identities.

I wouldn’t even say I’m on their “side” in this discussion. I’m on both sides. Or neither. But it would be good if you would actually listen. I’m not talking about parsing words to trap people into meaningless little logic traps that characterize them into or force them to defend positions they never held. That’s lazy. Try actually looking beyond the words and understanding the actual concepts.

To be fair, the above could apply equally to people on all sides. There is a HUGE area of common ground that should be a starting point, but is being ignored.
 
Well, thank you for your condescending contribution.

I think I understand very well the position of certain posters within this thread.

And by the way, I'm not in any way interested in scoring points, "winning", or any crap like that. I'm interested in contributing to the debate, learning from the debate, and trying to think/act critically.

And I think it's absolutely reasonable to expose hypocritical and contradictory opinions, especially when they're based upon irrational underlying factors.

(You might want to ask Emily's Cat, for example, why she claims on the one hand that self-ID is the only sticking point for her, but on the other hand she has a blanket refutation of the right of trans women who've had no surgery (ie with a penis) to (eg) use women's changing rooms - regardless of whether those trans women have been clinically assessed and diagnosed.....)
 
And as I've now pointed out more than several times, "biological females" would have been heavily involved in the real-world policies and directives in respect of transgender identity/rights and gender dysphoria.

Or are you perhaps denying the right of these biological females - intelligent and highly experienced biological females, who are among the world's experts in mental health and psychology/psychiatry - to be part of the opinion-forming process which concluded that gender dysphoria is a valid condition (and not a disorder or the product of one)?

And are you also denying the right of biological-female legislators in many of the world's liberal democracies - intelligent and experienced women, who will also have heeded expert opinion - to be part of the entities which enshrined transgender rights in law?

Or are you saying that the views of the biological females on an internet forum somehow trump the opinions of the many intelligent, experienced and well-informed women who (thankfully) took part in making the real-world decisions and changes?
 
theprestige said:
I reject LondonJohn's analogy wholesale. Sexual attraction is not a social construct based on a biological fact. What transsexuals are demanding is fundamentally different from what homosexuals demand.
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I don't know whether you're doing it deliberately or not.... but the point had nothing whatsoever to do with the conditions themselves: it was entirely to do with reactionary resistance to reforms, on the basis of a refutation of the validity of the conditions themselves.
 
Meadmaker said:
I'm waiting to see where he goes with it.

It doesn't seem very similar to me, either, but I'll let him provide whatever questions he wants and see how he gets to a therefore.
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May I refer the honourable member to the reply I gave some moments ago


(A little bit of UK parliamentary throwback there for the initiated few...)
 
TomB said:
If he did, it would not support allowing trans-women into sex-segregated spaces. It would support ending segregation of men from women.

What this whole argument comes down to is that most seem to agree that sex and gender segregation are both valid in various circumstances, but we can't agree which type of segregation is appropriate in each instance.
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And that's not the point being discussed.

The point being discussed is whether Group Y's 'discomfort' with Group X is a valid reason to exclude Group X from being in the presence of Group Y.

It is NOTHING to do with how that exclusion is achieved or how inclusion is achieved. It is the simple testing of an argument made in favour of excluding transwomen from female spaces.

P1. Women are uncomfortable with having transwomen in female spaces
P2. Discomfort alone is a valid reason to exclude someone from a space

C: Transwomen must be excluded from female spaces.

The specific point of discussion IN THIS SPECIFIC ANALOGY is whether P2 is true or not.

Now there might be a million and one other discussions to be had but we can't have any of them if we keep flying off to other topics everytime we try to get a specific on one of them.

Now can anyone tell me what a) what on earth Olmstead's objection has to do with P1 P2 or C above? and/or b) why they believe P2 is true and/or c) why P2 is true but only in the case of women excluding transwomen from female spaces
 
TomB said:
The analogy only really works if you look at two groups (trans-women and cis-women) in isolation. Then you can frame it as breaking down or removing the barrier of segregation. The argument for this is that the reason for the segregation is invalid and therefore the segregation should be abandoned.

But if you broaden the view two include cis-men (and trans-men, but we seem to ignore them) the nature of the analogy changes. It is no longer about removing segregation, but redefining the terms of the segregation. This sounds minor, but it is not. It completely changes the analysis criteria of the proposed change.

It is no longer about fairness. It accepts as a starting point that segregation is desirable and justified, but that the grouping criteria should change. (This is significantly different than arguing that the groupings should be eliminated.) To make such an argument, you have to explain why the reasoning or goals of the segregation are better met with the new criteria.

The analyses of the two situations are not the same.

What I've been reading is that the "anti-trans" side is willing to accept trans people into their spaces provided there is some mechanism that allows them to feel confident in excluding cis-men.

Arguments have been made that there are few trans-women who assault women in bathrooms/locker rooms or that there are currently few instances of cis-men taking advantage of the opportunity to do so.

My answer to that is simply this (gasp) analogy: I'm a programmer. I am aware that there is a vulnerability in my program that would allow a user to do something that I don't want them to. But so far no one has done so. Should I wait until the vulnerability is exploited to address the vulnerability, or should I be proactive and address it up front?

It seems to me that it's not trans people that Emily's Cat, for instance, really wants to keep out of her locker room. It's cis-men like myself...or people of questionable trans status or behavior like Jessica Yaniv. The admittedly few cases that have been cited don't illustrate widespread exploitation of a vulnerability, but they do demonstrate that the vulnerability exists.

Perhaps a better goal would be to address a system that both shifts the line of segregation where appropriate and prevents the exploitation of the vulnerability. Interestingly, LondonJohn and Emily's Cat are not far apart on this particular issue, though I've never seen LondonJohn acknowledge this.

There are more than two sides to this issue. It's too complicated to label someone as pro-trans or anti-trans and all of the insults and hate speak that goes along with it.
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No you have completely missed the point of the analogy which is to argue that 'discomfort with another group is not a valid way to decide whether the groups need to be segregated or not' It doesn't go beyond that.

There are two competing/simultaneous arguments that I can decipher here. One is that women are uncomfortable and therefore exclude transwomen
The second is that women are at risk and therefore exclude transwomen

The problem we are having in the discussion at points is that whenever we try to nail down one or the other of these arguments they get switched.

The analogy that was being made was to address and test the former of these two arguments.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
No you have completely missed the point of the analogy which is to argue that 'discomfort with another group is not a valid way to decide whether the groups need to be segregated or not' It doesn't go beyond that.

There are two competing/simultaneous arguments that I can decipher here. One is that women are uncomfortable and therefore exclude transwomen
The second is that women are at risk and therefore exclude transwomen

The problem we are having in the discussion at points is that whenever we try to nail down one or the other of these arguments they get switched.

The analogy that was being made was to address and test the former of these two arguments.
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Is it not possible for biological women to feel uncomfortable and also be at risk? Why are these experiences competing?
 
LondonJohn said:
I think it's time to reasonably draw the provisional conclusion that certain arguments within this thread are based predominantly upon an overarching fear and hatred of all males, when it comes to anything which might conceivably take things into a psychosexual area.

I don't think those arguments are really about transgender identity or the rights of trans people (especially trans women) at all. I think they're about males. All males.
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I mean, that's a big component of the TERF-based transphobia. That's only a small niche of the larger world of transphobia, but it's a unique one rooted in the strains of feminism that paint all men as the enemy, and transwomen as crypto men trying to infiltrate women's space for nefarious purposes.

The UK seems to be a TERF stronghold, where otherwise progressive and queer accepting people draw a hard line for transgender rights.
 
Darat said:
In English and Welsh equality legislation sex refers to both female and male, the law is "sex neutral".
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I often see it argued that having sex as a protected class is important and that gender wouldn't offer the same protections. But I am struggling to see why that should be the case, or think of specific examples of where the sex/gender distinction is vital. In any case I think that both sex and gender can sit alongside each other.

I feel like I may be missing something and would be interested to see a reasoning.

I'm struggling to see why a gender-based definition of the protected class would make any real difference. If it's a true biological difference then the people who don't have that biology aren't going to need that protection but it doesn't mean the people who do need it aren't going to have it.

If it's for example illegal to sack someone for getting pregnant then that protection applies to all the people who can get pregnant, it matters not a jot that a large number of ciswomen can't get pregnant so I don't see why it would matter if transwomen can't get pregnant and transmen maybe can.

I'm struggling to see the line of logic that goes 'if we accept transwomen as women then I'm going to lose my right to have an abortion/get paid equally/not be sacked for being a woman
 
Darat said:
No idea, but I do know I'm not an extremist in regards to this topic.
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The reason I ask is that there’s no bloody middle ground. There is no solution that will satisfy everyone. You trend to one side or the other. Calling people extremists is simply dismissive.
 
lionking said:
The reason I ask is that there’s no bloody middle ground. There is no solution that will satisfy everyone. You trend to one side or the other. Calling people extremists is simply dismissive.
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I tend to agree. There's some edge cases where there's room for minor quibbling, but the core issue, whether trans-identity is valid and should be recognized and protected by law, is largely a binary choice.
 
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