Cont: Trans Women are not Women 4

[The Atheist]

To me, this seems like another excellent reason for separate, non-gendered bathrooms - multi-gender people: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nati...dison-rose-vincent_n_5f81ab0dc5b6e6d033a308fa

 

[Emily's Cat]

YBut it also means that we are women just as much as cisgender women are, with some differences in biology. I am not a man who wants to be a woman, I am a woman as much as any other.

I've asked this before, as have many other people. It's a question that routinely gets dodged and ignored.

In what way are you a woman like any ciswoman? What do you share in common with ciswomen?

In particular... What do transwomen share in common with ciswomen, but do not share with either transmen or cismen?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Nothing has changed just because the cisgender girls have the ability to become pregnant. Putting someone with a penis and someone with a vagina in a room together doesn't automatically ensure they will have sex, like the parents seem to think. If a chaperone would make them feel better about things, fine. But it still sends a message to the trans girl that she is not to be trusted.

No more so than it would send a message that a male and a female teenager aren't to be trusted alone in a room together.

You seem to be looking at this only from the perspective of the transgirl, and inferring that all of the distrust is aimed at her. In reality, the distrust is toward the combination of penis and vagina alone together in a room.

Do you think it should be socially acceptable for overnight events to routinely place cisboys and cisgirls alone in the same room?

 

[Emily's Cat]

This is actually a perfect example of heterosexism right here. The assumption that males and females will be attracted to each other when that might not be the case, like due to homosexuality or transgenderism.

Actually, it a pretty reasonable interpretation of the statistics. There's around a 90% to 95% likelihood that any pair of randomly selected male and female teenagers will both be heterosexual.

You're essentially arguing that nobody should put their guard up when there's a guy standing around with a rifle slung over his shoulder in public... because he *might not* do anything bad.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Better to separate everyone then I guess, just to be fair.

Well... except that there's only one combination that can result in someone "accidentally getting full of baby". That is the combination that we guard against.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Clearly looking at things that simplistically doesn't work anymore. Unless you ignore and erase LGBTQ+ people. Gender and sexuality are far more complex than the biological assumptions you are starting with. Potential risk of pregnancy is just a nice way to sidestep the issue.

Yes, it works very, very well. It's worked very, very well for thousands of years. Risk of pregnancy is the risk that is being guarded against by separating teenage females and teenage males from one another in situations where there isn't going to be a decent amount of supervision.

 

[Emily's Cat]

And yet you enthusiastically endorse some of the most confining and oppressive elements of those gender roles, even to the point where you argue that not doing so is some sort of violation of "women's sex-based rights".

Which of those confining and oppressive elements do I enthusiastically endorse?

 

[Emily's Cat]

As a Robotics mentor, I'm more interested in whether the students can apply physics to the problem of throwing nerf balls into a target. When it comes to gender, sexuality, biology, I'm most concerned that the number of people who go to the competition is the same as the number that return.

On that note, I suppose that coming back with one extra is perhaps a wee bit less concerning than coming back with one too few.

 

[Emily's Cat]

If you remove the two main reasons for sex segregation (pregnancy of minors, and the full range of sexual misconduct (mostly by by males) ) what reasons for segregation are left?

None that I can think of, other than privacy regarding nudity. Even that could be overcome... but even that ultimately stems from the risk of pregnancy and sexual misconduct on the part of fickle teenagers who have a habit of not thinking things through.

 

[Emily's Cat]

And that's the thing, I have always viewed the purpose of the separation of the genders/sexes to be modesty and privacy concerns, not to prevent sex. And I agree with Chanakya that the view seems pretty regressive, since my parents weren't like that, and neither were any of my friends parents. And I wouldn't be that untrustworthy of my kids either to assume something is going to happen simply because they are with someone of a different sex or gender.

It really seems more like helicopter parenting to me.

Well hey, seeing as my sister, both of my half-sisters, my mother, one of my aunts, and about five of my cousins all got pregnant in high school, it's clearly nothing to worry about.

It's far more important for parents to make sure that someone else's child has their feelings affirmed than about the risk of their daughter coming home with a permanent addition to the family.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Not generally, for the majority anyway, and it's not really something we all agree on. There is some debate in the trans community on whether gender is binary or not. I personally agree with the view that gender is a spectrum (as well as sex and sexuality) and most of us find ourselves towards one end of the spectrum or another.

Then there are those who fall in between and for some of them their gender is fluid and can fluctuate. Like bisexuals who may find one gender more attractive at one point in their life and a different one at another.

My own gender is very much female and so my gender is not fluid, but there are people who can be fluid in their gender or gender expression, and that's perfectly valid.

Sex isn't a spectrum. Sex is binary.

Bisexuality isn't a gender, it's a sexual orientation. Someone who is bisexual isn't attracted to genders, they're attracted to sexes. A bisexual person might very well be less concerned with the combination of gender-signals and genitalia... But that's not the case with the vast majority of gays and lesbians. A lesbian might be initially attracted to a transwoman on the basis of the artificial signals that the transwoman is sending out with regard to her sex... but if that transwoman has male genitalia, that lesbian isn't going to be interested any further. Because sexual orientation is about sex, not gender.

 

[Emily's Cat]

That is a concern, of course, but honestly it's a trivial concern to address when the subject is hotel rooms.

I've shared plenty of hotel rooms with groups of mixed sex, and never seen anyone in their underwear, or less.

My spouse has shared hotel rooms with a variety of our very close female friends. That's never been a worry for me... but we're all grown up. Hell, I wouldn't have trusted myself to share a room with a male teenager when I was in high school... and I'm a pretty well behaved intelligent person. And being intelligent... I'm smart enough not to underestimate the effect of teenage hormones.

 

[Chanakya]

By that logic, the transwomen I know really are women.

That's interesting.

I'd have imagined the opposite to be the case. For one, the lifelong -- ages long? -- power imbalance that women suffer, is something most (M to F) trans people probably won't have experienced . Besides, one would expect them to more ...appreciative of appreciation, I guess?

But the above is only what I imagine (I haven't myself interacted with any trans folks IRL, that I know), and evidence, even anecdotal evidence, trumps no evidence. So, interesting to know.

 

[Chanakya]

Given the right upbringing, kids will do dumb things, because their brains are not fully formed. That's just reality.

I envy you your certainty about the nature of reality in the absence of objective evidence (in the context of our discussion about whether it is the norm that well brought up kids tend to behave responsibly when it comes to sex). Life can, arguably, be simpler with that attitude.

If you're lucky, it won't be your kids, but all you can do through good parenting is increase the odds.

While that is true, that same truth holds for a number of things that can also have significant impact, like doing hard drugs, falling in with wrong company, getting radicalized, falling under the influence of some cult, usw. I (continue to) wonder if you use the same approach (as you do when it comes to unprotected boy-girl sex) for those other issues as well -- e.g. by ensuring kids "in your watch" don't get alone-time that they may misuse to do drugs, don't get unchaperoned online time that they might misuse to get radicalized, etc.

Meanwhile, dragging it back on topic, if you throw young men and young women together into hotel rooms, you push the odds in the wrong direction.

So what happens if you throw a transgirl and girls into the same hotel room? Well, I have no idea, really, but I do know that things are different, and I do know that the possible outcomes that I truly care about are the exact same as if I threw a cis-boy into the same hotel room, because, biologically, they are exactly the same.

Beyond the risk of pregnancy, which is a real, though unlikely, possibility, there's just some absurdity in suggesting that somehow the regular girls in that room ought to all just act like this is all perfectly normal and pay no attention to the girl with the penis.

As far as the last, I'm with you. Having no direct RL interactions (that I know) with trans folks -- that is, they're a rarity -- I wouldn't be at all surprised if young girls gawped at a girl with a penis, or young boys at a boy without one.

But, I don't know, change? Just because I didn't see something growing up, doesn't necessarily mean today's kids also shouldn't, you know?

----

In any case, apparently trans folks are just 0.3%, or so a quick google check tells me. That's, like, a tiny percentage, compared to, say, gay* numbers. I suppose that makes the issue both easier to handle and, in some ways, more difficult.



*"Gay" is a lovely word, beautifully co-opted to refer to homosexuality and homosexuals. Wonder who thought that up? The trans folks should think up some similarly cool name for themselves! You know, work up a cool vibe. "Trans" is such a nuts-and-bolts, purely functional, rough-and-ready term.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I envy you your certainty about the nature of reality in the absence of objective evidence (in the context of our discussion about whether it is the norm that well brought up kids tend to behave responsibly when it comes to sex). Life can, arguably, be simpler with that attitude.

I would think that thousands and thousands of years of biology would count as objective evidence, but you do you.

While that is true, that same truth holds for a number of things that can also have significant impact, like doing hard drugs, falling in with wrong company, getting radicalized, falling under the influence of some cult, usw. I (continue to) wonder if you use the same approach (as you do when it comes to unprotected boy-girl sex) for those other issues as well -- e.g. by ensuring kids "in your watch" don't get alone-time that they may misuse to do drugs, don't get unchaperoned online time that they might misuse to get radicalized, etc.

I believe you've said that you don't have children, correct?

Yes, all of those things are risks, and part of the job of a parent (and of guardians like chaperones and teachers) is to limit the risk of those things occurring. Not every risk can be controlled, but nearly all of those can be managed and mitigated.

Part of the management strategy is, as you've mentioned, talking with your child and taking a role in their lives. Another mitigation strategy is not giving your kid complete agency over every aspect of their lives, and retaining some element of input with respect to who they hang out with, where they go, what time they are required to be home, etc. Keeping tabs on your kids is a pretty common approach. So if a kid starts hanging out with a crowd that seems to introduce an unacceptable risk, a good parent would likely intervene and try to keep their kid from socializing with them.

Keeping hormone-riddled teenagers separated in circumstances where pregnancy is a feasible outcome is simple risk mitigation. Blind faith that you've been a good enough parent that your kid would never do such a thing is a really good strategy for becoming a grandparent at a young age.

 

[LondonJohn]

Talk about charging off down a blind alley on the ludicrously hyper-specific issue of what to do with transgender adolescents on school trips where overnight stays in shared rooms are required.

Sheesh. Am I ever glad I drew back. And there are some lovely antediluvian attitudes being showcased again - to no surprise.

 

[Paul2]

Talk about charging off down a blind alley on the ludicrously hyper-specific issue of what to do with transgender adolescents on school trips where overnight stays in shared rooms are required.

Sheesh. Am I ever glad I drew back. And there are some lovely antediluvian attitudes being showcased again - to no surprise.

What exactly is the problem with the issue of school overnights such that it must not be discussed? What harm would discussing it bring? How is it a "blind alley?"

 

[LondonJohn]

What exactly is the problem with the issue of school overnights such that it must not be discussed? What harm would discussing it bring? How is it a "blind alley?"

Because it's an awfully long way away from (and only the most minuscule part of) any discussion about whether trans women are women......?

 

[Paul2]

Because it's an awfully long way away from (and only the most minuscule part of) any discussion about whether trans women are women......?

I don't see how it's a long way away. It's an issue about how teens, which include cis boys and girls, and trans boys and girls, might or should be treated. The fact that it is a specific situation - teens on a school overnight - makes it no less relevant. Unless you can explain its irrelevancy.

And what attitude was antediluvian?

 

[Meadmaker]

Because it's an awfully long way away from (and only the most minuscule part of) any discussion about whether trans women are women......?

You've got no argument, so you ignore the question and make up some justification why it doesn't matter.


Well I have news for you. You aren't eligible to be Vice President, so you may as well just answer the question.


Oh. It's hyper-specific. So is every other situation. Locker rooms in school? Hyper-specific. Bathrooms at Target? Hyperspecific. Prison cells? Hyperspecific. Olympic Games. Hyperspecific. All-District track meet?
Hyperspecific. Women in Engineering scholarship? Hyperspecific. Every individual situation is hyper-specific. So ignore them one at a time.

However, you are correct about one thing. The question of whether a teen transgirl ought to share a hotel room with one or more teen cis-girls while on a school trip has absolutely nothing to do with whether trans women are women, because regardless of what you call these people and regardless of what pronouns you use, the one with the penis can still stick it into the one with the vagina and a baby can still come out, and no language revision is going to change that.