Cont: Trans Women are not Women 4

[d4m10n]

And there are some lovely antediluvian attitudes being showcased again - to no surprise.

Curious to know how postdiluvian attitudes play out in practice: Would you be okay with having the cis boys and cis girls bunking together on academic field trips? If not, why not?

 

[Ziggurat]

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.

I'm afraid you're wrong. Language revision means that what comes out isn't a baby, it's just a clump of cells.

 

[LondonJohn]

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.

Wow!

And you're totally correct of course - I don't have an argument. No siree! I suspect you'll probably find out in due course just how lacking in argument I am


(BTW the "trans girl" adolescent in the tale of the robotics club awayday wasn't trans at all. He was a boy. One cannot simply declare to be of the opposite gender - especially at that age.)

 

[LondonJohn]

Curious to know how postdiluvian attitudes play out in practice: Would you be okay with having the cis boys and cis girls bunking together on academic field trips? If not, why not?

No, no I wouldn't. Same reason as yours.

And any properly diagnosed transgender adolescent should have their own room.

End of story. Not too difficult now, was it?

 

[LondonJohn]

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.

I'm referring to just how long that one issue had been being discussed (and, incidentally, how it had morphed into a discussion about separating male and female adolescents to lower the risk of pregnancy...).

I didn't say the matter was irrelevant.

And what attitude was antediluvian?

Not yours.

But every time I read any of this thread (which is rarely, these days), I simply cannot help but map certain positions here across to, for example, the "debate" about homosexuality in the 1960s/70s. I write "debate" in inverted commas because there - as here - there is no actual debate about the legitimacy of homosexuality (unless one is a nutcase extremist religion-freak, of course). And there's no debate (now) about the legitimacy of gender dysphoria: the only thing which needs to be addressed and debated is how - and to what extent - transgender rights should be enacted/enforced and protected. But when I see (just for example) people writing things like "a man who wants to be a woman".......

 

[theprestige]

"Properly diagnosed."

Diagnosed with what? A sickness that has requires treatment? And the treatment is a private room? It seems like you're bouncing from desperate premise to desperate premise, trying to to stay on the right side of of your illogical position.

 

[LondonJohn]

"Properly diagnosed."

Diagnosed with what? A sickness that has requires treatment? And the treatment is a private room? It seems like you're bouncing from desperate premise to desperate premise, trying to to stay on the right side of of your illogical position.

You really aren't aware of the process of clinical assessment and diagnosis of gender dysphoria?

"From desperate premise to desperate premise" LOL

I won't even begin to ask why you believe my position to be illogical.


And it's just this type of collegiate debate which has so enamoured me of this thread. No, wait, "enamoured of" is not the right set of words, is it? See ya!

 

[Meadmaker]

(BTW the "trans girl" adolescent in the tale of the robotics club awayday wasn't trans at all. He was a boy. One cannot simply declare to be of the opposite gender - especially at that age.)

<Sigh> I know I said "At the beginning of the school year, a boy they knew announced he was really a girl, and she wanted to join the team. The trans-girl had undergone no chemical or surgical alteration at this time, and expressed that she actually never intended to do so."

She didn't just announce it to the Robotics team. She announced it to the team, and her parents, and her psychogist, and the whole world, and started living as a girl, which is why she wanted to join an all girls team. She was every bit as much of a transgirl as any other non-operative, non-transitioning transgirl.


Aside: I noted that this was a "community team", as opposed to one affiliated with a school. The significance of that was that they were neither bound nor guided by a school or governmental policy. The choice was up to the team organizers, not to any school.

 

[Meadmaker]

No, no I wouldn't. Same reason as yours.

And any properly diagnosed transgender adolescent should have their own room.

End of story. Not too difficult now, was it?

Excellent. Thanks for the answer.


As I'm sure you have guessed, I agree with you. (I don't know if I specifically said it already, but my position wasn't too hard to guess, whether or not I had already said it.) However, if you have read the thread, you will be aware that not everyone agrees with you. Boudicca90 did not agree, and quite a few people on the Robotics forum didn't agree. That would be discrimination, and we can't have that, so they said.

 

[d4m10n]

End of story. Not too difficult now, was it?

That depends on whether one espouses "trans women are women" as a moral heuristic in difficult situations such as this.

 

[Boudicca90]

Wow!

And you're totally correct of course - I don't have an argument. No siree! I suspect you'll probably find out in due course just how lacking in argument I am


(BTW the "trans girl" adolescent in the tale of the robotics club awayday wasn't trans at all. He was a boy. One cannot simply declare to be of the opposite gender - especially at that age.)

No, no I wouldn't. Same reason as yours.

And any properly diagnosed transgender adolescent should have their own room.

End of story. Not too difficult now, was it?

Based on what Meadmaker said, she is a trans girl, not a boy trying to game the system. And someone that age can absolutely declare themselves to be trans, I knew when I was younger than her, and I didn't even know what transgenderism was back then. Also therapists and doctors aren't the sole arbiters of whether someone is transgender or not. She doesn't need approval to feel that her gender doesn't match her body.

As a girl, she belongs with the other girls. I'm against any segregation of us from other women. End of story.

 

[Ziggurat]

Also therapists and doctors aren't the sole arbiters of whether someone is transgender or not.

I'm not sure who the arbiters are, sole or otherwise. I mean, you're an arbiter, you've denied that someone claiming to be transgender was actually transgender. But who else gets to make that call? And on what basis? That's the part I'm still looking for an answer to, and nobody, including you, is willing to actually venture one.

 

[Meadmaker]

I'm not sure who the arbiters are, sole or otherwise. I mean, you're an arbiter, you've denied that someone claiming to be transgender was actually transgender. But who else gets to make that call? And on what basis? That's the part I'm still looking for an answer to, and nobody, including you, is willing to actually venture one.

Did Boudicca90 say that? I think LondonJohn said that, and even when he said it, I think it was based on a mistaken assumption.

 

[Chanakya]

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.

Wait wait wait. You guys aren't part of the anti-abortion crew, are you? Because that would explain the hilighted, above, and your subsequent post addressed to me, as well as answer the question I'd asked Meadmaker but which he didn't answer.

Why on earth would a pregnancy have to be any more "permanent" than a drug addiction, or a radicalization by religious/political weirdos, or affiliation into a cult, or falling in with a dangerous violent crowd? I'm not saying treat pregnancy casually, but to single that one risk out for heavy handed policing seems blatant, and unexplained (perhaps unexamined?) special pleading.

Yoy won't trust a young penis together with a young vagina, right? (Pardon my could-be-seen-as-vulgar usage there, I didn't want to say 'boy' and 'girl', not in this thread, for obvious reasons. Not really properly familiar with what the exactly correct terminology might be.) Would you, then, be similarly disapproving of, say, allowing a kid alone time, without having subjected them to a body search first, so that they may not, in that trip, end up using drugs, and return home an addict? And I don't see why the issue of addiction should be any more permanent or any more temporary or necessarily any more or less concerning than that of pregnancy.



Anyway, I agree, this line of discussion is a clear derail, that I won't further fuel, not in this thread. It does seem making a mountain of a molehill of an issue, but I'm afraid I simply didn't see your view on this, or Meadmaker's, as consistent or reasonable. Unless, like I said, abortion's off the table: I can see how then, with that premise, this view is entirely reasonable.

 

[Meadmaker]

Anyway, I agree, this line of discussion is a clear derail,.

So, I'm not going to go further with it.

I will say that I support the availability of legal abortions, and I would be willing to make a large bet and give you odds that Emily's Cat does, too. That's just a hunch on my part, but it's a very, very, strong hunch.

 

[Boudicca90]

Did Boudicca90 say that? I think LondonJohn said that, and even when he said it, I think it was based on a mistaken assumption.

I said it, and I don't think I was quoting anybody.

I was just trying to make the point that gatekeepers may be necessary for some things like hormones and surgery, but not to validate anybody's identities. So as long as the girl thinks of herself as female and lives as such, she is a girl. She doesn't need to prove herself by being validated by a "professional" who more than likely has little actual experience with, or knowledge about, transpeople.

And Ziggurat: Stop trying to make Zuby happen. He tried to use our own identities and terminology against us, and it worked with conservatives like you. Which was the point.

 

[Ziggurat]

Did Boudicca90 say that? I think LondonJohn said that, and even when he said it, I think it was based on a mistaken assumption.

Boudicca90 said that. It was some pages ago now, but I never got an answer.

 

[Ziggurat]

I said it, and I don't think I was quoting anybody.

I was just trying to make the point that gatekeepers may be necessary for some things like hormones and surgery, but not to validate anybody's identities. So as long as the girl thinks of herself as female and lives as such, she is a girl. She doesn't need to prove herself by being validated by a "professional" who more than likely has little actual experience with, or knowledge about, transpeople.

And Ziggurat: Stop trying to make Zuby happen. He tried to use our own identities and terminology against us, and it worked with conservatives like you. Which was the point.

You contradict yourself. You are gatekeeping Zuby, and rightly so. But that just points out how nonsensical your stated position is. You don't actually believe what you say.

 

[Chanakya]

So, I'm not going to go further with it.

That's cause and effect reversed!

I found people here saying -- arguably not entirely wrongly -- that a very detailed discussion around that trip is a derail. I also found you resolutely not answering the questions I'd raised, from which I inferred that you were unwilling to go further down this derail. Which explicit statement (others') and implicit opinion (yours, as I inferred) I was "agreeing" with there, in saying I was probably derailing the thread.

Which long winded explanation is probably making a mountain of an even tinier molehill, but the point of my saying this is, while I'm only casually interested in this question and am fine with your choosing not to address it, I wouldn't want you to refrain from addressing it on account of what you seem to see as my being uninterested in the potential derail. The only reason I'd asked was because I was curious about the answer, if only casually, not to make some rhetorical point.

I will say that I support the availability of legal abortions, and I would be willing to make a large bet and give you odds that Emily's Cat does, too. That's just a hunch on my part, but it's a very, very, strong hunch.

I'll take your word for it. As far as you yourself, certainly, obviously; and as far as Emily's Cat as well, unless she corrects us on this.

But that leaves unaddressed the inconsistency, the apparently unreasonable special pleading that I'd highlighed. But like I said, no big deal if you don't wish to take this further.

 

[Rolfe]

Some pages ago we were talking about "reading" someone as male or female. I had an interesting reminder of that yesterday.

I was watching the nightly free opera stream from the Met, and last night's was the modern production of Parsifal I missed when they showed it at Easter so I was looking forward to it. (I'm not sure it really did it for me in the end but it was interesting.) The opening tableau during the prelude showed the male chorus lined up on stage as the Knights of the Grail, and separated from the men by a narrow stream there was a group of women. The men were wearing standard business suits and the women classic "little black dresses" with black tights and high heels.

During the prelude the men removed their jackets, then their shoes, then divested themselves of watches, mobile phones, iPads and similar electronic gadgets, and these were taken away (I didn't quite see how) leaving them in white shirts, black trousers and bare feet. As the camera passed along the line of men, my brain instantly said "that's a woman!", and then a second or two later, "and another one!" The separation of the sexes was so clear-cut my brain clocked these individuals as out of place, and I scrutinised the set-up more closely. No, indeed the women were a separate group to the left of the stream and the group in the shirts and trousers were the men. I thought, could I have been mistaken? But I knew I wasn't.

Then as the opera began I realised the answer. I'd forgotten that two of the six small solo roles for squires and knights of the Grail are written for female voices - just to signify the youth of the squires, and give variety to the ensemble. With most productions this isn't something you'd think much about, but in this one with the clear separation, with the women physically separated on-stage, it was a bit of an issue.

The costume and make-up departments had done their best. These two singers didn't have feminine figures (they might even have been wearing binders), they had the same shirts and trousers as the men, the same short hair, and their acting of masculine mannerisms was beyond criticism. But even as the camera passed quickly by them, before anyone had sung a note, my brain clocked them as female.

Personally if I'd been casting this I'd have looked into the possibility of casting actual males in these roles for this one, either boys or counter-tenors. The human brain is really quite good at correctly sexing people.