Cont: Trans Women are not Women 4

[lionking]

Sport is the very epitome of pitting people with unfair biological advantages against each other. Sport has never been about a level playing field. It's about being able to create a spectacle. The issue of transwomen competing in sport is a largely social one not a biological one.



I don't necessarily disagree but 'people who couldn't make the grade in men's events turning up in women's events and winning' is what women's sport is. And people pay to watch it. So it's more a matter of perception than biology again.

Have you ever spoken to natal women who play sport? They do not oppose male bodied transwomen athletes out of prejudice but because of its unfairness and, with contact sports, risk of injury.

 

[Elaedith]

Bill C6 currently being pushed in Canada seeks to ban conversion therapy for under 18s, defined as ‘a practice that seeks to change an individual's sexual orientation to heterosexual, to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviours, or to change an individual's gender identity to match the sex they were assigned at birth’
This is similar to legislation already passed in other countries - a method used by activists to sneak legislation through without scrutiny by appending it to issues related to gay rights, which people already understand.

There is no such thing as conversion therapy for gender identity. The concept of ‘conversion therapy’ makes no sense for changing a belief or self-perception that has multiple possible causes and will change in most cases with development anyway. This type of legislation is used by activists to enforce the affirmation only model, where therapists fear being accused of conversion therapy if they do anything other than unconditionally confirm a child's belief about their sex. It is also used to gull people into making false parallels between sexual orientation and gender identity, which is highly effective at silencing opposition and scrutiny.

Dr Kenneth Zucker and Dr James Cantor were allowed to speak briefly as witnesses on a hearing of the Bill (Cantor by invitation of another group).

You can hear their statements starting around 12.36 on the following link:
https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20201201/-1/34420

Extracts from Dr Ken Zucker’s statement:

"I am a clinical and research psychologist. Since 1976 I have seen over 1600 children and adolescents who experience gender dysphoria. I was the chair of the Sexual & Gender Identity Disorders Work Group, art of the Taskforce for the 5th Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association. I have published over 300 peer reviewed articles and book chapters on this topic, so I feel I have the necessary background the address elements of BillC6.”

“Where I disagree quite strongly with BillC6 is its additional focus on gender identity in children and adolescents. Since California passed similar legislation in 2012, there has been an insidious conflation of sexual orientation & gender identity. Not only does the proposed legislation erroneously conflate two very distinct psychological phenomena, it also completely ignores developmental considerations”

“In my view, this is a serious mistake. Do politicians appreciate this conflation? The background scientific material provided to this committee by Phillips and Walker is completely silent with regard to what is known about best practice therapy for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria”

“In my view, BillC6 should be modified in 1 of 2 ways. Delete entirely any reference to gender identity and restrict it to sexual orientation, the original target of criticism of conversion therapy. Failing that, BillC6 should be extensively revised in terms of explaining the scope of what exactly it means to engage in exploration of gender identity or to its development. In other words, provide objective markers.”


Extracts from Dr Cantor’s statement and responses to questions:

"I hope today to support BillC6 except for the inclusion of gender identity, because the Bill treats it the same as sexual orientation.

As a clinical psychologist and research scientist, I've been providing therapy and publishing on the neuroscience of human sexuality for over 25 years now, including helping many transexuals to successfully transition. I've served as a Senior Scientist at CAMH, Editor in Chief of the Journal of Sexual Abuse, Associate Professor at University of Toronto and I am currently the Director of the Toronto Sexuality Centre.”

“I'm therefore here today to provide 3 perspectives. That of a scientist to point out that this legislation mistakes the content of the current science. That of a Mental Health care provider to note that this bill will have a chilling effect, inhibiting mine and others ability to act in my patient's best interest. That of a member of the GLBT community, to describe exactly how this is affecting my brothers and sisters."

“To say that we're exploring, or to say that a client is exploring their gender identity is to assert that there exists a concrete gender identity that we merely need to shut up and observe. There's no evidence of that for gender identity. We have evidence of that for sexual orientation, but we cannot treat gender identity as if it’s the same thing.”

But I think the most likely outcome is that some minor tweaking will be made to pretend that their concerns were addressed, although they were asked about this during questions and stated it would not be enough.

It is just possible that the tide is turning and sanity may prevail, as the Keira Bell case verdict came during the hearing.

 

[cullennz]

Sport is the very epitome of pitting people with unfair biological advantages against each other. Sport has never been about a level playing field. It's about being able to create a spectacle. The issue of transwomen competing in sport is a largely social one not a biological one.







.

Sorry. But totally wrong.

It is purely biological.

Your average elite female rugby player would probably end up in a wheel chair for life playing in a men's team in even NPC rugby, let alone super or international.

It is frankly silly to deny this

 

[elemental]

A raped woman asking for a female doctor is just as much about 'feels' as a trans woman doctor not wishing to be treated as a man in her job. A woman not wanting to wax a sack is just as much about 'feels' as a transwoman wanting her sack waxed.


At least be honest about that.

I might be misunderstanding the point here. But if I offer a waxing service I decide the services I offer. If I don't wax ball sacks I don't wax ball sacks. It's my choice to offer that service or not and has nothing to do with feels. If a transwoman demands I wax her balls to make her feel like a woman even if I don't wax balls, that is about her feels. Not mine. These aren't equal. I mean, how can they be? Why do I need to learn how to do balls if I don't offer servicing balls??

 

[The Atheist]

It is just possible that the tide is turning and sanity may prevail, as the Keira Bell case verdict came during the hearing.

You'd hope sanity prevails, but I wouldn't be holding my breath.

 

[Meadmaker]

I might be misunderstanding the point here. But if I offer a waxing service I decide the services I offer. If I don't wax ball sacks I don't wax ball sacks. It's my choice to offer that service or not and has nothing to do with feels. If a transwoman demands I wax her balls to make her feel like a woman even if I don't wax balls, that is about her feels. Not mine. These aren't equal. I mean, how can they be? Why do I need to learn how to do balls if I don't offer servicing balls??

But...but....but......BLACK PEOPLE!


What I mean by that is that some people will insist that a decision to not wax someone's scrotum, even after she informs you that she is a lady that just happens to have a scrotum, is really the same as saying you won't perform a Brazilian wax on a black woman.

 

[Ziggurat]

They may have a plausible claim for a "exceptional circumstances" exception.

The circumstances are not exceptional, they should not have to claim they are exceptional.

They may also be able to claim that the client in this case is asking for a service they are not providing to anyone, or that it requires expertise they don't have.

That's how Canada eventually ruled. But it is not comforting that this answer is a "may" and not a "definitely can" for the UK.

Also if they think the client is disruptive they may refuse the client on that basis.

Nope. The entire point of such legislation is that businesses can't just make this claim whenever they want. If Yanniv asks to get his lady balls waxed without being obviously disruptive, then this cannot successfully be used to refuse service.

 

[Ziggurat]

Sport is the very epitome of pitting people with unfair biological advantages against each other. Sport has never been about a level playing field. It's about being able to create a spectacle. The issue of transwomen competing in sport is a largely social one not a biological one.

If you really want to deconstruct the whole thing, well, sports is social to begin with, it's not natural. And separating men's and women's sports is also a social construct.

But that's not particularly insightful or helpful. We draw social distinctions along biological lines because it is often useful to do so. That is the case in sports. The separation of men's and women's sports serves a useful purpose. It is often framed interns of fairness, but that's not quite correct, or at least not complete. But fair or not, again, it is useful.

Allowing biological men to compete against biological women undermines that usefulness.

 

[cullennz]

But...but....but......BLACK PEOPLE!


What I mean by that is that some people will insist that a decision to not wax someone's scrotum, even after she informs you that she is a lady that just happens to have a scrotum, is really the same as saying you won't perform a Brazilian wax on a black woman.

I like this forum.

I really do. Have been reading it for years with Randi etc and then joined about 13 years ago, only really started posting in the past not that many years.

But if there is one thing that annoys me about it, it is posts like this.

I mean WTF?

A female doesn't want to handle some stranger dudes sack and they are being called/compared to racists?

I get the trans rights people can get a bit OTT, but there are limits.

It is getting a bit silly.

Let us turn it. Trans women refuse to go to mens toilets even though they usually have a willy and are biologically blokes, because they hate men, like Americans refused to share toilets with black people.

Trans people are secretly racist.

 

[Meadmaker]

I like this forum.

I really do. Have been reading it for years with Randi etc and then joined about 13 years ago, only really started posting in the past not that many years.

But if there is one thing that annoys me about it, it is posts like this.

I mean WTF?

A female doesn't want to handle some stranger dudes sack and they are being called/compared to racists?

I get the trans rights people can get a bit OTT, but there are limits.

It is getting a bit silly.

Let us turn it. Trans women refuse to go to mens toilets even though they usually have a willy and are biologically blokes, because they hate men, like Americans refused to share toilets with black people.

Trans people are secretly racist.

You did get that I was making fun of that attitude, right? I think the comparison is ridiculous, but it's made all the time.

I suppose it's a Poe's Law case. I was posting a parody, but it was indistinguishable from the actual attitudes expressed.

 

[d4m10n]

I was posting a parody, but it was indistinguishable from the actual attitudes expressed.

The comparison is nevertheless instructive; dark-skinned people and light-skinned people aren't different enough to justify separate treatment, whereas people with vulvae are indeed different from those with scrota.



Sent from my SM-T560NU using Tapatalk

 

[theprestige]

It's not really a hard question and you've answered it yourself. No, biological males have no business in women's sports. We segregate sports by sex for a reason.

The problem is that it's impossible to express this reason without the Yanivs of the world reframing it as a human rights violation and/or a semantic conundrum that can only be resolved by dissolving the concept of binary sex altogether.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

has nothing to do with feels.

what does it have to do with then?

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

The circumstances are not exceptional, they should not have to claim they are exceptional.

If the circumstances aren't exceptional what grounds do they have for discrimination?

That's how Canada eventually ruled. But it is not comforting that this answer is a "may" and not a "definitely can" for the UK.

It's comforting for me that the UK requires a reason for discriminating over and above 'I want to'

Nope. The entire point of such legislation is that businesses can't just make this claim whenever they want. If Yanniv asks to get his lady balls waxed without being obviously disruptive, then this cannot successfully be used to refuse service.

That's what the part you quoted said. if a person is being disruptive you can kick them out, if not then you need a reason to deny them service over and above 'i don't want to'.

Judging by the Canada judgement there MAY well be an argument that waxing male and female genitals are different products. That seems to be a technical argument. But also bear in mind that Yanniv was refused waxing services for arms and legs also and I think it would be a push to argue that waxing trans legs is a different product from cis legs.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

If you really want to deconstruct the whole thing, well, sports is social to begin with, it's not natural. And separating men's and women's sports is also a social construct.

But that's not particularly insightful or helpful. We draw social distinctions along biological lines because it is often useful to do so. That is the case in sports. The separation of men's and women's sports serves a useful purpose. It is often framed interns of fairness, but that's not quite correct, or at least not complete. But fair or not, again, it is useful.

It has been useful yes. And largely practical. We are now seeing one area where there is an issue. That being the case, we should acknowledge that the way we have done things so far has been merely a useful construct rather than some sacrosanct application of biology, logic and rationality.

Professional sport is a commercial enterprise like any other and like any other it needs to abide by the laws of the land in which it operates - including anti-discrimination laws.

As such, it is up to professional sport to either accommodate transwomen into women's sport OR to justify why excluding them is necessary. Anti-discrimination law allows for these special cases. I'm not sure if 'people don't want to watch transwomen compete with ciswomen' would be upheld as an exceptional circumstance in a court - they are welcome to give it a go and see what a judge says.

Allowing biological men to compete against biological women undermines that usefulness.

In your opinion. I think it's fairly trivial to show that it is at least not always the case.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

You did get that I was making fun of that attitude, right? I think the comparison is ridiculous, but it's made all the time.

I suppose it's a Poe's Law case. I was posting a parody, but it was indistinguishable from the actual attitudes expressed.

It seems that people are unhappy with discrimination laws being explained with parallels to examples of discrimination laws. Because penises and testicles?!? It's just weird.

These cases seem much more analogous to the 'gay cakes' episode. If you offer a service then you have to offer that service to everyone and you can't discriminate against people. And it doesn't matter if that's because of race, sexual orientation or the presence of a scrotum. No matter how much you insist that testicles mean discrimination should be OK.

Don't like it? Provide a good reason why you should be exempt or don't go into business offering that service to the public. 'I don't want to' isn't a sufficient reason. We don't live in that libertarian dystopia that some of you guys seem to want to.

 

[Meadmaker]

It seems that people are unhappy with discrimination laws being explained with parallels to examples of discrimination laws. Because penises and testicles?!? It's just weird.

These cases seem much more analogous to the 'gay cakes' episode. If you offer a service then you have to offer that service to everyone and you can't discriminate against people. And it doesn't matter if that's because of race, sexual orientation or the presence of a scrotum. No matter how much you insist that testicles mean discrimination should be OK.

Don't like it? Provide a good reason why you should be exempt or don't go into business offering that service to the public. 'I don't want to' isn't a sufficient reason. We don't live in that libertarian dystopia that some of you guys seem to want to.

You are aware that the cake dude won the case in the Supreme Court, yes? So, apparently it does matter. At the time, it was a partial victory. They didn't explicitly rule that he had a right to discriminate, they dodged it with a ruling that gave him that right, but without affirming that right explicitly.

That was with Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court. With Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett taking their places, there is little doubt what the result will be when it comes back, as it appears it will. More lawsuits have been filed in federal court. It will take a while for those to work their way up.

Of course that is about US law. UK law may be different.

 

[Earthborn]

The circumstances are not exceptional, they should not have to claim they are exceptional.

I think a service in which one is expected to touch someone else's genitals is more exceptional than one where a client choses a private stall.

But it is not comforting that this answer is a "may" and not a "definitely can" for the UK.

I wrote "may" because it depends what services a person provided and what expertise they claim to have.

The entire point of such legislation is that businesses can't just make this claim whenever they want.

Not whenever they want, no.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

You are aware that the cake dude won the case in the Supreme Court, yes? So, apparently it does matter. At the time, it was a partial victory. They didn't explicitly rule that he had a right to discriminate, they dodged it with a ruling that gave him that right, but without affirming that right explicitly.

That was with Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court. With Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett taking their places, there is little doubt what the result will be when it comes back, as it appears it will. More lawsuits have been filed in federal court. It will take a while for those to work their way up.

Of course that is about US law. UK law may be different.

And the point is that you have to establish your 'exceptional circumstance'. In UK law I think the equivalent 'gay cake' case found that you can't force someone to promote a message they fundamentally disagree with. So you can't force someone to give you a cake with a message on it, but that doesn't mean you can refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple necessarily. Presumably it would be equally lawful for a racist to refuse to ice a cake with 'black people are not inferior to white' so of course being lawful is not the same as morally right.

With the waxing case my sense is that you can probably establish an exception for waxing particular genitalia but it's not going to be possible to establish an exception to trans people completely. So if a transwoman wants her legs waxed you probably have no grounds to refuse. Now I personally am not sure if I agree with that exception but I also don't know enough about waxing to dismiss it out of hand either.

 

[Ziggurat]

It has been useful yes. And largely practical. We are now seeing one area where there is an issue. That being the case, we should acknowledge that the way we have done things so far has been merely a useful construct rather than some sacrosanct application of biology, logic and rationality.

There are lots of things we should acknowledge but do not. For example, women cannot actually become men and men cannot actually become women. That's verboten, even though it is just an application of biology, logic, and rationality (qualities which do not require the adjective "sacrosanct").

Professional sport is a commercial enterprise like any other and like any other it needs to abide by the laws of the land in which it operates - including anti-discrimination laws.

Since one of the issues under debate is what those laws should be, this statement is not useful, even though it's obviously true.

As such, it is up to professional sport to either accommodate transwomen into women's sport OR to justify why excluding them is necessary.

They should not have to justify it as necessary. It should suffice to justify it as sufficiently useful.

In your opinion. I think it's fairly trivial to show that it is at least not always the case.

It is often not worth trying to accommodate exceptions to the general case.