Cont: Trans Women are not Women 4

[Meadmaker]

And it's a racing certainty that prevailing reactionary attitudes to transgender identity (and to transvestism) are borne of blind, uncritical adherence to what society at large deems to be "normal" or "acceptable", coupled with constant reinforcement of these "normal" or "acceptable" traits in the media and other societal influencers. When you add that factor into the age-old "people who are not the same as me (and my friends & role models) are both wrong and abnormal" canard, it's a recipe for bigotry and dismissal.

When I read the above, I find it fairly easy to understand how it applies to people who say that being a transgender person is sinful, wrong, or perverted. In other words, if someone says that a trans-woman is a pervert, I can look to the above paragraph, and find an explanation as to why they are saying that. Their condemnation is born of blind, uncritical, adherence to societal norms.

However, I have a much harder time applying it to the question of who ought to be allowed in a locker room, or who should compete in a girls' track meet.

Maybe you can connect the dots for me.

 

[Aber]

It seems to me that there are still people within this thread who appear to believe that identifying as transgender is either a) something which is frequently done on a whim or according to "woke" fashionability,

Fashionability is a plausible argument for the change in the sex ratio of young people seeking treatment:

Further, in 2011 the gender split was roughly 50/50 between natal girls and boys. However, in 2019 the split had changed so that 76 per cent of referrals were natal females.

 

[LondonJohn]

Right. Especially with self-ID, there seems to be little agreement on how to define transgender folx by others (meaning external criteria). And I see some contradictions among Trans-activists on who is included.

There may be some contradictions around the edges, but the basic premise by which gender dysphoria and transgender identity is defined is pretty clear (and DSM had no trouble in codifying it satisfactorily).

In lay terms, it's someone who does not identify as the gender ascribed to them at birth (almost always, of course, assigned on the basis of biological sex). And yes, a good proportion of the diagnostic climate is based on environmental social and cultural factors - in other words, how the person's environment attaches certain expectations, behaviours and attitudes to the gender spectrum (ranging from alpha-man to man to beta-man to neutral, through to the same spectrum on the woman side).

I don't think it's 'evil', but I suggest males will do a lot to satisfy sexual (hetero or other) desires. I volunteer on an anonymous suicide prevention hotline - I find others are surprised when I tell them about the high frequency of male masturbating callers

Sadly, that wouldn't surprise me at all (and in fact it's a narrative theme in an episode of "Inside No 9").

But those masturbating males weren't "pretending" to be women in order to go about their business, were they? And it's ludicrously easy to preserve one's anonymity (and thus undetectability) across the distance of a phone call. Those two factors, in my opinion, mean that there are few or no points of comparison between those masturbating male callers and a cisman pretending to be a transwoman in order to enter woman-only facilities/spaces.

I linked here a couple of days ago to a short twitter thread written by a woman (female) who works at a women's refuge. Her experience was that those transwomen who used the services had always been genuine as opposed to nefarious imposters, and that none of the ciswomen using the shelter (nor any of the staff) had ever experienced anything akin to an improper abuse in terms of phoney self-identification etc.

And I'd certainly love to see more empirical or anecdotal evidence around exactly what problems might or might not ever have occurred along these lines in places like public baths changing rooms and women's refuges. After all, transgender identity and gender reassignment surgery have both been recognised/performed for decades now. Surely if hetero cis men had been attempting to use the Trojan Horse tactic of a bogus self-identification as a transwoman in order to do horrible things to (or in the presence of) ciswomen in those sorts of spaces, the media would have picked up on it many times by now. Wouldn't they?

 

[LondonJohn]

When I read the above, I find it fairly easy to understand how it applies to people who say that being a transgender person is sinful, wrong, or perverted. In other words, if someone says that a trans-woman is a pervert, I can look to the above paragraph, and find an explanation as to why they are saying that. Their condemnation is born of blind, uncritical, adherence to societal norms.

However, I have a much harder time applying it to the question of who ought to be allowed in a locker room,

Ciswomen and transwomen should be allowed into the women's changing room. And likewise for the men's changing rooms.

After all, it perhaps helps to look at this from another angle: should transwomen be made to use the men's changing rooms? Can you perhaps figure out the potential issues that might arise wrt the emotional wellbeing of the transwoman in that scenario? Or should transwomen be made to use the disabled changing rooms? Or should they be made to change in their cars? Or should they be forbidden from using any public facilities with gender-specific changing rooms?

or who should compete in a girls' track meet.

Below elite and sub-elite level: ciswomen and transwomen. At elite and sub-elite levels, my own opinion is that transwomen should be excluded from women's events, owing to the undeniable performance advantage that a large proportion of biological males hold over even top-decile-performance biological females.

I do of course recognise that the hard-core trans-activist view is somewhat militant on the blanket inclusion of transwomen in all levels of women's sports, and it's a view that's shared even among some moderate trans-activists. But there is simply no denying the step-change distorting effect it could very possibly (even probably) have on women's sports. And on top of that, I really don't think that it's a hill worth dying on for trans-activists of any flavour. I think that there's minimal to zero chance that the administrators of elite and sub-elite sports will ever permit transwomen to compete in women's events.

Maybe you can connect the dots for me.

All of this is a negotiation, and an ongoing negotiation. Furthermore, trans-activists should neither hope nor expect that full equality, tolerance and non-discrimination will happen quickly. If one looks at partially-comparable situations with black civil rights and gay rights, most legislatures and societies took 15-30 years to go from the start position (criminalisation, blanket discrimination, etc) through to what might be regarded as something close to truly equal rights. These things usually need something close to a generation for attitudes and mores to catch up. But catch up they eventually should - and shall.

 

[LondonJohn]

Fashionability is a plausible argument for the change in the sex ratio of young people seeking treatment:

What's your quote from?

And remember, there may be plenty of other factors underpinning that proportional shift. It could, for example, have been that males with undiagnosed/unrecognised gender dysphoria had become frightened by the way in which "out" transwomen had been treated, and had shied away from counselling and diagnosis as a result. Or it could have been that females with gender dysphoria felt more comfortable by 2019 with the idea of diagnosis and trans-identification than females in 2011 had felt. There are other viable factors too.

It would be interesting and informative, incidentally, to see some form of rolling-average data in a region such as the USA on the proportion of males vs females identifying as transgender: perhaps broken down by age group, state, and clinical diagnosis vs self-identification, over the past 20 years or so

 

[Emily's Cat]

The thread takes a long time to process new posts. So I hit Submit, and the spinny thing spins without end. Meanwhile, I go to another thread and post. Then *this* post gets rejected for being within 60 seconds of another post. Then I come back an hour later, realize this tab is still open, and hit Submit one more time.

Turns out, the original post had actually gone through.

Lol, yeah it was slow and spinny a lot yesterday. Not sure if it's just this thread getting too long, or if the software got infected by some 2020.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Sure. Perhaps that is the greatest obvious difference between our two positions on the matter. The trans exclusionist view is one that there is a zero-sum relationship between trans rights and women's rights, so increasing trans rights means harming women.

Trans women are women and will be counted as such, transmen vice versa. This is good.

Yeah... and in these cases, it LITERALLY is a zero sum game. Positions that are supposed to be held for females, so that females have an equal voice in representation (being a wee bit over half the population, mind) are LITERALLY being give to people who are not female.

In the NY case, it's even worse. The person who took that seat is non-binary, has had no diagnosis, no hormones, no transition at all. But that person likes to wear dresses and lipstick... so they view themselves as being "a woman". And as such, that person worked quietly behind the scenes to get the rules changed so that these positions are no longer required to be "one female per male", but currently read "two people who don't identify as the same gender, unless they both identify as non-binary". And this person has further stated that their goal is to eventually get the rules rewritten so that it's just "any two people" and there's no reference to sex or gender at all.

So... yeah. This quite literally removes female voices from representation and replaces them with male voices.

There's also that added little bit of salt rubbed in when this person - a person who somehow believes they can represent the views and needs of females - tells anyone who doesn't agree with them to "suck his girldick".

Because reducing one's opponent to nothing more than an object to be used as a sexual receptacle exhibits such a profoundly insightful understanding of women's issues.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Transwomen are men, though. You can't be a transwoman unless you're a man. It's a pre-requisite. I mean, could I be a transwoman if I wanted to? No, obviously, because I'm not a man. QED.

Can I just "identify" as a transwoman?

 

[Emily's Cat]

What about pregnant transmen? Are they counted as men, or as women?

They're counted as "uterus bearers" or as "offspring incubators" or "gestators" who will then go on to "chestfeed" the children that they "fathered".

The degree of Orwellian linguistics involved in this topic is staggering. And deeply dehumanizing.

 

[Emily's Cat]

If there is a quota for women representation, and the quota is only being met and not exceeded, then yes, as a matter of fact, it IS a zero-sum relationship to include transwomen under that quota. This is obvious.

I'm not sure that math is really considered by TRAs. They've already tossed language and biology out the window, so why not math as well?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Coming late to this thread via a nomination so apologies for butting in without reading the whole thing, but I just wanted to say that what bothers me about this whole thing is the stereotyping. A man likes wearing high heels and makeup, therefore he must really be a woman in the inside? No, he's a man who likes wearing high heels and makeup, and what's wrong with that. I'm a woman who has never worn high heels or makeup in her life, so what?

I have wondered whether Eddie Izzard is now being pressured to identify as a transwoman, or whether his comfort being a transvestite is considered transphobic...

I'd love to smash gender stereotypes altogether.

I look forward to a future when there is just one set of pronouns and no one knows or cares about gender. People will undoubtedly still divide everybody else into "people I find sexually attractive" and people I don't find sexually attractive", but no one except those involved will give a toss who's in anyone else's categories.

It would be very nice, and I hope that someday we can get there. At the moment, I'm not convinced that removing children's safeguards, allowing physically intact males into female-only spaces, and allowing male-born people to usurp representation for females is going to get us further down that road.

 

[Emily's Cat]

No idea how you get any of this from my post.

I'm going to guess sheer exhaustion from the topic, and a sprinkling of frustration.

My whole point is that people should be able to wear/do whatever they like, without being immediately labelled as a particular gender as a result of those choices. There would almost certainly be more variety in what people wear or buy, not less.

 

[Emily's Cat]

'We' as a society have decided that discrimination against people based on certain characteristics is bad. Race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation. Of course we also acknowledge that it might be necessary at times. But you don't just assume it's necessary without doing the work of showing it. I'm genuinely trying to understand why this would be worrisome or troubling to anyone.

I think the burden of proof is on those who want to deny things to others. In any case,we have already been through the process as a society of saying that it is not OK to discriminate willy-nilly.

Alright. Please explain how it's necessary and acceptable to discriminate against biological females? How is it necessary to reduce their representation in leadership positions and politics?

 

[qayak]

I have wondered whether Eddie Izzard is now being pressured to identify as a transwoman, or whether his comfort being a transvestite is considered transphobic...

What about that sweet transvestite from transexual Transylvania, where does he fit into all this?

 

[The Atheist]

What about that sweet transvestite from transexual Transylvania, where does he fit into all this?

On the bottom.

 

[theprestige]

What about that sweet transvestite from transexual Transylvania, where does he fit into all this?

What about pregnant transmen? Are they counted as men or as women?

 

[Emily's Cat]

I'm not aware of there generally being specific quotas for things but if they are then they would surely be proportional so if you increase the numerator by the number of transwomen hired you also increase the denominator by the number of transwomen in the population. So the impact should be a wash.

As always it seems, what is obvious to you about trans issues may not be the case.

Once again, you seem to be making rationalizes based on what you assume should be the case, rather than acknowledging what IS the case.

The quota for "women + transwomen" isn't increasing, because transgender people are an extremely small (but incredibly loud and surprisingly powerful) group of people. It changes the ration from being 49.5% male and 50.5% female to being 49.2% "men" and 50.8% "women".

What is happening, in actuality, is that male-born and male-raised people who identify as "women" are usurping seats that are supposed to allow females equal representation. The number of seats actually being filled by females is being reduced. Literally.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Rather than just continue the same back and forth, I'm curious about the issue of the Labour Party including trans women on their shortlist or other quota systems.

Is there any good data that this is actually a meaningful controversy among Labour Party members? One source claimed that 300 people resigned in protest to the trans-inclusive stance, of a party of some 500,000.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43962349

Inclusion of self-identifying trans women for these positions seems to be the official party line.

Yep, it's the official party line to replace female representation with representation for males who feel as if they're women.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The Post Office discriminated against me today by refusing to sell me a dozen sausages - should I nail a rat to the front door or just threaten to rape them with a barbed wire wrapped baseball bat do you think?

Spray paint "kill all Postmasters" across their wall, and post messages on social media decrying postal workers as not being humans, and thus deserving of rape, violence, and aggression aimed at them. That'll surely convince them that they should sell you sausages.

 

[Emily's Cat]

OK, I can see that's a genuine issue for people who like to compete athletically. Not something I care about at all, so I have no suggestion to make. Well, other than to hope that eventually everyone comes to share my opinion of such pointless competitiveness. I mean, what's wrong with just working to beat your own previous personal best for your own satisfaction? I've seen people devastated by coming second in something. Competitive sport, it seems to me, is just lots of misery for the many in return for an ego boost for the few.

I'm going to wax philosophical here for a moment.

Competition is an incredibly common element of the human psyche - of all mammals, actually, and probably most critters on the planet. Athletic competition is only one of many ways in which we compete. We compete in academics, in employment, in recognition through TLA and Pith nominations, We compete to gain influence and status. We compete to gain a mate or partner.

Many people don't feel a strong compulsion to be the single best, but pretty much everyone competes to be recognized as good, regardless of the topic in consideration. Many people have a "specialty", a topic or skill that they are very good at, and they frequently compare themselves to others. It's not always public, but it's still there.

For those people who have athletic skills, it is reasonable and natural that they want to excel and to be recognized for their accomplishments.

I am not good at athletics, and thus, for the most part I don't care about them. I don't compete, I don't care about winning. But I understand the drive to compete and to win, and I don't think that aspect of our animal nature is likely to go away, well, ever. At least not for several hundreds of thousands of years at least.