Cont: Trans Women are not Women 4

[TurkeysGhost]

For time out of mind, females have been told that their concerns, their needs, their dignity, and their safety is "no big deal", and that we're overreacting and getting hysterical about nothing important. Not because it isn't important - but because it's not important to males.

A bigger problem that the TERFs are having is that their concerns are increasingly not that important to other women. As much as you try to paint this as some dastardly plot by males to invade female spaces, plenty of cis-women resent this white-knighting by their bigoted sisters.

When the TERFs finally get shown the door, there will be plenty of cis-women slamming it shut behind them. Feminist women have always been the tip of the spear in opposing the TERFs.

 

[Emily's Cat]

A little wrinkle you may have missed; the Tory party is of course the one that has had 2 female leaders, and the Labour party while having women only shortlists for MPs has not yet had a female leader.

I confess that I haven't kept close tabs on all of the party seats in the UK But I've heard a similar notion from other British and Scottish women, that the conservative party is now far more pro-woman than the liberal side is.

 

[Emily's Cat]

IIRC E’s Cat *is* fine with transwomen in her space if they are making at least *some* attempt at “passing” as female. The idea is that if they’re putting in at least some effort, they’re generally far less likely to be an opportunistic predator.

The trans”women” EC was concerned about were the ordinary bearded “cis men” who were making zero changes but simply self-identifying as a woman and demanding that natal females accept that solely on the “transwoman”’s say-so. Incidentally, Boudicca actually agreed that someone of that description shouldn’t be using a ladies room, but when EC continued to the crux of the matter — namely, if we agree they shouldn’t be there, as long as they “identify as” a woman on what grounds do we exclude them? — Boudicca had no answer. Just right back to self-identifying being all that’s necessary and that transwomen are entitled to every last bit of private spaces that natal females set aside for themselves.

For the most part, yes. There are a few areas where I'm less willing to share, particularly prisons. I think it's downright reckless endangerment to put people with penises into a female prison, no matter how sincerely they identify as women, and no matter how effectively passing they are.

 

[Paul2]

Of course if they are not producing gamete's they have no biological sex and people find the idea that at menopause women stop being biologically female while accurate somewhat questionable and distasteful. Tying sex to fertility is rather a non starter for most people when taken seriously.

Please. You can't imagine that you can modify the definition of biological sex to account for the fact that an organism might or will stop producing gametes? That the fact that organisms stop producing gametes at some point is some type of logical defeater? Especially since an organism stops producing gametes doesn't mean that they could have produced the other type of gamete at some point.

Also, please don't bring up the tiny proportion of organisms that never produce any gametes at all until you imagine what a rejoinder, similar to the one I've offered above, might be.

 

[GlennB]

I confess that I haven't kept close tabs on all of the party seats in the UK But I've heard a similar notion from other British and Scottish women, that the conservative party is now far more pro-woman than the liberal side is.

As a matter of interest, this is the current breakdown in the UK, with total vs. women MPs, showing that the Labour party has a far higher %age of women MPs than the Cons


Con 365 87
Lab 202 104
SNP 49 16
Lib 11 7

 

[Ron Obvious]

Boudicca, I know it hurts your fragile heart to hear it, but you ARE biologically male. There isn't any gray area in this one at all, not in actual reality. You can no more change your biological sex than you can change the hair follicles created by your scalp, or change the color of your irises, or change your foot size. It's a part of you - your body IS you, and you are your body. Your brain is a part (an important one, definitely) of your body. But the things your brain thinks about your body don't actually change your body.

The sad thing about the unscientific times we're living through in is that while, what you've said is obviously and self-evidently true, you could nevertheless be up for hatespeech for it or be sacked for saying it.

Think of that when you look back through history and wonder why people got sucked into e.g. McCarthyism or the Satanic panic of the 1980's. We're living through a similar moral panic today brought to you by the oh, so liberal Woke anti-bigotry people. After all, if you disagree with them, you must a bigot, right?

 

[Emily's Cat]

That article has some good things in it, but fundamentally is using a straw man definition of biological sex. When you define biological sex as the type of gamete the organism produces - fewer and bigger, versus more and smaller - things are nearly completely binary, and is and has been extremely useful and even crucial for biology. I'm not a biologist, but Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True is one, and that's where I read about this.

Not "nearly completely". They ARE completely binary. There is no third gamete, there are only two. There are vanishingly rare cases where an intersex condition or chimerism could result in both types of gametes being present, but it is still not a spectrum in any way.

Binary number systems are just that - binary. Sure, it's possible for someone using and old-school analog typewriter to end up tying a 0 and a 1 in the same spot. And it's entirely possible for a 1 and a 0 to get interchanged or mis-copied, even digitally. But at no point is it possible for a 2 to show up in binary code. Same thing applies to gametes. All mammals (and most other species on the planet) have binary sexual reproduction.

 

[Ziggurat]

I confess that I haven't kept close tabs on all of the party seats in the UK But I've heard a similar notion from other British and Scottish women, that the conservative party is now far more pro-woman than the liberal side is.

This kind of thing can also easily snowball into a preference cascade. If more women switch over to the conservative party, it is likely to become even more receptive to their opinions.

 

[Emily's Cat]

A bigger problem that the TERFs are having is that their concerns are increasingly not that important to other women. As much as you try to paint this as some dastardly plot by males to invade female spaces, plenty of cis-women resent this white-knighting by their bigoted sisters.

When the TERFs finally get shown the door, there will be plenty of cis-women slamming it shut behind them. Feminist women have always been the tip of the spear in opposing the TERFs.

Wow. You cut out the entire meat of my post so that you could trot out dogmatic rhetoric instead.

Do you really have nothing at all to say about the points I made? Have you decided, in your entirely male view, that females no longer care about equality? And you've just assumed that a whole lot of ciswomen don't care about political representation and equal access to opportunities and social liberty?

Is it really your view that males are fully capable of deciding what's best for females?

 

[Emily's Cat]

As a matter of interest, this is the current breakdown in the UK, with total vs. women MPs, showing that the Labour party has a far higher %age of women MPs than the Cons


Con 365 87
Lab 202 104
SNP 49 16
Lib 11 7

Thanks

For clarity, how many of those 104 are natal females?

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Wow. You cut out the entire meat of my post so that you could trot out dogmatic rhetoric instead.

Do you really have nothing at all to say about the points I made? Have you decided, in your entirely male view, that females no longer care about equality? And you've just assumed that a whole lot of ciswomen don't care about political representation and equal access to opportunities and social liberty?

Is it really your view that males are fully capable of deciding what's best for females?

I am of the opinion that women can decide for themselves, and many have decided that trans inclusiveness is not a threat to their own rights.

It seems women are deciding more and more that TERFs don't speak for them. They don't see trans inclusion as giving up on equality.

How do you explain the failure of TERFs to convince sufficient numbers of their fellow women to adopt their ideology? Why is it that TERF viewpoints are more popular with men than they are with women?

 

[Ziggurat]

Is it really your view that males are fully capable of deciding what's best for females?

Don't take it personally. He may think he's capable of deciding what's best for everyone.

 

[GlennB]

Thanks

For clarity, how many of those 104 are natal females?

'

Google doesn't find any trans MPs, though Lily Madigan has aspirations: Meet the woman who wants to be Labour's first transgender MP

 

[Paul2]

Not "nearly completely". They ARE completely binary. There is no third gamete, there are only two. There are vanishingly rare cases where an intersex condition or chimerism could result in both types of gametes being present, but it is still not a spectrum in any way.

Binary number systems are just that - binary. Sure, it's possible for someone using and old-school analog typewriter to end up tying a 0 and a 1 in the same spot. And it's entirely possible for a 1 and a 0 to get interchanged or mis-copied, even digitally. But at no point is it possible for a 2 to show up in binary code. Same thing applies to gametes. All mammals (and most other species on the planet) have binary sexual reproduction.

I only meant to account for at least the one exception that I'm aware of, the case in which an organism never produces any gametes. I'm not a biologist, so I was just being careful.

And, it doesn't change the point anyway. We don't have to have a perfect binary to assert the binary. Acknowledging how a binary might not be perfect doesn't mean we let in anything that mutes that binary. As always, let's acknowledge the reality we have.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Please. You can't imagine that you can modify the definition of biological sex to account for the fact that an organism might or will stop producing gametes? That the fact that organisms stop producing gametes at some point is some type of logical defeater? Especially since an organism stops producing gametes doesn't mean that they could have produced the other type of gamete at some point.

Also, please don't bring up the tiny proportion of organisms that never produce any gametes at all until you imagine what a rejoinder, similar to the one I've offered above, might be.

Ah the old no one sees any distinction between a steer and a bull argument why they don't even have different words for them.

 

[Paul2]

Ah the old no one sees any distinction between a steer and a bull argument why they don't even have different words for them.

Seriously? Explain how this defeats the usefulness in biology of understanding that there are two types of gametes, and we call that difference sex, because I don't see the connection.

 

[Ziggurat]

Ah the old no one sees any distinction between a steer and a bull argument why they don't even have different words for them.

They don't have different words to describe the sex of steers and bulls. It's the same word for both of them. Can you guess what that word is?

Male.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Seriously? Explain how this defeats the usefulness in biology of understanding that there are two types of gametes, and we call that difference sex, because I don't see the connection.

Because people who actually know biology know how limiting that is. Like species, it seems all nice and cut and dried but the closer you actually look at it the harder it can be to say if two animals are the same species or not. Are there clear examples that are not the same species sure, but there are a lot of cases where people will say they are either the same species or different ones that can interbreed or not depending.

So there always needs to be a third sterile category. And why shouldn't all sterile individuals be in it? This is about classification after all there is no shame or scorn associated with any classification, why are you getting so upset about simple and accurate classification?

 

[Emily's Cat]

I am of the opinion that women can decide for themselves, and many have decided that trans inclusiveness is not a threat to their own rights.

It seems women are deciding more and more that TERFs don't speak for them. They don't see trans inclusion as giving up on equality.

How do you explain the failure of TERFs to convince sufficient numbers of their fellow women to adopt their ideology? Why is it that TERF viewpoints are more popular with men than they are with women?

Ignoring your wibbly-wobbly and fluid definition of TERF for the nonce...

You keep making this claim that more and more ciswomen are flocking to the side of transwomen and supporting them. Do you have any support for that claim?

My impression is the opposite. Third wave feminism is hemorrhaging female supporters, because they've gotten tired of seeing the interests of every other non-female group get centered above the interests of females, on the idiotic trickle-down theory that if we address everyone else's problems first, then the problems that females face will just magically disappear.

It wasn't those "all inclusive" ciswomen who got the self-id section removed from the GRA amendment, and got Tavistock investigated.

If you're taking your impression from Twitter, though, I can see how you may have errantly assumed this as the case. What you seem to be missing is that TRA choke-hold on twitter that gets opposing female voices silenced and banned at the drop of a hat, but continues to allow self-identified transwomen to make violent threats against females on a regular basis. Not really a representative sample of the views of females.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Ah the old no one sees any distinction between a steer and a bull argument why they don't even have different words for them.

I can only giggle.

Sure, there's a difference between a steer and a bull in terms of ability to sire offspring. At no point, however, is a steer mistaken for a cow.

Edited by zooterkin: 

<SNIP>
Edited for rule 0 and rule 12.