Cont: [ED] Discussion: Trans Women are not Women (Part 5)

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I was neutral on puberty blockers until this thread (whilst there is no doubt the thread has been full of irrational and often hateful comments there has been some good discussion and information), we don’t have a good understanding of possible side effects, long term health issues and so on so I would say until someone can make their own decision regarding medical treatments they shouldn’t be prescribed. We will gain this information over time as they are used for other medical treatments so in a few years we may be able to say they can again be used for under 16s in regards to gender changing as we will better understand the risks.

In effect we already have self-determination, no one is assigned their gender (I am aware of outliers such as intersex), if you wish to change it you can. However there is no doubt that today it is still important to society what gender someone is. (Whether that should be the case is a different discussion even though it often is thrown in to, in my view, simply muddy the waters.) Therefore society saying that “A, B and C have to be done if you want to change your gender” is addressing the world as it is, not how some people may want it to be, it is a “reasonable” course of action. Now of course it could be used unfairly by making the criteria too difficult to meet - but I would assume it to be no more arduous than it is today.

I hadn’t thought about the potential problem in regards to sports being completely free to determine their own criteria. As they say it is astonishing that there are apparently no gay top tier football players, so perhaps some sports may not adopt fair and objective criteria. There may be some need to provide a framework for sporting organisations.

I have to disagree on the puberty blocker argument. The whole point of them is that they HAVE to be used before the person receiving the treatment is of an age where we would normally decide that they have the right to determine their own treatment. And the alternative to using them is at least equally unclear and risky. Forcing someone to go through an irreversible process and then trying to medicate/operate on them.

i don't believe there are no gay top tier footballers...only that they tend to stay closeted because they know what the impact would be of coming out. But yes we do need to reflect on what unfettered capitalism and consumerism leads to in society which is why I don't for a second buy into the 'if people want to see it and pay for it then its OK' school of thought that seems to be prevalent amongst our US chums.

 

[Meadmaker]

So why on earth would you want to deny someone access to a bathroom based on their gametes?

I think the question that is relevant here is why you would deny access to a bathroom or changing room based on anything at all. Why have the segregation between male and female?

If you can answer that, then you can see whether trans people ought to go to one or the other, based on the reason that the segregation exists at all.


That question is one that trans rights activists seem to want to ignore entirely. Some dismiss it and say that, really, the sex based segregation is just a social convention that serves no purpose. That's all very well and it then sidesteps the question of whether a transwoman should go here or go there, because it shouldn't matter to anyone anyway.

Other people ignore the why, and just say that it doesn't matter. Men are men, and go to the men's room. Women are women, and they go to the women's room. There is no need to explain why. That's just the way it is, and since transwomen are women, in the TRA narrative, the answer is obvious. They go to the women's room. The problem with this is that the term "women" becomes totally undefined in the process, and so the separation is arbitrary. Asking yourself why the separation exists in the first place would shed some light on all of those questions. It would shed light on the definition, and on the question of which bathroom or locker room transpeople ought to be in.

ETA: The whole question of gametes is something that is just trying to get to the definition problem. Of course no one discriminates based on gamete production, but gamete production is a way of illustrating that this thing called biological sex really is binary. There is something that is different about people who produce one kind of gamete, or have the organs for producing that kind of gamete, even if those organs are non-functional, versus people who produce the other kind of gamete, with the same qualifications.

 

[Meadmaker]

I don't know what the grassroots structures are for US sports in detail but can speak with certainty on soccer in most countries around the world absolutely having leagues and competitions for 'athletes that aren't good enough to be on the top pro teams'

Here's the English system for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_football_league_system

Ok. That's a somewhat different system than American baseball's minor leagues, but it is a skills based system.

Are there any women players? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that there are no women at any level of that football pyramid, but there is a separate women's league.

 

[Meadmaker]

Transwomen aren't men.

Caitlyn Jenner(s) would not be winning decathlons in male competitions.

Huh? She did. That's the point. Are you saying that at the time Caitlyn, then known as Bruce, was competing in the decathlon, he wasn't a woman? Did he become a woman later? How does this work?

Of course it is true of the post-transition Caitlyn Jenner that the medical treatments performed would reduce her athletic ability....and she's kind of old, too. So, due to treatment performed in transition, Caitlyn would no longer be a world class male athlete on the senior circuit, but that treatment is not an inherent part of being a transperson.

Those are meant to be serious questions, by the way. I'm not trying to catch anyone into some rhetorical trap. I would ask our resident "transwomen are women" supporters whether that person who won the decathlon in the 1976 olympics was a man or a woman at the time of the competition. If the answer is that the person was a man, when and how did that person become a woman?

 

[Ziggurat]

'Gay men are taking resources allocated to women' is a fact?

You sure about that?

No, transwomen are. You didn’t specify who “they” were in your question, so I had to guess, and apparently I guessed wrong. If you meant gay men, I’m not sure what you are referring to. It can’t be sexual partners, because gay men are not allocated to women, and gay men pick other gay men as sexual partners.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I think the question that is relevant here is why you would deny access to a bathroom or changing room based on anything at all. Why have the segregation between male and female?

If you can answer that, then you can see whether trans people ought to go to one or the other, based on the reason that the segregation exists at all.

That's A question yes. But not the question to be asking if you want to define binary sex as only being about gametes. If you want to throw other things into the mix then you have to also throw those other things into your definition of sex.

My question was specifically to someone who wanted to define binary sex as solely about gamete production.

That question is one that trans rights activists seem to want to ignore entirely. Some dismiss it and say that, really, the sex based segregation is just a social convention that serves no purpose. That's all very well and it then sidesteps the question of whether a transwoman should go here or go there, because it shouldn't matter to anyone anyway.

Other people ignore the why, and just say that it doesn't matter. Men are men, and go to the men's room. Women are women, and they go to the women's room. There is no need to explain why. That's just the way it is, and since transwomen are women, in the TRA narrative, the answer is obvious. They go to the women's room. The problem with this is that the term "women" becomes totally undefined in the process, and so the separation is arbitrary. Asking yourself why the separation exists in the first place would shed some light on all of those questions. It would shed light on the definition, and on the question of which bathroom or locker room transpeople ought to be in.

ETA: The whole question of gametes is something that is just trying to get to the definition problem. Of course no one discriminates based on gamete production, but gamete production is a way of illustrating that this thing called biological sex really is binary. There is something that is different about people who produce one kind of gamete, or have the organs for producing that kind of gamete, even if those organs are non-functional, versus people who produce the other kind of gamete, with the same qualifications.

No that wasn't the argument. It wasn't that gamete production was illustrating something. It was that gamete production was defining something and that all the other things that you are trying to include here didn't matter at all.

Which is what I was pushing back against. You cannot say 'if we remove everything else then we can define sex as clearly binary then with that agreed we can add everything else back to base policy on sex' that's having your cake and eating it.

You will notice that I try to ask specific questions of specific people making specific arguments. You may or may not have noticed that what i get in response to them is non-answers or answers to different questions that weren't asked. People are free to do that but I don't find it helpful.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Ok. That's a somewhat different system than American baseball's minor leagues, but it is a skills based system.

Are there any women players? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that there are no women at any level of that football pyramid, but there is a separate women's league.

A separate women's league which tends not have the same depth of pyramid as its relatively new.

Historically (from memory) mixed teams were disallowed by the authorities past about age 10 or 12 but I think its 16 or 18 now. Beyond that it's strictly separate though unclear if the rules technically segregate by sex or gender.

There have been one or two examples of mens teams attempting to sign women and being blocked by the authorities.

Transwomen are able to compete in the women's leagues with permission from the authorities. I am personally unaware of any competing at the elite level of women's soccer in the UK.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Huh? She did. That's the point. Are you saying that at the time Caitlyn, then known as Bruce, was competing in the decathlon, he wasn't a woman? Did he become a woman later? How does this work?

Of course it is true of the post-transition Caitlyn Jenner that the medical treatments performed would reduce her athletic ability....and she's kind of old, too. So, due to treatment performed in transition, Caitlyn would no longer be a world class male athlete on the senior circuit, but that treatment is not an inherent part of being a transperson.

Those are meant to be serious questions, by the way. I'm not trying to catch anyone into some rhetorical trap. I would ask our resident "transwomen are women" supporters whether that person who won the decathlon in the 1976 olympics was a man or a woman at the time of the competition. If the answer is that the person was a man, when and how did that person become a woman?

I think you've kind of answered your own questions.

Bruce Jenner had not transitioned when he won decathlons.
Caitlyn Jenner transitioned and that transition included hormone treatments that would have reduced her ability to compete with cismen. Therefore Caitlyn Jenners could not win decathlons in the male category.

We can discuss a hypothetical of someone who transitioned but did not take hormone treatments but that wouldn't be (a) Caitlyn Jenner.

I don't really worry too much about what Bruce Jenner was... if you want to call him a man or you want to say Bruce Jenner was an untransitioned or pre-transitioned transwoman. I don't think it really matters and I think you would probably need access to information on their thinking and psychology that neither of us possess.

What is clear is that the Bruce Jenner who won decathlons would not meet the criteria to legally self-ID as a woman and would legally be a man. Had Bruce Jenner attempted to compete in the woman's competition he would have been denied access.

 

[d4m10n]

I think the question that is relevant here is why you would deny access to a bathroom or changing room based on anything at all. Why have the segregation between male and female?

(IMO/YMMV)

We have to answer whether any given instance of segregation is by sex or by gender in the first place, e.g. changing rooms in dept. stores appear to be segregated based on gender, as are the clothing shelves themselves. By contrast, top level rugby leagues appear to be segregated by sex.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

No, transwomen are. You didn’t specify who “they” were in your question, so I had to guess, and apparently I guessed wrong. If you meant gay men, I’m not sure what you are referring to. It can’t be sexual partners, because gay men are not allocated to women, and gay men pick other gay men as sexual partners.

You had to guess that the response to a quoted post about gay men referred to gay men? No wonder you struggle to add anything to the discussion if that's your level of reading for context.

And bi-sexual men exist.

 

[Meadmaker]

That's A question yes. But not the question to be asking if you want to define binary sex as only being about gametes. If you want to throw other things into the mix then you have to also throw those other things into your definition of sex.

My question was specifically to someone who wanted to define binary sex as solely about gamete production.



No that wasn't the argument. It wasn't that gamete production was illustrating something. It was that gamete production was defining something and that all the other things that you are trying to include here didn't matter at all.

Which is what I was pushing back against. You cannot say 'if we remove everything else then we can define sex as clearly binary then with that agreed we can add everything else back to base policy on sex' that's having your cake and eating it.

You will notice that I try to ask specific questions of specific people making specific arguments. You may or may not have noticed that what i get in response to them is non-answers or answers to different questions that weren't asked. People are free to do that but I don't find it helpful.

You asked why bathroom segregation should be based on gametes.

I'm not sure how that question fits into the above post.


When it comes to biological sex, it really is all about gamete production. If you produce a specific sort of gamete, then you are of the sex corresponding to that gamete. Period. No exceptions. When it comes to people who produce no gametes at all, the answer is somewhat more complicated. Generally, I think biologists would have no difficulty assigning a biological sex to non gamete producers based on anatomical similarity to gamete producers. The number of people not classifiable through those means is either zero or vanishingly small. I'm not sure if there is anyone who truly cannot be classified in that way, but if those people exist, there aren't many. However, it may be that for some purposes, some biologists might say that people who produce no gametes are not truly of either sex. However, I suspect that is almost never said about humans. Perhaps it is said that more often about other species. I have heard it said that honeybee workers are sterile females, and I have heard that they have no sex at all. I don't know which statement is more popular among entymologists.

An interesting case is other species where a single organism is capable of producing both types of gametes, but not at the same time. Some species of fish and amphibians can produce sperm at one point in their lives, and eggs at a different point in their lives. I have always heard it said that these individuals change sex. When they produce sperm, they are males. When they start producing eggs, they are females. That's because biological sex really is determined by gamete production.

 

[Meadmaker]

I don't really worry too much about what Bruce Jenner was... if you want to call him a man or you want to say Bruce Jenner was an untransitioned or pre-transitioned transwoman. I don't think it really matters and I think you would probably need access to information on their thinking and psychology that neither of us possess.

What is clear is that the Bruce Jenner who won decathlons would not meet the criteria to legally self-ID as a woman and would legally be a man. Had Bruce Jenner attempted to compete in the woman's competition he would have been denied access.

However, it goes to the question of whether a transwoman is "really" a woman.

Clearly Bruce Jenner would not have been allowed to compete in a women's competition in 1976, based on law and policy. However, does law and policy determine one's sex? Can an act of the legislature change someone from male to female? Legally, of course it can, but I don't think many people would say that they have such power to make such changes in reality.

So, today, we have lots of people who will insist that Caitlyn Jenner is "really" a woman. She is every bit as much a woman as, for example, Kylie Jenner. At least, that is what some would say.

So if Caitlyn Jenner is "really" a woman today, was Bruce Jenner "really" a woman in 1976? Or is it that humans can change sex?

I get that you aren't interested or don't want to answer that question, but unless that question can be answered, the assertion that transwomen are really women doesn't have any meaning. Of course, that lack of meaning and definition doesn't seem to bother a lot of people.

 

[Ziggurat]

You had to guess that the response to a quoted post about gay men referred to gay men?

What exactly do you think the context of all this discussion about gay men is? Why is it even in this thread?

And bi-sexual men exist.

And bisexual men aren't allocated to women alone, are they?

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

You asked why bathroom segregation should be based on gametes..

Indeed I did. And you answered with a different possibly interesting question but not an answer to the question i asked. Which is fair enough since the question wasn't asked specifically of you.

I'm not challenging the idea here that gamete production defines biological sex. What I am asking is that if, as argued, we have to remove everything else BUT gamete production to define biological sex then why should I care about biological sex at all?

I used bathroom segregation as an example of that general points. As far as I can see the only reason to separate bathroom usage based on gamete production would be if there was a risk of getting pregnant from using a toilet. And even then I'm not sure if that follows purely from gamete production, after all if it's only about biology and gamete production then getting pregnant is a good thing. That's what our biology is for!

So my sense is that by stripping out all of the 'fuzzy areas' of biology to a neat clear line all we have done is strip out anything that actually matters to the social topics being discussed and I don't think that helps.

But I suspect what actually happens is that once we all agree on the neat clear line we then smuggle back in all of the things we got rid of to agree on it in the first place.

It seems from your arguments that you aren't stripping things back to gametes purely but are happy enough to bundle a bunch of other things in as well so my push back is maybe not addressed at you specifically. Its a practical difficulty of this conversation that there are a lot of different nuances of positions to be addressed.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I get that you aren't interested or don't want to answer that question, but unless that question can be answered, the assertion that transwomen are really women doesn't have any meaning. Of course, that lack of meaning and definition doesn't seem to bother a lot of people.

That's a bit naughty since I actually did give you an answer. That answering that question would require access to details of Bruce Jenner's psychology and thinking that I don't have. And presumably you don't either.

You would probably have to ask Caitlyn Jenner to get an answer. And even then I am not sure that would be definitive 40-odd years after the event.

I'm comfortable with the idea that Jenner was always a woman, I'm comfortable with the idea that Jenner was once a man and became a woman. I'm comfortable with the idea that we can't pinpoint an exact moment when that happened.

We struggle with these kind of fuzzy lines all the time. Even in hard sciences.
It doesn't render things meaningless it just means that sometimes you have to be comfortable with an element of ambiguity.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

What exactly do you think the context of all this discussion about gay men is? Why is it even in this thread?

And bisexual men aren't allocated to women alone, are they?

I was going to give you answers to these questions but since they seem to confuse you I will try your tactic of just asking a tangentially related question as if it somehow matters.

Why do you think any human being is ALLOCATED to any other?

 

[Meadmaker]

Indeed I did. And you answered with a different possibly interesting question but not an answer to the question i asked. Which is fair enough since the question wasn't asked specifically of you.

I'm not challenging the idea here that gamete production defines biological sex. What I am asking is that if, as argued, we have to remove everything else BUT gamete production to define biological sex then why should I care about biological sex at all?

I used bathroom segregation as an example of that general points. As far as I can see the only reason to separate bathroom usage based on gamete production would be if there was a risk of getting pregnant from using a toilet. And even then I'm not sure if that follows purely from gamete production, after all if it's only about biology and gamete production then getting pregnant is a good thing. That's what our biology is for!

So my sense is that by stripping out all of the 'fuzzy areas' of biology to a neat clear line all we have done is strip out anything that actually matters to the social topics being discussed and I don't think that helps.

But I suspect what actually happens is that once we all agree on the neat clear line we then smuggle back in all of the things we got rid of to agree on it in the first place.

It seems from your arguments that you aren't stripping things back to gametes purely but are happy enough to bundle a bunch of other things in as well so my push back is maybe not addressed at you specifically. Its a practical difficulty of this conversation that there are a lot of different nuances of positions to be addressed.

I'll try to address this, then.

An awful lot of these moving things around in conversations comes from people seizing on incomplete or general statements and finding some apparent inconsistencies and declaring that since one side or the other cannot cover every possible case in complete detail, we get to make up whatever we want. If we say anatomy, someone will point to someone who has suffered an injury with a hand grenade, and then somehow get from there to the idea that Colleen Brenna can use the girls' locker room and Jonathan Yaniv ought to be able to demand ball waxing. So much is just word games.

However, the underlying biology really exists, and at the level of gamete production, it's clear.

In reality, we don't separate locker rooms based on gamete production, because we have no way of verifying whether someone is actually producing gametes, and we are not all that concerned anyway. It gets driven to that by playing along with the word games that people use to dodge the issue.

What we are truly concerned with is something that is very, very, closely correlated with gamete production. What we are truly concerned with is the manner in which one would engage in sexual intercourse. That is the actual basis of the segregation. If the people involved are actually producing gametes, then the consequences of that sexual intercourse are even more significant, but people will react to the possibility of intercourse even when the absence of gamete production would make pregnancy impossible.

Your comments about people not getting pregnant from using the toilet are just a diversion, because it is not actually using the toilet that is the issue, it is that partial disrobing and exposure is necessary during the course of using a toilet. One could question whether it is wise or sensible to feel anxious about exposure of genital areas, and we could discuss whether that anxiety is a consequence of social conditioning or is instinctive, but no sane person would doubt that it is very real and very common.

 

[qayak]

She didn't take any resources allotted to women.

It was a freaking GLAMOUR magazine madey uppy title. Had they wanted to give another woman an award they could easily have made 26 of them.

Your opinion on whether she deserved the award is neither here nor there. Glamour Magazine felt she did.

Moaning about it just makes you seem silly.

It's indicative of how absolutely woo woo the trans rights discussion has become and I know several women who changed their opinions in trans rights because of it. 100% of women know more about being a woman than Jenner dies.

 

[Darat]

Ok. That's a somewhat different system than American baseball's minor leagues, but it is a skills based system.

Are there any women players? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that there are no women at any level of that football pyramid, but there is a separate women's league.

Because women playing football was very popular and they were successfully competing with the male leagues the FA stepped in and banned women from playing in the leagues.

Women have their own leagues and because of the quirk of USA sports participation at a young age you are very successful on the world stage.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-women-s-soccer-team-win-2019-world-cup-n1027206

 

[Meadmaker]

I'm comfortable with the idea that Jenner was once a man and became a woman. I'm comfortable with the idea that we can't pinpoint an exact moment when that happened.

Ok. That's a good enough answer for me. You are saying that it is possible for an individual human being to change from a man to a woman, in a very real sense. It is possible for an individual to really and truly be a man, and at some time in their later life, to really and truly be a woman.