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

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Abooga said:
Yes we can. Spain has done it already. The new gender violence laws only apply for violence from men to women. No more pesky presumption of innocence either, a woman's word is enough to send a man to prison. (But not the opposite).
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Is that your assessment of how the law works out in practice, or is it literally written that way? A citation might help if so.
 
Meadmaker said:
I'm looking for an argument about why

1) Segregation of men and women ought to maintained and

2) Whatever reason men and women ought to be segregated, transwomen ought to be included with the women.
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I'd be interested in hearing this argument as well, if anyone cares to make it.

Personally, I'd like to see more unisex builds when it comes to restrooms and more totally private changing rooms. As to sport, I'm happy to leave it to the individual leagues as to whether they have different height classes, weight classes, skill levels, leagues for women, etc.
 
It doesn't surprise me that people refuse to address the segregation question in any meaningful manner.

Darat says that's the way society is organized, perhaps suggesting that segregation of men and women is not really necessary at all. So we have to go from where we are to where we want to be, but do it incrementally. I'm not sure where he wants to end up, but wherever it is, we can't get there in one step.

Upchurch went with the more common dodge of declaring that universal privacy would eliminate the need for segregation. Indeed it would, which makes one wonder why generations of architects never thought of that.

I'm not sure how that works for sporting events, though. In track and field, we could just have every athlete run one at a time, and then give everyone first place in their division, which consists only of themselves. If anyone has any suggestions for how we make that work for tennis, please post them.

Arguments from analogy are so much easier.
 
Meadmaker said:
I'm looking for an argument about why
1) Segregation of men and women ought to maintained and
2) Whatever reason men and women ought to be segregated, transwomen ought to be included with the women. (For bonus points, complete the argument by showing how transmen ought to be included with the men.)
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d4m10n said:
I'd be interested in hearing this argument as well, if anyone cares to make it.
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I can't make that argument, but I can make this one:


1) Segregation of men and women ought to be maintained in contexts where the average disparity in physical strength between the sexes is an important consideration for the health, safety, and mental well-being of women. This is essentially segregation in sports, and in "safe spaces for women" - locker rooms, women's shelters, etc.

2) For this reason, transwomen ought to be included with the men, since they are on the male side of the disparity in physical strength between the sexes, and since there is no evidence that transwomen are less prone to violence than cismen (the gist of EC's sidebar that Upchurch misunderstood).

Also for this reason, transmen ought to be included with the women.

The objection to this is that it undermines the mental well-being of transsexuals, who are thus prohibited from performing as their preferred gender, in the very few contexts where there is a bright and defining gender line they can cross.

But I think this has to be balanced against the mental well-being of women in general, who need to have spaces where they can indeed feel safe from male aggression, by segregating males out of those spaces.
 
Meadmaker said:
It doesn't surprise me that people refuse to address the segregation question in any meaningful manner.
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You mistake your opinion as being a measure of meaning, I don’t.

Meadmaker said:
Darat says that's the way society is organized, perhaps suggesting that segregation of men and women is not really necessary at all.

...snip....
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Quite disguised but still a straw man and nothing for me to address.


Meadmaker said:
...snip.... I'm not sure where he wants to end up, but wherever it is, we can't get there in one step.
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Again has nothing to do with what I posted.

Why not actually address what I posted?
 
theprestige said:
I can't make that argument, but I can make this one:


1) Segregation of men and women ought to be maintained in contexts where the average disparity in physical strength between the sexes is an important consideration for the health, safety, and mental well-being of women. This is essentially segregation in sports, and in "safe spaces for women" - locker rooms, women's shelters, etc.

2) For this reason, transwomen ought to be included with the men, since they are on the male side of the disparity in physical strength between the sexes, and since there is no evidence that transwomen are less prone to violence than cismen (the gist of EC's sidebar that Upchurch misunderstood).

Also for this reason, transmen ought to be included with the women.

The objection to this is that it undermines the mental well-being of transsexuals, who are thus prohibited from performing as their preferred gender, in the very few contexts where there is a bright and defining gender line they can cross.

But I think this has to be balanced against the mental well-being of women in general, who need to have spaces where they can indeed feel safe from male aggression, by segregating males out of those spaces.
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What about if in general women don’t wish for this form of segregation?
 
Darat said:
You mistake your opinion as being a measure of meaning, I don’t.



Quite disguised but still a straw man and nothing for me to address.




Again has nothing to do with what I posted.

Why not actually address what I posted?
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Because I don't understand it. It had something to do with universal suffrage and societal organization, but I can't make sense of it.
 
Meadmaker said:
Because I don't understand it. It had something to do with universal suffrage and societal organization, but I can't make sense of it.
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You asked for an argument for why there should be segregation. I pointed out that no one needs to come up with such an argument for since that is what we have now.

The illustration about universal suffrage was to show how rights movements don’t achieve all their aims at once.
 
The irony about the suffragettes is that it wouldn't have happened unless a load of like minded dudes voted for it.

This tends to be forgotten.
 
Emily's Cat said:
Those different definitions are driving policy, Darat. If it were nothing more than a matter of social interaction, there'd be no real argument at all. But that's not where we're at, and it feels a bit disingenuous to gloss over that.


...snip....
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You’ve took my words slightly out of context but I can understand why and I will address your point.

The context of my words was that Butter seemed to be having an emotional issue with competing definitions so I was trying to address her feelings.

As to the context in your comment above.

That is not what is happening, what is happening is people disagreeing about what rights each other should have and using a definition to either support or decry the other side. The definition used will not make or break the rights people want. It doesn’t matter what words are used to define rights it is what they actually achieve.

I have repeatedly said that we will not find a way to reconcile the wants of the extremists, no amount of discussion will.
 
Darat said:
That is not what is happening, what is happening is people disagreeing about what rights each other should have and using a definition to either support or decry the other side. The definition used will not make or break the rights people want. It doesn’t matter what words are used to define rights it is what they actually achieve.
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That is incorrect. For example, Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in higher education, including in athletics. The definition of sex matters. Does it cover gender identity too? Definitions of words are critical here, and if you can change the definitions, then you can change how courts enforce the laws without having to actually change the laws themselves.
 
Emily's Cat said:
RE: the in-between. Under the old state of things, there was trust on the part of women that people knew where they ought to be. And if a woman was butch or androgynous, we trusted that they were female. Sometimes we were wrong, but it was rare.

RE: getting people involved after the fact. This is rather like arguing that nobody should lock their doors out of concern for being robbed, and they should only get the cops involved after they've been cleaned out. You're removing the ability to prevent harm, and placing people - female people overwhelmingly - in a position where they cannot protect themselves from being hurt and can only get the police involved AFTER they've been harassed or assaulted or raped.

This essentially creates a situation where females are being asked to take on real risk and face real harm... in order to avoid hurting the feelings of a small number of males who identify as women and need to be in female spaces to affirm their internal subjective impression of themselves.

I think this is rather like abolishing the sex offender registry, and letting likely-to-re-offend pedophiles move in right next to a preschool, and telling all of the families in the area that it's no big deal, they can get the cops involved after their child has been molested. That's not intended to draw a parallel between transgender people and pedophiles, just to illustrate the insanity of placing that much risk on people in order to protect the feelings of a few.
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I'm not claiming trans females are any less likely than males to be a risk. I question whether the protection you're trying to preserve is meaningful.

Where I'm stuck here is that I don't see a scenario where women present challenging a male that enters is any additional protection against someone intending trouble. If, as you point out, challenging a person when they offer trouble is a questionable proposition, isn't it equally questionable, under traditional rules, to challenge someone intending trouble when they're observed entering? It seems to me in either scenario if the biological male has a physical advantage, outside help is needed.
 
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What an interesting subject that's been on my mind quite a bit as of late. This discussion is centered on the debate of trans women competing in sports with cis women. But the original poster posited that trans women aren't women.

And as open minded as I try to be, I can't see it any other way. The biological sex that people are born with is just there. As is race. Yet people can choose to identity as whatever gender they want in life, that's their right of course. But a trans women will never be a woman, and a trans man will never be a man. It's a physical impossibility.

As far as masculinity, and femininity, that's a social construct, but biology isn't. Unless somebody can explain to me otherwise, if biologically there is a spectrum of what makes a woman or a man a man. That would be interesting.
 
Ziggurat said:
That is incorrect. For example, Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in higher education, including in athletics. The definition of sex matters. Does it cover gender identity too? Definitions of words are critical here, and if you can change the definitions, then you can change how courts enforce the laws without having to actually change the laws themselves.
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It is totally correct. I never said definitions aren’t important.
 
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