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

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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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Just in case anyone was confused, this is the sort of thing I was looking for, but from "the other side".
 
Meadmaker said:
Just in case anyone was confused, this is the sort of thing I was looking for, but from "the other side".
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Sorry I can't help much there.

But I do have this interesting question for the trans-activists in the thread:

My understanding is that transwomen in male spaces are at risk of harassment and violence from the cismales in those spaces. This sucks. The obvious solution is to allow them to use female spaces instead.

What policies do trans-activists propose we put in place, to prevent their violent cismale abusers from self-identifying as women and following them into these spaces?
 
Ziggurat said:
You said they won’t make a difference to people’s rights. I explained how they actually do.
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No I didn’t.

What words are used to describe the rights makes not one iota of a difference to the actual rights, English can use many different words to describe the same thing. To get wrapped up as the extremist do in regards to what the word “woman” must means will mean no progress can ever be made. Another way to look at it is that you don’t need to redefine what “woman” means to allow access rights to another group.
 
theprestige said:
Huh?
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You gave a reason for segregation and ended with:

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. ​

What happens if “women in general” don’t want the segregation you outline, are you saying it should be enforced to appease extremists on one side regardless of what women in general want?
 
theprestige said:
Sorry I can't help much there.

But I do have this interesting question for the trans-activists in the thread:

My understanding is that transwomen in male spaces are at risk of harassment and violence from the cismales in those spaces. This sucks. The obvious solution is to allow them to use female spaces instead.

What policies do trans-activists propose we put in place, to prevent their violent cismale abusers from self-identifying as women and following them into these spaces?
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I’m not a “trans-activist” but wouldn’t what we currently have in place do the job, i.e. laws against abuse, assault and harassment?
 
Darat said:
You gave a reason for segregation and ended with:

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. ​

What happens if “women in general” don’t want the segregation you outline, are you saying it should be enforced to appease extremists on one side regardless of what women in general want?
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I'm still not following.
 
theprestige said:
I'm still not following.
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I am asking if you think women in general should have the ability to influence what rights they have?

Or another way to put it.

Your segregation argument seemed to me to be predicated on the idea that women in general want the segregation you argue for. What if women in general don’t want such segregation?
 
Darat said:
I am asking if you think women in general should have the ability to influence what rights they have?

Or another way to put it.

Your segregation argument seemed to me to be predicated on the idea that women in general want the segregation you argue for. What if women in general don’t want such segregation?
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I'm sorry. I must be having a really bad day. I'm just not getting it. You want me to make some other argument from some other starting assumption?

ETA: You need me to affirm my support for women's suffrage?
 
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Darat said:
You gave a reason for segregation and ended with:

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. ​

What happens if “women in general” don’t want the segregation you outline, are you saying it should be enforced to appease extremists on one side regardless of what women in general want?
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I know it wasn't addressed to me, but if you could convince me that most women wanted to allow transgender males into their private spaces, I think that is what ought to be done. Likewise for men and transgender females.


I don't expect that to happen. However, I think most women are willing to compromise, kind of along the lines of the five points you mentioned a few days back.
 
theprestige said:
If laws against abuse did the job, we wouldn't have to shelter people from their abusive partners in the first place.
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Of course no laws are perfect, people are still murdered even though we have laws against murder. Anyone who expects any policies/laws/regulations to stop people breaking the law or harming others to be 100% effective are always going to be disappointed with the laws/policies/regulations.

What the law does give us is a way to help and try and reduce or deter certain behaviours. People are sheltered from their abusive partners by laws against abuse, for example I think in the USA you have what are called restraining orders they can stop for instance an abusive partner entering premises that their victim is in.
 
Darat said:
People are sheltered from their abusive partners by laws against abuse, for example I think in the USA you have what are called restraining orders they can stop for instance an abusive partner entering premises that their victim is in.
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People are sheltered from their abusive partners by shelters.

Even a restraining order only criminalizes the close approach of the abuser. It doesn't actually shelter their victim if the abuser decides to approach them anyway.

If the law criminalized discrimination in shelter admission, it wouldn't prevent shelter administrators from discriminating anyway, but it could end up in them having to pay crippling fines, serve prison sentences, and lose their permit to operate a shelter. All the people they'd been sheltering would be left with a printout of their restraining order, to protect themselves with.
 
Meadmaker said:
I know it wasn't addressed to me, but if you could convince me that most women wanted to allow transgender males into their private spaces, I think that is what ought to be done. Likewise for men and transgender females.
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The only wrinkle in that is the problem of the tyranny of the majority, sometimes we can’t avoid it but it is always an issue when a minority are arguing for change. There isn’t any solution to the problem, only mentioning it because I think we all should be mindful of that issue when we are talking about rights for a minority.

As an illustration - when sex between two men in private was decriminalised in England and Wales apparently the majority of the population was against it.

(Note that is an illustration not an analogy, the rights being given by society in that case did not impact anyone but homosexual males, whereas the issue of access for trans people is often seen and portrayed as taking rights away from another group.)

Meadmaker said:
I don't expect that to happen. However, I think most women are willing to compromise, kind of along the lines of the five points you mentioned a few days back.
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That is the impression I have but...

I have been amazed at how different the under about 21s view this issue, which is that they don’t see a “big” issue or problem with access for trans folk. If the past is another country the future will be a whole new planet.
 
Darat said:
No I didn’t.

What words are used to describe the rights makes not one iota of a difference to the actual rights
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You say you didn't, but that's exactly what you're doing here. The words used do matter, because laws are made with words. If the definition of the words changes, then the laws change, and the rights those laws confer change. So you're wrong.

Another way to look at it is that you don’t need to redefine what “woman” means to allow access rights to another group.
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That's absolutely true. But I'm not the one trying to redefine it. The people trying to redefine it are doing so in part to avoid having to go through the legislative process in order to make changes to actual rights.
 
theprestige said:
In any case, EC has repeatedly and explicitly stated that she does not object to transwomen having access to female-only spaces. So your analogy not only fails in function (the two things not actually being analogous), but it's wildly off the mark as well. You really should just read the thread instead of trying to reset it.
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Er...


Emily's Cat said:
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.
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Emily's Cat said:
You've brought this up several times. I can't decide if it's semantic tomfoolery and pretense... or if you genuinely are incapable of understanding this concept.

The current state doesn't check for gender when they enter toilets because the vast majority of people are visually obvious as either male or female on a simple glance. There is no need to check ID, because if a person who looks like a man enters the room, it is socially acceptable and appropriate for women to challenge them and ask them to leave. If they refuse to leave, it is reasonable for women to involve the owners of the premises or the police (depending on venue), as it is reasonable to assume that the opposite-sexed interloper is up to no good.

Self ID changes that current policy. Self-id replaces sex (which is almost always able to be determined by a cursory glance) with an internal feeling which cannot be verified by anyone at all. If these laws get passed, it will mean that any male who wishes to can enter the ladies toilet, whether he is trans or not. Furthermore, it means that it will no longer be allowable for women to challenge his presence in the toilet. All he needs to do is utter the magic words "I'm a woman" and he cannot be asked to leave.

Yes, some transwomen currently use the women's rooms without challenge or complaint. Most of those transwomen have made efforts to pass and most have undergone medical treatment to appear more like a female. Women accept them out of politeness even though we can tell, and occasionally we cannot tell (although this is a lot more rare than you seem to think).

Self-id destroys that polite fiction. It allows any male to enter without any expectation that he present as female in any way at all. Self-id robs women of the right to challenge the 6 ft lumberjack with a beard. We are forced to accept any male who wishes to be there and no longer have any safeguards.

++++++++++++++++++

You're trying to change the rules, and then pointing to how things work under the old rules as proof that changing the rules is fine.
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Emily's Cat said:
I'm going to respectfully suggest that you've got a very male-centric perspective on this. In day-to-day interactions, including toilets, most of us genuinely don't care.

You're looking at this from the perspective of a male, who isn't subjected to nearly as much sexual harassment, sexual assault, and sexism as women are. You're looking at this from the perspective of someone with a very, very low probability of being raped, and a very high probability of being able to fight off an attacker.

I'm all for treating people decently. But treating people decently shouldn't require females to be put at greater risk and exposure.
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Are you sure you’ve read the thread?
 
Meadmaker said:
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.

[snip]

Arguments from analogy are so much easier.
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More or less easier than argumentum ad antiquitatem?
 
There has been a lot of talk about passing/enforcing laws lately, but I think informal social norms are at least as important, if not more so.

Even if the State of Missouri has laws which strictly required bathroom segregation by sex instead of gender, attendees to Skepticon (something of a wokefest for the unfamiliar) would know better than to dare question any masculine-looking person in the ladies' while at the event itself. This is because one would likely encounter a couple dozen angry social justice activists long before happening across a single cop, IRL.
 
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