If it's one side it might be the one that has accused me repeatedly of misogyny, sealioning (whatever that is), denying reality, refusing to provide evidence that I provided several times? Or are you reading this thread with one eye shut?
I will openly say that I did think you some of your comments sounded misogynistic, although I'm quite sure I also said I believed it wasn't intentional. And I still don't understand why people being dicks to you is evidence for them
inventing the positions they are claiming to support, or evidence for underlying transphobia. I'm frequently a dick about things I actually believe. (I don't really understand what sealioning is either, though, btw. I hate all these new internet words - I can never keep up.)
Or the one that makes statements and then doesn't take a breath before saying 'and if anyone points out i'm wrong I'm going to call them an idiot' (to paraphrase)
I don't know what you're referring to here. I hope
I didn't do that. If I did, I may have been misconstrued.
Because these very same people in many cases NEVER raised any complaints about any of these issues until they became trans issues.
Now I am perfectly willing to say that yes there were female voices no doubt that complained about voyeurism in toilets, sexual assault in jails, discrimination in women's sports, the lack of women in certain occupations, etc etc. But it wasn't the old white men who have now tacked themselves onto the debate who would have been(and probably still are) exactly the same ones lambasting feminists for promoting equality in areas that AREN'T related to trans issues.
Okay, I at least understand what you're saying now. And I can actually see your point. You might be right, but there are other possibilities too. Maybe an old white man has no reason to think about these issues until the trans debate brings them up.
I'm not an old white man, but I never thought much about fairness in women's sports until someone asked me "so how is that supposed to work with trans people?" At which point I had to say, "Oh. I dunno!" Which is pretty much what I've said with regard to sports this whole thread. I just have no idea. I have no solution to offer there. But I do understand the problem.
As an example, I've repeatedly pointed out here that the vast majority (almost all) sexual assaults of women in prison are carried out by male prison staff. I don't see any of these old white men calling for this practice to be banned.
Do you mean that male guards should be banned from working in female prisons and vice-versa? I've actually thought that before. I guess the reason it hasn't been tried comes down to physical strength? (Just my guess, haven't Googled.) Maybe they need some men around for if there's a full-scale riot, though I would think weapons could easily even the score.
How many old white man right-wing opinion articles to you want me to link to saying 'women's sport is crap' before I can safely say that many of these guys don't give a crap about women's sport. Am I supposed to believe they were all avid watchers of women's weightlifting before trans issues came to the fore?
I do see your point. But that doesn't necessarily apply to everyone here. It's easy to see the potential problems with regard to women's sport and transwomen athletes, even if disingenuous actors have also taken up the cause as a shield.
What is more insulting is that one side in this argument is talking about actual daily occurrences of transgender people being discriminated against, alienated and harassed and other than a few anecdotes and edge cases what is being argued back is philosophical BS on the meaning of words and bizarre hypotheticals in which Mike Tyson decides he's a woman tomorrow. And that's putting aside the snide comments about genitalia. And then people like yourself come along and claim that this side is the one that is reasoned and the other is being insulting.
No, I think both sides have people who have been/are being insulting. I just think posters such as yourself and Upchurch have seemingly decided to lump everyone with ANY question or objection in with the bad-faith guys, and I don't think that's fair, because we're skeptics and we're talking about the kind of stuff that is catnip to skeptics - the nature of reality, mind/body dualism, so-called legal fictions, solipsism vs. collectivism, nature vs. nurture. All that good stuff.
If you go back and look at the Leela Alcorn thread, you'll see that I am not anti-trans in the slightest. And I personally have no problem with treating them as their preferred sex/gender in literally any scenario (with the possible exception of intercourse, but even that isn't written in stone for me). I'm just hung up on the current trend toward "an individual's biological sex [as opposed to gender] is whatever they say it is." My mind just can't process that.
As I said earlier, though, at the end of the day, I do not need to understand. I'm going to keep trying, though. We live in a world where fiction is blending with reality more, and "newspeak" words are kinda starting to seem like an actual thing, and I just get uneasy about that kind of stuff. It must be dissected.
But I do not actually have any desire to block transwomen from any space that I might occupy. I'm not as comfortable as you seem to be with dismissing the concerns of women who feel differently than I do, or assuming they're all transphobes, and I think that's ultimately why we're butting heads a bit.
