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Hey, sorry this took me so long to post! I had a response about halfway done last week. But then, it turned out to be a pretty unhinged week, and I wasn't really in any state of mind to return to this post. I really hope no one thought I was dodging in the meanwhile. 
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Ok im going to engage... because this seems like a reasoned response. And for the record I don't know if you are a man or a woman. Until now I had assumed you were probably a man because your profile pic looked male to me. Just for the people who have accused me of not replying to women i don't judge responses on gender.
Ah, understandable! My avatar's actually a pic of singer Tom Waits. I am a ciswoman, so that's the perspective from which I'm viewing the various issues.
I'd love to know specifically what i said that you considered misogynistic. For sure I have dismissed the view that promoting trans rights is a misogynistic conspiracy to deny women their rights. I have no intention to deny women their rights. If you feel I do I would love to hear your thoughts and engage with them directly.
The post that prompted my outburst toward you (about sounding misogynistic) was one in which you'd said women who were expressing certain concerns or complaints were actually bullies painting themselves as victims. I got really mad when I read that, and I went off a bit in my subsequent comments to you. I was embarrassed about the post later, to be honest, because I did lose my temper. That's why I kind of neglected to follow back up with you afterward.
My issue in the above paragraph is that you explicitly said ONE side is engaging in bad faith. If you honestly think that I don't think you have read the thread. I would say that someone explicitly saying that trans activism is a conspiracy by men to usurp female rights is at least equally bad faith if not more. do you disagree?
No, it appears there's been a critical misunderstanding here. I'm sure it's my fault, because I ramble too much, and I end up confuddling my own points. I
don't think you or Upchurch or Boudicca or whoever else are engaging in bad faith. What I keep thinking is that you guys believe, genuinely, that everyone with concerns (such as EC or Mead) is engaging in bad faith. So that's why there's been a lot of unwillingness to engage with their arguments, I think. Genuine questions are swept up in all the suspicion of tricks and traps (and I'm not saying those don't happen as well, because of course they do).
Well that seems like it would pretty much be bigotry or prejudice by definition? When cismen were perving on the women in the toilets i was ok with it but when trans people do it that has to be stopped!
That's kind of the point i'm raising.
I have to admit, it's difficult for me
personally to engage much with the bathroom argument, to be honest, because I really just don't care about stuff like that. Years of communal living and catch-as-catch-can stuff when I was younger have just rendered me mostly impervious to pissing and changing around whoever. However, that's just me, and I'm really not willing to outright castigate women who feel differently about modesty and say they're wrong, because these things aren't objective.
Nevertheless, I've been reading the thread, and I don't think EC or the rest of them were talking about transwomen perving on women. They were talking about cismen pretending to be trans in order to do that (or worse). The change they fear will facilitate that activity would be self-ID as the sole criterion for transition. I don't think that sounds like a super unreasonable concern with regard to self-ID laws.
And also reflect that they DON'T bring up these issues unless they are trans. If someone was on here and saying 'hey Jo Smith transwoman sexually assaulted a female prisoner in jail and I looked into it and Joe Smith cisman prison officer sexually assaulted 10 female prisoners in jail and we need to do something about this now' I would have sympathy for that.
But all we get is Jo Smith sexually assaulted a female prisoner ergo all trans people have to be excluded from female prisons.
I think the issue there, in that story, was more that the transwoman in question was very early in her transition process, still fully intact and functional, and she used that reality to hurt the women to whom she had access. So maybe there should be a period after the process has begun before a trans person is allowed to fully occupy
every single female-segregated space.
And that's fine. I also don't know exactly. what i have offered is 'if you have good reason to discriminate then i'm probably ok with it' I don't want a ciswoman being battered to death in a boxing ring in the name of equality. But i also don't want a transwoman being excluded from playing soccer because their genitals don't match their gender.
That doesn't sound so unreasonable to me. It's just a matter, I suppose, of figuring out where the proverbial "lines" lie in different types of sport.
My point is that if you are concerned about women being sexually assaulted in prisons then your focus has to be the male guards. If your focus is excluding transwomen then you will highlight them. I don't know what the answer is but the problem of sexual assault is predominately about male staff.
I think the issue of sexual assault in prisons came up as more of a concern about self-ID. Under self-ID, there is nothing stopping an intact, fully male prisoner from deciding to CLAIM he identifies as a woman, with the goal of being moved to female housing for nefarious sexual purposes. After all, we are OFTEN (definitely not always, not even close, but often), in the case of hardtime prisoners, talking about some very immoral people.
If, however, some type of reasonable "waiting period" were put in place before a transitioning inmate could be moved, along with some basic requirements for hormones or counseling or whatever, then that risk would be neutralized.
I don't disagree completely. But the question of what is and isn't fair competition is one for the medics and sports authorities. My position is that you have to show it's a problem before it is a problem. But my wider position is that the majority of these guys who suddenly are anti trans never gave a hoot or womens sports.and that is borne out broadly in the attendance figures
Yes, I agree that it's a decision for the experts. And also that I don't know much about it. However, I think it possibly
has shown itself to be a problem already, at least a handful of times. My understanding is that there is a lot of controversy about this issue in MMA, for example, based on some events that have already occurred.
This bit i struggle with and would love you to expand. what is your issue here? For me I see a lot of wannabee Sam Harrises thinking that their logic is the be all and end all and everyone else who disagrees is just denying reality.
I will try very hard to explain this precisely. Bear in mind, I cannot speak for anyone else's reasoning who has been discussing this here.
I personally have a great terror of reality-denial. I never found the flat-earther resurgence amusing, for example. I saw the writing on the wall awhile back that the internet was causing people to fracture into their own literal worlds, and I feared and hated it. Now, this sort of refuge in post-fact reality has overwhelmingly been the purview of right-wing extremists and conspiracy fools, and I am in no way comparing ANY aspect of individuals concerned with social justice to
their ilk. However, I do get a bit freaked out when reality is boldly denied in any context.
In this context, I am not referring to the statement "transwomen are women," or similar statements. That's just a matter of definitions. I am referring to the statement "biological sex does not exist" or "sex is not binary in humans." Those statements are plainly false, and what's more, they are not necessary for supporting trans people and/or giving them the freedoms they desire. I don't like seeing my "side" take a page out of the weirdos' reality-denying playbook. Sex IS binary in humans, but that in no way prohibits transwomen from being women. Not the way I see it anyway.
Maybe all of that seems like a side-issue to you and others, or a question of semantics. I don't really know if it's
objectively important or not. I just know it's the kind of thing that my brain gets really hung up on.
I'm not familiar with the leela acorn thread. all i will say is that at the end of the day i think i respect everyone's ability to come to their own conclusions. my only objection begins at the point that you want to deny things to others.
Ah, well, you didn't miss much. It was a thread from a few years back about a young trans girl who committed suicide. It was a very sad story, and it led to a general discussion of trans issues between forumites. Bathrooms and changing and all the rest were prominently featured, and I was in rare form telling people to stuff their anti-trans prejudices, as I recall. But I have to say, the whole issue (or large parts of it, at least) has gotten quite a bit weirder since then, with strange new dialogues and positions appearing that are quite a bit harder to understand.
This is the thing that worries me. Life is complicated. Reality is complicated. Sometimes we have to be OK with ambiguity and our best understanding. Things should be dissected. But they should be dissected with an open mind and with empathy. I don't see a lot of empathy for transpeople by those on this thread who oppose their rights. The damn title of the thread repeated 5 times is a straight up insult. Would this place allow 'Black people are *******' to be repeated so many times? and i'm hoping that gets blanked.
I don't like the title either. I understand what The Atheist was going for, but he probably should have added "in all cases" or "in full-contact sports" or something, in order to flesh out his intended point a bit more. As it stands, there is an inherently hostile component to the discussion even before one joins it, due to that harsh title. (That being said, though, I'm pretty sure The Atheist is also, ultimately, pro-trans rights. He has done outreach work with them before, and if I remember his past posts correctly, he has also dated at least one transwoman. Please correct me if I've mixed you up with someone else there, TA.) Having a problem with the way one or a few aspect(s) of current trans-activism seems to be going does not equal an overall anti-trans attitude.
I do have empathy for trans people, though. My interest in the whole issue was jacked up within the past year, as well, because one of my exes came out as trans during the pandemic lockdowns. I would have never guessed that any of that was going on inside her when we were together, and it caused me to really want to understand what she and others like her go through.
There's a lot of variability in what different trans people and their various supporters think, though. My ex does not think binary sex is a myth at all. She simply believes that her mind (or possibly hormones/chemicals) are such that she
should have been born as the other sex. She's kind of a spiritual hippie-person too, so there may also be a "soul-like" component to this belief. I find her belief logically consistent, even if others here might not.
And that's the thing. I'm not dismissing them per se. I'm asking for justification. And the justifications so far have mostly been hypotheticals. But meanwhile transwomen are suffering REAL problems. So what i am saying is let's just do away with all these problems unless you have a convincing reason why we cant.
And what i get back is what if Mike Tyson says he's a woman and kills someone in the ring! Do you see why that might not be convincing?
I definitely see why extreme hypotheticals or slippery slope arguments might not always illustrate things as effectively as the poster wants them to. This is especially true when emotions are running high. However, it cannot be denied that accounts of some real incidents have been posted throughout these threads, too.
It seems to me that 90%+ of people with hesitations, concerns, or objections are more worried about how self-ID would work as a sole criterion for access to the other sex's social spaces than about transitioning/transitioned people in general. I'm quite certain this is EC's position, for example. She's simply starting to engage with a little more venom at this point, probably because people keep calling her a terf.
