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

[Emily's Cat]

Becoming more regressive as you dig into an anti-trans stance? Color me shocked!

Making a performance out of portraying females in an incredibly rigid gender-role-bound stereotype is "progressive" to you?

The more we interact, the more I become convinced that you hold some incredibly misogynistic views.

 

[theprestige]

Perhaps the Canadiens who put such a policy in place were Conservatives. : )

Probably the same Conservatives who made it policy in California, too.

 

[Distracted1]

I'm well aware that slippery-slopes are not always fallacies. It's one that is very similar to arguments from authority - sometimes an argument from authority as an appropriate argument.

Slippery slopes end up relying on how likely it is for a current state to reach the end state being used in the argument.

For example... the "slippery slope" that allowing gay people to get married will lead to people marrying goats is fallacious. It's extraordinarily unlikely to happen, because marriage is contract between two consenting people. Goats are unable to consent, as they lack the mental faculty to make an informed opinion.

On the other hand, the "slippery slope" that allowing self-id alone to grant male-bodied people who claim to be transwomen access to female-only spaces will result in an increase in peeping, voyeurism, and sexual misbehavior isn't far fetched at all. Male people already do those things... this would just make it easier for them to do so.

I mean, seriously - if some males are willing to submerge themselves in the effluvia at the bottom of a port-a-potty in order to get a glimpse of a vulva... I'm pretty sure they'd be willing to toss on a wig in order to get into the locker room at the local gym.

The first step down the slippery slope is allowing that "A is B".

 

[Collin237]

Simple and completely useless.

A person is Napoleon if his internal sense of himself indicates that he really is the Emperor Napoleon.

C'mon, we're sceptics! Don't be so afraid of being called a bigot that you'd deny reality.

This is not about reality. This is about language.

In reality, people are apes. In language, calling someone an ape is a horrible insult.

 

[Distracted1]

This is not about reality. This is about language.

In reality, people are apes. In language, calling someone an ape is a horrible insult.

No, we are "Primates".

 

[Ron Obvious]

This is not about reality. This is about language.

As Orwell illustrated so well, language is a powerful tool used to shape perceptions of reality.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

With the repudiation by the SNP, where does that leave the TERFs, politically speaking, in the UK? I can't recall, what was the result of the last TERF dustup in the Labour party?

Seems that TERF bigots are getting the boot from the major left wing political parties. Do they become politically homeless, or do they just fold into right wing parties who also have a strong distaste for trans people.

 

[Collin237]

Aside from the problem that we have no access to someone else's internal perception, even THEY don't have any way of determining conclusively that their perception is permanent. Certainly people who have said they were transgender later say they are not. How can you tell the difference? How can they tell the difference? I don't think there is any way.

All categories of people are malleable. That doesn't mean they don't exist.

 

[Meadmaker]

This is not about reality. This is about language.

In reality, people are apes. In language, calling someone an ape is a horrible insult.

The problem is that people demand to win the language argument, and then having won that, they try to impose it on reality.

The short version of the result is, "I should be allowed to be on the girls' track team because I am a girl." I'm perfectly ok with calling Terry Miller a girl, but I am not ok with her being in the record books as the fastest girl to have ever run the 200 meters in the state of Connecticut, and I think it is an injustice that Selina Soule did not go to the regional track championships because Terry and Andraya took the spot that Selina earned.

 

[Collin237]

As Orwell illustrated so well, language is a powerful tool used to shape perceptions of reality.

Exactly. A tool that is used maliciously against trans people, by statements such as the title of this thread.

 

[Meadmaker]

With the repudiation by the SNP, where does that leave the TERFs, politically speaking, in the UK? I can't recall, what was the result of the last TERF dustup in the Labour party?

Seems that TERF bigots are getting the boot from the major left wing political parties. Do they become politically homeless, or do they just fold into right wing parties who also have a strong distaste for trans people.

Certainly in the US, more and more of them left the lef6t wing party. I'm convinced that this issue, specifically, was what pushed Donald Trump over the top in 2016. (Remember that his margin of victory was tiny. Obviously this was not the only issue, or even the most important issue in the campaign, but I think this issue shifted enough votes that would have otherwise gone for Hilary Clinton in 2016 to provide the small margin of victory.)

 

[theprestige]

All categories of people are malleable. That doesn't mean they don't exist.

Is the category of women malleable? Or is it fixed to "permanent internal perception of her body indicates that she has a female body"?

Speaking of "female body" and the issue of language... A female body is a physical fact. It's a biological condition that expresses one and only one set of binary sex characteristics. The degree of expression varies quite a bit, but it's always on the one biological female continuum.

If a male-bodied person perceives that they have a female body, that perception is wrong.

The whole issue is about the mental anguish that arises from perceiving a female body where a male body manifestly exists. The question is, how do we best ameliorate this anguish? The answers range from "treat them as women", which is effectively meaningless; to "agree that they're female", which is contrafactual.

As far as I know, this particular delusion - that the body should be female when it is male - is the only delusion, dysmorphic or otherwise, where the recommended treatment is to pretend the delusion is fact and play along with it.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Certainly in the US, more and more of them left the lef6t wing party. I'm convinced that this issue, specifically, was what pushed Donald Trump over the top in 2016. (Remember that his margin of victory was tiny. Obviously this was not the only issue, or even the most important issue in the campaign, but I think this issue shifted enough votes that would have otherwise gone for Hilary Clinton in 2016 to provide the small margin of victory.)

I very much doubt it. The TERF phenomena is very pronounced in the UK, but I don't perceive there being nearly as much left-wing anti-trans sentiment in the US.

Transphobia is very prevalent in the US, but from the right.

Likewise in Canada, the effort to oppose trans right from a lefty wing position totally failed. The UK, for whatever reason, has an unusual TERF stronghold that I don't see reproduced in other places.

If you have any evidence of a significant number of transphobic liberals splintering off in the US, I'd love to see it.

 

[Ziggurat]

All categories of people are malleable. That doesn't mean they don't exist.

The existence of the category isn't in question, the appropriate definition is. You gave a bad definition. This isn't a defense of that definition's flaws.

 

[Ron Obvious]

Exactly. A tool that is used maliciously against trans people, by statements such as the title of this thread.

You're proof of what I just said. If you think trans-women really are women, you've fallen victim to reality-altering propaganda. That doesn't mean you can't treat them as women as a courtesy in any or even all circumstances, but if you've gone so far down the rabbit hole as to believe they really ARE women, you've gone off the rails.

ETA: Sorry for the mixed metaphor.

 

[Aber]

With the repudiation by the SNP, where does that leave the TERFs, politically speaking, in the UK?

Still in the SNP.

https://twitter.com/joannaccherry/status/1354378624095432705

 

[Elaedith]

Obviously that's what the extremists claim in order to make fun of the idea. Do you have evidence of any actual liberal saying such a thing?

I have no idea really what this is supposed to be saying.

It is a central tenet of current gender ideology that everyone has an innate gender identity that is analogous to a sexual orientation. At the same time not analogous, since it is meant to be socially constructed and fluid, unlike a sexual orientation - but at the same time is innate and immutable when it is politically expedient for it to be, such as insisting that 'trans children' can be medically transitioned because they will stay trans. Or alternatively, it doesn't matter whether they stay trans or not, because identity is primal and biology is socially constructed and malleable.

No diagnosis of gender dysphoria or experience of gender dysphoria is required to be trans, nor is any form of transition or change to presentation whatsoever. Only an individual can know their gender, so only self ID based on self-declaration is acceptable. Self-ID can refer to both what is required to get a gender recognition certificate, and what is required to access what are currently sex-segregated spaces (which are to become self-declared gender-identity spaces). In other words, there are to be no circumstances under which a woman can challenge any male who chooses to enter what was previously a female space.

If you are seriously disputing these facts it appears you are completely ignorant of the current agenda.

 

[Meadmaker]

I very much doubt it. The TERF phenomena is very pronounced in the UK, but I don't perceive there being nearly as much left-wing anti-trans sentiment in the US.

Transphobia is very prevalent in the US, but from the right.

The important votes are the ones in the center. My belief is that some centrist voters in 2016 were pushed over to the right wing side by this issue, specifically. It wasn't an incredibly important issue to them, but enough to make the difference.

Obviously, no one can prove that, one way or another. It's just a perception of what the right wingers were pushing because they thought it would be persuasive. I remember getting very nervous on my way to work on Election Day, 2016, listening to Hugh Hewitt saying, "Come on, North Carolina. Are you going to let the NCAA tell you how to run your state?"

 

[Collin237]

Why is gender dysmorphia a human right that must be accommodated, but BIID and BDD are medical conditions that should be treated?

Because in the case of gender, the evidence shows that surgery usually helps but mental therapy usually doesn't.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

The important votes are the ones in the center. My belief is that some centrist voters in 2016 were pushed over to the right wing side by this issue, specifically. It wasn't an incredibly important issue to them, but enough to make the difference.

Obviously, no one can prove that, one way or another. It's just a perception of what the right wingers were pushing because they thought it would be persuasive. I remember getting very nervous on my way to work on Election Day, 2016, listening to Hugh Hewitt saying, "Come on, North Carolina. Are you going to let the NCAA tell you how to run your state?"

I doubt that was very much to do with wooing liberals and much more a ploy to drive up right wing turnout.

Culture war issues such as this are often a favorite for turning out the voters.