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

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Collin237 said:
That's a feature not a bug. When it's impossible to please everyone, the only fair option is to please no one.
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:boggled: I suspect this is intended as humor? It's difficult to tell for sure, but it comes across like you'd think gay men are actually women and should transition?

I bring it up because I've actually seen that argument put forth by some transgender people. Not a lot... but a very vocal few.
 
d4m10n said:
Throw in "adult" and "human," narrow the context to a specific culture, and bear in mind that it isn't necessarily ethical to impose gendered expectations on those who have no use for them. With all that in mind, pretty much, yes.

Said rebuttal assumes that to acknowledge the existence of gendered norms is to facilitate and perpetuate them. That's ********, obviously, and I'm surprised anyone falls for it.
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My point is that I'm aware of the state of play, and it's not a debate I see any need to contribute to. Everything I would contribute has already been contributed, and you've already rejected it. Wheels within wheels, but I'm making a choice not to give this particular wheel another spin.
 
We've been trying to land on "No you see when a biological male does this it makes him a woman, but that's not the same thing as saying that's expecting women to do it" for about 5 years now.

They want feminine/masculine characteristics that transgender people get to use in order to be their identified gender without there being gender stereotypes which isn't how reality works. That was my original issue with the concept all those many, many moons ago.
 
Collin237 said:
Of course not! But the crime of seeing a naked man is exactly as serious as the crime of seeing a naked woman, regardless of who's looking.
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:D Exposing oneself to someone who doesn't want to see your private bits actually is a crime, outside of a few very limited and specific locations where nudity is expected.
 
"If a perfectly spherical transgender person in a frictionless vacuum over an infinite plane of uniform gravity is tied to one track and the other track has a rapist penis falling over in a forest where there is no one around to hear it, and you're manning the lever..."
 
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Olmstead said:
I think it was a mistake to focus on the locker room issue. It just gets sidestepped with the claim that nudity isn't a big deal (and in many places in the world it isn't) or that nudity is always a big deal. Pre-op transwomen in women's prisons/women's safehouses is a more straightforward issue.
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The more complicated topics just get ignored and sidestepped. :(

I had a post a while back to this effect. It's *easy* to focus on bathrooms and locker rooms, because it's easy to fall back on social mores and either declare them absurd or appropriate without a lot of consideration.

It's a lot more challenging to discuss prisons, and placing male-bodied inmates in a women's prison, where the females have no way to get away from an assaulter. It's more challenging to talk about female representation in politics and business, and the effect of allowing male-bodied people who have been raised as males in a sexually-biased society to "represent" the views and perspectives of females.
 
JoeMorgue said:
//Total Hijack//

A lot of motion capture isn't done by the performers of the same sex as the character.
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Which is an obvious human rights violation.

Only gay actors can portray gay characters. Only deaf actors can portray deaf characters. Only child actors can portray child characters. And only actors that identify as women can play characters that are identified as women. Hollywood has another purge coming.

//Hijack//
 
Olmstead said:
I think it was a mistake to focus on the locker room issue. It just gets sidestepped with the claim that nudity isn't a big deal (and in many places in the world it isn't) or that nudity is always a big deal. Pre-op transwomen in women's prisons/women's safehouses is a more straightforward issue.
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It would be if a) there were available safehouses for trans-women, who likely need to be protected from the same demographic as women do. And b) trans-women in male prisons dis not face the same sorts of danger in a men's prison that a woman would.

I'm not saying that putting trans-women in these women's spaces is the answer. I'm just pointing out that either option has non-trivial issues that can be problematic.

I think that's true of many of the issues under discussion. But no one wants to propose something like: I think trans-women should be allowed into space _____ but in doing so,we need to address women's safety/cultural concerns first. My idea for how to do so is.... Or I think trans-women should be excluded from space ____, but recognize that they have a need to be addressed. My idea of how to do this is....

Neither "side" wants to acknowledge the concerns of the other. Also, it saddens me that there are "sides" to this, when it really should be a discussion about trying to find the best way to fit people into society.
 
JoeMorgue said:
"If a perfectly spherical transgender person in a frictionless vacuum over an infinite plane of uniform gravity is tied to one track and the other track has a rapist penis falling over in a forest where there is no one around to hear it, and you're manning the lever..."
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Well. If you're manning the lever, you're a sexist and a transphobe and already wrong. Unless you're a transman who's performing the sexist social stereotype of "lever operation in a manly way". Then it's okay. Then you're just Rachel Dolezaling the lever.

ETA: Actually, is okay to say that? Was Rachel Dolezal having a valid lived experience? Or was she just performing "crazy white woman does blackface and entitlement"?
 
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theprestige said:
What about Ancient Greek and Elizabethan thespians?

"I'm theatrically female, sexually male, and socially as queer as a three-dollar bill."
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I've been watching a lot of opera during lockdown and it's extraordinary how many parts there are for female singers playing male roles. One night you'll see a singer as a vulnerable flower of a heroine and the next night she's Isolier, or Cherubino, or Octavian. Or perhaps a role originally written for a castrato, but these are also often taken by countertenors. The best of them have studied male movement and behaviour and do a very good job, but they ain't fooling nobody.

I was amused when the baritone role of the innkeeper in a recent production of Der Rosenkavalier was played as a transvestive in maximum camp mode though.
 
Rolfe said:
You seriously don't see how offensive it is to tell women that their identification as a woman depends on society generally expecting them to perform a set of stereotypical sexist behaviours, as opposed to being actually female? We kind of thought we left that behind in the 1960s.
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I'm sure Damion's heart is in the right place, but yeah. There's a LOT of stuff I thought we'd left behind in the 60s that has somehow come round again.
 
TomB said:
It would be if a) there were available safehouses for trans-women, who likely need to be protected from the same demographic as women do.
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There absolutely ought to be, and many of the rape crisis organisations have offered to set up and run these facilities. This is rejected by the trans activists on the grounds that it upsets the poor widdle penis-owning transwomen not to be allowed to bunk up with abused women, it invalidates them or something, so it can't be allowed to happen.
 
TomB said:
It would be if a) there were available safehouses for trans-women, who likely need to be protected from the same demographic as women do. And b) trans-women in male prisons dis not face the same sorts of danger in a men's prison that a woman would.
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I get where you're going with this, and appreciate it. But I'm going to point out that it's not just transwomen in men's prisons that face this danger - it's a whole lot of smaller-framed or even vaguely effeminate men. And some who are neither small nor effeminate.

It's a problem with male aggression and male sexual violence. I have all kinds of empathy for any of the victims... but it's a problem that males need to figure out how to address.

Not all males, of course. But statistically, the perpetrators are overwhelmingly male.
 
Emily's Cat said:
I'm sure Damion's heart is in the right place, but yeah. There's a LOT of stuff I thought we'd left behind in the 60s that has somehow come round again.
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His heart may be in the right place but he keeps coming up with this offensive sexist stereotypical crap and it's annoying the hell out of me. If society expects me to behave in a "feminine" manner, society can go **** itself. And you're going to have to stretch "feminine" a pretty long way to encompass butch lesbians, so it's going to be pretty meaningless anyway.
 
Emily's Cat said:
TRans people are valid human beings, and they shouldn't be discriminated against on the basis of their gender identity.

That's not where the disagreement is. Literally nobody in this thread thinks that transgender people don't exist, nor that they *should* be discriminated against.

The disagreement is around when the segregation is and should be based on sex as opposed to gender identity.
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I'm curios. What is your opinion on borderline cases? Reassignment surgery is a reality now. A non-binary person could have any combination of sexual characteristics, and in my mind that is their right. I think you've said that transwomen without a penis should be welcome in female spaces. Should that be the line regardless of other sexual characteristics?

Because this seems to be a complex issue, regardless of whether "transwomen are women" makes sense. I can see why transgender people could feel oppressed.
 
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Emily's Cat said:
I'm sure Damion's heart is in the right place, but yeah. There's a LOT of stuff I thought we'd left behind in the 60s that has somehow come round again.
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I'm waiting for a committed transwoman to say she's entitled to a 30% cut in lifetime earnings due to her gender identity. Or that men should be legally prohibited from wearing dresses in public, because it undermines the gender stereotypes that she and other transwomen depend on to perform their valid lived identity, and is therefore a hate crime.

I wouldn't be surprised if some TRAs are already saying that attempts to de-normalize gender stereotypes is transphobic. If they aren't saying it yet, I bet they will soon.
 
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