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

[Rolfe]

Emily, Rolfe (and anyone else.)

Serious proposal which I am presenting without malice or ill intent and I would appreciate a response in kind.

Would something along the lines of pushing (maybe legally, maybe just socially) for more privacy in spaces such as locker rooms and public bathrooms at least be steps toward (not necessarily 100% perfect solutions, but just steps toward) providing you with the comfort and safety you are seeking? Because I feel it would also tone down the feeling that men are being assumed to be predators.

No. We want male-free spaces, not isolation. We use women's spaces to make contact with each other for help and support. Cutting women off from their informal ad-hoc support network in the name of allowing men in but then "protecting" them from men is a thoroughly bad idea.

It's also dangerous, as a man with ill intent only has to get into the private cubicle where the woman or girl is, and she's defenceless against him with nobody to see what's happening. He can lock the door and get on with it.

There's also the concern of voyeurism and peeping Tom behaviour, specifically the hidden cameras thing. If men aren't allowed in women's spaces it's very hard for them to place such cameras or cut peep-holes or whatever. If they have free entry they can do what they like.

Sorry, but your pathological delusion that women's single-sex spaces are an insult to your own personal good intentions and general all-round-nice-guy image is not enough to justify taking all this away from us.

 

[Rolfe]

All you'd really is the ability to discern whether people in a given culture would (by-and-large) tend towards using masculine or feminine modes of address, for starters. If you see someone (like myself) with a shaved head and a beard, it's a safe bet that people will say he/him/sir and expect me to respond normally. If I ask where to find tops, people don't point me to the blouses. This isn't exactly rocket surgery.

I'm going to respond to anyone with a prominent Adam's apple, a baritone voice, a 5 o'clock shadow, a receding hairline and enormous hands and feet with "he/him" even if he's dressed up like the good ship Lollipop and I'll bet most people would do the same.

 

[d4m10n]

In other words, using the pronoun "he" for you is nothing more than describing you as male...

You are mistaken. Outside of a few relatively unusual environments (e.g. communal showers) we find ourselves going off external cues (e.g. beards, breasts, mode of dress) which are only correlated with biological sex most of the time. Trans people in particular have been known to give off signals which don't match their sex at birth.

 

[Aber]

I'm not allowed to say it, but I think you know very well where statements like that crop up.

https://www.iglyo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/IGLYO_v3-1.pdf

Here's a bit of a 'how to' guide:

GOOD PRACTICES FOR NGO ADVOCACY
1. Target youth politicians
2.De-medicalise the campaign
3. Use case studies of real people
4.Anonymise the narratives
5.Get ahead of the government agenda and the media story
6.Use human rights as a campaign point
7. Tie your campaign to more popular reform
8.Avoid excessive press coverage and exposure
Another technique which has been used to great effect is the limitation of press coverage and exposure.
9.Carpe diem
10. Work together
11. Be wary of compromise

 

[JoeMorgue]

Sorry, but your pathological delusion that women's single-sex spaces are an insult to your own personal good intentions and general all-round-nice-guy image is not enough to justify taking all this away from us.

You've already declared me a rapist in waiting. You think it bothers me you don't think I'm "nice?"

Again at what point in your argument, even if 100% true, am I supposed to be on your side here?

 

[Collin237]

Depends on context really. I mean, if the context is around canals and sculptures of faces on Mars... it wouldn't be a lack of sanity to point that out, would it?

No. But it would be insane if someone talking like that got public recognition as representing a viewpoint. Nowadays, society keeps letting in people with outrageous views, taking them seriously for a while, and then dramatically "de-platforming" them. This makes it impossible to reach any agreement about contentious issues. And I think you've been pulled into that loop.

 

[Rolfe]

It's an interesting point linguistically that the third person singluar seems to be the most deeply-ingrained grammatical rule of all, and the one which people find it most difficult, in some cases impossible, to alter from their native language when learning a new one.

A Finnish mother virtually bilingual in English and Finnish, living in England, who constantly got it wrong when referring to her children as he or she. The notorious inability of native English speakers to cope with the gendered nouns in other European languages. It's hard-wired, and expecting people to over-ride their instinctive use of pronouns in their own native language is not a trivial ask.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Please see my original definition for the linkage to sex, which was made fairly explicit at the time.

I'm content to just move on from it. I disagree with your proposed definition of "woman", for the reasons I've given. I think it's nebulous and subjective, as well as having the effect of reinforcing sex-based stereotypes that are barriers for both men and women. If you want to stick with your definition, go ahead. Maybe you'll gain traction with other people.

 

[Aber]

Nowadays, society keeps letting in people with outrageous views, taking them seriously for a while, and then dramatically "de-platforming" them.

Not just nowadays; there are always faddish ideas around.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Pronouns are language specific. Some languages don't have gendered pronouns at all, some have more than two, still others implement them in radically different ways.

They are, therefore, not really a meaningful distinction anymore so then catsup and ketchup are.

 

[Rolfe]

You've already declared me a rapist in waiting. You think it bothers me you don't think I'm "nice?"

Again at what point in your argument, even if 100% true, am I supposed to be on your side here?

It would be nice if you would just butt out if you can't dredge up the slightest bit of empathy for anyone other than other men.

And please show where I declared that you personally were a rapist in waiting or withdraw that.

 

[caveman1917]

You are mistaken. Outside of a few relatively unusual environments (e.g. communal showers) we find ourselves going off external cues (e.g. beards, breasts, mode of dress) which are only correlated with biological sex most of the time. Trans people in particular have been known to give off signals which don't match their sex at birth.

They are (always) correlated with sex, what you probably mean is that the correlation isn't perfect (ie it's not 100%). And being mistaken about someone being male does not stop the pronoun "he" from only referring to the person being male. Your logic is silly, if I am mistaken in describing someone as "short" does that now mean that the word "short" sometimes means "not short"? Of course not!

 

[Rolfe]

Pronouns are language specific. Some languages don't have gendered pronouns at all, some have more than two, still others implement them in radically different ways.

They are, therefore, not really a meaningful distinction anymore so then catsup and ketchup are.

That's the point. Languages deal with the third person singular in a wide variety of ways, and it seems that the way your native tongue does it is the most hard-wired of all language learning. It's the very last part of a new language a learner will master, if they ever do. Expecting people just to jump to it and change the third person singular usage in their own language is not a trivial request.

 

[JoeMorgue]

There's this idea that correlation has to be 100% perfect with no exceptions in order to be useful.

If 99% of the population falls into 1 of 2 categories and the last 1% doesn't, that's binary with exceptions, not "a spectrum."

 

[d4m10n]

I think it's nebulous and subjective, as well as having the effect of reinforcing sex-based stereotypes that are barriers for both men and women.

My definition says nothing about whether the existing gendered expectations are good or bad or indifferent. I'd expect we'd find some of each if we took the time to examine them. For example, I am expected to respond politely to masculine pronouns and forms of address such as "sir" and "dude" and "bro" whereas my wife would not be expected to react in the same way. Is this a sex-based stereotype which raises social barriers, or is it a harmless linguistic convention?

 

[d4m10n]

They are (always) correlated with sex, what you probably mean is that the correlation isn't perfect (ie it's not 100%).

Yes.

And being mistaken about someone being male does not stop the pronoun "he" from only referring to the person being male.

I use the masculine pronoun for people who appear to be male, even if said appearance is the result of HRT. Don't you?

 

[Emily's Cat]

You are mistaken. Outside of a few relatively unusual environments (e.g. communal showers) we find ourselves going off external cues (e.g. beards, breasts, mode of dress) which are only correlated with biological sex most of the time. Trans people in particular have been known to give off signals which don't match their sex at birth.

I disagree. We find ourselves going off of external cues, yes... but I don't think those cues are as strongly "performing femininity" or "behaving the way females are expected to behave" as you seem to be suggesting.

Some of those cues are secondary sex characteristics (breasts and beard)... but a huge amount of them are sex-linked differences between male and female morphology. It's the shape of the body, the ratio of shoulder width to hip width, the overall size, the degree of muscularity and the deposition of fat, the shape of the brow ridge and the orbital socket, the shape of the jaw and chin, the shape and positioning of the gluteal muscles, the tilt and shape of the hips, the gait that is produced from those hips.

Humans are incredibly good pattern recognition machines - so good that we're notorious for finding patterns where they don't actually exist. But we are extraordinarily good at identifying male from female based on morphology. We can look at a highly-muscled, tall, narrow-hipped, flat-chested person without visible facial hair... and nearly always correctly determine whether they are male or female.

Remember the facial recognition software that came up earlier? That's not relying on a beard or clothing choices. It's looking at sexually dimorphic characteristics of the human skull.

 

[caveman1917]

There's this idea that correlation has to be 100% perfect with no exceptions in order to be useful.

It's easy to make money off if you turn it into a betting game, since a straight-forward calculation exists to derive a superior strategy if your opponent has a known bias in deriving probabilities from information. For example the people who go like "even if you know someone's sex you can not know their gender identity, it could be either way" would, consistently with this claim of lack of information, give even bets on asking random people their gender identity even if given their sex. Whereas you just take all such bets where the gender identity matches the sex, given that this is true for say 99% of people you'll win 99% of the bets at even odds so you just rake in the money.

 

[caveman1917]

Yes.

I use the masculine pronoun for people who appear to be male, even if said appearance is the result of HRT. Don't you?

So a man is anyone who appears to be male? In that case most transwomen would be men, as most appear to be male.

 

[Collin237]

https://www.iglyo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/IGLYO_v3-1.pdf

Here's a bit of a 'how to' guide:

That pamphlet is obviously satire. This is the sort of thing radicals pass around to convince people of their imaginary nefarious plots. You've been played.