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

[Olmstead]

I'm not sure what you mean. The situation, prior to very recent changes in law, was very poor for trans people. Without recognition that gender identity is a civil right, it is perfectly lawful to discriminate against trans people.

You implied that they should not be given the same rights if their condition isn't "valid" but a delusion. But presumably their internal experience would be exactly the same. Why shouldn't the delusional people be granted the same concessions if it helps them in the same way?

 

[Meadmaker]

DISCRIMINATION

noun
1.
the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, sex, or disability.
"victims of racial discrimination"

----

disingenuous
/ˌdɪsɪnˈdʒɛnjʊəs/

adjective: disingenuous
not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.
"he was being somewhat disingenuous as well as cynical"

I'm genuinely curious about something. When I type "discriminate" into google, the definition I gave was definition 1. The definition you gave, with a very slight wording change, was definition 2.

Did yours show up as definition 1?

 

[Ziggurat]

I'm not sure what you mean. The situation, prior to very recent changes in law, was very poor for trans people. Without recognition that gender identity is a civil right, it is perfectly lawful to discriminate against trans people.

You really need to clarify your language. The law does not recognize gender identity as a civil right. That doesn't even mean anything. Where applicable, the law recognizes gender identity as a protected class.

Sex is also a protected class. Being a protected class does not prohibit segregation based on sex for bathrooms, changing rooms, prisons, etc. Why would gender identity therefore prohibit that segregation? It doesn't.

 

[Meadmaker]

The interesting thing about the "discriminate" discussion is that it is the TRAs who want to discriminate between trans and cis.

The more traditionalist side wants to treat all males the same. The TRA side wants to treat transgender males differently than cisgender males.



I suppose one might argue that the traditionalist side wants to treat all males the same, regardless whether they are transgender or cisgender, but they want to treat some men differently than others. i.e. "my" side wants to treat transgender men differently than cisgender men. i.e. "my" side would allow transgender men to use the women's locker room, but we would not allow cisgender men to use the women's locker room.

It really all goes back to the thread title. Are transwomen actually women? And transmen men?

Using my definitions, no man can become pregnant. Everything else comes back to that. Do you agree with the title of the thread, or not?

 

[Emily's Cat]

EVERYBODY is being deprived of the privilege of changing in a private stall. Isn't it already a violation of women's rights that men build locker rooms that require women to see each other naked?

Not exactly. It's social convention for one thing. It's an area where everyone is aware that some nudity is expected, but it's expected to be sex-segregated. Females use the female changing room with full knowledge that there may very well be other females in there who are nude, or who will see them nude. Likewise for males. There is no expectation or consent to see or be seen by naked males in the female changing room.

In the vast majority of society, males and females keep separate spaces for some activities, often when there is nudity involved. Some of it is undoubtedly influenced by religious convention... but it's very commonplace in areas that do NOT have a judeo-christian influence as well. Cultures in which shared-space nudity is commonplace are exceptions and are quite rare.

Some of that convention is also a result of differences in behavior, as well as differences in the level of sexual aggression between males and females. This isn't a slam on men (I'm rather fond of men in general) but an acknowledgement of biology, nature, evolution, and the effect of testosterone on the body and the mind. It's an unfortunate fact that the vast majority of sexual crimes and assaults are committed by males.

Females having a space available to them were there is an expectation of no males being present is something that many of us value greatly.

For a long time, there were transsexuals and transwomen in those spaces with us, and we didn't complain. Those women kept to themselves, were respectful, and were few. And we knew that they had gone though lots of counseling to come to terms with their dysphoria, and had made a genuine commitment to live as their opposite gender. And they did their very best to try to pass and blend in. Over the last decade there's been a shift in advocacy, which has changed the views of many females. In particular, there's been a push toward 1) transgender people being recognized as their identified gender regardless of whether they even attempt to pass and 2) the elimination of any medical or clinical requirements for recognition of that identified gender. The result is that now, instead of a very few fully transitioned and considerate transsexual women in our spaces... we're being confronted with very masculine people who possess penises, and who feel entitled to enter our spaces as a right because they self-declare themselves to be women.

There's also been a marked rise in online social media activity that seems to be driven by a fairly strong paraphilia. The people experiencing this and expressing themselves are nearly exclusively male, and they appear to experience sexual arousal at the thought and image of themselves as women... and they experience sexual arousal at being allowed into female spaces. This has led some some fairly disturbing rhetoric, such as the "cotton ceiling" and casting lesbians as "vagina fetishists" if they don't consent to having sex with the transwoman's "ladydick".

This is, all around, a remarkable messy and contentious situation. It's exacerbated by a fair number of people who feel that misgendering is "literal violence" and hate speech... but who feel that threatening women who say that biological sex is real and meaningful are transphobes... and then proceeding to echo sentiments like "Punch a TERF today" and "I punch TERFs" and "TERFs aren't human and deserve to die" and "TERFs should be raped by my barbed-wire wrapped baseball bat" and "Suck my lady dick transphobe!"

All of which has led several females, myself included, to be a bit on edge. Seeing as most of us are neither TERFs nor transphobes, it's a bit frightening in terms of a rallying cry.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Queer people aren't asking to do away with sex segregation.

As far as I can tell, neither are trans people. I merely offer it as a solution that might assuage those that seem determined to take deep offense to trans women (nobody seems to care about trans men in these discussions) being treated as women.

Zuby is a male rapper who said he was a woman, deadlifted a big weight, and declared himself the new women's world record holder in deadlift. I do not take his claim to be a woman seriously. But I've seen no argument in favor of self-ID which allows me to exclude him.



I don't think this concept of "valid" is actually rigorous enough to rest your argument on, but even on this basis, some people claiming to be trans are not "valid". Zuby is an example. It's obvious in his case, but it's not obvious in others.

People can lie. People can likewise lie about being gay. They can lie about their religion, and even in some cases, can even lie about their ethnicity. Sometimes it's easy to tell it's BS, sometimes not. This doesn't strike me as a particularly convincing reason to curtail the ability of sincere trans people to be recognized as their self-identified gender. Evidence is lacking that gender-fraudsters is a significant problem in places with self-ID. Time will tell, but I think the danger of this is mostly imagined.

No. Consequences always matter.

Consequences have practical impacts that may have to be mitigated, but adverse consequences don't impact whether or not an underlying assertion is true. The adverse (to some eyes) consequences of "trans women are women" is irrelevant to the question of whether or not that statement is true.

Again, you haven't established that the use of any particular bathroom, for ANYONE, is a civil right. Whether or not trans identity is "valid" does not suffice for that question. If the justification for segregation is based on biological sex, then the "validity" of trans identity doesn't matter. Being trans doesn't change your biological sex. It would be unfair discrimination to ban them from using any bathroom, but if you insist that they use the bathroom corresponding to their biological sex, well, how have you discriminated against them any more than against a cismale person who wants to use the women's room? You haven't.

And despite Boudicca's position on the matter, a lot of trans people recognize that they have not, biologically, changed sex by transitioning.

Well we're back to where this thread started, the irreconcilable differences between "trans women are women" and "trans women are not women". It probably explains why this thread just runs in circles on and on forever.

Realistically, one side is going to triumph and the other fail. Recent news seems to indicate the "trans women are not women" side is looking at a rough road ahead. This is a good thing.

First off, you keep trying to bring in other forms of discrimination. That isn't valid to do. Not all forms of discrimination are equivalent, and the fact that you already accept sex discrimination in these intimate spaces for non-trans people in ways that you (and everyone else here) wouldn't accept for something like employment or housing should establish that pretty convincingly.

Second, you're simply wrong about the implications of delusions. For example, anorexia is a form of delusion, and a disability to boot. They believe themselves to be overweight even when they are underweight. But it is still illegal to discriminate against someone with anorexia in many cases, under the ADA. So even if one were to take the position that trans identity is a delusion (and I haven't made that claim), you still don't end up with the conclusion that any and all forms of discrimination against them are acceptable.

There's a huge difference between reasonable accommodation for disabilities required by law and the language of anti-discrimination law. The language of anti-discrimination law is much stronger and affords much more. Trans people stand to get much more should gender identity be afforded protection under antidiscrimination law.

Prior to the recent Bostock decision, it was perfectly legal to fire trans people*. Legal experts anticipate that this decision will be a landmark precedent that results in anti-trans and anti-gay discrimination to be outlawed in the same ways that discrimination on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, etc is outlawed. The fact that this case had to be brought at all proves that existing protections for gay and trans people was not adequate.

* The case was about a firing for sexual orientation, but the decision covers both sexual orientation and gender identity.

 

[Butter!]

Just out of interest .... where are we on the 'the majority of people here are quite reasonable and not in the least transphobic'?

Can we agree that for example a poster saying a handful of posts above here explicitly that 'transwomen are not women' is transphobic?

Can we count that as 1?

Happy to provide more evidence as we go just genuinely interested in whether your perception matches mine and whether we are agreeing on what we see

I'm sorry, Archie, I don't know what you're asking me. Colin said:

Yes, that seems to be what's happening. I'd have expected that ISF would be a place where independently enlightened policies would arise, but my hopes for that have been dashed.

I don't understand why his hopes are dashed. There is a debate going on, and lots of the non-transphobic posters have been proposing and discussing possible solutions. So I wanted to know what Collin meant about his hopes being dashed. Maybe I'm misreading his post.

If he meant his hopes are dashed because there are some transphobic posts present at all, then that would be something I couldn't deny. But his post seemed to be saying he was disappointed that no one was trying to come up with enlightened solutions. Plenty of people are.

When Collin first showed up, he thought we were all possibly transphobic, reactionary conservatives (mostly based on the thread title, which some of us are currently petitioning to change). Now that he has seen that isn't the case, I thought his hopes would perk up a little rather than being dashed. So that's what I was asking him.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Whether or not trans people are valid is the pivotal question to this whole thing.

I don't think this is the pivotal question, and I think that framing it that way is a red herring.

Trans people are valid in that I assume they experience genuine dysphoria. That assumption becomes strained when there is no expectation of a diagnosis of dysphoria, and we are expected to accept it as true solely on the claim.

Trans people are valid in that they are human beings, and deserve to be treated with the same degree of dignity and respect that we show to other human beings.

The pivotal question is whether or not gender identity - especially self-declared gender identity - should override and replace sex as a protected status, and whether or not gender identity entitles the declarer to be treated and recognized in all aspects of society as FEMALE.

I don't know how may times I've asked you what your view is on prisons. You keep going back to bathrooms. Sure, it's a lot easier to paint your opponent as a bigot if they're bothered by a penis-haver needing to pee in their bathroom... but it really misses the majority of the issue.

 

[Emily's Cat]

We all know the answer. You have conservative views about sex and gender and you don't want to listen to anything that counters those views. You are quite comfortable being transphobic even though you will deny to your grave that you are. Stalemate.

I can just as easily argue that you are quite comfortable being misogynistic even though you will deny to your grave that you are.

Clearly, name calling and labelling gets us nowhere. How about we simply knock it off and actually discuss the issue like adults?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Can we agree that for example a poster saying a handful of posts above here explicitly that 'transwomen are not women' is transphobic?

No, we cannot agree on that. Under the current and historical definition of "woman" transwomen are not women - they are not adult human females.

If you can provide a non-tautological definition of "woman" that includes both ciswomen and transwoman, but excludes both cismen and transmen, I anxiously await the opportunity to change my mind.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Realistically, one side is going to triumph and the other fail. Recent news seems to indicate the "trans women are not women" side is looking at a rough road ahead. This is a good thing.

It will be a great win for the MRAs. Yay for the oppression of females coming back into vogue!

 

[Matthew Best]

This is an absolute mess. Want to try again?

I'm just taking you at your word. Don't like it? How amusing.

 

[Ziggurat]

People can lie. People can likewise lie about being gay. They can lie about their religion, and even in some cases, can even lie about their ethnicity. Sometimes it's easy to tell it's BS, sometimes not. This doesn't strike me as a particularly convincing reason to curtail the ability of sincere trans people to be recognized as their self-identified gender.

You keep trying to hide the issue. It's not about "recognizing" their "self-identified gender". It's about whether or not to allow them to access sex-segregated spaces. Don't obfuscate that.

And let's take a moment to consider why someone might lie. A cismale predator might lie about being trans in order to access female-only spaces and commit mischief. This is undesirable, is it not? You said you don't care about consequences, but other people, including me, do, and it's never going to work to demand that we don't.

Is there an equivalent problem with lying about sexuality? Not really. Certain spaces cater to homosexuals, but admitting straight people doesn't cause problems (aside from possible discomfort for the straight people). And other than dating sites, I can't really think of spaces which cater specifically to straight people, and if you're gay, why would you even want to access those spaces?

Race, though, is an interesting example. And you will notice, people get very upset about it when people lie about being a minority. I think it's a little off-topic here so I don't really want to go into it, but I don't see how that example indicates we shouldn't care about the veracity of claims regarding trans status.

Evidence is lacking that gender-fraudsters is a significant problem in places with self-ID. Time will tell, but I think the danger of this is mostly imagined.

Possibly. And if that turns out to be true, it's perhaps your best argument. But the data isn't in yet to really support that claim. And absent that data, I don't think caution is unwarranted.

Consequences have practical impacts that may have to be mitigated, but adverse consequences don't impact whether or not an underlying assertion is true. The adverse (to some eyes) consequences of "trans women are women" is irrelevant to the question of whether or not that statement is true.

At the end of the day, the truth of falsity of "trans women are women" is always going to be a semantic debate, and those are always the least interesting debates to have. It is true for some definitions, and false for other definitions.

But the choice of definitions is not actually the important issue. The actual important issue is what we should do, and that isn't uniquely determined by which definition we choose. The fight over definitions is useful to each side to the extent that it can influence people's choices, but that's not a logical connection, it's an emotional one. So we are still left with the question of how transwomen should be granted or denied access to certain female-specific spaces. And possible adverse consequences are VERY relevant to that question.

There's a huge difference between reasonable accommodation for disabilities required by law and the language of anti-discrimination law. The language of anti-discrimination law is much stronger and affords much more. Trans people stand to get much more should gender identity be afforded protection under antidiscrimination law.

I don't think anyone here has opposed antidiscrimination protection for things like employment and housing. But granting those doesn't require that you grant them similar legal protections in terms of accessing bathrooms, sports, prisons, etc. Extending sex discrimination to gender identity is very easy to justify. But by the same token, allowing gender identity discrimination where sex discrimination is allowed (or just not allowing gender identity to override legal sex discrimination) doesn't present a slippery slope.

 

[theprestige]

If they are, arguments from consequences really don't matter. If trans identity is valid, then us cis people simply cannot deny them their rights simply because we don't like the consequences of that.

We deny rights because of the (risk of) consequences all the time.

---

Separately, it's a violation of human rights to deny a man a job or a home because of his sex or gender identity. But it's not a violation of human rights to deny a man access to a women's restroom because of his sex or gender identity.

 

[theprestige]

Consequences have practical impacts that may have to be mitigated, but adverse consequences don't impact whether or not an underlying assertion is true. The adverse (to some eyes) consequences of "trans women are women" is irrelevant to the question of whether or not that statement is true.

The claim is entirely dependent on a subjective paradigm.

We're not asking, "what are the consequences if this statement is true?" We're asking "what are the consequences if we adopt this statement as a public policy axiom?"

 

[TurkeysGhost]

And let's take a moment to consider why someone might lie. A cismale predator might lie about being trans in order to access female-only spaces and commit mischief. This is undesirable, is it not? You said you don't care about consequences, but other people, including me, do, and it's never going to work to demand that we don't.

Is there an equivalent problem with lying about sexuality? Not really. Certain spaces cater to homosexuals, but admitting straight people doesn't cause problems (aside from possible discomfort for the straight people). And other than dating sites, I can't really think of spaces which cater specifically to straight people, and if you're gay, why would you even want to access those spaces?

A person might lie about their sexuality in order to effect a sham marriage for the various benefits that come with being married (taxes, insurance, citizenship status, etc).

Possibly. And if that turns out to be true, it's perhaps your best argument. But the data isn't in yet to really support that claim. And absent that data, I don't think caution is unwarranted.

How long are you expecting this to take? Canada has had self-ID since 2017.

At the end of the day, the truth of falsity of "trans women are women" is always going to be a semantic debate, and those are always the least interesting debates to have. It is true for some definitions, and false for other definitions.

But the choice of definitions is not actually the important issue. The actual important issue is what we should do, and that isn't uniquely determined by which definition we choose. The fight over definitions is useful to each side to the extent that it can influence people's choices, but that's not a logical connection, it's an emotional one. So we are still left with the question of how transwomen should be granted or denied access to certain female-specific spaces. And possible adverse consequences are VERY relevant to that question.

Seems to me the choice of definition is very important. The meaning of "sex" is pretty pivotal. At least, what that term means matters a lot when it comes to existing non-discrimination law which talks about sex as a protected class a great deal. What is or is not meant by "sex" was basically the entire basis of the Bostock SCOTUS decision.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I'm genuinely curious about something. When I type "discriminate" into google, the definition I gave was definition 1. The definition you gave, with a very slight wording change, was definition 2.

Did yours show up as definition 1?

Yes because if you appreciate that what we are talking about is discrimination as in 'anti-discrimination law' then you type in discrimination and it comes up as the obvious 1st definition.

If you want to be disingenuous you try to pretend that's not what we are talking about when we discuss discrimination or to discriminate against transgender people.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I'm sorry, Archie, I don't know what you're asking me. Colin said:

No, it was nothing to do with what Colin said it was a direct question to you reharding the fact that Meadmake had said explicitly in his post 2 or 3 before it 'transwomen are not women' and I was genuinely asking where that fit into your perception that this thread is mostly reasonable people not being transphobic in the least?

Given that you have explicitly said you think the title of this thread is inappropriate and given that Meadmaker has unprompted repeated it as their own view can we agree that is a transphobic statement from them?

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I'm just taking you at your word. Don't like it? How amusing.

I don't understand it. I can't tell if I like it or not. It's incoherent.

 

[Matthew Best]

I don't understand it. I can't tell if I like it or not. It's incoherent.

Well, of course it's incoherent! That's the whole point!

If you would just write coherently, we wouldn't have to have this discussion.

Care to try again?