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

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caveman1917 said:
Yeah I'm sure answering the question of whether transwomen should be given the opportunity to play rugby in the female leagues is going to be helped quite a lot by not having definitions for "transwomen" nor "female."
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I already provided a rough working definition for female, but I expect sports leagues will focus on more specific issues such as the process of virilization caused by male puberty or the persistence of high levels of free testosterone.

caveman1917 said:
Your point being?
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My point being your stated position that pronouns should be used as indicators of biological sex (without consideration of socially constructed gender) is fairly bad career advice.

caveman1917 said:
"generally expected to perform femininity = referred to as she"
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I've already shown this to be false.
 
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LondonJohn said:
Yes it would. But gender identity has nothing whatsoever to do with biological reproductive function. It's entirely to do with sociological and societal expectations and preconceptions.
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Societal expectations are not completely divorced from reproductive function. Mothers breastfeed infants for many months. This is the normal biological function. Societal expectations such as mothers staying home with children are tied to this. The connection is not immutable, it can be (and is) done differently in wealthy modern societies, but the connection between societal expectation and biology is still real.
 
Matthew Best said:
lionking has it. It's because you've espoused positions that are likely to get you called a TERF:

The right to deny intimate services to a person on the basis of their sex
Separate housing in prisons for trans people
Separate tallies for trans people in sex-based positions, scholarships, grants etc
Separate tallies for trans people in honorifics such as "woman of the year" or "most highly paid woman CEO"
Separate housing for trans people for high vulnerability populations such as rape shelters and domestic violence refuges
Access to subsidized health care for gender transition treatment only by official diagnosis.
No access of minors to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgical procedures without parental consent

These appear to me to be all TERF positions.

Don't worry about the "feminism" part - the label TERF has outgrown that and now applies to anybody who espouses the positions you hold, regardless of whether they are feminists or not.
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Do you have a link to someone listing these items and calling them TERF points, to show that you aren't just parroting my responses?
 
Matthew Best said:
I don't see why not. You espoused positions that are trans-exclusionary. That will make you a TERF in the eyes on the TRAs.
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In order to convince me of that, you'd need a survey of TRAs evaluating those opinions as to whether they count as "trans-exclusionary". But since you have no evidence that those opinions appear anywhere except my own writing, that would prove only that you were spamming them.
 
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Collin237 said:
In order to convince me of that, you'd need a survey of TRAs evaluating those opinions as to whether they count as "trans-exclusionary". But since you have no evidence that those opinions appear anywhere except my own writing, that would prove only that you were spamming them.
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Nope I just need to demonstrate that they are trans-exclusionary, which by definition several of them are. QED.
 
LondonJohn said:
I.... just.... had.....a.......feeling you'd handwave away the (obvious and pertinent) analogy in this way. In a way, I'm glad I wasn't surprised :)


ETA: I can't decide whether to view it as laughable or offensive when you try to ridicule (in a post which is dripping with patronisation) my analogy by equating "Nazis are bad" (a statement that is universally accepted and universally endorsed by every relevant authority) with "Transwomen are not women" (which is not only a statement that is not universally accepted/endorsed, but a statement that is wholly contradicted and refuted by every relevant authority. (And this, of course, is why "Gayers are mentalists" is a pertinent analogy, while "Nazis are bad" is not.)


ETA2: Oh, I just noticed your weasel attempt to move the goalposts! You're now trying to claim that what you were doing was nothing more than "(expressing) opposition to trans rights activists"! But that's not what you were doing, were you? In fact, you were stating that you subscribe to the view that transwomen are not women. I wonder why you tried to disguise that in your condescending rebuttal?
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Yeah, I can see why you might be offended by what I did, but not all that offended, because it's so absurd that it's difficult to take seriously.
 
TomB said:
Awful nit-picky, aren't we?

For the purposes of the definition I gave, self-image would refer to how you picture yourself in your internal dialogue, not how you perceive yourself in the mirror. A non-delusional person would be aware of both the mental and physical images and how they differ.

My self-image, the way I tend to think of myself, is along the lines of myself at 30. I'm 52. I know that I'm about 50 pounds heavier and a step slower and need to pee more often. But I still think of myself the same way I thought of myself when I was thirty.

If I believed that I actually still weighed 150 pounds instead of 200 pounds, that would be delusional.
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In trying to think about your definition, this is exactly the situation I was thinking about.

It seems to me that most of us have some sort of image of ourselves that isn't accurate, but when does that inaccurate self image cross over into delusion? I think the answer is that it becomes delusional when we act on that image instead of the reality. It's one thing to have an image of yourself as you were at 30, but if you go onto a dating site and post a 20 year old profile picture, then you are no longer dealing with reality.
 
Speaking of dating sites, Tom's example made me think of a moral dilemma.

Suppose that, like Tom and a lot of people, my self image of myself is more youthful than the reality of my body.

If I have to enter my birthdate into my profile for the dating site, should I use a birthdate that more closely aligns with my maturity identification, or should I use the birthdate that was assigned to me at birth?
 
Meadmaker said:
In trying to think about your definition, this is exactly the situation I was thinking about.

It seems to me that most of us have some sort of image of ourselves that isn't accurate, but when does that inaccurate self image cross over into delusion? I think the answer is that it becomes delusional when we act on that image instead of the reality. It's one thing to have an image of yourself as you were at 30, but if you go onto a dating site and post a 20 year old profile picture, then you are no longer dealing with reality.
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Meadmaker said:
Speaking of dating sites, Tom's example made me think of a moral dilemma.

Suppose that, like Tom and a lot of people, my self image of myself is more youthful than the reality of my body.

If I have to enter my birthdate into my profile for the dating site, should I use a birthdate that more closely aligns with my maturity identification, or should I use the birthdate that was assigned to me at birth?
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False analogy. It's not possible to reverse the aging process. It is possible to have one's genitalia surgically altered.
 
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Meadmaker said:
Speaking of dating sites, Tom's example made me think of a moral dilemma.

Suppose that, like Tom and a lot of people, my self image of myself is more youthful than the reality of my body.

If I have to enter my birthdate into my profile for the dating site, should I use a birthdate that more closely aligns with my maturity identification, or should I use the birthdate that was assigned to me at birth?
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The example I like to use is my height vs my 'stature'. A woman's on-line dating profile says she's only interested in men over 6'4". My 5'9" self shows up and tells her I may only be 5'9" physically, but my internal sense of stature is 6'6", so she's a bigot if she says she's not interested. Kinda don't think that would fly, and for good reason.
 
TomB said:
Oh, it's not particularly useful. I keep saying that I find the whole definition chasing thing to be a pointless exercise.

It doesn't help us tell who is or is not a woman, because it relies on gender being an internal thing, divorced from the physical things we can directly measure. We have no current means of directly evaluating that.

It may be that at some point a test can be done for genetic markers that are present in cis and trans women bot not in cis and trans men. The only thing we have is psychology, and indirect evaluation.

The only thing my definition is good for, maybe, is illustrating dysphoria: internal image does not match up with external image. Operating system does not match with hardware.

But I don't think we need a definition of woman if we think that gender dysphoria is real. Trans-women are/are not women is, in my mind an unsolvable problem that distracts from how to handle real world situations. Answering the question only leads to all-or-nothing stances on both sides which I find unreasonable.
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I was thinking about whether to respond, and how, to this, when I read LondonJohn's response. His response illustrated very well the significance of the definition question.

LondonJohn said:
It's a relief, then, that the people who are actually qualified to pass judgement on this matter have definitively done so.


(And I think it's still fashionable in certain quarters to look for the "gay gene" as a way of quantifying homosexuality.....)
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Despite the fact that I have pushed the definition question as much or more than anyone else here, the truth is that I am much more interested in, as you say, handling real world situations. So why do I insist on definitions?

London John provided the illustration. He told you that you were not qualified to pass judgement on the matter. Experts have "definitively" passed judgement, and your opinion really doesn't matter.

In other words, the TRAs are saying the debate is settled. Transwomen are women. The experts say so, and that's a done deal. They are claiming victory by definition. They don't want to discuss the practical concerns about whether the person formerly known as Steven ought to share the girls' locker room with the swim team. That is unfair and prejudicial and bigoted because Stephanie is a woman and there should be no special consideration for women who happen to have penises, any more than for women with different color hair or skin.

I would prefer discussion about real world considerations, but the TRA side is demanding complete acquiescence, by definition.

Ok, then. What definition is that?
 
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