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

[theprestige]

That begs the question, what relevance does sorting the top .01%-or-whatever intelligence bracket by gender have toward promoting STEM skills for women at large?

It raises the question.

Begging the question is something else.

 

[Rolfe]

Thank you for that, saved me the trouble.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Yes. I have been coming around to such suspicions.

I'm really curious how I would go about adopting a fake persona for a year prior to you taking part in this thread, as an elaborate ploy to screw with you.

As to Boudicca, she's probably a troll. Then again, when she said she has a "female penis", maybe she did mean some kind of intersex structure, who knows?

An untransitioned trans woman with no intersex features is definitely a biological male in a reasonable sense of the phrase.

Boudicca isn't a troll, she just has strong feelings and I believe very emotionally-motivated views. She's also partially transitioned, and passes very well socially, but she still has male genitalia. I do not believe she is intersex. But she definitely isn't a troll.

I actually think Boudicca is a probably a really nice and caring person... but this is a topic that is difficult and polarizing.

I consider being trans a VLC. I also consider feeling afraid about being with trans people a VLC. What I do not consider a VLC is building one's philosophy around lists of crimes. And I mean any crimes, not just sexual.

What's VLC?

ETA: Maybe I'm missing something, but why would anyone in a robotics club outing care which cabin a trans person is in?

It was an overnight trip for a robotics competition for a girls robotics team. One of the members was a transgirl, among a collection of female teens. The question came up because the girls were sharing rooms... and thus there's a question of allowing a physically intact teenage male to share an unchaperoned bedroom with a teenage girl. Not even a case of the transgirl behaving in appropriately... but teens experiment.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Yes. I had originally answered the question as a generic opinion. Given criteria that made my general answer untenable, and given a requirement to provide a direct answer anyway, I'm giving a recommendation of full rights as the only way out of the maze.

Even though that reduces the rights and safety of females?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Wow, that's quite a diversionary tactic - I don't see why you would put having female only sports, representation, shelters (etc.) in the same category as religious dogma.

So in cases where there is supposed to be equal representation between men and women, you would be fine with the groups being all male (meaning all the "women" reps are transwomen)?

I must admit, I find being against any female only spaces sounds fairly close to admitting misogyny. I take it you deny that females have faced discrimination?

I'm about 98% sure that you and d4m10n are talking at cross-purposes here.

I direct you back to this post. I believe that d4m10n's quip was a commentary on the position previously espoused by Collin.

 

[theprestige]

What's VLC?

Valid Lived Condition, probably.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Hadn't seen this summary of alternate "woman" definitions posted here:

[qimg]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EtegEfVWYAIPPVi?format=jpg&name=large[/qimg]

That made me smile. If we could just find some common language from which to work, I think this topic would be a lot easier to tackle.

 

[Elaedith]

Valid Lived Condition, probably.

Are there any Valid Unlived Conditions (aside from being dead)? If not, what does the 'lived' represent I wonder?

 

[Emily's Cat]

I just checked the website of the White House. I see nothing about trans rights policy except diversionary tactics like mine.

I still think you're using "diversionary" in a way that I'm unfamiliar with. I'm using it as "tending to draw attention away from the principal concern". In the context of this thread, it's the same as a red herring, "something that distracts attention from the real issue".

Can you substitute another word, or otherwise elaborate on what you mean when you say "diversionary"?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Is anyone really making this argument, though? Gender-based norms for grooming (e.g. men shave faces, women shave legs) and fashion and other forms of self-presentation are plentiful and don't appear to be endangered.

I sure would LIKE them to be endangered. Seriously - YOU shave your armpits and legs, and let me know how that feels when it starts growing in.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Valid Lived Condition, probably.

Are we back to that? It would be nice if it came with a definition (or even a half-hearted description) this time.

 

[theprestige]

That made me smile. If we could just find some common language from which to work, I think this topic would be a lot easier to tackle.

There's been an ongoing failure from the "TRAs" in this thread to propose something that breaks the loop. Notably LondonJohn's steadfast insistence that the relevant experts have already broken it, and his steadfast refusal to support this claim.

I'm to the point where I'm pretty sure no such common language can exist. The whole reason TRAs are doubling down on victory by Orwell and policy capture is because this is not a debate that can be won on the merits. It's not even a debate that can be had, since the common language for it doesn't exist.

I think in the end it's really just "a woman is someone who is accepted as a woman, for performing their idea of the stereotype of woman as a social construct". Note that this is not an argument TRAs actually make. It's one that "TERFs" say the TRA position must reduce to. This reduction doesn't solve the language problem, but it does represent what's actually being sought.

 

[theprestige]

Are we back to that? It would be nice if it came with a definition (or even a half-hearted description) this time.

I've been using it off and on as a shorthand for "whatever you as a TRA think the Important Real Thing is."

Like, I don't have to know exactly how Collin defines VLC, to ask him how he knows you're performing a stereotype and not expressing a VLC. Indeed, his answer to that question could potentially give clues about his definition.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I've been using it off and on as a shorthand for "whatever you as a TRA think the Important Real Thing is."

Like, I don't have to know exactly how Collin defines VLC, to ask him how he knows you're performing a stereotype and not expressing a VLC. Indeed, his answer to that question could potentially give clues about his definition.

One of my gripes with LondonJohn's usage of that term is that within the context of his arguments and his position... he ends up defining the experience of gender dysphoria as a "valid lived condition" as if that dysphoria somehow creates an experience of "womanhood" that is accepted as valid.

But at the same time... his position and his arguments repeatedly and persistently denigrate the experiences of females in society as being overreactions, not real, and irrelevant.

So at the end of the day, as far as I can tell from LondonJohn's invented terminology, it seems like a person who is born and raised male, with the experience of a male body and of the way society treats a male person... but who views themselves as a woman is *more valid* than the experience of a person who was born and raised female, with the experience of a female body and the the way society treats a female person.

For all the arguments that not granting male-bodied people access to anything and everything "woman", we are somehow debating their existence and invalidating their identities... It's females that keep getting told that our experiences don't matter, our concern is irrelevant, and our safety is not a concern.

 

[Joe Random]

Is anyone really making this argument, though? Gender-based norms for grooming (e.g. men shave faces, women shave legs) and fashion and other forms of self-presentation are plentiful and don't appear to be endangered.

But that's the point - there are loads of expectations that 'men do <x> / women do <y>' which are mainly social convention and which are often harmful. I've actually heard on more than one occasion a group of two or more women slagging off on another (out of earshot) woman because she didn't regularly shave her armpits. Or in some cases because 'she dresses like a dude'. It was those non-biological expectations that, when I was growing up, we wanted to eliminate. Sure, many women would probably still wear makeup, but wearing makeup wasn't seen as being required to be a woman, for example. You had more choices to make than external expectations laid on you.

Only now that has to reverse, because if a fully intact biological male wants to identify as a woman, there have to be performances they can do to demonstrate. Barring that, they're like the one trans person I met in person a couple of years ago : the total stereotype of three day old beard scruff, masculine hairdo and dress, but demanded to be referred to as 'she'. In which case we're even more into bizzarro world and might as well start taking the self-identifications of 'attack helicopter' seriously.

 

[Rolfe]

"A woman is someone who is accepted as a woman..." By whom?

No way am I accepting someone born with male genitalia as a woman. So whose acceptance counts? How many people have to accept this guy? Do we have a vote? Do women get to vote? Or is it only the TRAs and their handmaids who get a say in it?

 

[Collin237]

I'm really curious how I would go about adopting a fake persona for a year prior to you taking part in this thread, as an elaborate ploy to screw with you.

Yes, you were like that before I arrived. But what about the few days when you had the opposite persona?

What's VLC?

"valid lived condition"

It was an overnight trip for a robotics competition for a girls robotics team. One of the members was a transgirl, among a collection of female teens. The question came up because the girls were sharing rooms... and thus there's a question of allowing a physically intact teenage male to share an unchaperoned bedroom with a teenage girl. Not even a case of the transgirl behaving in appropriately... but teens experiment.

Acceptance is a two-way street. She should have discussed it with them beforehand. Nobody has the right to expect that "you MUST accept who I am". Difficult situations require civil dialogue.

 

[Collin237]

Even though that reduces the rights and safety of females?

Requiring definite answers to questions too loaded to reasonably answer reduces everyone's rights and safety. When you asked me the question openly, I gave an open answer, which you agreed with. Then someone asked me the same question again, with a lot of strings attached to make sure I had to answer something different. Wasn't there something like that in Shakespeare's play Othello?

 

[d4m10n]

But that's the point - there are loads of expectations that 'men do <x> / women do <y>' which are mainly social convention and which are often harmful.

I'm all for minimizing harm, but some of these conventions are loosely adhered to and enforced by, well, middle-school behavior at most.

I've actually heard on more than one occasion a group of two or more women slagging off on another (out of earshot) woman because she didn't regularly shave her armpits.

This is one of the sex-based norms I've seen breaking down on our watch. Manscaping is becoming increasingly common, including shaving pits. I don't have a strong preference, personally, but tend to shave during the summer. Meanwhile, in pop culture geared to young women we have the New It Girl.

Or in some cases because 'she dresses like a dude'.

I've rarely seen women slagged off for wearing t-shirts and jeans around, but I will take your word for it. Try being a dude in a skirt sometime, though.

It was those non-biological expectations that, when I was growing up, we wanted to eliminate.

Total elimination of different fashions for men vs. women (not to mention youths vs. olds, urban vs. rural, white collar vs. blue collar, goths vs. drama kids etc.) strikes me as an unrealistic goal. Given the chance, people will dress to signal things about themselves and the groups with which they identify.

Only now that has to reverse, because if a fully intact biological male wants to identify as a woman, there have to be performances they can do to demonstrate.

Once again—I have to ask—which particular transactivists are literally asking for which specific reversals? Is someone out there demanding that men and women go back to strictly binary armpit grooming?

I sure would LIKE them to be endangered.

Then you probably shouldn't assume—based solely on my sex—that I've never shaved my armpits and legs.

 

[Collin237]

Are there any Valid Unlived Conditions (aside from being dead)? If not, what does the 'lived' represent I wonder?

Refusing to wear a mask in a virus-filled public area, is an invalid lived condition.

Setting up a fake identity as part of a spy operation to catch a bandit, is a valid unlived condition.

A man who dresses up as a woman to perv on women, is an invalid unlived condition.