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

[TomB]

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.

While I agree with you about LondonJohn's tendency to dismiss female concerns, I'd like to point out that the highlighted is debatable and may not be correct beyond a surface level. Yes, they have a male body. But they may not be treated as "one of the boys" growing up. I'm not positive, but I suspect that a male trans person may feel a bit isolated from thier peer groups growing up. Consequently, I'm not sure they experience the way society treats males in the same way cis-males do.

It would be an interesting question for Boudicca, were she still participating in the thread, assuming she was comfortable talking about it.

The other thing to point out: This statement seems to presume that the bulk of identity or personality results from environmental conditions and experiences. And that may be correct. But it also may be correct that a significant portion may be innate. There is a field called "behavioral genetics" for a reason.

If you consider the experience portion to represent everything significant in gender, you can make a case for lack of commonality between cis and trans women. But if you consider the genetic contribution significant, you can also make the case for significant overlap that is common between cis and trans women but not cis and trans men.

So how do you classify someone who has (in terms of behavior/gender, not sex) biological commonality with women but, due to sex, an environmental component closer to that of men? Could you truly say they are either?

 

[theprestige]

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.

Seems to me that recognizing one's own perversion, and acting to satisfy it, is very much a valid lived condition.

 

[theprestige]

While I agree with you about LondonJohn's tendency to dismiss female concerns, I'd like to point out that the highlighted is debatable and may not be correct beyond a surface level. Yes, they have a male body. But they may not be treated as "one of the boys" growing up. I'm not positive, but I suspect that a male trans person may feel a bit isolated from thier peer groups growing up. Consequently, I'm not sure they experience the way society treats males in the same way cis-males do.

It would be an interesting question for Boudicca, were she still participating in the thread, assuming she was comfortable talking about it.

The other thing to point out: This statement seems to presume that the bulk of identity or personality results from environmental conditions and experiences. And that may be correct. But it also may be correct that a significant portion may be innate. There is a field called "behavioral genetics" for a reason.

If you consider the experience portion to represent everything significant in gender, you can make a case for lack of commonality between cis and trans women. But if you consider the genetic contribution significant, you can also make the case for significant overlap that is common between cis and trans women but not cis and trans men.

So how do you classify someone who has (in terms of behavior/gender, not sex) biological commonality with women but, due to sex, an environmental component closer to that of men? Could you truly say they are either?

I'm completely lost. At what point did we stipulate that behavior/gender amounted to biological similarity?

 

[Collin237]

Seems to me that recognizing one's own perversion, and acting to satisfy it, is very much a valid lived condition.

It's about whether the condition can be exited. Let me try non-human examples:

A caterpillar acquires the lived condition of being a butterfly.

A cuttlefish, during a communal mating ritual, sometimes acquires the unlived condition of having the opposite color pattern.

 

[Joe Random]

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.

Having gems in your eyes is a valid unlived condition. +20AC and boatloads of resists if your name is Kangaxx .

**** me but you're bad at this. Sad point being you'll hook enough no matter.

 

[Collin237]

Having gems in your eyes is a valid unlived condition. +20AC and boatloads of resists if your name is Kangaxx .

**** me but you're bad at this. Sad point being you'll hook enough no matter.

**** me but you've got the wrong guy. I'm not the one with the gingerbread and unicorn.

 

[Meadmaker]

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



"valid lived condition"



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.

There was plenty of civil dialog, at least from where I could see. However, just because there's civil dialog doesn't mean there's agreement. In the end, some people said she should room with the girls. Other people said that was unacceptable. They could be civil about it all day long, but sooner or later someone has to book rooms, and someone will be unhappy about it.

 

[theprestige]

It's about whether the condition can be exited. Let me try non-human examples:

A caterpillar acquires the lived condition of being a butterfly.

A cuttlefish, during a communal mating ritual, sometimes acquires the unlived condition of having the opposite color pattern.

I find your analogies uninspiring. Tell us more about what defines a valid lived condition for transwomen.

 

[theprestige]

There was plenty of civil dialog, at least from where I could see. However, just because there's civil dialog doesn't mean there's agreement. In the end, some people said she should room with the girls. Other people said that was unacceptable. They could be civil about it all day long, but sooner or later someone has to book rooms, and someone will be unhappy about it.

The whole point of human rights policy is to save people the trouble of having to argue for what is rightfully theirs.

Collins' idea, of each transsexual having to argue their own case with the bigots in their community, is a non starter even for me.

 

[TomB]

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 don't think the population of trans-women is large enough to have a significant effect on the proportion of women shaving their armpits.

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

I have an employee who commented something like ten or fifteen years ago how she found armpit hair gross on men and preferred men who shaved it. I think the comment was in regards to basketball players, some of whom had armpit hair and some of whom did not.

Body hair removal has become much more of a thing for men: pits, chest, back. Sometimes legs. In high school, the entire men's swim team shaved their legs.

At the same time, shaving has become more optional for women. I think it always has been in some cultures. I knew two female exchange students from Germany in high school. One I'm pretty sure shaved her legs. The other I know did not. In German class I remember the teacher saying that shaving was not the norm there, but I'm not sure how accurate her statement was.

Anyway, I think it annoys some women that trans-women tend to go for the extreme stereotype. I think they do so because it makes their gender presentation unambiguous in a way that jeans and a hoodie (gender neutral these days) do not. But I don't think they do so with the intention of forcing women back into those stereotypes.

Will fashions eventually change so that the full spectrum is available to both sexes? Maybe, but not soon. And I don't think trans-people are slowing that process. I can't think of the last time I saw my daughter in a dress. She does wear a lot of yoga pants though, which haven't really made it into many male wardrobes yet.

 

[Collin237]

There was plenty of civil dialog, at least from where I could see. However, just because there's civil dialog doesn't mean there's agreement. In the end, some people said she should room with the girls. Other people said that was unacceptable. They could be civil about it all day long, but sooner or later someone has to book rooms, and someone will be unhappy about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=malnd19Ttyk

 

[Joe Random]

<snip little of worth>

******* hell, okay go ahead and collect your tokens from the 'willingly obtuse' machine at Chuck-E-Cheese's and buy yourself something pretty. Should have anticipated this knowing your oeuvre here and on other boards, so engaging with you honestly is 100% on me. Mea maxima culpa.

 

[Collin237]

The whole point of human rights policy is to save people the trouble of having to argue for what is rightfully theirs.

Collins' idea, of each transsexual having to argue their own case with the bigots in their community, is a non starter even for me.

I could say the same about the assumption that her campmates were bigots.

 

[TomB]

I'm completely lost. At what point did we stipulate that behavior/gender amounted to biological similarity?

I'm referring to the possibility of a biological component to gender (and by extension, being trans) that is separate from sex.

If we define sex as the physical body (100% biology), then we define gender a psychological characteristic.

Psychological characteristics, depending on your school of thought, can be a combination of innate and environmental factors.

Emily was speaking of the lived experiences of being a man or woman. She wasn't addressing the possibility of an innate component of that identity.

Consider a biological male, with the innate (biological) characteristics of gender normally linked to female biology, but with the experiences of being male.

Sex is clear: male.
Innate portion of gender: feminine
Experience portion of gender: masculine

So their gender is a combination of female (nature) and male (nurture). What do you call that? It's different from both the typical male and the typical female outcome.

 

[theprestige]

I'm referring to the possibility of a biological component to gender (and by extension, being trans) that is separate from sex.

If we define sex as the physical body (100% biology), then we define gender a psychological characteristic.

Psychological characteristics, depending on your school of thought, can be a combination of innate and environmental factors.

Emily was speaking of the lived experiences of being a man or woman. She wasn't addressing the possibility of an innate component of that identity.

Consider a biological male, with the innate (biological) characteristics of gender normally linked to female biology, but with the experiences of being male.

Sex is clear: male.
Innate portion of gender: feminine
Experience portion of gender: masculine

So their gender is a combination of female (nature) and male (nurture). What do you call that? It's different from both the typical male and the typical female outcome.

With respect, does this speculation have any basis in science?

 

[TomB]

I could say the same about the assumption that her campmates were bigots.

I'm not sure anyone is assuming anyone is a bigot in that scenario. It's just that the adults in that situation haven't figured out the correct way to chaperone that situation.

This one time, at band camp...

But seriously, when I was in high school, the marching band stayed in the dorms of a nearby university for a week to learn our field show for competition. They put the girls in one wing and the boys in the other, two to a room with adults spread out through both areas. Roommates were assigned so that freshmen were with juniors and sophomores were with seniors. (You didn't get to room with your friend.) I'm not sure how they would have handled a trans kid, but I wouldn't envy them the responsibility.

 

[d4m10n]

******* hell, okay go ahead and collect your tokens from the 'willingly obtuse' machine at Chuck-E-Cheese's and buy yourself something pretty.

If you don't believe transactivists are literally asking for reversals to the progress we've seen dismantling gendered social norms, then I've no idea what you've been getting at here. That said, I accept your resort to ad hominem as concession.

 

[TomB]

With respect, does this speculation have any basis in science?

The nature vs. nurture debate is a longstanding topic in psychology, so, yes. There have been studies for example, that have shown that adopted children are more like their biological parents than their adopted parents.

As far as transgender (I know, it's wikipedia):

Genetics

A 2008 study compared 112 male-to-female transsexuals (MtFs), both androphilic and gynephilic, and who were mostly already undergoing hormone treatment, with 258 cisgender male controls. Male-to-female transsexuals were more likely than cisgender males to have a longer version of a receptor gene (longer repetitions of the gene) for the sex hormone androgen, which reduced its effectiveness at binding testosterone.[5] The androgen receptor (NR3C4) is activated by the binding of testosterone or dihydrotestosterone, where it plays a critical role in the forming of primary and secondary male sex characteristics. The research suggests reduced androgen and androgen signaling contributes to the female gender identity of male-to-female transsexuals. The authors say that a decrease in testosterone levels in the brain during development might prevent complete masculinization of the brain in male-to-female transsexuals and thereby cause a more feminized brain and a female gender identity.[5][6]

A variant genotype for a gene called CYP17, which acts on the sex hormones pregnenolone and progesterone, has been found to be linked to female-to-male (FtMs) transsexuality but not MtF transsexuality. Most notably, the FtM subjects not only had the variant genotype more frequently, but had an allele distribution equivalent to male controls, unlike the female controls. The paper concluded that the loss of a female-specific CYP17 T -34C allele distribution pattern is associated with FtM transsexuality.[7]
Transsexuality among twins

In 2013, a twin study combined a survey of pairs of twins where one or both had undergone, or had plans and medical approval to undergo, gender transition, with a literature review of published reports of transgender twins. The study found that one third of identical twin pairs in the sample were both transgender: 13 of 39 (33%) monozygotic or identical pairs of assigned males and 8 of 35 (22.8%) pairs of assigned females. Among dizygotic or genetically non-identical twin pairs, there was only 1 of 38 (2.6%) pairs where both twins were trans.[4] The significant percent of identical twin pairs in which both twins are trans and the virtual absence of dizygotic twins (raised in the same family at the same time) in which both were trans would provide evidence that transgender identity is significantly influenced by genetics if both sets were raised in different families.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_transsexuality#Genetics

To me, this suggests that there are both genetic and environmental factors in someone being transgender.

 

[Collin237]

I'm not sure anyone is assuming anyone is a bigot in that scenario. It's just that the adults in that situation haven't figured out the correct way to chaperone that situation.

This one time, at band camp...

But seriously, when I was in high school, the marching band stayed in the dorms of a nearby university for a week to learn our field show for competition. They put the girls in one wing and the boys in the other, two to a room with adults spread out through both areas. Roommates were assigned so that freshmen were with juniors and sophomores were with seniors. (You didn't get to room with your friend.) I'm not sure how they would have handled a trans kid, but I wouldn't envy them the responsibility.

EC said there were no chaperons. I assumed she meant they went by themselves.

 

[TomB]

EC said there were no chaperons. I assumed she meant they went by themselves.

The bedrooms were unchaperoned. The trip had adults on it, and therefore was not unchaperoned. Just as at band camp, we had chaperaones, but they did not sleep in the bedrooms with us.

I think you will find it is very rare for overnight trips where chaperones are in every room. Even in Boy Scouts, the adults slept in different tents from us kids. At least in my troop....