[ED] Discussion: Trans Women Are not Women (Part 6)

[JoeMorgue]

**** it.

Genetic engineering. Everybody is born as a sexless, genderless Lego person. The only genitals you get are a cloaca.

Problem solved.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Me, at the beginning of part 1 of this thread:

Confrontationalism and a hardliner position aren't helpful. Trans issues are difficult, but I think we can probably figure out a good compromise that helps most people most of the time and does minimal harm otherwise. Mostly I'm concerned about the hard problem of getting good gatekeeping where necessary, without having to resort to "papers please" if we can avoid it. Hopefully someone has some ideas about this. Input from actual transgender persons would be especially helpful in figuring out how to make this work.
​

Me, now, after thoughtful consideration of the transgender and TRA contributions to every installment of this thread:

Maybe the confrontationalists and hardliners have a point.
​

Imagine my shock when enlightened centrism ends up siding with the reactionaries.

 

[Meadmaker]

Somehow, it turns out that those who do have the most education, expertise and experience are the UK Office for National Statistics.

Personally, I'm still wondering why a young woman is less qualified than a PhD psychologist to answer the question, "What is a man?"


I think the young woman has all the knowledge she needs, and a much more personal stake in getting the answer correct.

 

[LondonJohn]

Somehow, it turns out that those who do have the most education, expertise and experience are the UK Office for National Statistics.

I mean, are you continuing to misrepresent all of this on purpose?

As you've now been told several times, not only is the ONS a branch of the UK Government, but also that official document states explicitly that those definitions are the ones used by the UK Government.

On top of which, I've also provided plenty of evidence from various different highly-respected medical sources which use precisely the same definitions.

Somehow I'm not wedded to the idea that debating in good faith is particularly high-up on your priorities list when it comes to this matter......

 

[LondonJohn]

Me, at the beginning of part 1 of this thread:

Confrontationalism and a hardliner position aren't helpful. Trans issues are difficult, but I think we can probably figure out a good compromise that helps most people most of the time and does minimal harm otherwise. Mostly I'm concerned about the hard problem of getting good gatekeeping where necessary, without having to resort to "papers please" if we can avoid it. Hopefully someone has some ideas about this. Input from actual transgender persons would be especially helpful in figuring out how to make this work.
​

Me, now, after thoughtful consideration of the transgender and TRA contributions to every installment of this thread:

Maybe the confrontationalists and hardliners have a point.
​

Maybe this little anecdote says more about the way in which you derive your conclusions than about anything substantive.......

 

[Emily's Cat]

This is why we have people who actually have lightyears more collective expertise and experience in these kinds of things, upon whom society at large looks for guidance. I don't think I'd be going out on a limb by saying that this is the only viable societal approach to these sorts of matters.

Personally, I (and, I suspect, you) have zero formal education, comparatively minuscule levels of expertise, and comparatively minuscule levels of experience - compared with even one of the world's thousands of true experts in the field - when it comes to trying to derive an understanding from first principles of these sorts of conditions. And I certainly have no personal - or even one-step-removed - exposure to them. I can't know what it feels like to be, say, gay or transgender - because I am neither of those things myself.

And unless one does have personal (or maybe even one-step-removed) experience of these conditions, it's practically impossible - absent years of specialised education, expertise and experience - to come anywhere close to understanding them and judging their validity. In my opinion, it is entirely logical and correct to defer to the settled judgement of those who DO have the most education, expertise and experience.

After all, what other way could there be to approach these sorts of issues? It would, for example, be laughably easy - though, of course, laughably incorrect - to claim that conditions such as transidentity or homosexuality aren't valid, purely on the basis that one doesn't have those existential identity considerations oneself. And before medical and social sciences - particularly, of course, those which deal with intangible matters of the deep brain and human consciousness - came properly of age post-Freud, this was (sadly) precisely how society DID treat those with minority identities such as homosexuality and transgenderism.

Fortunately we know better now year-on-year: not only better in terms of a better understanding on the part of experts in the field, but also better in terms of first legislatures and then society at large (which, sadly, often has to be taught or legislated in order to confront its unfair prejudices).

Hooray for appeals to imagined authority!

 

[LondonJohn]

Personally, I'm still wondering why a young woman is less qualified than a PhD psychologist to answer the question, "What is a man?"


I think the young woman has all the knowledge she needs, and a much more personal stake in getting the answer correct.

I guess you don't realise that you meant to write "male" there, rather than "man"

 

[LondonJohn]

Hooray for appeals to imagined authority!

Tell me what would be a better way to approach this sort of thing then.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Womanhood is no longer the sole province of AFAB people, so it is a regressive view.

I need a blinking pathetic barbie emoji here.

Apparently "womanhood' is whatever be-penised people say it is, and female people no longer have the right to describe our own existence.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Yep, and that is why I posted that article by Julia Serano regarding referring to us as biologically male and why it is incorrect. With her being not only trans, but also a biologist, she has insight into why we are female that a lot of us laypeople don't.

But of course when people didn't agree with her conclusions, they just dismissed her as a crackpot rather than refuting her data and conclusions.

Nothing in Serano's opinion piece even tangentially touches on science.

 

[Louden Wilde]

Personally, I'm still wondering why a young woman is less qualified than a PhD psychologist to answer the question, "What is a man?"


I think the young woman has all the knowledge she needs, and a much more personal stake in getting the answer correct.

Oof - A psychologist is not the kind of scientist I want answering "what is a man" - it's essentially already saying that you think being a man is mental state rather than a biological descriptor (i.e. adult male Homo sapiens).

ETA - though I agree that the female has much more of a vested interest in getting it right....

 

[theprestige]

Personally, I'm still wondering why a young woman is less qualified than a PhD psychologist to answer the question, "What is a man?"


I think the young woman has all the knowledge she needs, and a much more personal stake in getting the answer correct.

Heh. It took me a minute to parse your meaning.

At first I thought you were taking a sarcastic dig at the idea that a young woman can confidently declare that she knows what it feels like to be a man, and that she is a man regardless of what the medical professionals might have to say about it.

 

[Emily's Cat]

1. Person points out that transgender identity has been attacked by some within these threads in a hostile and juvenile manner.

2. EC "responds" to this by reeling off her litany of points which are wholly irrelevant (note: not "unimportant") in terms of responding to the actual post to which she was responding. And by deliberately seeking to conflate the two by misusing the "hostile and juvenile" term in respect of her own unrelated points.

3. I respond to EC's post, pointing out that the person to whose post she was responding was clearly not referring to any of the things which EC chose to list off in her "response".

4. You infer from the above that I may be "dismissing all of the issues EC raised".


When it was disingenuous and misdirectional of EC to have raised them in the first place, as a "response" to a post which itself was talking solely and specifically about the number of hostile and juvenile posts aimed at attacking transgender identity.

Everything I listed has either been directly said in this thread or has been fully supported and lauded by TRAs.

And yes, you have dismissed every one of my concerns, repeatedly. You simply dismiss them all as being bigoted, and make a ridiculous analogy to black or gay rights.

 

[LondonJohn]

**** it.

Genetic engineering. Everybody is born as a sexless, genderless Lego person. The only genitals you get are a cloaca.

Problem solved.

Well, no. The problem is solved substantively addressed when it is understood and recognised that a small proportion of people genuinely can have an internalisation of gender identity which differs from that which has traditionally been (and for the vast majority of people, is) coupled to their biological sex.

And then the problem is solved substantively addressed when society can learn to afford this small proportion of people something at least approaching the basic level of affirmation and protection against discrimination that they might deserve, through legislation where necessary.

 

[Boudicca90]

Me, at the beginning of part 1 of this thread:

Confrontationalism and a hardliner position aren't helpful. Trans issues are difficult, but I think we can probably figure out a good compromise that helps most people most of the time and does minimal harm otherwise. Mostly I'm concerned about the hard problem of getting good gatekeeping where necessary, without having to resort to "papers please" if we can avoid it. Hopefully someone has some ideas about this. Input from actual transgender persons would be especially helpful in figuring out how to make this work.
​

Me, now, after thoughtful consideration of the transgender and TRA contributions to every installment of this thread:

Maybe the confrontationalists and hardliners have a point.
​

Your view (and the others here as well) was already set in stone from the moment this discussion started, the only difference is you stopped dispensing with pleasantries and are getting right down to what you really think.

Much like what has happened over the past 4-5 years. It's not that the number of racists among the population have increased, it's that they have become emboldened and have stopped trying to play nice with the other side.

Same thing is happening here.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Well, no. The problem is solved substantively addressed when it is understood and recognised that a small proportion of people genuinely can have an internalisation of gender identity which differs from that which has traditionally been (and for the vast majority of people, is) coupled to their biological sex.

Listen I've spent like 5 threads now listening to people try to convince me that a person's self image means a LOOOOOOT more then it does.

Very few people are exactly what they want to be. All of us want to be something we aren't. Sometimes major, sometimes minor.

Most of us just don't demand the world literally see us as that just because we want to be it.

 

[LondonJohn]

Yeah? How many parsecs did it take them to do the Kessel run?

You know I was referring to the breadth of their expertise and experience, not the length of time?

 

[LondonJohn]

Listen I've spent like 5 threads now listening to people try to convince me that a person's self image means a LOOOOOOT more then it does.

Very few people are exactly what they want to be. All of us want to be something we aren't. Sometimes major, sometimes minor.

Most of us just don't demand the world literally see us as that just because we want to be it.

Woahhhhhh.

This is about so much more than this. Astonishing. And offensive.

 

[theprestige]

I guess you don't realise that you meant to write "male" there, rather than "man"

Try to keep up. We've abandoned the attempt at compromise in terminology. We're back to man being an adult human male, and transwoman being an adult human male who thinks he's a woman.

---

Incidentally, I wonder if anyone has thought through the implications of the mod box, on this debate.

Best case scenario: Every single other transgender person that comes up in conversation - Jessica Yaniv, Bruce Jenner, Eddie Izzard, Ellen Paige - is gonna get pointedly misgendered. Pointedly deadnamed, too.* Where Boudicca's preferred pronouns are used at all, it'll be sarcastically or ironically.

---
*Yaniv's a special case, being notorious under that name in particular.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Woahhhhhh.

This is about so much more than this. Astonishing. And offensive.

Wow you just called me argument offensive yet didn't actually explain way or tell me what's different about it.

Bold new strategy.

Explain to me like I'm 5 what's the difference between "I want to be a woman even though I'm a man" and.... *Pause for dramatic effect* "MY PERSONAL GENDER IDENTITY IS THAT OF A WOMAN SO I HAVE SAYETH SO IT IS TRUE."

And again I'm not being a dick for the sake of being a dick here. "I want to be a woman" makes perfect sense and is fully understandable without reinventing every wheel and letting it self identity as a square.