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

[Earthborn]

The general link between discrimination and suicide is not strong - at least in the US, whites have higher rate of suicide than African-Americans or Latinos.

It would help if you provide a link to the actual study instead of a picture with some numbers, so we can see what the numbers actually mean. I assume these numbers are of successful suicides, which in the US are going to be heavily skewed toward the population groups most likely to have guns. A general link between discrimination and suicidal thoughts can't be inferred from this.

 

[Lplus]

I mean, the unisex restrooms the article says were built in the Home Office.

(BTW, what is the Home Office?)

The Home Office is a government office in London dealing with governance of the UK. I've never been there, so I can only report on the sort of Unisex toilets I have seen - which have all been individual lockable rooms containing all the necessary items which would be found in a large restroom. (toilet, washbasin, dryer, mirror, etc, etc)

 

[Aber]

I mean, the unisex restrooms the article says were built in the Home Office.

This:

Five male and five female loos have been converted to ten unisex facilities, each with three cubicles.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/08/16/00/4F1FC18200000578-6065075-image-a-2_1534375794743.jpg

 

[Meadmaker]

I'm saying that if they're interested in the correct answers to their questions, they're entirely free to do their own (objective) research to find out. Sorry if I didn't explain that well enough in my previous post.

You're kind of new here, I guess, so "putting the E in JREF" is a saying you might not be familiar with. Us veterans might even say "putting the E in ISF" as an ironic reference to the old days.

We have a lot of very educated people who post on this board, and some of them are happy to share their knowledge. Sometimes, I ask if anyone knows something. Often they do.

ETA: I got confused about some dates as I wrote the above John was indeed around during the JREF days.

The point remains the same. Sometimes, I ask people for information, and sometimes, someone knows it, which I appreciate. I try to provide similar information to those who request it when I have applicable knowledge.

 

[caveman1917]

It would help if you provide a link to the actual study instead of a picture with some numbers, so we can see what the numbers actually mean. I assume these numbers are of successful suicides, which in the US are going to be heavily skewed toward the population groups most likely to have guns. A general link between discrimination and suicidal thoughts can't be inferred from this.

By that logic suicide should be almost non-existent outside the US where people don't have guns. Just because you can use a gun to kill yourself with, doesn't mean you need one.

 

[caveman1917]

One factor that does correlate highly with ideation and attempts is mental illness.

IIRC transgender suicide rates are a bit higher than homosexuals, with the increase wrt homosexuals being attributable to a high incidence of comorbid mental illness. Presumably suicide rates would be brought down with better social acceptance like it does for the homosexual group, but it will always remain relatively high because of the high incidence of comorbid mental illness.

 

[theprestige]

(BTW, what is the Home Office?)

The Internet brings good news and bad news. The bad news is, thanks to the Internet, there is now such a thing as a stupid question. The good news is, thanks to the Internet, you never have to ask one.

 

[Ziggurat]

Is it correct to deny transgender people a reasonable level of recognition and rights, on the basis that to do so would very probably result in less violence (and discomfort) towards female women?

What's reasonable? That's a subjective qualifier that won't suffice here. You need to be specific about what "recognition and rights" you're talking about. People have different opinions about what counts as reasonable. I don't think anyone here disagrees that the right not to be discriminated against in housing is reasonable, but we've already seen disagreement about, say, participation in sports.

 

[Olmstead]

By that logic suicide should be almost non-existent outside the US where people don't have guns. Just because you can use a gun to kill yourself with, doesn't mean you need one.

It's suprisingly easy to mess up killing yourself. If you look at statistics, firearms are pretty much the only consistently successful method.

 

[Emily's Cat]

But you did say that. I realise you don't think you did, but you did.

What you said then, and what you're repeating here, is essentially that you think gender dysphoria and transgender identity are the products of a mental health defect - some form of delusion. You believe that transwomen are nothing more than men who have a delusion that they're women.

To be precise though, you are denying the validity of transgender identity. Because a belief that transgender identity is real and valid is by definition a belief that (eg) transwomen are women. So when you say you believe that transwomen are not women, you are denying the reality of transgender identity.

In short, you believe in gender dysphoria, but you believe it to be the product of a mental health disorder, rather than a valid lived condition

Sort of. Yes, I believe that gender dysphoria is a real mental health condition. I believe that people who have gender dysphoria really do experience a disconnect between their mind and their body - similar to BIID and other body dysmorphias.

Whether it is "delusional" is a different question altogether. There might be an underlying neurological cause that is completely out of the sufferer's control, which could conceivably mean that it's not exactly a delusion.

When I experience deja vu or intense foreboding prior to a seizure, I'm not considered delusional - the feeling is real and is a result of which part of my brain the seizure begins in. But my perception isn't *real*. I really genuinely *feel* like I'm remembering the thing that is happening as it happens... but I'm not. In actuality, the seizure is stimulating my temporal lobe, giving mixed messages that I'm simultaneously experiencing the event in real time and remembering a prior event. It isn't actually *real*.

I have the same view toward gender dysphoria. The person with that condition may very well *feel* that they're the opposite sex. But that feeling isn't *real*. They are not *actually* the opposite sex.

A female human being is a woman. If that woman has gender dysphoria, then that person *genuinely feels* that they are a man. But they are not male. They are not a man. Their feeling is not reality. To alleviate that discontinuity, transition may be the most appropriate approach. But that still does not make that female person an actual man - they are still a woman, they are still female. That is reality. Biological sex is reality.

(meaning that your belief runs contrary to the belief of the global expert community, and contrary to the policy positions of many liberal democracies).

BS. There are LOTS of experts in this field who do NOT agree with this propagandistic slogan. Those experts get ignored, mocked, derided, etc... but they do actually exist. There is not nearly as much consensus as you assume there to be.

And as far as policies go - policy makers are often complete and utter idiots pandering to whichever lobby group gifts them the greatest power, with little care for whether their policies are just or reasonable.

You claim to be a lawyer. I'm sure you know quite well that there are a lot of laws that make no sense, are not at all just, and are there because someone somewhere had a belief that they forced into law for political reasons.

 

[Earthborn]

I don't think anyone here disagrees that the right not to be discriminated against in housing is reasonable, but we've already seen disagreement about, say, participation in sports.

There is no fundamental right to participate in a sports competition -- it is inherently selective -- so it is reasonable for sports organisations to decide for themselves what the rules for their games are, and who fits those rules. It is also reasonable for that some people lobby for those rules to be changed if they think they are unfairly excluded or for other people to lobby for those rules to be changed if they think those with better perfomance are unfairly included.

 

[Meadmaker]

There is no fundamental right to participate in a sports competition -- it is inherently selective -- so it is reasonable for sports organisations to decide for themselves what the rules for their games are, and who fits those rules. It is also reasonable for that some people lobby for those rules to be changed if they think they are unfairly excluded or for other people to lobby for those rules to be changed if they think those with better perfomance are unfairly included.

One of the reasons that there are different sorts of controversies at different levels of competition is rooted in your statement. It is reasonable for sports organizations to decide for themselves what their rules are. So, in professional and Olympic level competition, it mostly works.

At the high school level, the sports organizations are not making the decisions. The administrators of the educational establishments are almost certainly not athletes today, and most of them were not even athletes when they were themselves high school students, so you have a lot of people making decisions for other people. Moreover, the people making those decisions include a lot of people who are downright hostile to the organizations for whom they are making decisions. A lot of folks with education degrees weren't on the football team in high school.

 

[caveman1917]

It's suprisingly easy to mess up killing yourself. If you look at statistics, firearms are pretty much the only consistently successful method.

Other methods like hanging or jumping off tall buildings are also quite consistently successful. It's easy enough to kill yourself if you think about it for a bit and don't do anything stupid like trying to cut your wrists or hanging yourself with a rope that'll break. But even if we grant that the difference in Louden's figures is due in part to differential access to guns, it's still nowhere near enough to fully explain the observed differences in suicide rates.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I'd say it's reasonable that, for example, transwomen should be able to use women's changing rooms in facilities where there are separately-gendered changing areas. Rather than a) being made to use the men's changing rooms, b) being made to use the disabled changing rooms, c) being made to change in their car or at home, or d) being prohibited in using these types of facility.

Are all males allowed to use the women's changing rooms? Why or why not?

And I'll mention once more: in any given jurisdiction, if (for example) self-ID transwomen are granted access to the women's changing areas, and if there is a clear rise in either extreme or lower-level offending against the female women in those facilities (whether such offending is being done by true transwomen, or by cismen who are masquerading as transwomen in order to carry out their offending behaviour).....

.... then it's a given that legislators and regulators will need to re-appraise the situation quickly. That might, just for example, take the form of tougher sentencing for these sorts of offences (and subsequent monitoring to see how effective this might be as a deterrent); more central- and local-level resources being allocated to effective monitoring and alarm systems (and subsequent monitoring to see how effective this might be, both as a deterrent in and of itself, and as a means to guaranteeing more convictions for the offenders, with its own deterrent effect); increased public education on the issue; or, if methods such as these fail to safeguard female women adequately, a modification or reversal of parts of legislation.

This is an approach I take umbrage to. You're opening a giant loophole, that anyone with a brain can see is very likely to increase harm to females. It obviously gives access to areas where females are vulnerable to any male who merely claims to be a transwoman. And your approach is to go ahead and run with that giant gaping loophole... and well, if there's "too much" observed harm against females, then we'll look at ways to deal with that later, with the very simple solution of having sex-segregated facilities as a very last resort.

It's like removing environmental regulations against pollution, in order to make a small company happy, and then saying "Oh, well, if we end up with pollution occurring, we'll consider other options of dealing with it before we go back to having preventive regulations".

 

[Emily's Cat]

So what, therefore, is the better method to at least try to ensure people who deserve to have their rights recognised do indeed have their rights recognised (and where undeserving people asking for rights do not gain those rights)?

Which rights are we talking about?

 

[Emily's Cat]

How many female victims do you consider an acceptable number while they are carrying out this grand experiment.

I would also like an answer to this question.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Or maybe you should determine policy with risk prevention in mind, rather than risk acceptance.

Especially when it's the risk of rape.

In project management, the risk of a project being delayed would be addressed during planning by setting aside funds to get the project back on schedule if the risk actually occurs.
Can't really do that for the risk of prison rape. I mean, you can, but it'd be pretty inhumane to approach the problem that way.

"Oh, you got raped? Yeah, we thought that might happen. Good news, though! We set aside money for rape counseling! And your experience is a valuable data point for us as we try to figure out a policy that only allows a very small amount of rape. Thank you so much for participating in our little experiment."

-LondonJohn, probably

In projects, there's also usually an overall risk assessment before it even gets to the project planning stage at all. And if the risk-probability is too high, or if the risk probability is low but the cost of that risk occurring is catastrophic, the project doesn't even begin.

There are also usually some key go/no-go decision points, where the risk is re-evaluated, and decisions to abandon are made.

I had to kill a project a few years ago. What the vendor promised as a deliverable ended up being something they couldn't actually do. They pushed our timeline to a point where it was just unfeasible, because they needed to develop new technology in order to give us what we paid for. So I pulled the plug. We made some patches to get some bare utility out of what we'd already paid for, took the vendor to task and got a good chunk of our money back, and started over with a different vendor altogether.

I've also been involved with preliminary work for the same concept at three different companies, and it's never made it off the ground. It's a great idea from a consumer perspective, we know that it would be very popular, we know both customers and providers would love it... but the downside risk is so large and has such a high variance that we just can't move forward. It's the sort of thing that needs a whole new infrastructure for consumer-insurer-provider communication pipelines. so even though the idea keeps coming back around every few years, it just doesn't materialize.

 

[Emily's Cat]

In the UK, they will only ever put speed-monitoring cameras at a given locations unless & until there are shown to be certain threashold levels of deaths and serious injuries at that location.

So I guess they have deaths and serious injuries on their hands in this respect too, right?

Okay, now that's just silly. They only put speed cameras there if there's a history of VIOLATIONS OF THE EXISTING SPEED LIMIT. But the speed limits still exist, and lower speeds are in place for more crowded areas where the chance of an accident are higher.

Get back to me with this analogy when the UK removes all speed limits and goes to a monitoring camera situation if there are a lot of crashes, so that they can apprehend the person at fault after the damage has been done.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I was just thinking if the numbers of victims to escalate, your first go to is harsher sentencing and then monitoring if that works.

That is more a longitudinal study and takes years, so I hope if they do it the people running it have an idea of the number.

And I hope that the females being used as guinea pigs are aware that they're considered "necessary collateral damage" in the quest for affirming the feelings of some be-penised people.

 

[Emily's Cat]

As to your question, no, it wouldn't help me out. I'm going to enter heartless ******* mode for just a moment. Julia Burca is not going to cause anyone's suicide by not wanting to be seen naked by a guy, or anyone she thinks of as a guy just because they happen to have testicles. Even if someone does end up killing herself, it isn't Julia's fault.

I think that's such an obvious thing that it didn't need saying. And given that it actually did need to be said, I don't think you're the heartless ****** in this scenario.