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

[theprestige]

There are tricks to hide one's genitals even when disrobing in the view of others cannot be avoided. Transgender individuals who wouldn't raise an eyebrow when entering, very likely have mastered that art. Which is why the suggestion by some that transmen should use the women's changing room is so unhelpful; no one will ever notice that they are not (biological) men.

This seems regressive. It's entirely unfair to those new to their transition and being "out". I expect there a lot of young transsexuals who have not yet "mastered the art" of passing without question, and who would just like to get some peaceful tolerance without having to worry about whether they're Doing It Right to everyone else's satisfaction.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Well I think it's a lot more complicated than that. Yes, of course you're correct to talk about limits of authority and so on. But the point is that bodies such as governments, legislatures and judiciaries rely to a large extent upon guidance and recommendations from the relevant scientific bodies, and this forms a major driver of new legislation and judicial landscape (and/or modifications of existing legislation etc).

I don't think this is true. You seem to be assuming that in a reasonable world, this would be how it worked. Unfortunately, the real world isn't so reasonable, and that's very frequently NOT how it works.

Governments, legislatures, and judiciaries are heavily influenced by lobbyist organizations... which frequently represent the interests of moneyed parties, and which very frequently do NOT have any expertise or scientific backgrounds in the topic for which they're lobbying.

I also think you're wrong to state that the main (or is it the only?) reason why psychiatrists (and psychologists and sociologists and medics) have decided that transwomen should be considered women is "because that promises the best outcome of their mental health".

For one thing, I don't believe that psychiatrists have decided that transwomen should be considered women. Psychiatry seems to have taken the position that in cases of gender dysphoria that cannot be resolved, transitioning to live as the other sex is the most effective way to alleviate dysphoria. That's not even close to psychiatrists taking the post-modern philosophical stance that you keep ascribing to them.

Do you have any published research and APA or governing psychiatrics body official statements that reflect the position you keep claiming - that transwomen really are women in some particular way?

 

[theprestige]

Well I think it's a lot more complicated than that. Yes, of course you're correct to talk about limits of authority and so on. But the point is that bodies such as governments, legislatures and judiciaries rely to a large extent upon guidance and recommendations from the relevant scientific bodies

You keep appealing to the decisions of government bodies, as proxies for the authoritative recommendations of the scientists.

What people keep asking you to do, and which you so far have not done, is cite the actual authoritative recommendations of the scientists themselves. Your go-to source is always the UK Office for National Statistics. Never the actual science their guidance is based on.

Why do you put so much faith in government, that they're getting the science right and the policy right? So much faith that you don't even bother to look it up and cite it yourself, you just trust the government to have it all figured out? The same government that brought you Brexit.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I've asked multiple times how exactly we know the psychiatrists are obviously 100% correct now but obviously 100% wrong back when all of this was lumped under "mental disorder" and have gotten nothing resembling an answer.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

I've asked multiple times how exactly we know the psychiatrists are obviously 100% correct now but obviously 100% wrong back when all of this was lumped under "mental disorder" and have gotten nothing resembling an answer.

Probably because it's an absurd strawman argument.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Hmmm. You describe the invective-fuelled hyperbole from radical feminists as "concerns", do you?

I beg to differ.

"Invective fueled" ? "Hyperbole?"

Can you provide examples of the "invective fueled hyperbole" to which you're reacting, and which you feel entitled to dismiss out of hand because it's coming from... females?

 

[Emily's Cat]

I know it's your opinion that transwomen should be made to use the men's changing rooms (and that transmen should be made to use the women's changing rooms). But I was asking Sarge what his/her opinion is.

Actually, my position is a bit more nuanced than that, even though you never seem able to follow it.

People with penises (genitally intact males and transwomen post-op) should use the same rooms as penis-havers use. People with vulvas (genitally intact females and transwomen post-op) should use the vulva-havers rooms.

It seems to be a cause of confusion to you. I don't have animosity toward transpeople, and I don't (generally) have any issue with their identity*. I have an issue with allowing a completely unverifiable internal identity to override the realities of biological sex. I object to the mixing of genitalia, where one set of genitals can make the other set pregnant against their will.

Look - I can explain my reasoning, and the reasoning of a great many females, as to why we wish to retain sex-segregation.

Why is it important for transpeople to override that sex-segregation? What is accomplished by allowing people to override sex-segregation based on their unsubstantiated claim to a gender identity? What is gained? On the other hand, what is the problem with allowing sex-segregation to remain? What is the problem that it presents to transgender people?

 

[Emily's Cat]

It's not my job to ask women what they want. I'm just expressing my opinion on an internet forum.

You don't seem to have any hesitation telling women what transgender people want though, nor insinuating that the women who have expressed their views are wrong or bad for having them.

 

[Emily's Cat]

And my overarching point remains the same: the thing to do in situations such as this is not to back away from granting transgender people reasonable human rights.

Can you explain why you feel that transgender people being privileged to use services designated for the opposite sex, regardless of the consent of those of that sex, is a civil right?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Here are a few people w/ vulvas:

https://images.app.goo.gl/iVvC7YHghPNn9UVj9

https://images.app.goo.gl/2graDy3AKwdSUEzF9

https://images.app.goo.gl/f7eEHktoSqJ3nBaa9

Are you confident women would feel (or be) safer with dudes like this in the ladies' changing room?

At first glance, perhaps not. But I will take actual money bets that I would *be* safer with any of those not-penis-havers in the changing room.

If a random person walks into the room looking masculine, I'm probably going to become pretty aware. If they drop their pants and they've got a vulva, I would no longer be concerned at all (although I might very well be quite curious).

If a random person walks into the room looking feminine, I'm probably not going to notice. If they drop their pants had there's a dangling wang there, I'm going to be extremely uncomfortable and feel threatened.

 

[Emily's Cat]

So your answer to my question is this: your opinion is that transwomen should be made to use the men's changing rooms.

And you can't foresee any issues around that?

LondonJohn, what do you see as the issue? What is the problem with requiring transwomen who still possess penises to use the men's rooms?

 

[Emily's Cat]

You're entirely correct: it's a gigantically different matter.

And that's precisely why the World's actual experts in this area consider transgender identity to be a valid condition, while at the same time they hold "a person identifying as Napoleon" or "a person identifying as an attack helicopter" to be a mental disorder (or, more accurately, the product of a mental disorder)

Actually... quite a number of the world's actual leading experts in this field have been viciously harassed and persecuted for their view on this topic, by people who are NOT experts, and aren't even working in the mental health field.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I am at a loss as to why you yourself apparently cannot understand why there's a fundamental difference.

I'm at a loss as to why it's so difficult for you to answer the question.

BTW, for you to ask "what's different about (trans)gender identity" - compared with a person identifying as Napoleon or as an attack helicopter - is in many ways the same as you asking "what's different about a person identifying as someone who prefers solitude to gregarious mixing", or "what's different about a person identifying as being in love with a certain other person", or "what's different about a person who identifies as bisexual". All of these are valid human conditions: they fall within the purview of the range of normalised human mental states as we currently understand them to be. Identifying as Napoleon, or identifying as an attack helicopter, do not.

You're doing nothing more than asserting something that you wish to be true.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I'm not at all trying to do that.

You say: "Transwomen have no right to share privacy spaces with biological females against the will of the females"

(And presumably you would also say: "Transmen have no right to share privacy spaces with biological males against the will of the males"?)

And you go on to say that the "best answer" is to assign the changing rooms on a sex basis, and for transwomen to use the male facilities, with transmen using the female facilities.


I don't think this is the best answer. And I don't think it's the right answer. It increasingly appears that legislators* - having listened to experts in this field, and having consulted with interested parties - don't think it's the right answer either.


* And at the risk of repeating myself - but I think it bears repeating (unfortunately, because that shouldn't have to be the case) - those legislative bodies, the expert groups who advise them, and the external groups whom they consult, all will contain a healthy representative proportion of females and males alike. Just in case any "females are sick of males telling them what to do" claims turn up.

Regarding the red: No. This is false. Legislators have listened to lobbyists, and have listened to one of the interested parties (transgender people, particularly transwomen), while intentionally avoiding interaction with the other interested parties (females).

Regarding the blue: No. This is false. Females are under-represtend in legislative bodies, and are becoming further underrepresented as their positions are taken by males who identify as women.

 

[Paul2]

If people can imagine that they are a completely different person, and some identify as cats or a different ethnicity, I don't se why they couldn't identify as inanimate objects.

Sure, they could, but it would be a significantly different type of thing, for the reasons I gave above.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Wouldn't all that make being trans-racial more valid than being trans-gender, not less? I don't know why, it's probably the same reason that black-face is considered offensive, while drag is still not. I'm not sure I can make much sense of it myself, though.

Yes, it should by all logic make trans-racial be more valid than trans-gender. But somehow, we all pretty instinctively recognize that a person claiming to be trans-racial is appropriating the negative experiences and oppression of a group of people wo which they do not belong, and doing so for their own person gain or gratification, without care for the harm it may cause to that group.

We all understand that Rachel Dolezal was wrong to appropriate the struggles of black americans in order to bolster her career and gain attention and sympathy for herself. At worst, it is maliciously cruel and heartless. At best, it's a variation of Muchausen Syndrome. Either way, she weaponized stereotypes about blackness in ways that further entrenched those stereotypes.

And by the way, I see Drag Shows as being Minstrel Shows for sex-based stereotypes. Drag is Blackface, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Emily's Cat]

To try to summarise the discussions and positions both here and in the nonbinary thread:

Sex = biology; binary
Gender = something else

1 - Gender and sex are binary and the same, and there should be segregation in certain areas based on sex - Traditionalists

2 - Gender and sex are binary, but not always the same, and there should be segregation based on gender - Transrights activists

3 - Gender is a spectrum and not linked to sex, and there should not be segregation - Radicals

4 - Gender is a spectrum and not linked to sex, and there should be segregation based on sex - ?

Have I missed anything?

5 - Gender is a social construct, largely a spectrum, and has some degree of correlation to sex but is not circumscribed by sex... and there should be segregation based on the type of genitalia you have, and I don't give a rat's backside how you dress or whether you wear makeup. - Rational human being who understand that females got the short end of things

 

[Sherkeu]

At this point, I might repeat the suggestion that you're not entirely conversant with the notion of (trans)gender identity (and gender dysphoria).

Transgender identities can be much more broad than the narrow focus on trans women with dysphoria who live (or are moving toward living) full time as women. You seem to be locked into that definition but the policies and laws being proposed are not limited to that. They are inclusive of anyone not "cis" (and even some who are).

Take the ACLU statement on defining 'transgender':

Transgender is frequently used to describe a broad range of
identities and experiences that fall outside of the traditional
understanding of gender. Some of those identities and
experiences include people whose gender identity is different
from the sex they were assigned at birth, people who transition
from living as one gender to another or wish to do so (often
described by the clinical term “transsexual”), people who
“cross-dress” part of the time, and people who identify outside
the traditional gender binary (meaning they identify as
something other than male or female). Some transgender
people describe themselves as gender variant or gender
nonconforming.

From the LGBT foundation:

When we use the word transgender, we are referring to an inclusive umbrella term that consists of binary trans people (trans men and trans women), as well as non-binary people and people who cross dress

.

Non-binary people feel their gender identity cannot be defined within the margins of gender binary. Instead, they understand their gender in a way that goes beyond simply identifying as either a man or woman.

All of these categories may have a lifestyle that includes full or part-time female gender expression. They do not need dysphoria, medical transition, or even to identify as a woman to be accommodated in female spaces under these new trans rights policies. A heterosexual man who cross-dresses for sexual excitement is covered (as long as he breaks no other law of course- but that goes for all of them).

Do you agree with the non-discrimination policies that cover all of these identities with full legally-protected access to female spaces?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Identifying as black is a valid human condition, yes. For black people.

Identifying as HM The Queen is a valid human condition, for HM The Queen.


A non-black person identifying as black is not a valid human condition.

Me identifying as HM The Queen is not a valid human condition.

But identifying as a man is a valid human condition for a female?

 

[Emily's Cat]

No they're not.

If you were being objective (but still wrong), you'd say my opinions are also misandrist (which they are not, either).

But it's interesting that you focus solely and exclusively upon the female-oriented elements rather than the male-oriented ones. Oh no, I forgot! In your world, there's zero reason even to think about whether males would be entirely comfortable with transmen using their communal changing rooms!

Males might be uncomfortable by transmen using their communal changing rooms, yes. Nobody denies that.

But what are the chances that a transman would be able to rape a male? What are the chances that a transman could physically dominate and impregnate a male?

What is the rate of sexual assaults committed by females against males?

It's not an equal equation. Males have nothing at all to fear from transmen. Not in any real way. Transmen are unlikely to be capable of causing severe physical injury to a male, and they're completely unable to impregnate them. The likelihood of a transman sexually assaulting or raping a male is significantly lower than the risk of a cisman sexually assaulting or raping a male. FFS, the largest risk in that scenario is to the transman from the males.

Transmen competing against males in sport has a sum total of zero chance of displacing men from awards or advancement.

Transmen taking men's spaces in business and politics is, as far as I'm concerned, still a gain for females.

Honestly, I swear you're chiding a farmer about being upset that you want to put a feather-covered fox in his henhouse... and you counter by further complaining that he has no problem with his neighbor wanting to put a chicken in the fox den.