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

[Belz...]

: D

Thanks. Good analogies prove my point even better than bad analogies. As far as I can tell, most of the failure modes of analogies have more to do with bad faith between the "teacher" and "student", than with the quality of the analogy itself.

This is a good example. A good analogy has been derailed by Collin's refusal to take the comparison in good faith. And I'm confident that everyone you're trying to rebut with this analogy is going to take a similar stance.

I warned you this would happen. It's like I'm Cassandra on the walls of Troy.

Well I'm not the one who brought up dogs. I would've gone with cars. I always try to go for car analogies.

 

[Belz...]

So do yours.

Ouch, that is a pretty abysmal reading of theprestige's post, there. You wanna have another go at it?

 

[sarge]

This entire post is a seething mass of hate. At this point, I'm convinced that you're doing it purposely.

That entire post was reasonable and accurate. I don’t believe you could have more completely misinterpreted it intentionally.

 

[Belz...]

So...if some boys are mistakenly transitioned to the incorrect gender identity they will still grow up to be happy?

If being forced into the incorrect gender is such a trivial thing, why is transitioning so important?

Either it is important or it's not.

No, see, just like women are three rungs up the oppression ladder and therefore don't matter relative to trans people, gays are one rung up the oppression ladder and therefore don't matter relative to trans people. Get your intersectionality facts straight!!!

 

[JoeMorgue]

No, see, just like women are three rungs up the oppression ladder and therefore don't matter relative to trans people, gays are one rung up the oppression ladder and therefore don't matter relative to trans people. Get your intersectionality facts straight!!!

That is seriously the worse part of this discussion. It's the worst example of "I'm right if everyone is on the victim ranking chart in the order I've made up in my head."

 

[theprestige]

So...if some boys are mistakenly transitioned to the incorrect gender identity they will still grow up to be happy?

If being forced into the incorrect gender is such a trivial thing, why is transitioning so important?

Either it is important or it's not.

Earthborn is saying that being a straight woman is the same as being a gay man.

 

[LondonJohn]

: D

Thanks. Good analogies prove my point even better than bad analogies. As far as I can tell, most of the failure modes of analogies have more to do with bad faith between the "teacher" and "student", than with the quality of the analogy itself.

This is a good example. A good analogy has been derailed by Collin's refusal to take the comparison in good faith. And I'm confident that everyone you're trying to rebut with this analogy is going to take a similar stance.

I warned you this would happen. It's like I'm Cassandra on the walls of Troy.

See below....

 

[Earthborn]

Why? What possible benefit would abandoning a long-standing practice that works for 99.7% of humans have?

Making it work for 100% of humans.

Yes, let's eliminate women's sports entirely by sending in males to dominate their various disciplines. Sounds like a great feminist idea!

I guess we could use Meadmaker's proposal and call it "Female Sports" and "Male Sports" and divide them according to biological sex, transwomen together with men, transmen together with women. Have people with suppressed testosterone compete with men, and have people with artificially increased testosterone compete with women. You know, for fairness.

Distinguishing males from females is not "segregationist". Those are REAL differences.

Whether the differences are real or not makes no difference as to whether the policy is segregationist. What makes it segregationist is the fact that it allows (and is specifically designed to) the government to treat the segregated categories differently.

So far, it seems that it is. What's your basis for disbelieving this?

The fact that if it was an observation, it would be an observation of a thing before it happened. The vast majority is not definitively diagnosed with gender dysphoria before puberty, because before puberty it is difficult to diagnose.

False. I have never been asked to provide a birth certificate for anyone to determine which swim team I should be on.

Not yet, but it is what would happen if certain proposed laws are implemented. Also, some

The courts are not using birth certificates to decide which ward a prisoner should be incarcerated in.

They're not? I would assume sex written on identity papers would at least play a role in the decision where to house a prisoner.

Eliminating a recording of sex on birth certificates will accomplish nothing at all when it comes to the ways in which we reasonably and appropriately segregate services on the basis of sex.

So you agree that allowing trans individuals to change their birth certificate by Self-ID alone, or eliminating sex registration completely, will not make much difference? Good!

False. People with DSDs are NOT more likely to be transgender. In fact, the proportion of intersex people who identify as transgender is significantly lower than the proportion of people without DSDs who do so.

The Intersex Society of America disagrees:

Any child—intersex or not—may decide later in life that she or he was given the wrong gender assignment; but children with certain intersex conditions have significantly higher rates of gender transition than the general population, with or without treatment.

Just... wow.

Even if it were true, and some kids get misidentified, it would mean a very small number of confused gay boys who would grow up happy to be gay, would turn into males that look like girls, but who have grown breasts that can't be removed without surgery, permanently altered their bone density and substantially increased their risk of certain illnesses, mutilated their natural bodies in ways that make them sterile and frequently unable to enjoy sexual pleasure... and don't have any measurable reduction in their distress and anxiety.

No big deal...

It is what the people who claim the treatment of trans kids causes them to be trans are saying. According to them, trans kids being happy is a bad thing because they imagine they could have been happy in another way. Even if they had to option of living another way and did not want it, their parents and doctors agreed going through with the treatment was the best option. Even then some argue that a hypothetical happiness is more important than a factual happiness. Loss of this hypothetical happiness is apparently the worst thing they can imagine to the point they want to ban many from persuing the factual happiness.

Zucker (2018, p4) showed that among those across several studies who had been carefully screened for meeting the diagnostic criteria, desistence was still nearly 70%

How many of those 70% got puberty blockers? I'm guessing close to 0%, because they didn't show a persistent gender identity.

"The Dutch study argued that adolescents who show established GD rarely identify as their biological sex. Professor Hruz suggested there may be two reasons for this. It may be that the clinicians made sound diagnoses of persistent GD. Alternatively, it may be that the very fact of the diagnosis and the course of treatment which affirmed that diagnosis (that is, both gender affirmative psychotherapy and the use of PBs) solidified the feeling of cross-gender identification and led the young people to commit to sex reassignment more strongly than they would have done if there had been a different diagnosis and treatment." (point 76)

This is pure speculation.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Because implausibility. They make a tour of rape shelters, always arrive just when a vandalism is occurring, and are the only ones to report it? You actually believe this crap?

It would be a good idea for you to look into things instead of making assumptions of malice. They don't make tours - they collect articles that are usually only written in small local papers, because the larger papers won't pick up things that aren't "pro-trans".

So far, every item I've found mentioned there can also be found in other news sources. All they do is collect the items in one place.

 

[Emily's Cat]

She compared men and women to breeds of dogs FFS! WTF is wrong with everyone?

Would you have been happier if I had used cats as an analogy? Or maybe fish? I could just as easily have made the illustration using nurse sharks and great whites. Or ball pythons and anacondas.

I understand that autism can create a barrier with more abstract elements of communication. Allow me to clarify that I was not comparing humans to dogs. I was using the relationship between characteristics of dogs that most people are familiar with, in order to highlight the relationship between male and female humans that is the actual item under discussion. By using an analogy, I can focus on the dynamic (difference in aggression and size) and remove the personal and the emotional from the situation.

But of course, analogy aren't always effective.

 

[Emily's Cat]

This is insane.

It's conversion therapy for homosexuality is what it is.

 

[theprestige]

Well, now I'm confused.

I remember, not so long ago, in a thread dedicated to discussing the merits (or otherwise) of analogies, somebody called theprestige wrote

Feel free to bump that thread with your confusion, and I'll address it there.

For now, in the context of this thread, do you like Emily's Cat's analogy? Do you think it expresses something valid about sex and sex-segregated safe spaces? Did it change your view of any of the issues we're discussing here?

 

[Meadmaker]

It's like I'm Cassandra on the walls of Troy.

But that's completely different, because Cassandra.....

 

[LondonJohn]

Making it work for 100% of humans.

Yes. And as an associated point: I have to say, this repeated pulling out of the 99.7% number as supposed justification is at once both baffling (from a logical and practical point of view) and mildly sickening.

For instance, some 3% of the population of the UK are classified as suffering from sight loss or blindness. Which of course means that 97% of the UK population do not suffer from sight loss or blindness. Per the logic - and morality - of certain positions in this thread, we really oughtn't to make any attempt to accommodate those with sight loss/blindness, given that it's not an issue which directly impacts such a huge majority of the population.....

I guess we could use Meadmaker's proposal and call it "Female Sports" and "Male Sports" and divide them according to biological sex, transwomen together with men, transmen together with women. Have people with suppressed testosterone compete with men, and have people with artificially increased testosterone compete with women. You know, for fairness.

Indeed. The tortured logic of those who are opposed to transgender rights forces them to chase their tails like this on most of the issues they oppose. And, just as with the communal changing rooms issue, the only solution that would logically satisfy their conditions would be for transgender people simply not to be permitted to participate in sports altogether.


(Note also, though, that while I strongly believe that transgender people should be allowed - and encouraged - to participate in sports correlating to their trans gender, I don't think this should extend to elite sports (which are, to a very significant degree, a public entertainment). And I think that this is indeed how those running elite sports will rule, and I don't think it will be successfully challengeable through the justice system. I don't see any dichotomy in my position, and I don't think the courts will think so either.)

 

[theprestige]

But that's completely different, because Cassandra.....

... Was a woman? : D

 

[Earthborn]

So...if some boys are mistakenly transitioned to the incorrect gender identity they will still grow up to be happy?

No, what is claimed is that their treatment somehow stabilises their gender identity. The supposed evidence for this is that after treatment that is extremely unlikely to be given to kids unless they have a stabile gender identity, the vast majority still have a stabile gender identity.

 

[LondonJohn]

Feel free to bump that thread with your confusion, and I'll address it there.

For now, in the context of this thread, do you like Emily's Cat's analogy? Do you think it expresses something valid about sex and sex-segregated safe spaces? Did it change your view of any of the issues we're discussing here?

Well I can feel free to ask you here, since you've given a general view on analogies already within this thread:

Do you, theprestige, believe that arguments by analogy always fail in practice?

And do you believe that arguments by analogy are never effective in practice as a tool of argumentation.


Obviously I'm loathe to put words into your mouth, but if you did happen to believe both of the above, how would that sit alongside your assessment of Emily's Cat's analogy here?

 

[TomB]

There is nothing physical about being a person that is dangerous. A dangerous person is such because of how they individually tend to act, not because of what they are.

Which is something, I think EmilysCat was careful to point out. Not all men are dangerous.

But when they are, the potential for damage is much greater than when a woman female has the same temperament. I'm not a particularly imposing guy (5'9" 210 lbs, built less like a linebacker and more like an accountant) but were I to attack my wife, I could do a lot of damage. Were she to attack me, not so much. And this extends to the majority of my more athletic female friends.

I don't mind the pitbull/pug analogy because it serves to illustrate the differences pretty well. Every pit bull I've known has been the most friendly cuddly dog you could imagine. (My daughter had pit bulls.) I've had pugs and currently have a chihuahua. The most aggressive dog we had was a pug that actually tried to bite the pizza guy. It was laughable. Had he been one of the pit bulls, probably not.

There is a cultural recognition of this difference in danger levels. Maw chasing Snuffy Smith with a frying pan is funny. Paw chasing Maw...not so much. Carrie Underwood can sing about taking a baseball bat to the property of her cheating boyfriend. Blake Shelton...can't. Because as a culture we recognize that a violent angry man is more dangerous than a violent angry woman.

I've encountered plenty of analogies. And when they refer to types of people, they are always hateful.

There is nothing hateful about being compared to a pit bull. They are are wonderful dogs, for the most part.

 

[Meadmaker]

I guess we could use Meadmaker's proposal and call it "Female Sports" and "Male Sports" and divide them according to biological sex, transwomen together with men males, transmen together with women females. Have people with suppressed testosterone compete with men, and have people with artificially increased testosterone compete with women. You know, for fairness.

Corrections added.


It would be up to the leagues to decide on whether exceptions should allowed for people who have medical conditions or treatments that give them advantages or penalties that might make it more sensible to allow, or prohibit, such people in one league or the other.

But you have done something here that I want to emphasize. I was talking about transgender people. You talked about people who had hormone treatments.

A huge, huge, I mean really big, problem is that there is a huge faction of transgender rights activists who want to declare people to be "women" or "men" without even undergoing any medical treatment. That's where a large number of people draw the line. If you want to reduce the hostility towards the transgender rights movement, tell people that they have to do more than put on a skirt before they'll be allowed into the ladies' room.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Of course not. The transwoman can probably represent the women in his district just fine. By the same token, so can the man. And so can the woman represent the men. And so can any of them represent the trans. And the whites can represent the blacks. The jews, the asians. And so on. So are gender quotas in political representation even necessary? Probably not. If they were, every woman in that district who voted for a transwoman rep instead of a woman rep, was voting against their own self-interest. Every woman in America would be talking about how Joe Biden isn't her president.

Politically, a male can certainly be a representative for a group that contains human females. But that's a bit different from being able to represent the views, interests, and needs of that cohort.

Think about the violence against women thread, and many of the interactions in this thread. There are experiences that female humans face on a daily basis that are mostly invisible to male humans. Male humans are intellectually aware of the fact that female humans face sexual assault and rape... but they are often completely blind to the impact this has on our lives. Males don't have the same pressing need to be constantly aware of the males around them that might represent a danger, they don't need to mentally prepare and be sure that they're ready in case a stranger accosts them in the parking garage when they're alone. Males don't make arrangements with their friends when they go out on a first date with someone they've just met... so that if their friends don't hear from them within a certain amount of time, they know something is wrong. Male humans simply don't have the experience that female humans have - and lacking that really aren't in a position to represent the interests of female humans.

In this thread, we've seen over and over how poorly male humans are at representing the interests and concerns of female humans. How many times have we seen male posters dismiss the concerns of female posters with respect to the risk of assault and rape? How often have we seen "oh, that's exaggerated" or "that never happens" or "you're being hysterical" in response to female concerns? How many times have we seen male posters insist that biological sex isn't important, and "what's in other people's pants" is nobody's business... and simply not hear or understand that for female humans, biological sex *is* important to our day-to-day lives, that it's the source of the vast majority of social barriers that we face, and that what's in other people's pants is rather more important to those of us who can be made pregnant against our will by it?

There's a reason that most human females want to seem increased representation by females in politics and business. It's not that male humans are bad or don't try to do a good job, it's that for the most part, there are elements of our lives as female humans that most male humans are blind to because it's something they don't experience.