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

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gnome said:
I'll agree on those weaknesses in my hypothetical question.

I hope I can say that my point survives--that majority opinion of welcomeness is problematic as the main way to decide the rules.
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That's what I meant by "the problems of majority rule."
 
Good article here by Jesse Singal in response to a low key kerfuffle over Science Based Medicine removing a review of A. Shrier’s Irreversible Damage from their website. The review was written by none other than Dr. Harriet Hall, a regular contributor to the SBM website.

Since removing Hall’s review, there have apparently been three entries posted on SBM responding to her (removed) review, including one co-written by SBM founders Novella and Gorski themselves.

Singal’s piece is a critique of Novella’s and Gorksi’s article. It also serves as a very thorough overview of the current evidence and consensus on health care for dysphoric youth. Well worth a read.

https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-science-based-medicine-botched
 
Sian Berry quits as Green party leader in dispute over trans rights [The Guardian]

"A vocal supporter of trans equality, Berry had said one of the first things she would do as mayor would be to set up a commission on the rights of trans Londoners. In her resignation letter on Wednesday, Berry said there had been significant disagreement with colleagues elected to the party’s frontbench team. However, she did not give further details."
 
Matthew Best said:
Sian Berry quits as Green party leader in dispute over trans rights [The Guardian]

"A vocal supporter of trans equality, Berry had said one of the first things she would do as mayor would be to set up a commission on the rights of trans Londoners. In her resignation letter on Wednesday, Berry said there had been significant disagreement with colleagues elected to the party’s frontbench team. However, she did not give further details."
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I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for those significant disagreements. I would also have been very interested in what rights of trans Londoners the commission recognized, and on what basis.
 
Dismember said:
Singal’s piece is a critique of Novella’s and Gorksi’s article. It also serves as a very thorough overview of the current evidence and consensus on health care for dysphoric youth. Well worth a read.
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I'll second Matthew's thanks for that - an excellent, thoughtful, and clearly honest piece.

It's funny how the the trans debate of all things is at the cutting edge of the politicisation of science.

This bit stood out:

Again, Schrödinger’s Evidence: When the Dutch find that most kids desist, their “methods [are] so fatally flawed that the results cannot be trusted.” When the Dutch find that trans adolescents tend to stay trans, no such qualms. Isolated demands for rigor, indeed.
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It's the recurring theme in all of the trans question - people pick their side before considering the evidence. I am definitely in the Dutch camp of erring on the side of caution.
 
Matthew Best said:
Sian Berry quits as Green party leader in dispute over trans rights [The Guardian]

"A vocal supporter of trans equality, Berry had said one of the first things she would do as mayor would be to set up a commission on the rights of trans Londoners. In her resignation letter on Wednesday, Berry said there had been significant disagreement with colleagues elected to the party’s frontbench team. However, she did not give further details."
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theprestige said:
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for those significant disagreements. I would also have been very interested in what rights of trans Londoners the commission recognized, and on what basis.
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Went looking for some more information... and there's some suggestion that Berry stepped down in part because Shahrar Ali was selected as the spokesperson for policing and domestic safety... and they made the unforgiveable error of actually knowing what a woman is, not being afraid to say so, and recognizing that women's rights exist as separate from those of transgender people.

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2021/07/14/sian-berry-green-party-trans-rights/

https://twitter.com/ShahrarAli/status/1285335761043296258

A woman is commonly defined as an adult human female and, genetically, typified by two XX chromosomes. These facts are not in dispute nor should they be in any political party.
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Emily's Cat said:
I'm seriously at a loss to understand the world when a position acknowledging reality is being treated as an "attack" on pomo science deniers.
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How do you know what indigenous tribe they belong to?

Serious answer--a factually accurate statement can still be part of a fallacious or ill-intentioned argument.

Is it certain that was the part that caused trouble?

An absurd example to make the point:

Person A says: "Water is wet. Therefore we should bulldoze houses in flood zones."

Later: "I can't believe everyone's so mad just because I acknowledged water is wet."
 
gnome said:
How do you know what indigenous tribe they belong to?

Serious answer--a factually accurate statement can still be part of a fallacious or ill-intentioned argument.

Is it certain that was the part that caused trouble?
An absurd example to make the point:

Person A says: "Water is wet. Therefore we should bulldoze houses in flood zones."

Later: "I can't believe everyone's so mad just because I acknowledged water is wet."
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Yes, it's certain. The fact that they provided a definition of women that does not include some males is what is viewed as an "attack".
 
Emily's Cat said:
Yes, it's certain. The fact that they provided a definition of women that does not include some males is what is viewed as an "attack".
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I am not trying to be difficult, but I don't see that this is clearly a primary reason for a split between Berry and Shahrar Ali. There are plenty of other related policy issues they may not be able to see eye to eye on.

What I see is that some people think this is why. That is far from confirmed unless there's something I missed in the reading.
 
Dozens of people have been arrested in*Los Angeles*following a chaotic and at times violent demonstration by anti-transgender protesters who targeted a Koreatown spa that has a trans-inclusive policy allowing trans women to use women’s facilities.

Saturday marked the second weekend of violent protests this month in the streets around Wi Spa, a neighborhood business that has found itself at the heart of a right-wing media storm over an alleged incident in which a customer filmed herself complaining about a trans woman in the women’s area of the spa.

The far-right protesters called for a boycott of Wi Spa and chanted baseless claims about paedophilia, as women carrying signs reading “protect female spaces” and “It’s worse in women’s shelters” marched alongside men wearing helmets and masks that covered their faces.

Calls to defend “female spaces” and “women’s shelters” have become rallying cries of anti-trans groups, who have falsely suggested that trans-inclusive policies endanger cis women. California has for years had laws in place that allow trans people to use facilities that match their gender.
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https://www.theguardian.com/society...-anti-trans-protest-outside-spa-turns-violent

Not-transphobic people non-violently protest the horrible misogynist spa business. Truly real women have no one that cares about their rights except neo-nazis and other far-right extremists. This would not have occurred in Nazi-Germany!
 
An article on Spiked! arguing that Trans-activisim is simply reinforcing old gender stereotypes.


‘What is a woman?’, asked Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, before adding that the counterpart question never needs to be asked. Man somehow transcends his biology. He is the default, the generic human being. Woman is the embodied Other, defined by her sex, which, rather than being merely biological, is assumed to entail the roles and characteristics that she has traditionally been expected to embody.




De Beauvoir wanted to prise apart this arbitrary characterisation of woman, and separate ‘gender’ from what is actually ineluctable — namely, sex. This, she hoped, would break the shackles in which women had been immemorially bound. So it was that The Second Sex launched the transformative wave of postwar feminism.


Now, 70-odd years later, the question that de Beauvoir hoped to make redundant is pertinent again, and the sex / gender distinction that she opened up is, as Helen Joyce laments in her new book Trans, turned on its head. It is now used to reconfirm the very stereotypes it was designed to subvert.
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https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/07/16/trans-activism-is-reversing-the-gains-of-feminism/
 
Anti-trans bigotry again used by the fascist right as an excuse to engage in widespread street violence.

Fascists, cloaking themselves in the language of TERF anti-trans bigotry, again descended on Wi Spa in LA and went on a violent spree aided by the LAPD.

Proud boys and other fascist elements attacked journalists and other peaceful bystanders in addition to battling with antifascist counter protestors. A journalist for the Guardian was assaulted multiple times when she refused to stop covering the event and leave the area:

Was interviewing right-wing protesters a the Wi Spa and this helmeted person interrupted my conversation with a young woman, silently gestured me to go away. When I continued to follow the protesters down the street and talked to me, slapped my phone and notebook out of my hand.

...


As a female journalist trying to interview women at a right-wing protest over trans rights at a Los Angeles spa, I was just chased, pushed, and thrown to the ground.
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https://twitter.com/loisbeckett/status/1416470735283884034

Proud Boys pepper sprayed a passerby onlooker who simply stopped to asked questions:

https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1416484067072167938

LAPD responded as they usually, by using illegal force against the left while largely ignoring the fascist right they are sympathetic towards. LAPD assaulted multiple journalists, including breaking one's hand with repeated baton strikes, and fired a "less lethal" shotgun and dangerously close range at a nonviolent protestor. LAPD made posts bragging about seizing a helmet and some a shield while ignoring masked and armored fascists patrolling the streets with bats.

At least in LA, the TERF-Fascist alignment is being made explicitly clear.
 
gnome said:
I am not trying to be difficult, but I don't see that this is clearly a primary reason for a split between Berry and Shahrar Ali. There are plenty of other related policy issues they may not be able to see eye to eye on.

What I see is that some people think this is why. That is far from confirmed unless there's something I missed in the reading.
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You're certainly entitled to your own opinion on the matter. So far as I can tell, none of Ali's positions would constitute a lack of support for the dignity, rights, and fair treatment of transgender people at all. But they do explicitly provide a definition of woman that excludes males, and the response to that definition was responded to as an attack on the trans community.
 
gnome said:
I am not trying to be difficult, but I don't see that this is clearly a primary reason for a split between Berry and Shahrar Ali. There are plenty of other related policy issues they may not be able to see eye to eye on.

What I see is that some people think this is why. That is far from confirmed unless there's something I missed in the reading.
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There seems to be a major split in views in the Green Party.

The Young Greens have asked for him to be removed:

https://bright-green.org/2021/07/18/young-greens-pass-motion-calling-for-termination-of-shahrar-alis-role-as-green-party-spokesperson/

The second area raised by the Young Greens’ motion is in relation to Ali’s support for an emergency motion proposed – although not debated – at the 2020 Autumn Green Party conference. Ali’s motion called for the prohibition of the privately run online transgender healthcare clinic GenderGP and claimed that GenderGP is “putting patient safety at risk” by – among other things – “providing puberty blockers to children as young as 10”.

The motion passed by Young Greens Convention claimed that the motion to prohibit GenderGP proposed by Ali, “seeks to undermine” the right of young people and children to access gender-affirming therapy – which the party supports – “by claiming that GenderGP is acting inappropriately, when in fact it is following standard NHS practice with regards to the age of children accessing puberty blockers.” The motion adopted by the Young Greens also claimed that prohibiting GenderGP from operating would create an additional barrier to trans people who need to access services that provide gender affirming therapy.
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A group of transgender rights activists Tuesday announced a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department for its handling of recent protests outside Wi Spa in Koreatown.

...

The suit alleges LAPD officers used batons to break a journalist’s arm, shot projectiles at fleeing protesters at close range and allowed conservative protesters to duck behind police lines for protection.

“What we saw at the Wi Spa protests were atrocious human rights violations committed by LAPD,” attorney Christian Contreras said.

The lawsuit also questions officers’ use of less-lethal projectiles against protesters despite a recent federal court order restricting their use.

In videos posted to social media from the protest, a group of LAPD officers appear to use batons on counter-protesters who were already on the ground and another LAPD officer appears to fire a less-lethal round at a woman standing on the sidewalk with her hands in the air.
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https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2021/07/20/group-announces-lawsuit-against-lapd-over-handling-of-wi-spa-protests/
 
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