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

[theprestige]

Maybe you didn't use the right critical thinking tools.

I'll make one additional effort to elaborate:

At sub-elite level, sport is a leisure pursuit - a competitive one, for sure, but a leisure pursuit nevertheless.

Not true. A lot of sub-elite sports have as an important purpose to provide a path to elite sport for those that are interested. Opening that up to transwomen will ultimately mean that only transwomen will graduate to the elite level of women's sports.

 

[Emily's Cat]

ETA: An interesting (to me, anyhow) disconnect in the "trans-rights advocates are misogynists" or "trans-rights advocates are men telling women their rights" approach...

... is in the real-world areas of medical (and medico-legal) science, national/state governments, and the judiciary.

Because in each of these fields, transgender rights are being validated, facilitated, enshrined, protected and enforced - more and more each day.

Which rather challenges the claim of being the most oppressed people in the world, I'd say. They wield an amazing amount of power for such oppressed people.

Yet it's demonstrably beyond question that representative or near-representative proportions of females sit on each of those types of public body.

Please demonstrate it then.

So those females are very significant contributors to the real-world public bodies which are - in greater numbers every day - validating and defending the human rights of transgender people. In moves which are often tarred with the "misogynist" or "men telling women their rights" brushes.

Are these females perhaps misogynists themselves? Or are the (misogynist) men on their public bodies actually telling these females what to do and what to vote for/implement? And are these females being browbeaten into silence, being prevented from (perhaps) complaining to the media along the lines of "Obviously I wanted to protect the rights of my fellow ciswomen, but the males on my public body forced me to comply with their demands"?

Because I don't recall any reports in the gist of that previous paragraph. Maybe there have been such reports, though. Otherwise, it's hard to understand just how and why so many females would have played such a significant role in giving transgender people their rights. All around the Western world. Isn't it?

You seem to have missed several cases of females who have lost their positions in politics, been harassed and hounded out of universities, had their women's rights organizations shut down or threatened, or otherwise been silenced by the ever-so-oppressed transgender folks.

Of course, this all hinges on your claim of females having "demonstrably beyond question" representative power that you haven't actually demonstrated.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Which rather challenges the claim of being the most oppressed people in the world, I'd say. They wield an amazing amount of power for such oppressed people.


Please demonstrate it then.



You seem to have missed several cases of females who have lost their positions in politics, been harassed and hounded out of universities, had their women's rights organizations shut down or threatened, or otherwise been silenced by the ever-so-oppressed transgender folks.

Of course, this all hinges on your claim of females having "demonstrably beyond question" representative power that you haven't actually demonstrated.

These TERFS have been cancelled by trans people? Or by trans people and their allies, which includes a lot of women.

Be honest here. The percentage of trans people in the population is so low, they could not wield any power unless they had lots of sympathetic allies, which, by all available polling, includes a lot of cis women.

I do hope you keep posting these stories of transphobes getting rekt for being bigots. Sometimes I miss them myself, and you gotta take the joy wherever you find it.

 

[Meadmaker]

You see, I too can adopt this phoney holier-than-thou attitude, and tell you that your indifference to the young transwoman athletes (not to mention their rights in a progressive liberal society) is palpable. See how this works? (Or... doesn't work)

No, it works pretty well. I am pretty much indifferent for the transgirls' desire to race against girls.

In some cases, I'm actively hostile, but for teens, the active hostility is directed more at the coaches and administrators that enable and encourage them.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I'm not sure you understand the Wi Spa situation correctly.

The Wi Spa itself was happy to have a trans-inclusive policy. The problems arose after one of its female customers was unhappy with that policy.

If a person or a group of people want to set up and run a private spa in which only ciswomen are allowed entry, then they can do so with with zero repercussions*. This is akin to what ST was saying.


* And perhaps they might offer totemic complimentary memberships to the woman who made the infamous video in Wi Spa......


ETA: for further clarity, all the Wi Spa protests showed is that nobody can compel a private business like a women's spa to exclude transwomen, if the owners/management want to include transwomen. But that's an entirely different matter from claiming that nobody could own/run a women's spa that excluded transwomen, if that was what they - the owners/mgmt - wanted.

Please provide some support for your claim that Wi Spa management desires to be trans-inclusive, as opposed to being compelled by law to be so.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Indeed.

And for that matter, I'm not sure that, for example, a 5ft2 80lb ciswoman in a women's prison who found herself forcibly sexually assaulted with a pool cue butt by a 5ft11 180lb predatory gay ciswoman prisoner....

.... would be all that enamoured by any suggestion that this was a "lesser" violation than a sexual assault/rape by a transwoman prisoner.

Females are very rarely sexually predatory. Beyond that, prisoners don't have access to pool cues, for what should be obvious reasons.

Perhaps you'd care to provide some support for your position? Perhaps you can share the reports of forcibly penetrative sexual assaults on females by other females as a widespread problem in society? Or as a widespread problem in prison even?

 

[LondonJohn]

Not true. A lot of sub-elite sports have as an important purpose to provide a path to elite sport for those that are interested. Opening that up to transwomen will ultimately mean that only transwomen will graduate to the elite level of women's sports.

Eh? I'm proposing (for reasons which I've documented at some length elsewhere) that transgender athletes should be excluded from representing their trans gender at elite level

 

[Ziggurat]

Maybe you didn't use the right critical thinking tools.

I'll make one additional effort to elaborate:

At sub-elite level, sport is a leisure pursuit - a competitive one, for sure, but a leisure pursuit nevertheless.

That's not even remotely true. For example, highschool sports is a path to scholarships. There's nothing leisure about that.

When it comes to the matter of ciswomen/girls at a sub-elite level who have ambitions to become elite-level athletes, they (in my model) will already be able to discount any transwomen/girls who might be beating them - since these people will pose no competitive threat to them at elite level.

Also not true. Winning a championship makes a difference to getting a scholarship. They won't get that scholarship on the basis that they would have won if not for that transgender competitor.

In addition, if ciswomen/girls and their families feel sufficiently strongly about the matter as to reject the validity of transwoman/girl competitors, they're perfectly at liberty to discount the efforts of those transwomen/girls in favour of a "ciswoman/girl leaderboard". If that's what floats their boat.

Irrelevant. Such a leaderboard would not be considered by colleges when awarding scholarships.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Oh I think you entirely miscomprehend, ST.

You see, the truth (as we keep getting told forcibly) is that if/when transwomen are allowed to use women's shelters and women's changing rooms and women's prisons....

... there'll be a veritable epidemic - nay, pandemic - of assaults and degradations carried out by transwomen (or "transwomen*") upon ciswomen in these spaces.

And - here's the kicker - there's nothing anyone will be able to do about it!!! No way to minimise ex-ante risk. No way to optimise monitoring and response. No way to maximise deterrence (through things like guaranteed identification of anyone who does offend, coupled with sufficiently strong sentencing powers). No: all women are doomed, end of.


* "transwomen" (in quotation marks), because it's a racing certainty (isn't it??!?!) that allowing transwomen into these types of women's spaces will result in a torrent of cismen choosing to masquerade as transwomen in order to offend against ciswomen in some way. I mean, that's an inevitability, isn't it? We don't even need to wait and see just how much this might actually happen in real life, do we???!?

This is false.

The concern is that by opening the door to transwomen on the basis of self-declaration alone with no expectation of any physical transition, there will be no way at all to tell the difference between a safe transwoman and a dangerous male.

I would be greatly appreciative if you could educate me on how to distinguish between a masculine presenting butch transwoman lesbian and a heterosexual male?

I'd also love to hear a solid explanation for the incredibly high level of sexual crimes committed by males who identify as transwomen.

 

[Ziggurat]

Indeed.

And for that matter, I'm not sure that, for example, a 5ft2 80lb ciswoman in a women's prison who found herself forcibly sexually assaulted with a pool cue butt by a 5ft11 180lb predatory gay ciswoman prisoner....

.... would be all that enamoured by any suggestion that this was a "lesser" violation than a sexual assault/rape by a transwoman prisoner.

Except this just doesn't really happen. Male sexual behavior and female sexual behavior just aren't the same. As Emily's Cat noted, females are less sexually predatory. But more than just that, even among those rare female sexual predators, this sort of violent physical aggression isn't the normal pattern. Female sexual predators are usually more emotionally manipulative than physically aggressive (see, for example, school teachers who have sex with underage students). Could your scenario hypothetically happen? Yes, it could. Are the odds of it happening similar to the odds of being sexually assaulted by a transwoman? No, they are not. Not even close. And that matters.

 

[Meadmaker]

That's not even remotely true. For example, highschool sports is a path to scholarships. There's nothing leisure about that.



Also not true. Winning a championship makes a difference to getting a scholarship. They won't get that scholarship on the basis that they would have won if not for that transgender competitor.



Irrelevant. Such a leaderboard would not be considered by colleges when awarding scholarships.

I have one objection. The significance of the competition, and recognition for the winners of that competition, is not dependent on money being attached to it. Scholarships and other forms of cash compensation are relevant, but they are not, in my opinion, the primary consideration.

 

[LondonJohn]

That's not even remotely true. For example, highschool sports is a path to scholarships. There's nothing leisure about that.



Also not true. Winning a championship makes a difference to getting a scholarship. They won't get that scholarship on the basis that they would have won if not for that transgender competitor.



Irrelevant. Such a leaderboard would not be considered by colleges when awarding scholarships.

You seem to be overlooking the possibility that US college sport (uniquely among college/uni-level sport around the world, I think) would probably be considered elite-level in and of itself.

Perhaps a ready reckoner as an analogue for "elite-level sports" might be "sports where people are either paid directly for participation, or they are paid indirectly for participation via scholarships/bursaries/other". And I'd also include into that category the sort of thing that goes on in sports such as tennis, when even young players are offered deferred inducements by big management and/or equipment/clothing companies.

 

[Meadmaker]

You seem to be overlooking the possibility that US college sport (uniquely among college/uni-level sport around the world, I think) would probably be considered elite-level in and of itself.

Perhaps a ready reckoner as an analogue for "elite-level sports" might be "sports where people are either paid directly for participation, or they are paid indirectly for participation via scholarships/bursaries/other". And I'd also include into that category the sort of thing that goes on in sports such as tennis, when even young players are offered deferred inducements by big management and/or equipment/clothing companies.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you sure seem to be saying that it only matters who wins if there is money on the line. Elite level, i.e. paid, sports, have to remain segregated by sex, because there are business implications. For high school, qualifying for the conference championship doesn't really matter, because there's no payday. If some athlete wants to win, they can make their own scoreboard that shows them in first place.

 

[Ziggurat]

You seem to be overlooking the possibility that US college sport (uniquely among college/uni-level sport around the world, I think) would probably be considered elite-level in and of itself.

I said high school, not college, because I meant high school, not college. Students usually get sports scholarships for college based on how they performed in high school.

 

[LondonJohn]

I said high school, not college, because I meant high school, not college. Students usually get sports scholarships for college based on how they performed in high school.

No. You misunderstand. If US college sport is judged to be elite-level and therefore not open to transgender athletes, US colleges are not going to be offering scholarships to the top high-school athletes if those athletes are transgender, are they? Rather, they're going to be offering their scholarships to the highest-performing high-school cisgender athletes.

In other words, for example: suppose (to take things to somewhat silly extremes, to make the point) US colleges are looking to US high-school rankings to decide who to offer women's high-jump scholarships to. Suppose that in those US high-school rankings, the top 100 positions are occupied by transgirl athletes.

Well, the colleges wouldn't be making offers to any of those high-jumpers, would they? Because they wouldn't be able to have those high-jumpers compete. Instead, what would happen would be that the 101st-ranked athlete - ie the highest-ranked cisgender athlete - would now be the most sought-after woman high-jumper by US colleges.

Hope that helps.

 

[LondonJohn]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you sure seem to be saying that it only matters who wins if there is money on the line. Elite level, i.e. paid, sports, have to remain segregated by sex, because there are business implications. For high school, qualifying for the conference championship doesn't really matter, because there's no payday. If some athlete wants to win, they can make their own scoreboard that shows them in first place.

You're wrong. But it's pointless for me to correct you, because you now seem unable to keep misrepresenting* me (hint though: you keep putting the cart before the horse (it's not sub-elite athletes who are the exception - it's elite-level athletes who are the exception)).

Have at it!


* I don't know now how many times I've explicitly pointed to elite-level sport being a public entertainment as the driving factor in the opt-out. Yet you keep looking straight past that in favour of your own provocative "it only matters where there are business interests involved" ********. And you wonder why I can't now even be bothered to engage with you.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

School sports are a whole different can of worms. Unlike professional sports, which is competition solely for the sake of competition, school sports are ostensibly about education. As such, there are lots of requirements to ensure that school sports are reasonably accessible to all students, and discrimination on the basis of protected classes is explicitly illegal.

It's a huge mess of competing interests, including what's best for students, what's best for schools, the money making potential of popular sports, what fans and local communities want, federal law, and so on. It's a real mess.

 

[TheGoldcountry]

Zero understanding of how youth athletics works.

High school sports is the training ground for future collegiate athletes. If young girls think it's a waste of time to compete in a sport because they allow anyone, regardless of biology, that avenue is now closed for them.

I have a feeling you understand this and are just being willfully obtuse. Women's athletics have grown immensely in my lifetime, and what you advocate for will send them back to obscurity.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Zero understanding of how youth athletics works.

High school sports is the training ground for future collegiate athletes. If young girls think it's a waste of time to compete in a sport because they allow anyone, regardless of biology, that avenue is now closed for them.

I have a feeling you understand this and are just being willfully obtuse. Women's athletics have grown immensely in my lifetime, and what you advocate for will send them back to obscurity.

There probably aren't enough openly trans people at any of these schools to field an entire soccer team.

You're understanding of school sports is incredibly reductive. Many, many students participate in school sports with no plans or aspirations to compete at any higher level. Physical education and fitness is important, and participating in sports is a good way to accomplish this.

The way you describe it, any athlete that doesn't get a scholarship spot at a university is wasting their time, which is clearly not the case.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Alleviating gender dysphoria.

What's the purpose for those who don't have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria? Or for those who believe that gender dysphoria is irrelevant to whether a person is transgender?