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

[theprestige]

And what gives you standing to critique a female perspective of sexual assault?

His gender sex. Once again, we uphold the principle that men are better at being women than women are.

 

[Meadmaker]

Here's your first mistake. The highlighted is incorrect.




This is also not entirely correct and shows a lack of understanding of how sports work.
...
Oh, almost forgot. Getting attention in school or club sports is the main gateway to elite sport.

All true, and important, but what I will add is that for some people, just making the team is a huge accomplishment, even if there is zero chance you will ever be part of elite sports. If there are twelve slots on the girls' varsity basketball team, and you are in thirteenth place at tryouts, and number two is a transgirl, I don't think that's right.

 

[theprestige]

All true, and important, but what I will add is that for some people, just making the team is a huge accomplishment, even if there is zero chance you will ever be part of elite sports. If there are twelve slots on the girls' varsity basketball team, and you are in thirteenth place at tryouts, and number two is a transgirl, I don't think that's right.

I'm savoring the introduction of a new coda in the terminology wars. ST concedes that it is perhaps unfair, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong.

Like male and man don't mean the same thing, right and fair don't mean the same thing.

 

[Emily's Cat]

If the accusations are true, the it doesn't seem like the law, as it stands now or as it was before, was ever much of a deterrent for Merager.

That's the unfortunate reality we live in that for some people, repeat criminals, laws don't stop them from doing whatever they like.

I don't see how a change in nondiscrimination law means much for these repeat criminals.

And if all Merager was doing is using the facilities as normal, then no crime at all occurred.

Before the law, the spa would have had the right to refuse a male admittance to the female section of the spa right out of the gate - which would have prevented the female customers from being subjected to their penis in the first place.

With the law in place, it gives cover to sex offenders and predacious males to engage in behavior that would otherwise have not been accessible to them.

Now, all they have to do is say "oh no, I'm transgender, it's okay" and they face no consequences.

Females have virtually no power now to enforce their boundaries and to ensure their dignity and safety.

It's an "unfortunate reality" that has been forcibly put into place without the consent of females, without consultation from females, and in a great many cases against the outright complaint of females.

This "unfortunate reality" only exists because male people and their allies seem to think that females don't matter.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Maybe. Data would prove it. Canada adopted this kind of law years ago. Surely there would be something measurable by now. Feel free to prove it.

Other than the rather large number of sexual offending males who have declared themselves to be transwomen since the law went into place?

 

[LondonJohn]

I already addressed this. There were around 3800 prisoners in women's prisons and approximately 34 of them were transwomen (less than .1%) yet they committed 7% of sexual assaults. In other words, male prisoners statistically pose a massively greater risk to female prisoners than do other female prisoners. Whether the male prisoners are transgender or not is completely irrelevant. All the available evidence shows that the risk is based on biological sex, not identity.

No. You're not assessing risk in a proper manner.

Example:

Suppose we take two events that any given individual living on the Japanese coast in 2021 might experience.

Event 1 is encountering a moderate- to large-level tsunami in their neighbourhood. Let's suppose that the odds of death to our individual if they encounter such an event is 1 in 50.

Event 2 is encountering a thermonuclear device detonation in their neighbourhood. Let's suppose that the odds of death to our individual if they encounter such an event is 1 in 1 (ie certain death).

The question now is: should our individual be more afraid of dying as the result of a nearby tsunami or as the result of a nearby nuclear explosion?

And the answer of course is: a tsunami. Because even though, for any given tsunami, the odds of death are far lower than from any given nuclear explosion, the odds of this individual encountering a tsunami are far, far higher than the odds of them encountering a nuclear explosion.


The relative risk of different events to any individual is only meaningful if one also has good information about the relative prevalence of each of those events in the lived experience of that individual.

Translating this into our E&W prison-sexual-assault example, it matters very much indeed that any given ciswoman prisoner encounters a way higher number of other ciswoman prisoners than transwoman prisoners - even though the risk factor per given transwoman prisoner might indeed be higher than the risk factor per given ciswoman prisoner (cf the risk factor per given nuclear explosion being far higher than the risk factor per given tsunami from the previous example).

And indeed the actual statistics bear this out well. Simply put, just as our Japanese individual should be far more afraid about dying in a tsunami than in a nuclear explosion, so a ciswoman prisoner in E&W should be far more afraid about being sexually assaulted by another ciswoman prisoner than by a transwoman prisoner.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Sure, but if I saw some guy staring at me naked and he had a raging hard-on, I would be uncomfortable even though we were both men. Likewise I assume women would not be pleased if another woman was visibly aroused while leering at them naked.

Actions, not identity, make things uncomfortable.

Here's the thing: females - even raging lesbian females - almost NEVER leer at other women in that fashion. This is a behavior that is almost completely one exhibited by males. Not females. Males.

Females do not place hidden cameras to get shots of other females - or males for that matter - peeing. Females do not try to get voyeuristic shots up the skirts of other females so they can post it on line - nor do they do so to males. Females do not post "revenge porn" online.

This is a type of behavior that is extraordinarily rare among females... but is not even particularly uncommon among males.

Actions make people uncomfortable... but there are some actions that are incredibly highly correlated with only one sex.

Sex, not identity. Identity doesn't erase sex.

Transgender identified males commit sexual crimes and violent crimes at or above the rate committed by females.

 

[LondonJohn]

Other than the rather large number of sexual offending males who have declared themselves to be transwomen since the law went into place?

Immaterial, unless/until you can show that this has translated into real-world increased rates of offending (most notably against ciswomen), as (crucially) either a direct or indirect result of the law having been put in place.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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

How does one become an elite athlete?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Seems like a lot of confirmation bias at work. Trans people who don't "pass" are much more noticeable than those that do. By definition, you wouldn't know a woman was a trans woman if they were passing.

So yeah, you notice the trans woman with broad shoulders and a 5 o'clock shadow and you don't notice the trans woman with a tiny waist in a sundress.

Is it your contention that Eddie Izzard and Alex Drummond are trying to pass, and just can't quite manage it?

 

[Olmstead]

No. You're not assessing risk in a proper manner.

Example:

Suppose we take two events that any given individual living on the Japanese coast in 2021 might experience.

Event 1 is encountering a moderate- to large-level tsunami in their neighbourhood. Let's suppose that the odds of death to our individual if they encounter such an event is 1 in 50.

Event 2 is encountering a thermonuclear device detonation in their neighbourhood. Let's suppose that the odds of death to our individual if they encounter such an event is 1 in 1 (ie certain death).

The question now is: should our individual be more afraid of dying as the result of a nearby tsunami or as the result of a nearby nuclear explosion?

And the answer of course is: a tsunami. Because even though, for any given tsunami, the odds of death are far lower than from any given nuclear explosion, the odds of this individual encountering a tsunami are far, far higher than the odds of them encountering a nuclear explosion.


The relative risk of different events to any individual is only meaningful if one also has good information about the relative prevalence of each of those events in the lived experience of that individual.

Translating this into our E&W prison-sexual-assault example, it matters very much indeed that any given ciswoman prisoner encounters a way higher number of other ciswoman prisoners than transwoman prisoners - even though the risk factor per given transwoman prisoner might indeed be higher than the risk factor per given ciswoman prisoner (cf the risk factor per given nuclear explosion being far higher than the risk factor per given tsunami from the previous example).

And indeed the actual statistics bear this out well. Simply put, just as our Japanese individual should be far more afraid about dying in a tsunami than in a nuclear explosion, so a ciswoman prisoner in E&W should be far more afraid about being sexually assaulted by another ciswoman prisoner than by a transwoman prisoner.

Yeah, but my neighbour installed a nuclear reactor to power his nightlight.

 

[LondonJohn]

I'm savoring the introduction of a new coda in the terminology wars. ST concedes that it is perhaps unfair, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong.

Like male and man don't mean the same thing, right and fair don't mean the same thing.

"Right" and "fair" don't necessarily have to mean the same thing.

For example, it's right that the state should provide halfway houses for serious offenders once they're eventually released from prison.

But that halfway-house policy is probably not fair to the people who are unfortunate enough to live close to one of them.

 

[LondonJohn]

Yeah, but my neighbour installed a nuclear reactor to power his nightlight.

Is Sheldon Cooper your neighbour?

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

How do you believe that college athletes are identified and approach with sport-scholarships?

Also, per Biden, any school that takes fenderal funds - which means all public universities and community colleges - must allow transgender people to compete according to their gender identity. There are no rules attached to that dictate with respect to transition or hormones or anything else.

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.

What about sports where high-level performance is the means by which scholarships etc. are initially attained?

 

[Emily's Cat]

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?

Those transgender participants in high school sports quite literally prevent another student from even being considered for those scholarships.

Hubbard's participation in the Olympics literally prevented a female from being able to go at all.

There are a limited number of positions on any given team, beginning in middle school if not earlier. There are a limited number of scholarships. This is pretty much a zero-sum game. The inclusion of unaltered trans-identifying males in high school sports prevents females from being able to participate.

 

[LondonJohn]

Is it your contention that Eddie Izzard and Alex Drummond are trying to pass, and just can't quite manage it?

It's not the goal of all transgender people (of either biological sex) to present themselves as convincing visual embodiments of their trans gender. Some feel they wish to do so (and some of those arguably are less than successful in their endeavour). Some feel no wish to try to match their visual appearance to their trans gender. And yet others - perhaps comprising the single biggest subgroup - fall somewhere in-between: they want to present some of the outward visual characteristics that match their trans gender, but have no desire to even try to "pass" convincingly.

I suspect Izzard and Drummond may fall into this last subgroup. But regardless, every transgender person has the right to determine how/how much/whether they seek to alter their outward visual presentation wrt their transgender. And obviously this is an even more obvious observation when it comes to those who identify as non-binary transgender...

 

[TheGoldcountry]

Have you not read/comprehended a single one of my recent posts on this subject?

Not agreeing with you =/= miscomprehension.

All of your "arguments" are based on fantasy world structures, with no thought given to how they will affect living, breathing people involved. You detach yourself from the actual consequences of what you propose by blithely dismissing anyone who disagrees with you as being a TERF, or intolerant, or hysterical.

The idea that we might have legitimate concerns eludes you when everything you see is immediately labelled as some brand of transphobia. It's condescending, arrogant, and annoying.

 

[Emily's Cat]

* 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.

I genuinely don't understand the distinction you believe you are making.

Those elite-level sports being public entertainment is very closely tied to them being profitable enterprises. There's not a good way to separate them. For a great many people and regions, high school competitions are also considered public entertainment, even if they don't make money.

So why would it be acceptable to sex-segregate for "elite level" public entertainment, but not for "amateur" public entertainment?

 

[TheGoldcountry]

How does one become an elite athlete?

Scouts will somehow notice them sitting on the bench, I guess.

 

[LondonJohn]

Those transgender participants in high school sports quite literally prevent another student from even being considered for those scholarships.
Hubbard's participation in the Olympics literally prevented a female from being able to go at all.

There are a limited number of positions on any given team, beginning in middle school if not earlier. There are a limited number of scholarships. This is pretty much a zero-sum game. The inclusion of unaltered trans-identifying males in high school sports prevents females from being able to participate.

That would not be the case if US college sport were deemed to be elite-level (as I believe it ought to be) and thus barred to transgender students seeking to represent their trans gender (as I believe should be the case when it comes to elite-level sport).

#3451, #3474 and #3477 outline my own thinking on this whole matter.