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

[JoeMorgue]

Seems pretty relevant to this thread topic to acknowledge that trans people are experiencing intense poverty and other downsides from living within an intensely hostile society, which might make them especially vulnerable populations that need access to social services, such as domestic violence and homeless shelters, while also (as any impoverished community) more likely to be incarcerated.

I was answering your question, not arguing relevancy.

"X is more likely to go into illegal sex work" is true for every disenfranchised minority.

I'm sure there's a gazillion and one psychological think pieces out there about transgender sex workers tying into the same "Wow violently anti-gay people just keep on winding up being gay..." thing, as in I'm sure some people that "in the closet" in an unhealthy way might seek out transgender sex worker in a sort of "Well they technically don't count" kind of rationalization way, but the basic question of disenfranchised people and sex work is pretty answered I think.

 

[Meadmaker]

Seems pretty relevant to this thread topic to acknowledge that trans people are experiencing intense poverty and other downsides from living within an intensely hostile society, which might make them especially vulnerable populations that need access to social services, such as domestic violence and homeless shelters, while also (as any impoverished community) more likely to be incarcerated.

Doesn't seem all that relevant to me.

Whether society is very welcoming or intensely hostile, they still run faster than regular girls, so they shouldn't be in the girls' division.

 

[Elaedith]

Which is why I tend to the conclusion that in cases where sex segregation makes sense for reasons of safety (prisons, shelters, sports) or fairness (sports), transwomen are males and can reasonably be segregated with the other males. Probably should be, in many cases.

I haven't seen any argument from science, or from axiomatic human rights, that inclines me to change my mind about sex segregation. To be honest, I don't think I've seen any arguments along those lines at all. But to be honest my eyes tend to glaze over at a lot of these posts. If someone has such an argument in this thread, please link it and I'll address it. Sorry in advance for the oversight.

I'd be open to the possibility of segregating transwomen from both men and women in prisons, but that seems to just exacerbate the "trans rights" problem.

My understanding is that currently in the UK transwomen prisoners without a GRC who do qualify for transfer to the female estate are placed in a separate wing and mix with female prisoners for some social activities. That seems a reasonable arrangement, although I think that participation in mixed-sex social activities should be optional for prisoners. I believe that those who self-declare but are not approved for transfer are given segregated showering/sleeping facilities within the male estate although I am not sure if they are otherwise segregated from other prisoners.

In this case, self-declared transwomen are often in the company of other self-declared transwomen. There may be other problems, such as the need to separate violent and non-violent transwomen. Having separate levels of security for different groups of transwomen becomes more of an issue if there are few of them in total.

This of course is not satisfactory to trans activists who insist that biological sex must not be acknowledged as real or relevant in any respect.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

My understanding is that currently in the UK transwomen prisoners without a GRC who do qualify for transfer to the female estate are placed in a separate wing and mix with female prisoners for some social activities. That seems a reasonable arrangement, although I think that participation in mixed-sex social activities should be optional for prisoners. I believe that those who self-declare but are not approved for transfer are given segregated showering/sleeping facilities within the male estate although I am not sure if they are otherwise segregated from other prisoners.

In this case, self-declared transwomen are often in the company of other self-declared transwomen. There may be other problems, such as the need to separate violent and non-violent transwomen. Having separate levels of security for different groups of transwomen becomes more of an issue if there are few of them in total.

This of course is not satisfactory to trans activists who insist that biological sex must not be acknowledged as real or relevant in any respect.

Seems worth mentioning that the GRC is famously difficult to get, taking years to complete start to finish, and anti-trans activists are working hard to ensure as many barriers as possible remain in place to prevent more trans people from achieving this recognition from the state.

As a result, plenty of people in the UK are living out-of-the-closet lives and do not have this important documentation that guarantees their rights.

In June 2020 a report published by the European Commission ranked the procedure established in the Gender Recognition Act 2004 as amongst the worst in Europe with "intrusive medical requirements", which means it now lags behind international human rights standards.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom#Gender_recognition

TERF groups like FPW will talk out both sides of their mouths, decrying trans people who self-ID while also opposing reforms to this law that would allow more trans UK citizens to have their status formally recognized.

 

[Ziggurat]

Seems worth mentioning that the GRC is famously difficult to get, taking years to complete start to finish,

It requires a minimum of two years of living as transitioned, which is a considerable amount of time. But why do you say it's famously difficult to get? Are many applicants actually turned down? On what grounds are they refused?

 

[TurkeysGhost]

It requires a minimum of two years of living as transitioned, which is a considerable amount of time. But why do you say it's famously difficult to get? Are many applicants actually turned down? On what grounds are they refused?

Of an estimated 200,000-500,000 trans UK residents, less than 5,000 GRCs have been issued ever.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf

For comparison, in Canada officially changing your gender is about as tedious as a trip to the DMV:

https://owjn.org/changing-identity-documents/

 

[theprestige]

Seems to me it's begging the question that sex segregation is the default.

It currently is the default.

Until relatively recently, sex and gender were considered largely interchangeable terms. Sex segregation and gender segregation were the same thing.

With growing understanding of transgender individuals, we know now that sex and gender are not the same.

More accurately, we have recently decided to use "gender" to refer to amorphous and subjective social constructs that have little or nothing to do with the biological facts of sex. And that's okay. But the biological facts of sex are still important considerations in some circumstances. Specifically in exactly those circumstances where you keep evading consideration.

Also, I don't think the ancient Romans or traditional Pacific Islanders were any less knowledgeable about sex versus gender than we are today.

So if you look at a sign that says "women only", what does that mean, and why? A change in understanding, such as this, necessitates reevaluation of prior assumptions.

I don't think it necessitates a reevaluation. I think you want there to be a reevaluation. Some of are asking, why?

How about a change of pace? Should transwomen count as women, towards equitable representation in employment and politics? Why or why not?

Transwomen and ciswomen are alike in many ways, and dislike in some others.

Many ways? What do you say are the three most important ways that transwomen are alike to women?

Which of these characteristics are most important?

It depends what characteristics you have in mind, and the context in which they're evaluated.

Most of us in this thread have stipulated that transwomen and women are substantially alike in every way that matters for the social constructs of gender and womanhood.

We've pretty much all moved on to the problem of sex-based disparities and how to handle them in public policy.

Anyway, now that you're finally on the same page as the rest of us that sex and gender are different, you don't need to keep telling us about it. We know.

If the goal of sex (or gender) segregated spaces is to protect women from the specific risk of male aggression, then it's clear that transwomen likewise need similar protection. The evidence is quite clear that they, like ciswomen, face the very same dangers. It's why so many of these women's clinics insist on treating trans women, because they see them as essentially the same problem. Despite their differences, they are very much alike in this regard.

Personally, I see no reason why sex or gender segregation must be the solution to any problem. It can be that solution, but only should be if it proves to be the most effective of all options.

It certainly seems to be the most effective option in sports and prisons. If you think the change would be an improvement, the burden is on you to explain why.

Also I think it's comical that just after lecturing us about how sex and gender are two different things, you keep trying to conflate them again in your arguments.

"Let's talk about sex segregation specifically for a moment."

"But sex and gender are two different things."

"We know. Let's talk about sex segregation specifically."

"Okay, so if we're going to talk about sex or gender segregation-"

"We're not. We're going to talk about sex segregation specifically. It's different from gender segregation."

"Okay, but the problem is that sex and gender are two different things."

"Yeah, that's not actually a problem. We're all okay with that. We've all moved on. You should move on, too."

If anything, it seems to be the transexclusionists are trying to work backwards. They have no interest in any solution that does not replicate the status quo.

This isn't true, though. We've all happily abandoned the status quo ante, when it comes to gender identity and inclusion.

But sex and gender are two different things. What we have yet to see from the transinclusionists is any coherent argument for abandoning the status quo in cases where sex has implications for physical safety and fairness.

If it's about safety in prisons, why not house all the smaller and weaker males with the females? There's a lot of males that come in for "extra" violence in prison. Sometimes child sex criminals have to be segregated from the general population for their own safety. There are other scenarios also. And a lot of these prisoners are themselves violent, when they have a suitable victim to prey upon. Regardless of their gender identity, housing them with females would effectively segregate them from their predators (good), and segregate them with their prey (bad).

The "women prey on women too" argument is kind of problematic here. Since yes, that's one thing transwomen have in common with women: They'll both prey on women, given the chance. Which brings us back to the question of why we want to abandon the status quo of segregating male predators from female predators. Because some male predators want to be housed with females? That seems like a terrible reason to change things up.

Please tell me you have a better one.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

It currently is the default.

Except where it isn't.

 

[theprestige]

My question wasn't why sex workers experienced violence, but rather why so many trans people end up in this line of work.

Thanks for the correction. I have no opinion about that. I'm happy to stay more or less focused on sex segregation in a few specific contexts where it seems to matter.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Thanks for the correction. I have no opinion about that. I'm happy to stay more or less focused on sex segregation in a few specific contexts where it seems to matter.

The lived realities of trans people has a lot to do with why they are vulnerable populations.

Removing the discussion from this context is intellectually dishonest.

 

[Ziggurat]

Of an estimated 200,000-500,000 trans UK residents, less than 5,000 GRCs have been issued ever.

That tells me nothing about how difficult it is to get a GRC. Obtaining a GRC is a function not only of the difficulty of getting one, but also its utility, which I have no real information on.

Furthermore, difficulty isn't even the right metric. The easiest possible process will obviously fail to weed out petitioners who petition dishonestly, but the converse is not true. A difficult process can still fail to distinguish between valid and invalid requests. I don't want a process that is harder than necessary, but I do want a process that can actually make distinctions, and do so accurately.

For comparison, in Canada officially changing your gender is about as tedious as a trip to the DMV:

The Canadian process is laughable, and has already led to exploitation.

 

[theprestige]

Except where it isn't.

Good thing we're all keeping track of the context of our conversation, then.

 

[Meadmaker]

The lived realities of trans people has a lot to do with why they are vulnerable populations.

Removing the discussion from this context is intellectually dishonest.

Males run faster than females.
Males are stronger than females.
Males are more aggressive than females.
Males can make females pregnant.

There is no social context where any of the above statements are false, and there are an awful lot of social contexts where those things matter.

 

[theprestige]

The lived realities of trans people has a lot to do with why they are vulnerable populations.

Removing the discussion from this context is intellectually dishonest.

So are the lived realities of women. But that's a context you've consistently avoided or dismissed throughout this thread. So I don't buy your "intellectually dishonest" claim.

Anyway, I recognize that there are competing goods. I'm asking for your ideas on how to reconcile them or balance them. Most of your arguments seem to rely on the premise that one of the two goods doesn't exist, or doesn't matter.

 

[Meadmaker]

I found out a little more about Darren Merager. In addition to her indecent exposure conviction, she was sentenced to four years for burglary. She stole a car and some art from someone's house. Someone locally well known. It was expensive art and the car was a Porsche.

No word on where she served time.

 

[Elaedith]

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.

This is nonsense. Your entire analysis rests of males in women's prisons posing a low risk to female prisoners because there are so few of them.

The goal of activists is to vastly increase the number of males in women's prisons, as well as removing current segregation from female prisoners. The method used to that end is to smear anyone who distinguishes male transgender prisoners and female prisoners as a bigot, because this must be due to 'trans animus' and not simply recognising that males pose more danger on average than females. To reconcile this with the fact that people would be equally concerned about males who are not transgender being housed with female prisoners, it is necessary to assert that transwomen are like females rather than males in relation to offending behaviour, and therefore to treat them as though they pose more risk than females on average per transwomen is bigotry (whereas to state this about other males is just stating a fact).

The context is therefore equivalent to somebody trying to change policy to increase the number of nuclear explosions, dishonestly claiming that nuclear explosions have been demonstrated to pose no more risk than tsunamis, while obscuring the fact that this is due to the statistical infrequency of nuclear explosions relative to tsunamis (ie ignoring base rates).

 

[Elaedith]

* Indeed, these are the definitions/distinctions that are employed in DSM5, whose recategorisation of transgender identity serves as the de facto and de jure foundation for legislation and public policy in ever-increasing numbers of progressive liberal democracies.

There was no 'recategorisation of transgender identity' in the DSM5. This is an outline of the changes made to the previous diagnosis of gender identity disorder (GID) in DSM5 and the rationale for them as outlined by Zucker et al (2013).

In DSM-IV GID was placed in the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders, even though there was little or no theoretical overlap between GID and sexual disorders. As Zucker et al explain "The placement of these three diagnostic classes in the same section in DSM-IV was probably influenced by several considerations, including clinical utility (e.g., that clinicians and researchers who study these phenomena tend to affiliate at common scientific meetings, tend to publish in the same periodicals, and probably have at least some familiarity with all of the conditions more so than clinicians and researchers who specialize in other areas of interest to psychiatry)."

However, consultation lead to a decision to separate gender dysphoria from sexual disorder to reduce stigma. Likewise the title was changed from GID to gender dysphoria (GD) to focus on distress rather than identity and reduce stigma. It is a myth that under DSM-IV, simply having a 'trans identity' was considered a disorder, but under DSM5 only having dysphoria is. Under DSMIV there was also a requirement for 'evidence of clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning' to make the diagnosis. Having a trans identity or being 'gender variant' without dysphoria was not sufficient. In other words, the name was changed but the underlying theory and the basis for diagnosis receive only minor revision.

The narrative that 'trans identity' was declassified as being a disorder in a manner parallel to homosexuality is pushed by activists for political reasons. As Singal states '"One of the main warning signs I look for when determining whether a given outlet is trustworthy on the subject of youth GD is whether it disseminates activist talking points without fact-checking them. This is one such talking point: the idea that in the DSM-IV, simply “being trans” and/or acting in a gender nonconforming way was considered a mental disorder, but then in the DSM-5, this injustice was rectified'."

The idea that government legislation is based on some scientific discovery about the nature of trans identity is fantasy. Zucker himself has pointed out that government legislation (such as Bill C6 in Canada) ignores the relevant science, because the briefing materials were prepared by activists who misrepresent this.

 

[Emily's Cat]

If you're referring to people not in this thread, make that explicit, but I'm not going to defend positions of people not participating, that's a fool's errand. So that's an irrelevancy as far as I'm concerned.

If you are referring to people in this thread, don't use that term, it's uncivil.

I don't know anyone in this thread who wants to exclude trans people from domestic violence shelters. A number of posters here want female-only shelters to be able to exclude transwomen, but that really isn't the same thing. There's a very important distinction between a given shelter excluding males and all shelters excluding males, and there are also male-specific shelters. Availability of shelters for males is a problem in some places because male domestic violence victims are generally underserved, but it's not peculiar to transwomen, cismen face that problem too.

IIRC, the position taken by many of us, including Rolfe if memory serves isn't even that exclusionary. It's that we want those shelters to be able to be female-only as the default, but we're quite content to allow transwomen entrance on a case-by-case basis determined by the people running the shelter and with consideration to the needs of the females there.

And I think almost all of us 100% support more male shelters, and would happily help foot the bill for accessible transgender shelters as well.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Again, take away the assumption that it's a monolithic group, and this doesn't even make sense. If you can't recognize the difference between Blair White and Chris Chan, I really don't know what to tell you. And if Chris Chan doesn't make your skin crawl, it's either because you aren't familiar with that... thing... or there's something wrong with you.

Bit of an aside here... Chris Chan is a great example of the horrible toxicity of social media. They have clearly had significant mental health issues for a long time, and those issues were made much worse by malicious people on the internet.

Which does not excuse anything they have done, but it does speak to the vulnerability of people with mental illnesses.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It is inadequate if you intend to prevent gender based violence and discriminatory behavior.

What if one wishes to prevent sex-based violence?