Discussion: Transwomen are not women (Part 7)

[Lithrael]

Layers upon layers just to hide the fact that there's nothing else to gender than social norms and stereotypes.

Buck Angel looks like a stereotypical man, so now he's a man.

Harisu looks like a stereotypical woman, so now she's a woman.

Obviously, this disqualifies any transwomen or transmen who can't or choose not to carry it off. It also disqualifies any cis-men or cis-women who, for whatever reason, are mistaken as the opposite sex/gender.

And this doesn't even touch upon the fact that expectations are both a personal and societal thing.

Yeah this is more or less how I see it at the moment, and all the labels etc are set dressing I’m happy to roll with as the ideas evolve. I don’t think it’s shaken out very far yet. Everything has been so repressive for so long, I feel like we’re still in a pushback vs pushback phase.

 

[Cain]

I don't have a problem with the concept of separating gender (man/woman) from physical body and sex (male/female). My concerns are not about who is a man or who is a woman (gender), but rather when should people be put into groups and when and why those groups should be treated differently.

If you remove the physical aspects (sex) from consideration, that leaves gender right? But what exactly is that? I know that gender expectations include how we dress and act and our roles in family and professional life. It's a Uncoupled from sex, gender seems to become based on how one fits into gender roles. Which, I know, is circular. Beyond that, it seems to be how someone views themself internally. Which is hard to describe.

So....

Absent the sex-related differences, what is inherent in gender that requires that the genders be separated or treated differently?

It's my understanding that feminists have been struggling to tear down expectations and gender roles in order to be treated the same as men: same range of jobs, responsibilities, fashion and grooming choices, and behavior norms, so that any limitations are due to physical capabilities or (in the case of medical/reproduction issues) physical needs. If you separate gender and sex, it seems to me their goal is to tear down gender completely.

So...everyone should be treated the same with no differences due to gender.

Then if:
Sports should not be segregated by sex, why should it be segregated by gender?

If bathrooms should not be segregated by sex then why should it be segregated by gender?

If locker rooms should not be segregated by sex, then why should they be segregated by gender?

And so on.

My point is that I'm open to ideas of why segregating by sex is inappropriate, but it does not immediately follow that segregating by gender is appropriate. A successful argument against sex segregation results in the removal sex segregation. To replace it with gender segregation, you then need an additional argument justifying segregation by gender.

Interesting post. I wonder if a breakdown in traditional gender norms contributed to younger people identifying as "gender fluid," which in turn affects gender norms.

I think JoeMorgue was the one many threads ago asked how they were to treat a trans woman as as a woman when he treats both men and women the same. That's a shorter version of a similar concept, I think.

Sex and gender are morally arbitrary characteristics. As a matter of convention, we refer to someone as "she" or "he," instead of their hair type or skin color (usually). The insistence on pronouns seems odd, but traditionally oppressed people take pride in the traits that previously marked them for abuse. Titles of merit, as opposed to nobility, readily supplant gender in a self-styled meritocracy: "Call me 'doctor.'"

 

[Cain]

In a nutshell: If you separate gender from sex, it stops having any meaning at all. Trans activists are demanding, as a human right, that everyone else conform to a standard that nobody can articulate and that probably doesn't even exist as such anymore.

Or maybe it's just being reimagined in a way that you cannot comprehend.

Countries traditionally have a close overlap between ethnic identity and nationality. What's the "nationality" of an allegedly creedal nation? There is some interesting unexplored psychological baggage here for rah, rah, rah conservative American Exceptionalists in terms of social construction vs. blood.

 

[theprestige]

Or maybe it's just being reimagined in a way that you cannot comprehend.

That was my working hypothesis, coming into Part 1 of this discussion. By Part 4 or 5, though, it was pretty clear that nobody advocating for trans rights has any kind of coherent definition of gender or gender expression. And that hasn't changed in the subsequent parts of the thread.

It's also become clear that the only real practical applications of transgender identity have to do with sex anyway: Recognition as females. Access to spaces and communities normally reserved for females. Etc.

 

[d4m10n]

Absent the sex-related differences, what is inherent in gender that requires that the genders be separated or treated differently?

Nothing comes to mind. Arguably the gender which is thought of as more nurturing should be encouraged into nurturing fields (e.g. daycare, nursing, primary school teaching) and the gender which is thought of as more confrontational should be encouraged into more confrontational fields (e.g. infantryman, policeman, trial lawyer) but I'm not remotely comfortable with this idea.

If bathrooms should not be segregated by sex then why should it be segregated by gender?

I'd argue that bathrooms are de facto segregated by apparent sex rather than birth sex, and that's just fine. People get upset when Buck Angel goes into the ladies' loo, for obvious reasons.

 

[d4m10n]

That was my working hypothesis, coming into Part 1 of this discussion. By Part 4 or 5, though, it was pretty clear that nobody advocating for trans rights has any kind of coherent definition of gender or gender expression.

It's even worse than this. Those who've declared themselves on the "right side of history" are unwilling to forthrightly define sex at this point, much less gender.

 

[gnome]

Nothing comes to mind. Arguably the gender which is thought of as more nurturing should be encouraged into nurturing fields (e.g. daycare, nursing, primary school teaching) and the gender which is thought of as more confrontational should be encouraged into more confrontational fields (e.g. infantryman, policeman, trial lawyer) but I'm not remotely comfortable with this idea.

Why is it even arguable? Why do we need to guess according to a person's gender and hope they fit the pattern, instead of paying attention to a person's individual affinities?

 

[gnome]

It's even worse than this. Those who've declared themselves on the "right side of history" are unwilling to forthrightly define sex at this point, much less gender.

A comment that imagines "those" are all in lockstep, which is not correct. Try "some".

 

[d4m10n]

A comment that imagines "those" are all in lockstep, which is not correct.

Just an observation herein the thread.

Why is it even arguable?

Because it would require totalitarian impulses to declare it beyond debate.

 

[Louden Wilde]

Sex and gender are morally arbitrary characteristics. As a matter of convention, we refer to someone as "she" or "he," instead of their hair type or skin color (usually). The insistence on pronouns seems odd, but traditionally oppressed people take pride in the traits that previously marked them for abuse. Titles of merit, as opposed to nobility, readily supplant gender in a self-styled meritocracy: "Call me 'doctor.'"

Hmm- Not sure what you mean by the highlighted. Sex - meaning male or female - is a biological descriptor applied to the two classes that was present in mammals from their inception hundreds of millions of years ago - not arbitrary and well outside the realm of morals.

 

[theprestige]

A comment that imagines "those" are all in lockstep, which is not correct. Try "some".

Those participating in this thread have been consistently on the same page.

 

[theprestige]

Why is it even arguable? Why do we need to guess according to a person's gender and hope they fit the pattern, instead of paying attention to a person's individual affinities?

It shouldn't even need to be argued. The only reason it's coming up at all is because trans-activists are calling for some kind of acceptance of gender expression. So we're trying to figure out what that means, other than gender stereotypes. Damion doesn't want that. I don't want that. You don't want that. But it seems like the trans-activists aren't leaving us much choice.

What do you think a transwoman means, when she asks you to accept her as a woman? Does she mean, accept her as a human being with individual affinities, regardless of gender? Probably not. Does she mean traditional gender stereotypes? Probably not. Does she mean female?

 

[Louden Wilde]

A comment that imagines "those" are all in lockstep, which is not correct. Try "some".

I would have agreed with this 16 months ago when I first was disturbed to see people trying to describe sex a spectrum, etc. on twitter. But I think d4m10n's point is valid beyond this thread- if your underlying argument is that gender is more important/should supersede sex (which is implied by TW=W), it pretty much inevitably leads to those sorts of shenanigans (unless you admit you're wrong, of course).

Notably, the proponents of TW are W in this thread won't/can't articulate why they think gender/ID is more important than actual sex.

 

[theprestige]

There does seem to be an occasional contingent in this thread that has adopted a pose of "I haven't been following the discussion, and I don't understand what the fuss is. Don't bother explaining it to me, though."

 

[gnome]

It is POSSIBLE that they could have occurred with a different bathroom policy, but they are LESS LIKELY to have occurred.

When more details become available, that will be a lot easier to say. We'd have the opportunity to know specifically if the inclusive policy made the attacker's assault easier in that case, or if it was little different than a man barging in that wasn't supposed to be there.

I don't know if this came out in the thread, but it turns out that in the Loudoun case the assault in question happened BEFORE the bathroom rules were changed.

So an individual case still doesn't really prove much about the wisdom of such policies, but it's worth noting that this particular case is not an example.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gop-...ssault-transgender_n_61784469e4b093143210f8d6

 

[d4m10n]

I don't know if this came out in the thread, but it turns out that in the Loudoun case the assault in question happened BEFORE the bathroom rules were changed.

So they implemented the rules change after being told about a gender non-conforming male student sexually assualting a female student in a bathroom? That's chutzpah, that is.

 

[Meadmaker]

I don't know if this came out in the thread, but it turns out that in the Loudoun case the assault in question happened BEFORE the bathroom rules were changed.

So an individual case still doesn't really prove much about the wisdom of such policies, but it's worth noting that this particular case is not an example.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gop-...ssault-transgender_n_61784469e4b093143210f8d6

Yes, and no. Or at least yes, and maybe not.

The school board passed a policy that covered transgender bathroom use, and also covered lots of other things related to transgenders. (In particular, a requirement imposed on teachers to use preferred pronouns.)


So, that's the formal, written, policy. I haven't seen any reference to what previous practice was. Were transgenders allowed to use the bathroom of their choice prior to the passage of the formal policy? I haven't seen any coverage of that question. Did any staff member know that the boy (sic) was in the girls' bathroom that day? Or any other day? I don't know, and I haven't seen it addressed. The fact that the policy wasn't passed until later doesn't actually answer that question. (I wrote a couple of other posts on that subject, including things we don't know about this case, a few pages back in this thread.)

Be that as it may, liberal sources like Huffington Post and conservative sources like Fox News will have their predictable spins on this story, but there is a message that this incident will send to darned near every woman who reads about this story. It's a message they already know, but this will reaffirm it in their mind. That message is:

Most men are good sorts, but there are men who are bad. Very bad. They are stronger than you, and some of them are so bad that even if they say they like you, if you don't do what they want they will hold you down and **** you in the ass.

Yeah. That bad.

And you can't always tell which ones are the bad ones, and just because they are wearing a skirt doesn't mean that they aren't one of the bad ones. Even the males who say they are not men might turn out to be one of the bad ones.

So, most women will prefer that men, or even just anyone who happens to be capable of an erection, be excluded from spaces where the women take off their clothes.


And if that ever changes, if most women are willing to allow sexually functional males into their spaces under some conditions, I will support the wishes of the majority of the women.

 

[Cain]

Hmm- Not sure what you mean by the highlighted. Sex - meaning male or female - is a biological descriptor applied to the two classes that was present in mammals from their inception hundreds of millions of years ago - not arbitrary and well outside the realm of morals.

In terms of biology, sex can be a real and highly relevant characteristic. This business about people being "assigned" female or male at birth, as if it's something done rather than observed, strikes me as silly (except in obvious intersex cases).

In terms of morality, for the most part, sex is a non-significant trait -- meaning, an individual's gametes have no bearing on their moral worth.

 

[Cain]

It's even worse than this. Those who've declared themselves on the "right side of history" are unwilling to forthrightly define sex at this point, much less gender.

I did see in a Reddit thread people claiming sex vs. gender / biological vs. social-construction distinction is hogwash because HRT "alters a person's biology," and therefore their sex. Heart surgery also alters biology.

Someone asked if female bodybuilders, who take loads of male hormones, can be considered men (apparently female bodybuilders take great offense when someone says they are men or want to be men). I don't think anyone answered that question.

 

[Puppycow]

Someone asked if female bodybuilders, who take loads of male hormones, can be considered men (apparently female bodybuilders take great offense when someone says they are men or want to be men). I don't think anyone answered that question.

I think that would be cheating unless that sort of thing is allowed in bodybuilding, unlike other competitive sports.

I think it would also lead to side effects like growing a beard and possibly baldness in extreme cases.