Discussion: Transwomen are not women (Part 7)

[JoeMorgue]

As best as I can put it one side is arguing a definition and one side is arguing a categorization.

One side is defining where "women/females" ARE and the other side is categorizing where "women/females" get to be and THOSE AREN'T THE SAME QUESTION.

This is why I've referred to it so many times as one side screaming "I have five fingers!" and another side screaming "You have four fingers and a thumb!'

Everyone gets that nobody is really disagreeing on how many "digits" are on a hand in that scenario right?

Same thing here. 99% of this discussion that hasn't been "How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg?" meaningless semantics have been one side using one definition and the other side clearly understanding the definition they are using but counter arguing using their own definition so no actual argument gets made.

"A penis doesn't make someone a woman" is not a counter to "I don't want people with penises in my locker room."

 

[llwyd]

Llwyd,

Remember this exchange?



Did you notice no one answered?

In all seriousness, your positions have been called bigoted, repeatedly, throughout the thread.

Self ID really is the battleground here.

Well, I'm sorry but social media and loud groups of radical activists really do not dictate the agenda. This is a broad question of human rights and emancipation and the various campuses and twitter accounts are fundamentally irrelevant. Obviously the Anglo-Saxon world is bit different, but it is not all the world - and even there the vast majority of the trans community does not consist of merely self-identifying persons. That's a pretty rare side issue. I'm sure once the dust settles in these hysterical times this will be quite generally understood.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Yes, I'm sure Midol and its advertising agency are that stupid and ill-informed. And I'm sure they - the agency in particular - don't spend an awful lot of time and effort (including commissioning data & insights from decent market research companies) in order to understand - as well as they possibly can - what certain customer segments think and what they want.

After all, it's not as if their (the agency in particular) very business depends on this, is it?

Have you ever in your life been involved in market research? Or is this just one more case of you making up what you think ought to be correct without any actual knowledge whatsoever?

 

[theprestige]

Well, I'm sorry but social media and loud groups of radical activists really do not dictate the agenda.

There's a lot of evidence that they do, actually.

This is a broad question of human rights and emancipation and the various campuses and twitter accounts are fundamentally irrelevant.

These are the venues in which the question is being discussed and answers promulgated. I cannot imagine a more relevant venue for the future of public policy than campuses of learning.

Obviously the Anglo-Saxon world is bit different, but it is not all the world - and even there the vast majority of the trans community does not consist of merely self-identifying persons. That's a pretty rare side issue.

I'm pretty sure that there are more people identifying as trans than there are people who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The question for public policy, and the question being debated in this thread, is to what degree those people should be accommodated.

I'm sure once the dust settles in these hysterical times this will be quite generally understood.

All of the evidence in this thread and elsewhere seems to suggest the opposite.

 

[TomB]

The succinct question I still want answered is:

Why do you think gender/gender ID* is (generally) more important than sex? Corollaries:

Do you mean to say that any/all female-only spaces, healthcare, representation/scholarships, activities (etc.) are discriminatory towards transwomen?

Do you agree that females are oppressed on the basis of their sex or not?


*ETA - And to be clear, gender ID is the set of sex-associated stereotypes you prefer

See, this is one of the stupid things on both sides of the argument.

Given that something like 90% of your day and 90% of your interactions with people are in contexts and environments where biology is irrelevant, yes, gender is more important than biology most of the time. That's because, ignoring Joe's question for the moment, gender related things affect how we present ourselves to and are perceived by others. The public face we put forward to represent our inner selves and our perception of the inner selves of others based on their external presentations. I would say the pro-trans side is mostly correct in this context.

But...

"Gender is more important than sex" doesn't stand up as a universal concept. This is because there are contexts where sex is more important than gender. The most obvious are medicine and reproduction. Sexual intercourse is another, for those who are not pan-sexual. So in certain contexts, the "gender critical" side is correct.

Context matters.

Note that most of the above is not terribly controversial. The controversial areas are what we are mostly arguing about:

Sports: is it/should it be segregated for biological performance reasons or for social reasons. (I s sports a social thing or a competitive endeavor?)

Changing areas: Are they separate due to biological differences or social differences.

Scholarships etc: are their purpose to address biological or social discrimination.

Neither side is right all of the time when they take an X is more important than Y stance.

And we ought to be able to discuss which is more important in a given context without throwing terms like bigotry and misogyny at each other.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The context was an "ideal" world, so, yes, she's carrying -- trying to carry -- a lot of moral baggage.

Lol, you're the one who introduced the term "ideal" into this. That's on you, buddy, so you might want to take up that moral baggage complaint with your own self!

This goes back to the BBC article where lesbians claim they were pressured into sex with trans women for fear of being "transphobic" (and "genital fetishists" and "perverts"). Attraction triggers are amoral. Maybe in an ideal world, people would be more turned on by virtuous character traits rather than body shape, but it's not so easy to transcend to the beast within.

Asexuals can be raped.

Nobody said they couldn't? You're really slaughtering your own faulty argument here.

That non-rape strategies are optimal is rather beside the point in the moral context. It's also beside the point for what you're attempting to argue because organisms are not wedded to a single strategy. Males can form a pair bond AND rape. In fact, they do.

I have no idea what point you think you're trying to make here, or what it has to do with this discussion at all. Right now, you seem to be building a gordian knot... so I'm just gonna bow out of this irrelevancy.

 

[Meadmaker]

Well, I'm sorry but social media and loud groups of radical activists really do not dictate the agenda. This is a broad question of human rights and emancipation and the various campuses and twitter accounts are fundamentally irrelevant. Obviously the Anglo-Saxon world is bit different, but it is not all the world - and even there the vast majority of the trans community does not consist of merely self-identifying persons. That's a pretty rare side issue. I'm sure once the dust settles in these hysterical times this will be quite generally understood.

Check out US Department of Education policy, and see if it fits with what you generally understand.

 

[Louden Wilde]

See, this is one of the stupid things on both sides of the argument.

Given that something like 90% of your day and 90% of your interactions with people are in contexts and environments where biology is irrelevant, yes, gender is more important than biology most of the time. That's because, ignoring Joe's question for the moment, gender related things affect how we present ourselves to and are perceived by others. The public face we put forward to represent our inner selves and our perception of the inner selves of others based on their external presentations. I would say the pro-trans side is mostly correct in this context.

But...

"Gender is more important than sex" doesn't stand up as a universal concept. This is because there are contexts where sex is more important than gender. The most obvious are medicine and reproduction. Sexual intercourse is another, for those who are not pan-sexual. So in certain contexts, the "gender critical" side is correct.

I disagree- and I think most women and girls (females) would disagree -sex is the basis on which they face discrimination and/or oppression - often on a daily basis.

Sexual attraction and biological issues related to sex come up pretty regularly - and it's relevant to all the things we're talking about - female only spaces, activities (sports), representation.

The point of many of us is that 'gender' shouldn't be important at all -It's stereotypes. So why is gender important in any context?

 

[Emily's Cat]

No, I'm refusing to concede that the term was intended to dehumanize or give offense in the first place.

Well, that's just silly. There are tons of terms out there that weren't *intended* to dehumanize or insult, but end up doing so anyway. For example, many of the terms related to race were intended to be nothing more than descriptive, not insulting. 'Negro' is literally the word for 'black' and was descriptive. Context made it insulting. 'Retarded' was descriptive and acceptable, but has become insulting.

Historically, female humans have been treated as less-than, as property, as breeding stock. And frequently, females have been treated as dirty, abhorrent, and exiled to menstruation huts. Females have been abused, mistreated, and dehumanized on the basis of our reproductive role.

Given that context, referring to female humans as "menstruators" or "bleeders" or "birthing bodies" is insulting. Creating a social more in which we are not allowed to refer to our own selves as 'women', when paired with that, is degrading. It robs females of our humanity on two fronts.

Saying that it's "technically" accurate doesn't ameliorate that.

 

[Emily's Cat]

There's only one scenario in which your concept of gender could apply to transgender people: a person who cannot fulfil social and cultural norms transitions in order to change the social and cultural norms that they need to adhere to.

If that isn't the case, then the "transgender gender" needs to be something else.

It also, by the way, has the effect of reinforcing those artificial gender roles, behavioral expectations, and the requirement of conforming to a stereotype. It adds support to arguments that 'women just aren't suited for leadership' because it defines the qualities of women that females are *expected* to meet. It opens the door to harassing people, both male and female, to conform to those stereotypes on threat of being disqualified from their own sex class.

That concept of gender is not liberating; it's highly regressive and confining.

 

[d4m10n]

Historically, female humans have been treated as less-than, as property, as breeding stock. And frequently, females have been treated as dirty, abhorrent, and exiled to menstruation huts. Females have been abused, mistreated, and dehumanized on the basis of our reproductive role.

I don't believe there is any good reason to assume that folks flogging feminine hygiene products in the 21^st c. are hoping to either invoke or perpetuate these historical injustices, and I don't believe it is good practice to read them in if they weren't part of what the speaker was trying to convey.

Well, that's just silly. There are tons of terms out there that weren't *intended* to dehumanize or insult, but end up doing so anyway. For example, many of the terms related to race were intended to be nothing more than descriptive, not insulting. 'Negro' is literally the word for 'black' and was descriptive. Context made it insulting. 'Retarded' was descriptive and acceptable, but has become insulting.

Please see my reply to TomB on this, just below.

There are a number of terms which, while descriptive, have derogatory connotations, despite not being intended as an insult in their original contexts: "mentally retarded" is an example.

Would it be correct or incorrect to read in derogation when viewing a text from the 1960s, back when the phrase was generally understood to be euphemistic rather than dysphemistic? If incorrect, why not analogize the archaic (euphemistic) usage to the neologisms under discussion here?

As I said before, menstruation, besides being something that most of the women I know consider unpleasant, has been thrown as insults: "must be that time of the month!" "She must be on the rag." etc. So referring to a person with even a technical term might not be perceived as all sunshine and rainbows.

I've seen nearly any broad description used as an insult some of the time, including "women." The trick is to check if that's what's being done, in context.

Personally, I think a better gender neutral term for people who are likely to need tampons is "female" because it refers to sex, not gender.

I would not object to Tampax marketing to females, but no doubt some would.

The main problem I personally have with "menstruators" is not that it offends me (but I'm male...) but I consider it an awkward word to say.

Easy to type, though.

Now, I agree with you that the taboos and negativity associated with a body process should go away. But you can't make that happen by rubbing peoples noses in the term.

I'm highly skeptical of this claim; I'd say that the first step to overcoming taboos is to deliberately break them, especially when an entire topic is considered off the table for discussion.

The point of "New Atheism," for example, was largely to tell theists that we unbelievers weren't going to keep our theological skepticism in the closet anymore; when people attempted to justify morality or policy in terms of theism we were going to engage the argument head-on.

 

[Emily's Cat]

And yet again we're so far in the weeds that nobody is actually saying anything.

Again I ask... why? To what point and what purpose does any of this serve?

And I'm asking for an answer not yet another vague, mush-mouthed mumble about "it's complicated" or some factor that doesn't exist outside the mind of one person.

"I am an X that identifies as a Y" (or any similar variation.) Okay. What information is that supposed to convey to me? What adjustment to my actions am I supposed to make?

These are not unreasonable or unclear questions.

I don't know who you are expecting to give you an answer. I don't think you should be expected to anything at all differently. At the very most, you might be expected to change pronouns for the sake of courtesy (not because it's some grave act of violence or in any way causes real harm). Nothing more.

The people failing to give you a response... well... I don't think you'll ever get an answer. They cannot give you an answer without showing the holes in their ideology. If they tell you that you are supposed to somehow treat people differently on the basis of them being 'men' or 'women', then they are advocating for sexism, it implies that they believe that males and females *should* be subject to different and disparate treatment. If they tell you that you aren't expected to alter your behavior... then it shows that their construct is completely imaginary and useless.

 

[Emily's Cat]

ME: We need to do better at accepting trans people into society and making them feel welcome.

THEM: Great! As a true ally to the cause, please join us out back behind the dumpster, where we'll be raping language until it learns to like it and begs us for more.

ME: On second thought, I'm out.

THEM: Transphobe!

Not the nicest characterization, but sadly not wrong...

 

[Emily's Cat]

Really, those are the sides? I guess I am opting out then. For me the issue is gender dysphoria (a recognized medical condition) and the community of people who have that condition and who have been brutally hounded throughout history (and even at this moment are being hounded in many primitive societies). It is mainly totally not about changing rooms and sports in connection with people who merely self-identify without any other single step taken towards transition.

If we all take a step back... your position is extremely close to my position, and theprestige's position, and well, the position of nearly all of the people on the "no self id" side of this discussion.

My personal position is (and has always been, despite frequent short-hands) that I don't care about public restrooms for the most part. I care about middle school and high school restrooms, to the extent that puberty is already sucky and well, frankly, females need some place where they don't need to be paranoid about changing their pads or tampons, fixing a bra strap, etc.

For changing rooms and showers and locker rooms, where people are generally expected to be naked, it's a 'don't rock the boat' situation. Penises aren't expected to be in the female rooms, boobs aren't expected to be in the male rooms. If, however, a person is even moderately passable, and keeps their bits covered, they're not likely to be challenged. So anyone who has had full surgery is good to use whatever fits their gender, and those who've had some HRT can probably get away with using the room that fits their gender as long as they don't whip out their fun-parts.

For prisons, rape shelters, hospitals, and other confined or limited spaces where the residents are particularly vulnerable, I go for a fairly strict sex-segregation policy. If the person has had full genital surgery, they can use what fits their gender, otherwise, they are expected to use what fits their sex. I'm willing to allow case-by-case exceptions within reason. And I'd be perfectly happy if a third space were also made available for mixed sexes or for transgender people on a voluntary basis.

For things like statistics, counting female participation in business, the economy, politics, and other measures of equality, as well as for the reporting of crimes, poverty, and victimization, sex needs to be recorded. We can record gender identity as well, I have no objection to that. But I do not at all approve of replacing the recording of sex with gender identity.

 

[Emily's Cat]

But as a number of us have noted, the current movement is definitely not (just) about people with gender dysphoria - indeed that view is widely rejected by the current movement.

Aye, there's the rub.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Personally, I think a better gender neutral term for people who are likely to need tampons is "female" because it refers to sex, not gender. Or at least it's supposed to. It seems that the term, though accurate and not intended to be offensive, might make some trans-women uncomfortable.

I would be okay with that compromise. So would most of the 'agenderist' or 'gender critical' female humans that I know.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Well, I'm sorry but social media and loud groups of radical activists really do not dictate the agenda. This is a broad question of human rights and emancipation and the various campuses and twitter accounts are fundamentally irrelevant. Obviously the Anglo-Saxon world is bit different, but it is not all the world - and even there the vast majority of the trans community does not consist of merely self-identifying persons. That's a pretty rare side issue. I'm sure once the dust settles in these hysterical times this will be quite generally understood.

Akshooalleeee... They really are dictating the agenda. They're driving policy. They're getting laws revised and rewritten. They're training children and influencing business.

 

[theprestige]

See, this is one of the stupid things on both sides of the argument.

Given that something like 90% of your day and 90% of your interactions with people are in contexts and environments where biology is irrelevant, yes, gender is more important than biology most of the time. That's because, ignoring Joe's question for the moment, gender related things affect how we present ourselves to and are perceived by others. The public face we put forward to represent our inner selves and our perception of the inner selves of others based on their external presentations. I would say the pro-trans side is mostly correct in this context.

This doesn't make sense. In the 90% of interactions where biology is irrelevant, gender is also irrelevant. The pro-trans side has so far been unable to articulate a definition of gender that makes it relevant in any interaction - especially any interaction where biology isn't relevant either.

Without a coherent definition of gender and its relevance, the pro-trans side is very much not "mostly correct". It's simply Not Even Wrong.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

No, I'm refusing to concede that the term was intended to dehumanize or give offense in the first place.

I imagine that it was probably a misguided attempt at the opposite. It does come across as demeaning to my ears, though, and apparently at least some women agree.

I've yet to see this phrase applied to human males generally.

I have, typically women referring to estranged partners by whom they have had children, although it's not common. And no, I don't have screen shots.

ETA: Okay, that isn't actually an example of "human males generally", I suppose. But it is a case where the use of the term is rude and demeaning, which was the point at issue. Would you agree that such usage is rude and demeaning? Would you agree that it would be similarly rude to refer to men generally as "sperm donors", were somebody actually to do so? Or do you consider that to be acceptable?

 

[theprestige]

I've yet to see this phrase applied to human males generally.

But it is a case where the use of the term is rude and demeaning, which was the point at issue. Would you agree that such usage is rude and demeaning? Would you agree that it would be similarly rude to refer to men generally as "sperm donors", were somebody actually to do so? Or do you consider that to be acceptable?

This is an interesting bait and switch that I notice comes up from time to time. People are happy to imply that X is bad, as long as they're reasonably confident you won't or can't show that X is actually happening. And of course the won't say explicitly that X is bad, just in case it turns out X really is happening.