Trans women are not women (Part 8)

[TurkeysGhost]

I get what you're saying. I have previously confessed to surprise at how rare these incidents are, now that bathroom use policies have been liberalized. I expected more of them.

But, just so we are clear here, my "bigoted position" is that teenaged girls shouldn't be in a position where they are coerced into taking off their clothes in the presence of classmates who could make them pregnant. If that be bigotry, then let's make the most of it.

No, the bigoted position is to see a trans woman/girl and assume they're really a crytpo male who's primary motivation is to be a sexual predator, which is obviously what is happening in the vast majority of these bathroom freakouts. These people are so bigoted that they are inventing trans people out of thin air to fit the bill of sexual predator, as this case has demonstrated.

 

[theprestige]

The International Olympic Committee’s new transgender framework has come under fire from medical experts who work for multiple sports federations, including World Athletics, World Triathlon and the International Cycling Union, who say it opens the door to unfair competition in female sport.

In a notable intervention, the scientists warn that IOC’s new guidance – which states there is no need for trans women to lower their testosterone to compete against natal women – ignores the science on sex, gender and performance and focuses mostly on inclusion.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...nce-criticised-as-unfair-towards-female-sport

That is disgraceful. Natal women will have no chance as more and more self ID transwomen see easy fame and fortune, and no need to do anything to reduce their power and stamina.

The whole idea of lowering testosterone to compete seems ethically dubious to me.

To me, the essence of athletic competition is testing your mind and body against others of similar ability and inclination. Am I really the fastest runner? Can I be the faster runner today? They may be stronger, but can I work hard enough to close that gap? Am I willing to work harder and push myself further than my peers in this?

Artificially lowering your testosterone is a major ability downgrade. You're no longer testing the limits of your mind and body. You're intentionally putting a limiter on what you can achieve. You're competing at a lower level on purpose. I find it hard to believe that a real competitive athlete would choose to compete at anything less than their full potential.

Even a golf handicap is applied to the results, not to the athletes. "If you go all-out, we expect you to finish about this far ahead of your competitor, who is also going all-out."

Lowering your testosterone is effectively not going all-out. And not going all-out, to me, betrays the spirit of athletic competition.

 

[theprestige]

No, the bigoted position is to see a trans woman/girl and assume they're really a crytpo male who's primary motivation is to be a sexual predator

I think the actual position is that fiat self-ID:

- doesn't provide adequate distinction between transwomen and male predators

- opens a door in the social norms for male predators, that had previously been closed

- absolutely refuses to address the above two points, instead launching into vile ad homs

You're still stuck in the same rut since Part 1 of this thread. Maybe consider this part your 8th invitation to break out of that rut and suggest a way forward that addresses the above concerns instead of demonizing anyone who raises them.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

I think the actual position is that fiat self-ID:

- doesn't provide adequate distinction between transwomen and male predators

- opens a door in the social norms for male predators, that had previously been closed

- absolutely refuses to address the above two points, instead launching into vile ad homs

You're still stuck in the same rut since Part 1 of this thread. Maybe consider this part your 8th invitation to break out of that rut and suggest a way forward that addresses the above concerns instead of demonizing anyone who raises them.

Good thing this is no longer something we have to speculate about. Self-ID is the law in multiple jurisdictions. Hell, a whole-ass country known as Canada has it. Seems about time for the bathroom warriors to put up some real world data rather than let their imaginations run wild.

 

[ponderingturtle]

As for testosterone, I thought that the message of the new framework was that testosterone levels alone were inadequate to ensure fairness, both because some cis-women have abnormally high testosterone levels,

But they don't count as women.

 

[Meadmaker]

No, the bigoted position is to see a trans woman/girl and assume they're really a crytpo male who's primary motivation is to be a sexual predator, which is obviously what is happening in the vast majority of these bathroom freakouts. These people are so bigoted that they are inventing trans people out of thin air to fit the bill of sexual predator, as this case has demonstrated.

One of the things that makes these conversations so difficult is that you folks (you, LJ, periodic others) keep telling us what our positions are.

With respect to private spaces, my position is that modesty is a valid, lived, condition.

For further elaboration, I refer you to four years worth of thread.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

One of the things that makes these conversations so difficult is that you folks (you, LJ, periodic others) keep telling us what our positions are.

With respect to private spaces, my position is that modesty is a valid, lived, condition.

For further elaboration, I refer you to four years worth of thread.

I understand you might prefer to discuss this while excluding relevant context, in this case the obvious bigotry inflaming this culture war issue, but I'm not really interested in doing so.

 

[Meadmaker]

The whole idea of lowering testosterone to compete seems ethically dubious to me.

To me, the essence of athletic competition is testing your mind and body against others of similar ability and inclination. Am I really the fastest runner? Can I be the faster runner today? They may be stronger, but can I work hard enough to close that gap? Am I willing to work harder and push myself further than my peers in this?

Artificially lowering your testosterone is a major ability downgrade. You're no longer testing the limits of your mind and body. You're intentionally putting a limiter on what you can achieve. You're competing at a lower level on purpose. I find it hard to believe that a real competitive athlete would choose to compete at anything less than their full potential.

Even a golf handicap is applied to the results, not to the athletes. "If you go all-out, we expect you to finish about this far ahead of your competitor, who is also going all-out."

Lowering your testosterone is effectively not going all-out. And not going all-out, to me, betrays the spirit of athletic competition.

I'll present a counterargument, although in the end, I'll end up agreeing. Read on.

The idea is that hormone treatment is done for medical reasons. i.e. The reason for the hormone treatment is to assist in medical transition of gender/sex/something/whatever is in fashion to call it these days. The point is that the hormone treatment is a medical activity.

One consequence of that is to lower testosterone levels, which also reduces athletic ability. So, the person is still competing at full strength, but "full strength" for that person has been reduced as a result of medical treatment.

However, here's where I shift back into agreement. If that level is published and used for qualification criteria, it will inevitably influence the hormone treatment itself. In other words, people undergoing hormone treatment will choose their level of treatment based, at least in part, on the qualification criteria, as opposed to sound medical judgement on treating their condition.

This poses, in my mind, two ethical issues. The first you have identified. It gets back to exactly what you say, where people are not competing at full strength, even allowing for effects of medical treatment, but are deliberately handicapping themselves to meet an entrance criterion. The second is, in my mind, worse. Inevitably, proper medical treatment will be subordinated to sporting concerns. Instead of a dosage that the physicians believe will bring about the best possible medical outcome, physicians will fall prey to the pressure of prescribing dosages that enable athletes to meet qualification criteria.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Came across an interesting pair of essays today.

1) Doing better in arguments about sex, gender, and trans rights

2) You Keep Using This Phrase, "Adult Human Females"

The second one is a rejoinder to the first one, and answers some of the questions posed by gender critical feminists to intersectional feminists. Both of them pose several interesting questions, several of which are likely worth discussing here.

Hmm. The second article doesn't appear to have actually answered any of the questions posed by the first. It mostly hand-waves and side-steps everything.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Hmmm.... I seem to remember that I too drew attention to that strange (and very obviously taught/learned and institutionalised among a certain rather militant constituency) "adult human females" mantra.

Still, I continue to enjoy the spectacle of progressive, well-informed legislatures and public bodies - all of which have the inconvenient truth of containing a pretty representative proportion of females - enacting laws and policies which give proper, proportionate rights and protections to transgender people (including, yes, transmen/transboys) in a careful and watchful manner. Excellent stuff.

Meanwhile, the toxic anti-debate continues apace in these threads

The "proper, proportionate right" of males to be housed in shared cells with females as long as those males say some magic words.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Yes, you're making the same wild leap of speculation the mob did. Congrats.

How about you educate us then. How does one tell who is a transgender person and who is not? What distinguishes between them?

 

[Emily's Cat]

An individual with CAIS will still be treated like a woman despite being infertile, because she is perceived to be female by all concerned.

My recollection is that individuals with CAIS are considered to be female, because their bodies are organized around the production of ova, even though they don't successfully have any ova.

 

[Emily's Cat]

There's a meaningful distinction between a boy gender-bending in their clothing choices and someone presenting themselves as a trans girl and requesting the appropriate recognition.

Please elaborate on that meaningful distinction. How does one distinguish between a male who is cross dressing and a male who is transgender identified?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Can anyone think of an example of an invalid lived condition?

An old friend of mine lives with Tourette syndrome^WP. Valid or not?

Another old friend of mine lives with bipolar disorder^WP. Valid or not?

Several old friends live with various degrees of PTSD^WP. Valid or not?

If the idea of validity is going to do so much work, it would be interesting to know how far it goes.

I'll add on to your list:

A friend of mine lives with Schizophrenia. Valid or not?

Many of my friends and relatives live with Alzheimer's and/or dementia. Valid or not?

I and several of my friends and relatives live with having a female body. Valid or not?

 

[JoeMorgue]

I mean at the end of the day the best we can do is just try and be better people and make women less needing of these safe spaces.

Maybe that's the best solution.

 

[Emily's Cat]

And what I've been saying for quite a while is that this is an entirely unproven speculation.

But yes, the mob and the right wing rags like the Daily Wire dropped this story like a ton of bricks once it became clear that it wasn't the anti-trans scare story they had hoped it would be. It doesn't really matter, the damage is done. The original smear will be remembered and the correction will not. The people originally complaining about this incident have no interest in finding out what is true, only confirming their bigotries.

I think you need a theme song. I suggest the following:

"Ad hominem, ad hominem, poison that well!
Tarnish by association, burn them in Hell!"

Feel free to copy and paste to your heart's content, it will save you the effort of trying to come up with new ways of pretending that invective is argument.

 

[Ziggurat]

The idea is that hormone treatment is done for medical reasons. i.e. The reason for the hormone treatment is to assist in medical transition of gender/sex/something/whatever is in fashion to call it these days. The point is that the hormone treatment is a medical activity.

I think that there is actually a mistake here. A medical activity is not a medical reason, and the distinction is important. Hormone treatment is always a medical activity, but it isn't always for a medical reason. Hormone treatment for, say, menopause is a medical reason: get the body functioning the way it's supposed to function. Hormone treatment for transgender transitioning is not done for medical reasons, it's done for psychological reasons. It is, in general, likely doing more harm than good to the body. The justification is that the improvements to mental state are worth the costs.

I think the point can still work, though, that there are reasons outside of athletics which can determine hormone treatment levels. It's just that the reason is psychological, not medical.

However, here's where I shift back into agreement. If that level is published and used for qualification criteria, it will inevitably influence the hormone treatment itself. In other words, people undergoing hormone treatment will choose their level of treatment based, at least in part, on the qualification criteria, as opposed to sound medical judgement on treating their condition.

I agree here. I'm sure that there are athletes who would happen to match the required hormone levels anyways, and also athletes who wouldn't change their treatment to match the requirements. But there are also going to be athletes who will tailor their treatment to match the requirements.

Inevitably, proper medical treatment will be subordinated to sporting concerns. Instead of a dosage that the physicians believe will bring about the best possible medical outcome, physicians will fall prey to the pressure of prescribing dosages that enable athletes to meet qualification criteria.

I'm less concerned about this, precisely because I don't really think hormone treatment for transgender transition is a medical reason to begin with. The optimal medical outcome is almost always going to be no hormone treatment at all. But that criteria can be overridden by psychological concerns in some cases. Someone's desire to compete in an athletic event is just as valid a psychological motivator as someone's desire to have a certain body appearance.

But the fundamental problem remains. Biological males have massive athletic advantages in the absence of hormone treatment, and they retain a number of advantages even with hormone treatment. And while it may be beneficial to the trans athlete to let them compete, it may be detrimental to the other competitors, and their interests should not be ignored.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Can we agree on a burden of proof needed to declare another demographic "a danger" because we're all over the place here.

 

[Ziggurat]

I'd be interested in hearing a rejoinder from those who promote this analogy here.

I would be too, but that point has been made many times before, and it's never, ever addressed. It won't be addressed this time either.

 

[theprestige]

I mean at the end of the day the best we can do is just try and be better people and make women less needing of these safe spaces.

Maybe that's the best solution.

Incomplete solutions are usually not the best solutions, or even good solutions.

For one thing, sex segregation in sports isn't a question of having "better people".

For another, your solution is entirely silent on how transwomen should be segregated while we wait for the day when we're all "better people".