Trans women are not women (Part 8)

[Dismember]

I would like to hear from some 20 year olds who went through some of this, and now can speak out without permission. Whether it is people who experimented with gender non-conformity of some sort, or people who shared locker rooms with the opposite sex, or other variations on that. Looking back, now with an adult perspective, what are their thoughts? Time will tell, I suppose.

Chiara Canaan has spoken about this: https://thevelvetchronicle.com/path-of-desistance-childhood-interrupted/

I begged my mother to let me take testosterone and wanted to schedule “top surgery” (a double mastectomy) right away. My mother wouldn’t allow it, but she voiced support for me to be as “gender-non-conforming” as I pleased. Our relationship remained rocky until I graduated high school at seventeen and traveled to another state for a nine-month internship on a horse farm. While working there, I had limited internet access, which shifted my focus; I started paying attention to other things going on in my life. This shift, coupled with the emotional maturity I gained during that time, allowed me to return home and take a step back—to question the narratives I’d been exposed to online.

I stumbled upon radical feminism, some tenets of which resonated with me, and eventually dove further into researching Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), first explored in Lisa Littman’s 2018 study. This term describes a growing trend among adolescents, in which gender dysphoria seems to come on “out of nowhere,” and is often very severe and distressing. It’s a very real phenomenon, and with the increasing numbers of detrans and desisting people, it’s something that needs to be taken seriously.

She co-founded a group with three other young women who once considered themselves to be trans and later detransitioned. Canaan herself is the only one who did not go through with medical transition. https://www.piqueresproject.com/about.html

I'm not sure if Canaan is currently speaking about these experiences anywhere (possibly on the podcast, linked on the PiqueRes website) but Helena is active on Twitter and discusses her trans/detrans experience regularly.

There's an active detrans community on Twitter, many within the late-teens to early-30s age range, if you're interested in their perspectives. @ImWatson91, @HormoneHangover and @lacroicsz (Helena) are worth reading. @SourPatches2077 is older, I think mid 30s, but her tweets are worth checking out, along with @detranny (age unknown) and many, many others.

 

[Ziggurat]

Chiara Canaan has spoken about this: https://thevelvetchronicle.com/path-of-desistance-childhood-interrupted/

Interesting link, thanks.

She co-founded a group with three other young women who once considered themselves to be trans and later detransitioned. Canaan herself is the only one who did not go through with medical transition. https://www.piqueresproject.com/about.html

I wonder if the fact that it's all women is an artifact of them more likely to meet and befriend (and thus form a group with) other women, or if detransitioning is actually more common among women & girls. Perhaps someone has actually measured.

 

[Meadmaker]

Chiara Canaan has spoken about this: https://thevelvetchronicle.com/path-of-desistance-childhood-interrupted/



She co-founded a group with three other young women who once considered themselves to be trans and later detransitioned. Canaan herself is the only one who did not go through with medical transition. https://www.piqueresproject.com/about.html

I'm not sure if Canaan is currently speaking about these experiences anywhere (possibly on the podcast, linked on the PiqueRes website) but Helena is active on Twitter and discusses her trans/detrans experience regularly.

There's an active detrans community on Twitter, many within the late-teens to early-30s age range, if you're interested in their perspectives. @ImWatson91, @HormoneHangover and @lacroicsz (Helena) are worth reading. @SourPatches2077 is older, I think mid 30s, but her tweets are worth checking out, along with @detranny (age unknown) and many, many others.

Detransitioners are a real problem for the TRA community. They usually solve that problem by ignoring or dismissing them, sometimes by denying their existence. (That usually takes the form of saying that they were, in fact, trans, but succumbed to pressure of family and/or society.) If only there were a way to tell the "really trans" people from the "think they might be trans" people, or even the "pretending to be trans" people.




When I wrote what I wrote earlier, though, I was really focusing, in my head, about the social experience of people who had dealt with transgender issues as teenagers, either as transgenders themselves, or, the people I was thinking about first, people who were interracted with trans people. Do the people who protested about sharing a locker room with a male look back and say, "I was kind of naive and didn't realize that a person really could be transgender, and there was never any danger." Or do they say, "As a teenager, I was humiliated by forced to share a locker room with a male, and the school board was too busy being politically correct to care about actual girls."

And the transgirls themselves? Do they say, "Being allowed to use the girls' locker room was so important to me. I might not have survived without that kind of support." Or do they say, "Looking back, I really was making the other girls feel nervous. I should have just used the coaches' changing room, like they offered, but at the time, I was so wrapped up in my own stuff that I wasn't thinking about other people."

 

[d4m10n]

They held the female for over twelve hours, during which time they searched their house and confiscated a feminist book for no reason that anyone can figure out.

Have you seen or heard which book it was? I've seen claims that it was one by Brunskell-Evans but no confirmation from the alleged hate speaker or the Gwent constabulary.

 

[Roboramma]

I'm going to feel awfully sheepish once someone finally produces the data revealing what an awful position I've supported. Won't I look the fool.

That's hard to do when those who record the data have determined to record the crimes perpetrated by those males as having been perpetrated by females.

 

[Roboramma]

Oh yeah right. So this thread turned you into a TERF. And you didn't think that before?

I don't think theprestige is a radical feminist, do you?

But if you go back and read page 1 you'll see for yourself that his description of his change of views is accurate.

 

[Roboramma]

Filling in some gaps...

Gwent police arrested a middle-aged disabled female in a wheel chair for putting up stickers addressing violence against women. They referred to the stickers as being hate-based and encouraging violence, based on complaints that the stickers were "transphobic". They held the female for over twelve hours, during which time they searched their house and confiscated a feminist book for no reason that anyone can figure out. They denied needed medications while they were being detained, even though the police had brought them from the female's house. The police finally released said female at 3 AM, and turned them loose to make their own way home in the middle of the night in their motorized wheelchair without returning the female's phone to them.

Meanwhile... activists in Gwent went around town and put up new stickers over the violence against women ones, depicting an anime character saying "**** you TERFS" and pointing a gun at observers.

The second stickers are apparently not troublesome at all.

Thanks for that. That's insane. I can't understand why anyone is defending this.

 

[Elaedith]

Have you seen or heard which book it was? I've seen claims that it was one by Brunskell-Evans but no confirmation from the alleged hate speaker or the Gwent constabulary.

The alleged hate stickerer did confirm this in a tweet (I think she means GNC children not GC children).

The police don't seem to have learned anything from recent court decisions.

 

[d4m10n]

Thanks for that. That's insane. I can't understand why anyone is defending this.

No one here has defended it yet, which I find somewhat encouraging. Waiting to hear from LondonJohn, our resident expert in UK law.

 

[d4m10n]

The alleged hate stickerer did confirm this in a tweet (I think she means GNC children not GC children).

Holy ****** [emoji102]

"The object of the search is to recover the following: Any material of a transphobic nature that looks like it can be used it the commission of a hate crime."

I suppose the stickerer could've thrown the Brunskell-Evans book at someone on the street, or perhaps maliciously dropped it on besandaled toes.

 

[Elaedith]

Holy ****** [emoji102]

"The object of the search is to recover the following: Any material of a transphobic nature that looks like it can be used it the commission of a hate crime."

I suppose the stickerer could've thrown the Brunskell-Evans book at someone on the street, or perhaps maliciously dropped it on besandaled toes.

Not necessary, there is no distinction between speech and violence, remember? Reading a book expressing the wrong narrative is the same as bashing somebody over the head with it.

(Of course it might turn out that there were notes plotting a terrorist attack in the margins, but I think it somewhat unlikely).

 

[digger]

Well, yeah.

I think the hypothesis is that gender (separate from sex) has a biological/genetic basis. Also that gender is a sex linked characteristic, similar to male pattern baldness, maybe. Like male pattern baldness, the link, while very strong, can be imperfect. Thus you could have a gender that doesn't match sex as a result of biology.

I'm not sure what the evidence for and against this hypothesis is. But it's not a unique hypothesis in psychology. Nature vs. nurture is a question that pertains to a lot of psychological and personality variables. And it's hard to directly test.

I'll point out, that, if that hypothesis is correct, there is no "wears dresses and makeup" gene. Gender expression and gender roles is still a societal thing. And yes, that means stereotypes.

But the questions are still:
What things do we need to sort by sex?
What things do we need to sort by gender?
What things do we not need to sort at all?

And the problem that I keep coming back to, is that I can't really find reasons to sort by gender. Those that I think don't need to be sorted by sex, I tend to think don't need to be sorted at all.

The obvious conclusion. But you haven't questioned the frame. Always question the frame.

Why are we having this discussion? I don't think that your interlocutors actually care about the gender purity of female prisons. The point of this conversation, baked into the assumptions of the OP and never challenged, is to establish that trans identity is something to be debated. People who don't really know or care about trans people or female prisoners can debate it at length and seem reasonable.

 

[d4m10n]

I don't think that your interlocutors actually care about the gender purity of female prisons.

You've given us no reason to conclude that the people who claim to want prisons segregated by sex (rather than gender identity or self-ID) are making such claims in bad faith. I question your attempt to frame the discussion in this way, it strikes me as an attempt to derail us from the arguments about prisons to a discussion about the integrity of individual interlocutors. The function of rule 12 is in large part to prevent such derails from consuming our discussions.

 

[Meadmaker]

I don't think that your interlocutors actually care about the gender purity of female prisons.

I agree. They don't.

If that reply is confusing, I think you need to question your frame.

 

[Elaedith]

The obvious conclusion. But you haven't questioned the frame. Always question the frame.

Why are we having this discussion? I don't think that your interlocutors actually care about the gender purity of female prisons. The point of this conversation, baked into the assumptions of the OP and never challenged, is to establish that trans identity is something to be debated. People who don't really know or care about trans people or female prisoners can debate it at length and seem reasonable.

The primary frame of gender identity evangelists (this does not mean trans people, for the benefit of anyone being thick or dishonest) is to say that major changes to law, language, data gathering, medicine, psychology, sports and other areas of policy that affect everyone cannot be debated because to debate them is to debate or deny the existence or identity of trans people.

 

[digger]

You've given us no reason to conclude that the people who claim to want prisons segregated by sex (rather than gender identity or self-ID) are making such claims in bad faith. I question your attempt to frame the discussion in this way, it strikes me as an attempt to derail us from the arguments about prisons to a discussion about the integrity of individual interlocutors. The function of rule 12 is in large part to prevent such derails from consuming our discussions.

I'm not breaking rule 12. I'm questioning the frame.

If the purpose of the conversation were actually to determine the greatest threats to female prisoners' bodily autonomy, the frame presented would be entirely different. We wouldn't be looking at one corner case and trying to generalize from it. Prisoners are being brutalized at inhumane rates because the system they're stuck in promotes that brutality. If all assault were prevented in all bathrooms in all prisons, we wouldn't have to worry quite so much about which population to put the sexual predators in with.

The problem isn't that one guy lied about being trans. The problem is that US prisons are rape factories. Stop all of the rape going on in prison, and people can lie all they want about what gender they are and it won't matter.

 

[theprestige]

I'm not breaking rule 12. I'm questioning the frame.

If the purpose of the conversation were actually to determine the greatest threats to female prisoners' bodily autonomy, the frame presented would be entirely different. We wouldn't be looking at one corner case and trying to generalize from it. Prisoners are being brutalized at inhumane rates because the system they're stuck in promotes that brutality. If all assault were prevented in all bathrooms in all prisons, we wouldn't have to worry quite so much about which population to put the sexual predators in with.

You may want to reframe that. You just said that transwomen in prison are sexual predators.

 

[d4m10n]

If the purpose of the conversation were actually to determine the greatest threats to female prisoners' bodily autonomy, the frame presented would be entirely different.

The issue isn't limited to "the greatest threats," the question is whether sex segregation eliminates or reduces some specific threats (e.g. rape) relative to an alternate arrangement.

We wouldn't be looking at one corner case and trying to generalize from it.

Would you prefer to look at statistics? If so, sex crimes and other assaults will have to be recorded by sex rather than self-identification.

 

[Ziggurat]

The obvious conclusion. But you haven't questioned the frame. Always question the frame.

Why are we having this discussion? I don't think that your interlocutors actually care about the gender purity of female prisons.

OK, I'll question the frame. Yes, they don't care about the gender purity of female prisons. They care about the sex purity of female prisons.

The point of this conversation, baked into the assumptions of the OP and never challenged, is to establish that trans identity is something to be debated.

Isn't it something to debate? If we can't debate it, then we can't question the frame.

Always question the frame.

People who don't really know or care about trans people or female prisoners can debate it at length and seem reasonable.

You seem to be assuming quite a bit about people you don't actually know. I don't think you're actually taking your own advice.

 

[theprestige]

When questioning the frame, it helps if you've been paying attention to the discussion and understand what the frame actually is.