• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Trans women are not women (Part 8)

Status
Not open for further replies.
theprestige said:
I'm pretty sure Canadia is indeed in the middle of a culture war.
Click to expand...

Sure, but it seems more focused on other issues.

There was a bit of flare up back when trans rights were being passed into law. Jordan Peterson really came to prominence by doing his pseudo-intellectual anti-trans schtick (before melting his brain with quack cures for benzo dependency).

The Canadian culture war seems to have mostly moved on to more important freakouts like vaccine mandates or whatever other flavor of the month.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
What do people do when they want to illegally discriminate but can't and don't find much public sympathy? I suspect most of them just suck it up and accept the situation. Maybe they write a letter to the editor that likely isn't published. You know, loser stuff.
Click to expand...

If you want to know why this thread has the reputation it does, look in the mirror.


Meanwhile, does anyone actually have any information on the subject of my question?
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
No, I actively seek out stories of TERF frustration to amuse myself. Are there any other Canadian examples besides that TERF shelter that shuttered rather than stop illegally discriminating that you're aware of?
Click to expand...

I realized earlier today that I've never seen you actually express compassion and care for anyone. Like, nobody at all, not even the groups you claim to be fighting for.

It seems more like you're picking and choosing topics that allow you to drape a veneer of righteousness over your hate and vitriol, so that you can maintain some pretense of being "on the right side" rather than being shown up as someone whose goal is to antagonize and attack and harass for your own titillation.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I still love it. The whole routine of clutching your pearls and falling back on your fainting couch when it suggested that a woman with a penis being given the same threat vector as a man with a penis. "Why goodness surely you aren't suggesting that a transman is some sort of inherent threat? I mean what are they cismen?"

Again I do ever so adore watching two sides come up with cleverer and cleverer insults for each other, demonizing each other more and more, while "Okay yeah but the cismen, of course we have to keep them in check nobody is arguing that" is the only thing they agree on.
Click to expand...

WTF is the point of you even posting in this thread? You don't contribute to the discussion, all you do is look down your nose at everyone involved while simultaneously managing to imply that the "real" victims here are all males.

If all you're going to do is drop in once in a while to scold everybody for talking about something you're not interested in, please take this opportunity to excuse yourself from this thread completely.
 
Meanwhile, over in the Long Beach, California, school district, plans had been drawn up for one of those unisex enhanced privacy locker rooms that would make everyone happy.


And no one was happy. Go figure. Plans put on hold.
 
One of the problems with these plans is that anyone of either sex can enter the main area. Thus the chance of a vulnerable female and a predatory male being in the main space together is not negligible. Then the "enhanced privacy" part provides a perfect venue for assault - floor-to-ceiling partitions and a lockable door.

It's like walking into a dark alley in terms of putting yourself at risk.
 
theprestige said:
But then what even is the point of saying transwomen are women? It doesn' mean anything. It doesn't tell what accommodations they should have in public policy. It doesn't even tell you what their preferred pronouns are.
Click to expand...
It makes some transwomen and transmen feel better, as they are accepted as the gender they choose to conform to?

I don't really get the urge to conform to what society says regarding gender roles, but some transpeople feel its important.
 
theprestige said:
Nope. It's becoming increasingly clear that it's either functionally meaningless, or a stalking horse for transsexuality.

If some male can make a coherent argument about what it means, other than "pretend I'm female", I'll reconsider.
Click to expand...
You replied to my earlier post
p0lka said:
Re: the hilighted
That's the solution then, surely.

man woman? it's gender based, be what you want.

Male female? It's in your genes and non negotiable.

Which would mean transwomen are women, but they're not female. Also transmen are men but they're not male.
Click to expand...
so you are aware of my position that male and female are biological facts yeah? and gender is something separate.

Conflating the two isn't helpful.
 
Meadmaker said:
Meanwhile, over in the Long Beach, California, school district, plans had been drawn up for one of those unisex enhanced privacy locker rooms that would make everyone happy.


And no one was happy. Go figure. Plans put on hold.
Click to expand...
According to this la times reporting, the complaints seem rather one sided. Lots of the usual bigoted claims that any measure of trans inclusion will open the floodgates for sex crimes. Nothing in the reporting to indicate these concerns are representative of anything but the usual fringe

https://www.latimes.com/california/...ch-gender-neutral-locker-room-proposal-paused

No surprise this has become a flashpoint after Breitbart decided to steer their flock of psychos to the story
 
Last edited:
SuburbanTurkey said:
According to this la times reporting, the complaints seem rather one sided.
Click to expand...


Well that's the nature of complaints, isn't it? The only people who are complaining are the ones who don't like it.

And yes, I read a few media stories about the subject, and they all said that everyone who was complaining were conservative. How they figured that out, I don't know. Oh, wait. Yes I do know. That's how the complaints were dismisssed. They're complaining? Must be conservative. Oh, that's an old fashioned word. It must be right wingers.

The first one I read had a wonderful line in it. After noting the girls, and they were girls, teenagers, actual users of the facility, saying they did not like taking a shower in a stall that had not quite floor to ceiling dividers next to a boy (not a transgirl, a regular old cisboy, this is unisex), the story continued "conspicuous by their absence was any comment from the LGBT community".

Well now that's interesting. First of all, how would they know? If a girl is L or B, they probably still don't want to share a room with boys, and they probably didn't start out their complaint with, "I'm a lesbian and...."

But....where were the transpeople saying how important it is? What gives? This was a major redesign for their benefit, and they weren't there to demand it. Why not?


Well, here's a prediction. They won't show up to support that proposed design, now or later, because a unisex facility does not give them what they want.
 
I was listening to a recent episode of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast (anyone else a listener?), and they had a talk segment on the issue of whether sex is binary. They haven't really ever talked about the "trans question" before, and this, strictly speaking wasn't about transgender issues. But I could tell that they are sort of gingerly approaching the edges of those issues.

Anyway, I'm sure that everyone here is already aware of the existence of intersex people, with unusual combinations of chromosomes, or in some cases insensitivity to androgens (male hormones). I guess the main thing they proposed in the discussion is that sex isn't binary, but rather "bimodal", which seems like a reasonable enough statement. Here is a wikipedia article on what "bimodal" means:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimodal_distribution

Of course, most people are either male or female, but not everyone. But I already knew that.

Cara, the one woman on the podcast, and probably the youngest member too, actually seems to be the most vocal on the topic.

If anyone cares, here is a link to the episode:
https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts/episode-869
And there is even a partial transcript, albeit incomplete:
https://www.sgutranscripts.org/wiki/SGU_Episode_869
It does however have a figure illustrating the concept of a bimodal distribution.
The discussion of "biological sex" begins at 1:00:45.
 
Puppycow said:
I was listening to a recent episode of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast (anyone else a listener?), and they had a talk segment on the issue of whether sex is binary. They haven't really ever talked about the "trans question" before, and this, strictly speaking wasn't about transgender issues. But I could tell that they are sort of gingerly approaching the edges of those issues.

Anyway, I'm sure that everyone here is already aware of the existence of intersex people, with unusual combinations of chromosomes, or in some cases insensitivity to androgens (male hormones). I guess the main thing they proposed in the discussion is that sex isn't binary, but rather "bimodal", which seems like a reasonable enough statement.

Of course, most people are either male or female, but not everyone. But I already knew that.
Click to expand...

Short version - this is unscientific bollocks.

For Biologists, sex is binary; intersex people are either male or female with unusual development patterns.

To claim sex is a spectrum, you have to define what the X axis is measuring.

To see the arguments in action have a look at:
https://twitter.com/lecanardnoir/status/1503857738148892673?cxt=HHwWgsCysaSp494pAAAA

or

https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/doggit/

The X axis in the graph is not ‘sex units’. The graph is not mapping sex. It is schematically mapping a characteristic associated with sex, like testosterone levels (in some concentration unit). Sex is why you have a bimodal distribution of testosterone levels.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Puppycow said:
I was listening to a recent episode of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast (anyone else a listener?), and they had a talk segment on the issue of whether sex is binary. They haven't really ever talked about the "trans question" before, and this, strictly speaking wasn't about transgender issues. But I could tell that they are sort of gingerly approaching the edges of those issues.

Anyway, I'm sure that everyone here is already aware of the existence of intersex people, with unusual combinations of chromosomes, or in some cases insensitivity to androgens (male hormones). I guess the main thing they proposed in the discussion is that sex isn't binary, but rather "bimodal", which seems like a reasonable enough statement. Here is a wikipedia article on what "bimodal" means:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimodal_distribution

Of course, most people are either male or female, but not everyone. But I already knew that.

Cara, the one woman on the podcast, and probably the youngest member too, actually seems to be the most vocal on the topic.

If anyone cares, here is a link to the episode:
https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts/episode-869
And there is even a partial transcript, albeit incomplete:
https://www.sgutranscripts.org/wiki/SGU_Episode_869
It does however have a figure illustrating the concept of a bimodal distribution.
The discussion of "biological sex" begins at 1:00:45.
Click to expand...

This is some pretty well worn ground for us "regulars". I'm sure some people will have something to say on it, so I will skip to my particular point.

Lia Thomas isn't intersex. Darren Merager isn't intersex. The Loudoun County school rapist isn't intersex. Jonathan/Jessica Yaniv - not intersex.

The existence of intersex people (which term isn't used by the cool kids anyway these days) has absolutely nothing to do with the debate.


Well, ok, Caster Semenya is intersex, so once in a while something about intersex comes up, and the TRAs use it to say, "Because there are intersex people, it's ok if I take off my clothes in the girls' locker room....because somebody has Kleinfelter's Syndrome."
 
Meadmaker said:
Well that's the nature of complaints, isn't it? The only people who are complaining are the ones who don't like it.

And yes, I read a few media stories about the subject, and they all said that everyone who was complaining were conservative. How they figured that out, I don't know. Oh, wait. Yes I do know. That's how the complaints were dismisssed. They're complaining? Must be conservative. Oh, that's an old fashioned word. It must be right wingers.

The first one I read had a wonderful line in it. After noting the girls, and they were girls, teenagers, actual users of the facility, saying they did not like taking a shower in a stall that had not quite floor to ceiling dividers next to a boy (not a transgirl, a regular old cisboy, this is unisex), the story continued "conspicuous by their absence was any comment from the LGBT community".

Well now that's interesting. First of all, how would they know? If a girl is L or B, they probably still don't want to share a room with boys, and they probably didn't start out their complaint with, "I'm a lesbian and...."

But....where were the transpeople saying how important it is? What gives? This was a major redesign for their benefit, and they weren't there to demand it. Why not?


Well, here's a prediction. They won't show up to support that proposed design, now or later, because a unisex facility does not give them what they want.
Click to expand...

That's all well and good, but your original vague post (no citation, just your slanted view of things) made it sound like there was unanimous complaints about the unisex, private stall design. "LGBT people haven't yet vigorously supported the plan in the face of a Breitbart inspired right wing freakout" is hardly that. Were you intentionally eliding that Breitbart sent up the signal to draw all the reactionary freaks to the issue or did it just escape your attention? The LATimes article makes it sound like a handful or so of very loud people who have decided getting mad at school board meetings is their new hobby, hardly a mandate for action.

Seems like you're jumping to conclusions here. Sounds like they plan to hold some kind of public comment period before making a decision.

You should remember that the general public doesn't exist in the same media environment as these reactionary dweebs. The Breitbart freaks think this is some pressing issue, meanwhile the rest of the normal, non-insane crowd may not even be aware there is even a controversy. I suppose more mainstream reporting like the LA Times piece and a public comment period might bring some more voices in support of the plan.

In the greater context of the culture war, you really shouldn't draw many conclusions from some right wing fringe issue striking first on some nonsense issue. These freaks are constantly searching for some local governance issue to be pissed off about. Hit pieces from Brietbart and similar other reactionary press are trying to generate controversy out of nothing, so it's not surprising that right wing weirdos are the first voices to start shouting. It doesn't mean they speak for anyone but the lunatic fringe. Right wingers screaming about made up nonsense, and relative confused silence in response from non-insane people, is a common pattern.

The right wing has identified a real weak point in our society: hyper-local government. "Good governance" doesn't turn out normal people to shout at school board meetings the same way that crackpot conspiracy theories about LGBT groomers or whatever other dreck is in the right wing world. We saw the same thing with the CRT freakouts. Local institutions that were previously mostly uncontroversial and could be trusted to run under their own oversight are now being targeted by the extreme right. Unfortunately that means normal people are going to have to devote more of their attention to things that previously could be trusted to manage themselves. So long as decent people are on the back foot in responding to these manufactured freakouts, it will remain a viable strategy for the extreme right.
 
Last edited:
p0lka said:
You replied to my earlier post

so you are aware of my position that male and female are biological facts yeah? and gender is something separate.

Conflating the two isn't helpful.
Click to expand...

My position is that in the context of the question of trans rights and accommodations, socially and in public policy, gender apart from sex is meaningless.

And that's why males can't have the word woman. I'll reconsider my position if you can give a coherent explanation of what woman means in this context, separate from sex.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom