Trans women are not women (Part 8)

[LondonJohn]

As has been pointed out many times, this is a stupid analogy. The appropriate analogy is demanding that black males , not black females, be allowed to use women's rest rooms, then pretending that women's objections are racist, even though they also object to white males (of course adult human male means the same as 'man' if you are not a believer in gender essentialism). This is directly analogous to pretending that women who object to transwomen being in women's spaces object because they are trans, not because they are male. I actually find it hard to believe anyone is really stupid enough to believe this.

If you believe segregation of spaces by sex is the same as segregation by race then come right out and say that women should be happy stripping off with adult male strangers and if they aren't you are going to mock and bully them because they are just like racists objecting to desegregation.

Demanding that everyone conforms to your belief that gender identity trumps sex or gets punished is not a 'civil right', and is not analogous in any way shape or form to the idea that everyone should have equal rights regardless of majority opinion.

LOL. You just don't get it. I knew that already though. White bigots were saying the same in the 1950s - they were equally certain that they were in the right.

But you ought to go tell that horrible President Biden though that he's in severe danger of doing for transgender people what the horrible Presidents Kennedy and Johnson did for ethnic minorities in the 1960s. Heaven forfend that Biden should succeed, eh?


PS: Time to haul myself back out of the cesspit of this thread for another while. It's been....... well, the same as it always was. Have fun!

 

[d4m10n]

Per Meadmaker's misguided assessment, black women should/would never have been allowed to use white women's bathrooms if it was a matter of decision by way of polling white women.

I can think of at least three distinct reasons why this is a poor analogy.

1) Switching the oppressed group for the oppressor group. Females are analogous to African Americans inasmuch as they've both historically been denied the franchise and other manifestations of equality, but you've analogized females to European Americans, an oppressor class.

2) Analogizing real differences to unreal ones. Sex entails actual measurable differences based in reproductive adaptation, whereas race is an arbitrary ancestral line-drawing exercise at best.

3) Comparing safe spaces designed as an accommodation to segregated spaces designed to maintain an oppressive hierarchy.

 

[Elaedith]

LOL. You just don't get it. I knew that already though. White bigots were saying the same in the 1950s - they were equally certain that they were in the right.

But you ought to go tell that horrible President Biden though that he's in severe danger of doing for transgender people what the horrible Presidents Kennedy and Johnson did for ethnic minorities in the 1960s. Heaven forfend that Biden should succeed, eh?


PS: Time to haul myself back out of the cesspit of this thread for another while. It's been....... well, the same as it always was. Have fun!

Lol. How did I know there would be no answer, just smears, moral grandstanding and then disappearance? It must have happened before.

 

[Elaedith]

I can think of at least three distinct reasons why this is a poor analogy.

1) Switching the oppressed group for the oppressor group. Females are analogous to African Americans inasmuch as they've historically been denied the franchise and other manifestations of equality, but you've analogized them to European Americans, an oppressor class.

2) Analogizing real differences to unreal ones. Sex entails actual measurable differences based in reproductive adaptation, race is an arbitrary ancestral line-drawing exercise at best.

3) Comparing safe spaces designed as an accommodation to segregated spaces designed to maintain an oppressive hierarchy.

Of course, all of this has been pointed out many times. LJ has *never* answered by addressing the arguments. He always disappears then returns eventually to repeat the same nonsense.

 

[theprestige]

I can think of at least three distinct reasons why this is a poor analogy.

1) Switching the oppressed group for the oppressor group. Females are analogous to African Americans inasmuch as they've both historically been denied the franchise and other manifestations of equality, but you've analogized females to European Americans, an oppressor class.

2) Analogizing real differences to unreal ones. Sex entails actual measurable differences based in reproductive adaptation, whereas race is an arbitrary ancestral line-drawing exercise at best.

3) Comparing safe spaces designed as an accommodation to segregated spaces designed to maintain an oppressive hierarchy.

Yeah he's been flogging the same fringe reset in the face of the same rebuttals for over a year now.

 

[crazycat]

Yeah he's been flogging the same fringe reset in the face of the same rebuttals for over a year now.

Unfortunately, I think that the comparisons of trans-restrictive and anti-trans positions to the mean ol' racists and homophobes of the past are a part of the TRA playbook and have worked to get many governing organizations (such as governments or sports governing bodies) to go along with the the TRA agenda.

As meadmaker has often pointed out, there isn't a clear understanding among people who genuinely want to be fair to trans people, just what trans means. You end up with laws that don't distinguish between people who have or are undergoing sexual reassignment treatment, people with genuine gender dysphoria, youngsters exploring their identity, and downright cheats who have uttered the magic incantation.

Self declaration is enough.

I think those "enlightened" governing bodies are realizing they've been scammed, or at least misled. They were thinking a few trans-sexual or gender dysphoria people who have been diagnosed and are undergoing treatment, but the results are quite different than they imagined.

You end up with people like Lia Thomas winning medals in women's swimming or male rapists in prison all of a sudden deciding they are women and getting transferred to the women's prison.

Governing bodies are starting to realize the scope of what they are allowing and rein in the privileges given to trans people to a more biologically sensible laws and rulings.

 

[Paul2]

Thanks for "leaving this here".

Your point is....?


(FWIW, the world's sporting administration bodies are - quite correctly - seeking to make evidence-based decisions in this whole area*, so as to make a proportionate and properly-balanced decision. My own view is that within a few years, there will be sufficient evidential data in almost all sports to show that transwomen do indeed, in general, hold an unfair advantage over ciswomen in all power, strength or endurance sports. As such, I expect - and will welcome - a ban on transwomen competing in most sports at elite- and sub-elite-level. Outside of that, however, I expect progressive societies to accept that transmen are men and vice-versa, and for that acceptance to be protected in law.)


* Just as, for example, they sought to do in cases such as that of Caster Semanya

The quotation from Titania McGrath was pithy, which is why I left it.

I largely agree with your position above, but didn't you mean "in most cis-female sports?"

 

[Meadmaker]

PS: Time to haul myself back out of the cesspit of this thread for another while. It's been....... well, the same as it always was. Have fun!

Drat. I was just going to ask about that whole elite versus non-elite sports thing.



I never thought it made any sense to say that males needed to be kept out of women's sports at elite, or sub-elite now, levels, but not at other competitive levels. Oh, well, it will be one more thing not explained.

 

[Matthew Best]

But yeah, you do you. Whatever. I'm glad that you're excited by making meta-analyses of it all - and even more happy that you chose to sign off with a little casual condescension

Oh Zig - you didn’t use condescension did you? LondonJohn hates that.

HATES it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Meadmaker]

Anyhow, I am addressing your contention that the matter of transgirls in girls' bathrooms should be (more-or-less exclusively) condoned/opposed by reference to whether cisgirls would support the move or not.

Alas, LondonJohn will not share the discussion, if he stays true to his declaration of intent to not come back to the thread. Nevertheless, for others' benefit, I would like to explain why I say this, and why it is really nothing at all like white people refusing to share bathrooms with black people.


My contention is that modesty is an innate, biologically motivated idea. It is not a whim of society, and that the sense of modesty would be offended if forced to share private space, disrobed, with males.

If cisgirls were ever to say that it's just fine with them that transgirls share those private spaces, that would be strong evidence that, really, modesty probably is societally imposed. I'm far less likely to demand adherence to some traditional standard (i.e. segregation by sex) in the face of evidence that this is just a cultural artifact.

People might object that this is exactly what the white people used to say. It was natural to keep the races separate! So they claimed. However, if that were true, that feeling would persist. In the modern era, darned near no one thinks we ought to have separate bathrooms for black and white people. That was clearly a cultural artifact that served no purpose. Good riddance.

Is the desire for avoidance of the male gaze when disrobed likewise a cultural artifact? Convince me of that, and I'll change my tune on sex based segregation of places where people take off their clothes.

Although, at that point, it might be difficult to convince me that any segregation at all makes sense. It's hard to imagine a scenario in my head where self-identified gender created a reason for segregation. What would be the purpose? Why bother?

 

[Sideroxylon]

Your bald and sweeping assertion about an innate nature of modesty (and sloppily applied with any nuance here) is not simply borne out by cultural observation.

 

[Meadmaker]

Your bald and sweeping assertion about an innate nature of modesty (and sloppily applied with any nuance here) is not simply borne out by cultural observation.

It was a one sentence statement. It's grossly oversimplified. I don't feel like repeating all the stuff that went before on the subject.


Sloppily applied? To hell with it.

 

[Ziggurat]

But your post was referencing Meadmaker's comments about the Gervais show, and how (in Meadmaker's opinion) Gervais wasn't making fun of transgender people at all - merely making fun of TRA extremism. You were drawing a line of similarity (you certainly didn't say anything like "well that's the difference between the Gervais material and the Chappelle material". To me, it was fairly clear that you were reinforcing and supporting Meadmaker's contention by bringing in the Chapelle show as another similar example.

Yes, I was supporting his contention, one I note you haven’t really even tried to dispute in either your original response to me or to this follow up. And it is similar, but not in the way you originally claimed.

But yeah, you do you. Whatever. I'm glad that you're excited by making meta-analyses of it all - and even more happy that you chose to sign off with a little casual condescension

At the risk of sounding condescending again, you are in a glass house throwing bricks. Lest you forget how you signed off last time:

I see. You don't see.

 

[llwyd]

I rather thought that the discussion between Thermal and myself about sex vs gender would have belonged here, but okay... Anyway, there is a meaningful distinction there and quite meaningful also for the trans debate.

 

[Thermal]

I rather thought that the discussion between Thermal and myself about sex vs gender would have belonged here, but okay... Anyway, there is a meaningful distinction there and quite meaningful also for the trans debate.

Yeah, but the discussion here is about one gender's assumption into the other's, and there it is more about whether there are others, other than the Big Two.

 

[theprestige]

I rather thought that the discussion between Thermal and myself about sex vs gender would have belonged here, but okay... Anyway, there is a meaningful distinction there and quite meaningful also for the trans debate.

I used to think the distinction was meaningful for the trans debate. Then, over the course of this thread, I realized two important things about the trans debate.

First I realized that the definition and nature of "gender" is essentially meaningless. It's either a regressive gender stereotype cosplay, or a completely fluid array of half-baked ideas that may or may not be accepted by anyone else as gender-specific.

Second I realized that pretty much every single meaningful aspect of the trans debate is actually about transsexualism, not transgenderism. Other than preferred pronouns, every single right, every single accommodation in public policy claimed by the trans-inclusionist movement, is about transcending binary sex, not about gender identity.

Actually I take that back. Not every single meaningful aspect. The right to not be discriminated against in the workplace, if you're a man wearing a dress, is a gender identity thing*, not a transsexual thing. But that's a settled question these days. Nobody in this thread is resiling against that.

---
*See "regressive gender stereotype cosplay".

 

[Meadmaker]

Actually I take that back. Not every single meaningful aspect. The right to not be discriminated against in the workplace, if you're a man wearing a dress, is a gender identity thing*, not a transsexual thing. But that's a settled question these days. Nobody in this thread is resiling against that.

---
*See "regressive gender stereotype cosplay".

I had to look up "resiling". I had never heard of that word. However, based on my online dictionary, I don't think it's the word you meant.


ETA: Of course, dictionaries don't get much respect in this thread. As best I can tell, looking things up in dictionaries is a sign of bigotry.

 

[theprestige]

I had to look up "resiling". I had never heard of that word. However, based on my online dictionary, I don't think it's the word you meant.


ETA: Of course, dictionaries don't get much respect in this thread. As best I can tell, looking things up in dictionaries is a sign of bigotry.

Hah, you're right. I was using it to mean "rejecting, reacting against". Not "withdrawing from."

Anyway, my point to Ilwyd stands: Gender identity isn't the issue (anymore). The only remaining open questions of public policy and human rights are questions of sex identity.

 

[d4m10n]

Gender identity isn't the issue (anymore). The only remaining open questions of public policy and human rights are questions of sex identity.

I've some trouble wrapping my head around what it means to identify as something one is not.

I can identify as Hispanic since my paternal ancestors were all descended from Spanish colonists who settled in the Caribbean. I cannot (sensibly) identify as Japanese, since I have neither ancestral nor cultural connection to those islands.

My daughter can identify as Native American since she has a tribal enrollment number and can claim direct descent from two of the three Native war chiefs at St. Clair's defeat^WP. Were she to say that she doesn't identify as Native American, she would be (in some sense) factually incorrect since both of her parents had quite a few ancestors living in the Americas in 1491.

My son can sensibly identify as a coder since he gets paid to code. Were he to identify as a poet, he'd have to post up at least a few poems first, preferably someplace where people read poems. Were he to deny being a coder, he'd have to come up with some clever way to explain why looking at code is a paid gig.

I suppose it comes down to the question of whether someone can be mistaken when they claim to identify as something or other, or disclaim an identity which has been put on them. If someone identifies me by saying "Damion is a resident of Oklahoma who suffers from male pattern baldness," they are correct even if I'm deeply discontented with where I live and where my hair grows.

 

[Rolfe]

Seen on Twitter earlier today.

[imgw=500]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FT_grl3XsAIBMba?format=jpg&name=small[/imgw]