Cont: Trans women are not women (IX)

[lionking]

You keep saying this over and over, but I'm not convinced you have thought this through.

Because if you had, you'd realize that the same argument would apply to laws proposed or passed that require people to use the bathroom of their birth sex and laws that prohibit trans girls from participating on female sports teams.

Exactly. Governments only become progressive and honourable when they agree with you.

 

[d4m10n]

That usage predates the usage by the gender critical crowd.

Wow, that is confusing. Ran a quick search over at Google Books and it looks like the meaning of the phrase inverted after 2012 or so.

 

[Aber]

Oh, let's say stage 2. As I understand it, boys and girls don't attain physical fitness attributes in the same order, so it might be a bit different in any given sport. I assume that Rolfe is right and this would be more of an "in principle" olive branch.

This requires putting 11 and 12 year olds on puberty blockers/cross sex hormones with lifelong consequences. Children at this age are clearly not Gillick competent to make these decisions.

 

[Aber]

And lastly on this matter: you seem also to be unaware that governments and other related institutions do an enormous amount of work, soundings, evidence-gathering and consultation.... prior to proposing, passing into law, or instigating & enforcing law/regulations when it comes to these sorts of civil rights reforms. I guarantee you that they take great care to listen to all interested parties, and that they're constantly trying to take evidence-based decisions and second-guessing any unintended consequences.

Sure...

Recent reports have shown that the SNP has failed to engage with feminist and religious groups in their gender reform proposals and have instead opted to hear only from pro-trans lobby groups.

A Freedom of Information report has found that five of the groups who met with Shona Robison, the minister in charge of the reforms, receive government funding and have been aggressively pushing for changes since the election pledge.

Meetings have been held with the Equality Network, Scottish Trans, Stonewall Scotland, LGBT Youth Scotland and LGBT Health and Wellbeing since May. However, no equivalent meetings have been held with opposition groups like the Scottish Catholic Church or feminist group, For Women Scotland.

https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/only-pro-trans-lobby-groups-25850103

 

[Aber]

You complain about awful neologisms like "uterus-haver", and it is awful, but here's a challenge: find me as many instances as you can of people actually, seriously using it. Not people complaining about it, or joking about it, or even telling other people to use it: just casually using it. I suspect it barely happens.

An example of the debate on medical terminology

Should clinicians be using the word ‘woman’ in medical language? Are phrases like ‘human milk’, ‘parental’ and ‘hand-held notes’ preferable to ‘breastmilk’, ‘maternal’ and ‘maternity notes’1?

https://pmj.bmj.com/content/97/1150/483

This thread has run through many iterations but a common theme is that new posters are often not aware of the current state of play; "that would never happen" is usually met with examples.

 

[shuttlt]

You complain about awful neologisms like "uterus-haver", and it is awful, but here's a challenge: find me as many instances as you can of people actually, seriously using it. Not people complaining about it, or joking about it, or even telling other people to use it: just casually using it. I suspect it barely happens. In college, at the dawn of the age of people complaining about "political correctness", I had a sexist English instructor who griped constantly about how feminists wanted us to say "ovular" instead of "seminar". I looked it up one day, and found one usage that wasn't clearly a joke or a complaint. The women's clinic where I volunteer is very trans-friendly, a pioneer in "trans health"...and they still say women and girl all over the place in their literature. And in the name of the place. "Uterus-haver" nowhere. If they need or want a gender neutral word, they just say "patient".

Here is the top hit on Google for "birthing persons nhs".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-56007728
It's an NHS trust changing their language to be trans-inclusive in their maternity services. They were moving to "chest feeding" and "birthing parent".

It's not hard to find examples.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Roy Wood Jr from the Daily Show with Trevor Noah did an extended piece with 2 transgendered young people. It was excellent if you have 50 minutes to watch it. They mention the issues with sports but say that really is only a small issue overall. The GOP using trans people in their campaign fear mongering is a serious threat in states like TX and FL.

 

[mumblethrax]

This requires putting 11 and 12 year olds on puberty blockers/cross sex hormones with lifelong consequences. Children at this age are clearly not Gillick competent to make these decisions.

Like I said, I'm not advocating it.

An example of the debate on medical terminology

But that's not what I asked for.

Here is the top hit on Google for "birthing persons nhs".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-56007728
It's an NHS trust changing their language to be trans-inclusive in their maternity services. They were moving to "chest feeding" and "birthing parent".

It's not hard to find examples.

Also not what I asked for.

 

[Matthew Best]

Like I said, I'm not advocating it.


But that's not what I asked for.


Also not what I asked for.

What exactly did you ask for?

 

[mumblethrax]

What exactly did you ask for?

"You complain about awful neologisms like "uterus-haver", and it is awful, but here's a challenge: find me as many instances as you can of people actually, seriously using it. Not people complaining about it, or joking about it, or even telling other people to use it: just casually using it. I suspect it barely happens."

 

[shuttlt]

Also not what I asked for.

You want some fly on the wall footage?

You had said

The women's clinic where I volunteer is very trans-friendly, a pioneer in "trans health"...and they still say women and girl all over the place in their literature. And in the name of the place. "Uterus-haver" nowhere. If they need or want a gender neutral word, they just say "patient".

That is why I thought an account of an NHS trust saying they were going to use "birthing person" would be relevant.

You can see that BSUH have updated their website:
https://www.bsuh.nhs.uk/maternity/your-pregnancy/

It is now all "pregnant and breast/chest feeding women and people". They have produced guidelines saying that this is how they are going to communicate, and their website shows them communicating in this way.

 

[mumblethrax]

It is now all "pregnant and breast/chest feeding women and people". They have produced guidelines saying that this is how they are going to communicate, and their website shows them communicating in this way.

"Pregnant women and people" sound not at all awful to me, shows that "female erasure" is not actually happening, doesn't have the atomization problem, and seems clinically appropriate where people who don't consider themselves women are part of the audience.

Anyway, I was specifically asking for examples of "uterus-havers".

 

[Matthew Best]

Anyway, I was specifically asking for examples of "uterus-havers".

I mistakenly thought you were asking for awful neologisms like "uterus-haver".

Why the particular interest in this one term?

 

[TomB]

So when you say it's reasonable to ban those who've gone through a male puberty... but you do NOT mean banning males... then which of those approaches of permanent damage and medicalization do you favor in order to allow some males to compete against females?

I see that Mumblethrax already replied to you on this point. But I think I'll respond as well.

People who have had puberty blockers exist. Given current treatment trends, there will be more of them. Arguing against the treatment does not make these people go away in the near term. Therefore, it is quite feasible to have a stance on if and how to accommodate them in a variety of situations independent of any stance or debate on the appropriateness of the care that got them there.

I don't like using this analogy, but I think it's one that might be illustrative. One can be critical of reckless behavior that leads to contracting an easily preventable disease without being against treatment for the disease.

In other words, the opinion that they should not have had a particular treatment does not lead to a conclusion as to what you allow them to do post-treatment. Particularly when we are talking about treatment that happens as kids. It smells of punishing the kids because you don't agree with the decisions of the parents.

So I would suggest separating the arguments regarding the merits of a treatment plan from decisions about how to handle people who have had that treatment.

Additionally, you phrase this as if boys are put on puberty blockers for the purpose of competing in women's divisions in the future. That seems...odd, but I agree that regardless of the merits of any other reason for puberty blockers, that one would be ridiculously out of line. But I doubt it is happening. I can't see a whole lot of parents going:

"Hey, little Johnny, I'd like you to play baseball, but you suck. So we're going to turn you into a girl. Then you can play softball. By the way, your new name is Hilda."

Do you think this actual conversation or thought process goes on? Or do you think that twelve year old boys are likely to think:

"I like swimming, but I'm slow. So I'll tell mom and dad I'm a girl so they can put me on drugs and get me on the girl's team. Then I can WIN!!!"

There may be (a few) cases where a male transitions with the express intent to pursue a sports career as a woman. I'm not aware of any, but it's conceivable. (People are strange.) But that would most likely happen with adults (18+). Most of the cases you hear of in high school are, I think, kids who transitioned and then figured out they liked or might be good at sports. (And in most of the cases I've seen, they shouldn't be on the girls' team, in my opinion.)

Ascribing sports competition as an actual motive for puberty suppression seems off base.

For those who go through puberty suppression and then discover sports, evaluate them as individuals.

 

[d4m10n]

"Pregnant women and people" sound not at all awful to me, shows that "female erasure" is not actually happening...

https://nypost.com/2021/09/28/aclu-apologizes-for-changing-rbg-quote-to-delete-woman-and-she/

 

[Rolfe]

Given the known adverse effects of puberty blockers on boys, I think it's safe to say that puberty-blocked boys beating girls and women in the female events is not going to be a practical problem.

 

[theprestige]

Roy Wood Jr from the Daily Show with Trevor Noah did an extended piece with 2 transgendered young people. It was excellent if you have 50 minutes to watch it. They mention the issues with sports but say that really is only a small issue overall.

Of course they did. This is the standard trans-activist dodge when it comes to the difficult question of trans policy in sports.

They don't have a solution, so they just downplay or dismiss the problem. You don't have a solution, so you just downplay or dismiss the problem.

Instead of dismissing it, why don't you solve it?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Surely you jest?

Your posts tend to be special pleading for females and non sequiturs.

Pointing out hop skipping and jumping in others posts is yeah, brill.

Things I never thought I'd have to say:

Expecting females to have spaced to change or be vulnerable without the presence of males is not "special pleading". Wanting female inmates to be housed with only females is not "special pleading".

 

[theprestige]

Special pleading is a rhetorical fallacy, appealing to a spurious or begged distinction in order to avoid applying the agreed-upon reasoning to the matter in question.

However, the distinction between men and women is real. The pleading is not special.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I was specifically saying that the problem of people and institutions capitulating to trans activists is blown out of proportion. I can say that while still acknowledging that it happens, and it's bad when it does. That exchange followed Zig's claim that trans activists would not accept my putative definition of women. I don't particularly think that's true, at least not everywhere--if Merriam Webster were to add the sense of 'woman' that describes gender, I think those activists would be delighted. If they said "Not good enough!" I think Merriam Webster would tell them to go kick rocks.

For the sake of clarity, I was not saying that it's not a problem if girls don't feel comfortable using their own changing room, or that rape is unimportant.

You complain about awful neologisms like "uterus-haver", and it is awful, but here's a challenge: find me as many instances as you can of people actually, seriously using it. Not people complaining about it, or joking about it, or even telling other people to use it: just casually using it. I suspect it barely happens. In college, at the dawn of the age of people complaining about "political correctness", I had a sexist English instructor who griped constantly about how feminists wanted us to say "ovular" instead of "seminar". I looked it up one day, and found one usage that wasn't clearly a joke or a complaint. The women's clinic where I volunteer is very trans-friendly, a pioneer in "trans health"...and they still say women and girl all over the place in their literature. And in the name of the place. "Uterus-haver" nowhere. If they need or want a gender neutral word, they just say "patient".

Midol refers to its customers as "menstruators"
Tampax celebrating "people who bleed"
CNN refers to "people with cervixes"
Medical Journal The Lancet writes about "bodies with vaginas" but they still refer to men as men.
Harvard medical school talks about "black birthing bodies" and "gestational parents"
BBC News writing about "people with a vagina"
Period tracking app Clue has a whole paper on what language to use instead of women, including uterus-haver, people with uteruses, and people who menstruate
Discussion of whether or not the word "woman" should be used in a medical setting in a medical journal
Period product company Yoppie advertises to "bleeders"

There's more, but I assume that's enough to start with? Enough to acknowledge that this is something that female humans aren't "hysterical" about when we find such dehumanizing language insulting?

I focused on rape in prison because it's a good example of where we fail to see the forest for the trees. Rape by male guards is orders of magnitudes more common than rape by trans inmates, tens of thousands of assaults per year, but has it ever even been mentioned on this forum? Trans women aren't the primary culprits, so why this intense focus on them? I also think the problem of trans women in prison is relatively easy to solve, except in prisons that are dumpster fires of human misery, which too many of them are.

Yes, rape in prison is already a problem. We've actually addressed this multiple times throughout this thread. It's a problem already for female inmates, and it's also a problem for male inmates. My point, which I think is quite valid, is that INCREASING the risk to females by placing males in the same cells as them is NOT a way to mitigate the current risk of rape. So let's NOT do that. And placing males with females as a result of their self-declaration of gender identity is a policy adopted by legislators as a result of lobbying groups.

I do see them. They do impact me. I don't want anybody getting raped. I don't want girls feeling uncomfortable to change in their own changing room.

Am I required to have a position from the outset? I'm trying to puzzle my way through this issue. From my perspective, this thread is often incredibly hostile, which makes bad faith argument inevitable, and there's a powerful counter-orthodoxy at work. If I say "Hey, I think there might be such a thing as gender?" I'll be told I want women back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.

No, you're not required to have a position from the outset. It's true that this thread can get "passionate". Some of that is simply because this is volume 9 and well, many of us have gone through all of this multiple times already, so it feels like we're having to start all over again for no good reason. This is exacerbated by the fact that a few regular posters who have definitely been through these discussions keep trying to fringe reset the whole thing and it's exhausting. I know it's a lot to read through, but it might be worthwhile for you to go skim through the prior volumes. They contain some very good information, from people on both sides of this discussion.

And to be brutally honest, some of my frustration is due to having been repeatedly told - by males - that this isn't that big of a deal, and that females are just overreacting. I can't tell you how many times in this thread the message has essentially been "males know better than you, you silly little female, so just shoosh and let us tell you what to do". Not in exactly those words, but sometimes not that far off. I'm tired of being told that the concerns of females don't matter, and that we're evil bigoted fascist nazi-adjacent transphobes if we object to having penises in our showers without our express consent. Sometimes, I'm just not in the mood to have to "be kind" to another male who seems to think it's not a big deal for me.

Females are conditioned to "be kind", and to sublimate our own needs to support the feelings of males. It sucks for males right now, but many of us are completely fed up with it, and being kind doesn't work for us.