Cont: Trans women are not women (IX)

[shuttlt]

I'm puzzled that you're puzzled. To me, Shuttit's view seems to be pretty standard contrarianism or at best devil's advocacy.

It's not contrarianism. I've spent quite a bit of time reading about the history of liberalism, the new left in the 60s... effectively the history of the ideas we see motivating people at the moment. By all means disagree on my interpretation, but I'm not saying anything out of a desire to disagree. As much as I like you Rolfe, all I see from you, and Emily's Cat, is the same boomer 2nd wave feminist analysis of everything. You've had left wing activists doing what we see the activists in that video doing, dressed exactly as those activists are dressed for years now. Some kind of 1970s idea of misogyny and the patriarchy is a bad explanation for their motivation. Books where modern progressives explain their ideas have been on the NYT best seller list. Sainsbury's was selling them very prominently during last black history month.

Your desire to maintain the old definition of woman, your concerns that women need to be protected from men are conservative concerns. You want to conserve the things that progressives were fighting for 40 years ago. Those people clad in black know conservatism when they see it. That is why they are behaving as they are. The core ideas aren't even that different to the ones back in '68, it's just that things are now at a point where they can be more fully realised.

I'm not being a contrarian. I straightforwardly think you are wrong.

 

[Rolfe]

I think straightforwardly that reality has a habit of reasserting itself and that this is going to go the way of lobotomies. In ten or twenty years time "affirming" a child who declares that he or she wants to be the opposite sex is going to be seen to be on a par with agreeing with an anorectic that she is too fat and prescribing a low-calorie diet and liposuction.

 

[Brainster]

I think straightforwardly that reality has a habit of reasserting itself and that this is going to go the way of lobotomies. In ten or twenty years time "affirming" a child who declares that he or she wants to be the opposite sex is going to be seen to be on a par with agreeing with an anorectic that she is too fat and prescribing a low-calorie diet and liposuction.

We can agree that will be a good outcome (and as Jordan Peterson pointed out inevitable given the lawsuits down the road), but does that solve your problem? As I understand it, your issue is more with grown men transitioning to females less than completely and demanding access to female spaces. And on that issue the media is virtually 100% against you and unlikely to change.

 

[shuttlt]

I think straightforwardly that reality has a habit of reasserting itself and that this is going to go the way of lobotomies. In ten or twenty years time "affirming" a child who declares that he or she wants to be the opposite sex is going to be seen to be on a par with agreeing with an anorectic that she is too fat and prescribing a low-calorie diet and liposuction.

Do you think that this is a discrete idea that, for some reason, the universities, media, activist organisations, politicians have all taken up due to some unfortunate mistake of fact? It seems to me that this is just a particular manifestation of a radical world view that has slowly been gaining power in academia, in HR departments, in media. It could be that they drop this issue at some point in the future, but the people in power in all these places do not believe in the reality that you believe in. If you go back to the intellectuals behind radical left wing politics in the 60s and 70s, you see these things in Marcuse, Foucault, Althusser. Obviously your average person marching for them, just wants peace, love and dope.... but have you read what Queer Theorists have been writing for decades? All you are seeing is what happens when they are powerful enough to implement their ideas. I don't see them changing ideas that entire academic fields are based around. Equally, they don't seem likely to lose power any time soon.

 

[Emily's Cat]

No. My post in no way either compared or equated the KKK with women.

The question I was addressing was whether certain groups - which by their defined nature are reactionary and bigoted - should be invited into policy consultations. The poster was highlighting the fact that the Catholic Church was not consulted on transgender policy in Scotland. And the poster was stating that literally any & all interested parties should/must be allowed to participate in the consultation process.

So my response was to ask whether the KKK - which was most definitely an interested party - should have automatically been allowed to participate in consultations on black civil rights policy and legislation. Because, per the poster's stated POV, the KKK certainly should have been allowed to participate.

I wasn't actually comparing the KKK with any group in particular. Although if one was to try to draw any kind of implied comparison, the only feasible comparison would have been with the Catholic Church regarding transgender rights policy/legislation. But there's simply no logical way in which one could infer that I was comparing the KKK with the community of (cis)women, nor for that matter any (cis)women's activist groups.

Nah. That was your misdirection on the topic. Let me remind you of the quote that set it off:

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.

And since the material information seems to elude you, NO MEETINGS WERE HELD WITH OPPOSITIONAL GROUPS.

That is, the only groups consulted were those with a pro-trans-everything view. GROUPS REPRESENTING AN OPPOSING VIEW WERE NOT CONSULTED.

Including, GROUP REPRESENTING THE INTEREST OF FEMALES.

This is information in direct contradiction to your baseless assertion that:

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.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Yes of course, the two other groups you list are affected by the same issues. And those two groups - specifically in the context of discussion about transgender identity - are known as cismen and transmen. I, for example, am a cisman (in the context of transgender-identity-related issues: outside of that context I am simply a man).

You're sidestepping, and once again failing to answer a clear and direct question.

I (and others) object to being FORCIBLY cast as a subset of our own sex class, and having our sex class extended to include people who are NOT part of our sex class.

You said that it's respectful to use the terms ciswomen and transwomen when talking about issues that affect both female people and males with identity issues.

I asked you specifically WHAT ISSUES affect those two groups that do NOT affect males or females with identity issues.

Your response is effectively that any issue that affects both females and 'transwomen' also affects males and 'transmen'... in which case it simply affects all people, and there's no need to muddy the waters with any additional subclasses.

So I will ask once again: What issues affect both females and males with identity issues?

 

[Emily's Cat]

A consistent approach from you; let transwomen into female spaces unless and until you can prove actual harm.

And this completely ignores the work done by the UK Sports Councils.

Can you not see why women object to this?

Also ignores the fact that this approach uses females as sacrificial guinea pigs, without any care whatsoever for the harm faced... at least until some really "well-measured" and "detailed study" can be conducted that can quantify an as-yet-designed threshold of harm.

Questions to the extent of "How much harm is acceptable for females to incur before you consider it too much" consistently go unanswered. From which I am sorely tempted to infer that no amount of harm to females is "too much".

 

[Emily's Cat]

It is interesting now that it appears more girls than boys are identifying as trans, that we never hear anything about these sorts of problems on that side. Granted, because of the physical differences, trans-men do not gain any advantages in sports by transitioning. But we also never hear about trans-exclusionary gay men.

We're starting to hear about trans-exclusionary gay males. Males who are exclusively attracted to other males are now being smeared as "bigots" who have "genital fetishes" also.

 

[jimbob]

Putting this thread on moderated status after (yet) another clear out


Remember that this is discussing Trans people and not how awful the other side is

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: jimbob

 

[Emily's Cat]

I think this thing about boys who have never progressed past Tanner 2 is a side-show. Disturbed children who are pushing to transition early and children with the potential to become seriously competitive athletes are not groups that have a lot of overlap, if any.

I think if any such boys do come forward to get involved in competitive sport, it's more likely they'll get injured in training than that they'll beat healthy girls. Puberty blockers are the last thing you want to be taking for healthy bones, muscles and cardiovascular system.

I think they put the clause in just in case someone like Jazz Jennings or Suzie Green's kid wanted to get involved. Such people do exist after all. I think however it's highly unlikely that this is a practical likelihood. Does Jazz Jennings look like the next Sharron Davies to anyone? And the last I heard about the Green sprog, he was out of commission with multiple fractures.

The clause could make it easy for CAIS girls to compete without people getting all upset about SRY genes, though.

It's a sop to one of the argumentative talking points I've run across. We talk about the very definite and well known, well-studied differences in male and female athletic performance, and the role that male puberty plays in developing those differences. And without fail, someone comes along with "Well what about males who very went through male puberty at all, huh? What about them?"

Even though it's throwing a bone, I'm pleased with the approach. Particularly as it DOES include people with CCSDs that leave them competitive with general females.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

I think straightforwardly that reality has a habit of reasserting itself and that this is going to go the way of lobotomies. In ten or twenty years time "affirming" a child who declares that he or she wants to be the opposite sex is going to be seen to be on a par with agreeing with an anorectic that she is too fat and prescribing a low-calorie diet and liposuction.

I wish I agreed with you, but I think things will head in the opposite direction. We’ll have transgender appreciation month, and you won’t even be able to say many of the things you’ve said in this thread without incurring great costs. Power is already aligned against you, and will continue to do so.

Hope I’m wrong and you’re right, but there you have it.

 

[lionking]

It's not contrarianism. I've spent quite a bit of time reading about the history of liberalism, the new left in the 60s... effectively the history of the ideas we see motivating people at the moment. By all means disagree on my interpretation, but I'm not saying anything out of a desire to disagree. As much as I like you Rolfe, all I see from you, and Emily's Cat, is the same boomer 2nd wave feminist analysis of everything. You've had left wing activists doing what we see the activists in that video doing, dressed exactly as those activists are dressed for years now. Some kind of 1970s idea of misogyny and the patriarchy is a bad explanation for their motivation. Books where modern progressives explain their ideas have been on the NYT best seller list. Sainsbury's was selling them very prominently during last black history month.

Your desire to maintain the old definition of woman, your concerns that women need to be protected from men are conservative concerns. You want to conserve the things that progressives were fighting for 40 years ago. Those people clad in black know conservatism when they see it. That is why they are behaving as they are. The core ideas aren't even that different to the ones back in '68, it's just that things are now at a point where they can be more fully realised.

I'm not being a contrarian. I straightforwardly think you are wrong.

What on earth are you talking about? How is the desire to protect women from men anything other than a desire to protect women from men?

 

[Rolfe]

We can agree that will be a good outcome (and as Jordan Peterson pointed out inevitable given the lawsuits down the road), but does that solve your problem? As I understand it, your issue is more with grown men transitioning to females less than completely and demanding access to female spaces. And on that issue the media is virtually 100% against you and unlikely to change.

Do you think that this is a discrete idea that, for some reason, the universities, media, activist organisations, politicians have all taken up due to some unfortunate mistake of fact? It seems to me that this is just a particular manifestation of a radical world view that has slowly been gaining power in academia, in HR departments, in media. It could be that they drop this issue at some point in the future, but the people in power in all these places do not believe in the reality that you believe in. If you go back to the intellectuals behind radical left wing politics in the 60s and 70s, you see these things in Marcuse, Foucault, Althusser. Obviously your average person marching for them, just wants peace, love and dope.... but have you read what Queer Theorists have been writing for decades? All you are seeing is what happens when they are powerful enough to implement their ideas. I don't see them changing ideas that entire academic fields are based around. Equally, they don't seem likely to lose power any time soon.

Well, time will tell. I sense a turning tide, but more like the time it takes to turn a tanker. We'll see.

 

[theprestige]

Woman and former Olympic swimmer Sharon Davies speaks out in favor of fixing what the trans-activists broke:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...l-but-female-athletes-must-speak-up-xllplkmp3

tl;dr - the trans ban should be extended to all sports.

 

[d4m10n]

If you go back to the intellectuals behind radical left wing politics in the 60s and 70s, you see these things in Marcuse, Foucault, Althusser.

I'd be interested in knowing what those folks had to say about how gender identity (or something substantively equivalent) should shape public policy.

 

[Puppycow]

World swimming bans transgender athletes from women's events

BUDAPEST, Hungary -- World swimming’s governing body has effectively banned transgender women from competing in women’s events, starting Monday.

FINA members widely adopted a new “gender inclusion policy” on Sunday that only permits swimmers who transitioned before age 12 to compete in women’s events. The organization also proposed an “open competition category.”

“This is not saying that people are encouraged to transition by the age of 12. It’s what the scientists are saying, that if you transition after the start of puberty, you have an advantage, which is unfair,” James Pearce, who is the spokesperson for FINA president Husain Al-Musallam, told The Associated Press.

There seem to be a lot of devils in those details, like what exactly do they mean by "transition"? Social transition? Puberty blockers? Cross-sex hormones? Did they just open up another can of worms?

 

[Graham2001]

Well, time will tell. I sense a turning tide, but more like the time it takes to turn a tanker. We'll see.

I found this article by a Transgendered writer on Glen Lourie's substack, she's describing her own experience, but right at the start makes a clear point, she's all in favour of transition around the ages of 16 - 18, once people have reached the age where they might understand the consequences of their choices.


The whole 'affirmation' movement makes me think of the Repressed Memory movement, which encouraged many girls to believe that if they '...thought they'd been raped by their fathers...' then they had been and that such views should be affirmed, not questioned.

The position of “my body my choice” is now mainstream in some parts of the United States. When this position becomes an ultimatum and a threat, it must be condemned as irresponsible and unethical. If trans suicide is mentioned at all, it is usually to shame or guilt people who are not trans. I would like to see more calls to value life (and the necessary institutions that make life comfortable and possible) from trans people themselves. This means that “my body my choice” has limits. “One shouldn’t harm oneself because one feels badly” must go hand in hand with my “body my choice.”

https://glennloury.substack.com/p/gender-dysphoria-and-self-harm

 

[shuttlt]

I'd be interested in knowing what those folks had to say about how gender identity (or something substantively equivalent) should shape public policy.

In it's simplest form, it is a call to upend society so that abnormal is normal since normal was only ever considered such because it served power. There is no intrinsic meaning to "woman" it is just a tool of power that is used to bestow privilege on some people, and withhold it from others. Gender identity is just the current way of deconstructing and upending "normal".

As to public policy, isn't that kind of what we are talking about here. You demand the removal of taboos and prohibitions that favour the normal over the abnormal. The famous pro-paedophilia petition all those French intellectuals signed back in the 70s would be a classic example of a policy demand. There is a pretty good connection between the people who signed it and queer theory, which then underpins a lot of modern trans-activism.

You are an old time, d4m10n... I suspect you know quite a bit of this already.

 

[lionking]

In it's simplest form, it is a call to upend society so that abnormal is normal since normal was only ever considered such because it served power. There is no intrinsic meaning to "woman" it is just a tool of power that is used to bestow privilege on some people, and withhold it from others. Gender identity is just the current way of deconstructing and upending "normal".

As to public policy, isn't that kind of what we are talking about here. You demand the removal of taboos and prohibitions that favour the normal over the abnormal. The famous pro-paedophilia petition all those French intellectuals signed back in the 70s would be a classic example of a policy demand. There is a pretty good connection between the people who signed it and queer theory, which then underpins a lot of modern trans-activism.

You are an old time, d4m10n... I suspect you know quite a bit of this already.

Yes there is. There are plenty of dictionaries to assist with your confusion.

 

[shuttlt]

Yes there is. There are plenty of dictionaries to assist with your confusion.

It isn't my confusion. I was asked to summarise a political/philosophical tradition. In that tradition, the meaning of words like "woman" are arbitrary and serve the interests of reinforcing power hierarchies. Pointing to the dictionary is hardly a rebuttal of that.