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Cont: Trans women are not women (IX)

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Puppycow said:
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?
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Actual policy details are linked upthread.
 
I thought this article discussing LGBT Clubs in school, and affirmation in general, to be a good read. The author is a gay male, who was bullied due to their sexuality when they were in secondary school. Their experience prompted them to try to shield their students from the harm they endured by starting an LGBT & Allies club to provide a safe space for them.

Looking back now, they realize they likely did more harm than good. One of the points they make is that what they said and what students heard were very, very different things. When they said "you're fine the way you are", what they meant was "there is nothing at all wrong with your body or your orientation, this will work out even though it's tough right now, and you will come to accept yourself as you are". But what their students were hearing was "your chosen identity is accurate and you should change your body to fir the stereotype of that identity".

The underlying disconnect, in this teacher's view, is that students exist in a fundamentally different place now than when they were a student. I think this observation is pretty profound, and something that adults really need to take into consideration:
Based on what I observed in school, there are two trends that have coalesced to produce the rapid increase in trans-identifying children in this country. First, all children are now permanently attached to their phones in constant dialogue with each other (rather than their families) through text, clips and emojis through an array of social media platforms. Parents have ceded total control to their children, and have little to no idea of the kind of content to which thier children are exposed: easily accessible pornography, unattainable body standards, violence, sexualised music and, worst of all, the constant, incessant gaze of their peers. When a child sits in their bedroom alone with their phone, they are in fact sitting in their bedroom with complete strangers they have met online.
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Emphasis mine

The author also makes a good point that most teachers (probably most activists too, imo) have good intentions. They mean well. But most teachers don't realize that the message children are receiving isn't the message they intend to send:
I simply cannot believe that any teacher – or adult – would in their right mind knowingly encourage a child to think they need surgery or drugs to make themselves feel better about how they look. However when you agree to use pronouns that do not align with a child’s biological sex without question, that is effectively the message being sent to them because that is the message they are hearing from the strangers they meet on social media.
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All in all, I think it's a good, compassionate, and well-thought-out article. The teacher is clearly coming at this from a position of care for children, but is also now aware that their good intentions may have been paving a path to a bad outcome.

Is a school LGBT club a good idea?
 
shuttlt said:
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.
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Okay, I get that. My question (perhaps poorly worded) was whether the founders of the philosophical tradition in question ever clarified how their critical theories ought to deal with conceptual categories like "man" and "woman" and similarly gendered terms.

I think what you're saying is that once one concedes that conceptual categories are created not for the sake of describing reality but for the sake of inscribing power relations, then one ought to expect the sort of results we've seen, regardless of whether the founders of critical theory actually contemplated any specific issues around gender identity.
 
d4m10n said:
Okay, I get that. My question (perhaps poorly worded) was whether the founders of the philosophical tradition in question ever clarified how their critical theories ought to deal with conceptual categories like "man" and "woman" and similarly gendered terms.
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That I couldn't tell you. It seems like a modern construction for them to mention. Sexuality, sex roles and the like certainly get mentioned. It's kind of a theory of everything though. The only filter is what you choose to apply it to rather than what it could be applied to.

d4m10n said:
I think what you're saying is that once one concedes that conceptual categories are created not for the sake of describing reality but for the sake of inscribing power relations, then one ought to expect the sort of results we've seen, regardless of whether the founders of critical theory actually contemplated any specific issues around gender identity.
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Yes. They were coming up with this stuff between the wars. It was an environment where psychoanalysis was being integrated into Marxist thought, so issues of sexual identity and abnormal sexuality would certainly have been amongst the things they were drawing from. I don't think the current notion of gender identity had been formulated then, so they could hardly have been explicitly talking about that.

These sort of ideas have an inertia to them. Once you set them going in society, they keep ploughing forward and don't necessarily respect the scope their creators intended to bound them in.
 
Megan Rapinoe gives her opinion:
https://time.com/6188583/megan-rapinoe-equal-pay-title-ix-transgender-sports-bans/

And I think people also need to understand that sports is not the most important thing in life, right? Life is the most important thing in life. And so much of this trans inclusion argument has been put through the extremely tiny lens of elite sports. Like that is not the way that we need to be framing this question. We’re talking about kids. We’re talking about people’s lives. We’re talking about the entire state government coming down on one child in some states, three children in some states. They are committing suicide, because they are being told that they’re gross and different and evil and sinful and they can’t play sports with their friends that they grew up with. Not to mention trying to take away health care. I think it’s monstrous.

I would also encourage everyone out there who is afraid someone’s going to have an unfair advantage over their kid to really take a step back and think what are we actually talking about here. We’re talking about people’s lives. I’m sorry, your kid’s high school volleyball team just isn’t that important. It’s not more important than any one kid’s life.

Show me the evidence that trans women are taking everyone’s scholarships, are dominating in every sport, are winning every title. I’m sorry, it’s just not happening. So we need to start from inclusion, period. And as things arise, I have confidence that we can figure it out. But we can’t start at the opposite. That is cruel. And frankly, it’s just disgusting.
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shuttlt said:
Megan Rapinoe gives her opinion:
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Rapinoe made her living (and pretty good money too) playing professional women's sports, something that was only possible because the sport was sex segregated. Without sex segregation, Rapinoe couldn't compete against high school males. She owes her entire career to sex segregation.

But her career is almost over now. She's coming close to aging out, and she's already off the roster for the "SheBelieves Cup". So none of this really matters to her. If sex segregation goes away, it won't really impact her. She no longer has skin in the game.

So when she says, "And as things arise, I have confidence that we can figure it out", she can have that confidence because she risks nothing. If they can't figure it out, it's no skin off her nose. If harm is done to the sport in the process of figuring it out, she won't pay any price. This is just another example of radical activism on the part of someone with no actual stake in the outcome.
 
Oh, I'm not mentioning Rapinoe because I think she is honest. Quite the reverse.
 
Rapinoe seems to be complaining that now a thing has arisen, we're trying to figure it out.

I fully understand that elite sports isn't the whole enchilada, or even a big part of it. But I like the lens of elite sports, because it is a powerfully-focusing lens. Whatever answer we land on for elite sports, it will inform all our other answers.

It will inform how we approach gender dysphoria as a condition that needs treatment, and it will inform our public policy decisions about this condition.

It will inform how we approach gender self-ID, and what accommodations and entitlements we recognize for it, in public policy.

It will inform how we manage student athletics at all levels. It will inform how we handle gender ambiguity and confusion among prepubescent children.

It will inform our policies for women's shelters, women's locker rooms, and women's representation in politics and commerce.

So when trans-inclusionists try to deflect from the sports question, saying, "it's not just about sports!", my response is, "true, it's not just about sports. So let's figure out the sports question, and then see what that tells us about all the other questions."
 
theprestige said:
Rapinoe seems to be complaining that now a thing has arisen, we're trying to figure it out.

I fully understand that elite sports isn't the whole enchilada, or even a big part of it. But I like the lens of elite sports, because it is a powerfully-focusing lens. Whatever answer we land on for elite sports, it will inform all our other answers.
It will inform how we approach gender dysphoria as a condition that needs treatment, and it will inform our public policy decisions about this condition.

It will inform how we approach gender self-ID, and what accommodations and entitlements we recognize for it, in public policy.

It will inform how we manage student athletics at all levels. It will inform how we handle gender ambiguity and confusion among prepubescent children.

It will inform our policies for women's shelters, women's locker rooms, and women's representation in politics and commerce.

So when trans-inclusionists try to deflect from the sports question, saying, "it's not just about sports!", my response is, "true, it's not just about sports. So let's figure out the sports question, and then see what that tells us about all the other questions."
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That right there may be why trans rights advocates are so insistent in inclusion to sports.

My stance is that a conclusion about sports should not inform policies for other topics like bathrooms, healthcare, etc. I don't believe a one size fits all circumstances answer is the best we can do.

Different situations have different concerns and consequences. Allowing trans-women into bathrooms should not mean you send them to women's prisons. Allowing trans-women their pronouns at work should not mean they get to use women's locker rooms. And saying that trans-women are not eligible for female sports divisions should not mean that they should not be considered women in other areas.

Tying all of the answers to all situations together forces the other side to do the same.
 
I have to agree with Tom on the rejection of "one size fits all" solutions.

It should be illegal to fire someone just for being trans, unless their job description specifically requires sexed attributes (e.g. WNBA player, pregnancy surrogate, sperm donor).
 
TomB said:
That right there may be why trans rights advocates are so insistent in inclusion to sports.

My stance is that a conclusion about sports should not inform policies for other topics like bathrooms, healthcare, etc. I don't believe a one size fits all circumstances answer is the best we can do.

Different situations have different concerns and consequences. Allowing trans-women into bathrooms should not mean you send them to women's prisons. Allowing trans-women their pronouns at work should not mean they get to use women's locker rooms. And saying that trans-women are not eligible for female sports divisions should not mean that they should not be considered women in other areas.

Tying all of the answers to all situations together forces the other side to do the same.
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Edited by sarge: 
removed rule 12 violation


Why are the feelings of women who are having their privacy invaded in what used to be women's single-sex intimate spaces of no account, while transwomen's desires to invade these spaces are prioritised? Why are we suggesting that compelled speech be enforced because correct English might hurt a transwoman's feelings?

They aren't women, no matter what space they are trying to inhabit. That's why the sports thing is so important. It provides a clear bright line that distinguishes between women and men LARPing "woman" which completely negates the TRA objective that there should be no difference whatsoever between the girl and the bearded man who wants to get off on being close to her while she changes her sanitary pad.

Sports shows that we can tell the difference between men and women when we have to. It lifts the lid on the whole deceptive can of worms. We're done being "kind", and being pity-shamed into giving up our intimate spaces just because men thing they're of no importance, unlike Olympic sport apparently.
 
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d4m10n said:
It should be illegal to fire someone just for being trans, unless their job description specifically requires sexed attributes (e.g. WNBA player, pregnancy surrogate, sperm donor).
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I don’t think anyone here disagrees with this.

In fact, I’d even go a step further. In the examples you listed, even being trans isn’t really the issue. Those cases involve disqualification for being the wrong sex, not for being trans. A trans man (not a trans woman) should be able to play in the WNBA (provided they aren’t on testosterone, since that’s categorically banned). A trans man should be allowed to be a pregnancy surrogate (provided they are capable of completing the pregnancy safely). A transwomen should be allowed to be a sperm donor (provided they are virile).
 
Rolfe said:
I wonder how Shuttit views this piece.

‘You had me at underdog’: How the Left fell for Big Pharma
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OK. I'll read it an comment as I go.

But given Marxists have historically ‘had a thing’ for material reality, the pairing with transgenderism seems unlikely.
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Marxism of the sort being referred to here is a phenomenon of the 19th century. This is as if the crisis that ended modernism never happened. Intellectuals were moving away from this materialist, modernist Marxism from at least the inter-war period and certainly by the 60s. That's not to say that a lot of plodding foot soldiers didn't get the message.

They make an odd couple – transgenderism is the cherry on capitalism’s rainbow cupcake, the marketing of an impossible dream and the reduction of people to saleable parts.
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Again, this seems to be talking about Marxism and Capitalism as if it was 1890. The project of the past 100 years from the academy has been to make the the left compatible with oligarchic capitalism, and assist it in centralising power, and destroying rival institutions while taking over their bureaucracies.

Marxism, and the left more broadly, has traditionally recognised that material conditions can’t be identified into and out of at will
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This looks like a classical Marxist view. That was pretty much dropped 50 years ago.

Whether the relationship lasts has yet to be seen, but just as with all love affairs that play out in public, the attraction between the left and transgenderism has provoked fevered speculation.
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I don't know what to say. The whole trans thing is just the vanguard of queer theory. All these arguments have been running for 50 years now based on forerunner ideas that have been running for 100 years.

Heyer is one of those who holds that a cadre of intellectuals known as the Frankfurt School embarked on a quest to subvert Western society with a culture war. The foundational idea is that a revolution could be fermented if sexual and social norms were broken down, and that this required the ideological capture by a “long march through the institutions”. It would be unfair to characterise everyone who promotes the idea of cultural Marxism as antisemitic, but there is a strong and unpleasant whiff of antisemitism through the theory which firmly points the finger of blame at the Jewish thinkers who comprised the majority of those within the Frankfurt School.
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This is kind of tricky. The Frankfurt school was a predominantly Jewish thing and was heavily involved in denazification and pathologizing the right. Accusations of antisemitism pretty much make themselves if you go down this path.

The theory that sometime in the last century a committed band of ideologues orchestrated an ideological take-over seems somewhat unlikely. Anyone who’s attended meetings of left-wing parties will know that even the purchase of teabags will involve setting-up a committee to discern which brand is the least tainted by imperialism. That a notoriously divided and chaotic left could lay a long plan to ferment a generation of revolutionary foot soldiers is a bonkers idea. But the appeal is obvious – cultural Marxism offers a seductive explanation for those trying to make sense of seemingly nonsensical ideology.
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This is simply untrue. My father was involved in the new left in the 60s. I've been reading left wing books about the period. This is argument from incredulity. Is she really saying that Marxists are far too disorganised and bumbling to take anything over? Really?

She concludes that transgenderism offers an opportunity for disenfranchised young men to be both victims and heroes in a movement that conveniently “reinvents, rejuvenates the argument that puts feminists on the right” and “justifies the exclusion of older women from the public sphere and creates spaces for males to get access to younger women and children.”

Brew adds, “It gives an opportunity for young women and men to be self-righteous – to channel socially sanctioned anger.”
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Probably some of this. Society has been changed so everything is seen in terms of bourgeoisie/proletariat, oppressor/oppressed and you get all sorts of benefits by being able to identify yourself as "oppressed". Things have been moving that way for at least 60 years. You clearly see it when the new left mapped the bourgeoisie/proletariat model on to race and sex in the early 60s. All that is happening is a natural extension of that. This is not a classically "right wing" way to organise a society.

To Brew, the left is not just infatuated with transgenderism; it has been largely replaced by it.
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The left of "the working man" was replaced a long time ago. In academia, it was being replaced in the 60s, in politics it was in the late 90s. The focus shifted onto race and sex. All that's happening is that women are being dumped in the way the working class were.

And unlike the failed class war, the battle against ‘TERFS’ or ‘gender criticals’ offers a real chance of victory. This is in part because those on the mainstream left are standing on the same side as every multinational corporation.
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Well, yes. This was the plan of people like Gramsci. They realised in the 1920s that the working class were never going to bring about the revolution. What she's doing now is describing their plan.
 
Rolfe said:
I wonder how Shuttit views this piece.

‘You had me at underdog’: How the Left fell for Big Pharma
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While I wait for my other post to appear. I realised I had something to add...

One thing to think about is that you have, arguably, a change the occurs in the organisation of society. In the age Marx was writing, it's the age of Capitalism. Individual men, with a vision and a bunch of capital forged empires. That mostly died with Henry Ford... sure there are exceptions like Elon Musk, but the point stands. What took over was management and bureaucracy. No longer was the factory owned by one man, with that one man taking the decisions.... now the factory is run by managers, is owned by various investment firms run by managers, whose capital comes from various pension funds, run by managers. Look at Elon Musk's bid for Twitter. Most of the people on the board didn't own any Twitter stock, or owned trivial amounts.

James Burnham wrote about this in the 1940s. Effectively his claim was that the Communists and the Fascists operated in this way. Technocratic rule. Management rule. Bureaucratic rule. He saw the US under FDR as just being less far down the same road.

Looking at the left as some opposition to to capitalism is wrong. The game is one of bureaucracy and centralisation and globalisation.

If this is capitalism, it is the system of the managers of capital, not the owners of capital.

 
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