Cont: Trans women are not women (IX)

[theprestige]

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 think it will actually serve to separate out the various issues. Primarily it will separate sex from gender, and clarify where we are quite rightly segregating by sex: Sports, prisons, for example.

It will also illuminate the grey areas where we are probably segregating by sex and may wish to continue doing so in an informed way: Locker rooms restrooms, representation in commerce and politics.

And it will resolve all the other areas where the issue is gender. Mainly because in all the areas where the issue is gender, it turns out that gender doesn't really matter much. Pronouns? Sure. Dudes wearing dresses? No problem! Girls wearing blue jumpers and playing with army men? By all means!

Honestly that third category is what I thought the issue was, back when this thread started. I thought it was mostly about being more welcoming of transgender expressions in a few key areas. Over the course of this thread, I've come to realize that gender really doesn't matter. Express whatever you want. Roleplay whatever idea of *gender makes you happy. And I've come to realize that the real issue is sex segregation, and that there are serious problems with ignoring or dismissing sex segregation. And that the trans-activist community absolutely does not have women's best interests in mind, with their approach to sex segregation.

All of this becomes clear, the moment we have a clear answer for elite sports.

 

[d4m10n]

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.

Fair enough; I meant to convey that people may be reasonably disqualified from those jobs or gigs when they have transitioned into the sex of people who perform them. As you've shown, those who transitioned the other way should still be allowed, given other qualifications.

Much of what has been called transphobic in these nine thread comes down to making sex-at-birth-based distinctions in situations where most people continue to believe those distinctions ought to matter.

 

[Rolfe]

I think it will actually serve to separate out the various issues. Primarily it will separate sex from gender, and clarify where we are quite rightly segregating by sex: Sports, prisons, for example.

It will also illuminate the grey areas where we are probably segregating by sex and may wish to continue doing so in an informed way: Locker rooms restrooms, representation in commerce and politics.

And it will resolve all the other areas where the issue is gender. Mainly because in all the areas where the issue is gender, it turns out that gender doesn't really matter much. Pronouns? Sure. Dudes wearing dresses? No problem! Girls wearing blue jumpers and playing with army men? By all means!

Honestly that third category is what I thought the issue was, back when this thread started. I thought it was mostly about being more welcoming of transgender expressions in a few key areas. Over the course of this thread, I've come to realize that gender really doesn't matter. Express whatever you want. Roleplay whatever idea of *gender makes you happy. And I've come to realize that the real issue is sex segregation, and that there are serious problems with ignoring or dismissing sex segregation. And that the trans-activist community absolutely does not have women's best interests in mind, with their approach to sex segregation.

All of this becomes clear, the moment we have a clear answer for elite sports.

Several people have asked in the past, but never got a clear answer. Is there really any area of life where we should be segregating, strictly, by law, on gender?

What do transwomen have in common with women that men don't have in common with women? In other words, what do transwomen have in common with women that we don't all have in common with the human race as a whole?

Sure, toy shops will segregate toys by "gender" and it's a bad idea, but nobody is suggesting that kids be legally prohibited from going into the area of the shop with the "wrong" toys. Clothes shops will segregate clothes into women's wear and menswear, which is not a bad idea because our bodies are differently shaped before you even start on fashion choices. But people should not be prohibited from browsing among the clothes intended for the opposite sex or gender.

But once a male decides he wants to try on clothes in a fitting room, that's where sex segregation snaps into place, and no, he should not be permitted to do that in the women's fitting rooms, because that is an intimate space that should remain single-sex.

I cannot think of a single area of life where gender segregation needs to be enforced.

 

[theprestige]

Fair enough; I meant to convey that people may be reasonably disqualified from those jobs or gigs when they have transitioned into the sex of people who perform them. As you've shown, those who transitioned the other way should still be allowed, given other qualifications.

Much of what has been called transphobic in these nine thread comes down to making sex-at-birth-based distinctions in situations where most people continue to believe those distinctions ought to matter.

There is no such thing as transition to the opposite sex. That's the point. Transcend gender all you want. What really matters is sex, and that can't be transcended. This is why getting an answer for elite sports is so clarifying. Precisely because it makes absolutely clear that gender is irrelevant, and immutable sex is what matters.

 

[shuttlt]

There is no such thing as transition to the opposite sex. That's the point. Transcend gender all you want. What really matters is sex, and that can't be transcended. This is why getting an answer for elite sports is so clarifying. Precisely because it makes absolutely clear that gender is irrelevant, and immutable sex is what matters.

This is only as long as we define sex in a way that you can't transcend it. Why would this stop at gender?

 

[theprestige]

This is only as long as we define sex in a way that you can't transcend it. Why would this stop at gender?

It won't stop at gender. And that will also be clarifying. In fact, this process is already going on. Men in women's sports. Men in women's prisons. Pregnant women admitting to the hospital as men. Sexual attraction being demonized as a metric for sexual identification of others.

I've been saying for a couple years now that transgenderism is a stalking horse for transsexualism. That's now becoming obvious, I think.

 

[Rolfe]

This is only as long as we define sex in a way that you can't transcend it. Why would this stop at gender?

This is trivially easy to do. As opposed to defining "woman" in such a way that only a particular subset of males gets to be included.

You're entitled to believe that this is all a lost cause (though not entitled to imply that women should therefore lie down and concede defeat), but the contradictions, the insanity of it all are becoming more and more evident the more they escape into the light.

To me, what I am seeing is more the beginning of the rout of the people who got a long way under the radar, but do not have a case that will stand up to honest public scrutiny. There is a long way to go still, and no doubt the captured organisations and officials will fight back, but the rational definition of sex is going to win out over "you can't say that, it will hurt someone's feelings and they might kill themselves!" rhetoric.

 

[d4m10n]

There is no such thing as transition to the opposite sex.

Not 100% but FtM individuals rather often take on many of the secondary sex characteristics of their acquired sex. (Hence the abbreviation.)

What really matters is sex, and that can't be transcended.

I don't know if we're in a good position to say "what really matters" to people who are dealing with dysphoria, a mental state which I've some trouble wrapping my head around.

This is why getting an answer for elite sports is so clarifying. Precisely because it makes absolutely clear that gender is irrelevant, and immutable sex is what matters.

Again, I cannot concede that what is true for sports is going to be true in other areas of human endeavor. It may be that gender identity and expression matter much more in other areas, e.g. where to shop for clothing.

 

[Rolfe]

Not 100% but FtM individuals rather often take on many of the secondary sex characteristics of their acquired sex. (Hence the abbreviation.)

They're still not male though. Even Buck Angel gets it.

I don't know if we're in a good position to say "what really matters" to people who are dealing with dysphoria, a mental state which I've some trouble wrapping my head around.

You know what? Changing the entire world around to pander to "what really matters" to a group of people with a mental illness that causes them to be both narcissistic and extremely demanding is a mug's game. Nothing will ever be enough. (I saw one on twitter the other day having a melt-down because he'd read the words "the girls" or "us girls" in a normal we're-talking-about-female-human-beings sense, because he'd got it into his head this was a phrase trademarked by the trans community and now these horrible transphobes are even stealing that!)

Again, I cannot concede that what is true for sports is going to be true in other areas of human endeavor. It may be that gender identity and expression matter much more in other areas, e.g. where to shop for clothing.

Nobody cares where anyone shops for clothing. It is not something that is or should be regulated by law. People care when they find other people of the opposite sex in their changing rooms, which need to be segregated by sex. Find some other way to allow males to select and purchase clothing designed for females, which they should be perfectly at liberty to do.

Nothing needs to be segregated by anyone's chosen "gender identity" as far as I can see. Sport is showing the way as regards how to define sex and make that stick by enforceable regulations. That absolutely needs to become the norm in absolutely all areas of human endeavour.

 

[theprestige]

Not 100% but FtM individuals rather often take on many of the secondary sex characteristics of their acquired sex. (Hence the abbreviation.)

Secondary sex characteristics don't make the man.

I don't know if we're in a good position to say "what really matters" to people who are dealing with dysphoria, a mental state which I've some trouble wrapping my head around.

Point taken. However. One area that I think needs more clarification is what "gender dysphoria" actually is. Is it a social anxiety, about gender conformity? Is it a distress about one's physical body, akin to BIID? Are there two separate conditions here, which require distinct diagnoses and entirely separate courses of treatment? Are there three separate conditions here, and autogynaephilia needs to be explicitly taken into account?

Further, all of the areas that actually matter for public policy are areas of sex segregation. The issues of gender identification and gender nonconformity are already well-addressed in public policy (at least in the liberal democracies of the western world).

Again, I cannot concede that what is true for sports is going to be true in other areas of human endeavor. It may be that gender identity and expression matter much more in other areas, e.g. where to shop for clothing.

Where to shop for clothing is already well-handled in public policy. Discrimination for showing up to work in non-gender-conforming attire is well addressed by public policy.

The only remaining areas of difficulty in public policy, where we are struggling to be inclusive, but also fair and safe and rational, are areas of sexual disparity, not gender conformity.

 

[Aber]

I thought it was mostly about being more welcoming of transgender expressions in a few key areas. Over the course of this thread, I've come to realize that gender really doesn't matter. Express whatever you want. Roleplay whatever idea of *gender makes you happy. And I've come to realize that the real issue is sex segregation, and that there are serious problems with ignoring or dismissing sex segregation.

Agreed

And this becomes even clearer when you throw "non-binary" into the mix.

 

[LondonJohn]

For information and education (and "entertainment" I suppose, if one is that way inclined):

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/articl...s-who-transitioned-genders-during-remote-work

 

[shuttlt]

This is trivially easy to do. As opposed to defining "woman" in such a way that only a particular subset of males gets to be included.

I agree it is trivially easy to do. Equally, defining woman has been trivially easy to do since the beginning of recorded history. If there is a will to problematise the definition, then it is going to get problematic.

You're entitled to believe that this is all a lost cause (though not entitled to imply that women should therefore lie down and concede defeat), but the contradictions, the insanity of it all are becoming more and more evident the more they escape into the light.

I don't think it is a lost cause. Or at least I'm not sure that it is. I just think it is a much larger battle than you do. I don't think you will win any lasting victory by fighting it as if an otherwise sane society suddenly got confused about the definition of "woman" and thought putting male sex offenders in woman's prisons was sensible. Those aren't random policies that our leaders settled on for no reason.

To me, what I am seeing is more the beginning of the rout of the people who got a long way under the radar, but do not have a case that will stand up to honest public scrutiny.

Progressive ideas generally don't have popular support. They capture elite opinion. The older generation of feminists who oppose this stuff still have some power. Best case scenario, this get's pushed back. It won't get pushed back to where it was before though. Education will continue pushing these ideas in schools and the academy.

It's like fighting Scottish independence, I don't see any route to a stable victory, the best that can be done is to kick total defeat down the road a bit. If one were going to defeat it, one would have to address why the idea is compelling and how it was able to take hold (and outwit Blair - no mean feat). Scottish independence, such as it is, has been the work of decades. Trans-activism is the same... only it's international and the source of it is in the US.

There is a long way to go still, and no doubt the captured organisations and officials will fight back, but the rational definition of sex is going to win out over "you can't say that, it will hurt someone's feelings and they might kill themselves!" rhetoric.

Why will it win? Where is that written? I'm with Lawrence of Arabia.... "nothing is written". There is nothing divinely ordained about our culture. I agree that there will be all sorts of unfortunate consequences, but that doesn't mean it will be possible to put the toothpaste back in the tube. These things go much easier in one direction than another. Entropy is easier to create than order.

Once a society starts to make having children a lifestyle choice, or makes being a man or a woman something you can opt in and out of.... I honestly think one is looking down the barrel of civilizational collapse. It's like a human debating with himself whether he wants to shoot himself in the head. Once it becomes something that is up for rational debate, you are teetering on the edge of a precipice.

 

[LondonJohn]

The thought of gold medalist Ariane Titmus being beaten by a bloke makes me feel I’ll.

Do you mean "being beaten by a transwoman"?

 

[LondonJohn]

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.

Once again: you're fundamentally misinterpreting what's happened here.

Trans-activists "broke" nothing. FINA didn't "fix" what trans-activists "broke".

FINA was effectively duty-bound (for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with swimming per se) to allow transgender athletes to compete in their trans gender class...... until/unless FINA was in a position to make an evidence-based ruling on the matter.

And as you may be aware, there has until very, very recently been a near-total insufficiency of reliable data regarding elite-level transgender athletes/sportspeople, across virtually all sports. So in fact, nothing "broke" when transwomen were allowed to compete in the women's category. And nothing was subsequently "fixed" either. What happened was that, in this particular case, FINA waited until it felt it had sufficient empirical evidence to demonstrate reliably & credibly that (most) transwoman swimmers, at all distances, did indeed have a significant performance advantage - once corrected for other variables - over ciswoman swimmers. It then formed and enacted the appropriate policy based on that evidence.

In other words, everything happened exactly as it should have done, and exactly as it needed to have done. FINA's policies were never in any way "broken" - whether by trans-activists or by anyone else.

As for Davies stating that the ban should extend to all sports, well........ I'd suggest that she should learn that each and every sports administration body will need to go through exactly the same process as FINA has done. Each of them will do so as soon as is reasonably practicable, and my own opinion is as it's always been: that it's likely that over time every body administrating a sport where musculoskeletal and cardiopulmonary factors confer a performance advantage will indeed enact bans against transwomen competing in the women's category (at elite and sub-elite levels only though).

But IMO it's as big a folly for someone such as Davies to pronounce on what "should" be done across all sport as it was for her to have pronounced on what FINA "should" have been doing - before FINA was in a reasonable position to take action. YMMV.

 

[LondonJohn]

Again, I cannot concede that what is true for sports is going to be true in other areas of human endeavor. It may be that gender identity and expression matter much more in other areas, e.g. where to shop for clothing.

Exactly. Trying to claim that transwoman bans in elite-level sports are somehow a generalised endorsement for the idea that biological sex is the only important differentiator.... is both reductive and wrong.

As you point out, these sports rulings are in a very specific and narrow area: that of elite-level (and probably also sub-elite-level) sports. Transwomen and transgirls will still be permitted to - and will continue to - compete against ciswomen/cisgirls at all lower levels of sport*, for example.

To focus on one narrow example and then claim it is illustrative of (let alone supportive of or validating of) a wider truth is the same, in effect, as claiming "Short dumpy girls are prohibited from becoming haute couture runway models..... and this validates the view that short dumpy girls should generally be treated less beneficially than tall willowy girls".



* The exception being certain sports - or certain team positions in certain sports - where there might reasonably be injury considerations at risk.

 

[LondonJohn]

It won't stop at gender. And that will also be clarifying. In fact, this process is already going on. Men in women's sports. Men in women's prisons. Pregnant women admitting to the hospital as men. Sexual attraction being demonized as a metric for sexual identification of others.

I've been saying for a couple years now that transgenderism is a stalking horse for transsexualism. That's now becoming obvious, I think.

So you're saying here that in your view, transwomen are actually "men"? And that pregnant transmen are "women"? Have I got that right?

 

[theprestige]

So you're saying here that in your view, transwomen are actually "men"? And that pregnant transmen are "women"? Have I got that right?

For all practical purposes, yes. As the thread title says: Transwomen are not women.

Honestly I'd be very surprised if at this point anyone got my clearly-stated and extensively-argued position wrong. Okay, maybe not very surprised, but perhaps at least a little surprised.

 

[Rolfe]

They're still not female though. Even Buck Angel gets it.

You know what? Changing the entire world around to pander to "what really matters" to a group of people with a mental illness that causes them to be both narcissistic and extremely demanding is a mug's game. Nothing will ever be enough. (I saw one on twitter the other day having a melt-down because he'd read the words "the girls" or "us girls" in a normal we're-talking-about-female-human-beings sense, because he'd got it into his head this was a phrase trademarked by the trans community and now these horrible transphobes are even stealing that!)

Nobody cares where anyone shops for clothing. It is not something that is or should be regulated by law. People care when they find other people of the opposite sex in their changing rooms, which need to be segregated by sex. Find some other way to allow males to select and purchase clothing designed for females, which they should be perfectly at liberty to do.

Nothing needs to be segregated by anyone's chosen "gender identity" as far as I can see. Sport is showing the way as regards how to define sex and make that stick by enforceable regulations. That absolutely needs to become the norm in absolutely all areas of human endeavour.

Sorry I can't edit this, but I did mean that MtF people are still not female. I must have already been thinking about Buck Angel, who of course is still not male, and knows it.

 

[LondonJohn]

For all practical purposes, yes. As the thread title says: Transwomen are not women.

Honestly I'd be very surprised if at this point anyone got my clearly-stated and extensively-argued position wrong. Okay, maybe not very surprised, but perhaps at least a little surprised.

Well, quite.

It's merely that it's useful to understand (with sufficient clarity) people's differing points of view here.

For example, the stated view of some people in this thread is that they accept and support the concept of transgender identity, and that they recognise transgender people accordingly.... but that they have issues over certain specific areas such as prisons, changing rooms, etc.

On the other hand, the stated view of some other people in this thread is that they do not accept or support the concept of transgender identity, so therefore they do not recognise transgender people... and of course they (by definition) also share the concerns of the first group.