Transwomen are not women - X (XY?)

[Emily's Cat]

Oh dear.

The analogue is "sexuality is binary and immutable: all people are heterosexual".

This is completely inane.

Sex is binary and immutable. All people are either male or female. Gender identity is completely and utterly irrelevant to the topic.

Sexuality seems largely immutable, but is not binary, and nobody has claimed that it is. The majority of people are heterosexual, which means that they are attracted to people of the opposite sex. Some material portion male people are androphilic rather than gynophilic. Some material portion of female people are gynophilic rather than androphilic. Some slightly smaller portion of people are both androphilic and gynophilic, and this "bisexuality" tends to be more common among females than among males.

Note, however, that such attraction is only couched in terms of androphily and gynophily - there is no third option, because THERE IS NO THIRD SEX.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Meaning she is in agreement with the caution voiced in Finland, Sweden and the UK (as well as now also the Netherlands, to some extent).

Oh, but obviously those are backwards regressive countries led by children, and thus can be ignored!

 

[Nick Terry]

The older I get, the more convinced I am that it's one specific key word in that last sentence that really seems to be the sticking point of whether or not something gains support. Can you guess which word that is?

I know exactly which word that is.

"These have been raised repeatedly in debates about single-sex spaces, but concerns about the beliefs of Muslim or Orthodox Jewish women seem to be dismissed or downplayed by supporters of self-ID."

 

[Nick Terry]

Oh, but obviously those are backwards regressive countries that aren't dictated to by children, and thus can be ignored!

FTFY

 

[Emily's Cat]

I think she expressed general gender-critical views, including support for JK Rowling. I also saw something about current testimony concerning transition of minors and witnesses being called about that.

I found this from Tribunal Tweets

British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives vs Amy Hamm

Ow my head.

“Common discriminatory statements directed towards transgender people include: statements that deny their existence such as by insisting that there are only two sexes, often referred to as erasure,”

Nobody is denying their existence, we're denying that they are anything other than the sex they acquired at conception! There ARE only two sexes, and demanding that anyone recognizing this fundamental reality of the entire class of mammals is "discriminatory" is fantasy.

 

[Elaedith]

This is completely inane.

Sex is binary and immutable. All people are either male or female. Gender identity is completely and utterly irrelevant to the topic.

Sexuality seems largely immutable, but is not binary, and nobody has claimed that it is. The majority of people are heterosexual, which means that they are attracted to people of the opposite sex. Some material portion male people are androphilic rather than gynophilic. Some material portion of female people are gynophilic rather than androphilic. Some slightly smaller portion of people are both androphilic and gynophilic, and this "bisexuality" tends to be more common among females than among males.

Note, however, that such attraction is only couched in terms of androphily and gynophily - there is no third option, because THERE IS NO THIRD SEX.

Although it's hard to work out exactly what goes on in his head, I believe LJ is pretending that people are claiming 'gender (not sex) is binary and immutable - all people are cisgender' and this is therefore equivalent to saying 'sexuality is binary and immutable - all people are heterosexual'.

Of course nobody as far as I'm aware has said anything remotely resembling the first statement, which is completely incompatible with a gender-critical position.

It's another bizarre concoction of LJ's misrepresentation and circular logic.

 

[Rolfe]

One of the mind-expanding things about this whole affair is the realisation that some people you thought, despite their faults, were capable of reason, turn out to be absolutely impervious to it, while others you previously disagreed with strongly on other matters turn out after all to be quite human and quite sensible.

 

[Emily's Cat]

There is a protest there right now, so expect to hear about all the "anti-trans" bullies.
Truth is, it is the CA law at fault. I doubt the YMCA would have chosen to allow it. But if you defy, you pay a big price. So far no one has stepped up to take on a law suit.



eta: this was actually something I was concerned about in one of my first posts on this topic fr Oct 2019

I remember that post. I also remember some posters insisting that you were transphobic and a bad parent for teaching you child to have boundaries and to seek safety when those boundaries were violated.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I don't want to share certain spaces such as toilets and changing rooms with women. Does that make me anti-women?

Nope, it makes you a fairly normal example of the male half of the species, who should retain their right to single-sex spaces.

No. Simply transphobic……

Well, that too, I suppose

 

[Emily's Cat]

But normal men, with the regular amount of modesty and sensitivity issued to members of the human race, understand at least to some extent how women feel. Which makes it quite striking just how many men there are out there loudly giving away women's property to the trans ladies, because the sacred oppressed marginalised (manspreading, space-occupying) trans ladies are obviously the important people.

The more this conflict continues, and the more I hear the vehement insistence of males that transgender identified males are actually "women"... the more convinced I become that what is really at play is males enforcing gender roles on other males. They aren't insisting that females need to be inclusive because they actually care about those transgender identified males. They are insisting that females are obligated to be inclusive so that they can get away with excluding males who aren't "masculine" enough from their male spaces.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the premise that Harry Potter is just that special to some people. Hating Rowling, but still being that invested in having her books on your bookshelf, speaks to a level of irrationality that just boggles my mind.

Like maybe the Bene Gesserit were on the right track, with their test to see if someone is truly human or just a dumb animal.

I have Harry Potter on my bookshelf... along with the entire Dune set, and the Robot/Empire/Foundation series, about 80% of the stuff written by Clark and Niven. Also a pile of Wrinkle in Time books, Pern books, Middle Earth books, and untold numbers of other random sci-fi/fantasy novels that I enjoy.

Also a whole bunch of math and physics and chemistry and actuarial books.

Basically, I like books.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It should be possible to separate the artist from the work. Indeed, if it wasn't, I wouldn't be working on a book about Richard Wagner's work right now. But I don't take Tippex to his name on all the scores I have. Or all the books of commentary. And what I'm supposed to do with the eBooks and the pdf scores, I don't know!

If I couldn't separate the person from the art... I wouldn't be able to enjoy anything written by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Hell, I still laugh at old Cosby stand-up.

 

[Rolfe]

Your midnight check-in on the petition reports 72,595 signatures, so 254 new signatures today. Definite fall-off today for whatever reason.

The new magic number is 304.5.

 

[Rolfe]

If I couldn't separate the person from the art... I wouldn't be able to enjoy anything written by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Hell, I still laugh at old Cosby stand-up.

Yeah, but she's a terrible writer. So that is not a valid comparison.

 

[LondonJohn]

One of the mind-expanding things about this whole affair is the realisation that some people you thought, despite their faults, were capable of reason, turn out to be absolutely impervious to it, while others you previously disagreed with strongly on other matters turn out after all to be quite human and quite sensible.

Yep, ain't that the truth. And who doesn't enjoy a bit of pomposity/arrogance/circular logic once in a while?!

All I can add is that it's a good job the adults in the room understand 1) the validity of transgender identity, 2) that transmen are men (and vice versa), and 3) the need to grant/protect the rights of transgender people. It's only a small hardcore of bigots and denialists - who most definitely are not the adults in the room - who are evangelically convinced they "know" otherwise.

And the best (ie most disingenuous & pathetic) thing is that most such people aggressively lead on "this is all about protecting women and children", when a) they must know (and they're either stupid or lying if they don't know) that safeguarding of women and children is actually of extreme importance to the adults in the room, and b) they typically use this as a smokescreen for their actual fundamental denial of/disavowal of/disbelief in transgender identity itself. Most of the people in this thread fit that category - which is one of the reasons why this thread is such a toxic binfire, and why people like me have zero interest in debating against such obnoxious viewpoints.

The funniest thing is that the zeal of the denialists leads them to contort their worldview in order to rationalise their POV. The number of people and institutions that the zealots rationalise as "captured" is so ludicrously huge that right-thinking people would long since have paused and thought to themselves "Hmmm, pretty much every relevant person and institution of importance fundamentally disagrees with my viewpoint on transgender identity and the granting/protection of proportionate rights to transgender people - perhaps it's time to consider the possibility that the experts are right and I am wrong".

Still, it'll continue to be entertaining to watch the denialists' viewpoints get increasingly shrill and nasty, secure in the knowledge that 1) their viewpoints are of no import and they're nowhere near the levers of power or mainstream medical opinion, 2) the experts and the adults in the room will clearly prevail, as they should, and 3) these people will eventually either "peak" (LOL) anti-trans as they belatedly realise how misguided and hysterical they have been, or go down shouting into the abyss.

Carry on!

 

[LondonJohn]

Yeah, but she's a terrible writer. So that is not a valid comparison.

Funny you should mention this whole area: personally, I bought all of JK Rowling's awfully-written detective novels, not because I necessarily believed I'd enjoy reading them, but primarily as an act of political activism in support of Rowling against those hideous perverted men cosplaying at being women. Yeah! That'll stick it to the man!!

 

[theprestige]

I have Harry Potter on my bookshelf... along with the entire Dune set, and the Robot/Empire/Foundation series, about 80% of the stuff written by Clark and Niven. Also a pile of Wrinkle in Time books, Pern books, Middle Earth books, and untold numbers of other random sci-fi/fantasy novels that I enjoy.

Also a whole bunch of math and physics and chemistry and actuarial books.

Basically, I like books.

You're missing my point.

You probably don't have any books on your shelf by authors you despise and want canceled, but their books are such an important part of your life that you'd rather rebind the books to erase the author's name than take their books off your shelf.

Because that would be crazy.

If I couldn't separate the person from the art... I wouldn't be able to enjoy anything written by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Hell, I still laugh at old Cosby stand-up.

The point is that there seems to be people that cannot separate the artist from the art, and also cannot bear to give up the art. So they go to these lengths to try to erase the artist from the art. A more sane person would not be so invested in the idea of Harry Potter that they can't just throw out the books when they part ways with the author.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I hadn't watched a Blaire White video for quite a while, so I thought I'd check out her channel.

Her most recent video is talking about Dylan Mulvaney, a trans tiktoker who does videos about being a girl. (her 207th day as a girl, for example).

I almost didn't watch the video because I'd never heard of this person and would have just written them off as another strange extreme example that is not representative of trans people. Actually, I think that's correct. But, this person was invited to the White House to talk to President Biden about trans issues. So...might be worth paying attention to.

Anyway, the video. If Rolfe were to create a character to illustrate all of her problems with trans women, i think that character wold be Dylan Mulvaney.

Interestingly, Blaire, although trans herself, brings up most of the same issues as Rolfe, even going so far as to say that she will never "experience what it's like to be a woman" or to be a girl. She talks about womanface. And wonders about Dylan's obsession with tampons.

It's a 20 minute video, but it's worth the watch.
https://youtu.be/r59Q-SB1kkI

I despise Dylan Mulvaney. That person is everything wrong with this regressive view of "women". I'm also not convinced that they are actually trans, I think they started their whole tiktok thing as a lark, and have ended up making enough money off of it that getting facial surgery is worth it if it keeps the cash flowing.

The only person I currently loathe more is Jeffrey Marsh.

 

[Emily's Cat]

This incident I mentioned some time ago came up again on Twitter, this time with some receipts. I got screaming abuse for mentioning it the first time. (Warning - the story is really gross, don't click the link if you have a sensitive constitution.)

https://twitter.com/MalesOfReddit/status/1616255972078661633

The thing is, maybe this is rare, maybe it isn't, we have no way to know. Some people will argue that since the red-haired shop assistant had no idea what the creep was doing, it didn't harm her, what she doesn't know about doesn't affect her. I utterly reject that interpretation.

Allowing men like this access to women's protected spaces destroys these spaces and puts many/most women on edge. Fetishes like this tend to escalate - how long before he's stalking that girl? And I'll say it once again. Once it is legal for any subset of men to enter women's spaces, any man at all has de facto right of entrance. We can't keep any of them out, because we have no way to know which men belong to the subset who have been granted the legal right to be there and which don't. (And the Scottish bill specifically facilitates any man actually getting that legal right for a fiver, anyway.)

That's like arguing that it's okay if a peeping tom stares through your window while pleasuring themself... as long as you don't know about it. No, that's still not okay.

 

[Rolfe]

You're missing my point.

You probably don't have any books on your shelf by authors you despise and want canceled, but their books are such an important part of your life that you'd rather rebind the books to erase the author's name than take their books off your shelf.

Because that would be crazy.

The point is that there seems to be people that cannot separate the artist from the art, and also cannot bear to give up the art. So they go to these lengths to try to erase the artist from the art. A more sane person would not be so invested in the idea of Harry Potter that they can't just throw out the books when they part ways with the author.

I've got all of Jacqueline Lichtenberg's books which are something of a guilty pleasure. She was cancelled way back in the 1980s, ostensibly because some people thought that the books depicted homosexual relationships. (How come Marion Zimmer Bradley got away with what she did, at much the same time, when she actually meant it and Lichtenberg didn't?) Actually though her crime seems to have been being conceited and obnoxious at a convention. Someone with a fair bit of influence in fandom then wrote a hatchet job on her in a widely-read fanzine, slamming the books for being disgusting. When I mentioned that I liked her books a friend gave me a horrified look and said how could you read such filth - turns out he hadn't read a word of it himself. I also came across people criticising the plot-line of one series of novels, when the flaw they were using to rubbish the books was actually part of the development of the story and led to some dramatic developments in a later volume.

This was particularly annoying because the cancelling led to her publisher dropping her and the third book of a trilogy which I particularly liked not being written at all.

So it's been going for some time, and it doesn't even need the internet. What startled me even back then was the use of a (false) accusation that the books depicted male homosexuality as the reason for the cancelling. I mean, even in the 1980s? In science fiction circles?

And then again I mentioned Richard Wagner, who was notoriously a racist. I think in that case, well first he's dead, but mainly, if your art is absolutely world-shakingly tremendous, lots of people suddenly decide they can separate the art from the artist after all.