I side with mainstream medicine and pretty much every government in the industrialised world. Transgender denialists *think* they know better than the world's experts in this field. That's their prerogative. And it's what makes them bigots.
That's a low bar.
Disagreeing with politicians does not make one a bigot.
Nor does disagreeing with scientists, consensus or not.
And it's not clear that there is as much of a consensus as you believe. There is a lot of debate in the literature currently, I believe.
As I've stated many, many times in these threads, I absolutely agree that there's a debate to be had over proportionality when it comes to granting transgender people rights and protections. It's not my goal - and it's not the goal of any of the legislatures and administrative bodies - to cause disproportionate harm or distress to ciswomen or children.
Here, I agree with you. I don't think there is any conspiracy among "men" as a class to disenfranchise or imperil women.
But I fundamentally disagree with ignoring potential issues up front and waiting to see if there are problems before addressing loopholes that abusers can walk through. Unless you think engineers should take the same approach in building bridges?
I care about that argument. Incidentally medics and legislatures care about that argument as well - despite the torrent of shouting about "mutilating kids" and "misogyny"* coming from the bigots with weary predictability.
To an extent, I agree with you here as well. I consider the term "mutilation" hyperbolic. However, that mean that the underlying point (surgical intervention for young children) should be ignored. And the pendulum seems to be swinging in their direction these days among your experts and lawmakers.
That said, I have seen a good deal of statements or posts that I would consider misogynistic from some trans activists. Some of it is downright offensive. Take Dylan Mulvaney's "Days as a Girl" series, for example. And this was a guy invited to the White house to discus trans issues with the president.
The bar for bigotry seems to be lowering. Disagreement with policy makes you a bigot. Lesbians who are not interested in trans-women are called bigots.
If you lower the bar much further, the word will become meaningless.
But here's the thing: the bigots aren't just interested in this area - although they continually try to pretend that these are their only areas of concern and disagreement. No: they start from the (bigoted) premise that transwomen are "men in dresses" or "cosplayers" or mentally ill (and that transmen are "women in men's clothing" or "cosplayers" or mentally ill).
I'm not going to go back to the beginning of these threads, but as I recall, that language was not used initially. What came first, in what at the time was a fairly civil discussion about whether and how to accommodate trans-women in female facilities, was labeling opponents as bigots.
So no, I also don't like some of the language a couple posters use. But I also remember it as them being pushed into that language from the other side. Initially, it was less that trans-women were men, and more that trans-women are not the same as women.
And that's why I won't debate with such bigots. I'd be perfectly happy to engage in debate with people who accept the view of mainstream medicine that transgender identity is a valid condition**, that transmen are men (and vice versa), but that there are concerns wrt cisgender women and younger teenagers as transgender people are granted certain rights and protections.
First, nobody here says that transgender identity is not valid. As you've been told repeatedly. But what "valid" means to you and what "valid" means to them are not necessarily the same thing. To them, it means something like: "valid, worthwhile human being, but in a category that is different from the category 'woman.'" (Yes, that's awkward wording.)
What they are concerned about is not that they think transgender people should be denied rights and protections.
Rather they are concerned that the rights and protections granted to trans-women reduce, eliminate, or otherwise negatively affect the protections women already have.
Largely, this centers on "self-id." In the past, it has been difficult to have gender legally changed. There is certainly a discussion to be had as to what that process should be. If the old system was overly difficult to the point of being unavailable to people who would need it, the counter proposal (self-ID) is the opposite as it makes it easily available not just to those who need it, but also to those who don't and can use it for purposes that harm women. Voyeurism, sexual gratification, invading privacy, etc.
Worse, in some cases or plans, it would make it an offense to question someone's presence in those spaces. Can you not see how this might make women feel more vulnerable? Especially after the number of real world cases where this has happened that have been posted here? Is it an epidemic? Maybe not. But it is happening.
But I won't debate with clowns who think it's acceptable to mock transgender people by declaring themselves to "identify as attack helicopters" or calling transgender people mentally ill cosplayers. They can all go straight into a skip as far as I'm concerned. Appropriately enough, the skip is this toxic little thread, which virtually every well-adjusted member of this forum avoids like the plague because it's a nasty stain on ISF.
You do know that the "attack helicopter" thing is not really addressing trans men/women, right? It's about some of the unusual genders someone put out for several years ago: (
https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/List_of_uncommon_nonbinary_identities)
It's more of an absurdist critique of a growing gender spectrum that was defining every mental condition (autism, BPD) or personality trait as a gender. Granted, it's been used for other things since.
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And it's "its", not "it's".
* The interesting thing to note here is the large number of females within both the medical community and the legislative community who are in favour of granting rights to transgender people that the bigots label "misogyny".The bigots attempt to rationalise this by inventing the idea that all these females are either suffering from *ahem* "internalised misogyny" or that they are (another bigot favourite) "institutionally captured". The truth, however, is far more simple.[/quote]
Everyone here is in favor of granting rights to transgender people. Just some think that doing so should negatively affect the protections women previously have had.
** Oh and note the repeated "What does that even mean?" nonsense from the bigots wrt transgender identity being a valid condition. It's perfectly obvious what it means: it means that transgender identity is not now viewed by mainstream medicine to be a mental health disorder. Which is indeed the sole reason why legislatures around the world are now thankfully accommodating transgender people.
It's a legitimate question, because apparently it means different things to different people. See my example above. For some it means "trans-women are women." For others it stops short of that. So yes, saying what you mean by "valid condition" is useful.
