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Transwomen are not women - X (XY?)

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Rolfe said:
Francesca seemed to me to be dismissing that out of hand on the basis that the ripx4nutmeg account had been comprehensively discredited as a source, by her, end of. On examination, we find that this traces to a discussion in mid 2019 in which Cavemonster disagreed with the interpretation ripx4nutmeg had put on an entirely different tweet. Francesca decided to agree with Cavemonster, fine, but she appeared also to be implying that ripx4nutmeg knew that Cavemonster's interpretation was the true one but had decided to misrepresent the situation maliciously.

I disagree. Indeed ripx4nutmeg's tweet was a compilation, but this appears to be by way of giving background information about the trans-identifying male who was tweeting about being in a female lavatory. Which seems quite legitimate to me. My position is that even if Cavemonster was correct about the interpretation of the quoted tweet, it's an unreasonable reach to conclude that ripx4nutmeg was being malicious or fabricating anything. I think her interpretation was reasonable even if it so happens it was mistaken.
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Well, it's good that you have reviewed the exchange I suppose, three years on. At the time it was more like you drove on by and vanished subsequently, oddly disinterested in the challenges to the "retweet" by ripx4nutmeg that you'd brought to the thread.

It's a long time ago and it's a drop in the ocean. But I remember it particularly because of what I saw (and still do) as an example of transphobia dressed up as rallying followers about an alleged predatory male. Gender critics should call that out just as much as gender self-ID supporters would. If they don't, they look bad IMO. And I did not see it as a mistake, careless or innocent. Essentially it flagged a trans woman's twitter account, pushing a created narrative, and got her hounded off the public sphere of twitter. Happens all the time. It's still a sleazy thing to do.

To go from that (entirely forgotten on my part) exchange from three and a half years ago to jumping in and insisting that ripx4nutmeg is a discredited source on principle
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Just a transphobic source. YMMV. I'm a bit surprised I remembered the handle myself.
 
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Francesca R said:
Well, it's good that you have reviewed the exchange I suppose, three years on. At the time it was more like you drove on by and vanished subsequently, oddly disinterested in the challenges to the "retweet" by ripx4nutmeg that you'd brought to the thread.
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Really? I have more to do than jump to your tune the minute you show yourself in the thread. And the word you are clearly looking for is "uninterested". It's not impressive to pick words you think sound more upmarket when they actually mean different things.

Francesca R said:
It's a long time ago and it's a drop in the ocean. But I remember it particularly because of what I saw (and still do) as an example of transphobia dressed up as rallying followers about an alleged predatory male. Gender critics should call that out just as much as gender self-ID supporters would. If they don't, they look bad IMO. And I did not see it as a mistake, careless or innocent. Essentially it flagged a trans woman's twitter account, pushing a created narrative, and got her hounded off the public sphere of twitter. Happens all the time. It's still a sleazy thing to do.

Just a transphobic source. YMMV. I'm a bit surprised I remembered the handle myself.
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Thanks for providing your opinion. I don't see it your way, and I don't appreciate being scolded for not seeing it your way.

You can see transphobia in absolutely anything, if you want to

I think the original tweet was guilty of no more than a misunderstanding, if it was indeed a misunderstanding. I would have interpreted it the same way. And if accounts that tweet mostly about the horrors of the trans assault on women's rights are "transphobic" then mine probably is at the moment too. Feel free to cancel me. And feel free to pop by and be judgemental and patronising every few months. You're welcome.
 
Rolfe said:
Really? I have more to do than jump to your tune the minute you show yourself in the thread.
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I'm appreciative that you have jumped to it on the 3.5 years later showing, is what I am saying.

And if accounts that tweet mostly about the horrors of the trans assault on women's rights are "transphobic" [ . . . ]
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I think accounts that misrepresent a trans person's distress as "delighted that he frightened a woman out of a women's toilet" are transphobic yes. I think other gender critics ought to think the same. If they're not transphobes.
 
Francesca R said:
Do you think the TRA acronym, or the label trans rights activist is offensive? I can't tell from this
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I can't see why it would be. Someone might object to using the label to describe a specific person on the grounds that it's not accurate, but for people who are activists for trans rights, how could it be?

But I don't think you're misreading LJ. He seems to label any speech which isn't in complete agreement with him as hateful.
 
Francesca R said:
I'm appreciative that you have jumped to it on the 3.5 years later showing, is what I am saying.

I think accounts that misrepresent a trans person's distress as "delighted that he frightened a woman out of a women's toilet" are transphobic yes. I think other gender critics ought to think the same. If they're not transphobes.
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I think a perfectly reasonable reading of the original tweet was that the person meant exactly that. It is after all a common type of thing for a trans-identifying man to say. Many of them openly delight in embarrassing women in single-sex spaces. I think that the person who was distressed was the woman who ran from the ladies' toilet because she was confronted by a man in a dress. This distress is set to get a lot more common, I fear.

It may be that that was not the correct reading of the original tweet. Nevertheless it was a reasonable reading and if it was a mistake it was an understandable one. I think that your continued insistence on imputing bad faith and malice to this is itself indicative of bad faith.

I also think that if men don't want to be upset by women's natural aversive reactions when they see a man in the ladies' toilet, then they should avoid going there. And as for your earlier "got 'her' hounded off Twitter", how naive can you get? Nobody can be hounded off Twitter. It's trivially easy to block any account you don't want to see, or mute an entire thread, or simply set your account to private for a bit. Or all of the above. This performative "oh poor me I feel unsafe because someone has criticised me" schtick is something we see from the trans side all the time. You fell for it. Someone who has the (literal) balls to put on a dress, heels and a wig and go prancing into women's single-sex spaces is not going to be reaching for the smelling salts because of things he reads on Twitter.

It would also seem that many people agreed with ripx4nutmeg's reading of the tweet, if the original tweeter got pushback for it.

Now, did you come here solely to pick a fight over what someone tweeted three and a half years ago? Or have you anything to say that's relevant to what's going on in 2023?
 
Question: In what scenario, under the best laws protecting trans gendered persons, is a man NOT a woman if he claims to be a woman.

Answer: (seems to be) Only if the man says so.
 
Ziggurat said:
I can't see why it would be. Someone might object to using the label to describe a specific person on the grounds that it's not accurate, but for people who are activists for trans rights, how could it be?

But I don't think you're misreading LJ. He seems to label any speech which isn't in complete agreement with him as hateful.
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On the surface, bit TRA and TERF are descriptive terms that ought to be non-offensive. But both can be hurled as ...I'm not sure slur is the right word. Labeling someone with either of those terms carries with it an implication of bias and blinders rooted in one extreme or the other. It's one way of dismissing arguments.

One argument I've seen here, though not for a while as that poster hasn't been around, was that "...you are making TERF arguments." I think there have been similar types of statements going the other way. Along the line of "Straight out of the TRA playbook" or something.

The way I see it, TERFs raise some legitimate concerns. As do TRAs. Both sides can also make some specious points as well. Agreeing with TERFs on a point does not make one a TERF. Neither does agreeing with TRAs on a point make one a TRA.

And both sides seem unwilling to call out bad behavior or disinformation from those on their own side. (Something that Blaire White pointed out regarding the Jessica Yaniv stuff.) A bad argument in a good cause is still a bad argument.
 
Another question that has been exercising me is, now that anybody can marry anybody else and the pension age has been equalised (or I think it has), what real benefit is there to a man to having his legal sex changed? And I mean sensible benefits, not simple appropriation of things that are women's on account of their being women?

I really can't think of much, although maybe others will come up with more.

A man in Canada self-IDed as a woman to get cheaper car insurance. Is this fair? Is this what the people bringing in these laws are trying to achieve? The man isn't a lower risk as a driver simply because he got a piece of paper saying he was a woman.

Much of what is put forward seems merely to be aimed at avoiding a bit of embarrassment, although I'm not sure it actually does that. Someone who is honestly taken for a woman has to present a passport or a driving licence that says "M" and this is embarrassing. For this, we turn the world upside down? But indeed, how many such cases are there? Very few transwomen actually look like women to the point you'd be surprised to see an M marker on a document. Any embarrassment that's going on is merely the constant embarrassment they encounter every minute of every day, because people see them as men in women's clothing. Or we can go further and consider the transwomen with beards and little concession to even trying to look like a woman. They still want that documentation, but what actual good is it doing them?

Transmen on the other hand seem to be positively disadvantaging themselves, as they take themselves out of all the legislation that has been passed to protect women's vulnerabilities. It seems that legally male people may not be entitled to ante-natal care or maternity leave or protection from dismissal on account of being pregnant.

Equal pay legislation is becoming a minefield, as to get a successful claim under that, a woman has to identify a man doing an equivalent job but who is getting higher pay. I saw a lawyer declare that all the equal pay settlements in however long could be argued to have been decided on erroneous grounds, if sex doesn't mean sex.

I haven't even touched on the male appropriation of female single-sex spaces and provisions, although that seems to be the main objective of the trans activists. This seems to have been granted to them de facto rather than de jure, although achieved by the dubious tactic of misrepresenting the law to numerous public and private bodies. That's the bit that has to stop. No legal right of any male to enter a women's single-sex space or category.

Without that, what's left? Not blushing at passport control because you think you look like a woman and your passport says M? When in actual fact you probably look M in the first place? Is all this upending of society's norms actually worth it to achieve this objective?
 
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Rolfe said:
Another question that has been exercising me is, now that anybody can marry anybody else and the pension age has been equalised (or I think it has), what real benefit is there to a man to having his legal sex changed? And I mean sensible benefits, not simple appropriation of things that are women's on account of their being women?

I really can't think of much, although maybe others will come up with more.

A man in Canada self-IDed as a woman to get cheaper car insurance. Is this fair? Is this what the people bringing in these laws are trying to achieve? The man isn't a lower risk as a driver simply because he got a piece of paper saying he was a woman.
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The actuarial rates on men a women differ. I read on Zebra .com that younger males pay about 14% more than younger females. But when older, it's pretty much equal. Actually, their numbers showed older women paying slightly higher rates than older men. (but not the 14% difference.)

I'm not sure for the reason for the difference. It could be that young boys are prone to do stupid things with cars. Or it may be that younger males simply drive more. (When the couple goes out, who drives?)

you are right, it doesn't make him a lower risk driver. But it may in theory put him into a behavior group with less risk. Not this guy, obviously, because he wasn't really changing groups or behaviors. He was just taking advantage of a loophole.
Much of what is put forward seems merely to be aimed at avoiding a bit of embarrassment, although I'm not sure it actually does that. Someone who is honestly taken for a woman has to present a passport or a driving licence that says "M" and this is embarrassing. For this, we turn the world upside down? But indeed, how many such cases are there? Very few transwomen actually look like women to the point you'd be surprised to see an M marker on a document. Any embarrassment that's going on is merely the constant embarrassment they encounter every minute of every day, because people see them as men in women's clothing. Or we can go further and consider the transwomen with beards and little concession to even trying to look like a woman. They still want that documentation, but what actual good is it doing them?
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Well, beyond that, an authority such as a police officer or (more likely) TSA may regard you with suspicion. if your gender does not match your presentation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they can't tell when someone was born male. But without the official documentation, they may regard a trans woman as possibly suspicious and make the encounter longer and more thorough than is routine. I don't know if this fear is grounded in real events, but I did read that fear.
Transmen on the other hand seem to be positively disadvantaging themselves, as they take themselves out of all the legislation that has been passed to protect women's vulnerabilities. It seems that legally male people may not be entitled to ante-natal care or maternity leave or protection from dismissal on account of being pregnant.
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Not sure about other countries, but men in the U.S. can typically take parental/birth leave. Me stepsons did when my grandchildren were born. If nothing else, it falls under FMLA. Neither sex is guaranteed paid maternity leave, but both can use sick leave and have their job protected up to 12 weeks (small companies are exempt).
Equal pay legislation is becoming a minefield, as to get a successful claim under that, a woman has to identify a man doing an equivalent job but who is getting higher pay. I saw a lawyer declare that all the equal pay settlements in however long could be argued to have been decided on erroneous grounds, if sex doesn't mean sex.
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I'm not sure I understand the issue. If there is not a man/male getting paid higher (with equal or less experience) then where is the inequality? You think men will identify as women in order to protect their employer from wage discrimination lawsuits?

And are trans-women going to get the "male" rate or will they be discriminated against as well?
I haven't even touched on the male appropriation of female single-sex spaces and provisions, although that seems to be the main objective of the trans activists. This seems to have been granted to them de facto rather than de jure, although achieved by the dubious tactic of misrepresenting the law to numerous public and private bodies. That's the bit that has to stop. No legal right of any male to enter a women's single-sex space or category.
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Single sex spaces are the battle ground for activists because it's the point of conflict. There is less resistance to the idea that they shouldn't be discriminated against economically or in terms of housing. Not that these don't still happen.

Without that, what's left? Not blushing at passport control because you think you look like a woman and your passport says M? When in actual fact you probably look M in the first place? Is all this upending of society's norms actually worth it to achieve this objective?
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I think the passport issue as a bit less frivolous than you make it out to be. But I'm neither trans nor a TRA, so I don't really know the ins and outs of life as a trans person any more than you do.

I'm never against questioning society's norms. I mean, that's how we got civil rights for, well, everyone. Now, some norms are defensible and need not change, but that doesn't mean they should not be questioned.
 
I think there is probably something to be said for some sort of certificate of official trans identity, or something like that, that can be presented with the correct documentation to allay any official doubts or misgivings. Police, passport control and so on should be trained rigorously to look at a document with an M marker presented with such a certificate and say "thank you madam, that's fine" (assuming it is fine) and not bat an eyelid or allow the slightest trace of a smirk to cross their faces.

I don't know precisely how serious the other legal points are or what the best way to deal with them is, but a lot of it would go away if trans people retained their actual sex but were awarded a document to say they were trans. The law could then decide if there were occasions where that mattered. That solution would stop transmen losing maternity rights, because they would still be legally female. Just also legally transmen.

It is already illegal here to discriminate against anyone as regards housing, employment or anything else of that nature on the grounds of "gender reassignment".
 
LondonJohn said:
Indeed. And of course the irony is that they themselves cannot see this. Woe betide anyone who even tries (even in the narrowest way) to challenge the twisted, bigoted orthodoxy of this thread. Like all good zealots, they take it as a matter of faith that their position in inviolably "correct".... no matter that the central tenet of their position - that transgender identity is a fraud and that trans people are mentally ill cosplayers - is diametrically opposite to that of the actual experts in the relevant medical and social science fields.

As I've said many times in the past, we can at least be thankful that none of the transgender-denialist fanatics in this thread are anywhere near the levers of power or influence. Just as when a small band of hard-core reactionary zealots still refused to see homosexuality as anything other than mentally-disordered deviancy - in spite of the relevant experts declaring it to be a valid lived human condition, and in spite of progressive governments throughout the liberalised world legislating for gay rights - so this latter-day bunch of reactionary zealots will rightly get left behind. Still, at least they'll have this nasty little thread (oh, and the comments section of the Daily Mail) in which keep telling each other that they are right and the experts are wrong.
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I tire of your repeated misrepresentation generously slathered in insinuation and insult.

And for the record, the orthodoxy of this thread, as you wish to put it, is that transgender identified males ARE STILL MALES.

No matter how genuine and valid someone's gender identity may be, it still does not change their sex.
 
TomB said:
On the surface, bit TRA and TERF are descriptive terms that ought to be non-offensive.
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No, this is incorrect. TERF is offensive on its own. The key is "exclusionary". That's an intrinsically negative word. The default value judgment is, don't exclude. But there's no intrinsic negative connotation to TRA. Rights are a good thing. Advocacy is perfectly acceptable.

TERF was coined as an insult, from the start, by the people doing the insulting. TRA was not. They aren't the same.
 
Women fighting to retain their rights aren't trans-exclusive anyway. They entirely include transmen in women's spaces, if they want to be there (or have to be there because the men don't want them). Male-exclusive would be accurate.
 
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