Transwomen are not women - X (XY?)

[d4m10n]

I'm going to need more elaboration, because this reads as if both d4m10n and Zig are saying that this trans issue is all the fault of females somehow.

I've little to add beyond what Zig said above. Men and women cannot be expected to solve public policy problems separately in any modern democracy.

 

[Ziggurat]

Transgender identified males belong to YOUR group, not mine.

Sure. But they are causing problems for your group, not mine. So you are likely going to care about those problems more than me. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but that's just true. And it's not that I don't care at all. I do, and I think my post history here shows that. Hell, I think we're in pretty close agreement both about the nature of the problem and the appropriate responses. Nevertheless, you probably care more than I do.

 

[Rolfe]

And women have the same vote as men. They have to be part of that solution. Women cannot sit this out and expect men to solve it, ala Rolfe's suggestion. That may not be fair, but it's the reality of the situation.

Please.

I said men need to take some responsibility for their own brother-men, not sit it out and leave women to do all the work, as is happening at the moment. At the moment men are washing their hands of it all, assuming that because trans-identifying men want to go into women's spaces that's where they should go, and leaving it to women to deal with the result. When we protest we get #bekind and "but where else should they go - they have to go somewhere!"

The very idea that women can be accused of sitting this out is outrageous. The bloody country is stuffed with feminist groups and feminist meetings, women strategising, writing policy papers, lobbying government, everything. Meanwhile men look from afar at somebody else's problem.

There's an amusing thing that has happened several times recently, where a man notices that something isn't quite right, and comes on Twitter (or uses his newspaper column) to ask, where are all the feminists? Why aren't they saying anything about this. To by buried under a heap of angry women pointing out that they've been campaigning about this for the past five or ten years, have you only just noticed?

Another phenomenon which is quite common is that a minor celebrity says something about "why can't we all just #bekind, transwomen only want to live as their authentic selves." Again he (it's always he) will be buried in an avalanche of women linking to policy papers and case studies and legal analysis, almost all by women, and the blogs and campaign groups that have been explaining the problem in detail for years. All these women will be ignored. But in the middle of the avalanche there will be one or two men saying the same thing as the women. The minor celeb will only answer the men, might even offer to debate one of them, but behaves as if the women's posts don't exist.

Men need to get their own house in order. They need to start telling gender nonconforming men that they are welcome in men's spaces, that they don't need to invade women's privacy, and indeed that their behaviour is in many cases out of order. They need to make bad treatment of transwomen by men socially unacceptable, and something they will stand out against.

That's what we need. Not men saying that women are trying to sit it out and expecting men to solve it, when we simply remark that a bit of supportive action from the Y-chromosome brigade would make all the difference.

Sorry, I'm still reeling that you even said that.

 

[Rolfe]

Sure. But they are causing problems for your group, not mine. So you are likely going to care about those problems more than me. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but that's just true. And it's not that I don't care at all. I do, and I think my post history here shows that. Hell, I think we're in pretty close agreement both about the nature of the problem and the appropriate responses. Nevertheless, you probably care more than I do.

So people who are part of your group are causing problems for the other group. So it's the group who are having the problems you think has to do all the labour, you don't think maybe the group whose members are causing the problems might maybe lend a bit of a hand?

Public policy? We've got lobby groups and policy documents and impact assessments and case studies and legal analysis coming out of our ears. I'm not sure what more we can do. The fact is that this is not a level playing field. Men get listened to when women don't. But hey, don't let that worry you, it's not you who's being put in danger by physically more powerful predators let loose in your safe spaces. I appreciate you take more interest than many men, but even you are prepared to sit back and let women do all the heavy lifting.

We need men to do their bit, to speak out, to reinforce our voices, and to add their own voices to the debate in accepting responsibility for the problem men, rather than saying "well, it's not us they're causing problems for." But even you think that's a bit much to ask apparently.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Apologies in advance for all of the chopping up of your post. You seem to have several unstated implicit assumptions that I would like to address.

For the record, I'll describe my current position:

Trans-women and natal women are not the same, and I would use the term women to mean natal women. But I don't think that puts trans-women into the group "men."

Why not? Why would a set of males who have a gender identity discordance not belong to the general set of males who are colloquially referred to as "men"? If you grant that the term "women" applies to natal females, why would you exclude a subset of natal males from the category of "men"?

In short, it appears that you acknowledge that transgender identified males are not females... and yet you still wish to exclude them from the category of males in society. Who is really doing the excluding in this case?

I think both trans-women and women, in terms of gender, would be in a group described something like "having a feminine gender identity." Men and Trans-Men would be in a group of "having a masculine gender identity." Or something like that. The identities are all "valid lived experiences."

You unstated assumption is that everyone has a gender identity in the first place. I contest this assumption. I do not believe that most people have anything that could be considered a gender identity. What they have is an acknowledgment of the reality of their physical sex, and the social baggage that comes along with it. I, for example, do not have a "gender identity of woman". For the most part, I view all of the societal crap that has been force-paired with the female sex to be a whole bunch of ******** that is a barrier to me, and I want little to do with it. And yet, I acknowledge that I am unquestionably female, by dint of having a female body that has going through all of the normal stages and cycles of a female body.

Rather, I submit that the only people who have a "gender identity" are those who seek to affirm a psychological state in opposition to their physical body. This is the "identity" of an online avatar, of a character in D&D. It is a wholly internal and subjective view of how one wishes one were, with the desire to allow that wish to override reality.

If you disagree with my suggested view, I would challenge you to describe what exactly a gender identity is, and in what way a set of males has one that bears any resemblance at all to that of a myself. How does one describe a gender identity of "woman"? Can it be done without referencing regressive social stereotypes?

None of that, nor the definitions of disorders and conditions in the DSM, sheds any light on who should use what bathrooms, locker rooms or sports teams though.

There is a term that's often paired with "accommodation," and that's "reasonable." An employer does not have to accommodate every special need of an employee in a protected class, just those that are considered reasonable. The debate here should be not about validity of identity, in my opinion, but about what accommodations are reasonable and what are not. And there will be some that are not.

On this, I agree. And I will place my stake in the ground and say that placing the subjective internal psychological desires of one set of males above the realities of all females is NOT a reasonable accommodation. Doing so on the basis of nothing more than a declaration, absent anything even remotely approaching verification from a prudent clinical source, is even less reasonable.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I am proud to be a cisman, in the context of a discussion where it's useful to differentiate between cismen and transmen. Outside the context of a discussion where it's useful to make that differentiation, I'm perfectly happy to be called a man.

I am also proud to be a TIRP (trans-inclusionary regular person).

In your desire to be inclusive, please do your part to make male lavatories, locker rooms, showers, and prisons safe for males of all walks of life, including those who choose to present in feminine attire.

Do your part to stop males from beating up other males.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I know you were asking LJ, but I'll answer because the answer is blatantly obvious.

There are several contexts.
In the context of any scientific study comparing populations of trans-men, trans-women, natal men and natal women. you can use whatever terms you wish to distinguish you want, but a lot of people use cis. But you need language that does not lump trans-men in as either men or women and also does not lump trans-women in as either women or men. You need language for (at least) four different groups.

Another context is discussions like this one. Again, there are four different groups. Trans-men, trans-women, natal men, and natal women. Again, use the terms you want. I'm not sure "natal" is actually a very good term here because I need a term that includes non-trans men but excludes both trans women and trans men. I'm not sure natal really does that.

"Men" does not work for similar reasons, regardless of which side of the politics you are on. both sides want to use the terms "Men" and "Women" as umbrella groups. The difference is which umbrella group they wish to put trans men and trans women into.

Regardless of which perspective you approach it from, it's difficult to have discussions where the same term is used twice: once for a larger population and then also for a sub-population.

Use the terminology you want. The concept beneath the language matters more than the language used to describe it. But you need, really, six terms to truly discuss the concept. Possibly more if you add more variables, such as sexual orientation.

The fight over language is, to some extent a proxy argument. If you can win the language war you can define your way to victory without ever having to really address the concepts that the language is intended to describe.

I avoid the entirety of it by referring to people on the basis of their sex, and modifying when the presence of an unusual psychological state is relevant. Both "natal women" and "transmen" are female. They are, when context is appropriate, transgender identifying females, but they are still females. Both "natal men" and "transwomen" are male. They are, when context is appropriate, transgender identifying males, but they are still males.

 

[ahhell]

Well, sure.

But, leaving the outing or privacy issues that the "trans" side might present aside for the moment....

There is a lot of information that one might think would be useful for emergency responders to know. None of that tends to be on ID cards. (Except, maybe if you are an organ donor.) Some examples: diabetes, heart condition, allergies to medications, foods, etc. You can get MedicAlert cards, bracelets or necklaces that carry this information. But there is no means of putting that on my Illinois ID/driver's license.

Given that, while I agree it is useful information that care providers should have, I find it hard to single out this one piece of information that should be on the official ID for medical purposes above all others.

That said, the field on my ID says "Sex" not "Gender," so listing a trans-person's gender in the sex field is not, strictly speaking, accurate.

ETA: There was a case discussed a couple years ago in which a trans-man was treated as male in an ER which may have resulted in the loss of their baby. the individual, as I recall (I may be mistaken) filled out the forms indicating their gender rather than their sex. I'm not sure if they communicated the issue to the nurses.

This is a reasonable argument. The only reason it differs from other medically relevant information is that its already on most IDs so it might be misleading to just indicate gender.

That being said, it would probably be advisable to carry a medical alert bracelet similar to diabetics or folks with dangerous allergies.

Also, is that a thing stiil? My sister used to have a bracelet that said she was allergic to penicillian. I don't think I've seen one of those in 30 years.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

Just a transphobic source. YMMV. I'm a bit surprised I remembered the handle myself.

You know what, Francesca? I've always enjoyed interacting with you, but on this topic, I profoundly disagree with you. Very specifically, I do NOT in any way view it as "transphobic" for a female to feel intimidated, or uncomfortable when an obviously male person is in a space that is expected to be female-only. And I do NOT think it is transphobic to expect that females have access to female-only spaces.

I think it is extremely shortsighted for you, or for any other female, to feel that they have the RIGHT to give away MY rights, in order to assuage the feelings of a male with a gender identity issue.

It is not your right to declare that females, as a whole, have no right to consent, no right to dignity, no right to safety. It's not yours to give away. If you, personally, are happy to share your spaces with any male who says a statement out loud, then you can share YOUR spaces. But do not expect that I am obligated to do so.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

I don't think that any male, regardless of their psychological state, should EVER be in a position to frighten females out of a female-only space. They should not be in that space in the first place.

And that you insist that the people in the wrong are the females who were made uncomfortable by a male, who then feel obliged to CROW about having frightened females out of a female-only spaces is a privileged take of the most disconnected sort.

 

[Ziggurat]

Please.

I said men need to take some responsibility for their own brother-men, not sit it out and leave women to do all the work, as is happening at the moment.

That isn't fair or true. Plenty of men are taking an active role in pushing back against the madness. Jordan Peterson's opposition to compelled pronoun speech or Matt Walsh's documentary "What is a Woman?" come to mind as high profile examples, and they aren't alone by any means. And there have been plenty of males in this thread who are also pushing back against extreme trans agendas.

Second, as I pointed out already, lots of women are on board with the pro-trans agenda, and actively pushing it. They aren't less to blame then men who are sitting out the fight completely. In terms of support and opposition, the lines aren't really one sex vs the other.

And lastly, I don't buy collective guilt. My responsibility for the actions of another person don't depend on whether or not their genitals match mine.

The very idea that women can be accused of sitting this out is outrageous.

I didn't say they were. But you basically called for them to by saying men should solve this on their own. But that's not how politics works. The women who support the radical trans agenda aren't sitting this out, but they are also working against the outcome you want. It may be uncomfortable to admit that many women support the radical trans agenda, but they do. I'm not responsible for that reality, and don't shoot the messenger for pointing it out.

Men need to get their own house in order.

There is no men's house. There is only one body politic, and it is shared.

They need to start telling gender nonconforming men that they are welcome in men's spaces, that they don't need to invade women's privacy,

AGP men who invade women's spaces aren't doing so because they are unwelcome in men's spaces.

 

[Rolfe]

Your midnight check-in on the petition reports 79,166 signatures, so 187 new signatures today. Down a bit, again.

The new magic number is 285.4.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Do you think the TRA acronym, or the label trans rights activist is offensive? I can't tell from this

Honestly, it depends on context. Sometimes it is intended as offensive. Most of the time, however, it's intended to draw the distinction between actual transgender identified people and those who preach violence on behalf of transgender identified people without a care for who gets hurt.

 

[Distracted1]

Yes, it's one of the oddities of this whole situation.
The field says "Sex." It is completed with the term for sex: M or F, male or female, not the terms for gender (since they are no longer synonyms) "Man" or "Woman."

One thing that has occurred to me before is that if we were to apply the updated language retroactively, there would not be rooms labelled "Men" or "Women." Instead, they would be labeled "male" or "female." I think the original labelling envisioned sex, not gender, but it was not anticipated that at some future point there would be a difference.

This is why I think you can't just look at the word on a legacy usage and apply the current definitions. You have to examine each instance and determine if what was applicable was sex or gender.

Does that make any sense?

The "original labeling" worked from the acknowledgment that gender and sex were identical in meaning.
Only relatively recently has the word "gender" been appropriated to mean "gender role" by some.
In a twist of logic derived from this appropriation, attempts are made to work backwards from the misappropriation.

A(sex)=B(gender) has been accepted as long as the words existed. When asked ones' gender has anyone ever replied "man"? Or, instead does one reply "male"? the answer has always been "male" because gender and sex have always meant the same thing.

Those who have decided to adopt a new meaning for the word "gender" are using the the fact that we understand A=B to try to shoehorn a new meaning upon A.
If they cannot change the meaning of the word "sex"- they will instead change the meaning of a word that means exactly the same thing ,and having achieved that, insist that- since we understand that "sex" and "gender" are the same- by accepting that "gender" means something other than what it means, we have de-facto accepted that "sex" means something different as well.

Linguistic Judo.

Gender is not "man or woman", gender is "male" or "female"

 

[Rolfe]

That isn't fair or true. Plenty of men are taking an active role in pushing back against the madness. Jordan Peterson's opposition to compelled pronoun speech or Matt Walsh's documentary "What is a Woman?" come to mind as high profile examples, and they aren't alone by any means. And there have been plenty of males in this thread who are also pushing back against extreme trans agendas.

Second, as I pointed out already, lots of women are on board with the pro-trans agenda, and actively pushing it. They aren't less to blame then men who are sitting out the fight completely. In terms of support and opposition, the lines aren't really one sex vs the other.

And lastly, I don't buy collective guilt. My responsibility for the actions of another person don't depend on whether or not their genitals match mine.

I didn't say they were. But you basically called for them to by saying men should solve this on their own. But that's not how politics works. The women who support the radical trans agenda aren't sitting this out, but they are also working against the outcome you want. It may be uncomfortable to admit that many women support the radical trans agenda, but they do. I'm not responsible for that reality, and don't shoot the messenger for pointing it out.

There is no men's house. There is only one body politic, and it is shared.

AGP men who invade women's spaces aren't doing so because they are unwelcome in men's spaces.

A couple of points. It's late. I never at any point intended to say that men should solve this on their own. But at the moment it is self-evidently the women who are doing all the work. Certainly there are some men, but overall there are hordes of women fighting tooth and nail to retain their single-sex spaces, and precious little sign of any men saying, come on now, the place for people with male tackle is in the gents, be grown-up about it. It would help, you know.

Of course AGP men are not invading women's spaces because they feel unsafe in the men's spaces. We all know that. But that is the excuse they give, and even more it's the reason their allies have been taught to parrot. How can you expect the poor flowers to go in the men's where they'll be beaten up, is the repeated cry. Although actual examples of transwomen being beaten up in the men's room are few and far between (and there's usually more to it than just "he was wearing a skirt so I punched him"), and actual examples of women being assaulted in women's spaces by men who at least claim to be trans are easy to find.

So you know, it would be helpful if men made some effort to undermine this glib, facile, false and deceptive excuse.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.)

The reason for the difference in rates, is that there is a difference in the frequency and severity of accidents, and it has a very high correlation with sex. We can speculate about the tendency for young males to have a higher risk appetite than females... but at the end of the day, the rates differ because the experiences differ.

Health insurance used to be rated by both age and sex. The government decided it could not longer be rates by sex... because reasons. But the experiences are very different. Males between the ages of about 13 and 30 have a much higher rate of physical injury. Females between the ages of about 15 and 40 have a much higher rate of maternity (whodathunkit?). Males and females swap cost levels over time - we're subject to different types of illnesses and injuries at different periods in our lives.

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.

No, it does not put them in a lower risk behavior group. All they are doing is exploiting a legal loophole in order to get a lower rate, which is not representative of the experience of the class of people to which they rightly belong.

It might be the cases that this specific male is a much safer driver than most males... but changing a sex marker as an act of legal fiction doesn't make that male into a female-typical driver.

 

[Rolfe]

The picture of him in his red convertible didn't suggest to me that he was a particularly safe demographic! Indeed, someone who has been given a high insurance quote and then makes a false declaration to get into a group that's considered less risky is not someone I would expect to be lower-than-average risk.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Well, thing is, you actually describe my position. I never actually went to the girls' bathroom or other private spaces, nor did I ever support that kind of thing. I suppose I did play a sport with the girls (basketball), but never in any competitive setting, and I always made a point to just pass the ball and never use my otherwise testosterone-based advantages at all. (Seriously, they were surprised when I showed what I could actually do at one point after school.) But these days I'm told I'm some kind of alt-right short-stache goose-stepping card-carrying NSDAP member if I maintain the exact same views: stay out of the girls' toilet, don't push them out of sports, don't EVER end up in a physical fight against an actual girl, and no, you're not an actual girl in any meaningful sense, etc.

But somehow some cis guys feel entitled to tell me that they should tell me I'm wrong...

This is a case where drawing the distinction between Trans Rights ACTIVISTS and transgender identified people is actually quite important.

There are a great many transgender identified people who hold the same view as you, and who, in general, respect the right of females to have female-only spaces.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Mind if I ask side question that may have been addressed in the previous 74 pages?. For the sake of medical emergencies, shouldn't Identity cards indicate that someone is Trans? I mean, if you're incapacitated in some way by accident or due to some other medical emergency, isn't it of value for the emergency responders and doctors to know?

You'd think so, wouldn't you? And yet... we've already seen cases where a person's actual sex wasn't disclosed, and they failed to get appropriate medical responses. In particular, there have been a few cases of transgender identified females, whose paperwork labels them "men" failing to get care for miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, ovarian cysts, and other such female-specific ailments.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I'm saying nothing of the sort. Please, give me more credit than that, you should know by now that such a position isn't in my character.

I should have put a smiley in there. I did NOT think that was your actual position... but I was being quite truthful when I said it needed more elaboration

But blame is somewhat beside the point I was making. The question was how to solve it, and in regards to public policy, it's only going to get solved by voters demanding solutions. And women have the same vote as men. They have to be part of that solution. Women cannot sit this out and expect men to solve it, ala Rolfe's suggestion. That may not be fair, but it's the reality of the situation.

In terms of a lot of policy, sure. In this specific context though, I thought the reference was to how males treat other males in bathrooms, changing rooms, prisons, etc. If males abuse males, then males need to sort some things out - evicting some males and tossing them at the females as being "non men" isn't a solution.