Transwomen are not women - X (XY?)

[sir drinks-a-lot]

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.

I'd like to request a cite for this. It does not ring true to me at all. In fact, if I had to guess from my experience, it would be the opposite.

But let's not guess. You've repeated these sorts of statements several times and seem rather upset about it. Where are you getting your information?

 

[Rolfe]

My point here is that trans men and women face a dilemma that some seem to dismiss regardless of which facilities they use. whatever they choose they face harassment of some sort, though I suspect that it usually doesn't escalate to violence. (And when it does, that violence probably doesn't actually occur inside the restroom.)

I'm not an advocate of trans-women getting self-id access to women's facilities. But I think if you are going to honestly consider the issue, it's important to recognize that there are valid concerns.

Lately, the arguments I've been hearing from the trans side have had less to do with safety and more to do with "validation" and outing. (Outing, however, can be dangerous as it could lead to assault outside the facility.)

I haven't found statistics, but I suspect that most assaults on trans women do not occur in men's rooms. (But the act of using the men's room can draw attention. As can using the women's room unless they pass really well.)

There are male creeps who do use the trans loophole for devious purposes. I'm not sure that what they are doing has anything to do with "transness," however. (I find the whole AGP to be increasingly unconvincing, the more I look into it.) I think these are people with issues in addition to being trans or who just have issues period.

I can condemn these people and even point to their abuse of loopholes as a reason not to allow trans-women into female spaces without somehow extending their character onto any significant portion of the trans population.

I agree, it is a nuanced subject. My main concern is that men are being given the legal right to be in women's single-sex spaces. If a transwoman genuinely looks and behaves female then there isn't even an issue. Nobody will even remark on his presence in the ladies. If a transwoman doesn't pass well but is obviously doing his best to appear inconspicuous and considerate of other users, then most women will do the #bekind thing. This happened a lot in the past. However, the lack of males having any legal right to be in female single-sex spaces has always meant that we can police our spaces and make a fuss if a man seems to be abusing our kindness. This, sadly, is happening more and more often, to the point where women are complaining about men-dressed-as-men coming into our spaces. This is the background to the poor treatment the transman experienced, I think.

There is really no issue with "outing". Most transwomen are obviously men, and that's the basis on which it is claimed they are assaulted by men. Not that men think a woman has come into the gents (mistake? long queue at the ladies and in a hurry?) and proceed to set upon her, but because they are genuinely transphobic - they see a man dressed as a woman, and react negatively.

A transwoman who is capable of being outed, that is one who is assumed to be female, is never going to encounter a problem in the ladies in the first place. A transwoman who looks like a man can't be outed, because it's already obvious.

 

[TomB]

The pile of straw - I agree with you about that - is what is being peddled by multiple trans activists in their campaign to bully and force women to #bekind.

The statistics on murder rates (I don't have any on common assault) show transwomen to be the safest demographic in society. Not only are they mudered at a lower rate (per head of population) than men (and bear in mind that most murder victims are men), they are murdered at a lower rate than women are. It has been said with some truth that on the face of the statistics, the best thing a man can do to reduce his chance of being murdered is to present as a transwoman.

In fact transwomen are the perpetrators of murder more often than they are the victims.

It's remarkable how often we read statements such as your last sentence, and yet how difficult it is to find actual examples of it happening. I'd have thought that if it was a real problem, someone might have collated some cases to give us a feel of the problem.

Meanwhile, in the U.S.:

Transgender people (16+) are victimized over four times more often than cisgender people. In 2017-2018, transgender people experienced 86.2 victimizations per 1,000 people compared to 21.7 victimizations per 1,000 people for cisgender people.
Transgender women and men had higher rates of violent victimization (86.1 and 107.5 per 1,000 people, respectively) than cisgender women and men (23.7 and 19.8 per 1,000 people, respectively).
One in four transgender women who were victimized thought the incident was a hate crime compared to less than one in ten cisgender women.
In 2017-2018, transgender households had higher rates of property victimization (214.1 per 1,000 households) than cisgender households (108 per 1,000 households).
About half of all violent victimizations were not reported to police. Transgender people were as likely as cisgender people to report violence to police.

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/

These are not prostitutes in Brazil.
Dismissing the issues, including risks, that transgender people face does not advance your cause. Transgender people face legitimate issues. That does not mean they need to be solved by exacerbating women's issues but dismissing them doesn;t make sense either.

And it's a societal problem, not a "men's" problem or a "women's" problem.

 

[TomB]

There is really no issue with "outing". Most transwomen are obviously men, and that's the basis on which it is claimed they are assaulted by men. Not that men think a woman has come into the gents (mistake? long queue at the ladies and in a hurry?) and proceed to set upon her, but because they are genuinely transphobic - they see a man dressed as a woman, and react negatively.

A transwoman who is capable of being outed, that is one who is assumed to be female, is never going to encounter a problem in the ladies in the first place. A transwoman who looks like a man can't be outed, because it's already obvious.

By outing, I mean something more like "has attention drawn to." It doesn't mean their trans status wouldn't be apparent, it means that certain activities bring someone onto someone's attention or radar.

 

[Rolfe]

Yes, they do, don't they.

 

[Rolfe]

Meanwhile, in the U.S.:

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/

These are not prostitutes in Brazil.
Dismissing the issues, including risks, that transgender people face does not advance your cause. Transgender people face legitimate issues. That does not mean they need to be solved by exacerbating women's issues but dismissing them doesn;t make sense either.

And it's a societal problem, not a "men's" problem or a "women's" problem.

Well, the article does bring the prostitutes in Brazil into it.

If I sound dismissive it's because the effect on women's rights of extending the rights of transgender people is simply not being considered at all. It's astonishing how often we discover that accommodations are made with no risk assessment or impact assessment being carried out on women's rights, and indeed nobody even thinking about whether women's rights might be affected. (And then in some cases - Nicola Sturgeon I'm talking about you - flatly denying the blindingly obvious fact that women's rights are being affected.)

That whole article has a sniff of "activist lawyers" about it, but there's too much dismissing of evidence because of the source going on here, so I won't do it.

I agree that everything possible should be done to protect trans people, within reason, and that "within reason" has to take account of the need for protection of other groups.

 

[TomB]

Well, the article does bring the prostitutes in Brazil into it.

Where? Brazil is not mentioned. The data cited is from:

Researchers analyzed pooled data from the 2017 and 2018 National Crime Victimization Survey, the first comprehensive and nationally representative criminal victimization data to include information on the gender identity and sex assigned at birth of respondents.

I see no mention or suggestion that the study brings prostitutes in Brazil into it.

 

[Rolfe]

“The media has rightly given attention to the 2020 increase in murders of transgender women of color,” said lead author Andrew R. Flores, Affiliated Scholar at the Williams Institute.

That's in the article, and that's clearly a reference to the Brazilian prostitutes thing. That's what, for me, makes the whole thing smack of "activist lawyer".

 

[Ziggurat]

Meanwhile, in the U.S.:

These statistics, as presented, are not useful for the current discussion. Crime victimization rates correlate with a whole bunch of other stuff, some of which likely also correlate with being transgender. For example, though LJ insists transgenderism isn't a mental health disorder, there are a LOT of transgender people who have other mental health disorders (depression, anxiety, bipolar disorders, eating disorders, autism, etc). And mental health disorders correlate with poverty, and poverty correlates with crime rates. If you don't control for all these other variables (and that data set obviously doesn't), then you've got zero reason to conclude that transgenderism is the actual risk factor.

But it's worse than that. Even if transgenderism is a risk factor for crime victimization, that doesn't get us to any public policy recommendation. If transwomen are being attacked more often because they are transwomen, are these attacks happening because of the bathroom they use, or for other reasons? The data set gives no indication. A general higher risk (which again isn't proven because of other possible variables) tells us nothing about how that risk might change with specific public policy choices. For example, letting transwomen compete in sports against females isn't likely to improve their safety.

 

[Rolfe]

These statistics, as presented, are not useful for the current discussion. Crime victimization rates correlate with a whole bunch of other stuff, some of which likely also correlate with being transgender. For example, though LJ insists transgenderism isn't a mental health disorder, there are a LOT of transgender people who have other mental health disorders (depression, anxiety, bipolar disorders, eating disorders, autism, etc). And mental health disorders correlate with poverty, and poverty correlates with crime rates. If you don't control for all these other variables (and that data set obviously doesn't), then you've got zero reason to conclude that transgenderism is the actual risk factor.

Ah-ha! Well spotted. If you compare entire population statistics like that, then a group with multiple correlated risk factors is going to show up disproportionately.

This perhaps makes it even more striking that the trans murder rate is so strikingly low - because that was also calculated using whole-population statistics. For Britain, I hasten to add. Hardly any trans people appear in the murder statistics at all. There are more trans perpetrators of murder than there are trans victims.

 

[Rolfe]

But it's worse than that. Even if transgenderism is a risk factor for crime victimization, that doesn't get us to any public policy recommendation. If transwomen are being attacked more often because they are transwomen, are these attacks happening because of the bathroom they use, or for other reasons? The data set gives no indication. A general higher risk (which again isn't proven because of other possible variables) tells us nothing about how that risk might change with specific public policy choices. For example, letting transwomen compete in sports against females isn't likely to improve their safety.

Now that part did occur to me. Even if it were the case that allowing men to use women's bathrooms improves trans safety (and as I have argued repeatedly, once you give any subset of men the legal right of entry, it is in practice impossibly to keep any man out), this has to be balanced against the decrease in women's safety. Also against the loss to women of their private, male-free spaces and consequent effects on comfort and modesty.

This can never be about transwomen who entirely convince everyone they meet in the street of in the bathroom that they are women. These people are at no greater risk than any other woman, because nobody is going to attack them "for being trans". Nobody is going to know that they're trans - not women who see them in the bathroom and not men who see them in the street or in a bar.

This is about transwomen who are read as male. Women don't want them in their single-sex spaces because they're male. They risk transphobic attack (from men - attacks on transwomen almost always come from men) because their attacker sees them as male, but performing a role the attacker despises.

If transwomen who are read as male are at especial risk of attack because of this, how much safer does it really make them if they can avoid going into the men's bathroom? When they're going about the rest of their day on public transport, in the street, in bars and so on, always looking like a male performing a role that some men despise.

 

[TomB]

That's in the article, and that's clearly a reference to the Brazilian prostitutes thing. That's what, for me, makes the whole thing smack of "activist lawyer".

No it's not "clearly" a reference to that.
It cites a 2020 increase, but this article notes an upward trend and a sharp increase in 2021:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/944726/murders-transgender-gender-diverse-people-us/

 

[TomB]

These statistics, as presented, are not useful for the current discussion. Crime victimization rates correlate with a whole bunch of other stuff, some of which likely also correlate with being transgender. For example, though LJ insists transgenderism isn't a mental health disorder, there are a LOT of transgender people who have other mental health disorders (depression, anxiety, bipolar disorders, eating disorders, autism, etc). And mental health disorders correlate with poverty, and poverty correlates with crime rates. If you don't control for all these other variables (and that data set obviously doesn't), then you've got zero reason to conclude that transgenderism is the actual risk factor.

But it's worse than that. Even if transgenderism is a risk factor for crime victimization, that doesn't get us to any public policy recommendation. If transwomen are being attacked more often because they are transwomen, are these attacks happening because of the bathroom they use, or for other reasons? The data set gives no indication. A general higher risk (which again isn't proven because of other possible variables) tells us nothing about how that risk might change with specific public policy choices. For example, letting transwomen compete in sports against females isn't likely to improve their safety.

Sort of.

It denotes a correlation, but does not address causation. Speculating about the causation, also without data, does not eliminate the correlation.

Also, the presence of other factors applies to the whole population not just a part of it. Really it requires a little more advanced statistics like an ANOVA.

Regardless, it still invalidates Rolfe's claims that trans is one of the safest demographics.

You are also misrepresenting the point of the statistics with some of your statements. It was not about what bathrooms they use or playing in sports leagues or meant to support (or the opposite) any of the other issues one way or the other.

Bad arguments that support a cause you support are still bad arguments.

 

[Ziggurat]

Ah-ha! Well spotted. If you compare entire population statistics like that, then a group with multiple correlated risk factors is going to show up disproportionately.

I forgot another likely major confounding factor: age. The transgender cohort skews younger, and young adults are more likely to be victims of crime than older adults.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm not "claiming" that trans is "one of the safest demographics", I am referencing actual murder statistics in this country and pointing out that as regards being the victims of murder, being trans is safer than either being a woman or a man.

Fact check: how many trans people are murdered in the UK?

It is also a fact that more transwomen have been convicted of murder than have been the victims of murder. That's quite startling also, although the numbers are small in both cases.

 

[Nick Terry]

Professor of criminology Jo Phoenix has just released a lengthy (68pp) report addressing Canada's transgender prison policy, with extremely useful comparisons with the US and UK, and a postscript about the past few weeks.

Over and over she notes that evidence is not being collected in Canada despite a policy change going back six years (to circa 2017), while the disproportionate rate of incarceration in the US (six times higher than in Canada) makes comparisons difficult, especially for issues such as sexual violence inside prisons, where procedures are simply different in US prisons to Canadian or British prisons. It's a very educational read.
https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/wp-cont...0117_Rights_and_wrongs_Phoenix_PAPER_FWeb.pdf

One shocking statistic that *was* gathered is that about half of Canada's prisoners are Indigenous (First Nations etc); I would have expected a disproportion but not quite as many as that.

The report is also excellent for its reflection on the meaninglessness of 'trans rights are human rights', since all human rights will come into conflict with other group's rights, e.g. the rights of the religious versus the rights of homosexuals, and there is neither a way of decreeing one group to be uniquely vulnerable nor in fact any evidence that trans women are uniquely vulnerable - cue discussion of other available data.

 

[Ziggurat]

You are also misrepresenting the point of the statistics with some of your statements. It was not about what bathrooms they use or playing in sports leagues or meant to support (or the opposite) any of the other issues one way or the other.

That may not have been your point. But other than pedantry (and I confess I'm not above that myself on occasion), how these numbers affect such issues is the only reason any of these statistics really matter here. If they don't inform us of the consequences of different policy options, then it's really just a curiosity, it's not actually useful for making decisions.

 

[Elaedith]

In 2017-2018, transgender households had higher rates of property victimization (214.1 per 1,000 households) than cisgender households (108 per 1,000 households).

What does 'property victimization' mean? If it's referring to standard property crimes like burglary, it's unlikely that the victims are being targeted for being transgender. That would be a fairly clear indication of confounds with other factors such as socio-economic status and living in unsafe areas.

The reason that these issues are important, is that if a large part of victimization results from confounds with other factors such as poverty, living in unsafe environments etc, then a remedy would be to tackle discrimination in employment and housing and improve access to education and training. However, activists (some of whom are not trans) spend little time on this compared to efforts to enforce ideological conformity to their philosophical views on gender theory (which is likely to lead to risk of backlash and make things worse). Likewise if all mental health problems are assumed for ideological reasons to stem from 'minority stress' but this is not in fact true, then evidence-based rather than ideological approaches to tackling mental health problems are the solution.

 

[Ziggurat]

The reason that these issues are important, is that if a large part of victimization results from confounds with other factors such as poverty, living in unsafe environments etc, then a remedy would be to tackle discrimination in employment and housing and improve access to education and training. However, activists (some of whom are not trans) spend little time on this compared to efforts to enforce ideological conformity to their philosophical views on gender theory (which is likely to lead to risk of backlash and make things worse). Likewise if all mental health problems are assumed for ideological reasons to stem from 'minority stress' but this is not in fact true, then evidence-based rather than ideological approaches to tackling mental health problems are the solution.

Activists frequently don't actually help the people they agitate on behalf of.

 

[Elaedith]

Sort of.

It denotes a correlation, but does not address causation. Speculating about the causation, also without data, does not eliminate the correlation.

Also, the presence of other factors applies to the whole population not just a part of it. Really it requires a little more advanced statistics like an ANOVA.

It requires something like a multiple regression approach to control for factors such as age, socio-economic status, mental health issues etc. This still wouldn't establish causation but can address the roles of some confounds.