Cont: Transwomen are not women - part XI

[crazycat]

Cis men can go into women's bathrooms any time they like. And they've been able to do so since time immemorial. Those cis men are degenerate.

And, by the way, if either a trans woman or a cis man starts waving their genitals around deliberately in a women's bathroom/changing area, that's ample grounds for investigation and possibly criminal charges.

In the real world that's often not what happens. The offended women complain to the management and the management tell them that "that's the law now". (The law that your supposed experts made)

In real life. the offended women change their routines so that they don't have to be in that situation again - they change at home or don't use the offending facility, or just stop doing whatever activity they were doing there.

In real life, women tend to avoid confrontation and leave the scene. It would take a very brave woman indeed to actually bring criminal charges against the offending man. (Even a crime as serious as rape isn't often reported)

Perverts know this very well and have a good idea of just how far they can push women.

Nobody is claiming that transwomen are perverts. What has been said countless times is that self-ID allows perverts to enter women-only spaces by claiming that they are transwomen.

Does the trans community really want to have these perverts prentending to be trans?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Again gay men and BDSM enthusiasts and every other comparison doesn't work because those groups have criteria beyond "purely internal self declaration."

I would say that the comparison also fails because none of those other groups place an obligation on people outside of their groups other than "stop beating us up".

Nobody is being asked to take part in the activities and beliefs of homosexual people. Nobody is being obligated to support the insertion of BDSM practices into the lives of Non-BDSM people.

That's where we end up with a considerable divergence in those analogies.

If the ask were simply "don't beat us up, don't fire us, don't deny us fair housing" there is zero rational argument against that - and nobody in this thread would oppose that in any way. We already support that, 100%.

The demand inherent in the current approach to transgender self-identification goes far, far beyond the asks of other civil rights groups. The current approach demands that everyone else completely internalize and take part in their self-declared identity, and that we subordinate the effects of sex to the desires of gender.

 

[Brainster]

Okay, what do you suggest?

Does that okay means yes, you recognize that there are circumstances where Self-ID is not sufficient?

I suggest that it may mean that we will eventually have transgender prisons or at least separate wings. It seems obvious that keeping them with male prisoners is problematic and keeping them with female prisoners is also not a good idea.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I think the historical parallels are super obvious. The Dobbs decision aside, we always trend towards greater freedoms over time. More suffrage. Less segregation. More inclusion. Sure, people fight against those things, but they always lose eventually.

Aye, there's the rub. Greater freedom for whom? More suffrage for whom?

If you only look at one side of this, if you only view it from the perspective of transgender identified people, it's very easy to believe that this results in greater suffrage and greater freedom for transgender identified people.

But it often fails to acknowledge the loss of freedom, the loss of suffrage, the loss of equal participation in society that is faced by females as a result of these policies.

At the very minimum, it seems like we should at least acknowledge that increasing the freedom of transgender identified males to use female-only intimate spaces denies access to those spaces to muslim and othodox jewish females. Allowing transgender identified males to participate in female sports directly denies participation to an equal number of females. Allowing transgender identified males to claim recognitions and political positions reserved for females directly reduces the ability of females to be recognized and to participate in governing their society.

The policies put forth result in an already under-represented population having their participation further eroded.

 

[JoeMorgue]

What I want is for people to take a deep breath, touch grass, and stop acting like "I have to sometimes use the bathroom with people I don't like" as some kind of grand human rights violation. Sometimes it is no more complicated than it's just one of two identical and arbitrarily divided public bathrooms behind the bar at the Applebees on 5 dollar Margarita Night that you have to walk past a family of 4 eating their spinach and artichoke dip appetizer to get to, not a gas chamber at Auschwitz you're being lead into.

I want people to stop acting like going to the bathroom is ALWAYS like going behind enemy lines.

Not EVERY goddamn public bathroom in this country is a some dusty isolated Saw-trap room in the corner of an abandoned parking garage dimly lit by one flickering bulb at 3 in the morning. Sometimes the risk factor is low. You're not going to get either raped or hate crimed. You can put your guard down some of the time.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Are you unaware that being gay is entirely a state of mind? That the "visible" consequences (showing romantic love to someone of the same sex, having sexual interactions with someone of the same sex, etc) are merely manifestations of that state of mind?

Are you aware that describing homosexuality as being a "state of mind" is the entirety of the argument in support of conversion therapy for homosexuals?

It's not a "state of mind", it's "wiring in the brain".

FFS, this is like saying that my being epileptic is a "state of mind". No, it bloody well isn't a "state of mind".

Cambridge dictionary:

state of mind
noun [ C ]
US /ˈsteɪt əv ˈmɑɪnd/

a person's mood and the effect that mood has on the person’s thinking and behavior:

 

[Emily's Cat]

I'm saying "because they say so."

Okay... but I would also note that christians say that god is real.

Just because a group of people says a thing is so, doesn't make it truth. There must be some method of objective observation that supports the claim.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Also I do believe that men who wish they were women can never change that.

Except that some of them can, and indeed do, change that. They desist, they detransition.

This is especially true for minors. A child may wish to be the opposite sex, but if they are left to the natural process, well over 80% of them desist in that wish during puberty. A majority of those who desist, gain recognition that what they initially perceived as a desire to be the opposite sex was a manifestation of a sexual attraction to members of their own sex.

The blunt version of this is that if you leave a kid with gender dysphoria alone, they become a fairly well-adjusted homosexual adult. If you interfere, you trans the gay away and create a medical patient for life.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Agreed. I would only ask why you need something defined beyond socially defined terms?

I disagree that the any of the terms we are talking about are purely personally defined. There is no question that the terms are in transition (pun intended), but as Thor said, all words are made up.

Generally speaking, the term in question is "woman". For some people, this is a term that is well defined, objectively observable and verifiable. For other people this is an ephemeral word that is inherently solipsist in nature and means whatever they want it to mean whenever they want it to mean something, but which cannot be observed or verified in any fashion.

 

[Emily's Cat]

You do realise (or maybe you don't?) that it's entirely possible to be, for example, a gay man who never actually expresses his homosexuality in any observable manifestation (ie he never develops a romantic togetherness with another man, nor has any kind of sexual activity with another man, etc)?

By your criteria, since this man is homosexual by "purely internal self-declaration", does this somehow invalidate his homosexual identity?

I really find it weird that in support of transgender policy, you end up defining homosexuality as an "identity", rather than a state of being based on neurological wiring.

LJ, have you ever looked into what an identity is, from the perspective of psychology? Is specify psychology, because legal identity is something else altogether - in legal terms, identity is the means by which other people discern that you are who you say you are and aren't fraudulent.

 

[Upchurch]

Does that okay means yes, you recognize that there are circumstances where Self-ID is not sufficient?

Of course it's not perfect. But no one has been able to suggest anything else that is in anyway fair.

I suggest that it may mean that we will eventually have transgender prisons or at least separate wings. It seems obvious that keeping them with male prisoners is problematic and keeping them with female prisoners is also not a good idea.

Okay for prisons, what about bathrooms?

 

[JoeMorgue]

You do realise (or maybe you don't?) that it's entirely possible to be, for example, a gay man who never actually expresses his homosexuality in any observable manifestation (ie he never develops a romantic togetherness with another man, nor has any kind of sexual activity with another man, etc)?

By your criteria, since this man is homosexual by "purely internal self-declaration", does this somehow invalidate his homosexual identity?

I'm literally seconds away from making you prove to me the invisible dragon in my garage isn't gay.

This discussion is obsessed with difference that don't manifest as a difference.

Who the **** cares what difference someone has that never manifests as a difference? How would we know to even care? Nobody's Gaydar is that good.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Your clear implication here is that (in your opinion) there's nothing more to transgender identity than declaring that one has transgender identity.

But of course that's simply flat wrong. As has already been pointed out (many times), most societies have deeply-entrenched sets of gender roles/expectations/attitudes/behaviours. And as such, when (for example) someone assigned female/woman at birth comes to realise that they do not internally inhabit society's version of "woman", and that instead they internally identify as society's version of "man".... this is how/why they come to have transgender identity. It's not a circular definition, and it's not a meaningless definition.

I very strongly disagree with your perspective on this. How well one aligns with a set of stereotypes does NOT define what sex a person is. Nor does it determine whether or not an individual is tansgender.

Your definition forcible requires that icons like Prince, Annie Lennox, David Bowie, and Grace Jones be viewed as "transgender". In fact, your definition changes MY gender, as well as the large numbers of gender nonconforming males and females across the globe. Furthermore, it makes a person's "gender" something that is fluid depending on which country they are in at the time.

Your definition makes regressive social stereotypes prescriptive.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Your clear implication here is that (in your opinion) there's nothing more to transgender identity than declaring that one has transgender identity..

Maybe because we keep asking what else there is to it and don't get answers.

 

[Upchurch]

What I want is for people to take a deep breath, touch grass, and stop acting like "I have to sometimes use the bathroom with people I don't like" as some kind of grand human rights violation. [snipped for brevity]

I agree with the full content of this post, not just what I quoted.

 

[Emily's Cat]

So much to unpack, there. Are you imagining a trans woman whipping around the one feature that she's the most self-conscious about because it is a constant reminder of how her body doesn't fit her?

What you think transgender people are, and your personal experience of them, does not align with the vocal groups who are pushing policy.

Because self-declared transwomen flaunting their penises in female-only spaces has been in the news several times. Self-declared transwomen raping females in female prison estates has been in the news several times.

I will reiterate for the hundredth time: The problem is not transgender, the problem is self-id and the gigantic gaping loophole visible from space that allows predatory males to transgress female boundaries at their whim.

This is a problem for females. It's also a problem for genuinely transgender people.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Do you think they are all ********?

How do we tell which are which?

 

[lionking]

As has been pointed out many times, you're wrong. Fortunately though, we have a huge number of competent, experienced experts in mainstream medical science and medical practice. And those people/institutions are right.

Like Tavistock? Now you are an adult in this room. How about addressing the damage this once “highly competent”, much praised and authoritative bunch of fanatics did to (mainly) young people?

 

[d4m10n]

But minors are presenting with gender dysphoria (or, in some cases, purely transgender identity) every day.

What is a "purely transgender identity" in the absence of gender dysphoria?

I'd be quite interested in the answer to this question, as well as any real life examples of the phenomenon.

Suppose a middle school girl tells her GP that she is now identifying as non-binary. She is referred to a specialist who asks all the right questions and determines that she is not suffering from gender dysphoria. Okay, so she is now under the transgender umbrella but does not require any medical intervention, perhaps not even watchful waiting and psychotherapy. All that differentiates her them from her their classmates is a sense of personal identity, one for which we have no diagnostic criteria. In the absence of such criteria, why defer to medical expertise at all?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Well, what of it? Do we punish all trans people because of a few?

No... apparently we just punish all females because of a "few" opportunistic and exploitative males.

Upchurch, the problem is not that these people are transgender, the problem is that they are male. The problem is not rights for transgender individuals, the problem is self-id as the basis of policies that allow for the transgression of female boundaries and consent.