Cont: Transwomen are not women - part XI

[Elaedith]

I don’t remember her mentioning it. If she did, it was barely a mention. I do remember a reference to homosexuality being reclassified.

That said, I think you should watch the video.

If homosexuality being classified was mentioned, I doubt it was for any reason other than drawing spurious parallels, even if by indirect implication. Providing specific detail isn't needed, because people obviously find it pleasing to view themselves as 'just like the first people to realise that homosexuality is not a disorder' and therefore morally superior. People will readily accept something without evidence that flatters their self-conception. Too much detail might spoil the fun by providing facts that can actually be checked.

I have seen many ContraPoints videos. All of them have been mind-bogglingly irrational and dishonest activist propaganda that is easily refuted.

Here is a refutation somebody made about an earlier JK Rowling one.

 

[crazycat]

How can it be considered fair for (e.g.) all the ambitious white American girls who trained and worked hard for years to achieve in long-distance running, only for some black East-African woman (with a number of innate physical advantages) to come along and take their dreams away?
I don't think you've thought this through very well, have you?

This has got to be the craziest analogy in this thread.

Are men complaining about African men winning men's races because of their physiology? Are women complaining about African women winning women's races because of their physiology?

I don't think you've thought this through very well, have you?

Sports are generally considered to be competition among more or less equals. Why do you think that when a transwoman competes she beats women's records by a huge margin? And matches men's performance in whatever is being measured by that sport?

Humans are a sexually dimorphic species. All the wishing in the world doesn't change that.

 

[Nick Terry]

Black Women’s Caucus of Women's Declaration International USA Statement Against Gender Ideology
https://womensdeclarationusa.com/black-womens-caucus-statement-against-gender-ideology/

The use of statistics to demonstrate and document how trans issues might affect African-American women more severely is excellent.

Black women are 2.5 times more likely to be murdered by men than White women and this is why the fight against gender ideology is pertinent for Black women; we are the demographic most in need of protection from male violence. There have already been deadly consequences where an employer ignored a Black woman’s whistleblowing regarding a male who demanded to be recognized as a woman. Monica Archer, a caseworker in a women’s shelter, warned her employers about a client, Harvey Marcelin living as Marceline Harvey, who’d made threats against her and other shelter employees. Archer was fired for speaking out. Marcelin had already served 50 years for murdering and dismembering two women and after Archer’s whistleblowing was ignored, Marcelin was found to have murdered and dismembered a 68-year-old “gal-pal” he had met while living in the women’s shelter.

Marcelin has since been reimprisoned, but locking away criminally-violent men who claim to be women doesn’t end the horror for all women. As of 2021, California has imprisoned men who claim to be women in women’s prisons. Since then, there have been women who have come forward claiming to have been harassed and sexually assaulted by some of these men. Studies have shown that even when men claim to be women, they display a typically male pattern of criminality with respect to violent crimes. Additionally, 49.7% have been convicted of sex crimes. Therefore, incarcerated women are forced to be housed with male criminals of whom half have a history of sexual violence. Since Black women are seven times more likely than White women–and more than twice as likely as Hispanic women–to be incarcerated during their lives, these inhumane conditions of incarceration disproportionately and unfairly affect a maligned and especially vulnerable group of Black women. Being raped while incarcerated amounts to torture at the hands of the state.

 

[d4m10n]

I have seen many ContraPoints videos. All of them have been mind-bogglingly irrational and dishonest activist propaganda that is easily refuted.

In her defense, some of them are mostly just for fun, and some others deviate significantly from woke critical social justice orthodoxy.

Her video on cancellation is certainly worth watching:


As to the video about Roper's podcast, she makes some good points. Certainly Roper is framing the entire arc of the show to suggest JKR has been done dirty; I don't think that's particularly controversial. That said, I've got some nits to pick with her substantive criticisms of Rowling.

Consider the following screencap:

If JKR is actually making this specific motte-and-bailey argument, one should be able to show that she made the claims from the lower left corner (or their substantive equivalent) and then retreated to the claim in the upper right when challenged on them. Can anyone do this? So far as I can tell, Contrapoints does not do so. Instead, she extrapolated from JKR's claim that it is acceptable (or perhaps preferable) to refer to people who menstruate as "women" because they are both adult and female. Was that comment substantively equivalent to "trans men are women," though? Not if you take "women" as a social role rather than a word denoting nothing but age and sex. And therein lies the conceptual problem here: The word "women" means something different in the sentence "trans men are women" than it does in the sentence "trans women are men." This problem could have easily been avoided by using JKR's actual words rather than a pair of gender critical slogans pulled from somewhere else in the world wide memeplex.

 

[Elaedith]

In her defense, some of them are mostly just for fun, and some others deviate significantly from woke critical social justice orthodoxy.

Her video on cancellation is certainly worth watching:





As to the video about Roper's podcast, she makes some good points. Certainly Roper is framing the entire arc to the show to suggest JKR has been done dirty; I don't think that's particularly controversial. That said, I've got some nits to pick with her substantive criticisms of Rowling.

Consider the following screencap:

[qimg]https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20230421/b94fe04ac57de0942119b60de3594df3.jpg[/qimg]

If JKR is actually making this specific motte-and-bailey argument, one should be able to show that she made the claims from the lower left corner (or their substantive equivalent) and then retreated to the claim in the upper right when challenged on them. Can anyone do this? So far as I can tell, Contrapoints does not do so. Instead, she extrapolated from JKR's claim that it is acceptable (or perhaps preferable) to refer to people who menstruate as "women" because they are both adult and female. Was that comment substantively equivalent to "trans men are women," though? Not if you take "women" as a social role rather than a word denoting nothing but age and sex. And therein lies the problem here: The word "women" means something different in the sentence "trans men are women" than it does in the sentence "trans women are men."

Ok, on reflection I probably haven't seen that many ContraPoints videos, mainly the previous ones on Rowling. I will try to watch these when I can get time. I haven't had time to listen to much of the witch trials podcast either so I'll have to listen to that first before I can understand your second point. Do you have which episode of the podcast this is this responding to?

 

[Elaedith]

Not if you take "women" as a social role rather than a word denoting nothing but age and sex. And therein lies the conceptual problem here: The word "women" means something different in the sentence "trans men are women" than it does in the sentence "trans women are men." This problem could have easily been avoided by using JKR's actual words rather than a pair of gender critical slogans from somewhere else on the world wide memeplex.

From my experience, activists tend to pretend that if somebody says 'a woman is an adult human female', that they are not saying 'woman' should be defined as 'somebody of an adult age and female biological sex' (therefore allowing women to have any gender role), but are actually saying that only people who are biologically female can have the social gender role 'woman' (and likewise for men).

They then use this to conflate gender critical views (which are positive about gender nonconformity) with socially conservative views (that are negative about gender nonconformity). How much of this is due to ignorance or stupidity versus dishonesty and political expedience is not always clear.

 

[Ziggurat]

Consider the following screencap:

A bailey in a motte-and-bailey argument is supposed to be a position which isn't really defensible. But "trans men are women" and "trans women are men" are both pretty defensible positions, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[d4m10n]

More nitpicking on the Contrapoints video

First, some background.

Rowling encourages us to be skeptical of the gender-related claims of males who wield their penis as a weapon to sexually assault females, as Bryson did:

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1639276123627323392

Rowling also encourages us to be skeptical of males who "would dress in women’s clothes to get access to vulnerable women and girls," as Dolatowski did.

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1618978743174987776

Now, it seems fair to me to suggest that sexually violent males need not be accorded the same deference we'd show someone who has not demonstrated disregard for the sexual autonomy and privacy of women and girls.

Contrapoints, though, seems not to see the distinction at 44:20

Natalie characterizes these tweets as a transphobic attack on trans women rather than an attempt to show how men can abuse self-i.d.

 

[d4m10n]

A bailey in a motte-and-bailey argument is supposed to be a position which isn't really defensible. But "trans men are women" and "trans women are men" are both pretty defensible positions, as far as I'm concerned.

Taken together, clearly not. You have to switch the meaning of both key terms to make these propositions make any sense. In the first sentence, "men" cannot mean "adult human males" but in the second sentence it must mean exactly that. This is confusing at best and equivocation at worst.

 

[Ziggurat]

Taken together, clearly not. You have to switch the meaning of both key terms to make these propositions make any sense. In the first sentence, "men" cannot mean "adult human males" but in the second sentence it must mean exactly that. This is confusing at best and equivocation at worst.

I'm not following you, because I think you can use "man" to mean "adult human male" throughout.

In the sentence "trans men are women", the phrase "trans man" does not refer to an actual man under that definition. But that doesn't invalidate the definition, nor does it mean that we're using some other definition of "man" besides "adult human male". Rather, "trans" isn't simply an adjective that selects a subset of "man", the way that other adjectives such as "tall" or "handsome" do. "trans man" is its own thing, separate from "man".

Linguistically, it's similar to how "giant red panda" is completely different from "red giant panda", even though a naive interpretation of "giant" and "red" as being simple adjectives suggests they should be. They aren't. A giant panda is not simply a panda that is giant, and a red panda is not simple a panda that is red. Red panda and giant panda are distinct things, and painting a giant panda red cannot make it a giant red panda.

 

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Taken together, clearly not. You have to switch the meaning of both key terms to make these propositions make any sense. In the first sentence, "men" cannot mean "adult human males" but in the second sentence it must mean exactly that. This is confusing at best and equivocation at worst.

Keep the meaning of the noun as it should be, and concentrate on the adjective, which is alienans. Compare " forged fiver": a forgery, not a fiver. Or " decoy duck": a decoy, not a duck.

 

[Lplus]

Still confusing gender with biological sex, I see.

(And once more: mainstream medicine considers transgender identity to be a valid lived condition; mainstream medicine considers identifying as Napoleon to be a mental illness. Feel free to take things up with the actual world experts, whose considered & weighty opinions you - with a gargantuan relative deficit in knowledge, education and experience - seemingly feel entirely comfortable thinking you can simply contradict because you know better.)

And you seem to be completely separating gender from biological sex. To claim that "woman" is purely gender and has no relationship with biological sex is one thing, to also state that transwomen should be banned from womens' sports at elite level because of extra strength, weight etc, is then illogical since that extra strength, weight etc is due to the biological sex of the transwomen. You can't have it both ways.

 

[TheGoldcountry]

More nitpicking on the Contrapoints video

First, some background.

Rowling encourages us to be skeptical of the gender-related claims of males who wield their penis as a weapon to sexually assault females, as Bryson did:

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1639276123627323392

Rowling also encourages us to be skeptical of males who "would dress in women’s clothes to get access to vulnerable women and girls," as Dolatowski did.

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1618978743174987776

Now, it seems fair to me to suggest that sexually violent males need not be accorded the same deference we'd show someone who has not demonstrated disregard for the sexual autonomy and privacy of women and girls.

Contrapoints, though, seems not to see the distinction at 44:20

[qimg]https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20230421/81dfd974bafa8982e1f72e2ad87f0973.jpg[/qimg]

Natalie characterizes these tweets as a transphobic attack on trans women rather than an attempt to show how men can abuse self-i.d.

It appears logically clear to me that you can't ignore sexual crimes by saying that "they weren't a real transgender" and then go on to champion self-ID, yet the cognitive dissonance is repeated over and over.

To me, it seems obvious that you would want the bad actors weeded out, because they are doing a disservice to the cause of transgenders.

 

[d4m10n]

In the sentence "trans men are women", the phrase "trans man" does not refer to an actual man under that definition. But that doesn't invalidate the definition, nor does it mean that we're using some other definition of "man" besides "adult human male". Rather, "trans" isn't simply an adjective that selects a subset of "man", the way that other adjectives such as "tall" or "handsome" do. "trans man" is its own thing, separate from "man".

Keep the meaning of the noun as it should be, and concentrate on the adjective, which is alienans. Compare " forged fiver": a forgery, not a fiver. Or "decoy duck": a decoy, not a duck.

Okay, so if we interpret the sentence "trans men are women" to mean something like "faux adult males are really adult females" where "faux" means an artificial imitation of the natural article, then I suppose we can make it all hang together. That said, the whole point of separating "trans" from the other word by a space in the first place was to avoid this specific interpretation of the term.

Writers shouldn't use "transman" or "transwoman." The word trans is an adjective that helps describe someone's gender identity, and it should be treated like other adjectives. Merging the adjective and the noun risks suggesting that a trans man or woman is more (or less) than just a man or just a woman, which goes against how many trans people identify themselves.

https://www.vox.com/2015/2/18/8055691/transgender-transgendered-tnr

 

[Ziggurat]

That said, the whole point of separating "trans" from the other word by a space in the first place was to avoid this specific interpretation of the term.

Sure, but I don't agree with that goal and I don't consider the source authoritative, so I have no reason to adopt that interpretation.

The adoption of the terms "cisman" an "ciswoman" are similarly meant to imply that cismen and ciswomen are subsets of men and women just like transmen and transwomen. But I don't accept that premise either.

 

[d4m10n]

Sure, but I don't agree with that goal and I don't consider the source authoritative, so I have no reason to adopt that interpretation.

Okay, but the person who made the video almost surely does agree with that goal and that conventional usage. The question is, then, "Whom is she quoting and what did they mean by it?" The answer is, of course, "We have no idea, but probably not Rowling." If Rowling did at some point imply that "trans" means "faux" I'd've expected her detractors to have pointed it out by now, since that would be precisely the sort of "explicit and unequivocal denial of transgender identity" LJ has been going on about.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Yeah, I've got to disagree on this point. There was plenty of criticism of Dylan from conservatives before Bud Light. For example:
Are We Being Pranked? Biden-Backed Man-Playing-Girl Is Basically A Gross Caricature Of Women
Matt Walsh: What is a woman, Dylan Mulvaney and the American gender-critical movement

It's not fair to tar conservatives because you didn't see what they were saying. It's true that he's getting a lot more blowback after this Bud ad than after the Tampax thing, but honestly, that's likely just a matter of visibility. For example, men don't pay attention to menstrual products (and that's ok, isn't it?), so for the most part, why would that have even made them aware of Dylan's existence?

Meh. You're not wrong. But my overall point was that angrysoba's assumption that the only objection to Mulvaney is from [scare quotes]the right wing[/scare quotes] is incorrect. It seems likely that it's a reflection of angrysoba not being aware of the objection of females because... well... unfortunately it's incredibly common for males to not pay any attention to female views at all. Not all males, but a whole lot of them a whole lot of the time.

angrysoba only becomes aware of objections to Mulvaney when those objections come from the right wing. The fact that left wing females have been objecting to Mulvaney from the very first day of this farce is something that angrysoba has been blind to.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Not sure if this is on topic here or in the moderated thread or in the locked thread, but I’ve been meaning to ask you folks about three related court cases.

Foote v. Ludlow School Committee
Lavigne v. Great Salt Bay Community School
Regino v. CUSD

What they all have in common are school districts which sought to facilitate the social transition of young students without informing parents of the child’s intent to transition. I expect that all three cases will ultimately be dismissed or settled, basically for the reasons given here towards the top of page 17.

Legal complexities and jurisdictional differences aside, all three cases raise the question of how far a school should go in helping a minor child to transition when the parents or legal guardians have not yet been informed and—quite probably—medical specialists have not had the opportunity to assess the child for dysphoria. We probably already agree that the school should not be providing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones or gender affirming surgeries, but there is plenty of room for argument and shades of gray as to the process of social transition (e.g. pronouns, teams, locker rooms, etc.) and non-medical interventions such as binding and tucking.

Okay then, what say you all? How far should schools go?

I personally don't think the schools should do ANYTHING so support or encourage transition without informing the parents. My position on this actually has very little to do with gender identity, it has to do with schools inserting themselves as a barrier within a family dynamic without EXTREMELY good reason to do so.

If a kid went to their counselor and told them "I want to be a goth, I want to dress in all black with heavy makeup and express my depressive sad internal self while I'm at school, but I don't want my parents to know about it" I would be extremely opposed to the school supporting a complete change of clothes and helping the child make sure their makeup was all washed off before they went home.

I don't think schools should assist children in keeping secrets from their parents.

That said, there are times when it may be appropriate for a school to intervene, but in very particular circumstances and in very specific ways. If there is reason to think that a child is being abused, then a school should be obligated to report that suspicion to the police and/or social services. If a child exhibits a significant change in mood or behavior, then it's reasonable for a school counselor to spend some time with the child to find out why, and to make sure that it's not a result of abuse at home. But if there is any reason to think that a child's change in mood needs treatment, that needs to involve the parents (or social services in cases of abuse).

FFS, kids aren't allowed to have tylenol at school these days. My friend's Type 1 diabetic child isn't even allowed to have their insulin on them while at school - it has to be locked up in the nurse's office! If medically necessary treatment of children by themselves with their parents and doctor's knowledge and support isn't allowed, why on earth would any treatment without that knowledge be considered reasonable or appropriate?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

With regards to non-medical interventions such as binding or tucking, that's a hard no from me. Both of those present health risks. Binders *bind*. They cause the same sorts of health problems that old-school corsets do, including ligament damage, stress fractures to ribs, skeletal deformity, lung stress, problems breathing and the subsequent circulatory issues, and so on.

I know less about tucking... but I honestly cannot see how forcing a male's testicles up inside their body can possibly be safe and healthy. Seriously, I had always assumed that "tucking" just meant sticking the penis and testicles down beneath the perineum, buffalo bill style. I was aghast when I found out what it actually was.

There's the additional aspect involved with binders and tucking, in that it involved adults giving children undergarments without their parent's knowledge, or adults talking to children about how to handle their genitals without their parent's knowledge. And quite simply, there is absolutely no situation in which I think that's appropriate - it's a complete transgression of safeguarding principles. Gender identity being a hot topic right now does NOT justify tossing safeguarding out the window.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I consider most medication of any sort outside the lifestyle appeasing ones like blood pressure pills, antacids etc to be party to over diagnosis syndrome.

Yeah... me and my epilepsy are gonna go ahead and disagree with you there, buddy.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Still confusing gender with biological sex, I see.

Never. I have an extremely clear distinction between the two, and have been consistent in that approach for many years now.