Cont: Transwomen are not women - part XI

[d4m10n]

Any statement about transgender issues which runs counter to the policy goals of Stonewall.

 

[Upchurch]

Okay, so this is all just pedantry over a style guide. Why should we care?

I may have lost the thread of the conversation, but this was one JKR's transphobic points. No one has said it was the sum total her transphobic points making it "all just pandantry". I thought you were one of the people asking for what Rowling has said that was transphobic, so I literally don't understand what you're asking here.

 

[d4m10n]

I thought you were one of the people asking for what Rowling has said that was transphobic, so I literally don't understand what you're asking here.

If it's transphobic to prefer the 2020 style guide over the new one, I suppose she must be a bigot after all. Seems like a frivolously pedantic argument to me, both when Jo made it and when Natalie countered it.

 

[Brainster]

What is transphobia?

Largely a marketing term that says, "You're the one who's weird, not men who put on women's clothing and hang around in bars." Taken literally it would mean fear of transgendered people, which seems ludicrous to me, but I could understand it coming from women incarcerated with transwomen sex offenders. I'm sure a lot of people (like Kid Rock and Ted Nugent) are disgusted or feel revulsion and that's what gets classified as a phobia.

 

[angrysoba]

Largely a marketing term that says, "You're the one who's weird, not men who put on women's clothing and hang around in bars." Taken literally it would mean fear of transgendered people, which seems ludicrous to me, but I could understand it coming from women incarcerated with transwomen sex offenders. I'm sure a lot of people (like Kid Rock and Ted Nugent) are disgusted or feel revulsion and that's what gets classified as a phobia.

Pretty sure that merely assuming the “phobia” has to refer to a fear in the same way as, say, arachnophobia, is deliberately misunderstanding. I would think the closer analogue here is of xenophobia or indeed homophobia. Maybe not a personal fear of physical harm from a transgender person but rather the fear of what they may do to society and our children. And of course the revulsion.

 

[Graham2001]

An interesting article on the whole 'sex=gender' thing by Robert Lynch that was published in Skeptic Magazine Vol. 28 Nº. 1

In my first year of graduate school at Rutgers, I attended a colloquium designed to forge connections between the cultural and biological wings of the anthropology department. It was the early 2000s, and anthropology departments across the country were splitting across disciplinary lines. These lectures would be a last, and ultimately futile, attempt to build interdisciplinary links between these increasingly hostile factions at Rutgers; it was like trying to establish common research goals for the math and art departments.


This time, it was the turn of the biological anthropologists, and the primatologist Ryne Palombit was giving a lecture for which he was uniquely qualified — infanticide in Chacma baboons. Much of the talk was devoted to sex differences in baboon behavior and when it was time for questions the hand of the chair of the department, a cultural anthropologist, shot up and demanded to know “What exactly do you mean by these so-called males and females?” I didn’t know it at the time but looking back I see that this was the beginning of a broad anti-science movement that has enveloped nearly all the social sciences and distorted public understanding of basic biology. The assumption that sex is an arbitrary category is no longer confined to the backwaters of cultural anthropology departments, and the willful ignorance of what sex is has permeated both academia and public discussion of the topic.

https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/from-sex-to-gender-modern-dismissal-of-biology/

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

Activists consistently conflate the figurative use of the term "woman" with the literal use of the term "woman", while retroactively redefining all prior (and obvious) literal usages to have really truly meant the figurative.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

They both take the form of
"Trans <figurative> are <literal>"

In that sense, both "transmen are women" and "transwomen are men" are fully defensible and rational statements. In both cases, the phrase is clarifying that despite a figurative use of a term, the object of the sentence still falls within the literal meaning.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

This might be my favorite illustration to date!

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

That's part of why I don't separate "trans". It compounds the artifice. The argument put forth is that a "trans" woman is first and foremost a "woman", same as any other "woman". It puts forth the idea that "trans" is just another adjective, like "blonde" or "hispanic" or "disabled", all of which are used as modifiers to specify a particular subcategory of "woman", while also emphasizing the inherent "womanness" of the object.

And I profoundly disagree with that. A transwoman is not ANY kind of woman, not in a literal sense, and very rarely even in the figurative sense. They absolutely are NOT "just another kind of woman" in the sense that other adjective modifiers suggest.

A transwoman is, quite simply, a male human.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I pointed out much earlier in the threads on several occasions that women have nothing to fear from genuine trans women

Why do you believe this to be true?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Contrapoints then asserts that the terms trans and cis specifically distinguish between sexes.

Let's say Contrapoints is taking a position which makes a hard distinction between sex as a material reality and gender as a social construct.

If that's the case, then one could make an argument that "transwoman" is synonymous with male and "ciswoman" is synonymous with female.

So far, we're good.

The problem comes in when we move from this to the broader arena of things like "women's sports" and "women's prisons" and "women's showers". And that's where the shell game comes out. Because at that point, all honest people know that those spaces are named using the literal sense of the word "women" to mean female human. All of those are spaces that are separated on the basis of the material reality of sex.

The shell game is obvious, because the activists at this point attempt to retroactively redefine those spaces, pretending that they have always meant the figurative sense of "woman" as a social construct, and from their they then argue that preventing transwomen (who are male) from accessing those sex-specific spaces is transphobic.

They pretend to acknowledge a distinction between gender and sex, then they substitute gender into cases that are clearly and obviously referring to sex.

 

[theprestige]

Because transgenderism is really transsexualism.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Largely a marketing term that says, "You're the one who's weird, not men who put on women's clothing and hang around in bars." Taken literally it would mean fear of transgendered people, which seems ludicrous to me, but I could understand it coming from women incarcerated with transwomen sex offenders. I'm sure a lot of people (like Kid Rock and Ted Nugent) are disgusted or feel revulsion and that's what gets classified as a phobia.

It is an inapt term in prison, because the female prisoners aren't afraid because the person is transgender. It's not transphobia. They're afraid because the person is male. It would be much more appropriate to call it adrophobia.

Aside: There's a similar situation with fears related to heights, which often get casually lumped together as acrophobia. Although I don't rise to the level of a clinical phobia... I have no particular fear of heights. I can happily sit on a cliff edge, dangling my feet over the side. On the other hand, I have a really hard time with open stairs (ones where each rise is a separate plank, not connected to the one above it, and you can see through them), as well as invisible walkways, and a whole lot of hotel balconies. I'm not afraid of the height, I'm afraid of falling. It's basophobia, not acrophobia. I get the same discomfort if I'm walking on a sidewalk near a busy road, even if the rise is only 6 inches.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Because transgenderism is really transsexualism.

I don't think it even climbs that far up the ladder of reason.

Also, despite terminology being a bit squishy and often not literally true, the term transsexual already has a meaning, and refers to a person who has undergone surgery to bring their bodies into the closest facsimile of their desired state.

It's worth noting that a whole lot of this comes back to the persistent conflation of sex and gender, after having spent decades prying them apart.

In the DSM 5, "Gender Dysphoria", and in the DSM 4 "Gender Identity Disorder" have virtually nothing to do with the social construct of gender ala Butler. They have to do with distress surrounding one's sexed body, as opposed to the perception or belief of oneself as the opposite sex.

 

[d4m10n]

In that sense, both "transmen are women" and "transwomen are men" are fully defensible and rational statements. In both cases, the phrase is clarifying that despite a figurative use of a term, the object of the sentence still falls within the literal meaning.

Ok, taking all that as read how are we supposed to get from things which Rowling actually said (either in the podcast or elsewhere) to something like "figurative women are literal men."

A transwoman is, quite simply, a male human.

I highly doubt whether Contrapoints would be willing to call herself this.

 

[angrysoba]

Let's say Contrapoints is taking a position which makes a hard distinction between sex as a material reality and gender as a social construct.

If that's the case, then one could make an argument that "transwoman" is synonymous with male and "ciswoman" is synonymous with female.

So far, we're good.

The problem comes in when we move from this to the broader arena of things like "women's sports" and "women's prisons" and "women's showers". And that's where the shell game comes out. Because at that point, all honest people know that those spaces are named using the literal sense of the word "women" to mean female human. All of those are spaces that are separated on the basis of the material reality of sex.

The shell game is obvious, because the activists at this point attempt to retroactively redefine those spaces, pretending that they have always meant the figurative sense of "woman" as a social construct, and from their they then argue that preventing transwomen (who are male) from accessing those sex-specific spaces is transphobic.

They pretend to acknowledge a distinction between gender and sex, then they substitute gender into cases that are clearly and obviously referring to sex.

In the video Contrapoints agrees that sports are an area where there is legitimate division between sexes, although qualifies it (reasonably in my opinion) that it depends on the sport and the age of competition. Weightlifting, she says, should be segregated by sex. You agree with that, I agree with that. She then asks what about middle school softball (I think) and suggests there is no need to segregate there. Again, I would probably agree with that too. I think there are a number of sports where segregation seems not to make a difference in terms of strength and I am surprised it happens anyway. Darts, snooker, chess (?).

 

[TomB]

In the video Contrapoints agrees that sports are an area where there is legitimate division between sexes, although qualifies it (reasonably in my opinion) that it depends on the sport and the age of competition. Weightlifting, she says, should be segregated by sex. You agree with that, I agree with that. She then asks what about middle school softball (I think) and suggests there is no need to segregate there. Again, I would probably agree with that too. I think there are a number of sports where segregation seems not to make a difference in terms of strength and I am surprised it happens anyway. Darts, snooker, chess (?).

Regarding softball:
Generally, the boys gravitate towards baseball and the girls towards softball. Despite the similarities, they are not the same sport. Particularly with regard to batting, playing one can actually mess up your skills in the other. That's just a little background information.

Technically, at a young age, girls and boys could play together. At some point puberty starts though. So you would want to start the division sometime before that. Which would probably be right around Jr. High.

However, the end point sport for boys is baseball, not softball. So most boys are going to start and finish in baseball, not softball. Again, the sports are not interchangeable.

Lets say that a boy did come up through the clubs playing softball. When he reaches Jr. High age he will find few male teams available. Instead there will be a lot of baseball teams for which his skill set...particularly batting...will be underdeveloped.

There was much made over Jennie Finch striking out several superstar MLB players. The reason is not that there is parity between Finch and MLB players, but rather that it's a different game and the batting skills are different because the pitching is different and the ball moves differently.

There are men's fast pitch leagues. But it's not exactly the same. The pitching circle is further back because the pitches are significantly faster. So definite sex advantage which starts at some age before which you would want to make the split. (Also, go watch high school softball and then high school baseball. You'll notice a significant speed difference in the outfield.)

Natalie probably picked Jr. High level because she doesn't think it's serious at that age. But it is. My daughter didn't start softball until she was in middle school and she was significantly behind. By that age, the pitchers on the teams all had paid private pitching coaches. Had she started earlier, age 8, she probably would have been scholarship material. But a four year delay makes a difference. Had Natalie said grade school. I would have agreed. But there still would be few boys on the team. Because...baseball.

 

[d4m10n]

Regarding softball, American civil rights activists want us to reinterpret Title IX so that it is taken to protect people based on gender rather than sex, whenever the two are in conflict:

ACLU of Indiana’s legal director, Ken Falk, said Tuesday in a statement that the group is pleased that the judge decided that the girl should “be allowed to play on her school’s softball team.”

“When misinformation about biology and gender is used to bar transgender girls from school sports it amounts to the same form of sex discrimination that has long been prohibited under Title IX, a law that protects all students – including trans people – on the basis of sex,” Falk said.

https://apnews.com/article/sports-c...uits-indiana-b1e6afa3e567180a528532fb0e8597cf

I think a big part of what the terven mean by "sex is real" is that they'd rather not see sex demoted beneath gender as a protected characteristic in law.

 

[IsThisTheLife]

There's a basic problem here, which is that by even using the cultural-marxist terminology that's been invented and shoe-horned into our language you validate it and allow yourselves to be corralled ("valid" is one of London Ja ... John's favourite words). I refuse to use asinine, made up words and phrases like "transphobia" and "gender non-binary" EVER (except in quotation marks) because it makes me feel like an idiot (or a 'liberal').