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Cont: Transwomen are not women - part XI

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Emily's Cat said:
I need a lawyer to normal person translation of this.
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Basically the ACLU is suing to overturn a state ban on gender affirming care for patients under 18. I've attached the meme version of the legal complaint, from a friend of a friend's post.

abe3b70feb354a9d944293f007343caf.jpg
 
sir drinks-a-lot said:
Question: What if we just got rid of the word "gender" as applied to humans?

Do we need it? I'm not as well read on these topics as a few of you appear to be, but it sure seems like it's kind of a magical word. Especially when I see it mostly used in the word "transgender", the phrase "gender roles" and as something people identify as.
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Gender is also widely used as shorthand to describe masculinity and femininity, the culturally and historically constructed roles and behaviours adopted by the two sexes. Women's history is necessarily "gendered" in this regard, but so is much of men's history - the history that appears ungendered because it's about men turns out to be gendered. Without understanding the cultural construction of masculinity in different societies and eras, we might find it hard to understand warfare, armed forces and responses to battle of various kinds.

To take another example, women's propensity towards physical violence is cross-culturally and cross-temporally vastly lower than male propensity towards physical violence. In many societies, there have been exceptions, but even now that the legal barriers to women's participation in professions that must use physical force have fallen, eg joining police forces or armed forces, women's violence is culturally constructed and interpreted through the lens of gendered stereotypes. So is male violence - men's violence is excused more often ('boys will be boys', nagging wives might 'deserve it', and so on) while women's violence is typically punished more heavily, both in courts and the media. Even many decades after women are admitted in substantial numbers to police forces and armed services, and even when such forces are commanded by women, these can retain extremely misogynistic subcultures and attract above-average numbers of male abusers, see the Metropolitan Police and Wayne Couzens for a spectacular recent example.

Can't we just say "transsexual" and "sexual roles"? And the part where people "identify" as this or that gender seems a bit suspect. What does it signify? It gets even weirder when people start to say there are a bunch of genders. It seems leak at most it is a sort of artistic declaration or something like that.
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I think it's generally a good thing to use the terms any particular subculture or identity wants to be called by. The chances are good that many of the subcultural identities will have disintegrated within a few years and been replaced with newer terms, or increased differentiations, or they just become known and understood, like twinks and bears in gay culture, recognisable sub-types that can be identified with, or not, as the case may be.

Wanting to be in the cool crowd is a perennial problem in youth culture, especially as not everyone can pull off looking like the type du jour. On the other hand, there are enough aged metalheads and increasingly elderly goths of the original iterations that we know what happens when members of various subcultures grow old.
 
sir drinks-a-lot said:
Can you clarify what you said here:



What was that useful role.
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During some of the earlier days of feminism there was some effort put into trying to pry apart the social aspects of sexism from the material reality of sex itself. After we got the right to vote, there was still a fairly strong social emphasis on what was "right and proper" for a female, in terms of how we were expected to behave, what kinds of jobs we were "suited" for, what was considered appropriate attire, etc.

During that period, some feminists in academia used the term "gender" to refer to the collection of stereotypes and socially defined expectations that were applied to both males and females, and to emphasize that this package of assumptions was not something innate to us on the basis of our sex. It was used initially to emphasize that "real men don't cry" was ******** based on stereotypes, not based on the material reality of being male. There is nothing inherent in being of the male sex that made one somehow less male were they to want a job as a nurse, or to want to stay home and raise the kids. There is nothing inherent to being of the female sex that made one unable to understand mathematics or to be a good decision maker capable of leading a company.

In that respect, the early use of "gender" as independent of sex was well-intentioned, and it served to help reduce barriers to females in the world. It also opened some doors for males which had been held closed as being "womanly" or "effeminate".

But the concept got hijacked... and it's gone so far sideways I don't think it's recoverable.

A similar thing happened with critical race theory - in its academic form it was a useful tool for identifying cases where underlying assumptions about race served as a barrier for fair and equitable treatment. But that also got highjacked, and now we have all of the idiocy spewed out by Ibram X. Kendi and the like.

That's a risk with academia across the board. Some things are useful tools in an academic setting, within limited and well understood boundary conditions. But if they escape that corral, they quickly degrade into supremely bad applications.
 
Nick Terry said:
Gender is also widely used as shorthand to describe masculinity and femininity, the culturally and historically constructed roles and behaviours adopted by the two sexes. Women's history is necessarily "gendered" in this regard, but so is much of men's history - the history that appears ungendered because it's about men turns out to be gendered.
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100% Males are subjected to just as much in terms of sex-based behavioral and social expectations. The difference is that many of those expectations serve to benefit males on average, and to disadvantage females, in terms of our ability to take part in society, economics, and politics. But they're no less confining for conferring an advantage on average.

I actually think that up until the last decade or so, females had made considerably larger strides in overcoming those artificial barriers than males had. It's not uncommon to find female doctors and lawyers... but males who choose to be nurses or legal assistants continue to be looked down on by most males as well as some females. The behavioral expectations for males are probably stronger overall.

For example, females have been accepting of non-conforming females since, well, forever really. All the way back in mythology we've had Artemis breaking the bounds of female behavior. And same-sex female relationships have historically been tolerated (provided those females were at least sometimes available for males to make use of). On the other hand, non-conforming male archetypes are fairly rare, and males in general seem quick to exclude non-conforming males from the fraternity of maledom.
 
Emily's Cat said:
During some of the earlier days of feminism there was some effort put into trying to pry apart the social aspects of sexism from the material reality of sex itself. After we got the right to vote, there was still a fairly strong social emphasis on what was "right and proper" for a female, in terms of how we were expected to behave, what kinds of jobs we were "suited" for, what was considered appropriate attire, etc.

During that period, some feminists in academia used the term "gender" to refer to the collection of stereotypes and socially defined expectations that were applied to both males and females, and to emphasize that this package of assumptions was not something innate to us on the basis of our sex. It was used initially to emphasize that "real men don't cry" was ******** based on stereotypes, not based on the material reality of being male. There is nothing inherent in being of the male sex that made one somehow less male were they to want a job as a nurse, or to want to stay home and raise the kids. There is nothing inherent to being of the female sex that made one unable to understand mathematics or to be a good decision maker capable of leading a company.

In that respect, the early use of "gender" as independent of sex was well-intentioned, and it served to help reduce barriers to females in the world. It also opened some doors for males which had been held closed as being "womanly" or "effeminate".

But the concept got hijacked... and it's gone so far sideways I don't think it's recoverable.

A similar thing happened with critical race theory - in its academic form it was a useful tool for identifying cases where underlying assumptions about race served as a barrier for fair and equitable treatment. But that also got highjacked, and now we have all of the idiocy spewed out by Ibram X. Kendi and the like.

That's a risk with academia across the board. Some things are useful tools in an academic setting, within limited and well understood boundary conditions. But if they escape that corral, they quickly degrade into supremely bad applications.
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We can't dispense with gender and ethnicity as analytical constructs even in the real world, but we should use more precise terms where they are available - violence against women and girls (VAWG) has caught on in the past decade, for example.

This is gendered violence, overwhelmingly male-on-female violence, while the prison statistics show it is further gendered after arrest due to the number of violent men who decide at that point that they are 'really' women and start identifying as trans. The reporting and perception of such cases is also gendered - in that a large chunk of the media and parts of society thereafter want to believe the accused really is a woman ('her penis'), while most of society does not.

At least in England and Wales, such men identifying as women convicted of violence are no longer sent to women's prisons, which might reduce the number of trans-identifying prisoners over time, or it might expose how transitioning from a male identity worsens the propensity towards violence for a minority of trans-identifying AMABs, to use the current jargon-acronym. There is enough social science already on disproportionate rates of depression, suicidality and poor mental health among transwomen, sooner or later there'll be detailed social science on violent transwomen, making clear why a minority of transwomen are so disproportionately represented in prison statistics. Denying this is so won't in the medium term help trans people or trans allied institutions very much, since it risks stoking up an even bigger backlash if swept under the carpet for years on end; the one in the UK this year was bad enough.
 
Emily's Cat said:
100% Males are subjected to just as much in terms of sex-based behavioral and social expectations. The difference is that many of those expectations serve to benefit males on average, and to disadvantage females, in terms of our ability to take part in society, economics, and politics. But they're no less confining for conferring an advantage on average.

I actually think that up until the last decade or so, females had made considerably larger strides in overcoming those artificial barriers than males had. It's not uncommon to find female doctors and lawyers... but males who choose to be nurses or legal assistants continue to be looked down on by most males as well as some females. The behavioral expectations for males are probably stronger overall.

For example, females have been accepting of non-conforming females since, well, forever really. All the way back in mythology we've had Artemis breaking the bounds of female behavior. And same-sex female relationships have historically been tolerated (provided those females were at least sometimes available for males to make use of). On the other hand, non-conforming male archetypes are fairly rare, and males in general seem quick to exclude non-conforming males from the fraternity of maledom.
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I don't know how true it is to say that males are quick to exclude non-conforming males from the fraternity of maledom. Maybe 50 years ago, plus/minus, when homosexuality was only just recently decriminalised, or before then, but since the 1980s, boys growing into men have been aware there is much less need for the classically, stereotypically male manual labour roles than was previously the case.

Culturally, jocks vs geeks is a stereotype going back many decades, ditto with gangs vs swots and other variants. Gay culture was always around in a covert way, but has been normalised and become public, and there are undoubtedly mixed spaces - whether at work or in social life - where the tone is not dictated by the wannabe alpha male heterosexuals. Men are surely aware that women enjoy socialising with gay friends and feel less threatened in many cases when they do, compared to the heterosexual hook-up scenes.

Homosociality is generally organised around interests - in sports (playing or watching), in hobbies and in fandoms. There are enough that men can go off to play weird games with robot toys of an evening or simply go drinking in a pub. The more non-conforming men have numerous spaces they can be themselves in, even if they stay away from lad's nights in or out.

But it's also true that many will confine themselves to online spaces, something noted already with different subcultures and stereotypes, especially the otaku in Japan, who are now obviously mirrored around the world.

The other side of this is the crisis of boys and men, of masculinity, reflected most pointedly in diverging rates of educational achievement, with more women graduating from higher education than men, and in the disconnect between men and women socially and sexually, eventually spawning incel culture. There is still a visible and measurable male privilege after graduation in terms of careers, which at the very least is caused by women taking time out from careers to have children, but the failson phenomenon and related stereotypes of clubbability and boy's networks are also real.

Some of this is class-based, which makes the gender gap between graduation rates intriguing - there are clearly more men who don't get higher education degrees than there are women. Maybe if the credentialisation of nursing was taken out of the picture, the numbers might change, but training as a proper nurse was always substantive, and learning specialist roles even more so. My late mother trained as a RN in the early 1960s, then as a midwife, then after returning to work following having three children, trained as a health visitor, before reaching management level supervising health visitors. I don't see this as vastly different to my late father acquiring a bachelors in engineering, training as an army officer and later attending staff college - one might show up as a 'graduate' in statistics, the other would not have. Today both would, while the American equivalent of my late father would be credentialised with a masters' for having gone through staff college, earlier training almost requiring completing a bachelors' when OCS would suffice in wartime to produce cannon fodder subalterns.
 
It should go without saying that death threats are not a legitimate form of discourse in a civilized society.
 
The Atheist said:
You throw tomato soup on a transphobe, we make death threats against trans and trans-friendly people.

It's the extremist way - the perfect marriage of religious zealots, Nazis and transphobes.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/13...ommunity-the-aftermath-of-posie-parkers-visit
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I think death threats are unacceptable... and illegal.

That said, I find it interesting that the pictures of "extremism" represented in that article include:
"Drag Culture - Start Young. Family Fun or Fetish Grooming?"
"XX = Female, XY = Male"
"Woman: noun Adult human female"
"No-one can change their sex even by dressing up. No-one is born in the wrong body"
"Protect Women's Spaces"
"No child is born in the wrong body"

None of that seems either violent or extreme to me.

I get tired of the forced association of right wing hate groups with left leaning females, as if we actually share any of the same views. We don't. And it's blatant ******* disinformation to continually imply that we do - something I would expect "The Disinformation Project" to be aware of, and to refrain from engaging in.

I'm also, frankly, pissed that they are completely willing to ignore and hand-wave away that ACTUAL ATTACKS ON FEMALES that repeatedly occur whenever females try to talk about the impact that transactivist demands have on our rights. The vitriol, the constant harassment, the threats, the intimidation, and the plethora of violent imagery and rape-related threatening content that females have been subjected to for the last several years.

They'll focus on an increase in objection to irrational demands for transgender people as if it were the brink of oblivion - despite the fact that NONE OF THAT is coming from the females who are most affected by it.

I have not yet seen a group of angry females show up to a pro-trans rally, then proceed to shout down, cancel, intimidate, threaten, yell profanities at, and physically assault transgender people. It has happened over and over and over again when females get together.

It ******* happened at that rally! Sure, sure, having tomato soup thrown on KJK isn't really a huge deal (other than being assault, one which has been LAUDED btw)... but let's not forget the older female who was physically attacked and had her jaw broken by a violent transgender identifying male.

Maybe if some bit of media attention were actually to look at the violence against females that keeps getting committed by the "be kind" brigade, it would give people a moment's pause, instead of everyone being fed this narrative of the poor innocent transgender people who are being genocided left and right all over the place.
 
New article in The Atlantic today:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...ockers-gender-care-transgender-rights/673941/ (https://archive.is/wg9Mw)

In the United States, then, the debate around child gender medicine has split along partisan lines: Left-leaning activist groups and the White House regularly describe child transition as “lifesaving” and raise the specter of suicide if care is withdrawn. Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and former President Donald Trump have called medical transition “child abuse.” If the most extreme red-state bills go ahead, both parents and doctors could face prosecution for giving a child access to treatment.
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The author is correct to point out that blue states are far too eager to shunt minors into the endocrine pathway, and that red states have overreacted by implementing complete bans. Moreover, she tries to answer the key policy question here: "In the middle of this storm, is there a way forward?"
 
d4m10n said:
New article in The Atlantic today:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...ockers-gender-care-transgender-rights/673941/ (https://archive.is/wg9Mw)



The author is correct to point out that blue states are far too eager to shunt minors into the endocrine pathway, and that red states have overreacted by implementing complete bans. Moreover, she tries to answer the key policy question here: "In the middle of this storm, is there a way forward?"
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I'm not sure complete bans are an overreaction. "You have to keep the endocrine pathway available for those who actually need it" is only a compelling argument if you can articulate who really needs it and how the pathway meets that need. If it's just empty rhetoric being used as a stalking horse to push the lie that TRAs are on the side of science and medicine, then a complete ban makes sense. Shut it down until its proponents can actually justify its use.
 
theprestige said:
I'm not sure complete bans are an overreaction. "You have to keep the endocrine pathway available for those who actually need it" is only a compelling argument if you can articulate who really needs it and how the pathway meets that need. If it's just empty rhetoric being used as a stalking horse to push the lie that TRAs are on the side of science and medicine, then a complete ban makes sense. Shut it down until its proponents can actually justify its use.
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We all grew up with a complete ban.
Survived.
 
Emily's Cat said:
I get tired of the forced association of right wing hate groups with left leaning females, as if we actually share any of the same views. We don't. And it's blatant ******* disinformation to continually imply that we do - something I would expect "The Disinformation Project" to be aware of, and to refrain from engaging in.
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I think the right wing (hate groups and otherwise) do share some of the same views as you do, and for largely the same reasons. I don't see a lot of conservatives in the US who support putting biological men in women's prisons, or who think it's just fine if boys can compete for girl's sporting teams and win scholarships and prizes meant for females. The unfairness is transparent to us, and unlike the left we aren't really interested in ranking groups by their degree of victimhood.
 
theprestige said:
I'm not sure complete bans are an overreaction. "You have to keep the endocrine pathway available for those who actually need it" is only a compelling argument if you can articulate who really needs it and how the pathway meets that need.
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It's not difficult to articulate who really needs it: Patients who persistently and consistently suffer from Gender Dysphoria and do not respond to non-medical treatments such as psychotherapy or CBT. The evidential problem is that no one is willing to do a true RCT on this, but this problem is only compounded by treatment bans which lack a loophole for scientific studies.
 
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d4m10n said:
It's not difficult to articulate who really needs it: Patients who persistently and consistently suffer from Gender Dysphoria and do not respond to non-medical treatments such as psychotherapy or CBT. The evidential problem is that no one is willing to do a true RCT on this, but this problem is only compounded by treatment bans which lack a loophole for scientific studies.
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Why create a loophole for scientific studies, when you know that nobody who wants it is actually going to use it for scientific studies?

Science has enjoyed this loophole in most (almost all?) jurisdictions for decades. Where's the studies? Where are the TRAs that want to do studies, will allow anyone else to do studies, will accept any studies that are done?

There are plenty of jurisdictions where the "loophole" is still the law of the land. If someone is so concerned about being allowed to do a study, they can do it in one of those jurisdictions.

I still don't think it's an overreaction.
 
Emily's Cat said:
"Drag Culture - Start Young. Family Fun or Fetish Grooming?
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Clearly unacceptable and outrageously wrong.

You do need to take into account posters at a rally aren't going to be extreme, because the people carrying them would get arrested.

That's why they keep the extreme parts online and anonymous. Real heroes.

Emily's Cat said:
... but let's not forget the older female who was physically attacked and had her jaw broken by a violent transgender identifying male.
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Who will be dealt with by the justice system, just like every other violent criminal.
 
Emily's Cat said:
I think death threats are unacceptable... and illegal.

That said, I find it interesting that the pictures of "extremism" represented in that article include:
"Drag Culture - Start Young. Family Fun or Fetish Grooming?"
"XX = Female, XY = Male"
"Woman: noun Adult human female"
"No-one can change their sex even by dressing up. No-one is born in the wrong body"
"Protect Women's Spaces"
"No child is born in the wrong body"

None of that seems either violent or extreme to me.



...snip....
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Neither the article nor the report claim that, the photos as they are titled and described in the article illustrate the physical protests.

The report is interesting reading for anyone interested in the phenomena of on-line misinformation, regardless of the specific targets this report is about.
 
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