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Cont: Transwomen are not women part XII (also merged)

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JoeMorgue said:
It's the impossible trifecta.

- We have to separate by biological sex because vagina owners have to be protected from penis owners.
- But we can't like... check for penises and vaginas at the door because that's just... all kinds of horrible.
- But we also can't go "Okay penis and vagina owners you have to do X (dress a certain way, act a certain way, whatever) so we know if you're a penis or vagina owner without checking what's in your pants."

And that's where we are stuck. All 3 of those can't be implemented in the functional real world at the same time.

The debate is which side of the triangle we get rid of. One of them has to go (or be heavily modified or deemphasized depending on how much of that hair has to be split.)

And you have to accept that, the impossibility of the whole triangle, even if you don't fully disagree with any side of it. There's arguments, logical sane arguments, for each side but they all 3 can't be "real world application" true at the same time. We can't make this not true.

And again I can lay out what the actual problem is without saying sex, gender, male, female, cis, or trans.
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That's not a bad summary at all. :thumbsup:
 
mumblethrax said:
I'm simply explaining that I am not muddling sex and gender, and it seems to me that anyone who thinks the nature of sex necessitates anything about what the law says is.
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So, can you answer your own question: which side of that razor (sex is biological, gender is social, cultural, etc.) do you think the law falls on?
 
Paul2 said:
So, can you answer your own question: which side of that razor (sex is biological, gender is social, cultural, etc.) do you think the law falls on?
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The law itself, as a social institution, necessarily falls on the 'gender' side.
 
This is why the accusation that the trans-supporting side doesn't actually know what its argument IS and just got as far as "Here's the new officially sanctioned oppressed victim group you have to agree with about everything because we updated the Victim Flowchart" and didn't really think about it any further are so common. Because that really is what it feels like a lot of the time.

It's been real easy in this discourse to back people into a corner where they just go "Well that's what the law says" or "That's what this medical journal says" and I don't think given what we're talking about people actually owning their arguments more then that is an unreasonable expectation.

And so I don't get crucified I want to make one thing very clear. Ironically I've tried very hard to not really make this discussion about trans people anymore than I have to because ironically I don't really think they are wrong. We as a society have ******* failed miserably at sexual rights, balance, and fairness. We've ****** it up bad. We can't get mad at people who trying to fix what they feel is wrong about their place in all of it.

I think they are "wrong" for certain values of wrong as it pertains to certain questions of categorization and labeling of the parts. But I don't think they are wrong exactly. I think their feelings of struggle at finding a sense of identity are 100% valid. Their desire to turn the labels on their head makes sense in some contexts. I don't think they have some sinister agenda (per capita outside of the sinister agenda any random percent of the population would have). I think they are good people who are genuinely being hurt by the world. And if SOME accommodations for them aren't on your table, you're most certainly a terrible person.

I do think they are wrong about somethings and coffee shop liberal "You're the victim, therefore everything you say is factually correct" is not tolerance, it's pandering. Infantilizing pandering at that. It's how you treat a child throwing a tantrum when you know they can't actually understand a logical or rational argument. And the most dehumanizing thing you can do to someone is have absolutely no expectations of them. These are big boys and girls they can handle being told they aren't right about everything.
 
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Pixel42 said:
Is a woman likely to be safe in the women's room if predatory men are free to enter it provided they utter certain magic words? Probably not.
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There is no bouncer in front of the McDonald's bathroom. There is no need for words, magic or otherwise. People seriously overestimate the difficulty predatory men have in accessing these spaces.

I live in a city of 8 million people, with no shortage of sex predators. It's been illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender identity for something like 20 years.

I have yet to succeed in finding a single instance where a sexual predator gained access to a bathroom by pretending to be trans.

There is no evidence that this has led to an increase in assaults on women.

Seems like the skeptic should conclude that this isn't the danger people think it is.
 
mumblethrax said:
The law itself, as a social institution, necessarily falls on the 'gender' side.
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No, it doesn't necessarily fall on the side of gender. Gender includes superficial things like how one dresses, and the law doesn't need to say anything about that.

And even if you want to say that whatever the law deals with is necessarily a social construct and so it can't be sex itself, that doesn't automatically make it gender. It can easily be some other as-yet unnamed construct. And that construct can be much closer to sex than to gender.
 
Paul2 said:
Does falling on the gender side mean anything other than both the law and gender are social constructions?
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Yes. It means that nothing follows from scientific definitions or scientific understanding of sex. The law is a separate domain, designed for different purposes. The people who are saying "Sex in humans is immutable, therefore legal sex should be immutable" are simply making a category error.
 
Ziggurat said:
No, it doesn't necessarily fall on the side of gender. Gender includes superficial things like how one dresses, and the law doesn't need to say anything about that.
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For the billionth time, I'm talking about the law itself, and not the contents of the law.
 
mumblethrax said:
The fact that such effects are not foreseeable.

Anti-sex-discrimination law might eventually be construed as barring sex segregated public bathrooms altogether. That doesn't seem like a good reason not to have such laws.
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They are foreseeable to those who take the trouble to think about what they are proposing, particularly when representations are made that point out the consequences. I'm afraid claiming unintended consequences doesn't cut it.

I knew Justice was blind, but I wasn't aware the law was not only blind, but deaf as well.
 
mumblethrax said:
For the billionth time, I'm talking about the law itself, and not the contents of the law.
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Doesn't matter. Your claim that the law (be it "itself" or its "contents") must deal with gender is simply wrong. That holds true for both, because gender is not the only social construct one can make around sex.
 
mumblethrax said:
You are confusing interpretation of the law with the intentions of lawmakers. They aren't the same thing.
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As a matter of personal praxis, I only care about the intentions of the lawmakers to the extent that the courts do when they decide how the law will be implemented. There is little point and much frustration in being a doctrinaire originalist, in my experience.

In this case the courts have (thus far) decided that Washington's ban on gender identity discrimination in public accommodations requires all hitherto exclusively female nude spas to accept at least some bepenised patrons. My question is not why the lawmakers drafted a law that has this effect, but rather what is the best argument for implenting such a policy at the state level. What are the costs and benefits?

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The moral high ground doesn't give you full right to ignore any and all practical concerns.

The people (or at least not everyone) who are simply asking to talk about practical considerations of how some of this is going to be functionally implemented on a day to day level is the bad guy here.
 
mumblethrax said:
The justification will be advanced on similar grounds to the justification for sex discrimination. Is a transwoman likely to be safe in the men's room? Probably not.
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Evidence? And who counts as a transwoman? Self ID? Medical transition? Hormones vs surgery? Top surgery vs bottom surgery? Specify the population or we can't make a comparison. I somehow doubt that this person is at any particular risk of being sexually assaulted in a men's room.
 
d4m10n said:
As a matter of personal praxis, I only care about the intentions of the lawmakers to the extent that the courts do when they decide how the law will be implemented. There is little point and much frustration in being a doctrinaire originalist, in my experience.
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Then questions like "What is the justification for writing a law denying single-sex accomodations and services?" should be irrelevant to you. That's not what lawmakers are doing.

My question is not why the lawmakers drafted a law that has this effect, but rather what is the best argument for implenting such a policy at the state level. What are the costs and benefits?
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I mean, that literally was your question, but if the effects are not foreseeable, neither will the costs and benefits be.
 
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