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Cont: Transwomen are not women - part 13

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Paul2 said:
In Butler's defense, the award is given for bad style, not bad content, and it is possible to parse that sentence above, although you'd still be left with all the questions. If her writing on transgenderism is as convoluted as the sentence above, I'll pass.
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Academic writing is frequently quite dense and not particularly enjoyable to read. Butler is usually not writing for a general audience and it definitely shows.
 
Paul2 said:
If her writing on transgenderism is as convoluted as the sentence above, I'll pass.
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All her writing is like that. The unnecessary complexity and opacity isn't inadvertent, it's deliberate. It makes it easier to pretend that there's more substance to her views than there actually is. The whole field is infected with this style of Foucaultian jargon, and nobody within it has the courage to simply state that the emporer has no clothes.
 
"Hey, this moral high ground I was occupying is two feet deep in sewage overflow. How the heck did that happen?"
 
d4m10n said:
If the individual is in a coma, you cannot know their gender.
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That's a massive retcon, trying to reframe what historically was just "sex but you can say it around grandma without giving her the vapors" into something like another horoscope sign.

Again, and so sick of repeating myself there are two vectors.

1. Your biological sex.
2. Expectations society puts on you because of 1.

There is no "Gender Soul" 3rd vector.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
There's a very practical question here. Facing a sex segregated space, what should a trans person do?
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1. Realize that isn't they don't get unilateral decision making in the segregation and "No I think I belong in the other line" isn't always their decision to make. Sometimes society gets to make demarcations you don't agree with side you are on and no it's not always a personal attack directly on you when it happens.

2. Get over it. It's a public bathroom. (Or locker room or changing room or vaguely similar concept.) The whole threat vector of bathrooms is massively over stated in this discussion anyway. We talk like going to the bathroom while not in your house is always braving some dark Saw trap looking room in the corner of a parking garage in the middle of the night light by only one flickering bulb while either a bunch pervy guys in trenchcoats or MAGA hatted TERFs wait at the door for you to pick the wrong door.

Sometimes it is just as simple as two rooms in the back of the Applebees that you have to walk past the family of four eating their mozzarella stick appetizer to get to where absolutely nothing is going to happen if you don't get your way in which of the two arbitrary doors you walk through. It's a toilet and sinks, not the showers at Auschwitz. You are not going to get raped or hate crimed for going in the door that doesn't match your preference.

Maybe it's just the military in me but I've taking a squat in some WEIRD places in my time, situations where "Do I have enough shielding between me and another set of genitals" is the least of my worries.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
I'm curious, do you see anything wrong with the Canadian "resolution"? The anti-trans doomsayers never seem to want to talk about how self-ID seems to be going fine there. It's been years now, surely any problems would have arisen by now.
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Does self ID lead to less medical intervention?
That would be the sole goal of a rational approach.
 
JoeMorgue said:
1. Realize that isn't they don't get unilateral decision making in the segregation and "No I think I belong in the other line" isn't always their decision to make. Sometimes society gets to make demarcations you don't agree with side you are on and no it's not always a personal attack directly on you when it happens.

2. Get over it. It's a public bathroom. (Or locker room or changing room or vaguely similar concept.) The whole threat vector of bathrooms is massively over stated in this discussion anyway. We talk like going to the bathroom while not in your house is always braving some dark Saw trap looking room in the corner of a parking garage in the middle of the night light by only one flickering bulb while either a bunch pervy guys in trenchcoats or MAGA hatted TERFs wait at the door for you to pick the wrong door.

Sometimes it is just as simple as two rooms in the back of the Applebees that you have to walk past the family of four eating their mozzarella stick appetizer to get to where absolutely nothing is going to happen if you don't get your way in which of the two arbitrary doors you walk through. It's a toilet and sinks, not the showers at Auschwitz. You are not going to get raped or hate crimed for going in the door that doesn't match your preference.

Maybe it's just the military in me but I've taking a squat in some WEIRD places in my time, situations where "Do I have enough shielding between me and another set of genitals" is the least of my worries.
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Ok, but even if trans people decide to "get over it", and I assume most have tougher constitution for this kind of stuff simply by virtue of having to encounter it far more often than the average cis person, it's entirely outside their control how other people will react to seeing someone who, by all appearances, is using the wrong restroom.

Seems pretty reliable to assume that a trans man with a flat chest and beard that regularly uses the women's restroom is going to provoke a reaction. Best case scenario is that cops/management or whatever gets called and there's an awkward explanation, worst case scenario is someone overreacts violently.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
There's a very practical question here. Facing a sex segregated space, what should a trans person do?
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Enter the space consistent with their sex, assuming that's what public policy mandates.

Your turn to answer a very practical question: When faced with a trans person, what should public policy on sex segregated spaces do?

---

There's also a somewhat less practical but still very important question here. What exactly is a trans person wanting to accomplish, when faced with a sex segregated space?
 
d4m10n said:
This does nothing to vitiate my point. These human societies lack any technologies which might help people artificially change sex (e.g. blockers, hormones, surgery) but they still recognize that some people can adopt a gender role other than the one we'd normally see socially assigned to a newborn male.

A social construct arising in a society living as close to nature as humanly possible.

Care to expand on this?
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With reference to nature/nurture, the old question would you rather be a happy pig or a discontented philosopher comes to mind.
I visualize pigs seemingly content with their "gender" being happy, always, representing what nature offers, and men wishing they were women representing the discontented philosopher, what nurture dishes out. I ignore women wishing to be men because it is brand new in cultural terms and driven by mysogeny.
 
JoeMorgue said:
That's a massive retcon, trying to reframe what historically was just "sex but you can say it around grandma without giving her the vapors" into something like another horoscope sign.
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Don't blame the messenger, Joe. I'm not the guy who redefined "gender" from something about grammar to something ineffable and unquestionable in each individual human mind which can only be ascertained by asking.

JoeMorgue said:
There is no "Gender Soul" 3rd vector.
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The entire trans rights movement disagrees, & if you are going to use their language you need to understand what it conveys to them. When they say "gender" they mean "gender identity," and when they say "gender identity" they mean this.
 
And using quotes for anything to do with "gender" or "gender identity" is helpful to indicate the poor semiotics in play. The pronoun scourge could be repackaged with quotes too.
 
theprestige said:
There's also a somewhat less practical but still very important question here. What exactly is a trans person wanting to accomplish, when faced with a sex segregated space?
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Presumably they need to take a piss from time to time.
 
Trausti said:
Also the grown men who want to watch young girls undress in changing rooms. The most important trans right of all.
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it's really a bad policy that people are allowed to be sex pests so long as they're in the right changing rooms. /s
 
TurkeysGhost said:
Ok, but even if trans people decide to "get over it", and I assume most have tougher constitution for this kind of stuff simply by virtue of having to encounter it far more often than the average cis person, it's entirely outside their control how other people will react to seeing someone who, by all appearances, is using the wrong restroom.

Seems pretty reliable to assume that a trans man with a flat chest and beard that regularly uses the women's restroom is going to provoke a reaction.
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Well that's the other factor, passing.

Despite how insufferably clever people think it is to go find pictures of post-surgery (and a lot of other work in most cases) trans people and go "Oh so you're saying THIS person should use the mens room? Hardy har LOL knee slap yuk yuk" over and over the Trans closet is even more transparent then the gay closet and that's saying something.

You can "My gender soul is on nuanced complicated spectrum of 147 genders" all you want but 99% of biological males and 99% of biological females are obviously what they are, secondary sex characteristics like height, build, voice, jaw and face structure, hip and shoulder size/shape are a thing. Pure or reasonable levels of androgyny as purely physical state are like not common. Sorry sexual dimorphism in the species Homo Sapien is still mostly a thing most of the time. Take it up with God or Evolution, they didn't ask our opinion.

This ties back into the "We can't set up literal or metaphorical genital checkpoints at the door" thing.

We aren't there yet, won't be on a timeframe worth discussing here, and might never get there on any kind of "We can take 6'4" bearded broad shouldered hairy chested person with a prominent Adam's Apple and a penis and make them into a woman in the sense that they will be perceived to be a woman by 99% of people in 99% of situations" thing. It's not something we can make not true because it would be easier if it wasn't.

"Just don't notice that the person in this gendered space is obviously from the different sex" is not a reasonable standard even assuming everyone is operating with good intentions.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Well that's the other factor, passing.

Despite how insufferably clever people think it is to go find pictures of post-surgery (and a lot of other work in most cases) trans people and go "Oh so you're saying THIS person should use the mens room? Hardy har LOL knee slap yuk yuk" over and over the Trans closet is even more transparent then the gay closet and that's saying something.

You can "My gender soul is on nuanced complicated spectrum of 147 genders" all you want but 99% of biological males and 99% of biological females are obviously what they are, secondary sex characteristics like height, build, voice, jaw and face structure, hip and shoulder size/shape are a thing. Pure or reasonable levels of androgyny as purely physical state are like not common. Sorry sexual dimorphism in the species Homo Sapien is still mostly a thing most of the time. Take it up with God or Evolution, they didn't ask our opinion.

This ties back into the "We can't set up literal or metaphorical genital checkpoints at the door" thing.

We aren't there yet, won't be on a timeframe worth discussing here, and might never get there on any kind of "We can take 6'4" bearded broad shouldered hairy chested person with a prominent Adam's Apple and a penis and make them into a woman in the sense that they will be perceived to be a woman by 99% of people in 99% of situations" thing. It's not something we can make not true because it would be easier if it wasn't.

"Just don't notice that the person in this gendered space is obviously from the different sex" is not a reasonable standard even assuming everyone is operating with good intentions.
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This isn't really an answer to the question I asked, though it does bring it good points.

Considering how tiny of a fraction of the population are trans, I would guess butch lesbians getting misidentified as men is happening nearly as much, if not more, than trans women are being clocked. There are almost certainly more "manly" (a bit tall, a bit broad shouldered, a bit whatever) cis women than there are trans women. Transdar is not as reliable as many would believe.

For those that do pass though, what do you recommend? I suspect many are just using the restroom that matches their gender identity with no-one catching wise.
 
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I personally don't care. "Passing" isn't even a concept that applies to my world view because it's meaningless.

I'm trying to make a system that works for the most people possible, enough to be stable.

The women will not give up their penis free safe space. They've made that abundantly clear.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I personally don't care. "Passing" isn't even a concept that applies to my world view because it's meaningless.

I'm trying to make a system that works for the most people possible, enough to be stable.

The women will not give up their penis free safe space. They've made that abundantly clear.
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have they? Generally speaking the polls show that women are measurably more trans accepting than men.

Seems very context dependent. In the case of Canada, for example, the anti-trans panic-mongering totally fell flat. The general public just wasn't interested in having a UK style freakout about it. They wrote trans rights into their civil rights law and went about their lives nonplussed.
 
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