Cont: Transwomen are not women - part 13

[Emily's Cat]

Again my issue is we could be having this exact same argument about anything; height, weight, eye color, blood type with the same "My internal self image doesn't match reality" and we just... aren't.

Why does everyone's actual real world height that actually exists in the real objective world never clash with their "subjective internal self image of self" so that we have to have SOME version of the "Okay the are 5 foot 5... but they see themselves as 6 foot and we have to acknowledge that in some way?"
These are not questions we are bigoted simply for asking.

Why only sex/gender? Why does literally no other objective, real world biological variable demand accomodation for an internal sense of self?

Oh, oh oh! I actually do have a disconnect on my height! I'm 5'2" in the real world. My brain however, thinks that I'm about 4 inches taller than I am. I'm nearly 50, and I am still constantly surprised that I can't reach things. My brain is absolutely convinced that I can reach it, I'm tall enough. And I just keep being surprised that I can't.

Emotionally, it would be awesome if everyone else in the world perceived me as being 5'6". It would be great if they treated me like I was taller. I would love it.

But... and here's the kicker... I *still* won't be able to reach that shelf. Because wishes don't alter reality. And I'm smart enough and self-aware enough to recognize that my brain is wrong.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Considering it's only recent history that "left-handedness" has been de-stigmatized, I would not rush to assume that trans identity is unique in this way.

Gender expression, even for cis-gendered people, has long been a contentious topic. Trans people are only the most flagrant transgression against conservative gender roles, but it's part of a larger context.

I call BS.

Go look at the 80s and 90s.

We have regressed since then.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Because you don't know how to argue without calling people Terf's and claiming the moral high ground as your total argument and this is no longer my problem to solve.

The complete picture of who we are consists of two things. Who we are and what we want to be.
Only with transgenderism does it manifest as this weird, line straddling "What I want to be IS what I am" way.

Being 5 foot 5 but WANTING to be 6 foot doesn't make you sorta 6 foot or a kind of 6 foot or 6 foot in certain situations.

When I close my eyes and picture "myself" I don't see exactly what the real world sees. This is true for everybody and there is absolutely nothing wrong with. Only with transgenders do we expect it to matter in this specific way.

Keep pretending it's super hard to understand because you can't function in an argument without a softball opponent you can call and Terf and wipe your hands of.

Technically, it's more than three. When we're talking psychological identity, it's three core elements: How we perceive ourselves, how we believe other people perceive us, and how we wish for others to perceive us. Note that in this context, "perceive" incorporates both somatic and psychological attributes. It's not just how we perceive our bodies, how we believe others perceive our bodies, and how we want others to perceive our bodies. It's also the content of our character. For example, TG seems to clearly want all of us to perceive them as being a noble, caring person willing to fight for what's right, and to stand up to injustice. Unfortunately for TG, as well as all other humans... how people actually perceive us (both somatically and psychologically) is beyond our control. I certainly don't perceive TG to be any of those character attributes listed.

Both the somatic and the psychological aspects of that identity are correlated with mental health disorders where the desire and the reality are out of alignment. On the somatic side, one of the most obvious examples is eating disorders, particularly anorexia. The patient perceives themselves to be fat; they believe that other people perceive them to be fat; they wish for others to perceive them as thin and fit. In reality, however, other people perceive them as being dangerously and unhealthily skinny. That departure from reality is a hallmark of the disorder. On the psychological side, you get into the various disorders that involve an element of delusion. That includes of course schizophrenia and psychosis, but it's also an element of both bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder.

There's another aspect to identity however, that being objective identity as opposed to psychological identity. This is the means by which other people recognize you and verify that you are you. This is very largely based on our physical attributes, because nobody can read your mind. Think of the items on your drivers license or passport. For people who know you well, it can also incorporate particular behaviors. And in some cases, it will incorporate things like manner of speaking. For example, there are some authors who have a very particular and recognizable "voice" - their style of writing is highly unique, and is something by which many people would recognize them. Similarly, there are some singers or actors who have unique vocal characteristics that make their voices identifiable characteristics.

Part of the frustration with the current transgender activism is the conflation of these two different types of identities. It's the push for everyone to accept the individual's psychological construct of themselves... over and above our actual perceptions of them, and in contradiction to objective identifiers.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The biological reality of sex is pretty straightforward like you say, but I don't see how that negates that gender, being a social construct, is complicated and nuanced. The meaning that people derive from biological differences is entirely what is in question in these broader debates about gender roles, and this has implications far beyond trans people.

This is at the very core of this discussion, and it's the piece that you seem unable or unwilling to grasp.

Nobody in this thread cares about anybody's preferred gender role. Not one of us gives a flying **** how someone wants to present. We're all pretty much in support of males wearing frilly dresses and lipstick, we support females wearing overalls and steel toed boots with a buzz cut. We. Don't. Care.

Gender *IS* a social construct. And it is literally NOTHING MORE THAN A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT.

But sex is real.

The problem, the entire heart of this discussion, lies in the fact that sex is a material reality.

Nobody gives a crap how anyone chooses to dress, or what career they want to pursue or if they want to be a homemaker. Nobody cares who wears makeup and who shaves their head, who grows their hair out long and who wears cargo shorts. We don't ******* care at all.

But we *do* care when someone tries to turn reality on it's head and essentially says "This male likes to wear lipstick and heels, therefore this male should use the female restroom and compete against females in sports and be housed with females in prisons". That's when we care.

And we care because these are situations where sex - actual objective biological ******* sex - matters. And it makes zero sense at all for anyone anywhere to try to wish into existence that a person's entirely socially constructed identification with stereotypes and gender roles be treated as sacrosanct and more important than the reality of sex.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Are you assuming that "simpler" is the desired end goal? Why?

Some things are just complicated. Gender roles are definitely complicated.

Gender roles aren't complicated. They're regressive ********.

There's plenty of well reasoned and well articulated writing on the subject. It's complicated, but not impenetrable. It's out there if you are really curious, Judith Butler's work is generally well regarded.

Judith Butler's work is only well regarded by true believers in the church of gender identity. If you've actually read Butler's work, you would be able to admit that their writing is entirely impenetrable and is absolute horse-****.

Left-handed people were routinely harangued into being right handed. Probably an interesting parallel there.

And yet somehow, we've never had an era of right handed people insisting that everybody else ignore that they do everything with their right hand, and give them a left-handed desk and left-handed scissors and put them in the left-handed hall of fame because they *identify* as left-handed.

 

[Emily's Cat]

We can, but we don't. Society has decided gender is something that is very important whether individuals like it or not.

No, you're wrong. Society has acknowledged that SEX is something very important. SEX not gender. FFS, stop conflating the two!

Trans people have to live in the world that exists now, not the post gender utopia of the future.

Is it your view that gender is not something that is socially coded with huge practical implications?

An obvious example of this is race. Race pretty much doesn't exist in any objective sense, it's entirely socially imagined. That doesn't make it any less "real". It's real because society has made it real.

None of us give a **** about gender. We care about sex.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Judith Butler's work is ****. Yes, it's well regarded, but that's a damning indictment of the field, rather than proof of quality. And Butler is anything but coherent. She falls very much into the Foucault mold of writing in deliberately opaque ways to try to sound more meaningful than she actually is.

Bombastic.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I don't think it's contradictory to condemn anti-trans bigots in the sternest possible terms while also admitting that I am not the best and most coherent explainer of the entire trans "controversy".

I'm a spectator as much as you are.

It's entirely contradictory to condemn people with actual rational and well-thought out concerns and arguments as "anti-trans-bigots" so you can get your hate-on and walk around telling yourself how progressive and awesome you are while not having a single coherent argument of your own.

Your entire schtick is well poisoning and name calling.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Perhaps they are right, absent good moderation of this website, quarantining all the anti-trans freaks into a single thread seems like the least-bad option.

Tell you what. You explain exactly what we have said that you view as being both "anti-trans" and "freakish", with an explanation of why you believe those labels are appropriate.

Then maybe we can talk.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Ok, but do you not find the privacy concerns for trans people at all compelling?

Do you not find the privacy concerns for female people at all compelling?

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

Butler is writing in a style that intentionally confuses and makes their points opaque. In my opinion, that's because they don't have a point, or at best they have an extremely weak point. But they figure if they use a lot of big words and complicated run-on sentences, everyone will just quit bothering about halfway through and assume Butler makes sense.

It's entirely self-servingly bombastic ********.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

Stop guessing and imagineering whatever you think is going to support your platform of invective.

No, butch lesbians do NOT get misidentified more often than males who identify as "women". You know why? Because the vast, overwhelming majority of the butchiest butch lesbos out there are still obviously FEMALE.

Blair White is in the extreme minority of trans identified males, they can pass in a fairly convincing way, provided they have on enough makeup. But they've also had a LOT of cosmetic surgery done, including significant facial feminization. And they had an unusually small stature for a male to begin with.

On the other hand, Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner only pass in photos, or when they're staged to be alone or visually separated from other people. If you actually see Cox or Jenner in the presence of actual females, their male physiques are pretty obvious. If you see their hands or their feet in the vicinity of even the tallest butchest female, there's pretty much no question that they are in actual fact males.

You seem to have this unshakeable faith that all trans people pass really, really well. But that's all it is: faith. It is not rooted in fact. Don't let social media and artfully crafted photo ops deceive you.

 

[Emily's Cat]

have they? Generally speaking the polls show that women are measurably more trans accepting than men.

This is a bait and switch.

Females are more accepting of trans than males are, yes. And yet it's also completely true that FEMALES DO NOT WANT TO RELINQUISH THEIR SPACES TO MALES NO MATTER HOW TRANS THOSE MALES ARE.

The two things can be simultaneously true.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

Mmm... No, no Canada didn't. There are a LOT of canadian females who are extremely unhappy with the fact that their government wrote it into law without bothering to even talk to females about the impact. And they've been campaigning and objecting to it ever since.

The canadian media, however, doesn't report on it.

Canada just had an extremely large protest just a few weeks ago. Just because you have your head stuck in the sand doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Buck Angel would cause quite a stir in the ladies, bro.

Strict sex-segregation makes significantly less sense in light of folks like him, since that policy would put everyday women more on edge than no policy at all.

Have you ever seen Angel in the company of males? The difference in stature is striking. Even with the muscles and the beard, Angel is downright delicate in comparison. Their movements are feminine, their gait is feminine. Their voice and inflection is feminine.

All alone, they're very masculine presenting - and I agree that generally speaking "person with obvious beard" is almost always going to be read as male, regardless of their sex. And for basic bathrooms, as I've said for ages and ages... use the bathroom that other people are going to assume you belong in.

OTHER PEOPLE. That's the keep. Because nobody at all is going to assume that Alex Dummond is a female. Ever. I don't care how many bangles they have on their wrists.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Restrooms are the least of my concerns.

If we can get some agreement from TRAs on things like sports and prisons and equitable representation for women, I'm willing to concede mere restrooms as gray area governed by passing, the honor system, and charitable impulses.

That's the way it used to be, before autogynephiliacs and assorted scumbags exploited society's good will to ruin it all for everyone. If Buck Angel wanted to preserve the polite fiction that respects women's concerns about safety and privacy, where he caucuses with the men who pee standing up... Maybe he should have been a lot more vocal when scumbags like Jessica Yaniv and Lia Thomas were making their moves.

Actually, Angel has been quite vocally opposed to the likes of Yaniv and Thomas, and a great many others.

Angel is actually quite gender critical.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It's ok to have an uncircumcised penis, but most would probably find it a bit invasive to have to explain their cock configuration to strangers as part of day to day life.

That might be one of the dumbest rejoinders I've read in a good long while.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Surely you are also aware that this is also sometimes not the case. Permanent estrangement does happen, and it often seems to happen when parents dig in their heels about their regressive, bigoted views. Adults who don't talk to their parents anymore because they took hard-line racist, sexist, anti-gay, anti-trans etc stances through their childhood (and beyond) is not exactly uncommon.

Regressive bigoted views like "you are only 15, you might want to have kids some day, you might want the ability to enjoy sex when you're older, you might want the ability to breastfeed a child, and you might not want to be a permanent medical patient for your entire life, you should wait a few more years until you're absolutely 100% certain before you take hormones that will significantly increase your risk of deleterious outcomes and start lopping off health body tissue."

 

[Emily's Cat]

I think one of the issues here is the "sample size" for lack of a better term is so small nobody is going believe any data we get from it.

I'll have to go googling but iirc the data as we have it doesn't suggest that "regret" for gender transitioning is something we have to worry about, but the sample size is really small and that's open to a lot of influence.

Aye, there's the rub. 30 years ago, regret was extremely low. But that was when there was a lot of medical and psychological gatekeeping, the transitioners were exclusively adults, usually in their late 20s to early 30s. That's changed. Within the last decade, the volume of people identifying as transgender has reduced in age dramatically, has shifted to be disproportionately female, to include a way over-represented proportion of neurodivergent (especially autistic) teens, and has included immediate affirmation with no material gatekeeping, with rapid access to puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. And regret is *rising*.

 

[Emily's Cat]

You have yet to engage with my point that trans people cannot use these sex segregated spaces without drawing huge amounts of attention to themselves simply by existing while trans.

A bearded trans man using the women's restroom and getting the cops routinely called on them is not a "solved problem", it's you simply refusing to engage with the problem.

Nah, you should just stop this game. You never engage with other people's questions. "I'm not going to answer your questions until you answer the one I just asked you a couple of minutes ago, and that is a loaded question"

We've all gone round the mulberry bush with you on this. You do not engage in good faith, you're only here to spew your hatred.