Cont: Transwomen are not women - part 13

[JoeMorgue]

Japan's Supreme Court hands down a landmark transgender rights decision

"SEOUL — Japan's Supreme Court has ruled that an existing requirement for sterilization surgery for people who seek to legally change their gender is unconstitutional.

The unanimous decision on Wednesday by the court's 15-judge Grand Bench is being hailed by campaigners as a landmark for LGBTQ+ rights in Japan. But as the Supreme Court sent the plaintiff's case back to a high court for further examination, her fate remains unclear."

NPR: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/25/1208448169/japan-transgender-rights-supreme-court

 

[Brainster]

Not obvious at all. The question was intended to see what the rational was behind such a condition, and you have used the term, "progressive stack", which means what, exactly?

It appears to have started with Occupy Wall Street. People who wished to speak to the crowd added their names to a list (the stack). Rather than letting people speak in the order they had signed up, the OWS facilitators would choose them in an order based their perceived marginalization in society--minorities first, then LGBTQ, then white women, then white men. This seems to have resonated with progressives and so the stack system has been adopted more generally as a way to adjudicate disputes between groups. As women are considered lower on the stack than LGBTQ, their needs and desires don't count as much.

 

[theprestige]

Yeah sterilization for gender change is extremely draconian. It probably emerges from an implicit commitment to sex originalism.

 

[Ziggurat]

Yeah sterilization for gender change is extremely draconian.

I'm not convinced that's true, because I don't think we're really talking about a gender change. In this case, I think we're really talking about a sex change.

To the extent that gender is a social construct and not simply a polite word for sex, I don't think the government has any business involving itself in gender. It should not care what your gender is, it does not need to record what your gender is. It does have business involving itself with sex. And sex is what gets recorded on birth certificates, gender doesn't get assigned.

If someone wants their government documents to record their sex as being something other than their actual sex, I think it's not unreasonable for the government to require that they be functionally as close to the sex they want to change to as reasonably possible. A male with reproductive capability isn't a female. There's a fundamental and important difference that transcends any social construction. And regardless of how you want to dress, the government doesn't need to pretend that reproductively capable men are actually women.

This ruling is basically a step towards self-ID, and we know what a cluster **** that always turns into.

 

[Jono]

Anyone read this paper yet? It's rather recent: The Detransition Rate Is Unknown

Excerpt:

Knowledge of accurate rates are essential for evaluating how well the protocols for commencing medical intervention identify those who are unlikely to benefit, as well as for those considering medical intervention to weigh as risk: regret is an adverse outcome, as is detransition for some (e.g., D’Angelo, 2018; Vandenbussche, 2022). The extremely low rates are based on studies with flaws which compromise the reliability of their reported rates, or refer to a population with very different characteristics from the large numbers of young people contemplating or undergoing medical intervention today.
...
Given the long-known and well-known limitations of outcome studies, one might question why these issues have not been addressed sooner. Medical interventions for gender dysphoria are already widespread: in the USA alone, over 17,000 children aged 6–17 started puberty blockers or hormones from 2017 to 2021, with at least 56 genital surgeries and 776 double mastectomies in the 13–17 age range from 2019 to 2021 (Respaut & Terhune, 2022). In response to the lack of systematic outcome studies, the irreversible nature of many of the hormonal and surgical interventions, and the serious consequences of poor outcomes, it has recently been asked (Clayton, 2022, p. 695): “Why are these experimental interventions, with inherent risks and scarce, low-quality evidence for benefits, being implemented outside HREC regulated clinical trial settings?”.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I have to agree with Emily, but I also admit I have not read the vast majority of the thousands of posts made in this thread, so may be a bit ignorant. Rather than just guess, would you please be specific regarding what your issue(s) is(are) with her post as well as what you perceive to be the boundaries for the topic of discussion?

ETA: I guess I should have said I agree with Emily's Cat, as I do not know if Emily alone is considered appropriate.

Emily, EC, pretty much any variation that isn't obviously intended as an insult is fine. I also don't give a crap what pronouns you use for me. All of it is pretty irrelevant - as long as I can tell who is being referenced, it just doesn't matter.

 

[Emily's Cat]

If you don't see that the complexity of biological sex in non-mammals is totally irrelevant to a discussion of trans rights in public policy, then I owe you both an apology for my ableism and exercise of neurotypical privilege. I'm very sorry. Please forgive my previous remarks.

It's an extension of the point. Sex in both mammals and birds has the same functional definition for all species in those classes - and a whole lot more outside of them. You might think it's irrelevant... but it's about as 'irrelevant' as saying that mentioning how gravity works exactly the same for Venus, Jupiter, and Betelgeuse is irrelevant to a discussion of how gravity works on Earth.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The State Department apparently doesn't have enough going on; today they issued a proclamation on Intersex Awareness Day. Okay, yeah it was just some flunky issuing a standard press release. But check out this interesting wording:

Intersex persons often face stigma and discrimination in accessing education, healthcare, and legal recognition, and are subjected to medically unnecessary surgeries.
Medically unnecessary surgeries you say? You mean like double mastectomies for teenage girls on the autism spectrum?

This is again some hijacking of DSD conditions for TRA purposes. In the past, some infants with DSDs have been subjected to surgeries to make their atypical genitalia appear more typical for their sex, but it's very uncommon within the last couple of decades. The majority of surgeries performed on people with DSDs are done for reasons of functionality.

Additionally, most people with DSDs don't face any stigma, because it's almost never obvious to other people. There are very, very few conditions where anyone other than the individual and their parents even know. And for most DSD conditions, it's not even apparent until they try to have kids and find that they're infertile.

No legal recognition is necessary, so I don't even know why that gets mentioned.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Request denied. I need some way to differentiate between transgender women (born male, do not identify as such) and cisgender women (born female, do identify as such) and you have not provided alternative nomenclature which would be more widely understood.

(On a bit of a side note, I find almost any attempt to move the needle by falling on the fainting couch to be unworthy of consideration. This is perhaps an idiosyncratic failing on my part, but I'm trying to treat females as if they have mental toughness equivalent to males.)

I reject your adoption of trans activist language in order to refer to me and other females. In fact, I take umbrage at the insistence that I and my fellow females must be subjected to denigrating and demeaning terms in order to protect the feelings of some males. Why is it that people will go out of their way to make sure that those males aren't offended, but give no ***** at all about offending females?

The fact is that transgender identified males are not women of any sort, and there's no need to create artificial language for females in order to accommodate their feelings. Referring to them as either transwomen or as transgender identified males is plenty sufficient.

Furthermore, females do not "identify as woman". We ARE women, there's no element of identification involved. We don't have some inner magical essence that makes us "feel like females", that's the only way we can feel. Because it's what we ARE.

Because most of them want to do so, and they live in a democratic society.

That's false. a higher percentage of females than males are willing to accommodate transgender identified males, but it's still a minority. Most of us do NOT want to.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I feel like this is going to risk going down a "Well every woman I KNOW says" street but:

So WITH THE FOLLOWING CAVEATS* I share the following polls from reputable sources:

PEW: Women SLIGHTLY support transgenders using the restroom of their "identity" instead of their biological sex at 55% to 40%

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-r...blic-bathrooms-transgender-people-should-use/

Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll shows similar at 54%.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campai...ing-transgender-people-to-use-bathrooms-that/



*It's hard to find stuff recent and as with all polling this is inherently biased against people with strong opinions about the matter.

 

[MBDK]

It appears to have started with Occupy Wall Street. People who wished to speak to the crowd added their names to a list (the stack). Rather than letting people speak in the order they had signed up, the OWS facilitators would choose them in an order based their perceived marginalization in society--minorities first, then LGBTQ, then white women, then white men. This seems to have resonated with progressives and so the stack system has been adopted more generally as a way to adjudicate disputes between groups. As women are considered lower on the stack than LGBTQ, their needs and desires don't count as much.

Emily, EC, pretty much any variation that isn't obviously intended as an insult is fine. I also don't give a crap what pronouns you use for me. All of it is pretty irrelevant - as long as I can tell who is being referenced, it just doesn't matter.

Thank you both for the information. I am now less ignorant than before, and hope this trend continues.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Anyone read this paper yet? It's rather recent: The Detransition Rate Is Unknown

Excerpt:

I agree that the tracking for desistance, detransition, and regret is insufficient and leaves a lot to be desired.

That said, I think this excerpt suggests that this article might not be as unbiased as I'd hope - if they've got a lower bound age of 7, I'm betting that some of those kids are taking puberty blockers for the entirely appropriate and FDA approved treatment of precocious puberty. Those cases should not be mixed in with gender identity issues.

 

[Elaedith]

I agree that the tracking for desistance, detransition, and regret is insufficient and leaves a lot to be desired.

That said, I think this excerpt suggests that this article might not be as unbiased as I'd hope - if they've got a lower bound age of 7, I'm betting that some of those kids are taking puberty blockers for the entirely appropriate and FDA approved treatment of precocious puberty. Those cases should not be mixed in with gender identity issues.

The source they cite is specifically an analysis of minors with a gender dysphoria diagnosis.

"For the analysis of pediatric patients initiating puberty blockers or hormones, Komodo searched for patients with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis. Patients with a diagnosis of central precocious puberty were removed. A total of 17,683 patients, ages 6 through 17, with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis initiated either puberty blockers or hormones or both during the five-year period."

The analysis also shows 776 minors aged 13-17 in the US with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria underwent mastectomies from 2019-21, based on insurance claims. Activists frequently assert that this doesn't happen.

 

[gnome]

It appears to have started with Occupy Wall Street. People who wished to speak to the crowd added their names to a list (the stack). Rather than letting people speak in the order they had signed up, the OWS facilitators would choose them in an order based their perceived marginalization in society--minorities first, then LGBTQ, then white women, then white men. This seems to have resonated with progressives and so the stack system has been adopted more generally as a way to adjudicate disputes between groups. As women are considered lower on the stack than LGBTQ, their needs and desires don't count as much.

All I can say is that this take is far from universal. I sense some straw. Personally I've only heard of it from opponents.

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

 

[Brainster]

All I can say is that this take is far from universal.

It is not surprising that this is not universal among the Left; as I mentioned earlier, this inverts their usual focus on class. I suspect it is quite a bit more popular among younger progressives than older ones.

 

[theprestige]

Even before the privilege stack, there was the concept of progressive poker, going all the way back to the idea of the "race card" - a complaint that was supposed to be able to trump any other concern in the social sphere. "You're won't promote me because I'm black!" Etc. That was extrapolated over time. If there's a race card, are there other cards? If you're black and a woman, are you holding a better grievance/reparations hand than a black man? What if you're a black lesbian? And so on. Who's supposed to lean in, and who's supposed to lean out, in any given social justice gathering? Obviously straight white men are always supposed to lean out. What about straight white women? Is a white lesbian supposed to lean out for a black man? A gay black man?

This was a running joke among conservatives, of course. I'm not going to lie to gnome and say that it wasn't. Conservatives absolutely did lampoon the progressive hang-up about social justice hierarchy, which minority or victim group had the most standing and which the least.

But I think gnome is lying to themselves, if they think it's not a real phenomenon, a real concern among progressives. And I think it's no secret that being trans is currently the wild card in the progressive deck. Even an old straight white man can claim a winning hand, if he says he's trans. Exhibit A: Rachel Levine, who was originally touted as being the first female to hold a certain high government office. Even though he's male, and didn't even socially transition until just before his latest promotion.

 

[d4m10n]

I reject your adoption of trans activist language in order to refer to me and other females.

And yet you've failed to provide alternative nomenclature to substitute for cisgender and transgender.

In fact, I take umbrage at the insistence that I and my fellow females must be subjected to denigrating and demeaning terms in order to protect the feelings of some males.

I don't find it demeaning to be called cisgender, and I don't much care if others do. Any attempts to manipulate my choice of words by taking umbrage will go unheeded, unless you can convince the mods to intervene on your behalf.

The reason International Blasphemy Day needs to exist is that some activists will take umbrage as a cudgel to prevent freethinkers from thinking both freely and aloud, using their own choice of words. The proper response to such activists is to double down, using language that offends pious activists in order to ensure that they do not gain further social traction by tabooing the blasphemous language and irreligious concepts used by freethinkers.

(I'm not going to spell out the obvious parallels here, but they clearly apply to activists on both sides of this debate.)

The fact is that transgender identified males are not women of any sort, and there's no need to create artificial language for females in order to accommodate their feelings.

All language is artifice, AFAIK.

Referring to them as either transwomen or as transgender identified males is plenty sufficient.

If transgender identified males exist, so do cisgender identified males.

Damion R.
Cisgender Identified Male

 

[Ziggurat]

And yet you've failed to provide alternative nomenclature to substitute for cisgender and transgender.

There's always been an alternative: transwomen and women. This set of nomenclature categorizes transwomen as not actually being women, while cisgender and transgender categorizes both as being women. Your choice of nomenclature essentially answers the question one way or the other.

 

[theprestige]

And yet you've failed to provide alternative nomenclature to substitute for cisgender and transgender.

This is a lie. The 'alternative' nomenclature - which is to say, the current norm - is gender and transgender. This has been called out many times in this thread. I don't believe you have missed it.

'Cisgender' is being promulgated as alternative nomenclature, as part of an Orwellian push to normalize it.

 

[d4m10n]

There's always been an alternative: transwomen and women. This set of nomenclature categorizes transwomen as not actually being women, while cisgender and transgender categorizes both as being women.

There is no linguistic reason to assume ____women are not women. Alderwomen are women, bagwomen are women, chairwomen are women, Englishwomen are women, firewomen are women, guildswomen are women, kinswomen are women, laundrywomen are women, mailwomen are women, newswomen are women, policewomen are women, servicewomen are women, tradeswomen are women, vestrywomen are women, etc.

Your choice of nomenclature essentially answers the question one way or the other.

Calling myself a cisgender identified male doesn't answer any questions at all, unless those questions are about my personal sense of which sex I ought to be.