Transwomen are not Women - Part 14

[smartcooky]

If someone woke up tomorrow and said "I have a deep, personal sense of identity that I am left handed even though I write, pitch, draw, shoot, and open doors with my right hand" nobody would take them seriously. "Identity" as I keep saying is not just a way to make something you want to be into something you are (or are a special kind of "are")

If someone woke up tomorrow and said "I have a deep, personal sense of identity that I am left handed even though I write, pitch, draw, shoot, and open doors with my right hand" and then proceeded to cut their right arm off in order to force themselves to be left handed they'd be sanctioned under the Mental Care Act.

Just an off topic note. Be careful using "handedness" as an analogy, because it can get complicated.

For example, I "write, pitch, draw, and open doors with my right hand", however, I play golf left-handed. In cricket and softball I bat left handed. This is not uncommon among cricket players, and apparently among baseball players as well.

When I play racquet sports such as tennis, squash, badminton, I hold the racquet in my right hand, but have a more powerful backhand game than forehand game. I also shoot left handed, but for a different reason - my left eye is my dominant (master) eye. I see more clearly with the left eye than the right.

 

[d4m10n]

The ACLU. They used a lot more words to obfuscate what they're saying, but they are still saying that.

I don't believe they made any comments about whether subjective self identity trumps objective observable reality in matters other than sex and gender.

Pretty sure we've covered this ground before, but oftentimes we do accept self-identification as a matter of cultural norms and public policy. The most obvious example (from where I'm sitting) is registration with a particular political party or other expressions of political affiliation (e.g. "I'm a lifelong independent!"). We generally trust people to self-identify into both fandoms and political coalitions, putting aside the question of whether those are indeed different things.

 

[d4m10n]

Why is Sex the only thing where someone's internal sense of identity should matter?

Again I ask, who said it was the only category like that?

 

[Hercules56]

Again I ask, who said it was the only category like that?

Can I qualify for AA if I decide today to identify as African American?

 

[lionking]

That is not a accurate. Transwomen believe they are a woman born in the body of a man. Therefore they seek to resolve this problem by changing their body to fit their emotional state.

If you just did a little research you will find that very, very few people who identify as trans surgically or medically change their bodies. Lia Thomas for one is an intact male with a girlfriend.

 

[d4m10n]

Can I qualify for AA if I decide today to identify as African American?

Can I qualify as Republican if I register as Republican just for this election cycle?

 

[Emily's Cat]

The entire discourse at this point is just people performatively going

Bill: "You said I have four fingers and a thumb but I counted my fingers and I still got five."
Ted: "No I think thumbs are distinct from fingers. Count again."
Bill: "I still got five."
Ted: "Did you count your thumb."
Bill: "Yes."
Ted: "Okay let's count again."

Everyone gets in the scenario that Bill and Ted aren't having a disagreement about the actual number of digits on a hand right? There disagreement is about how to categorize the digits. Counting the digits again ISN'T GOING TO GET US ANYWHERE.

WE ALL KNOW WE'RE NOT USING THE SAME MEANING FOR A LOT OF TERMS HERE. Stop pretending that's not what this is.

Humanity is:

1. Divided into two biological distinct groups, with allowances only made for very, very, very rare exceptions. Within a rounding error everybody is very clearly and obviously one of two biological sexes with no "complicated spectrum." Literally nobody in this discussion isn't one of those two things or is confused as to which one they are.

2. On a vast, complicated array of things when it comes to social expectations and roles put on us because of point 1.

Please some body explain to me what's complicated or still up for debate as to point 1 or 2 and if there's no debate about 1 or 2 then please explain to me WHAT THE **** WE ARE TALKING ABOUT that isn't just "I'm trying to win an argument via trying to define myself as correct via pure semantics."

So again... what are we talking about? And "It's complicated" isn't an answer.

Here's the crux of it.

Some people - even if they are very few - have rejected point 1 completely. Or they've stretched it to an unreasonable extent and argued that nobody can tell what sex another person is without forcing them to strip down naked and be examined in detail, and even then such an exam might be wrong because that person with a completely normal female body might actually have hidden internal testes. Some people - even on this site - have argued that nobody can see the sex of a person they pass on the street, and that they themselves genuinely never ever know whether a person they're interacting with is male or female because it's all a complete mystery.

Those people argue that we are incapable of observing someone else's sex in every day interactions, and that we're all just guessing based on hairstyles and clothing. They steadfastly argue that none of us can tell anyone's sex despite multiple research studies demonstrating an incredible level of accuracy in humans, and despite facial recognition software having around 99% accuracy in adults. They insist that the world is wrong and they're right instead of considering that maybe... just maybe... it's their own pattern recognition skills that are FUBAR and the rest of us manage just fine.

So despite point 1 seeming blatantly and glaringly obvious to most of us... some people absolutely reject it completely. They're not arguing five fingers versus four fingers and a thumb - they're arguing that we can't tell whether it's a thumb at all, it's impossible to recognize any difference between a finger and a thumb in any way.

And that rejection has downstream consequences that make it nearly impossible to have any sort of a rational adult discussion of policy impacts.

 

[d4m10n]

A Cis-man is a biological male.

A Trans-woman a biological male, with a mental illness that causes them to believe they are a female.

This is different from my answer at #1109 only insofar as you characterize the key feature not merely as a belief but as a belief caused by mental illness.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I have no evidence to support what I am about to post, its just my hunch.

IMO, there is going to be a flood of litigation a few years down the line as people who have been mislead, misdiagnosed and given a concoction of drugs in which the long-term effects were unknown, and the side-effects were lied about, start to suffer those effects. For example, the gender transition idealists assured us that puberty blockers were reversible and harmless. Turns out this was untrue.

There's going to be trouble at mill!

Absolutely - there have already been a handful of lawsuits, from people in the first wave of children who were medicalized and have detransitioned. There are a couple of cases where there are suits going in two directions - one against the doctors that pushed them down the medicalized pathway to begin with, and another against the doctors that currently are refusing to provide treatment to address the complications and harms done by the first set of doctors.

I know of one case where a young female was given testosterone, and went on to a mastectomy and hysterectomy + ovariectomy within the course of less than two years. Those services were covered by their insurance company as "necessary gender affirmation" treatments. They had other mental health issues that were left untreated. A few years after that, they finally made some headway on their mental health issues, and have attempted to detransition. Now that person is suing the doctor that approved and helped push through all of the transition stuff for malpractice. They're also suing their insurance company because apparently getting estrogen is considered "cosmetic" and they won't approve hair removal to get rid of the facial hair they grew, even though the insurer DOES cover hair removal for males that transition to female.

It's a complete mess.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Again I ask, who said it was the only category like that?

Name another one.

 

[d4m10n]

Name another one.

Sure thing just let me know when I accepted your censored word challenge.

 

[Ziggurat]

Can I qualify as Republican if I register as Republican just for this election cycle?

Yes. Because that’s definitionally what it means to be a Republican. It doesn’t actually mean anything else.

But you do have to actually register. You can’t just say you are without registering. So no, you cannot merely self identify.

 

[d4m10n]

But you do have to actually register. You can’t just say you are without registering. So no, you cannot merely self identify.

Isn't this an almost perfect parallel to the GRC process in the UK?

 

[JoeMorgue]

So no there is no equivalent to "I identity as the other sex." Got it.

 

[d4m10n]

So no there is no equivalent to "I identity as the other sex." Got it.

So no one actually said this but you made it up, got it.

 

[Ziggurat]

I don't believe they made any comments about whether subjective self identity trumps objective observable reality in matters other than sex and gender.

Sex is the only important category where they’re trying to make the case that it does. The fact that they don’t explicitly say they don’t do this for any other equivalent category doesn’t change the fact that they don’t do this for any other equivalent category. All your examples fail at the hilighted part.

Pretty sure we've covered this ground before, but oftentimes we do accept self-identification as a matter of cultural norms and public policy.

Not for anything important and objectively observable.

The most obvious example (from where I'm sitting) is registration with a particular political party

Not equivalent, because political affiliation is 100% a social construct (unlike sex), it’s not objectively observable, and because even in this case it’s still not self ID. You still have to go through a formal registration process, you can’t simply declare it and demand everyone to accept that declaration.

We generally trust people to self-identify into both fandoms

Fandoms are also 100% social constructs, AND not objectively observable, AND they don’t matter.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Can we get one, just one "I am the Lorax, I speak for the Trans" person in here who actually has their own opinion they can actually verbalize and can do something beyond just post links?

I can point you to a discussion somewhere else where there is a lorax, who uses precious few links and verbalizes their own opinion.

On the other hand... their opinion is... *odd* to say the least, and their verbalization of their opinion is heavily influenced by Judith Butler. And perhaps a whole, whole, whole lot of marijuana.

 

[Samson]

How about?

A Cis-man is a biological male.

A Trans-woman a biological male, with a mental illness that causes them to believe they are a female.

That's where I am at.
I learned more disturbing facts about my late brother recently.
It is time to stop bending the world to suit these few. The fact that there are now many, due to the criminal acts against children, says a rigorous push back is over due.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I take it as a terrible sign. There's tons of people on this forum who still profess the TRA position, but are totally unwilling to argue it or address all of the real criticisms of it. These are people that profess to be critical and skeptical thinkers. People who pride themselves on voting for The Party of Science^TM.

The idea that these people - and the hundreds of thousands more like them - can neither mount a rational defense of TRA policies, nor bring themselves to abandon those policies, is terrifying to me. It's not a good sign at all.

Agreed - there are several members of ISF who refuse to engage in this thread, who demonize those of us who do, and who pretty much refer to the entire discussion in extremely derogatory terms... but who definitely profess the TRA position. Even to the point of steadfastly insisting that none of us are ever able to tell whether a stranger walking by on the street is male or female, it's all a complete and utter mystery that can never be solved.

What cracks me up the most is that the majority of those who insist that we can't tell what sex people are... are married with children. So presumably they could tell well enough to be able to discern that the person they were talking to at some point in the past was a good match for their desire to procreate.

 

[theprestige]

I thought I had it there, for a moment. But nope. I still can't tell if Damion is trying to illuminate the ACLU/TRA position, be a devil's advocate for it, or defend it on principle.

Regardless, the only case where transgender identity matters is when seeking to transcend sex segregation in public policy. So arguing that fiat self ID is accepted in other cases seems like a pointless disingenuous waste of time.

Sex segregation isn't those other cases. There is no analogy to be had. It would be better if Damion just got straight to his conclusion, whatever the **** it is, rather than trying to creep up on it by slow degrees while the rest of us wonder what the hell he's getting at.