Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

[Rolfe]

I'm pretty much done with this thread, mainly cause I don't have time or motivation to participate, and since I don't feel strongly about the issue it isn't a fight I'm willing to engage in. But your first example triggered me, and I want to explain why. It is taken from 'Libs of Tim Tok' who are notoriously hard right propagandists. There is zero verification of this video. If you have seen even a small handful of videos on social media, and you have belonged to this or any skeptics group for more than a week, you would know the foolishness if not outright stupidity of posting this to make a point. It *may* be a legit video, but it is equally likely that is a staged video, meant to make people angry. And this is what has made millions of voters angry, to the point of voting a lunatic felon to head our nation. A mass disinformation campaign, driven by emotionally-charged propaganda. The left is guilty as well, but honestly most of the worst of it has come from the right. It has no place on a skeptical forum in my opinion.

So you agree that the behaviour seen in that video is undesirable, and not something women should be expected to welcome into their private spaces? That's a start I suppose. That you have to resort to suggesting that the video is a fake is extremely telling.

 

[Rolfe]

I've heard this argument over and over from the right (not saying you are right) and sure, on the surface it seems reasonable.
But on what scientific or statistical basis do you arrive at the conclusion? There are laws on the books that forbid the behavior you describe, and they aint going anywhere. There are never gonna be security guards standing at the entrance to every 'female space' asking people what sex they are. So how exactly are self-id laws (or whatever you are implying the TRAs want by a 'few magic words') gonna change things? How are they gonna make the behavior you describe significantly more likely to occur? I've seen the presentation of supposed examples of this happening in practice, and on a case-by-case basis the vast majority don't hold up.

Declaring that trans-identifying men will break the rules and the law and enter female-only spaces regardless, and can only be kept out by employing security guards, is not the win you think it is. "There's no point in passing this law because transpeople will not obey it" is not an argument that reflects well on transpeople. (Although it might be accurate, nevertheless.)

But in reality, none of them pass. Human beings are extremely good at correctly identifying the sex of other adult human beings. What is fuelling the current controversy is not that nobody can tell which is which, but that the entitled, importunate men who choose to violate women's boundaries have become untouchable. They know that if challenged they only have to say "I'm a woman" and suddenly they're the ones in the right. That's the magic words. That's the chilling effect that prevents women from remonstrating with them and calling the attendant and getting them thrown out, which is what would have happened until approximately ten minutes ago in the real world.

Women are calling for a return to the days when they could challenge a man in the women's bathroom, and the man would be asked to leave, and if any cops were called, they'd be called on him. Not on the woman, on a charge of transphobic hate speech.

 

[theprestige]

"It's not going to happen."

"Okay, maybe there's one or two outliers."

"Well, it's happening, but it's not statistically significant."

"I'm tired of talking to you transphobes."

 

[Rolfe]

"It's not going to happen."

"Okay, maybe there's one or two outliers."

"Well, it's happening, but it's not statistically significant."

"I'm tired of talking to you transphobes."

You missed the step of "of course this is happening, it's a good thing". Possibly also there's one that goes "this has always happened, why are you suddenly objecting now?"

 

[stanfr]

So you agree that the behaviour seen in that video is undesirable, and not something women should be expected to welcome into their private spaces? That's a start I suppose. That you have to resort to suggesting that the video is a fake is extremely telling.

That you don't realize that the lunatic right, people who think Qanon is legit, post thousands of fake videos is extremely telling.

 

[stanfr]

"It's not going to happen."

"Okay, maybe there's one or two outliers."

"Well, it's happening, but it's not statistically significant."

"I'm tired of talking to you transphobes."

Have you had any friends who are transsexuals? I'm just curious. I haven't had many, but I have had a few. One I have to cut out of my life because she started ranting about killing Muslims. So she had other issues besides gender dysphoria. But it helps to have some real life perspective, as opposed to forming your beliefs based on what you read on the internet.

 

[Rolfe]

That you don't realize that the lunatic right, people who think Qanon is legit, post thousands of fake videos is extremely telling.

Given what the trans-addled AGPs post all by their own little selves, nobody needs to fake anything.

 

[theprestige]

You missed the step of "of course this is happening, it's a good thing". Possibly also there's one that goes "this has always happened, why are you suddenly objecting now?"

Apparently I also missed "it's fake news."

 

[theprestige]

Have you had any friends who are transsexuals? I'm just curious. I haven't had many, but I have had a few. One I have to cut out of my life because she started ranting about killing Muslims. So she had other issues besides gender dysphoria. But it helps to have some real life perspective, as opposed to forming your beliefs based on what you read on the internet.

I have not had any friends who are transsexuals. I also haven't had any friends who are arsonists, rapists, Just A Prank Bros, homeless drug addicts, or financial scammers. But I can still comprehend the social issues that arise from such people and their behaviors, and reach rational and informed conclusions about public policy proposals relating to such people.

I also note that while you claim to have a few trans friends, they don't seem to have conveyed to you any meaningful insights about public policy relating to their circumstances.

I don't have to have trans friends to understand that fiat self-ID is a bad idea and functionally misogynistic in its outcomes. I don't have to have trans friends to understand that Lia Thomas is acting like a colossal dick.

ETA: If you won't talk to us, maybe talk to your trans friends. Ask them whether puberty blockers are a reversible course of treatment. Ask them how much good research has been done about the efficacy and advisability of trans-affirming surgery for minors. It's entirely possible that I know more about these issues than they do.

 

[stanfr]

Declaring that trans-identifying men will break the rules and the law and enter female-only spaces regardless, and can only be kept out by employing security guards, is not the win you think it is. "There's no point in passing this law because transpeople will not obey it" is not an argument that reflects well on transpeople. (Although it might be accurate, nevertheless.)

But in reality, none of them pass. Human beings are extremely good at correctly identifying the sex of other adult human beings. What is fuelling the current controversy is not that nobody can tell which is which, but that the entitled, importunate men who choose to violate women's boundaries have become untouchable. They know that if challenged they only have to say "I'm a woman" and suddenly they're the ones in the right. That's the magic words. That's the chilling effect that prevents women from remonstrating with them and calling the attendant and getting them thrown out, which is what would have happened until approximately ten minutes ago in the real world.

Women are calling for a return to the days when they could challenge a man in the women's bathroom, and the man would be asked to leave, and if any cops were called, they'd be called on him. Not on the woman, on a charge of transphobic hate speech.

Given what the trans-addled AGPs post all by their own little selves, nobody needs to fake anything.

Yet you chose to post right wing propaganda without fact-checking it. Whether I agree with some of your points or not (I do) is irrelevant when you can't even admit when your bias blinds you to basic skeptical principles.
For the upteempth time, I have a ton of sympathy for what you are arguing, but I am very uncomfortable with *how* it is being argued. To me, it mirrors the exact same language employed by those who "are calling for a return to the (good ol) days", you know, when blacks were servants, women could not vote, and we quietly (or not so quietly) killed the maginalized folks in society. That mindset is all too prevalent right now, and when people say "well I'm not one of them" I wonder how often they consider how their language emboldens and supports that mentality.

 

[stanfr]

I have not had any friends who are transsexuals. I also haven't had any friends who are arsonists, rapists, Just A Prank Bros, homeless drug addicts, or financial scammers. But I can still comprehend the social issues that arise from such people and their behaviors, and reach rational and informed conclusions about public policy proposals relating to such people.

I also note that while you claim to have a few trans friends, they don't seem to have conveyed to you any meaningful insights about public policy relating to their circumstances.

I don't have to have trans friends to understand that fiat self-ID is a bad idea and functionally misogynistic in its outcomes. I don't have to have trans friends to understand that Lia Thomas is acting like a colossal dick.

ETA: If you won't talk to us, maybe talk to your trans friends. Ask them whether puberty blockers are a reversible course of treatment. Ask them how much good research has been done about the efficacy and advisability of trans-affirming surgery for minors. It's entirely possible that I know more about these issues than they do.

You are Exhibit "A": "they're rapists, murderers, and *some* of them are just ordinary folk"

 

[stanfr]

How about on the basis of reason and basic logic?

What's the difference between a male going into a female single-sex intimate space and exposing themselves, thus committing a sexual offense... and a male going into a female single-sex intimate space and exposing themselves and thus just being a transwoman getting naked with the other ladies?

Yes, there are laws on the books. But by overriding what sex means, and replacing it with gender identity, you effectively legalize voyeurism and exhibitionism as long as the perpetrator says the magic words. You make it unenforceable.

It shifts the burden.

When the law (or previously, the well understood and accepted social convention) granted authority to the females. If a male entered a female single-sex space, the females in that space had the right and authority to complain about their presence. Managers of those spaces were expected to act on behalf of the complaining female unless extremely compelling counter-evidence was presented. In some cases, those females were completely within their rights to call the police and demand removal of the transgressing male and cops were expected to act in defense of the females.

Self-ID alters that relationship completely. It creates a situation in which females do NOT have the right and authority to complain, and females are expected to assume that any male in those single-sex spaces must be transgender identifying. We no longer have the authority to complain to facilities personnel and have them take our side - we've explicitly been told several times now that the transgender identifying male has the right to be there, and there's nothing we can do about it. So much so that females have been called bigots and transphobes for objecting to a fully intact tumescent male being naked in front of them and their children, and the females were chided that they shouldn't be looking at "her penis" in the first place. Young females were told that if they were uncomfortable having a fully intact naked male in their showers with them, they should find a different place to change after swim practice. High school females were told by a judge that they have no right to expect visual privacy from males when changing after gym.

Self-ID gives males the legal right to expose themselves to females without consent, and to ogle females without their consent... as long as they say the magic phrase.

I can't argue with that, and as a man I don't have the experience to challenge it from a personal perspective, although as I have said, I know many women who feel differently than you do. But I commend you for being polite in your response and not resorting to the inflammatory nonsense that is too common in this discussion.

 

[Rolfe]

I have not had any friends who are transsexuals. I also haven't had any friends who are arsonists, rapists, Just A Prank Bros, homeless drug addicts, or financial scammers. But I can still comprehend the social issues that arise from such people and their behaviors, and reach rational and informed conclusions about public policy proposals relating to such people.

I also note that while you claim to have a few trans friends, they don't seem to have conveyed to you any meaningful insights about public policy relating to their circumstances.

I don't have to have trans friends to understand that fiat self-ID is a bad idea and functionally misogynistic in its outcomes. I don't have to have trans friends to understand that Lia Thomas is acting like a colossal dick.

ETA: If you won't talk to us, maybe talk to your trans friends. Ask them whether puberty blockers are a reversible course of treatment. Ask them how much good research has been done about the efficacy and advisability of trans-affirming surgery for minors. It's entirely possible that I know more about these issues than they do.

I do actually have trans friends, including one who poured out his heart (and his intention to transition) to me over the phone one night (in the mid 1990s) when we were both really raw, having just discovered that a mutual friend had committed suicide. I had known that he liked to dress in female role-playing costumes, and in fact he came to my house for a reading group meeting on Sandman dressed as Death, and looking very convincing. He had also spent a weekend at a convention dressed as a woman, "for a bet" he said, and I remember the other guys questioning him avidly about what it was like in the women's toilets. I don't know how the women reacted, but hey, SF conventions.

My attitude was, this is extremely weird, but what can one say but "welcome, sister"? So I tried. I spent time at parties agreeing with him that his skin was getting softer and his shape more feminine and his moobs enlarging, which was all a complete pack of lies, but I did it to boost his ego. I listened to him describing the boyfriends he was attracting - despite having been in a heterosexual relationship before transitioning, and originally having declared he was going to be a lesbian. I looked at him and wondered why on earth he wanted to look like that, but of course kept my mouth shut about that part.

I could never think of him as "she" and always managed to avoid pronouns when talking about him, but I generally regarded him as harmless, and to be pitied. Especially given the intimate details he had revealed in that late-night phone call.

Then I moved 450 miles away and more or less lost touch apart from occasionally being at the same event. I began to realise he was socialising with an extremely unpleasant trans-identifying man, Andrew "Roz" Kaveney, that intrepid front-line fighter against the cotton ceiling. The more I have learned about autogynaephilia the more I have understood my friend, but it's quite an uncomfortable understanding to come to. Many trans-identifying men can appear pleasant and harmless and unthreatening, particularly to other men, but that doesn't really mean a thing in the big picture.

 

[Rolfe]

Yet you chose to post right wing propaganda without fact-checking it. Whether I agree with some of your points or not (I do) is irrelevant when you can't even admit when your bias blinds you to basic skeptical principles.
For the upteempth time, I have a ton of sympathy for what you are arguing, but I am very uncomfortable with *how* it is being argued. To me, it mirrors the exact same language employed by those who "are calling for a return to the (good ol) days", you know, when blacks were servants, women could not vote, and we quietly (or not so quietly) killed the maginalized folks in society. That mindset is all too prevalent right now, and when people say "well I'm not one of them" I wonder how often they consider how their language emboldens and supports that mentality.

Ooh, a man doesn't like the way I'm arguing. News flash. I am SO over caring about that. I'm not American, and I couldn't tell you what side of American politics many of the accounts I come across on Twitter even are.

 

[Rolfe]

Something else about mixed bathrooms I tend to forget about, but which is well discussed in this thread.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1859329713661149612

It's very difficult, or it used to be, for perverted men to get access to women's toilets to plant these bugs. It's something that happens a lot though, from the well-disguised planted camera to the mobile phone "casually" kicked under the partition. The footage generated is extremely valuable and is traded on porn sites. Mixed-sex toilets are an absolute gift to these perverts. They simply have to use the toilet in the normal manner, plant their bug, and walk out with complete confidence that their right to be there won't be challenged.

The sheer filthy perversion, porn addiction and sex-obsession of a fairly substantial subset of men is something trans-advocates like to brush under the carpet, but it's a huge issue.

 

[Rolfe]

I've just come across the first full-face photo of "Katie" Dolatowski that I've seen. At first the papers were using a heavily filtered picture that made him look like a cute wee dormouse, and latterly all that could be found was a side-on shot of him being escorted into a prison van, hair over his face, and at six-feet-five, towering over the female prison warders - because he was being referred to and treated as a woman by the criminal justice system, obviously. This is more realistic.



That thing that never happens, right? Show me the evidence, they said? Right?

 

[angrysoba]

Then you have no idea of either the nature or the scale of this problem. But then, you've never been thirteen and had to rinse out your blood-soaked panties in the communal wash-basin area of the Ladies, because you'd only just started menstruation and didn't know how to cope. You probably haven't had to pee a few weeks after giving birth, and had to do it with the door open because the baby buggy wouldn't fit in the cubicle. You think girls and women are happy to have men around when they do this?

ETA: I've been reminded that a siginficant proportion of early miscarriages happen in public toilets - often in the evening in pub toilets. Sometimes the woman hasn't even been aware that she was pregnant, sometimes it's the loss of a dearly-wanted child. Either way, it's excruciatingly painful and hugely embarrassing. Many women have accounts of this either happening to them and being helped by other women, or of being one of the women who has stepped in to help. The absolute last thing any woman in this position wants are random men walking in on the incident.

It's not only or even primarily about sexual assaults. It's about common decency, privacy and modesty. It's about not wanting men watching you when you have to do intimate female things. It's about voyeurism and occasionally exhibitionism. (There are multiple accounts of men peeing in a cubicle in the women's bathroom with the door open and everything on display, and when challenged announcing that they identify as a woman so it's their human right to be there.) It's most particularly about not wanting the sort of man who wants to be in women's lavatories in that space with you, because we know these are the men with the fetishes who go there to be sexually aroused by the proximity of women peeing and changing tampons and sanitary towels.

The male-free communal space in the women's bathroom is an essential defensive space against predatory men. It's way too easy for a man to barge into a cubicle before a woman has had time to lock the door, and lock it behind him. If men are allowed to be in the communal space it's much harder to prevent this. The predator just has to hang around waiting for the right moment. Conversely, if men hanging around the communal space isn't allowed, he has to get a lot more sneaky. (This is probably the main reason for the statistics about sexual assault in unisex toilets.)

Good men stay out of women's private spaces, and the ones who go in are not good men.

I get it. Thanks for this post. It is a very good one.

 

[theprestige]

I do actually have trans friends, including one who poured out his heart (and his intention to transition) to me over the phone one night (in the mid 1990s) when we were both really raw, having just discovered that a mutual friend had committed suicide. I had known that he liked to dress in female role-playing costumes, and in fact he came to my house for a reading group meeting on Sandman dressed as Death, and looking very convincing. He had also spent a weekend at a convention dressed as a woman, "for a bet" he said, and I remember the other guys questioning him avidly about what it was like in the women's toilets. I don't know how the women reacted, but hey, SF conventions.

My attitude was, this is extremely weird, but what can one say but "welcome, sister"? So I tried. I spent time at parties agreeing with him that his skin was getting softer and his shape more feminine and his moobs enlarging, which was all a complete pack of lies, but I did it to boost his ego. I listened to him describing the boyfriends he was attracting - despite having been in a heterosexual relationship before transitioning, and originally having declared he was going to be a lesbian. I looked at him and wondered why on earth he wanted to look like that, but of course kept my mouth shut about that part.

I could never think of him as "she" and always managed to avoid pronouns when talking about him, but I generally regarded him as harmless, and to be pitied. Especially given the intimate details he had revealed in that late-night phone call.

Then I moved 450 miles away and more or less lost touch apart from occasionally being at the same event. I began to realise he was socialising with an extremely unpleasant trans-identifying man, Andrew "Roz" Kaveney, that intrepid front-line fighter against the cotton ceiling. The more I have learned about autogynaephilia the more I have understood my friend, but it's quite an uncomfortable understanding to come to. Many trans-identifying men can appear pleasant and harmless and unthreatening, particularly to other men, but that doesn't really mean a thing in the big picture.

I should apologize for using bad actors as examples of comparable understanding without personal connection. That was thoughtless of me, and conveys an idea of transgenderism that I do not actually hold.

I don't have any football player friends. But I can understand the risks of concussion that arise from how the game is played, and reach an informed opinion about policy proposals to address that.

 

[Rolfe]

I get it. Thanks for this post. It is a very good one.

I've become very wary of these mixed-sex facilities where the cubicle walls and door are floor-to-ceiling height and men are allowed in there. First we have the much higher likelihood of a hidden camera being placed to record our doings for a porn site. But the bigger worry is safety. A man can be in the communal space as of right. He only has to linger, washing his hands maybe, until an unaccompanied woman comes in and there's nobody else there. Then when she enters a cubicle, barge in behind her and lock the door. The woman is now locked in a completely enclosed space with floor-to-ceiling walls and door, with a predator.

The entire set-up could have been designed as the predatory man's wildest dream. And what's more, he doesn't even have to put on womanface to go in there if that's not his particular thing. He can wear a dirty trench coat if he wants! From covert filming to voyeurism to exhibitionism to sexual assault and even rape, everything is designed in his favour. (Perhaps most disturbingly of all, he can wear a smart business suit and look like your favourite uncle. No need at all to raise suspicious by being a man in a dress and a bad wig.)

And all to pander to the trans cult - who don't even want this! They want to be the special ones who get to make women uncomfortable, they don't want to be made to pee beside men!

 

[Emily's Cat]

" I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete"

To me, that is exactly what I find troubling, that people, left or right, have this irrational fear of something they have been told to fear.
Why is there an *assumption* that it is gonna be a trans athlete running over your kids? Why is there only fear of the trans athlete, but not "regular athletes"?

Because males are bigger and stronger than females. This isn't hard. They're not worried about their female children being run down by another female in a female sport. They're worried about their female children being run down by a MALE in a female sport. And let's be realistic - this has nothing to do with them being trans, it has only to do with the objective fact that they are incontrovertibly male. It is about the physical capabilities of their male bodies, not about their internal gender feelings.

I'm not a total weakling, but there a several women at my gym who would kick my behind in a fight. If the trans athlete has a biologic advantage, then demonstrate it, scientifically--and institutionalize that finding in the rules of competition. Don't go inventing horror stories of trans athletes purposely working the system so they can psychotically destroy their female competition.

Nearly 1000 winning positions lost to male athletes participating in female sports to affirm their gender identities. To date, not a single win in a male sport lost to a female who identifies as a man. Not a single one.

We have a plethora of data that very clearly demonstrates that males have a physical athletic advantage over females, to the point where middle school males routinely outperform elite professional female athletes at the very pinnacle of their ability.

Just because you - who are NOT a competing athlete - might be outperformed by some few females doesn't turn sexual dimorphism on its head.