Thermal
August Member
Yes, I get that. You have made your position very clear. But as I said to theprestige a while back, I find the 'why' to be as interesting question as the 'what' to do.
Transwomen are not Women - Part 15
- Thread starter d4m10n
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Rolfe
Adult human female
Just because. Women do not need to justify their modesty or desire for decency to you.
We don't (or we shouldn't) need to justify our desire for a space where we can deal with menstrual accidents or underwear malfunctions or (perish the thought but it happens) miscarriages away from men. Young girls shouldn't need to justify their natural modesty about not wanting random men to see them in an intimate situation to you, or to anyone.
It's very strongly wired in women that WE are the ones who should choose which males get to see us in these situations, and we feel it to be a violation if this modesty is transgressed against. Some women seem to have managed to paper over this reaction a bit, but then we're all also socialised to #bekind, and if you tell some women that it's bigoted not to want men with lady-feels beside them when they're washing out blood-stained knickers, they'll capitulate. Especially if that capitulation gets them goodie-points from the men. But the instinct is there nonetheless.
For hundreds and hundreds of years the instinct has indeed been transgressed, by Peeping Toms and rapists and forced marriage. This is a new one, I'll give you that.
We don't (or we shouldn't) need to justify our desire for a space where we can deal with menstrual accidents or underwear malfunctions or (perish the thought but it happens) miscarriages away from men. Young girls shouldn't need to justify their natural modesty about not wanting random men to see them in an intimate situation to you, or to anyone.
It's very strongly wired in women that WE are the ones who should choose which males get to see us in these situations, and we feel it to be a violation if this modesty is transgressed against. Some women seem to have managed to paper over this reaction a bit, but then we're all also socialised to #bekind, and if you tell some women that it's bigoted not to want men with lady-feels beside them when they're washing out blood-stained knickers, they'll capitulate. Especially if that capitulation gets them goodie-points from the men. But the instinct is there nonetheless.
For hundreds and hundreds of years the instinct has indeed been transgressed, by Peeping Toms and rapists and forced marriage. This is a new one, I'll give you that.
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Thermal
August Member
There it is.
Stop being obtuse. I've maintained protection of women's modesty is a damn good reason to maintain sex segregated spaces.
angrysoba
Philosophile
I live in Japan and what you wrote is completely false.
Rolfe
Adult human female
I did in fact edit the post to give some rather fundamental reasons. But if you agree, why do you seem so damn set on the opposite happening?
No it isn't. Non-binary people don't 'identify' as male or female. But male and female are not identities, they are sexes. The idea that male and female are identities is based on postmodernist ideas that there is no objective truth or no way of discerning it, and no distinction between things that exist in nature and those that are socially constructed. All knowledge simply reflects the interest of those in power. Hence if the concept of binary sex seems to disadvantage some social groups, then the concept of binary sex must have been constructed by other groups with power for that purpose, and needs to be deconstructed.
Rolfe
Adult human female
Come to think of it, I've been on holiday in Belgium two or three times and it's completely false as regards Belgium too.
Mycroft
High Priest of Ed
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How would you know?
Ah, I re-read and discovered I mis-read. I thought you were claiming I was attributing those opinions to you specifically.
If you choose not to believe gay marriage was ever claimed to be a "special right" in the United States by the right, then that's okay with me. Your memory doesn't need to conform with mine.
You think we should default to the extreme you like. Got it.
I don't see that as being self-evident as you do. Just like we don't normally check a person's genitalia or do a genetic test to determine if the people we meet day to day are male or female, neither do we normally check their hip bones.
Mycroft
High Priest of Ed
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I'm pretty sure most people say non-binary to describe people who don't fit the cishet normative paradigm and not to trash the whole concept of male/female.
Some may, but not the majority.
Rolfe
Adult human female
Maybe so, but the actual people who claim to be non-binary claim to be neither male nor female.
Though I saw a tweet somewhere about a Spanish dictionary that cites the word(s) for non-binary in that language in masculine and feminine grammatical forms...
Though I saw a tweet somewhere about a Spanish dictionary that cites the word(s) for non-binary in that language in masculine and feminine grammatical forms...
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
I feel you're still missing my point.
The question has previously come up in the context of transwomen "living like a woman" for a period of time to qualify, as it were, as women. But no one has ever been able to explain exactly what that means. It's not wearing dresses or makeup, because plenty of women do neither. It's not doing particular jobs, or particular chores. The only ways in which women's lives differ from men's are a direct result of the biological differences between them. The very differences which transwomen do not have.
Thermal
August Member
For the same reason I've said over and over: I want it all. I want everyone to be safe and happy and comfortable. Not just you, and everyone else can go to hell. Everybody. So we kick around *all* the different perspectives, and sometimes we change our own.
If you don't agree with that, why the ◊◊◊◊ are you posting? Soapboxing? Condemning?
Mycroft
High Priest of Ed
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It's not a copout at all.
There are an infinite number of possibilities between the extremes. I'm not married to any one of them. I point out that one of the extremes being hard or messy doesn't mean we automatically default to the other extreme.
Now deal with what I actually say and stop trying to force me into your paradigms.
Mycroft
High Priest of Ed
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I had no idea visiting the women's bathroom was akin to going to the ER on a full moon.
Rolfe
Adult human female
Actually, I think I'm posting in a (probably hopeless) attempt to get some glimmer of understanding into the minds of people who, while not claiming a trans identity themselves, have nevertheless swallowed the entire Kool-aid bottle about sex being a spectrum and the existence of women with Swyer's syndrome (and clownfish) proving that any man who wants to should be able to change with the girls' swimming team and enter the girls' races.
It is absolutely completely ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ nuts, right up there with homoeopathy and contrails.
Rolfe
Adult human female
There are a lot of things you have no idea about.
Thermal
August Member
Well... agreed. Like I've said, 99+% of the time, that's the reliable barometer. In some fringes, it's not.
Last summer, I saw someone in the park where I walk my dog. Young person, 20 or so, and the most perfectly androgynous human I've ever seen. I wasn't eight feet away, in perfect lighting, and couldn't figure out if they were male or female. It was unnerving because I couldn't clock them as anything.
With most people I clock what they want to be seen as, which usually jibes with their sex. Some guys are feminine, some gals as butch, but something just feels right about the ID. I might see a man who is unquestionably a male, but if he has long hair and makeup and a dress on, I'll probably take the shot and treat them as a woman unless I'm told otherwise. I just don't feel the need to argue with them that it's 'biological fact' that they are male. In our social interaction with each other, I don't find that to be a hill to die on
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
Humans are a sexually dimorphic, non-hermaphroditic species. We are functionally unable to change sex - whatever sex we develop by about the 6th week of gestation is the sex we remain for the entirety of our lives.
Sex is defined based on the type of reproductive system that one has. In anisogamous species, there are two (and only two) reproductive systems in each species. The specific conformation of those systems varies from species to species, in the same way that the specific conformation of a foreleg might vary from species to species yet still be identifiable as a foreleg.
Within any given anisogamous species, one reproductive system will have evolved to support the production of large sessile gametes (even if the individual doesn't actually produce any gametes at all). The other system will have evolved to support the production of small motile gametes (even if the individual doesn't actually produce any gametes at all). Biologists use the term "female" to refer to those members of a species who have developed the system associated with large sessile gametes, or would have developed that system if not for injury or deformation. Biologists use the term "male" to refer to those with the system associated with small motile gametes (or would have if not for injury or deformation).
Any human being whose fetal development follows the wolffian process develops (in total or in part) the reproductive system that is associated with the production of small motile gametes, and we call those humans "males". Any human being whose fetal development follows the mullerian process develops (in total or in part) the reproductive system that is associated with the production of large sessile gametes, and we call those humans "females".
It is not possible for a fetus that developed a male reproductive system in utero to become a female in any fashion whatsoever.
The supporting evidence for this is 1) evolutionary biology of anisogamous species, 2) the function and formation of sexual reproduction, and 3) millions of years of observation that females get pregnant and have babies while males contribute the baby batter and that this is true for every single mammal and bird on the face of the planet that we have ever seen or documented in any way.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
That was from 2016, and even then less than half of females age 30 or older were in support. The only thing that skews it to 55% for females is very young people. Views have changed since then. In particular, we've now learned that over 80% of transgender identified males are intact, and that rather changes our tolerance.
Public split over bathroom use by transgender people
Americans overall are closely divided on the question of which public restrooms transgender individuals should be using. But similar to the other issueswww.pewresearch.org
Polls show that on average women are more accepting of transgender women in female bathrooms.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
Not really. Biology is pretty goddamned consistent. Even if you want to try to be very generous and include DSDs in the mix, biology has this down pat 99.8% of the time. And bear in mind that the majority of the most common DSDs do not present with any genital ambiguity at all - they present with either infertility or with a failure of puberty to follow the expected path. If we're talking about DSDs in which there's some degree of uncertainty on visual observation of sex at birth, we're talking about biology being right 99.997% of the time.
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