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Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

Suppose a specific individual demands access to, say, women's changing rooms at the local clothier.

Should it matter whether that person looks like Blaire White (very passable) or like Agee Merager (very manly)?
I don't know who these people are. (And I don't particularly care to know.) I get that there's a broad range of appearances and that more manly looking people are more likely to cause discomfort.
 
I don't particularly care to know.

Hopefully you don't particularly mind knowing, since I happened to post a picture of Blaire upthread.

(IMO, you have to be something of a hardliner to say people who look like her need to use the men's, or that people who look like the dude in that photo need to use the ladies' room, on account of the circumstances of their birth.)
 
Does anyone remember if we covered the Olympus Spa case out of Lynnwood, WA?


It's sort of nuts that these (relatively rare and obscure) Korean-style spas have become the frontlines in the battle for single-sex spaces in the U.S. and it's sort of nuts that this case doesn't have a higher profile yet. I expect that the Ninth Circuit will rule against the spa, but I'm not nearly so confident of how SCOTUS would rule, should they grant cert.
This is case in point why the sex segregation v gender ID needs to get clarified and carved in stone. The intent of a Korean spa is clearly sex segregation, but that line has been blurred with gender.
 
The right to have your birth certificate falsified...
This is such an absolutely bizarre and downright counterfactual idea to enshrine into law.

Birth certificates are records documenting what actually, factually happened at a particular place and time.

When Christopher Hitchens was naturalized as an American citizen (back in 2007) we didn't falsify his original place of birth (scratching out Portsmouth and penning in Washington D.C.), we just gave him all new paperwork.

When I was legally adopted in 1994, we didn't change my name on my birth certificate (a document from two decades earlier) but instead I was issued a brand new set of papers which would come in handy whenever I needed to prove that the person in the adoption paperwork is the same person as the one on the birth certificate.

Why would activists for any cause insist upon the right to falsify historical documents?
 
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Why would activists for any cause insist upon the right to falsify historical documents?

One of the first times that I remember saying "Wait, what?" was reading the Wikipedia entry on Caitlyn Jenner being rewritten to make it appear he was a woman when he appeared on TV shows back in the 1970s and 1980s:

Jenner began television appearances in the mid-1970s, both as herself and in character roles. One of Jenner's first recurring television roles was as a co-host of the short-lived daytime talk and variety series America Alive! in 1978. The comedy Can't Stop the Music (1980) was Jenner's first film appearance. She starred in the made-for-TV movies The Golden Moment: An Olympic Love Story (1980) and Grambling's White Tiger (1981).
(Italics added). Rewriting history.
 
This is case in point why the sex segregation v gender ID needs to get clarified and carved in stone.
Alternatively, we could stop using state antidiscrimination laws as a one-size-fits-all solution and just let proprietors of gyms and spas and pools set their own boundaries as they see fit.
The intent of a Korean spa is clearly sex segregation, but that line has been blurred with gender.
It wasn't blurred, it was steamrolled. It was pellucidly clear what the spa policy actually was until a bepenised activist came along to fight for the right to hang dong in front of strangers.
 
This is such an absolutely bizarre and downright counterfactual idea to enshrine into law.

Birth certificates are records documenting what actually, factually happened at a particular place and time.

When Christopher Hitchens was naturalized as an American citizen (back in 2007) we didn't falsify his original place of birth (scratching out Portsmouth and penning in Washington D.C.), we just gave him all new paperwork.

When I was legally adopted in 1994, we didn't change my name on my birth certificate (a document from two decades earlier) but instead I was issued a brand new set of papers which would come in handy whenever I needed to prove that the person in the adoption paperwork is the same person as the one on the birth certificate.

Why would activists for any cause insist upon the right to falsify historical documents?

The case that started all this, that of a very disturbed man who went to extreme lengths to adopt the appearance of a woman and then became absolutely paranoid about being "outed" had as one of its points that this person couldn't perform normal financial transactions which required sight of a birth certificate, because he didn't want anyone to see that it said "male" on it.
 
Alternatively, we could stop using state antidiscrimination laws as a one-size-fits-all solution and just let proprietors of gyms and spas and pools set their own boundaries as they see fit.
"Whites Only".
It wasn't blurred, it was steamrolled. It was pellucidly clear what the spa policy actually was until a bepenised activist came along to fight for the right to hang dong in front of strangers
Yup. I don't know if this spa, like Wi, had transgender policies in place. Wi did, but I still don't know how they worked in real time.
 
I don't know who these people are. (And I don't particularly care to know.) I get that there's a broad range of appearances and that more manly looking people are more likely to cause discomfort.

There are a number of considerations here. One is what's likely to happen if someone who looks virtually indistinguishable from the opposite sex goes into the opposite sex's intimate spaces. The answer to that is obviously "nothing at all", if the person in question is not personally known to the observer. I'm told that Blaire White isn't quite so "passing" in real life, that the photos and the videos are carefully curated, and that he does get clocked from time to time. Nevertheless, looking like that and behaving with a reasonable and modest demeanour, it's highly unlikely that anyone would challenge him.

From all I hear about the lack of interaction within men's single-sex spaces, Buck Angel isn't even going to be looked at. Even if she is slightly built and has a rather female silhouette, as I gather is the case, nobody is even going to notice her.

This is going to apply in all public places out and about. But what should happen if someone like that is clocked and asked to leave? Just apologise and leave and don't escalate it. If they pass so well, it's going to be a rare occurrence. If it's not a rare occurrence then maybe they don't pass so well after all and would be more appropriately accommodated in their correct-sex facility.

What absolutely must not happen is the granting of a legal right for anyone at all to use the facilities of the opposite sex. We all know where that leads. One minute it's Blaire White and the next minute it's the bloke with the fringed top and the frilly mini-skirt. The people to whom the facility rightfully belongs must have the right to police it without risking the interloper insisting that he is one of the favoured class who have legal right of access. And they'll all claim that.

Another issue is where the trans person is known, say at work. A company can't give a male permission to use the female facilities or vice versa, see what happened with Sandie Peggy and the Darlington nurses. And the Supreme Court ruling has made it clear that this must not be done or it is in fact discrimination against all the people of the same sex that are being excluded from the space. If you let one male into the female changing room, it is now mixed sex and you can't exclude any male. The employer may try to insist that Dr Upton goes in with the men, because everyone knows he's a man anyway and they certainly can't let him go in with the women, but realistically they're going to have to provide him with his own private changing room.

None of this should be particularly difficult. The problem is that a lot of the trans lobby are behaving like two-year-olds having a tantrum, and they're going to scream and scream until they get what they are not legally entitled to have.
 
"Whites Only"
Americans really do seem afraid that they'll revert to the ways of their (great) grandparents given half a chance, but I'm skeptical as to whether that's a realistic fear.

That aside, it's always a bit silly to compare sexual segregation to racial segregation since sex is real and race is socially constructed at best.
 
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None of this should be particularly difficult. The problem is that a lot of the trans lobby are behaving like two-year-olds having a tantrum, and they're going to scream and scream until they get what they are not legally entitled to have.
In 2023, World Aquatics inaugurated an open category for inclusion, so that transgender athletes could compete at the World Cup. It was eventually cancelled. Why? Because they received not a single entry - not one.


This pretty much proves that transgender identified male swimmers want to compete against women where they know they have a physiological advantage and can stick it to those uppity females.

In regards to toilets, bathrooms, changing rooms etc its the same deal. You can provide them with a third option, but most of them will not use those, they will demand the right to use the women's. Even though the element of competition is not there, the motivation is the same - stick it to the females.
 
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Americans really do seem afraid that they'll revert to the ways of their (great) grandparents given half a chance, but I'm skeptical as to whether that's a realistic fear.

That aside, it's always a bit silly to compare sexual segregation to racial segregation since sex is real and race is socially constructed at best.
That's not a comparison to race. It's a demonstration of why discrimination laws are indispensable, and you can't rely on Jethro and Ellie Mae to make their own rules up.

"Irish need not apply"

"Men only on this Ballot for Office"
 
That's not a comparison to race. It's a demonstration of why discrimination laws are indispensable,
No it isn't. I agree that racial discrimination is bad, but nothing in your post says why, nor does it say anything about remedies. Note in particular that the most pernicious aspects of racial discrimination was the legal compulsion to discriminate whether or not anyone wanted to, and not the freedom of individuals to individually discriminate.

Moreover, unless you adopt the position that all discrimination is unjustified (and this no sex segregation is permissible), this is all beside the point. No one contests that some discrimination is bad. But if some discrimination is not bad, then pointing to bad discrimination says nothing about whether some other discrimination is also bad, when you have done nothing to establish criteria for what's bad and what isn't. So this is, in fact, a complete logical fail on your part.
 
In 2023, World Aquatics inaugurated an open category for inclusion, so that transgender athletes could compete at the World Cup. It was eventually cancelled. Why? Because they received not a single entry - not one.


This pretty much proves that transgender identified male swimmers want to compete against women where they know they have a physiological advantage and can stick it to those uppity females.

In regards to toilets, bathrooms, changing rooms etc its the same deal. You can provide them with a third option, but most of them will not use those, they will demand the right to use the women's. Even though the element of competition is not there, the motivation is the same - stick it to the females.
Re: the underlined. What about transgender identified female swimmers?
 
That's not a comparison to race. It's a demonstration of why discrimination laws are indispensable, and you can't rely on Jethro and Ellie Mae to make their own rules up.

"Irish need not apply"

"Men only on this Ballot for Office"
Poppycock.
Firstly, there are such things as positive discrimination, and negative discrimination - racial segregation and sex discrimination in employment are examples of negative discrimination, while sex segregation and age restriction are examples of positive discrimination.

Secondly, using racial segregation either as a comparison or a demonstration with regard to sex segregation is a false analogy fallacy.

- Racial segregation is the exclusion of a group from things such as public facilities, places and employment on the basis of a characteristic they have no control over, and cannot change - namely, the colour of their skin.

- Sex-segregation is the inclusion of those of the same biological sex, and the exclusion of a those who choose to change their self-idenfied gender in order to invade spaces that their actual biological sex does not entitle them to enter.

No person is born is the wrong body, being transgender is a choice, being Black is not
 
It's a demonstration of why discrimination laws are indispensable, and you can't rely on Jethro and Ellie Mae to make their own rules up.
It's a demonstration of why racial anti-discrimination laws are indispensable (assuming Jethro and Ellie Mae vote like their grandparents, which is a questionable premise even in West Virginia) along with a hasty inference to the idea that actual biological differences need not be accommodated because biological sex is somehow analogous to sociological race.
 
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It's a demonstration of why racial anti-discrimination laws are indispensable (assuming Jethro and Ellie Mae vote like their grandparents, which is a questionable premise even in West Virginia) along with a hasty inference to the idea that actual biological differences need not be accommodated because biological sex is somehow analogous to sociological race.
I mean, I understand why the anti-trans side has to dig in against analogies regarding race and all. It's not pretty to look in that particular mirror. Yet the analogy is rock solid. Our anti-discrimination laws serve the interests of protected classes, of which race, sex, gender, religion, political affiliation, etc are under the umbrella of. It doesn't matter if you were 'born that way' or not. Even if smartcooky's horrific argument was true (that being trans is a choice, I suppose the argument also assumes like someone choosing to be gay), you are still protected.
 

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