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Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

d4m10n said:
Just finished it up on the morning commute; would recommend.

I expect it's going to piss off partisans on both sides, in part because the people running the show seem to be trying to engage with opposing factions (Olson-Kennedy for the gender affirmative model, Edwards-Leeper for a more restrained psychotherapeutic approach) with at least a modicum of objectivity. I even get the sense that the NYT folks wanted to put together a woke progressively politically correct podcast, but their dedication to factual reporting kept getting in the way.
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Jamie Reed (the whistleblower in the podcast) appears on another podcast called Informed Dissent, which discussed her segment. At about 7:30 she says that she felt the original reporter (Azeen) was completely different in the interview than she had been up till that point, which she attributed to the podcast host (Austin) being ultra-liberal. Azeen apparently felt the need with him present to affirm her support for the party line.

Let's remember the Times knew going in this podcast was going to generate a lot of heat; even before it came out there were posts online saying it was going to "harm" trans people.
 
p0lka said:
But then at that point they are denying reality, which would be easy to demonstrate.
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They are already denying reality. It is already easy to demonstrate. And yet, that makes no difference. Because this fight has never really been about reality. Fighting over what "female" means isn't fundamentally different than fighting over what "woman" means.
p0lka said:
The whole 'gender equals sex' is wishy washy as it mixes feelings with facts. Better to separate them
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The TRA's aren't going to agree to that. Just like saying "transwomen are women" has not actually won the argument for them, saying "female bathroom" won't win the argument for you. Because it's never really been about whether we use the word "woman" or "female". Your proposal isn't a solution, because that isn't the problem. I don't say this because I disagree with your viewpoint, but because it won't change anyone's mind.
 
p0lka said:
Oh i wasn't objecting to anything. If you go back and look I was answering the statement of 'No prizes for being able to identify Wil[lia]m Thomas in that lineup.'.
my answer was
<snip>
I was judging swimming skill, I didn't get a prize.
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Indeed, no prize, because what stood out about Thomas in that photo wasn't a skill difference, but an athleticism difference. That's the advantage that males have over females in athletic competition.
 
Brainster said:
Jamie Reed (the whistleblower in the podcast) appears on another podcast called Informed Dissent, which discussed her segment. At about 7:30 she says that she felt the original reporter (Azeen) was completely different in the interview than she had been up till that point, which she attributed to the podcast host (Austin) being ultra-liberal. Azeen apparently felt the need with him present to affirm her support for the party line.

Let's remember the Times knew going in this podcast was going to generate a lot of heat; even before it came out there were posts online saying it was going to "harm" trans people.
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Maybe. I listened to much of that as well. It’s difficult to say because there are some reasons to doubt the reliability of Jamie as well. She seemed less than sure of herself when talking to one of the mothers in the podcast, and those recordings were done by the NYT back in 2022 or 2023. It was the original reporting in which the NYT was seen as too generous to Jamie Reed in which the NYT initially garnered too much heat.

So it’s a bit of a stretch to now say they deliberately made her look bad or wanted to sacrifice her to placate the trans rights activists.

Another possibility is simply that journalists trying to ingratiate themselves with sources are simply much more friendly than journalists interviewing their sources.

Besides, many of the other interviewees, such as Marcy Bowers, also say in their interviews things like “I’m talking to you only because I heard from X that you were trustworthy…” etc… and often that’s around the time things are getting somewhat heated in the interviews themselves.

IOW, I would take insinuations of complicated motives with a grain of salt.
 
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Emily's Cat said:
I assume gay service members aren't out there porking behind a bush while deployed?
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No idea why you'd assume this, aside from the fact that bushes are prickly and don't provide much cover.
Emily's Cat said:
I think there's a general expectation that they're not going to be having sex in the field.
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In much the same way that there is a general expectation that co-eds at Baylor are too devout to hook up, sure. In reality, deployment goggles turn every willing female into the Venus de Milo (from the perspective of the hetero male gaze, once we've left the gays in the bushes) and you'll want to keep those hormone pills coming if you don't want to deal with the sort of complications that would render some females undeployable for quite a while.
Emily's Cat said:
Now I personally think that service members with gender identity issues should be able to go without hormones indefinitely.
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Personally, I think they should be superhuman warrior monks with no physical or psychological weaknesses whatsoever and no need for exogenous hormones or chemicals. Somehow, though, the Allies managed to win WWII despite widespread nicotine addiction and not a few STIs. In reality, we must make countless accommodations to human weakness.

I think the relevant calculation should be whether Space Force is better off without folks like Hunter Marquez and Bree FramWP, after factoring in the relevant costs to existing pharmaceutical supply chains and all else. Having heard the arguments against gays and lesbians as they played out, I tend to turn a skeptical hear towards anything which echoes of them.
 
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Ziggurat said:
Indeed, no prize, because what stood out about Thomas in that photo wasn't a skill difference, but an athleticism difference. That's the advantage that males have over females in athletic competition.
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Correct. And it’s also irrelevant that some biological women can beat Thomas (as I have said often I would have liked him to be selected for the US Olympic women’s swim team so the Australian women could thrash him) but that collegiate swimmers who deserved better were denied medals through his selfishness.
 
Ziggurat said:
They are already denying reality. It is already easy to demonstrate.
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If a male says they're female or vice versa, then it is easy to demonstrate they are incorrect by checking medically and saying they're correct or incorrect. If a male says they're a woman but not female and vice versa, then I don't see how that is easy to demonstrate at all? I mean have you seen how long this thread is, heh.
Ziggurat said:
And yet, that makes no difference. Because this fight has never really been about reality. Fighting over what "female" means isn't fundamentally different than fighting over what "woman" means.

The TRA's aren't going to agree to that. Just like saying "transwomen are women" has not actually won the argument for them, saying "female bathroom" won't win the argument for you. Because it's never really been about whether we use the word "woman" or "female". Your proposal isn't a solution, because that isn't the problem. I don't say this because I disagree with your viewpoint, but because it won't change anyone's mind.
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I understand what you're saying, but I think there's a massive difference between the words woman and female, or man and male for that matter, in terms of arguing with people about reality. The gender labels are societal vague terms, they are even used as such sometimes ie 'be a man' or 'man up' etc, whereas sex is just what it is. Anyone who would argue you can change your sex is just incorrect at this present time..
 
p0lka said:
If a male says they're female or vice versa, then it is easy to demonstrate they are incorrect by checking medically and saying they're correct or incorrect.
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You're assuming that they will agree with you about what "male" and "female" even means, and they don't. You seem to think that you can avoid the fight over what "woman" means by instead resorting to "female", but the distinction doesn't matter to them. They are no less willing to dispute the meaning of "female" as they are "woman". You cannot get out of this fight by such a trivial method.
p0lka said:
I understand what you're saying, but I think there's a massive difference between the words woman and female, or man and male for that matter, in terms of arguing with people about reality.
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And you are mistaken about that. YOU view those words as different, with one being more objective than the other. But they do not.
p0lka said:
Anyone who would argue you can change your sex is just incorrect at this present time..
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That is true, but being incorrect hasn't stopped the trans rights advocates before. The outcome of this argument has never actually depended on the facts.
 
p0lka said:
If a male says they're female or vice versa, then it is easy to demonstrate they are incorrect by checking medically and saying they're correct or incorrect. If a male says they're a woman but not female and vice versa, then I don't see how that is easy to demonstrate at all?
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That's the easy part: Womanhood doesn't need to be demonstrated, because womanhood decoupled from sex is functionally irrelevant.

If by woman they mean 'adult human male', then you're checking the claim of being female. You've already addressed this case.

If by woman they mean anything else, then it doesn't matter. No decisions need to be made. No action needs to be taken.*

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*Except, perhaps, for issues relating to preferred pronouns. But that's a whole other can of worms that I think should be unpacked (again) separately from the basic point you address here.
 
p0lka said:
If a male says they're female or vice versa, then it is easy to demonstrate they are incorrect by checking medically and saying they're correct or incorrect. If a male says they're a woman but not female and vice versa, then I don't see how that is easy to demonstrate at all?
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A female horse is a mare.
A female bovine is a cow.
A female deer is a doe.
A female chicken is a hen.
A female vulpine is a vixen.
A female goat is a nanny.
A female human is a _____?
 
With respect to the problems of mixed sex facilities:


This is the reality. And when facilities allow males who claim a transgender identity to access female spaces, that makes that facility mixed sex. Because there's no way at all to tell which males are "true trans" and which are predators.
 
Emily's Cat said:
A female horse is a mare.
A female bovine is a cow.
A female deer is a doe.
A female chicken is a hen.
A female vulpine is a vixen.
A female goat is a nanny.
A female human is a _____?
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Yeah i know logically what you're saying makes sense, but one of those we view from the inside and that's what makes it subjectively different.
 
theprestige said:
That's the easy part: Womanhood doesn't need to be demonstrated, because womanhood decoupled from sex is functionally irrelevant.

If by woman they mean 'adult human male', then you're checking the claim of being female. You've already addressed this case.

If by woman they mean anything else, then it doesn't matter. No decisions need to be made. No action needs to be taken.*

---
*Except, perhaps, for issues relating to preferred pronouns. But that's a whole other can of worms that I think should be unpacked (again) separately from the basic point you address here.
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I was replying to this ... "They are already denying reality. It is already easy to demonstrate.", and I just questioned whether it would actually be easy to demonstrate when it's gender terms as opposed to factual terms.

I agree that gender terms decoupled from sex are functionally irrelevant, that's my point. Gender doesn't equal sex, one's a fact and the other is societal pressure to conform to a role.

Offtopic: I used to be able to copy posts and quotes and insert them in my posts, wtf is going on with this new weird forum ◊◊◊◊?
 
p0lka said:
I was replying to this ... "They are already denying reality. It is already easy to demonstrate.", and I just questioned whether it would actually be easy to demonstrate when it's gender terms as opposed to factual terms.
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You haven't been paying enough attention. The TRAs have never restricted themselves to talking only about gender. They have been saying for years stuff like "sex isn't binary". Even stuff that sounds plausible is often factually wrong, like "puberty blockers are reversible". The conversation would already be very different is they had restricted themselves to only non-biological claims, but they never have. Which is why trying to back into biological classifications such as "female" won't change anything. This word is already under assault.
 
p0lka said:
Yeah i know logically what you're saying makes sense, but one of those we view from the inside and that's what makes it subjectively different.
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Only female humans can subjectively "view from the inside" how it is to be female, the rest of us have only imagination and empathy.
 
Ziggurat said:
You haven't been paying enough attention. The TRAs have never restricted themselves to talking only about gender. They have been saying for years stuff like "sex isn't binary". Even stuff that sounds plausible is often factually wrong, like "puberty blockers are reversible". The conversation would already be very different is they had restricted themselves to only non-biological claims, but they never have. Which is why trying to back into biological classifications such as "female" won't change anything. This word is already under assault.
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Yeah you might be correct, maybe I haven't. But then they are just arguing nonsense aren't they? Why is anyone letting anyone get away with factual nonsense? it's easy to demonstrate they are incorrect.

You mentioned puberty blockers? My youngest daughter wanted them, really wanted them (i reckon because of listening to people who had access to the internet) and we said no. She's gone through puberty and it seems all her issues have resolved themselves without puberty blockers. I think puberty blockers stop people from learning how to deal with stuff.
 
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