Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

d4m10n said:
Seems to me you are rejecting the philosophical principle of charityWP in favor of assuming that any opposing interlocutors are inherently irrational. I don't think that is a wise approach, since it fails to explain articles such as this one, which appear to be written in good faith even if they are mistaken on some pretty fundamental issues.
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How much charity should we extend to somebody who recycled objectively false statements (about the Cass report) and apparently never corrected them in spite of being informed? Or who made this statement on the page you linked "When it comes to gametes, these are strictly binary – egg or sperm. However, even here there are intersex individuals with “ovotestes”, some of which can make both eggs and sperm" - which apparently originally linked to a paper on crustaceans? (the link appears to have been edited now, but the claim is not changed). Should the principle of charity extend to failure to correct objectively false and misleading statements? I would say that 'good faith' ends at that point.
 
Elaedith said:
Should the principle of charity extend to failure to correct objectively false and misleading statements?
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No, but I still think he wrote that article in the firm belief that facts matter and persuasion is worthwhile.

The idea that someone would take the time to marshal all those facts while believing that "this has nothing to do with facts" and that only power really matters takes cynicism into the realm of the unfalsifiable.
 
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Rolfe said:
But they do argue semantically, all the time. I'm still at a loss to know who is going to require that any trans person involved in an argument takes a DNA test or has an x-ray or whatever else proof you have in mind.
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Asking if they are willing to, might suffice. They'll do an exit stage right unless they are really committed.
 
theprestige said:
No they are not. They are trying to treat sex as something mutable by self-perception.
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ok thanks, but then that's a stupid position to take as they will fail.
theprestige said:
It's been working out surprisingly, depressingly well in recent times.


Actually both can be assessed in most cases by direct observation. In fact, in almost all cases - including the cases of most interest to TRAs - biological sex can be assessed by simple observation.

And gender nonconformity is entirely a matter of outward expression, not inward feelings. Because that's all gender is - outward expression. Nobody cares whether or not you conform in your own inner life. Not employers, not landlords, not anybody.


There's plenty of evidence. Lia Thomas already competes as a female. Males are already enjoying the entitlement, in California, to be housed in prisons for females. Simple and direct observation of biological sex simply does not matter to these people.
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Well technically they competed in womans swimming and not female swimming. If it had been named female swimming they wouldn't have been allowed to compete at all. Seriously, if all these labels were female/male instead of woman/man then most of these arguments wouldn't have happened.
theprestige said:
You'd think, but that's not the case. Importantly, TRAs are doing an end-run around biological sex, and trying to establish psychological sex as determinative. They've expended a lot of effort to sway public opinion this way, and to gain influence over policymakers on this matter.



You'd think, but that's not been the case. And we can't ignore the conclusions that have already entered into public policy.


We've already seen that it does not work in practice.

You seem to believe that you're the only person to ever think of appealing to the obvious, the biological fact. This has already been tried. It has already been countered. We are now fighting to reverse the horrifying, anti-fact, anti-science trend. A trend that has already manifested in government policy and medical practice.

Your understanding of this issue, such as it is, lags behind our conversation by at least two decades, probably more.
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re: highlited I've not seen any instances of companies or public utilities or anything using male female instead of man woman to get any data, where are you seeing that it doesn't work in practice?
I could be 10000 years behind modern thinking, but if no one has tried it yet it's as fresh as a daisy.
 
p0lka said:
ok thanks, but then that's a stupid position to take as they will fail.
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They've been surprisingly successful at it so far.

p0lka said:
Well technically they competed in womans swimming and not female swimming. If it had been named female swimming they wouldn't have been allowed to compete at all. Seriously, if all these labels were female/male instead of woman/man then most of these arguments wouldn't have happened.
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Labels aside, sports are de facto sex segregated. Everyone involved knows this. Changing the label won't change the ask, or the seeking of sufficient power to get what is asked.

p0lka said:
re: highlited I've not seen any instances of companies or public utilities or anything using male female instead of man woman to get any data, where are you seeing that it doesn't work in practice?
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Examples have been given. You're ignoring them.

p0lka said:
I could be 10000 years behind modern thinking, but if no one has tried it yet it's as fresh as a daisy.
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It has been tried. Your thinking is remarkably un-fresh.
 
d4m10n said:
Seems to me you are rejecting the philosophical principle of charityWP in favor of assuming that any opposing interlocutors are inherently irrational.
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A given individual may be rational. A political movement is not. That's not how they work, that's not their purpose. Political movements act to advance goals. Individuals may or may not have rational reasons for having these goals or joining those movements, but the movement itself isn't rational. Rational argument is relevant in politics to the extent that it can convince people whether or not a particular approach will achieve their goals, but it rarely if ever changes what their goals are. Rational arguments may occasionally get individuals to change their political affiliation, but that's an exception, not the rule.

In the case under discussion here, the TRA's want trans identified males to be able to share a bathroom with females. That's the goal. Changing the label on the door and then arguing about what the label means does nothing to change the goal. It will convince no one to change their minds about how to achieve the goal, because the label was never relevant to the goal. Nor is anyone actually in doubt about what the goal is or how to achieve or prevent it. It's not like anyone is going to say, yes, we should allow trans identified males to share bathrooms with females if the door says "woman" but we should not allow trans identified males to share bathrooms with females if the door says "female". We choose labels to reflect policy, we don't choose policy to reflect labels. Either you want trans identified males to share bathrooms with females, or you don't, regardless of what's written on the door. Changing what's written on the door will not change anyone's opinion.
d4m10n said:
I don't think that is a wise approach, since it fails to explain articles such as this one, which appear to be written in good faith even if they are mistaken on some pretty fundamental issues.
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If that was written in good faith, then the author is an idiot, and given his position, I doubt he's an idiot. But it doesn't even matter, because it's all beside the point for the reasons I tried to explain above.
 
p0lka said:
Well technically they competed in womans swimming and not female swimming. If it had been named female swimming they wouldn't have been allowed to compete at all.
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That's not how it works. The name doesn't determine eligibility, the rules do.

For example, in the recent Paris olympics, the rules for women's boxing was you qualified as a woman based on what your passport said. That's not what the previous rules said. Previous rules actually required medical verification of sex in contested cases. It was a rules change, NOT a label change, which allowed a male to compete in the women's category. Furthermore, if you change the label to female boxing but keep the rule that it's determined by passport, then you end up with the exact same thing, because trans-identifying males could still have their passports marked "female". Because at least in the US, that's how passports are marked: not man or woman, but male or female. Trans identifying males could (until quite recently) simply have their passport marked "female" by choice. And it wouldn't matter that you could prove they were male, the rules of the 2024 olympics boxing competition said you go by the passport. And the passport says female, even though they are male. A label change from "women's boxing" to "female boxing" does nothing.

Trans-identifying males didn't get access to female spaces by changing the names on those spaces. They got access by changing the rules. Nobody is confused about what those rule changes meant. Nobody said, "we can change the rules because the label was 'woman' but we couldn't change the rules if it said 'female'".
p0lka said:
Seriously, if all these labels were female/male instead of woman/man then most of these arguments wouldn't have happened.
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No. You're wrong. All of these arguments would still happen, because everyone would still have exactly the same goals. The labels on the door were NEVER what the argument is actually about. Conflicting goals were. One side wants trans identifying males to share bathrooms with females, the other side doesn't. Changing the label will not eliminate that conflict, because changing the label won't change anyone's goals. I'm not sure why you cannot grasp this simple reality even though it's been explained to you so many times.
 
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theprestige said:
Labels aside, sports are de facto sex segregated. Everyone involved knows this. Changing the label won't change the ask, or the seeking of sufficient power to get what is asked.
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Why do you have to say labels aside? Sports are not sex segregated, they are woman man gender labelled segregated and lia thomas would not have been allowed to compete in female swimming.
theprestige said:
Examples have been given. You're ignoring them.


It has been tried. Your thinking is remarkably un-fresh.
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It doesn't matter if 'everyone knows this', some people in society will take advantage of anything in general, if it's not clearly defined. Like these tra people everyone is going on about. It's like it's a war or something.
 
p0lka said:
Why do you have to say labels aside? Sports are not sex segregated,
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They were, once upon a time.
p0lka said:
they are woman man gender labelled segregated
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Only after the rules changed. But they didn't change to better fit the label. They changed to better fit the goals of the people in charge.
p0lka said:
and lia thomas would not have been allowed to compete in female swimming.
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No. Her participation is contingent upon the rules, NOT the label. The rules don't depend on the label. They don't technically even have to match the label.
 
Ziggurat said:
They were, once upon a time.

Only after the rules changed. But they didn't change to better fit the label. They changed to better fit the goals of the people in charge.

No. Her participation is contingent upon the rules, NOT the label. The rules don't depend on the label. They don't technically even have to match the label.
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Ok, tell me how lia thomas would have been allowed to compete in female sports?
 
p0lka said:
Ok, tell me how lia thomas would have been allowed to compete in female sports?
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The same way she's allowed to compete in women's sports. Eligibility isn't determined by the label. It's determined by the rules. The rules don't have to match what you think the label means. Changing the label doesn't change eligibility, changing the rules does. So you can exclude him by changing the rules, but you can't exclude him by changing the label. And if you change the rules, you don't need to change the label.

I don't understand why you're confused about this.
 
Ziggurat said:
The same way she's allowed to compete in women's sports. Eligibility isn't determined by the label. It's determined by the rules. The rules don't have to match what you think the label means. Changing the label doesn't change eligibility, changing the rules does. So you can exclude him by changing the rules, but you can't exclude him by changing the label. And if you change the rules, you don't need to change the label.

I don't understand why you're confused about this.
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That's not really an answer to my question.
 
I won't have time until much later to read the actual decisions. This is more or less the decision we expected, but I can't comment on the reasoning at this point until I read it. What I can glean, however, from the quick skim is that this ruling follows a red-flag pattern. When you see a whole bunch of concurrences, it's a sign that the majority agreed on the answer they wanted, but couldn't agree on the legal reasoning that gets them there. It's a red flag because it means they're not just calling straightforward balls and strikes. In contrast, in this ruling the dissenters speak with one voice. That suggests there's really no disagreement on the theory of law that militates against the finding. I may change my opinion after I read what they actually say.
 
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