Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

[Thermal]

Meh. My brain seems to believe that Aber is female, but I don't trust my memory these days. Perimenopause is a helluva thing.

I'll also say that I strongly suspect that Aber DNGAF about pronouns and isn't going to faint away from suicidal thoughts if the opposite sex pronoun gets used.

Aber can be whoever they want to be, or keep it personal. I just didn't want to use the wrong pronoun and sound like I was being passive-aggressive or whatever, and smartcooky was using 'he', but I thought you had said Aber was female.

 

[Thermal]

I love when you post, you're so much more concise than I am.

Concise, yes, but wrong. the prestige and I were already in stated agreement that in areas with nudity, sports, prison, etc, that those sex segregated lines should remain strong. So to chide me on 'forgetting' about them is a comprehension fail on the reader's part, not forgetfulness on mine. Concise or not

 

[Rolfe]

With CAIS in most cases, I think the most appropriate and practical approach is to treat them as females. As I think about it more, I have questions when it comes to athletics.

Do people with CAIS develop a female skeletal structure? Particularly pelvis and angle of femur? What about lung capacity etc? That's where I'm a lot less clear about how development progresses outside of reproductive anatomy.

I think there is a legitimate debate to be had. There may be an edge there, but on the other hand at least one CAIS woman I spoke to about it talked about connective tissue issues and other health issues she thought would militate against CAIS women becoming elite athletes. There's no sign that women's athletics is being dominated by CAIS women in the way the 2016 Rio podium suggested it was becoming dominated by 5ARD men.

CAIS women can't compete at male levels of performance, so if they're barred from women's events, they're barred from sports. Any edge they have is likely to be of the same order of magnitude as Tom Daley's "flippers" and anaerobic capacity. There are very few of them, they didn't ask to be where they are, and there's no way to create more of them. My default position is let them compete, and looking at the boxing rules that came out recently, that's the line taken by them. I don't see a detriment to non-CAIS women which is likely to be of sufficient magnitude to justify the undoubted detriment to CAIS women that would occur if they were blanket-barred from women's sports.

 

[Rolfe]

Many of the physical changes that occur as a result of exogenous testosterone are irreversible - lowered voice, body and chest hair, enlarged adam's apple, atrophied vaginal canal, fertility problems, increased risk of heart disease and cancer. But some of them will revert once testosterone is stopped - increased muscle mass and strength. I don't believe a female who takes testosterone grows taller or gets a different skeleton or bigger feet and hands.

I'm less certain about how females who have previously taken testosterone should be handled.

I thought there was already a bar against women who had taken testosterone in the past from competing as women again. Or maybe it's just for a specific time period?

 

[Rolfe]

Even if that is Khelif as a child... All of the images I've seen as an adult are quite clearly *not* female presenting.

It would be quite a turnup if Khelif really had been dressed as a girl at that age, though. I'm extremely sceptical.

 

[Rolfe]

Yup. I don't think anyone except p0lka finds p0lka's approach convincing. So why anyone else is arguing about whether McDonalds labels their restrooms using "Female/Male" or "Women/Men" is irrelevant.

Buddy. Come on. Aber brought it up as a result of p0lka's argument that if we just change all of the labels to use "female/male" then the whole thing gets solved.

Meh. My brain seems to believe that Aber is female, but I don't trust my memory these days. Perimenopause is a helluva thing.

I'll also say that I strongly suspect that Aber DNGAF about pronouns and isn't going to faint away from suicidal thoughts if the opposite sex pronoun gets used.

Aber brought it up in response to Polka's assertion that simply changing the signs to Male and Female would stop trans-identifying men from going into the female toilets. He (I think of him as a he, but that may just be an assumption) stated that all the McDonald's toilets he has seen have been labelled Male and Female. My assumption is that Aber is Scottish, because the vehemence of his opposition to Scottish independence would have been remarkable in someone with no skin in the game (and as far as I recall he seemed to have a close familiarity with Scottish politics at that time), and there are plenty towns in Scotland beginning with "Aber". I had assumed Aberdeen.

The point is that Aber never at any time claimed that every single McDonald's in the world labels their toilets Male and Female, just the ones he had encountered. I had never paid any attention, merely going by the symbolic pictograms, but lo and behold, when I did look, it was just as Aber said. A McDonald's in Scotland used Male and Female on their signs.

What we are lacking is any evidence of male people who want to use the women's toilets being deterred from this in these branches of McDonald's. Given the normal behaviour of trans-activists, I would expect a campaign against McDonald's to stop being transphobic and replace these signs with "gender" labels, if the current signs were actually forcing them to stay out!

 

[Emily's Cat]

When you gain muscle, you don't gain new fibers. The fibers themselves get bigger. Those fibers can also shrink, but don't generally go away.

But things like the balance between slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers, as well as neuromuscular efficiency, are basically baked in from the womb. And males have an advantage here. Testosterone provides an additional advantage in growing muscle fiber size, and that advantage can go away with the removal of testosterone, but fast/slow mix and neuromuscular efficiency (which still provide an athletic advantage to males) doesn't go away.

Agreed on how it works in males. If a female takes testosterone, then stops... will their musculature revert back to a female-typical density?

 

[Emily's Cat]

I thought there was already a bar against women who had taken testosterone in the past from competing as women again. Or maybe it's just for a specific time period?

I genuinely don't know. I know they're barred from competing while taking testosterone. It seems reasonable to bar them for at least some period of time after they've stopped. I just don't actually know whether the impact on muscles is permanent or not. Testosterone is a one-way street for a whole lot of things, so it might be.

 

[smartcooky]

Yup. I don't think anyone except p0lka finds p0lka's approach convincing. So why anyone else is arguing about whether McDonalds labels their restrooms using "Female/Male" or "Women/Men" is irrelevant.

Because for some people, its more important confuse the issue with incoherent, inconsistent bollocks, to pretend that this issue is more complicated than it really is, and to tell endlessly tell everyone how they do things in their neck of the woods.

 

[Ziggurat]

Agreed on how it works in males. If a female takes testosterone, then stops... will their musculature revert back to a female-typical density?

I suspect so. Even with testosterone or steroids, females will not actually get male type muscles, since testosterone after birth doesn't affect fast/slow ratios or neuromuscular efficiency.

 

[Aber]

Aber can be whoever they want to be, or keep it personal. I just didn't want to use the wrong pronoun and sound like I was being passive-aggressive or whatever,

But not responding directly to me, and strawmanning (or strawwomanning) my position sounds like...?

Meh. My brain seems to believe that Aber is female, but I don't trust my memory these days.

I'll also say that I strongly suspect that Aber DNGAF about pronouns and isn't going to faint away from suicidal thoughts if the opposite sex pronoun gets used.

Aber brought it up in response to Polka's assertion He (I think of him as a he, but that may just be an assumption) .... My assumption is that Aber is Scottish, because the vehemence of his opposition to Scottish independence would have been remarkable in someone with no skin in the game (and as far as I recall he seemed to have a close familiarity with Scottish politics at that time), and there are plenty towns in Scotland beginning with "Aber". I had assumed Aberdeen.

Maintaining my mystery seems to be working.

 

[smartcooky]

Maintaining my mystery seems to be working.

Austin Aber: International Man of Mystery...

 

[smartcooky]

Agreed on how it works in males. If a female takes testosterone, then stops... will their musculature revert back to a female-typical density?

I suspect so. Even with testosterone or steroids, females will not actually get male type muscles, since testosterone after birth doesn't affect fast/slow ratios or neuromuscular efficiency.

Always remembering that the object of the exercise (taking male hormones) was never about turning them into men, or enabling them to compete with men. It was about giving them physiological advantages over the women they were competing against.

 

[Pixel42]

Concise, yes, but wrong. the prestige and I were already in stated agreement that in areas with nudity, sports, prison, etc, that those sex segregated lines should remain strong. So to chide me on 'forgetting' about them is a comprehension fail on the reader's part, not forgetfulness on mine. Concise or not

And yet you keep banging on about allowing the sex segregated line for toilets to be crossed being no big deal, ignoring the fact that all those other lines will inevitably be crossed once that precedent is set.

As for my other point - that granting trans identifying males the right to access female only toilets, on account of women having that right and them being women, simultaneously removes that right from actual women - I don't recall you ever even acknowledging it.

 

[smartcooky]

And yet you keep banging on about allowing the sex segregated line for toilets to be crossed being no big deal, ignoring the fact that all those other lines will inevitably be crossed once that precedent is set.

As for my other point - that granting trans identifying males the right to access female only toilets, on account of women having that right and them being women, simultaneously removes that right from actual women - I don't recall you ever even acknowledging it.

Indeed. Thermal professes to believe that...

a. males should not be allowed to cross the sex-segregation line to enter female-only spaces
b "transwomen" should be allowed to cross that line.

His reasons for this conflicting position he states to be something something penis-police something something that's how we do things in NJ something something and anyone who disagrees are tranny-bashing bigots. Since ALL "transwomen", without exception, are males (or more correctly, Transgender Identifying Males), I can only conclude that he must believe that "transwomen" are something other than male, and since I think he seems to understand the fact that sex is binary, he must actually believe they are in fact women. Its the only position that can reconcile a. and b. above.

 

[Thermal]

But not responding directly to me, and strawmanning (or strawwomanning) my position sounds like...?

I responded directly to your one liner claim, with detailed rebuttal including the statement from McDonalds that they have no such policies for franchisees, leaving it up to them. You slunk away the first time, only to return weeks later making the same one liner claim to someone else, which I rebutted again, and you slunk away again.

If you would like a direct response to this or any other matter, I'm not shy. If you intend to withdraw when things aren't going your way... again... let's just cut to the chase and not bother, yeah?

 

[d4m10n]

It wasn't ethical and it wasn't randomized, but East Germany basically already did the trials.

Much like Tavistock, the E. Germans didn't follow up over the years to see whether the adolescent women they doped with testosterone (or synthetic analogs) were irreversibly altered as a result of their CSH treatments. At least not that I can find.

 

[Thermal]

And yet you keep banging on about allowing the sex segregated line for toilets to be crossed being no big deal,

Not true. I have challenged the assumption that there is a sex segregated line at all for toilets, and allowing crossing-over has occasionally been done generationally, in both directions. It's not my assertion. It's an observation.

ignoring the fact that all those other lines will inevitably be crossed once that precedent is set.

Yeah, that's what you keep fear-mongering. It seems to repeatedly slip your mind that the precedent has been set for years where I live. Your wild fears do not pan out. It gets managed without much ado.

As for my other point - that granting trans identifying males the right to access female only toilets,

Multiple issues: 1) I don't use that slur, 2) it's not an issue of rights, and 3) not sure that female only toilets exist or ever have, certainly not with force of law

on account of women having that right and them being women, simultaneously removes that right from actual women - I don't recall you ever even acknowledging it.

I have, earlier. Obviously, I disagree with your framing. You pee where it feels right with your self ID. 99.5+% of the time, it jibes with your bio sex. That goes in both directions: males don't have 'rights' to deny anyone from using the men's room, either, and never have.

I think US Representative Sarah McBride seems to fit more naturally in a women's restroom more than the men's. I think it's profoundly bigoted to want to criminalize her use of a rest room because you trawl the internet for stories of cross dressing pervs which get claimed as representative.

 

[Elaedith]

I think it's already established that testosterone has irreversible effects within a fairly short time. It's the long-term effects of blocking puberty and replacing natural puberty with cross-sex hormones that haven't been studied.

 

[Ziggurat]

Much like Tavistock, the E. Germans didn't follow up over the years to see whether the adolescent women they doped with testosterone (or synthetic analogs) were irreversibly altered as a result of their CSH treatments. At least not that I can find.

Oh, we know for certain that they were irreversibly altered. Things like permanent voice changes are quite well understood, and follow up examination of those East German athletes indicates quite a bit of permanent damage to their health as well. The specific question about when or if athletic ability reverts isn't well studied, sure, but make no mistake, we know there are irreversible changes.