Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

d4m10n said:
Pretty sure those ladies wouldn't've complained if they'd already consented to view penises.

Here's an idea: Let's reinstate the cultural norm that no one shows their penis to women without clear consent and never to minor girls.
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That is the standing cultural norm, AFAIK. The spa patrons are having none of it. Imean, if you're uptight about seeing some dick, maybe don't make a day of getting naked in a place there is a strong chance of seeing some dick?

If you think this never occurred to the women, or they did not consent, then why was that not an issue at trial? The jury foreperson said of Meranger "The spa let him in", suggesting that he did no wrong as far as he knew. But the spa was not charged with anything. So are you suggesting these women were the only ones in the state who couldn't figure out this might happen?

If a woman exposed her cootchie to a young girl she did not know in public, do you think that would be copacetic? There's not much difference with taking your minor child to the naked spa. I'm not one to pay to get naked with the guys, soooo... little hard for me to relate to this kind of perceived modesty infringement.
 
acbytesla said:
You just want to make their lives hell.

I have a doctor friend who is trans. He was born female and now identifies as male. Nobody seems to care if he uses the Men's.
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Do you really need to have the contradiction in your post explained to you?

If no-one cares about your transman friend using the men's, how is that making his life hell?

Your claim is directly contradicted by the example you gave - this is commonly known as a contradiction.
 
d4m10n said:
Pretty sure those ladies wouldn't've complained if they'd already consented to view penises.

Here's an idea: Let's reinstate the cultural norm that no one shows their penis to women without clear consent and never to minor girls.
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Have you heard of "I" statements? They're a way to express your feelings that avoid attributing causation to other people for the way you feel about something. For example, "I feel uncomfortable when around naked people of the opposite sex", instead of "Naked people of the opposite sex make me feel uncomfortable".
 
Thermal said:
But fair enough, it may well not have been members only at the time, or may have had both members and walk-ins.
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IIRC it was the latter, but I don't have that article handy.
Thermal said:
if you're uptight about seeing some dick, maybe don't make a day of getting naked in a place there is a strong chance of seeing some dick?
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It would be nice if female patrons are aware of the relevant state laws which integrated all formerly single-sex spaces in California—as presumably were the civil rights attorneys among the spa-goers—are but I don't expect most of them found out about that until it was staring them in the face. Your tone here strikes me as fairly straightforward victim blaming, which I'm used to seeing directed against women and girls by men who advocate for the rights of their fellow bepenised people.
Thermal said:
So are you suggesting these women were the only ones in the state who couldn't figure out this might happen?
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Until this case was resolved, it wasn't obvious to me whether folks like Merager would get a free pass regarding the usual laws against exhibitionism and lewd conduct. No one here at ISF confidently predicted this particular result, despite much discussion of the case.
Thermal said:
If a woman exposed her cootchie to a young girl she did not know in public, do you think that would be copacetic?
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Disanalogy is disanalogous.
Ivor the Engineer said:
For example, "I feel uncomfortable when around naked people of the opposite sex", instead of "Naked people of the opposite sex make me feel uncomfortable".
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Empathy is when you consider other people's feelings even when they differ from your own feelings in the same situation.

All of the male posters here might consider trying it, especially the ones advocating for male rights in the face of female objections.
 
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d4m10n said:
It would be nice if female patrons are aware of the relevant state laws which integrated all formerly single-sex spaces in California—as presumably were the civil rights attorneys among the spa-goers—are but I don't expect most of them found out about that until it was staring them in the face. Your tone here strikes me as fairly straightforward victim blaming, which I'm used to seeing directed against women and girls by men who advocate for the rights of their fellow bepenised people.
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In other words.... "she had it coming"

d4m10n said:
Empathy is when you consider other people's feelings even when they differ from your own feelings in the same situation.

All of the male posters here might consider trying it, especially the ones advocating for male rights in the face of female objections.
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Yup, I'm afraid it is sadly lacking in some of the more trenchant and toxic males participating in this thread.
 
d4m10n said:
IIRC it was the latter, but I don't have that article handy.

It would be nice if female patrons are aware of the relevant state laws which integrated all formerly single-sex spaces in California—as presumably were the civil rights attorneys among the spa-goers—are but I don't expect most of them found out about that until it was staring them in the face. Your tone here strikes me as fairly straightforward victim blaming, which I'm used to seeing directed against women and girls by men who advocate for the rights of their fellow bepenised people.

Until this case was resolved, it wasn't obvious to me whether folks like Merager would get a free pass regarding the usual laws against exhibitionism and lewd conduct. No one here at ISF confidently predicted this particular result, despite much discussion of the case.

Disanalogy is disanalogous.

Empathy is when you consider other people's feelings even when they differ from your own feelings in the same situation.
All of the male posters here might consider trying it, especially the ones advocating for male rights in the face of female objections.
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Empathy is a two-way street. One person may be upset by another's sexual orientation, ethnicity or choice of clothes, but it may be because that person doesn't have a sufficiently accurate model of the other in his or her brain, probably because s/he has not encountered very many people from that group and/or been exposed mainly to extreme, non-representative examples.
 
Listen, the human body is beautiful. If you are upset by the sight of a penis, well that's on you, you should probably get some therapy and stop going to the gym.
 
ahhell said:
Listen, the human body is beautiful. If you are upset by the sight of a penis, well that's on you, you should probably get some therapy and stop going to the gym.
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The highlighted is a fact, isn't it?

While also (IMO) often extreme in their determination to not wear clothes where it would be advisable to, I think nudists have a very valid point about nakedness and how liberating it must be to separate it from sex.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
Empathy is a two-way street. One person may be upset by another's sexual orientation, ethnicity or choice of clothes, but it may be because that person doesn't have a sufficiently accurate model of the other in his or her brain, probably because s/he has not encountered very many people from that group and/or been exposed mainly to extreme, non-representative examples.
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How do you model the mind of Misty Hill, who likes to take pictures of himself in women's bathrooms next to tampon dispensers? How should we interpret that behavior? Do you think Hill is being empathetic when he does this?
 
ahhell said:
Listen, the human body is beautiful.
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Not really.
ahhell said:
If you are upset by the sight of a penis, well that's on you, you should probably get some therapy and stop going to the gym.
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No. This is a stupid and wrong interpretation of what's going on.

It's not that the sight of a penis is upsetting in and of itself. What's upsetting is the presence of people who choose to violate social norms. When people violate a social norm, other people reasonably conclude that they may be willing to violate other social norms. That applies even when the social norm in question is arbitrary and unimportant in and of itself.

We have a social norm against males exposing their genitals to strangers. We also have a social norm against males sexually assaulting females. If a male is willing to violate the first social norm, the odds that he is willing to violate the second social norm goes way up. So it is ENTIRELY reasonable for a female to feel threatened by an unknown male exposing his genitals to her. Not because the penis is dangerous in and of itself, not because the sight of a penis does harm, but because she cannot trust the male who CHOSE to exposed his genitals to her to not otherwise threaten her.

Ivor made mention of a theory of the mind, but he and you haven't seemed to actually put that into practice, and see how choices like exposing one's genital serve as a signal of one's state of mind to others, and how others reasonably interpret that state of mind.
 
p0lka said:
Yes I agree as religion is completely delusional, whereas the trans thing is based on reality at least.
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Earlier you said that you treat men and women differently, but when I asked you what the difference was in your treatment, you said you didn't treat men and women differently.

You also said that you decided whether to treat someone as a man or as a woman based on which gender role they expressed, but when I asked you how you could distinguish between the two, you gave a vague answer that had no practical value.

So I'm pretty sure you can't explain what non-delusional "reality" transgender identity is based on.

Further, I would argue that every single practical application of transgender identity is about sex. Specifically, it's about being treated as the opposite sex, for purposes of sex segregation. (Incidentally, I think this is why you're having such a hard time finding anything concrete or practical to say about gender identity.)

So when we get down to what transgender identity actually means, in practical terms, it is based on the reality of sex, and denies that reality. At best, it's delusional the way religion is delusional. At worst, it's delusional the way paranoid schizophrenia is delusional. In between, there's also delusional like social contagion and delusional like factitious disorder by proxy, among many other delusional and delusion-adjacent behaviors.

Vague handwaving at the idea of gender being a social construct doesn't even begin to address what's really going on.
 
Ziggurat said:
How do you model the mind of Misty Hill, who likes to take pictures of himself in women's bathrooms next to tampon dispensers? How should we interpret that behavior? Do you think Hill is being empathetic when he does this?
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Is Misty Hill a representative example of the group 'transsexual women'?

How many transsexual women do you know of, including casual acquaintances or relatives or friends of friends, but excluding reports in the press or from posts by campaigners on social media?

Do you think you've been exposed to a representative sample of transsexual women?
 
d4m10n said:
IIRC it was the latter, but I don't have that article handy.
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Well you've been putting up an awful lot of argument against what you recall is the case, then.

What the spa's disclosed policy entails is hugely relevant, including what they were advised of walking in the door, which may be more than what was on the website. The website spells out that gender is the basis for segregation, and never mentions sex. It also says that the spa is *not for the modest*. We know that transgender people used the facilities there, but still don't know how, or if it was disclosed to all patrons.
d4m10n said:
It would be nice if female patrons are aware of the relevant state laws which integrated all formerly single-sex spaces in California
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The spa does not advertise single sex spaces, specifically referring to gender only.
d4m10n said:
—as presumably were the civil rights attorneys among the spa-goers—are but I don't expect most of them found out about that until it was staring them in the face. Your tone here strikes me as fairly straightforward victim blaming,
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Not at all. My position is that when you engage in behaviors with predictable outcomes, you need to accept all outcomes, even those you did not expressly want. Don't hang around hornet nests and its less likely you get stung.
d4m10n said:
which I'm used to seeing directed against women and girls by men who advocate for the rights of their fellow bepenised people.
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This is cheap. No one is advocating based on penis having. Everything said applies to transmen too.

This is solely about whether we respect people who are different, even when they make us uncomfortable, and do we mean it when we say we don't discriminate against them.
d4m10n said:
Until this case was resolved, it wasn't obvious to me whether folks like Merager would get a free pass regarding the usual laws against exhibitionism and lewd conduct.
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And we found that they don't. So there's that.
d4m10n said:
No one here at ISF confidently predicted this particular result, despite much discussion of the case.
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It seems a lot of people here still don't understand what he was being charged with, so ya, the predictions would be kinda weak.
d4m10n said:
All of the male posters here might consider trying it, especially the ones advocating for male rights in the face of female objections.
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Haven't seen any of them.yet, but I'll keep a sharp eye out.
 
acbytesla said:
You just want to make their lives hell.
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That's a rude thing to say, especially in response to me telling you what's actually on my mind, and inviting you to discuss those things.

Can we try again, please?

acbytesla said:
I have a doctor friend who is trans. He was born female and now identifies as male. Nobody seems to care if he uses the Men's.
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Yeah, because nobody actually wants to make their lives hell.

When this thread first started, I entered with one simple concern: How to make sure transwomen had access to women's restrooms, without either giving all men access, or else resorting to some sort of regressive "papers please" solution.

I was really hoping - and expecting! - someone sympathetic to the plight of transwomen to offer some kind of solution or compromise that I hadn't thought of. Instead I got called a transphobe.

Over time, as the discussion progressed, I came to understand a few things:
  • Men and women are biologically different, and significantly so.
  • Therefore, sex segregation of certain things makes reallly good sense.
  • There is no sound medical basis for social transition to treat gender dysphoria.
  • All practical applications of trans identity boil down to overriding sex segregation.
  • This goes way beyond restrooms, to shelters, prisons, sports, and even representation.
  • Modern trans rights activism has taken a horrifically anti-science approach to diagnosing and treating gender dysphoria.
  • The very small cohort of men who insist on being entitled to override sex segregation, whether women like it or not, unfortunately correlate to a small cohort of opportunistic male sexual predators and sex pests, who were previously deterred by conventions prohibiting their access to women's spaces.
None of this is about wanting to make lives hell for transwomen. All of this is about figuring out what's the right thing to do for everyone involved. I was more on the side of transwomen in this, to begin with. I believed that society would have to make some sort of compromise, out of humanitarian concern for people who suffer from gender dysphoria. My position shifted a bit over time, as it became more and more clear to me that the science on gender dysphoria is far from settled. There is no good evidence that social transition is an effective or ethical treatment for gender dysphoria.

Does barring transwomen from women's restrooms make the lives of transwomen more difficult? Maybe, but that's not why I want it. I want this policy because I think, after careful consideration, it's the best compromise for everyone.

I don't think you want to be misogynistic. I don't think you want to make women's lives hell. I think some of the policies you propose do have that effect, though. That's why I'd like to discuss this more with you. But not if all you have are insults and strawmen. I understand if it's not a topic you want to give much thought. But don't take your apathy out on us.
 
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