Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

[Thermal]

And yet again you seem to be completely eliding that the only person who can possibly know that it's willfully untrue is you.

Yes, congratulations! You understand what an internal sense of self means! Do you want a gold star or a smiley face sticker?

Still bogging down? Ok. I am Thermal. That is my internal sense of self. I am not, for instance, Ziggaraut. Now, let me put on your hat: "But how can we tell you're Thermall?" Well, I post like Thermal. I use the Thermal account and phrases and figures of speech and hold some predictable positions. "You could be just faking that. The only person who can possibly know that it's true is you." Yeah, that's what an internal sense of self means.

"Cogito ergo sum", to which y'all literally reply "but you can't prove it to us" and you think you're saying something insightful.

Your claim is unfalsifiable.

An internal sense is perfectly falsifiable, internally. Watch: "I am a bag of potato chips", says I. "That is untrue", I say after consideration. Really not much more to it. And this is when you repeat "but how can we tell?" for the hundredth time, or come back a few pages later and take it from the top.

 

[smartcooky]

An internal sense is perfectly falsifiable, internally. Watch: "I am a bag of potato chips", says I. "That is untrue", I say after consideration. Really not much more to it. And this is when you repeat "but how can we tell?" for the hundredth time, or come back a few pages later and take it from the top.

Flawed premise. Simple observation falsifies your claim. (Anyone who gives you no more than a cursory glance will be able to tell you don't look anything like a bag of potato chips).

However, the self-ID claim "I am a transwoman" is impossible to falsify, because a transwoman is in reality, a transgender identified male - medically, functionally, observationally and in reality, identical to a man

 

[Aber]

Are you aware that religion is also a protected class?

Why do you think this is relevant?

 

[lionking]

Why do you think this is relevant?

Because he’s clutching at straws.

 

[Rolfe]

Another eye-opening article.

Free speech, police impartiality and murder

Charlie Kirk, Graham Linehan, Helen Joyce, Stephanie Hayden, free speech, legal cases and murder

familyeducationtrust.org.uk

I just know that someone is going to sneer "right-wing", because the use of the word "family" seems to be taken as evidence of right-wing bias to the level of Genghis Khan. But the facts are indisputable.

 

[mumblethrax]

Why do you think this is relevant?

Because if religion is a protected class, the idea that treating gender identity as a protected class reifies an unverifiable, unfalsifiable, entirely subjective article of faith is unlikely to be availing.

 

[smartcooky]

No. Refusing to relitigate lines of argumentation that have already been made is neither spitting the dummy nor flouncing.

The problem for you us that your "lines of argumentation" have been incoherent and inconsistent. Both @Ziggurat and @Emily's Cat have pointed this out numerous times.... and you seem just keep adjusting your phrasing of the same arguments to meet the challenges rather than simply defending them.

 

[smartcooky]

Completely nonsensical comment.

No, its a fair comment. You have often been incoherent in your approach.

 

[mumblethrax]

The problem for you us that your "lines of argumentation" have been incoherent and inconsistent. Both @Ziggurat and @Emily's Cat have pointed this out numerous times.... and you seem just keep adjusting your phrasing of the same arguments to meet the challenges rather than simply defending them.

This isn't true, and is irrelevant to the reason given for not responding to Emily Cat's post storms.

You're back to throwing ◊◊◊◊ at the wall.

 

[smartcooky]

Cheerleading is embarrassing, but you should probably stick to it.

Its not cheerleading... its simply expressing my opinion of what I have observed.

Less embarrassing than your own attempts to string two thoughts together.

Look who's talking!

 

[mumblethrax]

Its not cheerleading... its simply expressing my opinion of what I have observed.

It was cheerleading.

 

[Ziggurat]

A literacy test that is designed to grandfather in white people while excluding almost all black people, while nevertheless admitting a tiny minority of black people, is not "inclusive of all races."

The problem with literacy test was never really the design of the test themselves. It was always the biased administration of those tests. That’s how the racism got implemented, not through any particular test questions. A truly impartially administered literacy test, while still probably unconstitutional on other grounds, would have been race neutral. But that’s not what was implemented.

 

[Ziggurat]

Are you aware that religion is also a protected class?

Are you aware that federally gender identity is not a protected class?

 

[mumblethrax]

The problem with literacy test was never really the design of the test themselves.

I was not talking about the tests per se, but the laws that implemented them, which was evident from the fact that I talked about grandfather clauses. But this is irrelevant, because I was also not talking about what was wrong with literacy tests. I'm merely pointing out that the fact that they were inclusive of homeopathic numbers of black voters did not make them "inclusive of all races."

 

[mumblethrax]

Are you aware that federally gender identity is not a protected class?

Yes. It is, however, a protected class in New York.

 

[Aber]

Because if religion is a protected class, the idea that treating gender identity as a protected class reifies an unverifiable, unfalsifiable, entirely subjective article of faith is unlikely to be availing.

And what are the practical impacts of religion being a protected class; how does it impact on the rights of others?

 

[mumblethrax]

And what are the practical impacts of religion being a protected class; how does it impact on the rights of others?

In the usual ways--it places limits on rights of association.

It's difficult to make sense out of the contention that permitting transwomen to use women's bathrooms constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex. The permissibility of at least some sex-segregated spaces is carved out from anti-discrimination measures, not supported by them.

A more sensible argument would be that those exceptions are made in the public interest of making women safer, and that excluding transwomen would be similarly justified. A problem for that argument is that it doesn't appear to be the case that permitting transwomen in the ladies' room makes women less safe.

 

[d4m10n]

Your claim is unfalsifiable.

An internal sense is perfectly falsifiable, internally.

One of the fundamental things about being a skeptic is that skeptics generally demand empirical evidence for the sort of claims we evaluate, that is, we want evidence which can be verified or falsified by everyone concerned with the truth of the claim under consideration. Claims like "I am a bag of potato chips" can be evaluated objectively, claims like "I am more comfortable being treated according to the social norms of associated with femininity rather than masculinity" must be taken on faith.

ETA: I really do take them on faith, for what it is worth. If someone like J. Yaniv says they would feel gender affirmed having a Brazilian wax performed on bits for which that procedure was not designed, I'm just going to accept that they really believe it, however bizarre it might sound to me.

ETA_2: Because of the first ETA, I tend to define terms like "transwoman" based on utterances rather than unverifiable mental states: A transwoman is any adult male who claims to be a woman or demands to be treated like a woman in social situations where we discriminate between women and men.

 

[Ziggurat]

Because if religion is a protected class, the idea that treating gender identity as a protected class reifies an unverifiable, unfalsifiable, entirely subjective article of faith is unlikely to be availing.

You have a point. But even with religion, determining membership and authenticity of belief IS a problem. The courts have needed to establish methods to test these things, and those methods still get argued.

So what methods will test trans identity? And will those tests actually work to protect women from predatory males? This is where I don't think the two problems are equivalent. The thing is, for religious accommodations, it doesn't tend to matter very much to anyone else whether someone is or isn't given that accommodation. So if there are errors, if the courts are too permissive, not generally a big deal. And religious accommodation requests are often refused even for the authentically religious when those accommodations would create problems for others.

And that's where we run into problems here, because by nature the accommodations being requested for trans identifying males impose on others. First off, what tests would the court use? Would they require medical transition? A certification from a medical/psychological professional? A certain amount of time living that way? No test you make will pass without objection from the TRAs. That's not necessarily a deal breaker, but it may make actually implementing such a test politically harder. So what's it to be?

Second, does this test, whatever it is, actually serve to protect women from predatory males? Will women feel safe in the presence of males who have passed whatever this test is? Because the presence of someone like Hill (who is, as far as I can tell, authentically trans) in a women's bathroom will make a lot of women feel unsafe.

 

[Aber]

A more sensible argument would be that those exceptions are made in the public interest of making women safer, and that excluding transwomen would be similarly justified. A problem for that argument is that it doesn't appear to be the case that permitting transwomen in the ladies' room makes women less safe.

You are taking a very narrow view of what a public interest test could take into account. The UK equivalent allows single-sex spaces:

that limiting the service on the basis of sex is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. For example, a legitimate aim could be for reasons of privacy, decency, to prevent trauma or to ensure health and safety.