Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

[arthwollipot]

@arthwollipot: I know that you are very passionate about inclusivity and being open minded with people. Kudos to you for that, and I agree. But what do you say to the arguments of Pixel42 and Emily's Cat, that biological males are frightening in a female's intimate space? I've still got a problem with saying the comfort of a trans woman outweighs the comfort of a natal woman.

Number one:
The way the trans-hostile people frame opposing views is profoundly malicious and disgusting, and antithetical to everything this forum stands for. For example, Post #13,738 above.

Number two, and bear with me because this has a few parts:
If a man dresses as a woman in order to sexually assault women in bathrooms, part a, that is not a trans woman. That is a cross-dressing cis male rapist. Part b, that's already illegal. Part c, the number of times it has been documented to occur is vanishingly small. Part d, bathrooms have stalls and nobody is ever forced to see anybody else's genitals.

Number three:
Why is a trans woman less deserving of "comfort" than a cis woman? Do trans women not have equal rights? Where is a trans woman's "safe space"? Because I can assure you, it certainly isn't in the men's bathroom.

Number four, since I'm on a roll and this will almost certainly be the last time I put myself through posting in this horrid thread:
Sports governing bodies should be determining who gets to play, certainly not governments. The number of trans people competing at elite levels is vanishingly small. The concern over trans people in sports isn't about elite competition, which is where gender biases can come into play. It is being used to prevent children from participating.

Number five:
Why are you so concerned with another person's genitals and/or chromosomes and/or hormonal patterns and/or secondary sexual characteristics (whatever it is you mean by the term "biological sex" this week) anyway? Isn't that kind of intrusive? Isn't it none of your damn business? Isn't it a matter between a person and whatever medical health professional under whose care they are? Isn't it subject to basic privacy, not to mention doctor-patient confidentiality?

Finally, since I believe it should be said out loud:
I think you know that I'm fully supportive of science, but in this particular specific case I don't give a ◊◊◊◊ about the science. I happen to think it largely agrees with me, but that's irrelevant because whether a human being has the right to exist as a person is not a matter of science. It is a matter of conscience, society, and basic human dignity. The right for a person to exist as their authentic self is greater than all arguments. If your response to this is "but wait, what about..." know that you have already lost. Personhood is not up for argument.

If you do not fully and 100% support a trans woman's right to be a woman in all functional ways in society, then I cannot respect your arguments, regardless of what they are. You and I cannot be friends. I will engage with you with basic politeness in other threads - most of you - but know that this is a courtesy. I don't like you and I believe that your views on this matter should be marginalised. You should not be engaged. You should be ostracised. And that is why I will not participate any further in this thread.

Trans women are women. The end.

 

[Brainster]

Why I Don't Post In This Thread: An Analogy

All persons appearing in this analogy are fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The other day I was out with some friends, and I happened to mention that I thought Nazism was bad. A guy came up to us and said "Oh, you think Nazism is bad?"

"Yes," I replied, "I do." And I turned back to my friends, intending to continue having a good evening.

"I'm proud to be a Nazi. I bet you don't even understand what Nazism is all about," he said, puffing out his chest.

"I think I have a good enough idea," I replied.

"Oh?" He leaped on it like a kitten on a toy mouse. "Then tell me the Three Core Tenets of Nazism."

"I'm not sure I care to get into details with you."

"You don't even know, do you?" he asked with a smug self-satisfied smile. "How can you say Nazism is bad when you don't know the Three Core Tenets?"

"I'm not even sure I care what the Three Core Tenets are." I replied. "Nazism is bad. You know, there was that whole Holocaust thing?"

"The Holocaust was totally misunderstood!" he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Come into my Nazi Bar and we can discuss like civilised people why Nazism is not as bad as you think."

"I don't think I will," I said.

"Why, are you scared that you'll be proved wrong?"

"Uh... not really..."

"Then come on into the Nazi Bar and we can talk about it, politely and with an avalanche of references to Nazi literature to prove that what we are saying is true."

"No."

"If you won't debate the fundamentals of Nazism with me in my Nazi Bar," he said with just a touch of condescension, "then you're an intellectual coward."

"Discuss the fundamentals of Nazism with you, a professed proud Nazi in the safe and supporting environment of your Nazi Bar, with all your Nazi friends watching and listening, or have Nazis call me an intellectual coward? You know what? You can call me what you like. I'm not going to your Nazi Bar. This conversation is over."

And I turned my back on him. Because that's what you do with Nazis.

This is why the argument at least in this place is unwinnable. In the real world of course, the battle has been won, the trans agenda is being routed. But in places like this where the argument has been siloed? We'll get a few drive-bys like this, by people who won't engage in debate they will shut you down with accusations of Nazism.

 

[Rolfe]

"Transwomen" (we shouldn't be acceding to the word women being used in this context at all though) are men. The end.

I would point out, however, that nobody is being prevented from existing. They are merely being required to stay in their lane. Nobody is being prevented from participating in any sport. They are merely being required to compete in the correct category for their sex.

I came to this forum over 20 years ago to argue with homoeopaths. After some time I realised that they were utterly impervious to reason, and the interest became more of a psychological one, puzzling how anyone could cling so tenaciously to something so divorced from reality. This is going much the same way. "Men are women" is no less crazy than... no. I started to outline the basic tenets of homoeopathy and realised that they're actually quite a lot saner than the belief that some men are women.

The end.

 

[smartcooky]

Number one:
The way the trans-hostile people frame opposing views is profoundly malicious and disgusting, and antithetical to everything this forum stands for. For example, Post #13,738 above.

Nothing wrong with what Agatha said. It was not any of the things you said it was... it was an observation - not malicious, not disgusting and certainly not antithetical to the mission of this forum.

Number two, and bear with me because this has a few parts:
If a man dresses as a woman in order to sexually assault women in bathrooms, part a, that is not a trans woman. That is a cross-dressing cis male rapist.

And in the age of Self-ID, how are we supposed to tell the difference between a transgender identified male (what you erroneously call a transwoman) and a "cross-dressing cis male rapist"? ESP? Women's intuition? They look identical, and its only when a woman is attacked, that she will be able to tell the difference - oops, too late then!

Part b, that's already illegal.

And it does not help if you can't tell the difference.

Part c, the number of times it has been documented to occur is vanishingly small.

Yet they still happen, and there have been numerous examples posted right here in this thread.

Part d, bathrooms have stalls and nobody is ever forced to see anybody else's genitals.

Not all bathrooms have secure stalls, and those that do are frighteningly easy to breach. I'm 70, and I could kick a stall open without any problem. Also, its not just about that. The women s toilet is supposed a SAFE SPACE FOR WOMEN, and not for males, even transgender identified males.

Number three:
Why is a trans woman less deserving of "comfort" than a cis woman?

Why is a woman less deserving of "comfort" than a transgender identified male?

This is not womens' problem to solve

Do trans women not have equal rights?

Yes they do. Of course they do. They have the same rights as anyone else to be free to express themselves however they wish, dress however they please, call themselves whatever they want, and sleep with any consenting adult. Trans-identified people have the right to the same protections regarding employment, housing, freedom of speech and personal safety every other citizen is entitled to. Entering womens safes spaces is not a right they are entitled to, just as men who don't identify as transgender don't have that right either.

Where is a trans woman's "safe space"? Because I can assure you, it certainly isn't in the men's bathroom.

Transgender identified people have been offered the chance to have safe, gender neutral toilets and bathrooms. THEY HAVE REFUSED TO USE THEM!! They have always turned them down. TRAs actually argue AGAINST unisex toilets and bathrooms. Why? Its because they do not want a safe space of their own, they demand to use WOMEN'S safe spaces. The reason for this? Validation. Unisex or gender neutral spaces does not validate their claimed feeling of womanhood. They need to invade women's spaces for validation.

Number four, since I'm on a roll and this will almost certainly be the last time I put myself through posting in this horrid thread:
Sports governing bodies should be determining who gets to play,

They do, and the courts do? Why the courts? Because when people disagree on what is right and what is wrong, it is the responsibility of the courts to make that determination.

certainly not governments.

Why?

The number of trans people competing at elite levels is vanishingly small.

How many injustices does it take before it is wrong?
How many women being cheated out of medals and prize money (which in the case of elite sport, relates to careers and future income) does it take before its wrong?

We have already seen what happened with the Will "Lia" Thomas example...
- Female students cheated out of championships.
- Female students told to shut up, and threatened with expulsion from teams if they complained about having to get changed in front of a fully intact male swinging his schlong around in the changing rooms wearing only the smirk on his face.
- Female students threatened with termination of scholarships if they DARED to go public with their complaints.
- Female students threatend with forced "re-education" (i.e. indoctrination) on trans acceptance if they questioned school policy.

The concern over trans people in sports isn't about elite competition, which is where gender biases can come into play.
It is being used to prevent children from participating.

This is an ouright lie. NO CHILDREN are prevented from particpating based on their transgender identified status. They are simply required to participate in grades and divisions that align with their sex at birth... where they belong, just like every other child.

Number five:
Why are you so concerned with another person's genitals and/or chromosomes and/or hormonal patterns and/or secondary sexual characteristics (whatever it is you mean by the term "biological sex" this week) anyway? Isn't that kind of intrusive? Isn't it none of your damn business? Isn't it a matter between a person and whatever medical health professional under whose care they are? Isn't it subject to basic privacy, not to mention doctor-patient confidentiality?

No-one here is concerned about this. That aspect is entirely in your imagination.
Everyone here uses the term "biological sex" to make the distiction between the Sex and Gender.

- Sex is a biological fact of science.... claims of being one sex or the other are testable and falsifiable. There are only two sexes and they are immutable. No mammal (let alone human) in the entire history of history has ever changed sex. Even people with DSD (sometimed erroneously called "intersex") are still either male or female.

-Gender is a Social Constuct... its made up. Claims of being one gender or another rely purely on the say so of each individual, and there is no way to test which gender you are... there is also no way falsify a claim that you are one gender or the other.

Finally, since I believe it should be said out loud:
I think you know that I'm fully supportive of science, but in this particular specific case I don't give a ◊◊◊◊ about the science.

You either agree with the science or you don't - there can be no hedging on this - you can't have a bob each way.
Anyone who states they fully support science, but then claims that a fully intact male is a woman just because they say so, is suffering from cognititive dissonace. The two positions ar irreconcilable.

I happen to think it largely agrees with me

Then you're dead wrong

but that's irrelevant because whether a human being has the right to exist as a person is not a matter of science.

No-one. ablsolute NO-ONE here has ever claimed that transgender identified peope do not have a right to exist. TRAs have lied to you about this, they lie about this all the time.

It is a matter of conscience, society, and basic human dignity.

I reserve my conscience and the granting of human dignity for the women who have had to put up with this crap for the last 20 years, including members of my own family.

Thankfully, that time is coming to an end - as @Brainster has correctly pointed out, the trans agenda is being routed. The UK Supreme Court has made that clear, and I expect the US Supeme Court will eventually concur.

The time of pandering to men with fetishes that are a result of untreated mental illness; the time of young children being fed a cocktail of drugs with irreversible side-effects, the time of those young children being surgically butchered, resulting in life changing, and in many cases, life-shortening consequences, are thankfully, coming to an end.

The right for a person to exist as their authentic self is greater than all arguments.

Not if it impacts on the rights of OTHER people to exist as their authentic selves.

If your response to this is "but wait, what about..." know that you have already lost.

So we are to be silent and not allowed to debate any issues. That dogmatic attitude is the true sign of membership in the Holy Cult of Transgender Ideology.

Personhood is not up for argument.

Again, no-one here is aguing against personhood

If you do not fully and 100% support a trans woman's right to be a woman in all functional ways in society, then I cannot respect your arguments, regardless of what they are. You and I cannot be friends. I will engage with you with basic politeness in other threads - most of you - but know that this is a courtesy. I don't like you and I believe that your views on this matter should be marginalised. You should not be engaged. You should be ostracised. And that is why I will not participate any further in this thread.

If you do not fully and 100% support a female's right to not have males come into ther private spaces, then I cannot respect your arguments, regardless of what they are. You and I cannot be friends. I will engage with you with basic politeness in other threads, but know that this is a courtesy. I don't like you and I believe that your views on this matter should be marginalised. You should not be engaged. You should be ostracised.

See how that works arth?

Trans women are women. The end.

Transwomen are transgender identified males. They will always be males, they can never be anything else. The End!

 

[Pixel42]

I'm honestly hoping so.

Well he did, so you were right about that. But he just parroted the ideology and the usual strawmen without attempting to address any of the actual issues, so I was right about that.

Sad tale. But kids are kids everywhere, and will sometimes mock others, not knowing any better.

I think you're missing the point. The problem was the children's honesty, not their mockery. "Why are you pretending to be a woman, mister?". The cruel ones were the TRAs who assured him the thoughts in his head really did change reality when he was never going to be able to even pass as a woman, let alone have any of the experiences which actually make the lives of women different to the lives of men.

 

[smartcooky]

The way the Darlington Nurses were treated by the NHS is as disgraceful as it is completely bonkers

 

[Rolfe]

Nothing wrong with what Agatha said. It was not any of the things you said it was... it was an observation - not malicious, not disgusting and certainly not antithetical to the mission of this forum.


And in the age of Self-ID, how are we supposed to tell the difference between a transgender identified male (what you erroneously call a transwoman) and a "cross-dressing cis male rapist"? ESP? Women's intuition? They look identical, and its only when a woman is attacked, that she will be able to tell the difference - oops, too late then!


And it does not help if you can't tell the difference.


Yet they still happen, and there have been numerous examples posted right here in this thread.


Not all bathrooms have secure stalls, and those that do are frighteningly easy to breach. I'm 70, and I could kick a stall open without any problem. Also, its not just about that. The women s toilet is supposed a SAFE SPACE FOR WOMEN, and not for males, even transgender identified males.


Why is a woman less deserving of "comfort" than a transgender identified male?

This is not womens' problem to solve


Yes they do. Of course they do. They have the same rights as anyone else to be free to express themselves however they wish, dress however they please, call themselves whatever they want, and sleep with any consenting adult. Trans-identified people have the right to the same protections regarding employment, housing, freedom of speech and personal safety every other citizen is entitled to. Entering womens safes spaces is not a right they are entitled to, just as men who don't identify as transgender don't have that right either.


Transgender identified people have been offered the chance to have safe, gender neutral toilets and bathrooms. THEY HAVE REFUSED TO USE THEM!! They have always turned them down. TRAs actually argue AGAINST unisex toilets and bathrooms. Why? Its because they do not want a safe space of their own, they demand to use WOMEN'S safe spaces. The reason for this? Validation. Unisex or gender neutral spaces does not validate their claimed feeling of womanhood. They need to invade women's spaces for validation.


They do, and the courts do? Why the courts? Because when people disagree on what is right and what is wrong, it is the responsibility of the courts to make that determination.


Why?


How many injustices does it take before it is wrong?
How many women being cheated out of medals and prize money (which in the case of elite sport, relates to careers and future income) does it take before its wrong?

We have already seen what happened with the Will "Lia" Thomas example...
- Female students cheated out of championships.
- Female students told to shut up, and threatened with expulsion from teams if they complained about having to get changed in front of a fully intact male swinging his schlong around in the changing rooms wearing only the smirk on his face.
- Female students threatened with termination of scholarships if they DARED to go public with their complaints.
- Female students threatend with forced "re-education" (i.e. indoctrination) on trans acceptance if they questioned school policy.


This is an ouright lie. NO CHILDREN are prevented from particpating based on their transgender identified status. They are simply required to participate in grades and divisions that align with their sex at birth... where they belong, just like every other child.


No-one here is concerned about this. That aspect is entirely in your imagination.
Everyone here uses the term "biological sex" to make the distiction between the Sex and Gender.

- Sex is a biological fact of science.... claims of being one sex or the other are testable and falsifiable. There are only two sexes and they are immutable. No mammal (let alone human) in the entire history of history has ever changed sex. Even people with DSD (sometimed erroneously called "intersex") are still either male or female.

-Gender is a Social Constuct... its made up. Claims of being one gender or another rely purely on the say so of each individual, and there is no way to test which gender you are... there is also no way falsify a claim that you are one gender or the other.


You either agree with the science or you don't - there can be no hedging on this - you can't have a bob each way.
Anyone who states they fully support science, but then claims that a fully intact male is a woman just because they say so, is suffering from cognititive dissonace. The two positions ar irreconcilable.


Then you're dead wrong


No-one. ablsolute NO-ONE here has ever claimed that transgender identified peope do not have a right to exist. TRAs have lied to you about this, they lie about this all the time.


I reserve my conscience and the granting of human dignity for the women who have had to put up with this crap for the last 20 years, including members of my own family.

Thankfully, that time is coming to an end - as @Brainster has correctly pointed out, the trans agenda is being routed. The UK Supreme Court has made that clear, and I expect the US Supeme Court will eventually concur.

The time of pandering to men with fetishes that are a result of untreated mental illness; the time of young children being fed a cocktail of drugs with irreversible side-effects, the time of those young children being surgically butchered, resulting in life changing, and in many cases, life-shortening consequences, are thankfully, coming to an end.


Not if it impacts on the rights of OTHER people to exist as their authentic selves.


So we are to be silent and not allowed to debate any issues. That dogmatic attitude is the true sign of membership in the Holy Cult of Transgender Ideology.


Again, no-one here is aguing against personhood


If you do not fully and 100% support a female's right to not have males come into ther private spaces, then I cannot respect your arguments, regardless of what they are. You and I cannot be friends. I will engage with you with basic politeness in other threads, but know that this is a courtesy. I don't like you and I believe that your views on this matter should be marginalised. You should not be engaged. You should be ostracised.

See how that works arth?


Transwomen are transgender identified males. They will always be males, they can never be anything else. The End!

 

[Thermal]

Well he did, so you were right about that. But he just parroted the ideology and the usual strawmen without attempting to address any of the actual issues, so I was right about that.

True, he ducked my question and delivered the bullet points, while assuring readers he would not engage further. Kinda pointless, I guess.

I think you're missing the point.

Oh. not at all. i'd just have a very different interpretation.

The problem was the children's honesty, not their mockery. "Why are you pretending to be a woman, mister?".

Lots to unpack, here. Kids young enough to make unsolicited personal comments to strangers would probably be young enough to still be very hip to playing dress up. I'm pretty sure my own kids wouldn't have asked a stranger about their attire; they might ask me about it on the side, but they never did that I recall. The main thing, though, would be that my kids never had rules about dress thumped into their heads that hard at such a young age. If someone was to be 'blamed' here, I'd be looking at these kids' parents, and asking them what the hell they were teaching them about how to act in public.

But ultimately, The guy was a full blown adult, if I am understanding the story correctly. If he didn't understand that some kids will ask 'rude' questions, like they would about someone in a wheelchair or halo, he had some growing up to do himself. A little adult confidence on his part should have steeled him against little children, surely? The nameless, faceless TRAs, who told this man something or other, are hardly holding a smoking gun. If this guy was not ready to let his hair down and be himself, that sounds like his issue to work out.

 

[Thermal]

Number one:
The way the trans-hostile people frame opposing views is profoundly malicious and disgusting, and antithetical to everything this forum stands for. For example, Post #13,738 above.

Yeah I totally didn't get what that post was supposed to mean. I think you have to have your antenna pre-tuned in a certain way to make sense of a lot of the comments ITT.

Number two, and bear with me because this has a few parts:
If a man dresses as a woman in order to sexually assault women in bathrooms, part a, that is not a trans woman.

Come on, man. That's factually untrue and you know it. It's a big world, with all kinds of atypical people running around. There have been documented cases of transwomen who act completely inappropriately, and guess what? That's just who they are. It's not just rape or violent assaults. Exhibitionism and voyeurism are things, and their displays run across the gender spectrum.

Part b, that's already illegal.

Right, but if the guy was prevented from entering the room in the first place, the odds of him even being able to behave badly drop significantly, yeah?

Part c, the number of times it has been documented to occur is vanishingly small.

Not reassuring to tell the victims. 'Hey, suck it up, it doesn't happen that often'.

Part d, bathrooms have stalls and nobody is ever forced to see anybody else's genitals.

Right, but a woman attending to other personal hygiene issues might find herself at the sink, where she might feel very uncomfortable with a strange male next to her. An unexpected menstrual clean-up is usually not done in mixed company.

Number three:
Why is a trans woman less deserving of "comfort" than a cis woman? Do trans women not have equal rights? Where is a trans woman's "safe space"? Because I can assure you, it certainly isn't in the men's bathroom.

That's one of the thorny things we are talking about. Just restating the problem again is not moving forward very productively.

And I dunno about your experience, but I have been in restrooms many times with trans women (Atlantic City NJ has some colorful neighborhoods). I've never seen a trans woman assaulted. I have personally been violently assaulted by trans women multiple times (although in fairness, assaults at one particular part of town were not exactly a rarity).

Number four, since I'm on a roll and this will almost certainly be the last time I put myself through posting in this horrid thread:
Sports governing bodies should be determining who gets to play, certainly not governments. The number of trans people competing at elite levels is vanishingly small.

Yeah but they also rise to the highest levels. See Thomas, Lia.

Number five:
Why are you so concerned with another person's genitals and/or chromosomes and/or hormonal patterns and/or secondary sexual characteristics (whatever it is you mean by the term "biological sex" this week) anyway?

I'm not. I'm concerned with the potential for abuses of a well-meaning policy.

Finally, since I believe it should be said out loud:
I think you know that I'm fully supportive of science, but in this particular specific case I don't give a ◊◊◊◊ about the science.

Problematic on many fronts already, but go on...

I happen to think it largely agrees with me, but that's irrelevant because whether a human being has the right to exist as a person is not a matter of science. It is a matter of conscience, society, and basic human dignity. The right for a person to exist as their authentic self is greater than all arguments. If your response to this is "but wait, what about..." know that you have already lost. Personhood is not up for argument.

I don't think personhood is really being disputed. What some here are concerned about is a man in a traditionally women's only space, that can enter unchallenged, then we find out his purposes were less than mundane. If he was not allowed entry in the first place, that's less victims?

I mean, what is the comparison between the number of cis male pervs and sincere trans women? I kinda think they might be similar. That's not insignificant.

If you do not fully and 100% support a trans woman's right to be a woman in all functional ways in society, then I cannot respect your arguments, regardless of what they are. You and I cannot be friends. I will engage with you with basic politeness in other threads - most of you - but know that this is a courtesy. I don't like you and I believe that your views on this matter should be marginalised. You should not be engaged. You should be ostracised. And that is why I will not participate any further in this thread.

Trans women are women. The end.

Well I guess that's about as irrational as you could be. "Agree with me 100% or there is no discussion to be had". Well okay then.

 

[d4m10n]

Only if you think that "normies" develop a stronger and stronger need for booze the longer they go without getting drunk.

My analogy was admittedly weak, but analogizing libido to substance abuse seems even worse.

Addicts fare better with privation than with indulgence of their addictions.

I do not accept that addiction is strongly analogous to sexual appetites, whether healthy and normal or deviant and harmful.

you know you're like right at the very edge of sounding like you're advocating that pedophiles ought to be given access to diddle kids, right?

Congrats for somehow invoking the rule of "so" without using the word, but minus several thousand points for gratuitously comparing transgender people to sex criminals.

The addictive nature of paraphilias isn't some new idea.

You've yet to show any evidence in support of this position, you've only made the assertion and expected skeptics to be credulous about it.

So far as I can tell you've got at least two steps in your argument which were merely asserted rather than demonstrated.

One: transgender people are generally paraphiliac, much like cross-dressers.

Two: Paraphilias function like addictions rather than ordinary sexual appetites which include self-regulation via satiety.

 

[smartcooky]

Sue Evans, the whistleblower who exposed the Tavistock clinic’s use of puberty blockers, claims the BBC has been “captured by activists” pushing trans propaganda. She says the broadcaster was biased in covering the Tavistock story, let misinformation go unchallenged, and even stopped her from responding to pro‑trans voices on Radio 2 debates.

Julia Hartley-Brewer speaks with Sue Evans about her experiences.


I would post this in the BBC Reporting thread, but people like @catsmate and @arthwollipot maybe report it for being off topic and screech about "The Thread Where Intellectual Cowards and Science Deniers Fear To Tread" leaking into their echo chamber (even though it is about the BBC's biased reporting as much as it is about the way the Tavistock behaved).

 

[Emily's Cat]

All entirely predictable responses.

The Nazi is the Terf. The Nazi Bar is this thread.

Yes yes, evil females causing untold harm by not letting males do whatever they hell they want to do. Yep, if we pesky females would just know our places and let males with special feels show us their dicks whether we want to see them or not, all would be just great for males. Besides, nobody actually cares about females, they're barely even human, amirite???

 

[Emily's Cat]

Anyway, here's an interview with a Nazi:

‘Women are afraid to meet as women’: An Interview with Maeve Halligan

Maeve Halligan, president of the Cambridge Society of Women, discusses with The Cambridge Tab the group’s mission, its controversies, and the fierce public debate surrounding it

thetab.com

The volume of scare quotes in there attempting to make it seem unreasonable is pretty remarkable.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I'm honestly hoping so. This thread is more than a little one-sided, and as a bunch of skeptics, it would be great to have a less... extreme... discussion, with input from all angles. I get his position from other threads; he sees trans people like any other people,and they are what they say they are.

Have you perchance noticed that this vaunted slogan "they are who they say they are" is far from evenly applied? For instance, most of us in this thread are fairly left leaning (I'm more classically liberal than modern liberal), none of us have any hatred toward transgender people in general, and none of us wish harm to transgender people. And yet... @arthwollipot quiet clearly does NOT believe we are what we say we are. Rather, arth feels righteously justified in telling us that what THEY think we are is what we actually are, and that what WE say we are is somehow a lie intended to I dunno... take over the world and stuff transgender people into stoves? I honestly can't follow the paranoid fantasy at play.

Sad tale. But kids are kids everywhere, and will sometimes mock others, not knowing any better. A lot of physically handicapped people are well acquainted with kids being cruel, knowingly or not.

Most kids aren't being cruel, they're being honest and unbound by learned conventions of what not to say. Most kids don't harass or mock physically disabled people, but they will ask questions.

 

[Emily's Cat]

If you do not fully and 100% support a trans woman's right to be a woman in all functional ways in society, then I cannot respect your arguments, regardless of what they are.

Translation for the common person: If you don't fully and completely pretend that males with fully intact male genitals should be given the right to expose their genitals in female intimate spaces, and to look at the nude bodies of females in those spaces without consent or consideration for the dignity and safety of females, then Arth won't respect your arguments regardless of what they are.

Arth will only respect your view if it gives any male who repeats the magic phrase the right-by-law to override female consent.

Arth has put forth their "considered" viewpoint that females need to know their places, and if they dare to tell males no then those females should be marginalized and ostracized.

 

[Emily's Cat]

"Transwomen" (we shouldn't be acceding to the word women being used in this context at all though) are men. The end.

I would point out, however, that nobody is being prevented from existing. They are merely being required to stay in their lane. Nobody is being prevented from participating in any sport. They are merely being required to compete in the correct category for their sex.

I came to this forum over 20 years ago to argue with homoeopaths. After some time I realised that they were utterly impervious to reason, and the interest became more of a psychological one, puzzling how anyone could cling so tenaciously to something so divorced from reality. This is going much the same way. "Men are women" is no less crazy than... no. I started to outline the basic tenets of homoeopathy and realised that they're actually quite a lot saner than the belief that some men are women.

The end.

I mean, yeah... homeopathy is wrong, but it's not inanely wrong. There are many situations where "exposure therapy" works, and building up a tolerance for something can be a benefit. 1 part per million of some random thing, however, doesn't actually do that. So homeopathy is based on a wrong application of a not-completely-wrong premise.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Lots to unpack, here. Kids young enough to make unsolicited personal comments to strangers would probably be young enough to still be very hip to playing dress up. I'm pretty sure my own kids wouldn't have asked a stranger about their attire; they might ask me about it on the side, but they never did that I recall. The main thing, though, would be that my kids never had rules about dress thumped into their heads that hard at such a young age. If someone was to be 'blamed' here, I'd be looking at these kids' parents, and asking them what the hell they were teaching them about how to act in public.

But ultimately, The guy was a full blown adult, if I am understanding the story correctly. If he didn't understand that some kids will ask 'rude' questions, like they would about someone in a wheelchair or halo, he had some growing up to do himself. A little adult confidence on his part should have steeled him against little children, surely? The nameless, faceless TRAs, who told this man something or other, are hardly holding a smoking gun. If this guy was not ready to let his hair down and be himself, that sounds like his issue to work out.

It's worth stepping back and remembering that prepubescent children are very rarely intentionally cruel. The things that might hurt an adults feelings are usually things that kids attach no particular import to at all.

My parents enjoy sharing a story of me at about age 6. We were at the park, and there was an older male sitting on a bench nearby. I proceeded to walk up and introduce myself. Then I simply said "You have a really big nose. Can you smell really good?" And because this elderly person understood that kids aren't wrapped up in being self conscious about the size of noses, that no hurt was intended. They laughed, even though my parents felt embarassed.

In this case... Kids can tell the difference between male and female adults from somewhere around age five. Prior to that, there's a tendency to rely on learned externalities - long hair, dresses, short hair, beards, etc. But almost all of those are culturally based indicators. At that age, a kid will very sincerely believe that if a female cuts their hair short they turn into a male. By the time they start school, they get a lot more exposure to adults, and the pattern identification algorithms in our brains sort out the visual cues for males and females that are independent of external trappings really well. So I would guess it's more a case of "Hey mister, why are you wearing a dress?" than anything cruel or mocking. Basically, something that any well-adjusted adult would just give a simple answer to, something like "I think they're pretty and I like wearing them" or "I like a healthy breeze 'round my privates".

 

[Emily's Cat]

My analogy was admittedly weak, but analogizing libido to substance abuse seems even worse.

I do not accept that addiction is strongly analogous to sexual appetites, whether healthy and normal or deviant and harmful.

Can you maybe start out here by considering that paraphilias aren't just "sexual appetites", and not all titillating things are paraphilias?

 

[angrysoba]

If you do not fully and 100% support a trans woman's right to be a woman in all functional ways in society, then I cannot respect your arguments, regardless of what they are. You and I cannot be friends. I will engage with you with basic politeness in other threads - most of you - but know that this is a courtesy. I don't like you and I believe that your views on this matter should be marginalised. You should not be engaged. You should be ostracised. And that is why I will not participate any further in this thread.

Trans women are women. The end.

Arth, I support your passion for what you believe is right, but you must realize this is about as far away from skepticism as it is possible to be.

This plus the claim that TERFdom is equivalent to Nazism is massively overblown rhetoric.

Besides, you even make claims that any man who commits a sexual assault on a woman in a toilet or a prison must therefore not be a real transwoman.

The problem, as has been pointed out endlessly, is there is no reliable way to know the difference between a transwoman and a man pretending to be a woman.

I remember you even saying to another forum member was that the way to determine this was to look in the mirror and say “I am a woman” and if it sounds right then you are a woman. This is utterly unworkable as a definition. There is no way for anyone to know the subjective feelings of another person doing that kind of test.

Besides, if you decide that there is no argument to be made, then it demonstrates you are abandoning persuasion even attempting to persuade fence-sitters or people new to the discussion, and instead the only tools at your disposal will be coercion. Surely even from a strategic, let alone ethical reason, you can see that that is going to be a huge problem for your side of the … well… debate is the wrong word because you won’t do debate. The only word for it is battle and you are hoping that your tribe is stronger than the other tribe. That spells serious danger.

 

[Rolfe]

This article is several months old but I don't think we discussed the paper it's discussing before. Scary stuff.

A New Paper Reveals Devastating Harms of Cross-Sex Hormones

Male use of estrogen is associated with a range of diseases and health complications.

www.city-journal.org

Any report of increased disease risks from HRT has doctors refusing to prescribe it even to women who are desperate trying to deal with menopausal symptoms. But the same drugs are being dished out to men like sweeties, with no consideration of possible adverse effects.