Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

[Pixel42]

They said. They absolutely, wholeheartedly and truly believe that transwomen are women.

One wonders how they have managed to figure out whom to exclude from the organisation.

In a society with full sexual equality the only situations where sex segregation should need to continue are those where the actual biological differences between males and females justify it. If it's fine to let biological males become members of the Women's Institute, then surely the time has come to question whether there is still any need for such a thing.

Likewise if it's fine to let girls join the Boy Scouts and vice versa then it's time to ask whether they should be amalgamated.

 

[theprestige]

If.

 

[Thermal]

What's important to me on #3 is that I agree with trans rights activists on the de jure standard, and I agree that where the de facto equality falls short, we should work to bring it in line with the de jure. I agree with TRAs on both the "should" and the "is" of issue #3. I disagree with them about the "should" of 1 and 2.

Aren't (from their POV) 1&3 at odds with each other? That's their whole gig, being treated equally means equal to a natal woman, meaning sex segregated situations too?

 

[Elaedith]

The puberty blocker trial should not be tried at all. We have zero animal studies of puberty blockers used to delay puberty past the normal window, our understanding of the processes suggest that the effects are likely serious and negative, and there is little evidence that medical transition at any age actually produces significant long term benefits over other treatments. The risks to patients are not justified. If you were to accurately convey similar risk profiles to an institutional review board for any medical intervention that didn't have so much political baggage attached, there's not a chance in hell it would be approved.

There are animal studies cited in Baxendale's review, although I haven't checked how far puberty was suppressed past the 'normal window.'

“As can be seen in Table 1, the results from these studies indicate that treatment with a GnRH antagonist/agonist has a detrimental impact on learning and the development of social behaviours and responses to stress in mammals. ^{7,8,34–36,38,39,41,42} Sex-specific effects were observed in multiple studies.^8,37,42 In male sheep, impairments in spatial memory associated with the treatment were not fully reversed following discontinuation of treatment. ³⁹ Significant effects of treatment were also evident on measures of brain structure including overall volume, ⁴¹ functional connectivity ⁴⁰ and neuronal density. ⁴²”

 

[Trausti]

 

[theprestige]

Aren't (from their POV) 1&3 at odds with each other? That's their whole gig, being treated equally means equal to a natal woman, meaning sex segregated situations too?

I'm sure that's a fascinating hole, but it wasn't made for me. I hope you find time to address the other substantive arguments I made, which you said needed more serious thought.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Why? So you can ignore the answer, dissappear for a few days, then come back with a Rinse and Repeat as if I never answered?

First off, I have a job and I don't post on the weekends. I tend to post Mondays and Fridays, if time permits - and it often doesn't. I'm not about to ignore paying work in order to appease your ego.

What do you recall of the last several times I've addressed your questions? Nothing? Then first give me a reason why repeating the same answers would have a different outcome.

Some of your answers have been fine. Often, if you don't get a response from me it's because I have no objection to what you said. Sometimes I refrain from commenting because you've already had seven people pile on and there's no value to me piling on.

Many times, however, your answers are non-answers that tap dance around giving a clear and direct response. You hem and haw and redirect. It's become very difficult to get something concrete from you.

Actually, first you might give answering the questions I've been putting to you a whirl. You ignore them in their entirety.

Which questions?

ETA: What I'm taking away from this right now is that somehow you think you have good and noble reasons for objecting to the laws under discussion, but you think that the rest of us have bad and nefarious reasons for objecting to them... but you're not going to tell us what your reasons are, nor are you going to tell us what you're assuming our reasons to be. All you have is an empty assertion that you're a good guy and we're all bad guys because you said so. It's not convincing.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Saying "them trannies is all mentally ill pervs" is not what most would call treating them with dignity.

NOBODY HERE HAS SAID THIS.

STOP MALICIOUSLY MISCHARACTERIZING ALL OF US.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Maniacal transphobes and legal threats force transwomen out of UK Girl Guides.

Trans girls banned from joining Girlguiding

Girls’ adventure charity says it made decision after seeking legal advice in wake of supreme court ruling on gender

www.theguardian.com

Hopefully the EU courts will reverse this nonsense.

Club for females excludes males. Oh the travesty!

 

[Emily's Cat]

Sometimes courts grant extraordinary powers of consent to medical treatment to people under the age of legal majority because of exigent circumstances, for example, 15-y.o. girls hoping to receive help continuing or terminating their pregnancy against parental advice.

You seem to have kind of lost the context for my response. I was explaining why I oppose gender affirmation medical interventions in minors, but not in adults, and why I think laws to that effect are reasonable.

 

[Thermal]

I'm sure that's a fascinating hole, but it wasn't made for me. I hope you find time to address the other substantive arguments I made, which you said needed more serious thought.

I won't forget. I think you know me well enough to know I'm not ducking you. Just been crazy busy and only shooting off occasional one liner posts.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I get what you're saying, but I can visualize this pretty easily. I don't feel particularly like I am a male. Yet the stuff I do and wear and act like is +/-consistent with how other males present and act. If I were to look down and see different plumbing, I think that internal sense would become crystal clear. It's only subtle and elusive if everything jibes.

So yeah - I don't have any particular gendery sense of myself as female either. I don't have a gender identity, and I get quite peeved at the people who insist that EVERYONE has a gender identity. What I do have is a somatic sense of myself as female, based on the experience of having a female body.

If I were suddenly freaky fridayed into a male body, I'd be a wreck, but I don't think it would be becuase of some internal mystical sense of gender - it would be because my body doesn't move and respond the way my memory and experience leads me to expect. I might celebrate suddenly being stronger, and maybe laying on my stomach would be more comfortable because there would be no boobs in the way to get squashed. On the other hand, pretty sure morning wood would be an extremely weird experience, since I have no idea what the hell a penis is actually like from the owner's perspective.

I think you're making an unstated assumption here that's unmerited. You're essentially assuming that "gender" is an actual innate mental characteristic that is independent of the body. I also think you're perhaps assuming that people who say they're trans have some sort of a "sense" of the opposite sex's body so that they're discomfited by having "wrong" plumbing. I don't think that's true - I think at the absolute best, they're working from some fantasy of what having the opposite body would be like - but I think they're coming at it from the experience of their actual body.

To be a bit blunt... I think males who consider themselves trans are working from their own personal fantasy of what they imagine having a female body would be like - but they're envisioning that from an entirely male perspective. They romanticise what having boobs and hips is like, and they tend to come at it from a very male, and very sexual point of view. Similarly, females who consider themselves trans are working from a romanticized idea of what broad shoulders and a penis would be like, and they don't actually have any idea at all what it's actually like.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Because it is prohibitively restrictive against transwomen, which as a relatively nice and accepting guy, I am viscerally resistant towards.

Alright. You know how you keep saying that you largely support the gender critical view about sex-separated spaces? And you know how the rest of us keep saying that you're inconsistent in your arguments?

This right here is *why* we say that.

We're talking about sex-specific spaces and services. That's pretty much the only thing any of us cares about. If a male wants to wear dresses and make-up out in public, none of us cares. Go for it, have a blast. But that does not make a male into a female, and therefore such a male doesn't gain access to female single-sex spaces merely because of what they say their internal feelings are.

Taking the view that in terms of public policy related to intimate spaces and services, the word women means females of the human species is NOT restrictive against transwomen UNLESS you believe that transwomen should be granted access to female-specific intimate spaces and services based on what they claim their gendery feelings are.

So your statement quoted here is a prime example of the inconsistency of your position.

If you think that males should be granted access to female spaces on the basis of their internal feelings, then you do NOT support sex-separated spaces. If you DO support sex-separated spaces, then using the sex-based meaning of the word women is NOT prohibitvely restrictive to transwoman.

You can't logically hold both of the views that you claim to hold - they're contradictory views.

 

[Emily's Cat]

What the TQ+ activists and the gendercrits have in common is the desire to win utterly and from the top-down (e.g. via Supreme Court rulings) rather than giving individuals and businesses the liberty to allow each side to give a little to make it comfortable for the other.

I object to this framing.

We had already made reasonable accommodations. That's how the world worked for a very, very long time, and it was an acceptable balance. It's not the "gendercrits" that tried to change the rules. It was the predominantly male transgender activists who demanded more and more and more - including the right of completely intact adult males to show off their genitals to underage females in showers and changing rooms on the basis of their claim to have special internal "womanly feelings".

I don't think we can go back. So now we're in a situation where females either have to surrender ALL female single sex spaces and allow any male who wants to be there to use them... or we have to backtrack a bit and enforce a reality-based interpretation of sex.

 

[Emily's Cat]

My understanding is that cultures that have third genders (a) have pretty strict expectations about how the two sex-based genders should dress and behave, and (b) have equally strict expectations about how the third gender should dress and behave, as distinct from the other two. In that context, the third gender acts as pressure release valve.

It's a solution for societies that are trying to find a place for people who struggle to conform to their strict rules about binary gender roles in society. It's not a solution for societies that view such strict rules as regressive stereotypes, and have already abolished or deprecated most of them. No "non-binary" westerner is going to be happy at being told they're supposed to conform to some strict expectation of Third Gender Presentation - especially in a western context that already deprecated the strict expectations of the other two genders.

I'll add that the overwhelming majority of "third gender" cultures don't allow females to adopt a third gender, only males. They allow males who don't conform to the strict requirements of males to take a role similar to females, but they almost always get to retain at least some of the privileges that males receive in those societies instead of being relegated to the subordinate role of females.

The exception is albanian sworn virgins - which allowed females to inherit property and act as a man in society when there were no male heirs available... but only if they gave up the ability to marry and have kids of their own.

 

[theprestige]

What the TQ+ activists and the gendercrits have in common is the desire to win utterly and from the top-down (e.g. via Supreme Court rulings) rather than giving individuals and businesses the liberty to allow each side to give a little to make it comfortable for the other.

The only gendercrit top-down win I want is a Supreme Court ruling that gives individuals and businesses the liberty to do whatever they think best. I would rather it didn't come to this, but the TPAs have ensured that is no longer an option.

 

[Emily's Cat]

We have zero reason to suppose it would be significantly worse than juvenile castration, which is incredibly common and reasonably well understood in animals.

Sure, it's well understood and incredibly common. One of the well understood impacts is that it locks in juvenile behaviors, and prevents the development of adult behaviors, especially in male animals. Castrating male cattle and horses results in them retaining permanently juvenile temperaments and behaviors. Geldings are far more tractable than stallions, steers are far more docile and less territorial than bulls. In dogs and cats, sterilization retains puppyish and kittenish behaviors. To an extent, it also mitigates the development of adult physical characteristics - castrated male cats, for example, retain a softer facial structure rather then the more angular adult structure that Toms get.

Given that this is well understood... is there some benefit to creating a group of juvenile-tempered and physically unmatured humans?

 

[novaphile]

Sure, it's well understood and incredibly common. One of the well understood impacts is that it locks in juvenile behaviors, and prevents the development of adult behaviors, especially in male animals. Castrating male cattle and horses results in them retaining permanently juvenile temperaments and behaviors. Geldings are far more tractable than stallions, steers are far more docile and less territorial than bulls. In dogs and cats, sterilization retains puppyish and kittenish behaviors. To an extent, it also mitigates the development of adult physical characteristics - castrated male cats, for example, retain a softer facial structure rather then the more angular adult structure that Toms get.

Given that this is well understood... is there some benefit to creating a group of juvenile-tempered and physically unmatured humans?

Other than the obvious one, providing more dollies for paedophiles?

 

[theprestige]

It's like a matryoshka of ideological capture. The LGB movement has been taken over by transphiles. The transphile movement has been infiltrated by pedophiles.

 

[Trausti]

It's like a matryoshka of ideological capture. The LGB movement has been taken over by transphiles. The transphile movement has been infiltrated by pedophiles.

That's the next step, surely. You don't want to a pedophobe, do you?