Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

[Pixel42]

We should seriously consider rolling back the sorts of laws which were passed by progressive states and conservative states and thereby allow market forces to play out without rigging the game for one side or the other, as I suggested earlier

State schools? Public buildings?

 

[Ziggurat]

I thought it was clear that I meant total exclusion from all (formerly) single-sex spaces and services such as the various situations we've discussed here over the years

I see no reason to compromise on any of that. Just because there's a conflict of interests doesn't mean that any compromise is needed. I will refrain from coming up with examples to avoid being accused of comparing this issue to certain other issues, but I'm sure you can come up with some examples of your own where you would not accept compromise.

We should seriously consider rolling back the sorts of laws which were passed by progressive states and conservative states and thereby allow market forces to play out without rigging the game for one side or the other, as I suggested earlier at #14,144. For example, instead of mandating that every Korean Spa in the State of California must operate based on gender identity rather than sex at birth, we could go back to allowing individual spa proprietors to decide which patrons they allow in which spaces. For another example, instead of passing bathroom bills requiring sex-based sorting as they do in red states, we could allow individual businesses decide how they want to approach the problem.

I have to agree with Rolfe that I don't trust businesses to not cave to a heckler's veto from the TRA side. So I don't want to give them that option. Services should either be sex segregated or not segregated at all. I'm still not hearing any justification for segregating anything on the basis of self-declared gender identity. We don't allow racial segregation, why allow this?

Some policies just have to be national and top-down (e.g. military service eligibility, national health coverage) but most of the issues we've discussed here could have been avoided or mitigated if we'd kept politicians, lawyers, and judges out of loop and left it to individual proprietors and leagues to say whom they will serve and how.

It's too late for that. The TRAs already weaponized government against the gender critical folks. You can't put that genie back in the bottle.

(At this point, someone will invariably jump in with a facile comparison to Jim Crow, so I'm just going to say that it's a really poor analogy. Sex is real and often salient, whereas race is a cultural construction at best most.)

I agree with this, but I don't think you've fully grasped the implications of this.

Gender isn't real and salient. Gender is even more of a social construct than race. For the same reasons that we do not permit racial discrimination, it is perfectly permissible to say that we should not allow gender discrimination. We should not treat two biological males differently based on their claimed gender identities. Sex discrimination is permissible because, as you say, it is real and salient. Race AND gender discrimination is not, because they are not.

Didn't we already discuss the total ban on transgender military service in the United States? A compromise position would be to allow people diagnosed with gender dysphoria to serve in certain areas where they would not be expected to deploy to the field or share barracks.

One could do this. I see no need to. I see no advantage in doing so.

 

[d4m10n]

State schools? Public buildings?

Some policies do have to be top-down, as I've already said.

That said, I'd prefer that state universities be allowed to craft their own gender inclusion policies at the institutional level, rather than being told what to do by state legislators who tend to strongly overrepresent the rural districts which have relatively little use for those institutions.

 

[Emily's Cat]

We should seriously consider rolling back the sorts of laws which were passed by progressive states and conservative states and thereby allow market forces to play out without rigging the game for one side or the other, as I suggested earlier at #14,144. For example, instead of mandating that every Korean Spa in the State of California must operate based on gender identity rather than sex at birth, we could go back to allowing individual spa proprietors to decide which patrons they allow in which spaces. For another example, instead of passing bathroom bills requiring sex-based sorting as they do in red states, we could allow individual businesses decide how they want to approach the problem. For yet another example, we could allow the board which manages Kenwood Ladies' Pond to make their own decision on what they mean by "Ladies" instead of making it a matter of binding anti-discrimination law across all of Britain. Some policies just have to be national and top-down (e.g. military service eligibility, national health coverage) but most of the issues we've discussed here could have been avoided or mitigated if we'd kept politicians, lawyers, and judges out of loop and left it to individual proprietors and leagues to say whom they will serve and how.

"Just let the market decide" involves having a great big social experiment where all of the risk is borne exclusively by females.

 

[Ziggurat]

Women are consistently more likely than men to support inclusive policies, both in public opinion surveys and in their voting patterns.

Other than as a political reality to take into account when campaigning, I'm not sure why you think this is relevant to this discussion. Young women often take positions very much against their self-interest. For example, support for Islamic terrorists and radicals is frighteningly high among young liberal women, despite everything those organizations believe in being antithetical to liberalism. Young women seem particularly vulnerable to accepting oppressor/oppressed narrative framing, and the TRA's have been very successful on this front.

 

[Emily's Cat]

To the extent that implementing that policy ignores the stated preferences of other females, yes.

Women are consistently more likely than men to support inclusive policies, both in public opinion surveys and in their voting patterns.

There's a point where the government has a duty to protect citizens from exploitation and harm, and to preserve the equal rights of those citizens. Gambling with a policy that has already demonstrated increased harm to females and is generally opposed by the vast majority of citizens seems like a poor decision. It would be like trying out letting 15 year olds drink whiskey with lunch, on the basis that it's the stated preference of some young teens, and that 15 yos have consistently been more likely to support that policy than 30 yos are.

ETA: The more I've paid attention, the more I become convinced that the only reason males are more opposed than females is because males know far better exactly how messed up some males can be, and exactly how willing to exploit the situation for predatory gain some males will be.

 

[Ziggurat]

"Just let the market decide" involves having a great big social experiment where all of the risk is borne exclusively by females.

Oh, but not equally by all females. The risks are going to be dominated by lower class females. Which is another reason so many women take the TRA position. It's a luxury belief.

 

[Ziggurat]

Some policies do have to be top-down, as I've already said.

That said, I'd prefer that state universities be allowed to craft their own gender inclusion policies at the institutional level, rather than being told what to do by state legislators who tend to strongly overrepresent the rural districts which have relatively little use for those institutions.

Why do they have little use for those institutions? Because those institutions have become actively hostile to their interests and values.

State universities have had too much freedom to craft their own policies, and it has led to a dramatic deterioration in higher education. I'm happy to see any and all of that freedom taken away from them. They are not free market participants, there's no reason to treat them as if they are.

 

[smartcooky]

ETA: The more I've paid attention, the more I become convinced that the only reason males are more opposed than females is because males know far better exactly how messed up some males can be, and exactly how willing to exploit the situation for predatory gain some males will be.

There is also the fact that we have collectively seen the ◊◊◊◊-fight our mothers, grandmothers, aunts and sisters went through to win rights for women, as well as our desire to protect our daughters and grandaughters by making sure none of that ◊◊◊◊-fight was in vain, and none of those rights are eroded.

There is ZERO doubt in my mind that many of the trans rights that TRAs demand, if allowed to be implemented, will seriously erode women's rights.

 

[d4m10n]

"Just let the market decide" involves having a great big social experiment where all of the risk is borne exclusively by females.

Fortunately, females also happen to have outsized influence in market choices.

Gambling with a policy that has already demonstrated increased harm to females and is generally opposed by the vast majority of citizens seems like a poor decision.

Not sure where you are getting "vast majority of citizens" from but it is almost certainly untrue in Los Angeles (where Wi Spa is located) and in several other jurisdictions where civil rights laws were rewritten to include gender identity.

It would be like trying out letting 15 year olds drink whiskey with lunch, on the basis that it's the stated preference of some young teens, and that 15 yos have consistently been more likely to support that policy than 30 yos are.

Which group of people are you analogizing to 15-y.o.'s here?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Fortunately, females also happen to have outsized influence in market choices.

Females continue to do more shopping than males, news at 11...

Not sure where you are getting "vast majority of citizens" from but it is almost certainly untrue in Los Angeles (where Wi Spa is located) and in several other jurisdictions where civil rights laws were rewritten to include gender identity.

Polls done within the last 5 years all show that the majority of citizens do NOT support males being granted the privilege to use female single-sex spaces, be housed in female prisons, or compete on female sports.

You seem to be assuming that policies enacted by politicians are always done in service to the majority will of the citizens, and I think this is an error on your part. In this context, there are a whole lot of revisions to existing law that squished gender identity in there without ever giving the public an opportunity to vote on it.

Which group of people are you analogizing to 15-y.o.'s here?

None. Just pointing out that even if a marginally higher portion of group A supports something when compared to group B, that doesn't mean that group A overall supports it, nor that it's a good idea. At this point, trying to fall back on "oh, but more females support trans inclusion than males do!" is silly, given that such supportive females are in the clear minority of females overall.

 

[d4m10n]

Polls done within the last 5 years all show that the majority of citizens do NOT support males being granted the privilege to use female single-sex spaces, be housed in female prisons, or compete on female sports.

Were those polls broken out by state?

You seem to be assuming that policies enacted by politicians are always done in service to the majority will of the citizens, and I think this is an error on your part.

I am assuming only that citizens should be allowed to make their own mistakes, rather than being protected from progressive reforms by, for example, the Supreme Court.

At this point, trying to fall back on "oh, but more females support trans inclusion than males do!" is silly, given that such supportive females are in the clear minority of females overall.

In which jurisdiction?

 

[Brainster]

How did so many people get so brainwashed?

It's a consequence of the oppression template. When figuring out which side to support in a battle, liberals start by figuring out who are the oppressed and who are the oppressors. It's generally not a bad template. Whites were oppressing Blacks, so liberals supported civil rights. Straights were oppressing gays, so liberals supported gay rights. And, somewhat crucially, it is hard to argue that the oppressors were losing any of their real rights; there is no sensible basis for saying that a white person should be able to make a black person move to the back of the bus. Ditto with gay rights; did I (a heterosexual man) lose anything when gay marriage was allowed? Hard to make that case.
Trans rights, on the other hand do impinge on the rights of others (mostly women), but to acknowledge this is to invite accusations of transphobia, so they either deny there is any conflict or minimize it by pointing out what a miniscule percentage of society is trans. They'll also use the concern-trolling technique on anybody who dares to step out of line: Do you really want to be associated with those horrid conservatives who are just using this as a wedge issue? Wedge issues of course are ones where the public tends to support conservative positions.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I am assuming only that people should be allowed to make their own mistakes, rather than being protected from progressive reforms by, for example, the Supreme Court.

How do you feel about citizens being "allowed" to pay the price for the mistakes made by short-sighted politicians without having been given the option of whether they wanted to follow that mistake or not?

Seriously, it's not "people" making this mistake, it's arguably captured legislative bodies making this mistake with careless disregard for the impact it has on "people".

 

[Ziggurat]

ETA: The more I've paid attention, the more I become convinced that the only reason males are more opposed than females is because males know far better exactly how messed up some males can be, and exactly how willing to exploit the situation for predatory gain some males will be.

I think a lot of young women also don't understand how much physically stronger men are. I think most (but not all) know that men are stronger but can't really conceptualize how big the difference is, because they've never had a male actually use real force against them.

 

[smartcooky]

I think a lot of young women also don't understand how much physically stronger men are. I think most (but not all) know that men are stronger but can't really conceptualize how big the difference is, because they've never had a male actually use real force against them.

That difference is very significant.. Pound for pound, have on average 260% greater punching power than women, as Imane Khelif's opponents have discovered to their detriment.

 

[d4m10n]

Seriously, it's not "people" making this mistake, it's arguably captured legislative bodies making this mistake with careless disregard for the impact it has on "people".

Care to make the argument that the State of California was captured by special interests—rather than following popular opinion—when it decided to add gender identity to its list of protected statuses? Last I checked Californians were pretty keen on this stuff.

I'd much rather that the state legislature had allowed Wi Spa to make their own call, but I bet it wouldn't've changed anything in practice because popular support for trans-inclusive policies is generally high in prosperous West Coast cities.

 

[Ziggurat]

Care to make the argument that the State of California was captured by special interests—rather than following popular opinion—when it decided to add gender identity to its list of protected statuses? Last I checked Californians were pretty keen on this stuff.

"This stuff" being what, exactly? We have seen plenty of examples of people being more inclined to the TRA position when they don't really understand it. I would not be surprised if most Californians were ok with having gender identity listed as a protected class. That doesn't mean that they are ok with male sex offenders in women's prisons, or with schools being able to transition their kids behind their backs. The pushback against that last one is to my mind pretty strong evidence that the California legislature is NOT actually in sync with voters on the issue.

 

[d4m10n]

"This stuff" being what, exactly?

LGBTQ+ Rights in California in Response to Federal Attacks - ACLU of Socal

Authored by California LGBTQ+, Civil Rights, and Health Care Advocates As is clear from his first few months in office, President Trump and his administration have an agenda of openly targeting transgender, gender expansive, and intersex people, and attempting to require recipients of federal...

www.aclusocal.org

 

[Ziggurat]

LGBTQ+ Rights in California in Response to Federal Attacks - ACLU of Socal

Authored by California LGBTQ+, Civil Rights, and Health Care Advocates As is clear from his first few months in office, President Trump and his administration have an agenda of openly targeting transgender, gender expansive, and intersex people, and attempting to require recipients of federal...

www.aclusocal.org

This isn't very useful. First off, I can't tell how much you agree with the positions of the authors of your link, if at all. So I don't know how much this comports with your claims. Second, and more importantly in regards to my question, this covers a multitude of different issues. There's no reason to expect Californian voters to feel the same about each of them. For example, a voter who wants schools to address students by their preferred pronoun might not be OK with the school hiding this from that child's parents. So to speak a bit more explicitly, when you say that California voters back TRA positions, you need to specify which positions you're talking about.

Because from what I can tell, they DON'T support all the TRA positions. From what I can tell, the California legislature is a lot further to the left than California voters. And note, this is hardly the only political issue where that's the case. For example, Proposition 209 was passed with strong public support, and the California legislature has been trying to undermine it ever since.