Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

[Thermal]

No, actually, they don't. What happened is that sex segregation in marriage was legally abolished. There is no longer any sex segregation to be overridden, and both heterosexual AND homosexual people can now engage in same-sex marriages (just as homosexual people could previously engage in opposite-sex marriages). There is never any test of sexuality for legal marriage in the US.

So basically exactly what we have here.

The complete abolishment of a sex segregation is fundamentally different from maintaining sex segregation but allowing some people to override it.

We are not maintaining what we never had, nor are we allowing anyone to override what was never ridden.

 

[theprestige]

So basically exactly what we have here.

We are not maintaining what we never had, nor are we allowing anyone to override what was never ridden.

"Women's restrooms have always been open to men."

- Big Brother, probably

 

[Ziggurat]

So basically exactly what we have here.

No. Nothing like what we have here.

We are not maintaining what we never had, nor are we allowing anyone to override what was never ridden.

You keep pretending we never had sex segregation, but this is a lie. We did. We still do, in many places. And the TRA's are NOT trying to abolish sex segregation, but only allow self-ID trans people to transcend it. They don't want those of us who do not claim to be trans to be able to transcend sex segregation, they still want that enforced.

 

[Thermal]

Are you really going to keep up this pretense that you are stupid...

​

fiat​

a formal authorization or proposition; a decree.​

So 'fiat self-ID in this case is a formal decree by a man that he is a woman.

Dictionary definitions mean little in this thread, scooter. You guys Hunpty Dumpty your way through every discussion. IIRC, theprestige had some other layer of meaning attached to 'fiat', without which it would have been a fairly pointless modifier.

That thread being "The Thread Where Intellectual Cowards and Science Deniers Fear to Tread"

Only you seem to think so, which brings to mind an expression about a minority of one.

This conflicts with your self-declared support for ge idea that men can self-ID as woman.

I have no such idea.

No carve outs for anyone is my position. If you were OMAB, you are not permitted in women's safe spaces...The End.

So I keep hearing. it's no more robust or persuasive than it was the first few dozen bald repetitions.

 

[Thermal]

"Women's restrooms have always been open to men."

- Big Brother, probably

"Restrooms have never been strictly segregated."

-Western civilization, certainly

 

[Thermal]

Sometimes they do. Sometimes they do not.

We know. Saying that they blanket cannot, do not, or could not is the point taken issue with.

Police in Fairfax County did not reject Richard Cox's self ID, despite it being obviously opportunistic.

We know. One guy went a bit off the rails and got criticized heavily for it. That will happen under any policy.

 

[Ziggurat]

We know. One guy went a bit off the rails and got criticized heavily for it. That will happen under any policy.

You still can't be honest about what happened. A deliberate policy choice enabled sexual predation. It's an example of something that you claimed doesn't happen, but did in fact happen. This wasn't an error. This was what self-ID was designed to do.

 

[Thermal]

Hey, at least he's moved on from claiming it's analogous to race. So that's progress of a sort.

They are both excellent analogies. But you guys understandably have to push back hard against that, because your role gets a bit too much sunshine on it.

 

[Ziggurat]

They are both excellent analogies.

They are both garbage analogies. You use them because you cannot successfully argue the actual thing itself. You are trying to coopt the moral standing of one party in a different conflict without actually earning that moral standing.

 

[Thermal]

They are both garbage analogies. You use them because you cannot successfully argue the actual thing itself. You are trying to coopt the moral standing of one party in a different conflict without actually earning that moral standing.

I have debated the thing itself at great length and detail, as you damn right well know. I get met with "well we deny interdisciplinary gender studies in toto and make our own realities". Okey doke.

Eta: I don't think it's at all wrong to say "to support the rights of women for their modesty, we need to create strictly sex segregated private spaces." That's a far cry from "gender isn't real, and they're mentally ill or perverts anyway".

 

[smartcooky]

It's a cult now?

Of course it is. Some argue that it cannot be a cult because there is no authoritarian leader, but a leader it is not necessary - a cult can have shared leadership through groupthink.

The gender ideology cult is a lot like Scientology in a number of ways

1. Speaking against the transgender movement in any way makes you a bigot (in Scientology you would be labelled a "suppressive person" ).

2. If you were once a trans rights activist or even someone who agreed with their aims, and you change sides, even your friends and family are encouraged to ostracize you and not speak to you at all. (Scientology calls this "disconnection").

3. De-transitioners are publicly mocked and attacked (in Scientology, these would be former Scientologists who are targeted with "fair gaming").

4. Gender Critical public speakers are verbally and sometimes physically accosted. (Scientology calls this "attacking the attacker").

NOTE: All of these techniques were formalized and described in a 1967 policy letter by Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard

 

[Ziggurat]

I have debated the thing itself at great length and detail, as you damn right well know.

You have posted time and time again. You consistently avoid certain questions, though, such as what it means to be trans without dysphoria and why they deserve any policy accommodations. You also consistently use straw man representations of the positions of everyone who disagrees with you.

Eta: I don't think it's at all wrong to say "to support the rights of women for their modesty, we need to create strictly sex segregated private spaces."

You might not think it's wrong, but for some reason, you don't really seem to get around to actually saying that except as a disclaimer, as you do here.

That's a far cry from "gender isn't real, and they're mentally ill or perverts anyway".

And here's the straw, right on cue.

 

[d4m10n]

There ain't, nor ever been (recent Potty Laws excepted) sex segregation in any meaningful or enforceable sense.

At the federal level, to take one obvious example, we have men's barracks and women's barracks and sex segregation is quite easily enforceable in that environment. No idea why you would claim this sort of thing never happens, I could probably come up with a dozen examples without ever leaving the base.

At the state level, it depends on whether you live in a place like NJ which has banned sex segregation in favor of sorting by self-identification or a place like OK which has mandated sex segregation in certain settings.

 

[John Freestone]

Can I ask for a bit of clarification; which of the four meanings of gender are you tryna disappear?

(I'm guessing 2 or 3, but the TRAs are pushing 4.)

ETA: I really don't think you can "make gender vanish," in any case, but I don't want to push back until it's clear what exactly you're trying to de-reify.

"kids, think they are a particular gender (by which they literally mean sex)"

AFAICT, John invoked at least three of the four meanings in just that one post.

I would also object to abolishing normative sex stereotypes themselves, e.g. "Males shouldn't compete in female leagues, Lia." or "Males shouldn't hang dong in the women's spa, Agee." Not much point in objection until we nail down what we're trying to abolish, though.

Fair points. I was aware it was difficult to form my words carefully enough. I was responding to p0lka, and that is key to my answer. The points p0lka made over the short time I've been on the thread were all over the place on these definitions - or the last three, at least. So I was trying to cover several bases undermining the idea altogether. Maybe that's not the best way to go about it, but I wasn't so much trying to make a rational argument as an emotional appeal, in the hope that whatever cognitive blockage p0lka has might get looser.

The only definition p0lka rejects, AFAICS, is (1), by insisting on his 'male' and 'female' terms as the only thing that matters (there I am interpreting the definition, but it seems to be a reasonable interpretation of the basics: "gender is just another word for sex"). To p0lka, apparently, that's not true. Sex is fixed, they say, but you can slip genders on for the day.

(4) is a phantasm. "Feeling like" people of a particular sex can only mean one of two things. The psychological meaning of "feeling" that the TRAs mean is just a cognitive judgement based on (2) or (3) or both. They compare themselves with sexual stereotypes and try to place themselves on a gender spectrum (or binary, trinary? or other made up scheme) accordingly. It is not possible to have an experience of what anyone other than oneself experiences, so as pure "feeling what it's like", it's meaningless guff. And, of course, the physical interpretation hardly needs more analysis. I "feel like a man" physically, because I have a man's body, and that's true whatever my body might be like (knowing, as I do, the proper definition of maleness). To be even clearer, I don't have an experience of 'maleness' because I'm male. I just experience me, and know that's what I am. Similarly, we don't experience the plumbing of our arteries, our eye colour, or our chromosomes.

(2) is a mere observation of tendencies, if I've understood it. So if that's how you want to define 'gender', I guess my only objection is that the word is now cemtex and best avoided at all costs. Obviously, males and females tend to express particular stereotypes socially, just as we do physically. I agree with p0lka on the point that the problem is when these are 'indoctrinated', when the expectation that we follow them is too great, or perhaps when it exists at all. Further, obviously physical reality makes some of these impossible (e.g. pregnancy), or hard to overcome, and, as your last paragraph suggests, the sexes have different needs that a sane society should take seriously, and preferably work out democratically and through discussion.

I'm not quite sure what is meant by (3), particularly in the words 'projected onto individuals'. If it means 'enforced' or 'coerced', sure that should go. It's real, and it should be avoided. If it means 'assumed' or 'expected' - in other words, when we make judgements about people's abilities or needs - then we all do that from time to time, and can be forgiven. "Hell, that's a freaking strong spring on that door - shall I hold it open for this short, wiry girl, or let it slam in her face?"

2 and 3 are maybe points in a loop - we observe that the sexes are different, and then we naturally expect individuals to be like the types we've observed.

Sorry that took so long to say.

 

[John Freestone]

Homosexuals have carve-outs in the law in terms of 'overriding sex segregation' marriage roles we traditionally applied, often in actual law. We modified those laws to allow homosexual marriage to override the sex segregation, even though there was no suffering a medical distress in gay couples simply wanting to marry.

That's not the removal of 'sex segregation'. Banning men from marrying men isn't segregating the sexes, nor is banning women from marrying women. The law was prescribing the precise matching of a man with a woman, without exception, and its lifting was a great boon to society (particularly those involved). Sex segregation is about prescribing some spaces as being those where only men/boys should go, and those where only women/girls should go, and removing that restriction is greatly problematic to society (particularly women and girls).

The tag-teaming with gay rights is a tired old game. We saw through it long ago. Give it up already.

 

[John Freestone]

It is a real thing though, look at the problems it has caused by being treated as the same thing as sex.

Noooooo!!!!
It - 'gender' - as a concept, relies on sex. The sexes are what it is parallel to, what defines it, that's all. It's not parallel to "the colour of wallpaper", or "the weight of a pint of milk" - it refers to sex, but refuses to be the same thing.

I don't think you're very good at linguistic analysis. There was literally NO problem - there CAN BE no problem with equating "gender" and "sex". We have two words. They are equated. They therefore MEAN EXACTLY THE SAME THING. There can't be any problem from that, and there really wasn't. In certain quarters, saying the word "sex" was thought rude, and people started calling the condition of being male or female one's "gender". Just a different word. No problem. Unless you conflate one of those words with something else, they mean the same thing.

Conversely, what causes the problem is treating them as DIFFERENT, because then "gender" has to acquire its own meaning. That then reifies it, allowing people to demand theirs is different from their sex.

This is all so ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ obvious, it's infuriating you keep wanting 'gender' to be different from 'sex', and then demand we get rid of the gendered words on toilets (as you imagine them to be) and use sex-based ones instead! By requiring it to be different, you make it real, when it's just a vague cloud of typical behaviours and appearances that we observe OF THE SEXES.

Can you tell me, without referring to the sexes, what gender is?

 

[John Freestone]

"Restrooms have never been strictly segregated."

-Western civilization, certainly

Precisely. We were civilised about it. You're trying to ◊◊◊◊ all that up. Cheers.

 

[d4m10n]

@John Freestone

I'm going to try to address the four definitions in order, which will require a bit of cutting and pasting.

The only definition p0lka rejects, AFAICS, is (1), by insisting on his 'male' and 'female' terms as the only thing that matters (there I am interpreting the definition, but it seems to be a reasonable interpretation of the basics: "gender is just another word for sex"). To p0lka, apparently, that's not true. Sex is fixed, they say, but you can slip genders on for the day.

If @p0lka thinks it is a bad idea to use "gender" as "just another word for sex" then I am compelled to agree. These issues are confusing enough without conflating those two concepts as well.

(2) is a mere observation of tendencies, if I've understood it. So if that's how you want to define 'gender', I guess my only objection is that the word is now cemtex and best avoided at all costs.

Cemtex is incredibly useful (when employed as intended) and unlike "gender" it tends to do just one thing well.

I'm not quite sure what is meant by (3), particularly in the words 'projected onto individuals'. If it means 'enforced' or 'coerced', sure that should go.

Hard disagree. Sometimes it is okay to tell individuals (such as Lia Thomas) that they need to stay in their swim lane based on sex.

(4) is a phantasm. "Feeling like" people of a particular sex can only mean one of two things. The psychological meaning of "feeling" that the TRAs mean is just a cognitive judgement based on (2) or (3) or both. They compare themselves with sexual stereotypes and try to place themselves on a gender spectrum (or binary, trinary? or other made up scheme) accordingly. It is not possible to have an experience of what anyone other than oneself experiences, so as pure "feeling what it's like", it's meaningless guff.

You may be right, but I remain undecided on this point. Most people who used to be boys know what it is like to impatiently wish to be men, even though they now know (looking back) that they had an imperfect idea of what manhood would entail. Possibly this is what it is like to be a trans man? I've no idea, but I suspect it's probably more than just asking yourself which social stereotypes one might hope to fulfill.

 

[smartcooky]

In certain quarters, saying the word "sex" was thought rude, and people started calling the condition of being male or female one's "gender".

Indeed. Sort of reminds me of back-in-the-day when we sometimes applied for things, or had to answer some questions verbally

NAME? Fred Smith

AGE? 25

SEX? Oooh, yes please!!

Just a different word. No problem. Unless you conflate one of those words with something else, they mean the same thing. Conversely, what causes the problem is treating them as DIFFERENT, because then "gender" has to acquire its own meaning. That then reifies it, allowing people to demand theirs is different from their sex.

This is all so ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ obvious, it's infuriating you keep wanting 'gender' to be different from 'sex', and then demand we get rid of the gendered words on toilets (as you imagine them to be) and use sex-based on es instead!

Yup, exactly!!

Can you tell me, without referring to the sexes, what gender is?

Not possible!

 

[smartcooky]

If @p0lka thinks it is a bad idea to use "gender" as "just another word for sex" then I am compelled to agree. These issues are confusing enough without conflating those two concepts as well.

It always was, before the transgender madness arrived.

In fact, I'd argue that it was the separation of what was once two words that mean the same thing, into two words that some have attempted to make mean different things, that allowed this fad to spread in the first place.