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Cont: Trans women are not women (IX)

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theprestige said:
The way I process it is, he's saying the physician attending the birth can more easily know what day it is than what the sex of the newborn is.

Personally, I'd have to check for both. I think he also vastly overestimates the difficulty of determining someone's sex at birth. Yes, there are a few rare edge cases where figuring out a newborn's sex is somewhat more difficult than looking at a calendar, but as has been pointed out repeatedly, the trans-rights conversation isn't actually about those cases.
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So should Caster Semenya compete as a male or female? She was born male. She was identified as female.
 
Of course he shouldn't be allowed to compete with women. He's male. He doesn't even seem to bother presenting as female except professionally, which is quite subversive really.

Why are all the 5ARD boys who are mistaken for girls in infancy in locations where neonatal healthcare is poor. Can you guess?

ETA: He was always male. A mistake was made when he was born, which was propagated quite cynically to win medals for the country. If someone mistakes an antelope calf for a foal, should it be allowed to compete in the Grand National?
 
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Rolfe said:
This is where this nonsense started. This was a reply to Emily's Cat asking how much damage to women was acceptable to coddle the feelings of men.

We weren't talking about whether it's easier to eyeball the neonate and see whether there's a cock and balls there, or to look at the calendar for the date. We were talking about whether men should be allowed to self-ID themselves into women's intimate spaces, to keep the men happy, and how much unhappiness caused to women was a reasonable trade-off for this male happiness.

And suddenly it's easier to tell the exact birth date of someone wanting to buy a pint of beer or have a tattoo done or only pay half fare on the bus than it is to tell whether they're male or female.

No, sorry, run that past me again.
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Ah, well in that context, yeah, stanfr is playing silly buggers.
 
I kind of brought him up when I was trying to figure out what stanfr's talk about sex "developing" was all about. I was trying to say that rather than his sex developing, he was always male. He has 5ARD, which is a condition that affects boys, and led to his being mistakenly recorded as a girl on his birth certificate.

However, it appears that he behaved as a boy and played with the boys as a kid. It was only when the question of athletic ability came up that suddenly he was a girl all along and started this "oh how awful it is for a girl to have to go through all this".

I actually quite admire the way he presents as a pretty much normal man now. Subversive, as I said. Smashing the gender norms and all that.
 
stanfr said:
So should Caster Semenya compete as a male or female? She was born male. She was identified as female.
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How will answering this question help us decide where people like Lia Thomas and Laurel Hubbard ought to compete?

Seems like those latter cases are fairly straightforward, by comparison, not to mention on topic here.

ETA: Caster is not trans, since she identifies as the sex she was assigned.
 
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Rolfe said:
I kind of brought him up when I was trying to figure out what stanfr's talk about sex "developing" was all about. I was trying to say that rather than his sex developing, he was always male. He has 5ARD, which is a condition that affects boys, and led to his being mistakenly recorded as a girl on his birth certificate.

However, it appears that he behaved as a boy and played with the boys as a kid. It was only when the question of athletic ability came up that suddenly he was a girl all along and started this "oh how awful it is for a girl to have to go through all this".

I actually quite admire the way he presents as a pretty much normal man now. Subversive, as I said. Smashing the gender norms and all that.
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Well yes, I agree with that. His athletic career is probably close to over, and he has a heap of gold medals to show for it. I wish him well, but feel sorry for the women denied medals by his behaviour.
 
d4m10n said:
How will answering this question help us decide where people like Lia Thomas and Laurel Hubbard ought to compete?

Seems like those latter cases are fairly straightforward, by comparison, not to mention on topic here.

ETA: Caster is not trans, since she identifies as the sex he was misassigned.
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FTFY.
 
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You brought it up, and stanfr went for it whole hog. It's kind of funny how being "on the fence" somehow results in falling into every TRA trope and dodge seen so far in this thread.
 
lionking said:
Well yes, I agree with that. His athletic career is probably close to over, and he has a heap of gold medals to show for it. I wish him well, but feel sorry for the women denied medals by his behaviour.
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I don't know if I wish him well or not. The more that has emerged on that one, the more I suspect he knew all his life he was male, but went along with the agenda to compete in athletics as a girl because of the mistake on the birth certificate. The script was written and young Caster played along for the money and the fame.

On the other hand, coming from a dirt-poor township in black South Africa isn't exactly being born with a silver spoon in your mouth, and who can really blame him for taking the chance when it came. I reserve most of my blame for the SA authorities, who knew for sure what they were doing and exploited a vulnerable young person - even if it was with his consent and to his advantage.
 
theprestige said:
You brought it up, and stanfr went for it whole hog. It's kind of funny how being "on the fence" somehow results in falling into every TRA trope and dodge seen so far in this thread.
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I was genuinely trying to figure out what he meant by sex "developing", since he didn't seem to mean the usual thing about going through puberty and sex organs becoming functional and so on.

Nobody's sex develops in any other way though. Mistakes happen, but they're still mistakes.
 
stanfr said:
No, self-ID is intended tomato things easier for people, kind of like mail-in voting.
Do you believe there is no biological basis for gender?
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I have no idea what you specifically mean by gender. What the trans activists mean by it seems pretty decoupled from biology. But I don't think they have a really coherent definition, so... not really saying much.
 
lionking said:
I think he has always been on the rational side.
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Thanks. :thumbsup::)

Criticizing both sides tends to result in taking flak from both sides because both sides are thinking I'm with the other one.

Far too much "my side right or wrong", too much "four legs good, two legs bad". Bit of a challenge to convince most people that maybe they have a few "unexamined assumptions" of their own that aren't all that tenable.

But reminds me of the quip that when one is up to one's ass in alligators it helps to remember that one did set out to drain the swamp ... ;)
 
lionking said:
Well yes, I agree with that. His athletic career is probably close to over, and he has a heap of gold medals to show for it. I wish him well, but feel sorry for the women denied medals by his behaviour.
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The one I feel sorry for most is Melissa Bishop, Canadian 800m runner.

Clearly the best female 800m runner in the world in 2016, but had the misfortune to run at the Rio Olympics when three blokes were allowed to run as women, and in a shock to absolutely nobody, finished fourth behind the three men.

She should be awarded a gold medal. That Semenya has it is a travesty.
 
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