Cont: Trans women are not women (IX)

[Emily's Cat]

This is you committing that classic mistake of prejudiced people everywhere of extrapolating an individual's behavior to be characteristic of the entire group.

No, not the entire group. But ENOUGH of the group to be a cause of concern. ENOUGH of the group to merit serious consideration for the policies being put in place.

Here's some food for thought. When we look at transgender people who are incarcerated, there are virtually no transmen. For males in general, the rate of sexual assault is on the order of 15%. For transwomen, it's on the order of 50%. That is - 50% of transwomen in prison have records including sex crimes, compared to only 15% of males.

So... Does this mean that transwomen have a higher propensity for committing sex crimes? Or does this mean that males who commit sex crimes are more likely to claim to be transwomen (even if it's not true). In either case, what is the implication of that when prisons allow self-declared transwomen to be placed with females?

 

[Emily's Cat]

This is the same problem as always. You feel that the lines of who gets to be men and who get's to be women should be defended from deconstruction and are very concerned about what may happen if those categories are undermined, but you think what "men" and "women" are within those categories should absolutely be deconstructed and are profoundly unconcerned and optimistic about the consequences of doing that. The trans-activists have the same beliefs as you, they are just applying them to who gets to be a man or a woman, rather than how being a man or a woman is expressed. Your optimism that deconstructing maleness and femaleness is going to work itself out positively is the same optimism they feel that deconstructing who gets to be a man and who gets to be a woman is going to work out for the best.

Traditionalist: Women do the dishes.
Feminist: Both men and women do the dishes.
Trans-Activist: Whoever does the dishes is a woman.

 

[Emily's Cat]

@LondonJohn - care to give this a shot? Elaborate on the stuff you keep repeating in a way that makes your meaning clear?

Can we unpack this? You tend to use "lawyerly" language which is not clear and which causes confusion.

You say "Valid means that it is considered by science & medicine to be a genuine lived condition"

1) What do you mean by "genuine lived condition"? In this context, do you mean that people who "feel like" they're the opposite sex genuinely do feel like they're the opposite sex? In which case, you would be saying that they really do feel what they feel? Or do you mean that people who "feel like" they're the opposite sex actually, for realsies ARE the opposite sex in some fashion? In which case, you would be saying that their feelings override material reality in some meaningful way.

2) When you say "mainstream science and medicine" which sciences, and which medical practices are you referencing? Are you referring to mainstream gender studies and critical gender theory? Or are you referring to mainstream, accredited evolutionary biology, sports science, and reproductive science? Are you referring to practitioners of gender affirming medicine? Or are you referring to the medical organizations backing the decisions from Sweden, Finland, the UK, etc.?

 

[d4m10n]

And for colleges, let them build a few neutral restrooms and call it good. Easy peasy, problem solved.

I don't think this solution would be encouraged under the birth sex only bills linked to above, since said bills purport to solve the problem without funding any new builds.

Seriously, expecting to foist off someone else's identity issues for females to have to coddle is irrational, disrespectful, and incredibly inconsiderate toward females.

Forcing natal females who currently pass as males to constantly explain to other females why they are in female spaces strikes me as inconsiderate toward females as well. It's a terrible solution, on its face.

 

[theprestige]

How do we tell the difference between a sincere expression of what is going on inside of a person that can't be objectively determined, and when it is insincere, when it is fake, when it is put on? I dunno. But I know both are possible.

My understanding is that there is quite a bit of medical expertise that must be acquired and then brought to bear, on a case-by-case basis. (Indeed, it this medical expertise that LJ continuously appeals to, though he never actually cites it.)

 

[Paul2]

So... actually, pain can be observed. For low-level pain, it ends up being largely self-reported, but also doesn't usually need much in the way of intervention. For more extreme pain, most humans have involuntary reactions to it.

When I had a fractured tibial plateau, it hurt, and I could say "it hurts". But they physical reaction of my leg and my face when the orthopedist turned my lower leg was completely involuntary and completely observable. When my spouse had a kidney stone, the expression on their face, the tears, and the inability to stand upright were observable. There's even a facial-expression scale used to evaluate the degree of pain.

Sure, it may not be perfect. Someone could pretend to be in more pain than they actually are, and some tough people can mask their reactions in most cases... But genuinely, our physical bodies react to pain in pretty recognizable ways.

Sure. But there are also times when someone feels pain but not severe enough to elicit some involuntary reaction, and it was those times that are then not objectively verifiable if the doctor can't find an organic (?) cause, and that was the analogy I wanted to draw.

 

[Paul2]

Ok, as you say it is rhetorical. If we want to say that some lunatic who thinks they are Napoleon has a "valid lived experience", I'm certainly happy to agree that a man who believes they are a woman is having just as valid an experience. I don't think I want to use the terminology though, because it looks like a way of implying that the experience has some actual validity that a delusion wouldn't.

Except that we still have the possibility of an analogy to pain for a valid experience, instead of it necessarily being a delusion, right?

 

[Rolfe]

I have often heard people with back pain complain that doctors don't believe them and refuse to prescribe painkillers, because false accounts of back pain are apparently used by drug addicts to get hold of prescription opioids. So it isn't the case that everyone who says "I'm in pain" is unquestionably believed. Or "considered to have a valid lived experience as we appear to be calling it now." So I don't think it's a great analogy.

Believing you are the sex you verifiably, objectively, aren't, believing you're Napoleon and believing you're an attack helicopter, if that is indeed your subjective experiece of your existence, would all seem to me to be "valid lived experience". As would schizophrenia, anorexia nervosa, bipolar syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder. I genuinely do not see the difference.

How people who suffer from these conditions are treated and helped is a matter for their medical practitioners. If indeed these medical practitioners want to declare that the proper treatment for one such group is to be permitted to invade the intimate spaces of the sex they aren't, then some acknowledgement of the conflict of rights raised by this would be appreciated.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Again the loop is we aren't supposed to treat men and women differently in our society so in an ideal world "Treat me like a woman/man" would be a nonsensical statement, akin to "I demand you treat me like I have a certain blood type." The concept would not be right or wrong it would just be nonsensical.

Again the language has been hate ****** so much that it's literally impossible to say anything but after... like 5 years of this discussion basically I'm still where I started.

1. I can't change the things which aren't changeable. If you have a penis or a vagina you have a penis or vagina.

2. Everything that is changeable I don't care about. Wear a dress, wear pants, wear makeup, don't wear makeup, stay at home and raise the kids, go out and get a career, etc, etc, etc, etc and I cannot put any more effort into not caring.

And you notice in those two statements what words didn't appear once? Man, woman, male, female, gender, sex, cis, trans, or identity

I put the challenge out several times for people to explain their views without using those words. I can do it. So all the endless, endless, endless, endless, endless, endless, pointless, pointless, pointless, pointless, pointless hair splitting and debate and throwing the dictionary at each other about any of those doesn't matter to me and can't be used to argue my point.

Your biological structure is an objective fact. Your role in society should be your choice as undetached from the first point as possible.. There. Someone argue with THAT.

 

[Paul2]

I have often heard people with back pain complain that doctors don't believe them and refuse to prescribe painkillers, because false accounts of back pain are apparently used by drug addicts to get hold of prescription opioids. So it isn't the case that everyone who says "I'm in pain" is unquestionably believed. Or "considered to have a valid lived experience as we appear to be calling it now." So I don't think it's a great analogy.

I hope I was careful with my qualifiers. My analogy doesn't need to say *all* pain must believed in order to identify some cases in which pain is believable but cannot be objectively verified.

Heck, I had a pain in/near my ribs that my doctor couldn't figure out, x-rays showed nothing, but he gave no indication that he didn't believe me.

All I need is a *single* instance for my analogy to be functional. If there has ever been a single instance of believable/believed pain that is not objectively verifiable, and if we can accept that belief as proper, as it was with my doctor, then I can use *that* single instance as an analogy to the trans experience.

My analogy does not make a claim as to whether trans experience is equivalent to subjective pain as qualified above. But the analogy says we can't rule it out merely because we never do anything like that in any other situation.

 

[JoeMorgue]

The problem is if you tell 100 people that 10 of them are special and 90 of them are ordinary, 90 of them will declare themselves part of the special 10% and fight you, surprisingly hard, on it.

People love rules not applying to them, and that means rules of language and categorization as much or more than anything.

"I don't like being part of an established group, so I demand to be a hamburger with cheese on it and not just a cheeseburger" is the elephant in the room motivation we've been dancing around for a while now.

It's why treating them like they want to be treated isn't enough, you have to literally conceptualize them as they want to be conceptualized.

 

[Paul2]

Believing you are the sex you verifiably, objectively, aren't, believing you're Napoleon and believing you're an attack helicopter, if that is indeed your subjective experiece of your existence, would all seem to me to be "valid lived experience". As would schizophrenia, anorexia nervosa, bipolar syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder. I genuinely do not see the difference.

I think the difference is that, say, a male with a lived experience of being a woman need not - I am choosing my words carefully here, please read them carefully - think they are a woman in the same way that someone is under the delusion they are Napoleon in order to still report the feeling they have as if they are a woman.

I suppose the next step is to question whether the feeling they have is the same feeling that women have as women, and how does any male know that?

 

[Rolfe]

I hope I was careful with my qualifiers. My analogy doesn't need to say *all* pain must believed in order to identify some cases in which pain is believable but cannot be objectively verified.

Heck, I had a pain in/near my ribs that my doctor couldn't figure out, x-rays showed nothing, but he gave no indication that he didn't believe me.

All I need is a *single* instance for my analogy to be functional. If there has ever been a single instance of believable/believed pain that is not objectively verifiable, and if we can accept that belief as proper, as it was with my doctor, then I can use *that* single instance as an analogy to the trans experience.

My analogy does not make a claim as to whether trans experience is equivalent to subjective pain as qualified above. But the analogy says we can't rule it out merely because we never do anything like that in any other situation.

I don't honestly know what you're arguing about. I don't think anyone is claiming that nobody really experiences the condition of being trans. The question is, why should people who have this experience be allowed to force the rest of society to behave as if the objective reality of what sex they are doesn't exist?

 

[JoeMorgue]

"You can never know what it's like to feel like being this..." is a though terminating cliche, you could say it about anything and shut down the discussion.

Give me 100 dollars. You'll never know what it's like to be a left handed atheist Naval Veteran who likes Tom Waits and Dark Souls.

 

[theprestige]

"You can never know what it's like to feel like being this..." is a though terminating cliche, you could say it about anything and shut down the discussion.

If that were true, we could solve the entire trans controversy in a moment, by pointing out that a man can never know what it feels like to be a woman, and that therefore whatever gender dysphoria actually is, it cannot possibly be a "valid lived condition" of womanhood.

The reality is that progressives are more than happy to deploy the cliche to terminate any thought they disapprove of, but will steadfastly withhold it, when it comes to thoughts they wish to foster.

 

[Rolfe]

If that were true, we could solve the entire trans controversy in a moment, by pointing out that a man can never know what it feels like to be a woman, and that therefore whatever gender dysphoria actually is, it cannot possibly be a "valid lived condition" of womanhood.

The reality is that progressives are more than happy to deploy the cliche to terminate any thought they disapprove of, but will steadfastly withhold it, when it comes to thoughts they wish to foster.

I think that gets pointed out quite often, actually. Men no more know what it feels like to be a woman than I know what it feels like to be a cat. In spite of my avatar.

 

[shuttlt]

Except that we still have the possibility of an analogy to pain for a valid experience, instead of it necessarily being a delusion, right?

If I believe I am Napoleon, I am delusional. If I believe I am a woman, I am delusional. We can reframe "being Napoleon" to some social act of "performing Napoleon", or some inner essence of Napoleonnes that I am somehow possibly experiencing, and so perhaps I am Napoleon? Why can't we play the same game for being Napoleon that we have for being a woman? What delusional belief can't be "valid" if we only go to the effort of playing language games to validate it?

 

[Paul2]

I don't honestly know what you're arguing about. I don't think anyone is claiming that nobody really experiences the condition of being trans. The question is, why should people who have this experience be allowed to force the rest of society to behave as if the objective reality of what sex they are doesn't exist?

Some here didn't understand what was meant by a "valid, lived experience." I tried to make an analogy to pain as a valid lived experience. That's all. The rest has merely be me trying to explain what I wrote. That's it.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Some here didn't understand what was meant by a "valid, lived experience."

Yes. Nobody does. Including the people using it as an argument. Because it doesn't make any sense.

People just keep adding words to already established concepts.

First it was gender. Then it was gender role or gender identity. Now it's a "valid lived experience of perceiving the experience of identifying as a vessel who experiences the perception of identifying as one that experiences...."

Add more words to it, it won't matter.

There's what you are and what you want to be. That's it. That's the only two variables. There's no third axis to fit a "Gender Soul" into.

 

[Paul2]

If I believe I am Napoleon, I am delusional. If I believe I am a woman, I am delusional. We can reframe "being Napoleon" to some social act of "performing Napoleon", or some inner essence of Napoleonnes that I am somehow possibly experiencing, and so perhaps I am Napoleon? Why can't we play the same game for being Napoleon that we have for being a woman? What delusional belief can't be "valid" if we only go to the effort of playing language games to validate it?

Does this help, especially the highlighted sections?

I think the difference is that, say, a male with a lived experience of being a woman need not - I am choosing my words carefully here, please read them carefully - think they are a woman in the same way that someone is under the delusion they are Napoleon in order to still report the feeling they have as if they are a woman. . . .