Cont: Trans women are not women (IX)

[Rolfe]

This linked thread starts with a trigger warning. It's about what's going on in women's DV and rape shelters when men with the delusion of being women are allowed in.

These are men with fetishes that drive them to use women in whatever community they are in as props for their fetishistic sexualised behaviour. All this "be kind" and "they need refuges too" is simply enabling this.

https://twitter.com/Ju_Drops/status/1542282341648842753

 

[Paul2]

Won't anything we experience have some kind of basis in the brain?

On that basis, we don't have any disease, because it's just something happening in the body. But your more salient point is here:

Schizophrenia certainly does, but we generally don't go around validating schizophrenics lived experiences.

The content of their hallucinations or delusions, or the fact that they have them?

Similarly, the (non-)fact that gender dysphoria means that male is really a woman, or the fact that that male feels like he is a woman?

In both sentences, the first option is a stretch, but the second isn't. That's all that a lived experience need be here.

 

[theprestige]

Sorry, I misinterpreted your second paragraph as indicating that you imagined "agreeing to their demand" should even be on the cards.

Well I'm not ruling it out. Like I said earlier:

If LJ were to present a robust scientific argument for why gender dysphoria is not a mental health condition, and why claiming to have it should entitle men to be housed in women's prisons, that would be a major game-changer.

My position has always been that if it's a diagnosed medical condition, and there is broad consensus in the medical community that the best course of treatment is transcending sex segregation (including taking into account the trade-offs for other stakeholders), then we have a serious issue to discuss and resolve.

 

[theprestige]

Absolutely agree. Statements such as the highlighted are unfair generalisations.

I am an unapologetic liberal and progressive, but that does not mean I agree with all things in the progressive "agenda". I rebel against political correctness and am implacably opposed to transmen being allowed to compete in women's sports..

Yeah, that was bad behavior on my part. I apologize.

 

[Paul2]

Again, the question of whether or not the internal feeling of gender dysphoria is similar to the internal feeling of a fursona isn't the issue.

It is when EC wondered what LC meant by "valid lived experience."

The issue is what you demand of public policy, in response to you reporting the internal feeling. We don't concern ourselves much with whether claims of fursona are "real", or whether they have an organic basis (whatever that means), because the people making the claims aren't demanding major concessions in public policy, at the expense of vast swaths of the populace. If people with fursonas were making those demands, we'd be examining their claim of an internal feeling, and the nature of that feeling, a lot more closely.

Which is what we're trying to do, in response to the public policy demands being made by trans-activists. This examination is being vehemently opposed, by trans-activists.

Obviously, public policy is an important issue. We can, in this thread, talk about more than just public policy. We can talk about the medical basis, if any, for gender dysphoria, and a lot of other things, too.

 

[smartcooky]

Yeah, that was bad behavior on my part. I apologize.

Accepted

 

[Rolfe]

My position has always been that if it's a diagnosed medical condition, and there is broad consensus in the medical community that the best course of treatment is transcending sex segregation (including taking into account the trade-offs for other stakeholders), then we have a serious issue to discuss and resolve.

Since the experience of women so far in this "discussion" is that they are taked over, ignored and monstered as bigots when they try to point out that there is a conflict of rights here and maybe the abolition of all female single-sex spaces is a bit over the top to coddle the feelings of a small minority of men with a mental illness, pardon me for being instantly cynical.

To elaborate. The initial cause of all this was the decision, decades back, made by male sexologists and psychologists, that it was acceptable for them to "certify" certain of their male patients as having made a sufficiently meaningful transition and as being apparently benign and unthreatening to women (in their opinion), to be allowed to use women's single-sex facilities. This decision was taken without any consultation with women at all, and indeed without notifying women that they had done this. Women who found out about it were then pity-shamed into Being Kind.

They failed to take any account of particular situations such as women belonging to particular cultures or religious groups who are not permitted to sleep or perform sanitary necessities in a mixed-sex space. Or women who have suffered abuse from males that makes them react very badly to the presence of males in their intimate spaces. Or simply to consider that women's modesty and dignity were being compromised. They thought only of what their (male) patients wanted.

This is the background for my extremely negative reaction to any other male with no skin in this particular game pontificating that if only these men's condition fulfils certain arbitrary criteria, then they will support giving them legal access to our single-sex spaces.

 

[theprestige]

It is when EC wondered what LC meant by "valid lived experience."
Obviously, public policy is an important issue. We can, in this thread, talk about more than just public policy. We can talk about the medical basis, if any, for gender dysphoria, and a lot of other things, too.

We can certainly talk about a lot of other things, but I don't see the point. Medical basis would inform public policy. Everything else, not relating to public policy, is irrelevant, in my opinion.

After several years in this thread, it's become abundantly clear to me that the only real contention of any importance at all is the transcendence of sex segregation in public policy. Everything else is either a red herring or a stalking horse.

 

[shuttlt]

On that basis, we don't have any disease, because it's just something happening in the body.

Sure, my point was there being some kind of physical basis for the experience was not any kind of validation.

The content of their hallucinations or delusions, or the fact that they have them?

The experiences. If a schizophrenic has a delusion, we don't try to reorganise society around the truth of their delusion.

Similarly, the (non-)fact that gender dysphoria means that male is really a woman, or the fact that that male feels like he is a woman?

In both sentences, the first option is a stretch, but the second isn't. That's all that a lived experience need be here.

How is a male feeling like he is a woman any different from my plumber feeling like he is Napoleon? Both of them presumably are having some kind of internal experience that they are identifying as being them embodying the essence of something they are not and whose actual qualia they have no hope of confirming. At least there certainly is, or was, something it was like to be Napoleon. Is the same true of "woman"? There are some butch, manly women out there. Do they share this essence? It must be a subtle essence.

 

[Mycroft]

In denial, I see.

The correct word is skeptical, as one should be when they see another make extreme disparaging remarks about swaths of the population.

 

[Rolfe]

These people exist. They are pretty vocal on social media about their predilections. The actual number isn't expecially relevant, as the opening of women's intimate spaces to any male prepared to say the magic words inevitably includes them.

Or do you have a tolerance for only a certain number of women being affected, below which that's OK with you?

 

[Mycroft]

These people exist. They are pretty vocal on social media about their predilections. The actual number isn't expecially relevant, as the opening of women's intimate spaces to any male prepared to say the magic words inevitably includes them.

Just about any kind of person you can imagine will exist among the 8 billion living souls on this planet, but any time you judge a group based on the behavior of a small number of members of that group, you are being prejudiced.

Or do you have a tolerance for only a certain number of women being affected, below which that's OK with you?

I saw a very similar argument from a trumper about immigrants. He pointed to an article where an illegal immigrant from Mexico kidnapped and murdered a pretty white college student. His argument was that if this person wasn't in the USA, this young woman would not have been murdered.

Which is true, but the argument is still flawed. Can you spot the flaw?

 

[Rolfe]

I think a distinction has to be made between judging an entire group by a behaviour of a subset of that group, and deciding that, as it is impossible to exclude that subset if a privilege is given to the group, then that privilege should not be given.

 

[Emily's Cat]

That's what I was responding to.

I'm really very explicitly asking LondonJohn to provide an answer to that. I get that you can provide a reasonable response, so can most of us. We can conceptualize something that generally makes sense, even if it's fuzzy around the edges.

But LondonJohn has consistently used a handful of back-pocket phrases, and they have consistently and rather intentionally avoided ever defining or even elaborating on any of those phrases. They have been asked several times to provide more information on what they mean, and they have failed to do so.

Basically, LondonJohn persistently writes a lot of (often insulting and condescending) words that are devoid of meaning.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Who knows? Accident of biology?

Doesn't this issue just come down to whether gender dysphoria is - I hesitate to use the word, but for lack of a better one - real, in the same sense that unverifiable pain is real?

I don't think that's a useful question. Even if gender dysphoria is real, that still doesn't support that the person with dysphoria is actually the opposite sex in any meaningful way at all.

Gender dysphoria is real, btw. It is a genuine mental health condition, that merits real mental health support. I'm quite certain that many people who experience gender dysphoria to genuinely feel distress about their sexed bodies.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Well in my view his position is a veritable army of scarecrows already. That aside...

Pain: This is an internal feeling we cannot objectively verify. Instead, we expect medical professionals to apply specialized training and experience to the report. We expect them to carefully consider the available evidence, and compare it to other similar reports by other patients. We expect them to closely study the patient's behavior, the nature of their demands, and their apparent reaction over time to the medication prescribed. They won't get it right every time, but we do not therefore give them license to blindly accept or dismiss the report without properly examining the subjective and objective evidence available to them.

Homosexuality: This is an internal feeling that we can objectively verify. But most of us aren't going to bother. You say you're gay, I'm not going to start showing you photos of studmuffins to see if you get an erection or not. You say it, I believe it, that settles it. Mainly because it's nothing to me, what you get up to in the privacy of your bedroom with a consenting partner.

Fursona: Another internal feeling we can't objectively verify. We also don't care, because again, it's nothing to us if you want to cavort around in a faux-fur blue fox costume. As long as you're not demanding public policy changes, like fursona representation on corporate boards, or special restrooms for fursonas, constructed at public expense or mandated by law for private facilities, your internal experience or feeling and its outward expressions are a non-issue.

Gender dysphoria: See "fursona", above. (This, by the way, is an analogy. I don't expect it to go very well.)

I would see gender dysphoria more akin to pain in this list. I expect mental health practitioners to use actual expertise and actually treat the dysphoria. In much the same way I would expect them to use actual expertise and actually treat BIID or anorexia nervosa.

The newfangled umbrella term of "transgender" which explicitly rejects any expectation of dysphoria... yeah, that's more like 'fursona'.

 

[Mycroft]

I think a distinction has to be made between judging an entire group by a behaviour of a subset of that group, and deciding that, as it is impossible to exclude that subset if a privilege is given to the group, then that privilege should not be given.

You're claiming that transpeople have autogynophilia (AGP) and they want to victimize people's daughters by masturbating while in the bathroom with them.

That's not a reasonable claim. That is not a defensable claim.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Well now this is a rare thing indeed... I agree 100% with everything in this post. It sums up my position perfectly...

Sometimes the stars align, eh?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Not all progressives thanks.

To be fair, I think the meaning of "progressive" has drifted a whole lot in the last half a decade. It's honestly no longer identifiable as what I used to understand.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Is this really what they do?

Prove it.

Go to reddit and read the various trans subreddits. I've seen them, Rolfe has seen them, they're not exactly secret. Even twitter has a pretty good collection of pretty astonishingly horrific posts.

Seriously, you can doubt all you want while covering your eyes, but some of these people aren't even *trying* to hide it.