Transwomen are not Women - Part 14

[JoeMorgue]

Here's a question I've asked multiple times to the trans side.

Can a person say 'I am this gender' and be wrong? If not this is an amazingly meaningless distinction to make.

 

[Emily's Cat]

“Won’t you drink from this not-at-all poisoned well? *wink*”

You already know my answer, because:

1. I’ve made no secret that I reject essentialism, as have most sociologists since at least the 80s.
2. the idea of that photos of people with even hignly normative gender expressions are deterministic of a wide range of their biological characteristics is reductive.
3. you already have poisoned the well by saying that anyone who does not assume binary 1-to-1 determinism is, and I directly quote, “a ******* moron”.

So, no. I don’t care to have a go. After all, I’m the disingenuous one.

Thanks for the offer, though.

JFC.

This is not biological essentialism. Essentialism is:

The belief that ‘human nature’, an individual's personality, or some specific quality (such as intelligence, creativity, homosexuality, masculinity, femininity, or a male propensity to aggression) is an innate and natural ‘essence’ (rather than a product of circumstances, upbringing, and culture).

It's also not determinism. Determinism takes the position that a person's genetics alone determines their personality and their behavior. In the context of sex, it gets used synonymously with essentialism.

We're not talking about people's personalities, and what their "natural" behavior is, and what roles in society that "essential nature" makes them suited or unsuited for. We're talking about physical reality, the phenotypes associated with our reproductive role (which is NOT social in nature) and the associated secondary characteristics that are a result of sexual dimorphism.

Your extraordinary claim that we're completely unable to tell what sex a person is unless we literally see their genitals uncovered is fantasist claptrap. It defies millions of years of evolution, not just of the human species but of nearly all mammals.

We're not talking about "gender expression" either. Gender expression is the set of external accessories that get used to "signal" our sex. These are socially constructed, but they're also not rigid. And with the exception of extremely rare cases, they don't obfuscate our observation of a person's sexual characteristics. Those rare cases, by the way, are nearly always ones where a person has gone to great lengths to intentionally hide their natural secondary characteristics and to mimic those of the opposite sex.

Once again, I will point out that if YOU toss on a dress and some lippy, you're not going to suddenly be mistaken for a female. Similarly, if your female spouse tosses on some dungarees and work boots, nobody is going to accidentally assume they have a penis.

Take a collection of 1000 bog-standard adult human males and put them in dresses and heels, and 999 of them will be CORRECTLY identified as males by random passersby. Take a collection of 1000 bog-standard adult human females and put them in trousers and loafers, and 995 of them will be CORRECTLY identified as females by random passersby.

You might note that there's a slight difference there - it's easier for females to pass as males than the other way around. There are a host of BIOLOGICAL reasons for this. I could explain them to you, but it requires you to actually acknowledge that males and females are different in some fundamental ways, and that those differences begin in the womb and are significantly increased at puberty.

And at the moment, you seem to be making the transparently false claim that there's no observable differences between the sexes, it's all just based on clothing and make-up. Please stop uttering nonsense.

 

[Emily's Cat]

They're sociology terms, not philosophy.

If you're going to make fun of how stupid I am, you should at least get the field of study right.

Yeah, well, we're talking about ******* biology here, so try to keep up.

 

[Emily's Cat]

As a woman who has spent her whole life fighting gender stereotypes, ever since starting my first engineering job in 1970, this is what I find particularly depressing. Why can't people just wear what they want to wear, behave as they are naturally inclined to behave, without needing to "identify as" anything at all?

I've encountered some prejudice whilst pursuing a career in a predominantly male industry, but the only difference my being female has made to my choices and actions has been due to the fact that it inevitably makes me vulnerable to male sexual predators. Now I'm seeing women's ability to keep themselves safe being eroded in order to perpetuate the very stereotypes my generation rejected.

It's distressing, isn't it?

I'm a bit younger than you, having entered the workforce in the mid-90s. But even through my college career studying mathematics, there was so much less reinforcement of stereotypes than there is now. Pretty much the only time that typical female clothing and makeup came into my mind was when I was trying to attract a sexual partner... or as you say, trying to avoid the attention of predators.

It's come back as I've progressed in my career though. As a lower level analyst, it didn't matter at all that I almost always wore trousers and flats, with no make-up. As long as I was clean and looked like I picked my clothing on purpose, nobody cared. When I moved into lower-level management, it started to matter more. I noticed that higher-level leadership (especially males) didn't take me seriously unless I fit their view of "professional woman", which often meant heels and make-up, though I still didn't wear make-up.

Right now, I'm progressing into upper-level leadership, and it's a decision point for me. I don't dye my hair, and it's graying in a rather nice fashion IMO. But I'm now at a point where I really do need to wear make-up if I'm interacting with peers and executives. I'm still not doing heels though, those are the invention of sadists. But I find myself choosing pant suits that are tailored to a female form. It sucks, they're not generally as comfortable... but the reinforcement of stereotypes is making it nearly impossible to avoid.

And I get downright depressed when I talk to younger females, especially those in their twenties and thirties. The expectation that they not only dress in "feminine" attire, but outright sexualized attire is rife. If they don't show some skin, they get ignored... but if they do show some skin, they get objectified. It's a catch-22.

When I'm feeling particularly conspiracy-minded, I imagine that there's some sort of Illuminati of Males out there, engaged in concerted social engineering with the objective of coercing females to become subordinate vessels owned by males.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I agree 100%, but can tell you why they do it. Because they have been told to do it by the pro self ID idiots and their supporters. Its not enough to just be allowed to tell themselves who they are, they MUST tell everyone else and push it in their faces. They must force their ideas on everyone. They want the public at large to play by their rules.

Well, **** them! I refuse to play along with this stupid game of theirs. If someone who is obviously a man, tries telling me they self-ID as a woman, and that I must use "miss" or "mrs" pronouns, I will simply refuse to do so. I will avoid using any pronoun at all in most situations, an in those that require one, in the first person I will use their surname if I know it, or "you" if I don't, and in the third person I will use "them" or "it".

It's actually not as hard as I thought it would be. It's been... at least two years now that I've been using exclusively neutral pronouns here. So far as I can tell, nobody has yet been confused with regard to who I'm referencing. Sometimes it takes an extra second of read-through to make sure I'm disambiguating, but it's been easier than I expected.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Why can't people just wear what they want to wear, behave as they are naturally inclined to behave, without needing to "identify as" anything at all?

Indeed.

Slight aside for the fun of it... When I was in my freshman and sophomore year of college, I dated a male who routinely wore a skirt. It was some hippie-wear thing that was sold as unisex, and could be easily converted into weird wrap-around tie-dyed pants, or left loose as a skirt. They had three or four of them in different colors, and always wore them as skirts... because it was more comfortable and kept their balls from getting sweaty.

No "identity" was needed - this was the early 90s, and it was okay for males to wear makeup and lace and spangly stuff if they wanted to. Prince would roll over in their grave to see what's become of the world these days.

 

[JoeMorgue]

At this point I don't even know what "identity" means. It certainly seems to have taken on a meaning beyond "The collection of factual demographic variables that I am" to some people and has morphed into something somewhere between a horoscope sign and a soul.

I don't "identify" as anything in the sense of making conscious decisions to be this or that. I am certain things that are objectively true. I am biologically male, left handed, a Type O+ bloodtype, about 5'9, 185 lbs on a good day. But these are things that are up for debate. You can't argue them. I don't "identify" as them as if it were a verb, I just AM those things.

Those things are part of my identity but I don't "identify" as them. It's not a verb, it's adjectives.

The trans side seems to be using "Identify as" as a way to take "I want to be" and codify it into some special kind of actually, literally being.

And honestly I sorta think that is what happened. "I was born a man but I wish I had been born a woman" makes 100%, absolute, not complicated, not a "spectrum" sense. I fully understand it and get it. You tell me that, and there is no confusion.

But sorry changing the inherent sexual dimorphism of the human species is hard. We can barely begin to do it and questions as to whether we can ever fully do it is complicated.

And that's frustrating for people who feel they were born in the wrong bodies and I have sympathy for that. And it's doubly frustrating in a society which still puts so many nonsense rules on the sexes. Being in a society that makes men and women do a bunch of stupid crap just because they were born men and women AND feeling like you were meant for the other role must suck and I mean that.

But it's still to big a jump from that to "Therefore I can just identify as the other side."

 

[JoeMorgue]

The whole mythology of the "trans person who can perfectly pass" is something we've had to deal with before. And nobody is buying it. The trans closet is about as closed as the gay closet was and newflash my homie sexuals the gay closet was NEVER as closed as you thought it was. The "Closet" was always more about plausible deniability and being able to maintain the illusion that nobody knew rather then literally not knowing.

There was a period a year or so back when the discussion was just flooded with insufferable people who thought it was a trump card to post pictures of post-op trans people who had A) where obviously lucky enough to be somewhat androgynous to begin with, B) had obviously had a LOT of work done, and C) were still images taken in perfect lightning that we couldn't see in motion or context and go "Oh so you're saying this person should us this bathroom?" over and over and over and over and over.

And no. in 99.9999999999999999% of cases you don't "pass." There is just too much sexual dimorphism in the human species. Things like height, weight, build, shoulder width, hip width, Adams apples, facial structure, facial hair, breasts... they don't change when you "identity" as something else.

 

[theprestige]

Exactly. This debate would be a lot different if it were about naturally effeminate males who wish they could just be left alone to pass as women like they naturally tend to do anyway.

The whole point of preferred pronouns is that the people that prefer them aren't passing.

ETA: And while I am not saying Upchurch should shut up, I do wish he'd engage with the actual problem, rather than chasing every single red herring in the TRA playbook.

 

[Emily's Cat]

At this point I don't even know what "identity" means. It certainly seems to have taken on a meaning beyond "The collection of factual demographic variables that I am" to some people and has morphed into something somewhere between a horoscope sign and a soul.

I don't "identify" as anything in the sense of making conscious decisions to be this or that. I am certain things that are objectively true. I am biologically male, left handed, a Type O+ bloodtype, about 5'9, 185 lbs on a good day. But these are things that are up for debate. You can't argue them. I don't "identify" as them as if it were a verb, I just AM those things.

Those things are part of my identity but I don't "identify" as them. It's not a verb, it's adjectives.

The trans side seems to be using "Identify as" as a way to take "I want to be" and codify it into some special kind of actually, literally being.

I think this has been posted in various forms before, but it's not a common bit that's been talked to death, so I'll toss it out here again

There are two commonly used meaning for "identity".

The first, and by far the most common, is the set of objective characteristics that other people use to disambiguate you from other people. These tend to be physical most of the time - height, weight, eye color, hair color, etc. These are the types of things that end up on your various identification documents, which you use to prove that you are you to officials. Sometimes, this sort of identity extends beyond the physical, in which case it's usually associated with either a career or a very strong reputation. Again, though, these are items that other people use to pick you out of a crowd.

The other, less prevalent type of "identity" is a psychological aspect. It's the set of characteristics that forms your view of yourself for yourself. It's usually a combination of how you see yourself and how you want other people to see you, and it's usually based on personality and behavioral characteristics. For most well-adjusted people, how we think of ourselves is a fair reflection of how other people think about us - we are what we present to the world, we're honest in how we interact with others, and we're fairly objective about how we see ourselves. A lot of people have an element of psychological identity that is important to them, and it's very rarely something physical. It's usually associated with accomplishments, overcoming challenges, etc. Sometimes it's a little more nuanced. So for example, part of my psychological identity is associated with being an actuary, in particular with the type of thinking about uncertainties that comes with that. But another part of my psychological identity is associated with being a clear communicator. It's important to me that I feel that I'm understood, and to meet that need, I've put a lot of work into making sure that other people understand what I'm saying. I work with a lot of very complex information, with a high degree of uncertainty and varying degrees of materiality - being able to explain why my recommendation is a good recommendation, and support how I've come to that conclusion is vital to both my career and my sense of well-being.

I don't have the reference for this... but there's been some psychological research done that touches on these two types of identity. When we're asked to outline another person's identity, we tend to lean heavily on physical attributes (the first type of identity). When we're asked to outline our own identity, we tend to incorporate a lot more psychological and personality characteristics (the second type of identity). This is of course because we understand our own reasoning and thinking, and that's all opaque when we're talking about someone else.

There's a fair amount of the DSM-5 that is focused around Identity Disorders. In some people, the way they see themselves is in contradiction to how other people see them. These aren't perception disorders (like anorexia), where a person's perception of themselves differs from objective reality. These are based on the psychological characteristics that a person associates with themselves, but which are not in evidence by their observed behaviors and personalities. Identity Disorders often occur in tandem with various Behavioral or Personality Disorders, to greater or lesser degree.

The problem with the whole trans thing, to my mind at least, is that these are people who take their Psychological Identity and want to force other people to perceive them that way. How they view themselves is in contradiction to how other people view them... and they want other people to be required to adopt their own psychological identity as if it were reality. They think of themselves as having the psychological characteristics (which are often incredibly sexist in nature) of the opposite sex, regardless of whether they actually exhibit those characteristics or not. And they want other people to interpret their physical identity differently. So a male might psychologically see themselves as being delicate, feminine, graceful, sexy, sensual, submissive, emotional, etc. And because they believe that those psychological characteristic are an innate aspect of females (note that this is actually biological essentialism) they then wish for everyone else to see them as being female. In reality, most of the time, they aren't seen as being female by objective observers, and a whole lot of the time they're not perceived as having any of the behavioral traits they associate with females either. Many of them are quite aggressive and dominating, and are observably male. So at the end of the day, their "identity" becomes a force of coercion and control of those around them.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Yeah and like I said the second definition is functionally 100% identical to "Things you want to be."

Sure there's semantics at play here but there no functional difference between a desire to be something else and this "psychological identity."

 

[Lithrael]

(...)we're EXTREMELY good at discerning the sex of adults. There've been numerous studies that demonstrate that even when you remove all makeup and hair, we can correctly identify the sex of a person from their face alone with about 99% accuracy.

Who's 'we,' giimoozaabi? Outliers exist and those of us who don't clock gender at all well are some of the people most thrown by all of this.

On the other hand... when people make a concerted and intentional effort to obfuscate their sex and to mimic the markers of the opposite sex, yes, it gets more difficult. Sexual mimicry can and does complicate things. But that doesn't mean that we're not incredibly good at determining sex, it just means that we can be tricked by people who make efforts to present false indicators.

OK but I feel like here you are conflating like actual medical intervention 'false indicators' and just plain 'what do you mean? I woke up like this!' hair-and-makeup 'false indicators' and the distinction is important if you claim to be frustrated with what you see as transgenderism's reinforcement of gender essentialist gender performance. If ideally it should be ok for a guy who thinks of himself as a man to dress all the way up to the wetlook lips and high heels, is he still gonna be described as 'tricking' people?

Lastly I'm gonna be doubtful that 'you gotta dress up more like a lady from TV to be taken seriously as an exec or as a new hire' is a corporate pressure that's either a) actually suddenly resurgent after having gone away or b) got much to do with the influence of the transgenders being more of a thing now.

Joe: Yeah nothing, just the way they'd like to be adressed, that's it, gender is fake but that's a truth the world is not ready for

Upchurch: Again though, families that don't do a strong gender lean still don't get you a kid that is socialized as (gender) for the gender-socialization effects we're talking about, like baseline encouragement/discouragement for a range of gender normative activities. Apart from anything else, the immidiate family aren't the only people the kid will ever be interacting with. Again, the gender enforcement stuff isn't done by EVERYONE, just by enough people that a kid picks it up.

 

[Lithrael]

The whole mythology of the "trans person who can perfectly pass" is something we've had to deal with before. And nobody is buying it. The trans closet is about as closed as the gay closet was and newflash my homie sexuals the gay closet was NEVER as closed as you thought it was. The "Closet" was always more about plausible deniability and being able to maintain the illusion that nobody knew rather then literally not knowing.

Look ok look for real.

Edited by sarge: 

removed uncivil content

. I disagree as strongly as it is possible to disagree. Like, adrenalin amounts of disagree.

In the Venn diagram for both of these groups 'it's obvious, you're just in denial' is a smaller circle inside a circle that's bigger than you apparantly think.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Yeah and like I said the second definition is functionally 100% identical to "Things you want to be."

Sure there's semantics at play here but there no functional difference between a desire to be something else and this "psychological identity."

The only difference is that for normal, non-disordered people, they don't desire to be something else. Their psychological view of themselves is fairly well aligned to their actual behavior.

Like, I'd guess that most of the posters here see themselves as "intelligent". And for the vast majority, they're pretty much right. Virtually everyone who posts here regularly is more intelligent than the average person, often by a fair margin. So their internal view of their personalities is largely in agreement with how other people perceive them.

Sometimes they aren't perceived as being as intelligent as they think they are, but compared to an average person, they're still accurate.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Look ok look for real. **** all the way off. I disagree as strongly as it is possible to disagree. Like, adrenalin amounts of disagree.

In the Venn diagram for both of these groups 'it's obvious, you're just in denial' is a smaller circle inside a circle that's bigger than you apparantly think.

So you're telling me that you are of the opinion that there is a statistically meaningful number of people out there that I am/would be wrong about their biological sex based on their outward, for lack of a better term, presentation and the fact that I disagree with you about this makes meaningfully angry?

I'm just laying out in plan words where this discussion is at right now.

You're mad at me because I said in most cases a person can't fool another person for any reasonable length of time as to their biological sex.

 

[JoeMorgue]

The only difference is that for normal, non-disordered people, they don't desire to be something else. Their psychological view of themselves is fairly well aligned to their actual behavior.

Like, I'd guess that most of the posters here see themselves as "intelligent". And for the vast majority, they're pretty much right. Virtually everyone who posts here regularly is more intelligent than the average person, often by a fair margin. So their internal view of their personalities is largely in agreement with how other people perceive them.

Sometimes they aren't perceived as being as intelligent as they think they are, but compared to an average person, they're still accurate.

I don't think they are disordered. I think they are wrong about the practical application of how they choose to express and perceive gender roles. Again I've never let myself demonize them.

I consider myself intelligent and there are plenty of things I'd rather be then "me." I'd much rather be 6'4" with far less body fat and a stronger jawline, I just don't think "identify" as that when I'm demonstratably not has any meaning.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Who's 'we,' giimoozaabi? Outliers exist and those of us who don't clock gender at all well are some of the people most thrown by all of this.

"We" being the overwhelming majority of human beings. If you, specifically, suck at this, that's your problem. And your outlier status does not redefine reality for the whole ******* species. FFS, this is some argumentative playground BS. This is more or less up there with people wanting to pop in and say "What do you mean "we" are a bipedal species? I only have one leg!!!!!" It's inane on its face, so please don't do it.

OK but I feel like here you are conflating like actual medical intervention 'false indicators' and just plain 'what do you mean? I woke up like this!' hair-and-makeup 'false indicators' and the distinction is important if you claim to be frustrated with what you see as transgenderism's reinforcement of gender essentialist gender performance. If ideally it should be ok for a guy who thinks of himself as a man to dress all the way up to the wetlook lips and high heels, is he still gonna be described as 'tricking' people?

"I just woke up like this" is mistaken as the opposite sex so extremely rarely that an intelligent and good-faith interlocutor would not try to foist it off as having any relevance to what I said.

Lastly I'm gonna be doubtful that 'you gotta dress up more like a lady from TV to be taken seriously as an exec or as a new hire' is a corporate pressure that's either a) actually suddenly resurgent after having gone away or b) got much to do with the influence of the transgenders being more of a thing now.

Okay. You doubt away then. You've already claimed to be an outlier in a whole lot of ways, so if you're also painfully oblivious to the resurgence of stereotypes and the pressure they exert in professional roles, I'm supremely unconcerned by your doubt.

But hey, why don't you go do some research? Go look at female executives throughout the developed world... and get back to me on how many of them conform to female clothing standard expectations (dress or skirt suit, or female-tailored pant suit, makeup, hair style) and how many don't? That would be a good start to test whether your argument from disbelief holds any water or not, and maybe give you a chance for some introspection.

You might also note that I didn't attribute all of this reinforcement of sexist stereotypes to transgender ideology. You might note that... if you actually read for comprehension rather than your de rigeur opportunistic drive-by to let us all know that you're an exception and don't agree with me or the other females who post in this thread regularly. We get it, you're "not like other girls". Great for you.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I don't think they are disordered. I think they are wrong about the practical application of how they choose to express and perceive gender roles. Again I've never let myself demonize them.

It's disordered in the same way that my bipolar sibling's perception of themself as being a true sweetheart who never hurts anyone's feelings, and is really just the victim of an entire world full of meanies is disordered.

It's not a demonization. It's an accurate term for someone whose beliefs and self-perception are significantly in contradiction to objective reality.

I consider myself intelligent and there are plenty of things I'd rather be then "me." I'd much rather be 6'4" with far less body fat and a stronger jawline, I just don't think "identify" as that when I'm demonstratably not has any meaning.

Sure, but you understand the distinction between what you wish you were and what you are, don't you? You comprehend that your wishes are just wishes, and that no amount of wanting is going to make it materialize, right?

That's where the difference between ordered and disordered thinking comes in.

If you started going around telling everyone that you "identify" as a 6'4" person with Bruce Campbell's chin, and then insisting that they must all accept you as such for realsies... Then I would say your thinking was disordered.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Over and over we get someone popping in and saying that trans is so incredibly rare that it totally doesn't matter at all if transgender identified males compete in female sports. It's a non-issue, and essentially, females should just STFU and let the males win.

I'm going to try to add a link whenever yet another male wins a female competition, thereby displacing a female and depriving them of fairness in sport.

Here's one from today:
https://twitter.com/ReduxxMag/status/1734282808443466060

A trans-identified male is now the Women's Singlespeed national champion after seizing gold at the USA Cycling Cyclocross Championships last week in Louisville, Kentucky.

Kylie Small was competing with men as recently as April of this year.

 

[Paul2]

Over and over we get someone popping in and saying that trans is so incredibly rare that it totally doesn't matter at all if transgender identified males compete in female sports. It's a non-issue, and essentially, females should just STFU and let the males win.

I'm going to try to add a link whenever yet another male wins a female competition, thereby displacing a female and depriving them of fairness in sport.

Here's one from today:
https://twitter.com/ReduxxMag/status/1734282808443466060

Let’s grant for the sake of argument that trans folk winning sports championships is very rare. It won’t matter, then, to the vast majority of competitors. But it will matter to the competitors that get beaten by the trans person. Those competitors by themselves deserve some sort of accommodation.