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Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

Emily's Cat said:
Do you think that both sides have equally valid standing?
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Legally, of course. In terms of persuasive argument, no.

If we had to have just one marker, I'd say we go with "sex" as it was understood twenty years ago.

I'd argue that a better solution (by far) would be to educate people into the understanding that sex and gender are two separate phenomena which ought not be crammed into a single variable.
 
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d4m10n said:
Judging by the replies to #2521 they are in good company here. Evidently both sides want just one marker, and they each want it to mean exactly what they mean by it.
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Except that those who want biological sex to be that marker are following both scientific fact and objective, observable reality. The others just follow feelings.

Facts don't care about your feelings.
 
smartcooky said:
Facts don't care about your feelings.
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Factually speaking, is it easier to identify someone who passes as a man if you've been given a heads up not to be looking for a run-of-the-mill female who's never taken testosterone? If so, then we're still in the realm of facts here.
 
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d4m10n said:
I'd argue that a better solution (by far) would be to educate people into the understanding that sex and gender are two separate phenomena which ought not be crammed into a single variable.
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I agree that they shouldn't be crammed into a single variable.

I'm not convinced I agree that they're both actual phenomena. At least, no more so that I would accept that body and soul are two separate phenomena.

I am, however, curious as to what your argument is to support them being two separate phenomena that should each be separately recognized. I think you and I agree on what constitutes sex, at least enough so that we don't need to go into any detail on that. But how would you define gender such that it should be considered a variable in this context?
 
d4m10n said:
Factually speaking, is it easier to identify someone who passes as a man if you've been given a heads up not to be looking for a run-of-the-mill female who's never taken testosterone? If so, then we're still in the realm of facts here.
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I've read this five times, and I can't parse it, something isn't clicking. Can you try elaborating or rephrasing please?
 
d4m10n said:
Factually speaking, is it easier to identify someone who passes as a man if you've been given a heads up not to be looking for a run-of-the-mill female who's never taken testosterone? If so, then we're still in the realm of facts here.
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To paraphrase JKR... no matter how much lipstick and makeup the male wears, his meat and two veg will give the game away every time!
 
Emily's Cat said:
I've read this five times, and I can't parse it, something isn't clicking. Can you try elaborating or rephrasing please?
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Damion's point is just that telling you someone is trans makes it slightly easier to identify them than if you didn't know. From a bayesian perspective I think that's valid. It may not be all that much information, but its information.

If you told me that the person I was trying to find in a crowd trains powerlifting, I'd probably find them faster than if I didn't know that, because I'd keep my eyes out for a particular type of physique. It wouldn't be 100% accurate, because some people train more than others and you can still have some skinny guy who trains twice a month. But it's still information.

Still, I don't think we should include people's hobbies on their ID, even if that information is potentially useful.

Aside from it being noisy information, there's also the issue of abuse. People can lie about their hobbies and they can lie about being trans. Its not entirely clear to me what the scenario is where we're meant to be using the information on someone's ID. I assume in most such cases the person wants to be identifiable, like when a cop pulls you over, you want them to be able to identify that yes, you are the person on the ID. But if there are any adversarial situations, where people don't want to be identified, then listing hobbies or self-ID gender, is an opportunity for people to choose to be less identifiable. I'm not sure this is an actual issue, but it does seem worth mentioning.

As I said, I think the main issue is just that while there's some information there, it's noisy and not particularly useful. If a male is wearing makeup but in their ID photo they aren't and their ID just says "Sex: Male", I don't think that adding "gender: feminine" would be an aha moment for the cop. The person handing over the ID can just say "yeah, I'm trans".

I can't really think of any situation where including gender on an ID would actually be useful.
 
In the UK one of the two most used “ID” verification methods - the driving licence - doesn’t have sex on it, and I’m struggling to think why we need that info on any officially accepted ID these days. For instance the UK driving licence has a photo of you which is probably the best quick check method of verification. And given technology today if we need more than that we should be looking at biometric verification.
 
Wes Streeting is banning puberty blockers permanently.
Puberty is a human right.
Eta
Puberty is a rite of passage.
 
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Roboramma said:
I can't really think of any situation where including gender on an ID would actually be useful.
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I've already provided one above: any "spa or gym...which openly supports the reasoning behind CA civil rights laws" and wants a state-issued i.d. to settle which patrons go in which locker room. Other examples might include clothiers who want a state-issued i.d. to settle which patrons go in which room to try on clothes, or nightclubs who want to provide lower admission to self-identified women on ladies' night.
 
d4m10n said:
I've already provided one above: any "spa or gym...which openly supports the reasoning behind CA civil rights laws" and wants a state-issued i.d. to settle which patrons go in which locker room.
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If the state issued ID's gender category is based on self-ID then it doesn't really add anything to just asking the person "which locker rooms do you want to use?".


Other examples might include clothiers who want a state-issued i.d. to settle which patrons go in which room to try on clothes, or nightclubs who want to provide lower admission to self-identified women on ladies' night.
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My above comment applies to both of these, but I also generally don't really see them wanting to use gender instead of sex.

But anyway, I'm happy to accept that are probably some edge cases where people would find it moderately useful to have a state issued ID that lists gender. These sorts of cases however aren't a compelling enough reason to apply state resources to adding gender to ID.

I mean, there are probably also some cases where someone would find it useful to have a list of your hobbies on their ID, but that doesn't make a strong enough case to actually add that to state issued IDs.
 
Roboramma said:
These sorts of cases however aren't a compelling enough reason to apply state resources to adding gender to ID.
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At this point in time, we need to talk about adding "sex" rather than adding "gender" because most Americans live in states where the two categories have already been mashed together into a single (useless) one which suffers all the deficiencies you mentioned above but also fails to tell us sex at birth.
 
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d4m10n said:
At this point in time, we need to talk about adding "sex" rather than adding "gender" because most Americans live in states where the two categories have already been mashed together into a single (useless) one which suffers all the deficiencies you mentioned above but also fails to tell us sex at birth.
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I suspect the vast majority of them aren't even aware of that and would almost certainly object if they knew.
 
Emily's Cat said:
I am, however, curious as to what your argument is to support them being two separate phenomena that should each be separately recognized. I think you and I agree on what constitutes sex, at least enough so that we don't need to go into any detail on that. But how would you define gender such that it should be considered a variable in this context?
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Gender is what people say when you ask them if they see themselves as a man, woman, or neither.
 
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