I agree.
The topic is a lesbian themed social event. The person making up this idea said that lesbian women don’t want people with penises to attend, but is restricting those opinions to lesbians that have been pre-selected as valid members of the group.
It’s the same story over and over, “I know you feel X about yourself, but I get to decide what you are, whether you get included or excluded.”
Nobody is arguing that. They’re just arguing that if you want to exclude transwomen, you gotta do it on your own dime, not in a taxpayer-funded facility. What a bunch of whiners.
More importantly, that link refers to an actual court case, Tickle v Giggle, which is the most delightful court case name in history.
Who is “they”? And which medical treatments?
I’ve been seeing generally the reverse. But I don’t have the time right now to hunt up cites. The one I found on a very fast check said that there are some downsides to puberty blockers but that they significantly decreased the suicide rate. Seems to me that the first thing to do is to keep children alive.
Were they all intending to have sex with each other at the gathering?
If not, then the meeting wasn’t a “sex practice”, and nobody was demanding to be included in one. And the apparent assumption that any gathering of lesbians must be a “sex practice” strikes me as just plain rude.
Well, I thought it was more a question of associating (or not) with a certain cohort in a social gathering—but it seemed to me (perhaps incorrectly) that implicit was it would be a venue for potential romance or sex. And that it was a self-selected group of lesbians who prefer partners without penises.
I’m not trying to marginalize transgender lesbians. I’m just suggesting that when romance or sex is in play, we prefer what we prefer. To be clear, a social gathering that excludes transgender individuals where the gathering is primarily for community would be bigoted. Still their choice, but a close-minded one.
First of all, I agree that refusing to refer to Trans women as women is just a dick move.
That being said, if there is a speed dating event, that’s a context where I’m a bit conflicted over whether limiting access is acceptable or not.
I mean, saying that the event is just for Lesbians is exclusionary in and of itself, right? But it’s an appropriate type of exclusionary - We can all agree that it would be inappropriate for a straight cis guy to show up and roll the dice on whether any of the lesbian women are a little bi, right?
Likewise, if there is a straight speed dating event, we wouldn’t expect gay men or lesbian women to show up; and if they did, they would be wasting their time, because they’d be put into the group based on their gender rather than their orientation, meaning they’d spend the evening talking only to people they have no sexual attraction to.
In that context, I don’t necessarily think that it would be inappropriate to have events that cater to cis people as well as events that are more inclusive. Some people are sexually interested in men and women, or just women, or just cis women, or just men, or just cis men. Those are all valid sexual orientations, IMHO, and I don’t think it is unreasonable for different speed dating events to cater to different mixes and matches of these orientations.
Likewise, if I was trans and attending speed dating events, I’d want everyone I talk to to be people who self selected as being fine with dating trans people. That would, it seems to me, greatly reduce the risk of confrontation or violence, which are unfortunately very real parts of the trans experience in today’s reality.
Now, if there’s a particular government owned building that prohibits discrimination along certain lines, then maybe you cannot hold this kind of speed dating event in that venue, and that’s fine; but it’s a bit odd to me that you can exclude cis and trans men regardless of orientation as well as straight women but the line is drawn at trans women. I’m not sure if that sort of venue should be holding any kind of speed dating event, if that’s the rule.
I am definitely arguing that it’s okay to require cisgender lesbian women to be gender-inclusive in their social events when they are applying for permission to hold their social events at a facility whose official purpose and use policies mandate gender inclusivity, such as the Victorian Pride Centre.
Neither I nor the Australian Human Rights Commission nor anybody else is in any way trying to “force” any trans-exclusive cisgender lesbian group to include transgender people in their social events when that exclusion doesn’t violate institutional policy at the venues they choose for their events. They can scrutinize their proposed attendees for PENISES PENISES OH NO, PENISES!! all day long at such events if they choose, at their appropriately selected venue.
This disingenuous language about “forcing” trans-exclusive cisgender lesbians to be trans-inclusive, while deliberately obfuscating the context of specific venue rules violation, is very typical of the “gender critical” movement. This controversy, like so many others in the gender-critical propaganda sphere, isn’t actually about respectfully debating differing opinions on appropriateness of gender inclusivity to varying degrees and in varying contexts. Ultimately, it’s just about stoking contempt and resentment towards transgender people, particularly transgender women.
If you really wanted to have an honest discussion about when and whether cisgender lesbians should be entitled to exclude transgender lesbians from their lesbian-themed social events, you would have no problem calling the latter group “transgender lesbians” for purposes of discussion.
Likewise, if somebody wants to have an honest discussion about, say, when and whether groups of biological parents should be entitled to have parenting-themed social events that focus on biological-parenting-specific issues and exclude adoptive parents, they would have no problem calling the latter group “adoptive parents”.
If they continually insist on referring to them instead with language like “unrelated primary caregivers and legal guardians”, thus deliberately denying the adoptive parents’ claim to be considered “parents” at all, then you know that for them the cruelty is the point, not honest discussion. Even though the carefully-chosen term they insist on using is not factually inaccurate.
And if there’s a private organization that owns or leases a building and that organization prohibits discrimination along certain lines, that’s fine. That organization is completely in their rights to not open their facility to a use against their institutional inclusive precepts, does not have to allow their facility to be used for a trans exclusionary event.
I suspect the below is what is being referenced:
Of note: it is false that “they have become convinced that these medical treatments are more likely to harm the patients than to help them”; “they” do not feel that there is yet “enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness” of puberty blockers, a conclusion many other expert organizations disagree with, and very different than stating that there is evidence of harm.
Sure, but a private organization can refuse for any reason or no reason at all. A Catholic Church doesn’t have to host Lesbian Speed Dating events regardless of whether the event is trans exclusionary or not.
From the link and highlighted by @Kimstu:
I read this as the trans exclusion organization, the Lesbian Action Group, trying to force Victorian Pride House to accept their booking application in the government funded community owned facility.
I find this apparent insistence that a gathering of lesbians must be about having or planning sexual relationships at the gathering to be somewhat disturbing.
(I’ll also add that it’s my impression that not all lesbians are attracted only to cis women, but that some are also in some cases attracted to trans women; and in addition point out the obvious that in any case not all lesbians are sexually attracted by all other lesbians, any more than all hetero women are sexually attracted by all men or all hetero men attracted by all women. So in a gathering of any size, whether selected for cis-only or not, there will be individuals there who aren’t sexually attractive to other individuals there. But I still think it’s more important that we appear to have no evidence the particular meeting was about having sex, but some people appear to be jumping to the conclusion that any gathering of lesbians must be about having sex.)
What are you talking about?
That’s a very strange conclusion to make after reading my post.
I am certainly not insisting that a gathering of lesbians must be about having or planning sexual relations. What the fuck?
Obviously a lesbian support group or knitting circle or prayer group or book club is a totally different situation, and one where there’s really no argument for excluding trans lesbians; that seems self evident.
The person who brought this event up made it sound like it was some kind of speed dating event, because they talked about whether or not these lesbians were attracted to one another, which obviously wouldn’t matter at a boom club or support group. It would matter at some kind of dating event. If they did so I’m bad faith, that sucks and I condemn it.
I find this apparent insistence that I think all lesbian meetups must be about sex extremely off-putting. What the hell?
You’re the one jumping to conclusions, my friend. My response was very clearly about the specific context of dating events*, because that’s the one context where being exclusionary based on physical sex characteristics actually makes sense, given that most people want to date people who they are sexually attracted to.
*Additionally, speed dating events aren’t really about SEX - I don’t think most people who speed date are looking for a casual hookup - it seems to me that those sorts of events are generally about finding romantic relationships, not sex. Compare that to bar hookup culture, or certain dating apps as opposed to others.
That’s quite literally what I said in my post:
Some lesbians are attracted to all women, and others just to cis women, and some just to trans women, and others to some trans women but not others.
In the context of social events or mixers or apps specifically focused on helping people find a partner, whether that’s a sexual partner or a romantic one, I don’t think it is bad to have different events cater to different people on that spectrum. Because these differences matter in this context.
In the context of social events or mixers that are more generally focused on building communities, such as support groups or knitting circles, I think we should be more inclusive, because these differences do not matter in this context.
How you spin this position into ‘all lesbian meetups are about sex’ is just beyond me.
The group of lesbians that wanted to block trans women from their events is part of the LGB Alliance, which is a hate group masquerading as a civil rights group. LGB Alliance exists specifically because they don’t want trans people included in the gay rights movement and have made some really questionable moves in that direction, from opposing a conversion therapy ban because it included bans on conversion therapy for trans people, to tweeting out condolences to the victims of the Club Q nightclub shooting that deliberately excluded trans and non-binary victims. They regularly work with far right organizations on anti-trans initiatives, even when those far right orgs also promote explicitly anti-LGBT and anti-woman policies.
They’re also delightfully stupid, regularly saying things like, “In our historical gay and lesbian rights movement, we never demanded that society change its laws, its activities and its language to accommodate us. We never cursed people who disagreed with us or tried to get them fired. We always built bridges.” Which is both laughably untrue, and hilarious coming from a group that, at the same time, accuses politicians of being “pro-rape” because they support rights for trans women.
It’s an organization of scum-bag clowns.
Of course they made it sound that way, the whole point of this fictional Lesbians Only Social Event was to jimmy up a way to make including Transwomen seem like a terrible idea because it would “force” lesbians to be in the same room with a bunch of penises.
AFAIC, if lesbians (or any other groups) don’t want to ever bump into transwomen, they can stay in their own homes. We won’t force any transwomen to move in with you, I promise.
Oh, for sure, I agree with all of this. Even from their statement, you can tell, as others have pointed out, that the cruelty is the point. And doubly so when you add on the fact that this wasn’t a dating event but a social community building event.
Did you look at the link? The link doesn’t make it seem like anything of the sort.
I replied as I did because you appeared to be talking about the event in the link. As it turns out you were talking about something else altogether, I’ll withdraw those comments insofar as they were a reply to you.
Yeah, I think we have well established that certain points in this thread are not being made in good faith.
Like I said above, there are discussions that would be interesting to have. For example, whether the disproportionately high increase in teenagers who were AFAB identifying as nonbinary (when compared to AFAB teens identifying as male, or AMAB teens identifying as either female or nonbinary) is due to real rates of gender dysphoria, or whether it has more to do with societal expectations of behavior or appearance for women. And what that says about our society’s expectations and standards for women.
But unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to have any of these conversations in a public forum, because so many people only want to have them in order to try and delegitimize trans people. As we have seen in this thread.
No, I’d mostly dismissed the poster of the link’s contributions to the thread after the link to their statements about polite fictions or whatever; from that point on I haven’t really been interested in their contribution to a thread on trans people.
I was responding to the discussion generated by the posting of the link, which was mostly centered around speed dating type activities.
I can’t get past the crazy obsession with genitalia, and I find it more than a little bit creepy.
They’re called private parts for a reason. My between the legs anatomy is no one’s business but my own, and the list of people I’m willing to share details with is limited to my intimate partners and a few select medical professionals. If my gender matters to someone—whether in general or for a specific purpose—- they’re going to have to rely on how I chose to outwardly present. Anyone that isn’t satisfied with that needs to get over themselves.
Frankly, it’s mind-boggling to think that I might be asked to show or otherwise attest to the appearance of my genitals in order to attend a party or Bible study. My genitals aren’t a significant factor in how I present myself socially, and I don’t like thinking that people I met casually are looking at my crotch and speculating on what’s in my pants. It’s beyond creepy and I get the ick just being in the same room with people that are obsessed with such things.
Now, if it’s an event where I’m meeting prospective intimate partners, there may be a point where it’s relevant - and I will choose to share that information when I think it’s appropriate. But how and when I share information about my most private body parts needs to be my choice.