Do the existing rules prohibit people from debating the gender of people who identify as transgender?

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61

…the problem here is that you are putting the burden on “fixing” the problem on the people who are most affected by that problem.

Imagine we are dealing with racism. And pretend that you had never experienced racism, that all of your friends growing up were white, and the only exposure you had to other cultures is what you saw on TV.

When trying to decide what the rules should be around racism here, would asking for dialogue from black people be the first thing you would do? And if black people pushed back by pointing out that black poster had already posted multi-page threads called “ask the Black Person” and that still didn’t do anything to change attitudes, and black people kept leaving the boards, would that change anything?

From what I know there is only one transgender person still openly and regularly posting here. And I think that person would probably much rather be posting in discussions in Cafe Society than having to educate the moderating team. Its an unfair burden to be placing on them.

And its an unfair burden to be placing on people like me as well. I’m as new to all of this as everyone else. It was only a few years ago when I photographed and documented a celebration of Wellington transgender activist Carmen Rupe. I listened to horrific stories of discrimination and abuse. A couple of years ago a non-binary person (who later transitioned) started to freelance for me so I made a decision to learn more about this in order to be as welcoming as I could. I’m not an expert. I still make mistakes. I post in defense of transgender people here on the boards because the attacks on transgender people can be relentless. Its exhausting. And it takes a toll. I know I’m not the only one. We tag into and out of debates to give each other a break.

I’m tired. And I’m not even directly affected by this. I can’t imagine how the targets of open displays of transphobia must be feeling.

So it isn’t their job to educate you. And it isn’t my job either. And an open debate (even moderated to keep negative trans remarks or hijacks out) won’t stop the “but science!!!” talking points. I know moderating is unpaid. But I don’t think that this is the moderators call, especially when you have a moderator on staff who trans people cannot trust. Somebody still owns the boards, this place needs an admin. This really is above your paygrade.

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My bad for bringing it up. Didn’t realize he had a history.

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Welcome back, Eve. I’m glad to see you here to whatever extent you choose to be with us.

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Disclaimer: I’m not an expert on trans issues. I don’t even think I’m that well versed. I do have two transmen in my life (coworkers - but coworkers are serious business in the nonprofit where I work) who I think are basically the best thing that ever happened, but anyhoo.

I come into this JK Rowling thread at a point where it seems like things are pretty heated. In the brief time I am there, I am linked to an article that misgenders transwomen in its description of women allegedly getting assaulted in a shelter that has a clear bias against biological males of any kind, characterizing transwomen as inherently dangerous because they are really “men.” I witness the “transwomen have no right to be called women” argument, and the “trans people use suicidal behavior as a manipulation tactic” (as if their suffering is not real? it’s so dehumanizing) and then I’m treated to this gem, which is when I left the thread. To be clear, it was not even an attack on transfolk, it was an attack on women who consider themselves allies of transfolk.

Whatever the intent of that comment, I took this as a direct personal insult, considering the fact that I am a staunch feminist who has advocated on women’s issues for years and have a professional career that exists to preserve the safety of women (ALL women. And men too! Any gender, really.) I was really trying to bring that part of my life to bear in the discussion of shelters in particular and how we can make them safe for all women. I was posting some relevant citations about the lack of resources homeless trans people have, because the claim was essentially, “keep them out of our shelters, they can go somewhere else.” This is simply not true, they can’t just go somewhere else. Cis women get turned down from women’s shelters by the thousands every year, I can promise you that transwomen have even fewer options. As far as I can tell that’s all I did that set off that other comment.

All of which is to say I don’t believe that being inclusive of transwomen is a threat to cis women, but when you say that you are characterized as a misogynist. And if you say “this is transphobic” it’s because of misogyny. And if you say anything that’s not “you are so right” it’s misogyny.

I have no idea if these things were reported and I confess I almost never report things, and maybe that’s on me and I need to get better at it.

Where things really seem to go off the rails is if you call someone espousing transphobic beliefs transphobic. Personally I think all of this stems from misandry, a deep-seated fear of the male sex, but they get pissed at that too. So you have one side saying, “this is transphobic and/or misandrist” and the other side saying, “You’re a misogynist just as bad as the anti-suffragists.” There is absolutely no way to have a productive conversation about this issue with so many assumptions made about other posters’ motives.

I want to add that trauma is likely a major factor in how heated these threads get. Many trans-exclusionists have experienced trauma at the hands of males and many transfolk have experienced trauma for being trans. I think both sides are reacting from a place of feeling their safety threatened. I know from experience with PTSD that you can feel threatened by words on a message board and that words on a message board can trigger classic symptoms of PTSD. This includes the “fight or flight” response and I’ll leave you to guess which one we’re talking about here.

Now I’ve thought a lot about how that thread could have gone more smoothly, and I think if I had to do it over I would ignore the invective and focus on the claims that were made. But having had to do that in other types of threads, for my own personal issues, I think that is a lot of emotional labor to expect from transfolk. And I don’t think those threads are nearly as valuable without transfolk. Just as women feeling comfortable with sharing their experiences with sexual assault is so powerful as a learning tool for those who don’t know about those issues, transfolk sharing their own lived experiences is powerful for shifting the narrative and the stigma against them.

I recognize that all of this is messy and not easy to sort out. And I don’t really have a good solution. But it does seem like those who post vitriol against transpeople are operating within a different set of rules than is afforded to those who attack cis women, people of color and other minorities on this board.

I’m sorry this is so long but I had a lot of thoughts about it. Thanks for your consideration.

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This should say cis women, since transwomen are not getting those protections.

fixed that for you above {WE?}

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From post #1, I can only see three possible resolutions:

  1. Officially take the side of transgender/allies by prohibiting posts that question the validity of transgender identities (on the basis of said posts being inherently jerkish, encouragement of gender discrimination, personal attacks, or hate speech).
  2. Officially take the other side by saying you won’t prohibit posts that question the validity of transgender identities (on the basis of said posts being inherently jerkish, encouragement of gender discrimination, personal attacks, or hate speech).
  3. Change the rules to allow personal attacks and/or encouragement of gender discrimination
  4. Status quo. Transgender members/allies are subject to behavior that they consider a violation of the rules, but you are unable or unwilling to decide whether said behavior is actionable. In practice, the same as #2.

My opinion is that this list is exhaustive. If your goal is to be a safe place for transgender members, I highly recommend picking option 1. The trade off is that we are unable to debate the validity of transgender identities any more.

If you are unwilling to censor that debate, maybe you need to re-evaluate the rules against personal attacks and encouraging gender discrimination.

~Max

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Here on Discourse you don’t have to log in to search.

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Didn’t you just break your own rule in this very post?

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I think it is covered by the existing rules and from this thread it sounds like it should be better enforced. It’s pretty simple. People nowadays identify in a variety of ways. Other posters do not have legitimate cause to dispute those identities and nothing is gained from disputing those identities. The posters here are not the gender police. So as far as I am concerned, anyone trying to be the gender police is being rude and actively violating the “don’t be a jerk” rule. Nobody is ever going to make a discussion better by saying things that marginalize trans people.

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I’m the person who created the JKR thread which went so off the rails, and I have a few objections to rules against misgendering:

  1. It prevents some people talking about their ‘lived experience’, especially due to the rule that it applies retroactively. Think of partners who married a person who - as far as they could tell - was one sex but has now transitioned to the other, or kids who were raised by a mother and father, and are now told they can never talk about their previous lives in the way they experienced them.

  2. We are sold the ‘no misgendering’ as the kind, polite thing to do, which is fine, but it is then treated as a deep philosophical truth, one that has extremely troubling real world implications (yes, including the sports @BigT mentioned). It becomes very difficult to argue against these harmful and unfair policies if you have already conceded the main philosophical point in order to avoid hurting people’s feelings. This strikes me as a fundamentally dishonest and unfair method of winning an argment and getting your desired outcome (though I’m not claiming anyone is doing so consciously, just that that is the result).

  3. This one is petty, but I really resent being forced to use ‘she’ for biologically male people committing chactristically male crimes, and who many times have good reason to be lying or mistaken. Why must we take the word of generally dishonest people on this one issue?

I don’t know what happened with Eve and Una Persson because I wasn’t around then, but I’m surprised harassment of posters isn’t already against the rules. I’d be happy for a rule saying no intentional misgendering of posters here, though there would need to be some allowance for mistakes (eg for some reason I was convinced @What_Exit was female until I saw someone else get corrected).

As for the larger issue, I’ve learned that most people are decidedly ill informed on the current state of the scientific and medical knowledge. It would be a huge disservice to the board’s mission of fighting ignorance if we were banned from discussing and linking to scientific studies as @BigT apparently wants.

I hope @monstro will give her opinion too. She’s always a lot more articulate than me.

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This warning is doubleplus ungood.

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Thank you @Banquet_Bear, @Spice_Weasel, and @BigT for contributing, I absolutely agree with what you three posted.

This is something I don’t just deal with here, the internet is absolutely littered with transphobia, to the point where fighting back against it has become normal for me. And yes, I’m tired of having to constantly defend myself and the choices I made to stop living a destructive lie by pretending to be a man when I wasn’t one.

People say “transwomen aren’t women” and claim that it isn’t an attack on me personally, but it absolutely is. They are saying that I am not who I say I am and who I know I am, and therefore I am deceptive or have some kind of ulterior motive. Which then lead to some really disgusting theories about us that I have mentioned before.

And yes it is not my job to educate anybody, but I am willing to if it’s done in good faith, which it rarely is around here. It’s usually a way to find an excuse to tear us down. I even have to walk on eggshells around certain subjects because I know transphobes tend to use them against me. So some questions I simply won’t answer no matter how much they prod me.

And no, @DrDeth, cis or cisgender is definitely not a slur and absolutely shouldn’t be banned. It is merely a way to distinguish between people who retain the gender they were assigned at birth compared to those of us who took a different path with our gender. It certainly can be used as a slur, and I have used it that way many times in other places, but any word can be a slur with the right emphasis behind it.

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It’s also very difficult to argue for segregation if you are forced to concede the main philosophical point that people of other races are equal. That’s a feature, not a bug.

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Actually in the US at least the right to free speech includes so called hate speech. Now forums don’t have to allow any speech but that’s a different subject. Furthermore, merely labeling speech hateful because the subject matter is personal doesn’t necessarily make it so.

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Transgender issues are one of a large number of topics that posters here are allowed to be wrong about.

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Thank you everyone for the responses. I’m rereading this thread.

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On the one hand we have trans board members who are exhausted by the transphobia that fills thousands of posts on this board. On the other hand, we have a hypothetical board member whose partner transitioned, AND who wants to describe their partner as the sex they presented when they married.

When weighing real people against hypothetical people, the concerns of the real people should take precedence.

This is a condescending and inaccurate way of describing transphobic behaviors which contribute to a culture of oppression and violence against trans folk. If you wouldn’t describe verbal sexual harassment as “hurting people’s feelings,” maybe don’t describe transphobic comments this way.

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One big sticking point I see is is that there are many societal systems built around gender that don’t automatically lend themselves to people just self-identifying as that gender. It’s one thing if a person identifies as a certain gender, but it’s another if that person wants to participate in those gender-specific systems like gender-specific scholarships, gender-specific sports, etc. In those cases, it seems like it should be possible to discuss what was the intention of labeling those things as gender specific and if someone self-identifying as that gender is consistent with the original intent. For example, it should still be possible to accept transwomen are women, but still discuss what sort of changes, if any, should me made for transwomen to play in women sports.

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Are those 2 terms the same or is there a distinction between them. Googling seems to equate them.

  • The first one seems pretty straight forward.
  • The second is hard to wrap my head around, I take it that came up in the JK Rowling’s thread.
  • The third has to be excused for the first time, but once corrected, if a person is persistent, it should probably be noted and then after that a warning as a form of being a jerk or trolling.

Speaking for myself, my user name is gender neutral. So I don’t get upset by pronoun issues, I just correct them. DemonTree mentioned not knowing until it came up in a thread.

I think anyone talking about “Ellen Page” would be excused until corrected that He is now Elliot and identifies as male. Plenty of examples like this could be generated.

So this is a new term for me at least. As I mentioned, I am not knowledgeable about this subject.

OK, which ones should be prohibited? It is a possibility of adding a Transmisogyny rule to GD and P&E.

I understand it isn’t your job but I hope you’ll choose to help. I’m trying at least and not the only one.

This sums up part of the problem well.

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So the argument is this. Transwomen aren’t really women because they’re biological males. Males have such a high degree of entitlement that they believe they should have access to female - only spaces. Supporting trans inclusion means inviting males into female spaces and making females more vulnerable to assault, harassment and rape. Any possibility of having a penis in a female space, no matter whether that penis or attached to a cis man or a transgender woman, is an inherent threat to females. Therefore, trans inclusion is a threat to female safety, therefore if you support trans inclusion you support the oppression of females. And that makes you a misogynist.

I don’t understand how that’s not misandry. It seems founded on an irrational fear of men. But then the response is, “fear of men is rational, how dare you call me misandrist” and round and round we go.