The point I was making is that it isn’t unPC to tell a light-skinned black person to STFU when they inflate the importance of their self-identity beyond what is reasonable. There is no egg-shell walking when it comes to telling these folks “you don’t look like the rest of us, so pump yo brakes”. There are even spaces on the internet that explicitly exclude these people because their experiences are not representative enough and thus hella distracting. No one gets called a racist for doing this. It can be annoying sometimes to hear “You ain’t black enough to be a part of this conversation, sis!”, but it is still allowable under the club’s by-laws.
But it seems to me gender isn’t being treated the same way and I don’t know why given that race and gender are both social constructs with self-identification options. We don’t seem to have a problem scrutinizing someone’s “black experience” in reference to a type specimen Black Experience[sup]TM[/sup] and saying, “This person is so far out on the edge that it is OK to exclude them from certain spaces and conversations.” But for some reason, there’s this notion that we should never scrutizine someone’s “woman experience”, not unless we want to be called TERFs. It seems to me (and I might be wrong) that we are being told we must assume a person has such an experience based on their word and not express any negative opinion about it, even when it strikes us as crazy. There is a sentiment out there (not coming from transgendered folks, by the way) that it is wrong to put any parameters around “woman”. Maybe that sentiment is fringy. But it is certainly out there.
Do you think “woman” is a club open to everyone? No one has really answered that question. I’m okay with a rule that says women are people who feel they are women, because even though it is imperfect at least it is a starting point for building a framework. We could also throw in “Women are people who are female-presenting unless they are otherwise identified.” And that could include the linebacker with the goatee as long as there is something about her anatomy, appearance, and mien that shows “womanness”.
But I don’t think “women” should be a club with absolutely no conditions. I don’t see how we can say gender is a social construct and not have any conditions.
Interesting abstract. Without knowing the sample size and the margin of difference the authors found, it is hard to assess this science. But if it’s a reproducible finding and a meaningful one, in the future we should expect to see it verified by other researchers. Perhaps this will be the objective indicator for gender that we don’t have now. I don’t think we have it yet.
To be clear, I don’t question at all that gender dysphoria exists and that it manifests in the persistent way you’re talking about. What I question is whether it necessarily is an indication of being a different gender than one’s biological sex.
This broader point may be reasonable, divorced from an example that I really think was a stinker. However, I’m not sure how true it holds. The self-explanatory bit–that growing up identified as a girl and a young woman leads to a different cluster of life experiences from growing up misgendered as a boy and a young man–isn’t something I’ve heard trans folk object to. I think you may be imagining objections that don’t exist.
I’m sure as hell not gonna gatekeep womanhood. I’m not sure who I’d appoint to be that gatekeeper, either. Who would you choose?
My general rule is that I accept a person’s sincerely-proffered identity, unless there’s a damned good reason not to do so. This applies to gender as well as many other facets of a person’s identity.
Can you flesh out the “damned good reasons not to” please? First as general cases and then to a following specific to help further illustrate.
I’d guess that you’d not accept a person claiming to be a member of a particular Indian tribe based on it being a sincerely held identity based on what they had been told by their parents who had been told by their parents, but who is not considered a member of the tribe by tribal standards, and who might in fact have very little of that tribe’s genetic heritage. What counts as the “damned good reason” that allows for that but does not allow for refusal of a group of cis-women feminists to exclude trans-women as members of their tribe, to even perceive such as appropriation of their identity? Let us assume appropriation is not the actual intent in either case.
I think there is a difference between a Native American tribal membership and “womanhood” but personally I am having a hard time identifying it in a way that really helps. At least not any that I can articulate. you with the face, probably that can get hung up on how one defines “gender” (I’ll go with the longstanding persistent and pervasive self-perceived identity as the definition myself) but from a practical perspective - the best way to relieve that dysphoria seems to be being able to live as the gender one feels oneself to be and to be accepted as such by the community at large. There is no meaningful cost imposed on others by doing that and substantial benefit to the dysphoric person. So whether or not that meets your definition of gender I hope I am correct in believing that you believe treating people who identify in that way as the gender of their choice with respect, not challenging their identity (unless asked for your honest thoughts about it), is the appropriate default position to take.
I certainly don’t have a problem with having a rule or condition along the lines of “women are people who feel they are women”, or “women are people who identify as women”. Obviously it would be silly to have the category “woman” include people who identify as not women.
But speaking as a 100% cisgender female-assigned-at-birth vagina-having XX typical woman who nonetheless has occasionally been momentarily misidentified as a man, I am hella uncomfortable with putting appearance-based conditions on the category “woman”. (And such misidentifications can happen to almost any woman, not just those of us with wide shoulders who look a bit butchy in sloppy clothes. When my sister and I were at the hospital deathbed of our (very slender and delicate and short-haired) mother, for example, a well-meaning but tactless nurse’s aide asked my sister if the patient was her husband.)
I don’t think any cisgender woman should be required to “show” “womanness” in order to qualify for the category “woman”. If a woman, whether cisgender or transgender, happens to look like a bald linebacker with a goatee, that doesn’t make her not a woman. That is just one of the infinite number of ways that women can, and have a perfect right to, look. Society shouldn’t ever get to take away your “woman card” for the crime of not looking feminine enough.
Yes of course, we should acknowledge that a woman who looks like a bald bearded linebacker is likely to have different experiences from a woman who looks more traditionally feminine. And women who look traditionally feminine should be able to discuss their experiences related to their conventionally “womanly” appearance (e.g., being catcalled or groped or stereotyped with some conventionally feminine characteristics) without being scolded for not being inclusive enough of other kinds of women.
But that doesn’t mean that we should be letting any conventional standards of “womanly” appearance dictate who qualifies to be a woman and who doesn’t.
The thing is, what you describe is humanly impossible.
Beliefs do not exist in a vacuum. They inherently inform behaviors. You’ve had CBT before, right? Remember the triangle of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and how, if you worked on changing one of them, it would work to change the others?
Well, if, in your thoughts, you see trans woman as not actually women, then that will leak out into your behaviors. Even if you try your best to treat them with respect, you can’t, because, at your core, you do not respect them.
It is not thought policing to tell a racist that racist beliefs are wrong, and that black people actually are people. Likewise, it is not thought policing to tell people that their transphobic beliefs are wrong, and trans women actually are women.
In fact, the only way to possibly work on being less bigoted is to try and change one’s thoughts. You can’t be at full control of every behavior 24/7. We all have automatic behaviors. We all have automatic feelings and automatic thoughts. The only way to eliminate bigotry from us is to attack it at the thought level–and at the behavioral level. (Unfortunately, directly going after the feeling level is impossible. Hence why you can’t just stop being depressed.)
Tolerance is a stopgap–it’s never the end goal. The end goal is that always be that people stop having bigoted thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is never just stopping behaviors. If the thoughts are there, the behaviors and feelings will come back.
The goal was and is always to eradicate bigotry. Not bigoted behaviors. Bigotry.
Is treating someone with dignity and respect the benchmark for lacking prejudice? I ask, because generally speaking, someone who thinks black people are genetically less intelligent than white people is still considered a racist, regardless of how politely they treat black people in their daily interactions. Not that I mean to draw a direct parallel between anti-black racism and anti-trans sexism, I just want to make sure we’re using a consistent baseline for prejudice.
Saying that DNA does not 100% determine your gender identity is not the same as saying DNA has zero role in determining your gender identity. There’s clearly a connection there - the very, very high percentage of people whose gender identity corresponds to their biological sex strongly suggests that. But DNA is very weird and very complicated, and we are nowhere near understanding everything about how it is expressed in actual humans. Maybe it’s 99% DNA, but if that other 1% is in just the right place, it throws the whole thing off.
It is also not the single determinant of how we develop as humans. There is a hypothesis that transgenderism is caused by a hormone imbalance in the womb during pregnancy - the DNA says XX, but the uterine hormones say XY (or vice versa) and the kid ends up transgender. Why do we consider DNA more important that uterine hormones, in that situation?
Hell, let’s go one further. Your DNA says you die of cystic fibrosis before you’re ten. Science say fuck that, we can give you decades of more life. In that situation, we tell DNA to go suck a dick. Why is it different when DNA says, “You’re male,” and science says, “Fuck that, we can make you female?”
Since you mention me, I will point out that you are taking what I said outside of the original context. I was responding to a poster who was misgendering trans women by saying they were men, and arguing that they had the right to do so because they are assholes. I was saying that they’re being assholes has nothing to do with whether or not they are women or me.
You are saying something different. You aren’t saying “You don’t face sexual harassment because you ARE a man.” You are saying “You don’t face sexual harassment because you look like a man.” These are, in fact,opposing statements, because the implication with “look like a man” is that they actually aren’t a man. That’s how “looks like” works by default.
That said, you are correct that saying it that way might hurt feelings, and there is an alternative. “Just because you have not experienced sexual harassment doesn’t mean that other women haven’t. In fact, it is common for women to experience sexual harassment.” I would definitely try that first. Hopefully it would get across the main point, that one’s experiences are not the same as everyone else’s.
The racial parallels, while not always applicable, do work here. If I said “you don’t experience discrimination because you aren’t black,” that would be a hateful statement. I could say “You don’t experience discrimination because you don’t look black,” but not looking black might be a sore subject for you, and thus I would first trying saying only what is necessary. I would say “Just because you haven’t faced discrimination for being black doesn’t mean that other black people haven’t. In fact, it is common for black people to experience discrimination.”
Ugh, I hate that even my attempts at short replies come out so long.
That does tell you how they would like to be addressed–with gender neutral terms. That’s what it means to not assume gender. Let’s say you talk about your doctor but do not reveal their gender… I would refer to them using the gender neutral terms “them” and “their” because I would not assume their gender.
It is unfortunate that there does not seem to exist a gender neutral alternative to “sir” or “ma’am.” However, there are still more polite ways to get someone’s attention besides “hey, you.”
I would have simply said “Excuse me.” (If I needed to say anything, that is. In my experience, someone behind the counter will look for customers. It’s their job to say something like “How may I help you?”)
Because gender identity isn’t more complicated than that. Gender roles? Sure. Gender identity? It is, by definition, the gender the person identifies as. You don’t get to identify someone else’s gender. That’s the underlying concept behind trans acceptance.
You have told me you are a woman. Even if I think you look like a man, you are a woman. It does not matter how manly you are. It doesn’t matter if you dress in a way that looks manly, talk in a deeper voice, have some facial hair, are muscled in ways women usually aren’t, whatever. You are a woman, no matter how you look to me. Because you say you are.
In fact, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you say that you’ve been mistaken for a man before in real life, due to having more androgynous features? I don’t think you ever said you had facial hair, but don’t the rest above apply to you?
I use the scientific definition. Sex is biological. Gender is not. Sex describes one’s chromosomes, hormones, gonads, and genitals. It also can describe secondary sexual characteristics if one has started puberty. In cases where there are discrepancies in these, the anatomical features that are visible on a fully clothed human are usually used.
I have already explained the two separate aspects that make up gender–gender identity and gender roles. (The former is, I repeat, defined by what gender someone believes they are.)
AHunter is not using normal terminology, out of necessity because he is an unusual case. While his terminology is correct when referring to him, exploring the different variations of nonbinary genders is new, and different enbies have different terminology.
The only standard terms are “trans man,” “trans woman,” “cis woman,” “cis man,” and “nonbinary.” And actual anatomy is irrelevant for these terms. A trans woman may have a penis or a vagina. It’s actually generally considered rude to talk about, same as it would be rude for someone to come up and talk about your vagina.
Yes, but you are arguing a counterfactual. Rowling’s “sex is real” is a euphemism that means “gender is not real.” It means that sex alone is enough to determine if someone is a man or a woman.
Rowling is wrong. Rowling’s statement is transphobic. That is the point of this thread. You should not base any ideas on the acceptable ways to interact with trans people on anything she has said.
Trans people (who are the only people whose feelings matter on this) are quite angry with her right now.
Yes. Because you have no way of knowing. Claiming it can be obvious is an error. You cannot with 100% certainty determine by looking if someone is a man, woman, or non-binary. You already have experienced this–you met a non-binary person who you thought was a woman. It would not have been okay for you to judge their meaning or motives.
The whole flaw in your argument remains that there just is no way of knowing. Even cis women can look like men. Even cis men can look like women. The beauty of gender identity is that you don’t have to try and guess. You just use what they tell you they are.
Now, anticipating the types of questions you might ask about this: Yes, if you don’t know, but you need to refer to someone’s gender, practicality means you’ll just have to go on instinct. But this is unlikely to ever be frowned upon. What might change in the future is how acceptable it is to bring up gender when it is irrelevant, in the same way that it’s already frowned upon to bring up race when it is not relevant.
So, for instance, right now it would be normal to say “This woman I was talking to about trans issues.” It would not be normal to say “This black woman I was talking to about trans issues.” In the future, it’s possible that it may become normal to say “The person I was talking to about trans issues” and not mention your gender.
However, you need not fear some PC police attacking your because you get it wrong. Such changes take time, and people are more than happy to correct you. If you are late to the party, some people might be suspicious, but a brief apology followed by correcting yourself should be enough, e.g. “oops. I meant…” or “Huh. I didn’t know that was offensive. I meant…”
This is the general rule for all such interactions, BTW, even now. On Reddit, I see people slip up and misgender people a lot. All you get is something like “*they”, meaning you messed up and should have written “they” instead of “he” or “she.” This is inevitably followed by “Oops. I’ll fix it.” At least, if the person isn’t a transphobe. If they are, then they act like a jerk, and get downvoted and get their post deleted after it is reported (if the subreddit has a civility rule.)
Of course, based on your other replies, I suspect that your response will be something I would never anticipate, and I will have trouble figuring out how you got from A to B. I request that you be more clear about this. Because, along the way, there is usually some faulty link.
Also, please don’t ever confront someone who looks male to you but says they are female or vice versa. Like I said, there is no obvious tell. She could even be a cis woman.
There are somewhere around 30 markers that indicate sex, and chromosomes are actually some of the least important. They just set things in motion, but the end result may not match.
(This is also why I bristled a bit at “what do you think the difference is between sex and gender.” That isn’t an opinion topic, but a factual one.)
Right. This is my position too. This is why I’ve never had a issue with using the requested pronouns and treating trans folks no differently than cis when it comes to restroom access and the like. (If we had to do English all over again, I’d be in favor of calling everyone by the same pronouns. The fact that language is so gendered is weird when you think about it. And if we were socialized under this language system, I have no doubt we’d all get along just fine…there is no biological imperative that we refer to males differently than females. Same with style of dress, hair length, etc. These are nonessential cultural affectations that are markers for gender—on top of gender expectations and stereotypes that bombard us—that make me wonder whether the emphasis we give these markers is correlated with the psychology behind gender dysphoria in at-risk individuals…but I digress.)
Treating trans people like cis is a reasonable accommodation. But that’s a different thing than saying trans folk have “minds” that map to that of their desired gender and therefore are the same as them.
What I’m saying doesn’t have any practical significance, except maybe in interpreting relationships. A heterosexual woman involved with someone who has come out as trans decades into their relationship doesn’t suddenly need to question whether she’s a lesbian. A homosexual man shouldn’t be labeled a transphobe because he chooses to leave a partner who decides to transition as a woman. In other words, in their private lives, people are not obligated to believe trans folks are indistinguishable from cis with respect to gender identity. I think making belief determinations on a case-by-case basis is most reasonable and logical.
Thinking black people are inferior to whites is not the same thing as thinking a biological male (self-identified) woman as different from a biological female woman with respect to gender identity.
I’m sorry, but if this is where the trans movement is going with argumentation, it’s goddam jumping the shark. Belief in black inferiority earned my skinfolk 400 years of oppression, dude. How does the mere belief that gender does or doesn’t work a certain way take us down a path that goes anywhere close to treating another race like animals?
Do you think it would be silly to have a category of “woman” that includes people who want to be woman for reasons apart from feeling like a woman? Do you think it would be acceptable to bar access to the “woman” label to someone who admits to not having gender dysphoria? Someone who just want to experience life as a “woman”?
And when I speak of barring someone, I’m not thinking in legal terms. I’m thinking more in terms of social dynamics and interactions. Like, if I had a male edgelord coworker who told everyone he was going to now request we treat him as “woman” and I had good reasons to think he was just being an edgelord, I would still call him by feminine pronouns just to keep from getting called into HR. But I really hope that no one would condemn me for still thinking of him as a guy. I’d bar him from the “woman” club since he doesn’t fit my classification scheme for “woman”, and I would be totally unapologetic about it.
If I thought the coworker was sincere with her “woman” label and she at least made some kind of feminine display in her style of dress and appearance, then I would at least make the effort to push past my caveman programming. But hearing the words “I am woman” would not be sufficient to convince my brain that I’m looking at a woman.
As someone who gets misgendered frequently enough, I guess I don’t see the big deal. Misgendering is a reality for lots of us…not just transgendered folks or the gender fluid.
When I say “female-presenting”, I don’t mean “type specimen of femininity”. I merely mean someone who has some visual display of “woman”. The linebacker with the goatee might also have breasts. She might be wearing women’s clothing. I have a male coworker who isn’t built like a linebacker but is bald with a goatee. If he came to work wearing big hoop earrings and make-up, my brain might classify him as “female-presenting”. Because he’d be showing the social cues of “woman”.
And I think that’s key for me. For gender to be a social construct, it’s got to tie to social cues at least a little bit. If you’re telling me you’re “woman” but there are no signs of “woman” on you, then yes, my caveman brain is going to struggle to see you as “woman”. That doesn’t mean I won’t treat you with respect. It just means that when we’re interacting with each other as strangers, I’m probably not going to see you as a member of my tribe. Perhaps that will change as we become closer and I get to hear your story. But it isn’t going to happen fast.
(I’m just reminded of something that happened to me as a kid at Girl Scout Camp. One of the friends I made there was a little girl who looked like a little boy. Despite it being an all-girls camp, folks would misgender her. I did as well. One day the two of us took a shower together. I stopped misgendering her after that.)
I refuse to be apologetic about it or feel ashamed about my difficulty with this. I’ll do my best to get the pronouns right, but I’m not going to repeat mantras in my head like “That guy is really a woman” until my brain gets it right. That’s crazy-making, for one thing. And for another, it isn’t necessary to treat that person with respect. I don’t require people to see me the same way I see myself. I don’t go around asking people if my self-identity mirrors their perception of me because I don’t know I know I will be disappointed. So I choose to only care how people treat me.
Presumably a ciswoman would have the anatomy of a female, correct? Maybe they don’t have mammary glands, but they would have some anatomical feature of a female. I was including anatomy with the “female-presenting” logic. But I guess that might need to be tweaked.
With a club rule like “A woman is a person who feels like a woman. When this condition is not met, they are also a female-presenting person unless otherwise identified”, the linebacker with the goatee could be included into the club. But if the linebacker with the goatee said, “I don’t feel like a woman but I’m still a woman”, then I feel like it isn’t entirely crazy to at least wonder what makes her a woman. I might be tempted to ask her if she was born female, if we are at a bar, drinking wine under soft lights. If she says yes, I would accept into the club. If she says no, then I would probe deeper and possibly not include her in the club based on her responses. But regardless, I’ll call her “her”. That seems like a far compromise to me.
Would you be uncomfortable by this?
I agree with this. I might not be included if the club if we went by this standard.
Which is missing the point of my question. It wa sasserted thta it didn’t matter how you thought about trans people, so long as you treated them with “dignity and respect.” I’m asking if that applies to any other group that suffers from bigotry. Is it only treatment that matters, or does how you think about a group factor in as well?
Let me get this straight. You think it is humanly impossible to treat someone respectfully while not seeing them the same way they see themselves?
Really?
Your post only makes a modicum of sense if I thought non-women were horrible creatures not worthy of respect. But I don’t elevate “woman” over “man”. Apart from pronouns and subtle differences in expression of friendliness, I treat women and men the same.
This is what is killing me about this whole topic. Most of the posters here are treating gender as if it isn’t socially important. It’s just a label. There’s no big deal in changing it. Give the label to whomever asks for it and “chill the fuck out.”
OK, I can go along with all of this since it is consistent with my own beliefs. Grant the linebacker with the goatee her feminine pronouns and keep it moving, monstro!
But BigT, you’re saying something entirely different. You’re saying that gender is so important that misgendering someone mentally is no different than treating them horribly and being a bigot. Gender is so important that it has major ramifications on how a person is treated that go way beyond pronoun usage. I’m serious–I don’t know what these major ramifications are. If I call you by your preferred pronoun and treat you exactly how I treat everyone else, what else do you want me to do to make you feel respected by me?
But my beliefs aren’t “This person is inferior to me”.
My belief is, “This person is telling me they are a woman but I can’t see it and thus they are different from me. But I’m going to treat them respectfully.”
To me, this belief is akin to, “This person is black and thus different from me. I’m going to treat them respectfully though.” This belief isn’t 100% enlightened because it should just go without saying that everyone is deserving of respect. But I don’t think it would be racist. And I don’t think it would be helpful to tell someone that this thought isn’t enlightened and lecture them from a pulpit like they are some kind of moral defective. BECAUSE IT IS JUST A THOUGHT. We all have thoughts that aren’t 100% enlightened.
Since you’re over there quoting CBT scripture at me, here’s some food for thought for you: Behaviors influence thoughts just as much as the reverse. A therapist will often push a patient with low self-esteem to do things that promote self-esteem. Like volunteering at places or cultivating hobbies. They will also encourage a patient to do loving things for themselves, like going to the beauty salon. Because it turns out that treating yourself lovingly can help you see that you are worthy of love.
Personally, I think the best way to change people’s thoughts is through action. If people act the “right” way, they can make their thoughts be “right”. But shaming them for not thinking “right” even when their actions are righteous is wrong. It’s unhelpful. I know this, because for years I shamed myself for having low self-esteem. Shaming only made me feel worse about myself.
As I said to BigT, I think likening “blacks are inferior!” to “This guy is saying he’s a woman but I see him as a guy” is very unfair. Misgendering should not be likened to hate. I get misgendered all the time, especially in the winter when I’m bundled up. When it happens, I don’t react like I would if someone were to call me a “nigger”. I usually don’t correct the person who misgenders me, but you better believe I’d say something if someone told me I was inferior to them.
If I was able to read people’s thoughts and I realized that 50% of people see me as a man, it would shock me and maybe cause me to feel some kind of way about my physical appearance. Not gonna lie, I’d be questioning if I’m really as cute as I think I am. But that feeling would be in no way comparable to the feeling I’d have if I realized that the same proportion thought I was racially inferior to them. I would understand why people were misgendering me (I have short hair, don’t dress very feminine, have a deep voice). I wouldn’t understand at all why I should be seen as inferior to anyone.