Is Trans fear driven by a fear of being deceived?

Great Debates
221

What do you mean, “the argument was won”? There are still a lot of people who don’t think anti-Black racism is self-evidently wrong. Many of them try to disguise it in scientific trappings and terms, but it is the exact same mentality.

Shit, the resistance to the phrase “Black Lives Matter!” is pretty good evidence there’s still a long way to go. The fact that it has to be pointed out that Black people are statistically at higher risk from police action - even when initiated for their protection - and that Black people are often treated as if their lives aren’t worth as much by police is a symptom that not everyone is fully in board that anti-Black racism is self-evidently wrong.

A similar comparison can be made to homosexuality and it’s public acceptance. Stonewall was in 1969, when it was still acceptable for police to go on violent raids of gay gatherings in blatant bigotry. The 70’s saw a dramatic increase in gay visibility, followed by a bit of a backswing in the 80’s, before becoming more accepted through the 90’s. But it wasn’t until 2011 that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was rescinded. And Obergefell was in 2015.

So one might think that argument has been won, and anti-gay bigotry is self-evidently wrong. Except there are still plenty of people who lament homosexuality being paraded in their face, the incorporation of gay people and relationships in commercials being a particular trigger to get them talking.

That’s ~54 years of slow progress and the job isn’t done. Transgender rights have technically been a part of that movement that whole time, but only moved to the forefront of the issue with gay marriage becoming legalized. The acceptability of hating on gays is down, so the next weakest target came to forefront of the bigotry expression. As trans acceptance has gained visibility, so has trans resistance and bigotry.

And a lot of people are expecting legal challenges to Obergefell and other gay rights issues. Thomas has expressed a willingness to review it by the SC.

More examples that the battle hasn’t been won on anti-Black racism.

Yes. That’s hardly news. 20th in the world is pretty high. A 40 year old ranked 20th is remarkable.

There’s always a fundamental shortage of “common sense”. Or as I heard it phrased, “Common sense isn’t.”

The operative phrase was “after making careful and respectful arguments that are ignored”. @puzzlegal made a number of points about trans women being women and about the bathroom use controversy and you have completely ignored everything she said.

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? AFAICT, it is not in fact the truth that a majority of men, in any society, are physically assaulting or endangering women, so I think your statement there is at the very least ill-phrased.

It is certainly true that the minority of men, in all or almost all societies, who are physically assaulting or endangering women is sufficiently large to justify women in being wary of strange men.

But the societal mechanisms that are supposed to be handling the higher risk of violent behavior on the part of men are extremely inconsistent. And many of them are ultimately more about controlling women than protecting women.

For example: It’s often observed, validly, that the higher levels of aggression that are natural to and/or socialized into men make men more likely to physically assault other men, as well as more likely to attack women.

In practice, this means that smaller, weaker and elderly men have a nonzero risk of being physically harmed by stronger, bigger and younger men. But you know, we don’t just shake our heads and sigh about that and say there’s nothing we can do about it. We don’t make separate restrooms or other secure spaces for the smaller, weaker and elderly men so they can avoid the more physically dangerous men. Heck, even teenage boys use the same restrooms and other “men’s spaces” as the grown men who pose a significant physical danger to them.

How can we justify putting the most vulnerable parts of the male population at such risk?? Well, because as a society, we don’t treat men attacking other men as “just the way it is”. (Outside of various criminal subcultures such as organized crime, gangs and prisons, of course.) We regard it as aberrant and intolerable behavior that needs to be stopped and punished.

Male victims of criminal assault don’t get told that they probably “led their attacker on” by trying to pick a mutually desired fight with him. They don’t get suspected of making a “false assault accusation” because they’re embarrassed that they lost a consensual fight. They don’t get told that the assault was their own stupid fault for walking into a men’s room with a bigger guy, because a lot of men are going to try to beat up a smaller guy if they get a chance, that’s just the way it is.

(Yes, I know that in practice, more vulnerable men in some iffy situations do have to employ the same kind of self-protective thinking that women frequently use, if they’re around bigger and/or more dangerous guys. My point is that society isn’t expecting them to just accept that danger as an omnipresent fact of nature, like the weather, and putting all the responsibility on them to limit their own lives and choices to reduce their risk.)

See what I mean about the exploitation of protection to exercise control? Patriarchal society recognizes that there’s a nonzero risk of more vulnerable men being physically harmed by more dangerous men, but it responds by stigmatizing and policing the dangerous men as antisocial perpetrators, rather than by segregating and restricting the vulnerable men.

When patriarchal society recognizes that there’s a nonzero risk of women being physically harmed by dangerous men, on the other hand, it responds by sighing and shrugging and saying “it’s too bad, but that’s just the way it is”, and telling women it’s their responsibility to stay in their sex-segregated safe spaces to protect themselves.

And now, of course, that same attitude of strategic helplessness about male violence against women is also being weaponized to deny rights to transgender women.

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Excellent analysis!

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I already agreed with her on bathroom bills, and have said so, so there’s no convincing to do there. I don’t agree with the official position of this board on the other issue, but we’ve done this subject to death already. I’ve listened to her arguments and many similar ones, and I don’t find them convincing. And I’ve made mine on this board in the past and did not change many minds. I won’t repeat them here, it would derail the thread and just have a similar outcome.

I know multiple trans people personally, and I’ve spent a lot of time researching the subject and talking to people on both sides. I’m familiar with your arguments and I still think you’re wrong. What more do you want of me?

I’m not actually sure if I disagree with @puzzlegal at all on policies here, despite reaching them from slightly different principles. But potentially we could disagree on a given policy. Does that make me a bigot? Why? She is just as likely to be wrong, probably more so, since I have spent more time looking onto the issue and seen more evidence.

Additionally, it means bigot is now defined as ‘someone who disagrees with progressives’ preferred policies for any reason’. This is clearly a bad definition according to any objective standard, though it has been very useful to progressives in shutting up the opposition and achieving their goals.

It is however a dangerous tactic. Policies commonly have unintended outcomes, and refusing to listen to people who could be affected makes bad ones more likely. Additionally, we are now seeing a swell in actually bigoted opinions (according to the definition I gave earlier) being expressed, and calling them transphobic or racist etc no longer makes any impression, since “everything is racist/transphobic”.

There are plenty of GCs who do call opposition to them misogyny. They came from the same progressive ecosystem, after all.

This thread is supposed to be about motives. Understanding someone’s motive is useful if you wish to persuade them to support you. It would be a waste of effort to try and convince the second person that black people are no different to them, instead you need to address their actual fear.

On the original topic, I suspect your male janitor argument would be much more effective in convincing people to oppose bathroom bills than telling them that no one is transitioning in order to spy on women. Relatively few people believe the latter, so it doesn’t address their objection, but the majority of Americans do define gender as birth sex.

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And that’s why i said, way back in thread ~46:

And i agree that motive matters for persuasion. But i don’t think it makes or breaks bigotry. I’m a Jew. I care what you do, i don’t really care what’s in your heart of hearts.

No, disagreeing on “a policy” doesn’t make one a bigot. But being a bigot doesn’t make one not with engaging with, either. I don’t think it’s particularly useful to argue who is or isn’t a bigot. Because it’s actions that matter, and no one has ever been persuaded to change their actions by being called a bigot. That sounds like you are accusing someone of some fundamental character flaw, not of having made a poor choice that can be changed going forward.

Also, not related to this thread, but i suspect I’ve spent as much time as you have researching the specific issues of transgender, and have looked at it from more angles. I’m looking from the outside in, though, as are you.

But fwiw, i wasn’t intending to describe you when i said some people aren’t bothering to look at rationales and aren’t arguing in good faith.

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Kimstu, that was no hijack, that was the very heart of the matter. Very well argued! Kudos!

227

I think I’m the one that misintrepreted. Sorry, @DemonTree .

I think there is room to disagree over specific policies, depending on the policy. And @puzzlegal makes an excellent point about labels not helping. That only works as a shaming tool, and only works if the recipient already agrees in principle, just missed some detail.

You are also correct there are grades of any judged category like bigot. And overuse of the term waters it down. People become desensitized like you say.

I don’t think you can fairly know how much relative time another person has spent on the issue or how much research.

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How on earth could you know that? Have you run a detailed list of your time so spent, somehow obtained one from @puzzlegal of her time so spent, and compared the two?

Nonsense. I’ve never seen anyone called a bigot for objecting to environmental policies, for instance. Called wrong, sure. Called ignorant, sometimes. But not called a bigot.

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My point was that the people who are hateful don’t draw a distinction. They neither know nor care, and lump it all together.

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yes, this is so.

231

Okay, I didn’t mean to suggest you were the one offering messages that miss the mark, and I’m sorry if I implied you did.

I’ve encountered genuine misogynists on Twitter, especially after Elon bought it. I wouldn’t want to be friends with one. Sure, for some purposes it doesn’t matter - eg not being discriminated against by the government or in daily life. Laws can do that. But getting those laws in the first place, making sure they are enforced; that depends on what’s in people’s hearts.

Wish it was something I could just not think about, rather than wondering which observation or speculation is going to result in a stranger accusing me of having a fundamental character flaw.

But actually I don’t agree with you here. Calling people bigots is not changing their hearts and minds - but it can change actions, if they are afraid of the consequences of being so labelled. I’m not totally opposed to the idea some opinions should be taboo, which is what the various -ist and -phobe labels achieve. I am alarmed by the relentless expansion of the list of topics and views so tabooed that we have seen in the last 20 years. And I’m alarmed by some of what we’re seeing now that the taboo has been weakened.

I didn’t really think you were, but thank you.

You’re right. Neither of us actually knows and I shouldn’t have assumed. Sorry @puzzlegal. But equally I see this assumption made constantly about those on the other side of the issue, and it’s just as wrong there. Disagreement does not imply ignorance.

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Fair enough.

233

…if you’ve got to go back nearly 50 years for a single example, then what you’ve found isn’t representative: its an outlier.

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Hid off topic post {WE?}

When you’re getting your information about a subject from news sites rather than personal experience, you run into the problem that as something becomes more common it ceases being reported on.

So “rare” and “ubiquitous” can superficially look quite similar.

Anyway, here are some more up to date examples. From this list of 24 transwomen in the female category we have:

Tiffany Abreu (38 when a member of the 2022 Brazillian Cup winning team)
Molly Cameron (47 in 2023, still winning races)
Laurel Hubbard (41 when winning the 2019 Oceania weightlifting championships)
Lana Lawless (56 when winning the 2008 LDA golfing competition)
Victoria Monaghan (won New Zealand Open darts in 2022 at the age of 50)
Valentina Petrillo (reached the semi-finals of the T12 women’s 200m in the Paralympics this year at the age of 51)
Natalie van Gogh (still winning 1sts in cycling in 2015 at the age of 41)

Rene Richards was an outlier in 1977. Not now.

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Hid off-topic post {WE?}

…incorrect.

For starters: Tiffany Abreu was a member of a team, so unless you want to provide the ages of everyone else in the team, doesn’t really belong here.

Secondly: Molly Cameron didn’t win the Cascade Gravel Grinder in 2023. She won a stage. She actually came fourth.

Thirdly: Laurel Hubbard is a kiwi legend. And again: is an outlier.

The golfing competition that Lana Lawless won was the Long Drivers of America. She is the only trans woman winner out of 22 winners: an outlier in a relatively obscure, novelty event.

Victoria Monaghan: well, it’s darts. The woman she beat for the NZ open darts was aged 64.

Valentina Petrillo: well, the semi-finals isn’t the finals, is it. She actually withdrew from competition in 2023 due to anti-trans threats.

As for Natalie van Gogh: 41 isn’t that old for cycling. She was first in 2 events in 2015. She also came 2nd, 3rd, 7th twice and then 10th. She lost more times than she won. Women younger than her consistently beat her.

This cherry-picked list proves my points. These are all outliers. All wildly different sports. All very different levels of competition. One of them was a team event. They didn’t dominate the competition. You are going to find 43 year-olds competing at all levels if you look hard enough. Statistically your list means absolutely nothing at all.

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I just googled “oldest baseball players”. There are a lot of guys in their forties playing professional baseball today. Something about better sports medicine.

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Hid off-topic post. {WE?}

You claimed that @Jay_Z “had to go back 50 years” to find an example of a male person excelling in female sports at an unusually advanced age. The examples I provided were perfectly adequate to show that this is not so.

If you would prefer to discuss comprehensive statistics, that’s fine by me too. Ideally we could look at some sport that has lots of male players on testosterone suppression competing with female players (cycling would be a good one - there’s lots of data there) and plot their achievement levels against each other.

Do you know of any surveys like that?

238

…and they did.

But you aren’t Jay_Z.

My claim is that the single example wasn’t representative. It was an outlier.

And my criticism of your post is exactly the same.

These multiple examples are not representative. You’ve cherry picked from multiple sports, at different levels of competition. Nobody is dominating the competition. At best, they win a single tournament at the world level, and that’s it. But most of your list weren’t even doing that.

I’d prefer we didn’t. Because firstly, this thread isn’t about sports. If you want to start a new thread to argue this, feel free.

And secondly: you’d much rather you didn’t. Because you are wrong on the science, you are wrong on the facts, and if you try it on here I’m afraid I’m going to have to demolish your arguments.

I’m pretty sure that the “data” will be cherry-picked and not at all relevant to the discussion at hand. Because this thread is about “trans fear.” And cis people have nothing at all to fear from trans athletes.

239

Huh? Are there a lot of male sports competitors on testosterone suppression? You aren’t talking about trans women are you? Because all the males i know on testosterone suppression are fighting a hormone-related cancer, and they aren’t generally entering sporting competitions while they are doing that.

240

“Transwomen are female” fits very uncomfortably with “sex and gender are not the same thing”, don’t you think?

Has that second statement been dropped from the creed now? Transwomen are people whose gender identity is woman and whose sex is female?