I’ve already said it:
Let’s hope your politicians also recognise this, before it’s too late.
'Sokay, I think Trump’s got your back on this:
You know you’ve screwed up when Trump is the one fighting for fair play!
Maybe I’m just too cynical, but I find myself unconvinced that Trump and his supporters are genuinely motivated by a principled desire to find a just “fair play” solution to the problem that respects the rights of everybody, rather than mere malicious satisfaction in thwarting and mocking a despised minority.
I think you actually are. Sure the chance Trump cares about women’s sports is minimal, but that’s not true of all his supporters. I think a lot of people will be genuinely outraged at the idea of girls having to compete against biological males, and they are right. It is hugely unfair.
Supporting a policy because Trump opposes it would be pretty stupid, right? Supporting a policy that’s both unfair and hugely unpopular is handing him a gift in the election. If Democrat supporters made it clear to their politicians that they want something more nuanced, maybe that could be avoided?
I’d be more impressed with the good faith of such positions if more people could manage to express them in ways that didn’t seem so deliberately, gratuitously disrespectful of the transgender athletes’ expressed identity.
I mean, I think it’s a very valid point that, say, some girls can have some unfair advantage over some other girls that in fairness should disallow them from some kinds of competitions. For instance, a 17-year-old girl should generally not be entering sports competitions in the 12-year-old girls’ age class. A girl in the 170# wrestling weight class shouldn’t compete in the 109# girls’ weight class. Those objections are reasonable. And it would likewise be a reasonable argument to object to cisgender girls having to compete against transgender girls who have physical advantages due to the male physiology of their birth sex. I don’t think that’s an innately offensive position at all.
But look how it’s phrased instead: as outrage over “girls having to compete against biological males”. Why that choice of wording? It’s perfectly possible to make the exact same substantive objection to the physical disparity without describing transgender girls in a way that they’d consider misgendering: in fact, I just did that myself, a few sentences ago.
Another example, from the NY Post op-ed you linked to. I would consider it perfectly fair for an opponent of transgender female athletes in girls’ sports to say something like
[…] “the fact that a transgender girl sincerely identifies as female doesn’t cancel out the physical advantage that the male characteristics of her birth sex give her over cisgender girls.”
But how is the same sentiment expressed in the article itself?
[…] “a biological boy’s subjective sense of his gender doesn’t cancel out his physical advantage over girls.”
The author of the article knows full well that her daughter’s transgender competitors self-identify as girls, not boys, and use female pronouns. It’s perfectly possible to respect that preference while still strongly and clearly making the desired point about unfair advantage.
And yet… that’s not what the author did. It’s almost as though the misgendering and the implied contempt for the transgender girl’s “subjective sense” of gender identity is the real goal after all. Go all in on belittling and disrespecting the transgender girl’s expressed gender identity, and then smirk and say “biology made me do it”.
It just seems so gratuitously spiteful and petty, if what these advocates really want is simply to defend cisgender female athletes from unfair disadvantage. They could get much more sympathy and cooperation from people like me if they would just speak of, and to, transgender female athletes with respectful language, and acknowledge that they have a right to their gender identity and to competition opportunities in sports, and that everybody involved should work to figure out ways to provide fair opportunities for all.
But nope, there seems to be something just so deliciously irresistible about calling a transgender girl “he” and “him” and a “biological boy” as opposed to “girls”. Misgendering the transgender girls and hurting their feelings by insisting on defining them by their birth sex rather than their gender identity is really the point, isn’t it?
Because it seems to be so easy not to misgender them, and to make one’s valid arguments about competitive fairness while refraining from misgendering them, that I have a hard time seeing why else somebody would insist on misgendering them. As I said, it does not do much to produce an impression of a good-faith argument.
I’m saying it’s obvious that they are avoiding the use of the word woman and female in that particular article.
Your denial that this has anything to do with gender ideology is just more silly gaslighting. Even though you have no evidence that this is driven by women who have had hysterectomies, you feel comfortable pointIng your finger at them. Meanwhile, there is plenty of evidence trans activists believe “gender inclusivity” means referring to females using their sex organs and bodily functions. It’s the very reason JKR tweeted what she did about menstruation. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if this wasn’t come from gender ideology.
So it’s okay to be outraged, but only if it’s expressed in the approved way? Earlier you wanted language to be accurate, and what I wrote is accurate and has the advantage of not being a long periphrasis that still has to include the word ‘male’.
I actually don’t think avoiding offence here is as easy as you say; you mentioned birth sex, but that is now frowned upon; you should be saying ‘sex assigned at birth’. And how can it make sense to talk about male characteristics if even a uterus isn’t female and a penis isn’t male? Perhaps we might be allowed to mention androgenic puberty as the problem, but that’s just pushing it into another language. Or should we say ‘the puberty testicle-havers usually go through’? That strikes me as even more offensive, but apparently describing groups of people by their body parts is PC these days.
The real problem: it’s the idea there is anything male about trans women that is offensive, so whatever words are used to describe it will soon become taboo.
As for the NY Post article, am I right in thinking that is a conservative publication? If so it’s not aimed at people like you. If you are a mother trying to create a campaign against this unfair competition, it makes sense to emphasise the reason the competition is unfair in a way everyone can understand. The misgendering may be malicious, I don’t know, but I certainly don’t believe it was the ‘real point’ of the article.
Having said all that, there should be a happy medium between hyper-woke obfuscation and straight up misgendering. I don’t think we’ve found it yet.
Yeah, like I’m pretty sure a Black person wouldn’t want to contribute to a thread about “scientific” racism and have to deal with defending themselves against the inevitable dehumanization, and that’s how I feel about a threads like this. We transpeople, especially us women, seem to be one of the last people that it is still acceptable to insult and demean and to be honest, it’s been breaking me down lately.
@monstro and I are black women who have been on the SDMB for over 15 years. If you search for any thread on scientific racism, it is highly likely you will see our names appear. We are not afraid of arguing against viewpoints that we disagree with, even when those viewpoints liken us to intellectually inferior subhumans who hunger for “slave master” style rape (an actual barb that was thrown at me some years ago).
So it’s hard for me to relate to any trans person who finds this thread too hostile to engage with. No one is calling trans people slurs and saying they deserve bad things to happen to them. No one is denying that they face discrimination and deserve protections. Pointing out the problems with affirming gender identity in areas subject to sex-based protections is not the same thing as saying transgender people are invalid and shouldn’t be respected. Advocating for women’s rights shouldn’t be spun as an attack against the trans community. Saying that trans women are a class unto itself that shouldn’t be conflated or merged with the female sex class is not bigoted, either. It’s the position of people who believe biology matters much more than the idea someone has about themselves. It’s also the position of people who understand the root cause of female oppression has nothing to do with superficialities like dresses and makeup; being a woman is not a costume or a performance.
…trans people have been deliberately misgendered in this thread. You’ve posted misleading photos that were edited and originated from a hate site. Lets stop pretending that this thread is something that its not. Its hateful, demeaning, and cruel, and you and a couple of other posters are at the centre of it.
Exactly.
The authors of the CNN article could’ve said
“Persons born female should contact their doctor about cervical cancer screening by age 25.”
This would be apply to cis women, trans men, and non-binary females, without applying to trans women. It would also not send the message that females lacking cervixes should automatically be screened, since the instruction is only that they contact their doctor.
So why wasn’t this the way the advice was framed? Probably because anything that reminds the trans community that “female” is seated in reproductive anatomy is not tolerable anymore. I don’t think this is being driven by transmen, because you rarely see the language used in men’s health treated this way. It’s only the language used in women’s health that is rendered inclusive to the point of absurdity.
Here’s a version for men’s health:
They still can’t get it right though:
What about trans women who’ve had SRS, and cis men who’ve lost their penis for one reason or another? They still have a prostate. And what about trans men who’ve had a penis constructed? What about people with penises who’ve had their prostates removed due to cancer? This is sadly inaccurate.
This line is similar but reads even weirder:
Does having a penis cause someone to get prostate cancer? Cause that’s what it implies to me. “Prostate cancer is the most common non-skin cancer for people with prostates” would make more sense, but I’m not sure it’s accurate. Don’t hormone blockers reduce the risk of prostate cancer?
The ironic thing is that the ‘about’ section specifically talks about female bodies, not gender identity:
The fact this site isn’t aimed at men is probably significant to the use of language…
Yes, that’s very cringy and wrong. I don’t know why they decided to go with “people with penises” instead of “people with prostrates”. Even though that is imperfect too (for the reason you state), at least it is much more precise.
I get what they are trying to do. Prostrates are cryptic. Penises are obvious. Super informed people know what prostrates are. Less informed people don’t know what prostrates are, but they do know penises. The article is aimed at less informed people. So it makes sense to use “penis” as a flag. But like you said, if factual accuracy is the point, “people with penises” totally misses the mark. “People born male” achieves this goal.
I watch the Fuse channel sometimes (I guess I’m a wannabe millennial). This channel regularly features an advertisement for a certain HIV drug. I’ve seen the commercial a ton of times over the past year, but it was only recently when I listened closely to the disclaimer tacked on the back end. Paraphrased: “This drug should not be taken by individuals who were born female.” There are female-looking people in the commercial, but the commercial is targeted at transwomen and men. While it sucks there’s an HIV drug out there that more than 50% of HIV patients can’t benefit from, I’m glad the commercial uses language that doesn’t totally kowtow to an ideological agenda.
Probably because the circularity is blatant. “Prostate cancer is common in people with prostates” just screams uselessness.
There should be nothing wrong with saying prostate cancer is common in people born male.
…just misgendering them.
What we are seeing is phrases used as a euphemism for the taboo terms; that’s why it reads so oddly. It’s not about being more accurate, it’s just political correctness.
This page does a good job with the language IMO, and it does say the risk is thought to be lower in trans women but that there aren’t many studies:
https://prostatecanceruk.org/prostate-information/are-you-at-risk/trans-women-and-prostate-cancer
Still, that’s a site dedicated to the issue. A news article can’t be expected to go into so much depth, but there is still no excuse for omitting the word ‘woman’ or ‘man’ when describing usually-gendered body parts and illnesses.
Can you post an example of someone here misgendering a trans person? Not a hypothetical person that is perpetrating like they are trans for nefarious purposes, but an actual trans sperson?
You may not think Ivy should be participating as a woman in cycling, but do you seriously doubt she’s genuinely trans?
That’s leaving aside the general misgendering of all transwomen I highlighted there. Who are damned certainly not “hypothetical persons”.