To me it’s no different than opponents of gay or interracial marriage insisting that it’s not really marriage. But the usage of these words has changed.
I have no doubt that many of the community believe they are women. They are very sincere in this belief, and it is hurtful to them when they see this belief challenged. So I can understand why it would hard to see these views expressed in this thread.
But there is something pathological about hinging one’s self-esteem to external validation, no matter what the subject is. I don’t think we talk about this nearly enough. Suicide is not the natural consequence of having others see you as differently from your desired self. If this were true, we’d see this pattern with all stigmatized minorities. But we don’t. It shouldn’t be treated as a given that society’s acceptance of trans women as women/trans men as men is required to prevent people from offing themselves.
The more this idea is foisted on the public, the more it is going to cause people to see the trans movement as emotionally manipulative. The answer to trans suicide is not to shame people for saying transwomen are actually males rather than females. It’s to ensure they have access to mental health care and support systems that promote emotional resilency.
Using a heavy hand to police language for the purpose of protecting feelings actually obscures the harms that comes with this kind of language policing. Orwellian is an apt descriptor for this. When we’re only allowed to refer to transwomen as “trans women”, we essentially are being coerced into seeing them as biological females rather than a subset of biological males. So then we don’t see the big deal with entering them into women’s sports or placing them in women’s prison. If women’s rights are being curtailed because the use of certain language is masking biological truth, then women would have to be idiots to continue using this language.
Thanks.
I have to say that I don’t know what to think about the whole misgendering thing. Calling someone by their preferred pronouns but still considering that person to be a member of their biological sex class doesn’t strike me as OMG OPPRESSION!!! I get that referring to a transwoman as a “man” is offensive, and I get why some of @RickJay’s posts has ruffled feathers. And I also get that some transwomen don’t want to be classified as male. But should referring to a transwoman as “male” be likened to calling them a racial slur? No. There are no kikes or niggers or wops. There are males and females. There are transwomen who have no problem accepting their “male” classification. There are no Asians who are OK with being called a chink. Most importantly, there is no utility in describing people in terms of racial slurs. But there is utility in categorizing people’s biological states.
I think “man” and “woman” can be negotiated, so I am not in agreement with @RickJay or @YWTF on that piece. I think I’m OK with “male” and “female” being negotiated a little bit. But I don’t want them to be turned into subjective concepts that anyone can opt in and out of by uttering a few magical words. Trans folks can still have legal rights and full societal acceptance without everyone blinding themselves to biological realities.
I think I partially agree with this.
Here’s what I disagree with - if trans women aren’t women, okay, they’re still trans women. I call them women because that’s what they ask for (most of them, anyway), and since I’m using that word in the sociogender rather than biological context. But okay, I understand your position, and I understand that there’s no hate behind it.
But that’s very different than calling trans women “men” (not male, but men). If they’re men, then what’s the need for “trans women”? They’re just men, by that language. Strange, presumably delusional men. And trans men are then strange, presumably delusional women. I can’t see how that’s not hateful, dismissive, and gaslighting. And certainly rhetorically erasing of trans identity.
Then if someone defines ‘man’ as meaning biologically male, you are saying it’s unacceptable to express that idea in any form?
Also, I used the term ‘biologically male’ earlier, and Kimstu objected - so much so that she never answered my original question. As I said before, it’s the idea that people find offensive, it doesn’t matter what terms we dress it up in. And this:
This is the problem with putting avoiding offence above honesty in language. And enshrining these concepts into law makes it almost impossible to allow exceptions even where they are necessary and proportionate - exceptions that most people in this thread have agreed with - because they will fall foul of equal rights legislation.
A big reason for the conflict in this issue is that we are using imprecise language. When someone says “trans women are women”, the word “are” is implying an equivalence in the same way like “one plus one is two”. But “woman” is more of an encompassing concept instead of something that is crisply defined with clear edges. It would be more correct to say “trans women are a kind of woman”. And also say “cis women are a kind of woman”. And also say “trans women and cis women are different”. It would be like saying “sedans and hatchbacks are both cars, but sedans and hatchbacks are not the same thing”.
If we can come at this issue from this perspective, it’s easier to come up with workable solutions. We should acknowledge that TW and CW can both fit under the umbrella of women, but they are not equivalent and should be treated in unique ways in some instances. Although for most of history “woman” and “cis woman” were equivalent, we’re now entering an era where the term woman can encompass more than just cis women. For things like sports and bathrooms, the solution isn’t just to treat TW and CW exactly the same as if TW=CW. There are very important differences that should be acknowledged so that solutions can be created which work for everyone.
This is mostly how I see it. Thanks for describing it this way.
The problem is that people are saying “I’m not claiming trans women and cis women are identical”. But they want to pass laws that treat us identically. It’s hard not to see that as dishonest.
I do think that in most situations we should avoid being offensive, be polite, try and treat people kindly, etc, and I’m sure you’d agree. But in some circumstances being clear and open is more important. Scientific research is one, debate on public policy another. It’s good that ‘safe spaces’ exist, but the whole world cannot be a safe space.
“Trans women” denotes that they are males who don’t identify with their birth sex/gender. Why wouldn’t this be meaningful? It tells us that these are male people who, for one reason or another, see themselves as having a female gender. This may or may not be associated with body changes, a certain style of dress, or certain kind of behavior. Trans women is a perfectly cromulent term when speaking generally about this population.
But in a thread discussing civil rights, we need room to use more precise and accurate language. If I point out that trans women are males and thus should not be participating in Title IX-protected sports, then it becomes infuriating to see people sidestepping a policy concern in favor of finger wagging over semantics. It needs to be understood that I’m actually exercising a lot of restraint by saying “males” instead of “men” (when these terms mean the same damn thing to me as I’ve already explained), and when that restraint is instead spun as bigotry or insensitivity, I’m only going to become further convinced an Orwellian agenda is endangering me and other women. Especially when this finger wagging is occurring at the same time women are glibly being referred to as menstruators and individuals with cervixes. Just because women aren’t at risk of committing suicide behind this doesn’t mean it’s okay to reduce us to disembodied organs and bodily functions.
Perhaps posters like @RickJay wouldn’t feel the need to call Rachel McMinnon a man if there wasn’t so much pressure to make “transwomen are adult human males = men” literally a thought crime. Perhaps “man” would seem more egregious if I wasn’t so easy to find transwomen like this one or attacks like these coming from self-identified transwomen.
I haven’t reached this breaking point myself, but I can’t promise I won’t. Not if things continue as they are.
Right. And if they aren’t treated identically—and in fact, are treated more or less like as other members of their sex class in areas abutting with sex-based rights and protections—what utility is there in calling them types of women? It’s just asking for confusion and hurt feelings. It’s exactly why so many trans women feel unfairly discriminated against in the dating scene. The idea that a penis might turn off a lesbian seems unjust to them.
Women are being told they must see themselves as a subset of their own oppressed minority group. Should there be any surprise this will not go over very well? It would be different if there were maybe some hard and fast criteria for being trans, but there is not. There is no vetting whatsoever. So if progressives are saying any person has the right to opt into an oppressed minority group based only on the self-determined identity of that person, y’all cannot expect politically conscious members of this group to co-sign this. Its dead in the water. Expect a fight like no fight has ever been seen.
Should we? Do you think it might not depend on the degree of stigmatization?
And don’t we? We certainly do see elevated levels of suicide in gay youth, and elevated levels of suicide in black youth, and elevated levels of suicide in Native Americans. We don’t see it in the West in women overall, but there are various reasons why that might be. Not least that women may not be as stigmatized as a class as some other groups.
MrDibble
Should we? Do you think it might not depend on the degree of stigmatization?
Well, you tell me. If you think the degree of stigmatization explains why suicide is high among trans, the onus is on you to show the math behind this. I don’t see misgendering as anywhere close to the amount of stigma conveyed in “nigger”, “fag”, or “cunt”. I don’t see keeping trans women out of female locker rooms as remotely in the same galaxy as blocking people from attending public university or getting a bank loan. To me, being told one’s gender identity doesn’t trump their biological sex is nothing like being told you’re going to burn in hell if you are gay or you’re intellectual inferior to white people.
And don’t we? We certainly do see elevated levels of suicide in gay youth, and elevated levels of suicide in black youth, and elevated levels of suicide in Native Americans. We don’t see it in the West in women overall, but there are various reasons why that might be. Not least that women may not be as stigmatized as a class as some other groups.
Suicide may be high in these groups but you don’t see their suicide rates used as a censoring tactic. “Don’t talk about the differences in white and black IQ scores because it causes black people to feel suicidal” says no one ever.
“Censoring tactic” is your gloss. But I’ve used black youth suicide rates as an argument for “censoring” racist speech here before. The specific racist speech being confederate statues, not scientific racism threads, but speech is speech.
And no, I don’t have to jump through any maths hoops for you. Not as long as you’re happy to be completely subjective on your side of the argument with your I don’t sees and To mes.
So what was the point of posting what you did? If you don’t feel like actually supporting the idea that trans people face greater degree of stigma, then it was silly of you to even go there.
Clearly the point was that I don’t agree with your statement that we don’t see a pattern of suicide in stigmatized minorities. In fact, we do see it, and it’s clearly linked to societal acceptance - a prime example being the link between legalization of gay marriage and a drop in gay youth suicides.
And I think it’s a stupid game to ask me to prove that trans people face greater stigma than women overall with math. And I’m not here to play stupid games.
Kind of like a white person self-identifying as black.
But that wasn’t the point you made. You suggested the degree of stigmatization counts when it comes to suicide. It is only natural then to ask you to explain how this degree relates to trans folk compared to other oppressed minorities. I’m not seeing it and I’ve explained why I’m not seeing, and so I need to help me see that if you think I’m wrong.
And your response is to clutch your pearls as if it’s ridiculous to expect you to explain your own argument. This would be laughable if we weren’t talking about some very serious stuff here.
My remark about “degree of stigmatization” was to indicate that there’s a threshold, not that there’s a correlative scale of stigma vs suicide rate, Hence why no numbers and no maths. Just that there exists some degree of stigma that will lead to elevated rates, and trans and gays and some other groups have it, and then again some other minorities do not. Hence discounting trans suicides because not all stigmatized minorities are suicide risks is a red herring. And expecting maths about it is laughable.
I didn’t clutch my pearls, BTW. I snorted derisively.
I haven’t discounted trans suicides at all. All I’m saying is that language policing and shaming people for thought crimes isn’t where the emphasis should be when trying prevent to trans suicides. Access to mental health care should be emphasized more. That’s what the “maths” suggest to me.
Either transitioning is no big deal and shouldn’t require going through extensive medical and psychological evaluations before life-altering changes are made that could subject someone to misgendering and other hurtful offenses. Or it is a big deal and therefore it’s important for transitioners to work through medical and psychological experts before subjecting themselves to life-altering changes that subject them to misgendering and other hurtful offenses.
Trans activitists can’t insist on having their cake and eating it too without being challenged on this. They are hurting their own people with their focus on the wrong things, seriously.