Why didn’t they just say “Women and transgender men?” That covers everyone who has a cervix, and, as a bonus, doesn’t sound weird and objectifying.
The gender benders of the 70’s and 80’s knew this well and artists became legends behind it. David Bowie standing proud saying he’s wearing a man’s dress? That shit is hot. Boy George wearing makeup like that’s what just men do? Very simple and very radical.
For some their brains may have been (partially) masculinised/feminised before birth. For others, have a look at the stories on Reddit - Dive into anything
You make them sound like something to be overcome, rather than take seriously.
Re your objective/subjective question, here’s a thought experiment:
Imagine an ordinary 12 year old girl is in a car crash and falls into a coma. Six years later at the age of 18 she wakes up. The last thing she remembers is being 12, and she still feels like a 12 year old and hasn’t had any of the experiences that teenagers normally go through, but in the meantime she’s gone through puberty and grown into an adult physically (and that probably includes changes to the brain). Is she ‘really’ 12 or 18? Is that even a useful question?
Should she be able to go to school with 12 year olds to catch up on her education if she wants to? Should she be able to play for the under-13 teams and compete in sport against other 12 year olds? I think the questions would be best decided on a case-by-case basis, not by declaring she’s legally a 12 year old and insisting she be treated as such.
There’s a goofy but cute movie on Amazon Prime called “Troop Zero”, which is set in the late 1970s. It’s about a band of misfits who form a girl scout troop and end up competing against the town’s “mean girl” troop. One of the misfits is an effeminate boy who is super into David Bowie. He wears the same scout uniform (skirt and the sash) that the girls do.
There’s a part in the movie when the bullies (both kids and adults) make fun of the little boy and call him a girl. He says very pointedly “I’m not a girl!”
This didn’t strike me as being a big deal when I saw it. But later when I was reading the reviews about the movie, I saw a lot of folks pointing out how it is a jab at today’s gender politics. He was into “girly” things and his friends (both kids and adults) embraced him for it, and they were able to do this without questioning his gender, while it was his enemies who were the ones calling him a girl. I don’t know if the film’s writers were making a commentary on today’s gender politics or if they were just showing how things were back in the 1970s. It is interesting, regardless the motivation.
In contrast, there’s the most recent rendition of “Little Women.” I enjoyed it. Jo is the strong-willed, independent young woman who watches her sisters’ lives be constrained by courtship and marriage and decides she doesn’t want any of that for herself. She’s louder and more rough and tumble than her sisters, a wearer of men’s vests and coats atop her skirts and dresses. But it is clear she likes men. Seems pretty straight-forward, right? Sounds like a non-basic woman who is still well within two standard deviations of the norm for womanhood.
Now, I don’t have a problem with a version of Jo March that is queer. There are so many film adaptations of “Little Women”; why not make the story more interesting and befitting of modern times? But the Jo March in this latest rendition isn’t queer at all to me. We never see her make eyes at a woman. Yes, she rebels against the social customs of the time by not settling down. But how is that a gender/sexual identity? Plenty of people–men and women–decide not to settle down despite having their romantic passions. Is that queerness or is that people not wanting to be encumbered in a legally-binding monogamous relationship? Mixing men’s wear and women’s wear might have been unusual for that time given her social station. But I’m guessing it wasn’t unusual at for poor women to wear whatever clothing they could get a hold of, especially since the work they did tend to be very physical. My biggest hero of all time, Harriet Tubman, wore men’s clothing because it was more comfortable and practical for mucking around in the marshes, helping folks find their freedom. And she did plenty of gender non-conforming things (like leading a military operation). Does that mean she was queer? Or was she just a bad-ass who didn’t give any fucks?
So yeah, I wish we could stop making a big deal out of stuff. I’m tired of cavemen who demand everyone conform to gender roles and stereotypes. And I’m tired of gender ideologues who think any person who doesn’t conform to gender roles and stereotypes is special and thus deserving of a class of their own. Both of these views are gaggorific to me.
I agree. This would address virtually every situation from the classroom to the boardroom. But as a practical matter, we are still no further along with respect to changing room etiquette and sports competition.
Wait, the last 2,000+ posts weren’t spent on working out reasonable solutions to these problems?
Shocked, am I.
CMC
One thing is that I think we need to stop thinking of “women” as a single concept. At one time the meaning was clear, but now it’s being applied to many more concepts and the meaning is getting watered down. It’s like the word “milk”. At one time that meant one thing: Whole milk from a cow. But now there are lots of kinds of milk: cow, goat, 1%, 2%, soy, almond, coconut, etc. In some cases it doesn’t really matter which milk you use (on cereal), but in other cases it matters a whole lot (baking).
With regards to sports, locker rooms and bathrooms, we should probably come up with a different word other than men/women to clearly define what group of people they are intended for. The terms men/women have become too general and are less useful when specific definitions are needed.
Women’s locker/bath room = Rooms for genetically XX people and people who highly correlate to the typical physical presentation of XX people.
Women’s sports = Sports for XX people and people who identify as women and have a competitive performance ability similar to typical XX people.
Now that the terms men/women are being expanded to include people who traditionally did not meet the original definition, we need more specific definitions in some instances where those words are used.
This is still far too generic and doesn’t address the various issues that have been discussed up-thread. I certainly don’t have the answer but right now I’m inclined to suggest that:
a) As a long term solution, perhaps a fundamental change to locker room configuration is needed.
b) Trans people may not be sanctioned to compete in professional or college level sports.
??
Relevant essay from a feminist student who is currently suing Bristol University for allowing other students to bully and harass her:
Maybe not, but it’s a lot closer to what a workable solution would be which would please most people than what we have now. I think at some point, we have say that a gender fluid person who picks their gender on a daily basis can’t pick their locker room and sport the same way. That doesn’t mean they can’t go into locker rooms and join sports, but it means they may need to conform to objective qualifications in some instances rather than their personal preference.
I can be sort of pedantic in these discussions which can be annoying, but I actually wouldn’t mind hammering out a legal-like definition of who can use which locker room and join each sport. A workable solution would likely be one that most people thought was fair but no one was really happy about. Everyone will need to compromise on some points, but I think there is an actual workable solution which would address most valid concerns.
There’s no problem with allowing AFABs to compete, against women if not on T or men if on T. And the men’s category could be changed to ‘open’ to allow transwomen and anyone of any gender to compete in it if they are able. Otherwise you’d probably need separate leagues, though there may be some sports where transwomen don’t have a biological advantage over natal women. The current rules have definitely got ahead of the science though, and in some cases flatly ignore reality (see the advice to schools I linked above).
C) There should be significant hurdles in getting legal sex changes. There is absolutely nothing unreasonable about requiring people to have counseling, surgery, and be living as the opposite sex for a certain time prior to changing their official paperwork. Anything less stringent than this undoubtedly means abuse. Any two bit predator can figure out self-ID grants an unfettered pass into women’s spaces.
D) Unless someone has had a legal sex change, they are not entitled to be treated as a female if they were born male. Women-only rape shelters should be free to turn away anyone who doesn’t have F on their ID. Same with all-girls schools or dormitories. Males shouldn’t be able to gain entry into female-exclusive spaces just by claiming to be trans. The risk of abuse is too high and defeats the purpose of single-sex facilities.
E) The only people allowed to be legally recognized as women are people who have F on the official govt records. If the head of a women’s organization is found to be male and the rules of that organization is that leadership is female-only, the organization has the right to force that person out. As an oppressed group, women have the right to self-determination and they should be able to center their sex class without catering others.
Before you took the position you have on extending the use of women’s locker rooms to transwomen, did you wonder if women would be okay with undressing around naked penises?
Or did you assume it didn’t matter if they were okay with it?
All good and reasonable ideas. I’m thinking that maybe gender in society should have different levels of compliance and requirements depending on the situation. So like gender0 to gender5 to designate which level of compliance is needed for different scenarios. Someone who conforms to gender0 is just conforming at a minimal level and would be treated as that gender in situations where gender doesn’t really matter, like pronouns and clothing. But gender5 would be a very high level of gender conforming and would allow the person to enter situations which are typically only for cis-gendered people. So if a male presenting XY person not undergoing any kind of trans medical procedures wants to use the women’s locker room, they could be denied because the women’s locker room would just be for gender4 or 5 compliance. This sounds very sci-fi and government controlling, but it would be a way to balance people’s gender expression with the reality of society. People who just conform to the opposite sex in a slight way wouldn’t automatically have access to every gender-specific space, but those people who greatly conform to the opposite sex would have access.
Perhaps a real-life analogy would be immigrants. When they come to this country, they aren’t automatically granted all the same rights and privileges as a natural born citizen. Over time they can get access to many of the same rights, but they don’t automatically become 100% American on the first day. So if someone follows the path of work visa --> green card --> citizenship, each stage has different rights. The immigrants which want full American rights need to take the necessary steps which grant those level of rights. I can see gender rights being similar. If you are a natural born gender, you get full rights, but otherwise you need to go through some defined steps and procedures to get a different set of rights.
Many gymnastics events are much, much more challenging for males than they are for females (which is why men and women have some events that are unique to each sex.) There is also considerable evidence that in ultra-marathon running and swimming, women are superior at upper distances.
Something that worries me about this idea, is that it may be better for other women (and men if they feel self conscious/uncomfortable) but it could be bad for trans people by pushing them into surgery they don’t really want, in order to get more legal rights/social acceptance.
That’s a very valid point. I think I would argue that some spaces are not meant for trans people if they are not doing anything to alter their bodies to conform to that space. So someone going into the women’s locker room should be either an XX person or an XY person who is undergoing some level of medical transitioning. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be surgery, but likely something like hormonal treatment would be needed. An XY person without any medical treatment would need to use the men’s locker room in that case.
That’s interesting, because women’s gymnastics is also an event in which extreme youth is an advantage. There’ve been suspected cases of fraud passing a younger gymnast off as old enough to compete - makes me wonder how puberty blockers could potentially play into this. Do you think transmen might have an advantage in gymnastics, or would the different men’s and women’s events eliminate that?
For the latter two, guess it would depend on exactly what the advantages and disadvantages were and how they were linked to testosterone levels. I also remembered that the record depth for freediving has been held by both men and women, but that’s not exactly a sport.
When you say “conforming”, are you talking gender expression (clothes, hairstyle, makeup) or are you talking physical body changes?
It’s ludicrously easy to put on a dress and some heels to broadcast femininity, right?. Should this simple action give a man to access a space they otherwise wouldn’t be entitled to? If so, I don’t get the logic. Seems to send a message that there’s something naturally aberrant about a man who engages in feminine gender expression, and thus, this man doesn’t belong with other men. And is it fair that we require males to engage in feminine gender expression to enter space X, but not females?
If you’re talking about physical body changes, that makes more sense…but still not 100% practical if you’re concerned about keeping men out of space. Who gets to decide that a male’s body is sufficiently “female-like”? How often will this person’s body come up for review to determine conformity? And is it fair that we require males to look a certain way to enter space X, but not females?