One of the side affects of puberty blockers is brittle bones. It seems unlikely that a child taking them would be able to compete at gymnastics.
I think even in the regulated approach that @YWTF F is espousing, it would only be people who can’t/refuse to pass who would be affected. If you look sufficiently female and you aren’t literally waving your dick around the locker room, no one is going to know. The same if you’re running a women’s organization despite being biological male. No one will know unless you give them a reason to check you out.
The issue is alays going to come back to how to protect the folks who can’t pass, who lack the means to get the surgery and counseling they want to have, and who still want to be gender non-conforming as they want without the threat of violence. Wearing a skirt in the men’s restroom should not earn anyone a death sentence. Transwomen who enter women’s spaces are doing so for safety reasons in addition to the warm and fuzzies of gender validation.
To me, the solution (besides addressing predatory male behavior, of course) is more gender neutral spaces and more privacy in existing spaces. The violent transphobes who’d beat up a transwoman in the men’s restroom might also beat her up in gender neutral spaces too. But not necessarily. A gym, for instance, could provide single occupancy spaces for those desiring more privacy (which would include a lot of folks, including people with scars, medical issues, and mental disorders like social anxiety). We could also install “multiple occupancy” gender neutral spaces that have lots of privacy. Like a unisex restroom with stall doors/walls that extend close to the ceiling and floor, equipped with both urinals and toilets. Normalize the coexistence of men and women in spaces that have been historically sex-segregated and maybe we remove some of the thrill that incites predators to predator.
It would be for physical body changes. I mentioned before, but I think that they could do statistical analysis of XX and XY biology to come up with what is typical for each genetic type. Then if someone wants to cross over to the other genetic type, they should make some significant effort to match what is biologically typical for that genetic type. That does not mean put on a dress. For an XY person trying to go into a typically XX space, there would need to be some significant biological transformation so they more strongly conform to XX biology.
I think it’s totally fair that we say that XY people have to conform to XX standards to enter an XX space but XX people don’t. A place like the XX locker room is intended for XX people, and those people will naturally have a wide range of appearances. But since they are XX people, there will be some appearances and behaviors which are most typical. It’s fair to say that XY people have to conform to these common attributes. Just because because 1 in 100 women have facial hair does mean that XY people in the XX space can also have facial hair. The XY people in the XX space need to conform more to the 99/100 side rather than the 1/100 side.
I was thinking more about my own feelings of gender identity, and I realized that the very strong feelings I have are not about masculine pursuits, or masculine feelings, but about my own body. My physical male body seems like the perfect fit for who I am. I am happy and content with this body and I think I would be very unhappy and discontent with a non-male physical body. I don’t believe this is due to culture and society, but I can’t be absolutely sure.
Speaking personally, my body is just fine, but my “societal role” is messed up. Everything anyone has ever told me about “being a man” sounds like total horse-shit to me. The whole “men don’t cry” garbage, and, of course, the John Wayne macho crap about standing right up to a bully and don’t ever back down. I actually knew guys who suffered from the Marty McFly psychological limitation: you could get them to do anything, no matter how dangerous or stupid, just by saying “You’re chicken!” When I was growing up, all of that junk was part of “being a man.” Insane, and I wanted no part of it.
You mean transmen in men’s events? You said it… it’s a different sport entirely. Men’s gymnastics involves not only different events, but even the similar events have different standards of performance.
Your physical body is not a fit for who you are; is IS who you are. You were not born into your body, you were just born. Your body is 100% of what you are. Of course it’s a fit for you, it’s you. Everything you have ever thought, your personality, your hopes, your dreams, everything you like and all the love and hate you have ever felt, is a manifestation of your central nervous system, a part of your body.
There is no you apart your male body. There’s no soul, no spirit, apart from your physical form. It’s all you are and all you ever will be. You cannot separate your personality from your body.
I don’t by any means think this is true of all trans people, but it’s pretty common for people, especially women, to feel unhappy with their bodies, and I believe in some circumstances that can manifest as dysphoria. It probably was rare in the past, but now with increased visibility and the internet… it would explain the explosion in numbers and the increase especially among teenage girls. This would be less worrying if psychologists and other medical professionals felt free to investigate the cause of dysphoria, but currently the ‘affirming model’ and early medical intervention are pushed as the only option. In no other case do we basically let patients diagnose themselves.
I kind of see where you are coming from, but what you are proposing looks logistically tortuous. And for what gain? Access to the women’s locker room shouldn’t be treated as a prize those goes to the male most capable of passing as a woman. We’re not talking about withholding life-saving medications or anything of that level of criticality. We are talking about a room for donning and doffing clothes, safely and comfortably.
If exceptions to single-sex spaces have to be made, the exceptional case should have a bonafide need that is being met, and this need should always be greater than risks associated with granting this exception. It should also be determined on a case-by-case basis, rather than blanket policy.
I don’t think it makes sense to come up with pre-defined criteria for allowing a male to claim room in female spaces. Because the existence of these criteria will always imply males meeting X,Y, and Z criteria are entitled to female spaces, and that shouldn’t be the message that is sent if they don’t have a bonafide need.
And yet some folks feel the opposite from me, and can’t be happy with their bodies. Their gender identity is different from mine.
A women’s organization would know if it’s a paid position. You’re going to need to present some kind of government ID when you’re getting processed in, and if there is a M shown, then that it is unlikely to be missed if one’s sex is important for that organization.
But yes, with respect to locker rooms, what you’re saying is what I believe will result from policy that explicitly reserves female spaces for biological females. If a penis-haver is using that space, just them knowing that women can notify management if they suspect a male intruder will deter any behaviors that could attract attention.
I think that society is going to have to come up with workable solutions to the fact that more and more people that look a lot like one gender actually have the genetics of another gender. If the only rule is XX goes to women’s locker room and XY goes to men’s, then what to do about people who have undergone extensive trans procedures? Through medical procedures and hormones, an XX person can eventually look just like a very masculine man. If that XX person is forced to use the women’s locker room, then it’s going seem very much like a man in the locker room. And it’s the same thing with XY people who transition and look very much like a typical woman. I think in these kinds of cases, it should be okay to let people into gender-specific spaces as long as they are generally unremarkable in the space. If you have to look really closely at someone to see if their gender matches their genetics, that’s probably a good indication that they can integrate into gender-specific spaces without causing concern.
We don’t really know that. We know some people suffer dysphoria, and transition can treat it. Gender identity is a supposition to explain those facts.
I agree that the package of traits society ascribes to men is sucky. Just the fact that it’s still taboo for men to wear dresses (which are really nice garments for self-expression) makes me sympathetic to men who feel stifled by male-specific gender norms.
This is exactly why gender ideology concerns me. If boys start getting the message that stereotypically feminine traits belong to females, this will encourage them to transition just so they can be their feminine selves. This means that instead of expanding the concept of what manliness looks like, it will become narrower. The more gender nonconforming men there are, the harder it is for nonconforming boys to perceive themselves as aberrant creatures who are doing boy wrong. Because they have access to self-accepting role models.
It seems we are losing this diversity within the population that calls itself men.
Eh, that’s going a step too far. You don’t have to believe in a soul to think that the mind (as manifested by the brain) is somewhat distinct from the rest of the body. My body absolutely influenced me in that I went through an entirely different experience growing up than a female would have. But it was a part of my environment, in the same way that racial differences come from the environment. My body is the place where my brain lives; has always lived–but that’s not the same as saying you can’t separate my personality from my body.
One of the fun things about VR is that you can wear different bodies. You can be the opposite sex, or a different race, or super tall, or a cartoon, or whatever. It’s still my mind in that virtual body. A mind that has the experience of growing up a white male, but not one that is particularly tied to that identity.
It’s not chromosomes that are the regulated article. It’s what sex is shown on your government ID. (I kind of feel like the only person in this thread that remembers this information travels with a person wherever they go and is an noninvasive way of verifying someone’s sex. It’s precisely because people can look like one sex but be the other that our IDs lists our sex.)
If the policy is that women’s spaces is reserved for anyone who is female (as indicated on one’s birth certificate or driver’s license), then why is there a need to alter that policy? People with extensive trans procedures can apply for a legal sex change; this would allow them to use the room of their desired sex without deviating from the official policy. Everyone else can use the room of their birth sex or a 3rd space.
I kinda disagree… If I lost my fingers from frostbite, my hands would no longer be “my hands.” They would not “belong to me” and they most certainly would not “be me.” My body and my sense of personhood would have flown widely apart.
Yeah, this would probably work. The gender levels I mentioned earlier could be a part of this. I don’t think it should just be M or F. There could be a defined process and clear requirements to go from M->F0->F1->F2…->F5. And I don’t think that the government should state which level could do whatever. So it would be up to a particular gym to say which levels were allowed in the women’s locker room rather than the government. Then everyone would know the rules. If you didn’t want to be in the locker room with XY people who looked masculine, don’t go to gyms which set their policy at F0 and above.
Businesses have more to lose than gain by doing this. If 80% of the British population is against penises being in the women’s locker room, then their share of the gym fees will have to be made up by the 20% of the population that is okay with penises. There is not enough people fighting for mixed-sex showers to make these attractive for gyms.
Unfortunately, there are a number of problems with this.
Not everyone has a government ID. Some government IDs list gender, not sex. Some government IDs don’t list gender or sex. Some government IDs allow a non-binary option (usually ‘X’ or ‘Q’).
And I think in most cases the indication on government IDs is for recognition purposes (like listing eye color and height on driver’s licenses) rather than serving as an official government imprimatur of authentic membership in one sex or the other. In many states in the U.S., at least, changing the gender on your ID is just an affidavit away.
At least in the U.S. we would have to significantly adjust the way we handle IDs, and that would also probably mean setting national standards at the federal level.
I assumed it would normally be a moot point as I assumed most trans* individuals were unlikely to be displaying their genitalia if they didn’t match the expected norm in those spaces.
monstro has rightly raised some problems with the laissez-faire approach.
Agreed, case-by-case is probably the best approach because there are few enough amnesiac 18-year-olds, and they need accommodations in so many different areas of life. A case-by-case approach to gender identity causes problems because of the numbers involved and the highly intimate nature of the scrutiny.
In terms of sport, though, a case-by-case approach may be the only viable way forward, numbers be damned. Fortunately, athletes are used to scrutiny over their bodies.
Powers &8^]
A lot of trans folks don’t have dysphoria. They are fine enough with their bodies to live just fine without surgery. Many don’t even take hormones.
Do you think these people are equally as trans as those that do have dysphoria?