I wasn’t bullying anybody, @RickJay can believe what he wants, but the view that we aren’t women is becoming more and more of a fringe belief as we are accepted more in society. So he’s entitled to his own opinions, but the fact is that legally and medically I am considered a woman in this country, and thankfully his opinion isn’t more prevalent or I would have a lot more bigotry to contend with.
This doesn’t conflict with what I said. It’s a fact that this word has changed, and trans women are indeed part of at least one widely used definition of “women”.
I see we’ve reached the “everyone who disagrees with me secretly agrees with me,” part of the conversation.
Then why bring up gay marriage at all? Some religious nuts who barely know what their own holy books say may have claimed that gay marriage isn’t marriage, but any thoughtful person would realize that they’re full of it.
I think that the suffering of gender dysphoria is high enough, and the benefits to transitioning useful enough that society should make some allowances for transpeople. That doesn’t imply we should redefine all words under all contexts relating to sex and gender, especially since doing so may harm others.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think trans people would be happy with “transwomen are sometimes women” .
I brought up gay marriage as an obvious example to refute something that seemed very obnoxious to me (the post has since been deleted).
Like it or not, some people really see these issues as the same. I see them as very similar. The differences alluded to so far are trivial when compared to the similarities, IMO. And I’m well aware that many disagree with this.
It looks like a cheap shot argument to me, essentially accusing people of thinking the same way as homophobes do.
We’re talking about who should be granted the special accommodations that come with being female.
Special accommodations are legal rights. You can point to a specific section in state or federal code that describes these rights and who are eligible for them.
Women have always been considered adult females under the law. Not people who identify as women, but people who are assigned “female” at birth because they meet specific biological criteria.
Women don’t utilize women’s spaces because they want their gender affirmed. They utilize them because the law has said they–adult females–are afforded spaces due to their protected class.
Gender ideologues don’t appreciate this at all when they say that the doors to women’s spaces need to be open to males. Of course, they say that the doors should be open only to a subset of males. But since they simultaneously don’t think those males should have to meet any criteria get inside, they are essentially pushing to allow all males inside. They don’t care about the harm that may result from this, because in their eyes, the harm that results will always be offset by the happy feels that a small subset of males gain from having their gender affirmed. Despite there being no laws codifying the right of such “happy feels”, they believe this is a right. And they have convinced a lot of progressives of this, because progressives’ ears tend to perk up when they think rights are being denied to people.
Gender theorists have promoted the concept of 58 genders. Are all of these genders equally valid? Is anyone espousing an identity with any of these categories entitled to a space that affirms their identity? Do we need to create 58 kinds of restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, support groups, and sports leagues to ensure that everyone has their gender affirmed?
If the idea of providing separate accommodation for 58 gender identities is ridiculous to you, then you don’t believe gender affirmation is a right. You might believe something else is a right. But you don’t actually believe that everyone’s gender identity is entitled to special protections under the law.
If you’d seen the deleted post, maybe you’d agree with me that it was an appropriate response. But since it was deleted, and the sentiment presumably withdrawn, then I’ll refrain from paraphrasing it.
Which, of course, is exactly what Ann Hedonia, and the other cis women who have pushed back against you here, are doing - advocating for women even though they don’t share those women’s particular concerns.
I think your point is totally valid, but I’m not sure that our legal system will be able to maintain that viewpoint since our society is built upon the binary system of men/women. People need to go to the bathroom and change clothes while in public. With systems only built around an area for “men” and an area for “women”, I think we need a way to put everyone into one of those two facilities.
Even if we had the law of XX genetics goes to the women’s room and XY goes to the men’s room, there would still be the situation of very manly looking people in the women’s room. Trans men who have significantly transitioned will look very much like a typical XY person. If the law says that they have to use the space designated for their genetic code, then there would be muscular, hairy, penis-waving, genetically-XX people in the women’s locker room.
It is not (necessarily) bullying for someone to merely say they’re a woman. It absolutely is bullying for people to tell anyone who says that sex is a real thing and men aren’t women that they’re bigots and hateful, even though they know that’s false. Is is neither bigoted nor hateful to observe that women are female, not male. Transwomen are not actually women, as you know. Or perhaps you’d mind explaining what a woman is without resorting to circularity or silly, sexist stereotyping.
It is not bullying for a married couple to say they’re married. Gay marriage and transgenderism aren’t analogous.
I certainly see the issues as very similar. Before I transitioned, I identified as a gay man (out of necessity), and one that served in the military before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell ended. The same arguments used against me now as a trans woman were used against me as a gay man in the military, and it was bullshit then too. Those attitudes made me afraid for myself and my safety, and it just got worse when DADT ended and everybody felt much more free to voice their bigotry.
Marriage is a social category, and thus can be changed by society. Sex is not, and it has physical implications that can’t changed by a lawmaker’s pen.
Gay marriage really doesn’t affect anyone else. Allowing transwomen in women’s changing rooms, shelters, prisons and sports does affect other women. (And ditto for men, but men are less likely to be concerned because of those same physical differences.)
And married people are not generally discriminated against by the unmarried. Rather the opposite. So there’s no issue that changing the definition of who is married could make it harder for them to fight for their rights. This is not the case for women.
We’ve already had this conversation. Assuming you agree that “trans women” and “trans man” have real definitions, then the inclusive definition of women is your definition plus trans women and minus trans men. That’s not circular and doesn’t rely on any stereotypes.
From what I’ve read (medical news today)bottom surgery on ftm results in a very tiny penis a neopenis so afa getting naked in front of women there may be nothing for us to see anyway. Though one can go for implants to get increase size and penetrative ability. Also the ability to pee while standing is also mentioned as a reason for srs. Though there are pocket sized tools that can be used by people with a vulva to achieve that mighty standard of manhood. But then it needs to be washed out in the sink after use.
And he just did it again in post #2731.
Again, I am a woman. By you denying this and calling me a man and that i’m “not actually a woman” is bigoted and hateful and it is not bullying by me to point this out. Misgendering is just a way of calling us fakes and dehumanizing us and i’m not going to put up with it.
But you can’t show that logically, can you? Redefining the word that has referred to a biological variant of the human race (women) so that people who are biologically indistinguishable to the other half of the human race (men) can also be counted as women, has absolutely no similarities to changing marriage laws to include same-sex couples. I won’t even dignify this with the label of an apple and orange comparison, it’s just that bad.
How many people in this thread are willing to assert that they believe Anthony Scales is a woman? For all the claims that transwomen are women, for all the accusations of bigotry and transphobia directed at those challenging this view, at least one person here should have the guts to say unequivocally this person is a woman and as such, has the right access to restrooms and locker rooms reserved for girls and women.
Who has the guts and the integrity to assert this?
I believe trans women are women, but I doubt that Scales is a trans woman. I don’t believe that saying “I’m a trans woman” is sufficient evidence to determine that someone is a trans woman, and none of the trans people I’ve spoken to about this believe this either.
As far as the definition, I’m speaking of the social definition, not biological. I don’t believe trans women are men, so there is no conflict there.
I’m a fan of harm reduction. Trans people clearly are the recipient of a great deal of bigotry and worse, and I think it’s worth spending a certain amount of effort on counteracting this as a society. Basic recognition (using the preferred names, pronouns, etc.) has almost no cost and so seems like an obvious choice. Same with enforcing no discrimination in the workplace or other areas where biological sex is irrelevant.
But there’s a certain point where gains by trans people erase gains by others, like ciswomen. So far, it seems that even recognizing this is a way to get dismissed as a TERF. There needs to be reasonable discussion on this point but people are mostly talking past each other. Furthermore, there seems to be in progress a great expansion of what it means to be trans, and I see very little introspection in the trans community about what the endpoint should look like and if it will harm their own cause in the long run.