But how do you know White identifies as a woman for a valid reason as opposed to a mistaken one? Is there such thing as a mistaken self-identity in your concept for how all of this works?
White raped multiple women and sexually assaulted others. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that White’s impulsive desire to use and possess women’s bodies translates to a desire to actually be a woman herself. If I were a betting person, that is what I would bet is the main driver. It just makes too much sense to ignore that possibility, and so I won’t. A person who rapes women cannot be trusted to know what a woman feels like. But maybe this is just me being crazy.
Can you find one report of an adult human female that has committed the combination of crimes Karen White has? I mean, if there was any reason to doubt she’s really a woman (beyond her totally shit credibility), it should be that. It is basically unheard of for women to inflict that kind of violence on other women, but it’s not unheard for men to do that.
I don’t believe in gender, so I’m agnostic about anyone’s claim of truly being the opposite gender. I believe the most I can say is that transwomen are transwomen. Transmen are transmen.
I’m not burning you at the stake. You can withhold the persecution complex for those moment when you’re actually being persecuted.
Your implication that you are a beacon of open-mindedness while those who disagree with you are dogmatic authoritarians (or whatever “we know how it ends” is supposed to mean) is ridiculous. As is the implication that as an atheist you’re immune from that same behavior.
If I were you I’d look at my own instinct to immediately jump to “burning me at the stake” as a response to my post as an indicator that maybe I myself was operating from a more dogmatic, close-minded and defensive position than I believed at first.
And:
Why equivocate now? If I said “trans women are women” you would, I think, disagree (and have done so consistently already). Yet now you refuse to agree to the statement “trans women are not women”?
Because that’s what decency is. Not about Karen White specifically, she’s just the shittiest version of a transgender person we’ve identified, but about transgender people in general. You treat them as a member of the group, a FULL member of the group because that’s what decency is. They don’t get the back of the bus, they don’t get some “civil union” version of rights because they’re not real enough people, they get real rights for real people, full rights.
Courtesy can get stuffed. Men were all sorts of courteous to women while treating them like lesser beings.
If their rights need to be restricted in some way, there should be a real reason for it. A problem that has been attacked with the idea of giving them full access to their rights, but is legitimately intractable.
I’m not calling myself of beacon of anything. I’m aghast at the reluctance I’m seeing to express doubt when asked about a specific transwoman. Dogma is the only reason someone would declare Karen White is a woman, when none of us even know this person and there’s good reason to believe she’s a sociopathic liar.
How is this equivocation? A male who identifies as a woman is, by definition, a transwoman. Karen White meets that definition, so there’s no faith required for me to say she’s a transwoman. “Transwoman are transwomen” is tautological. But saying transwomen are women is ideological. There is dogma behind that I don’t subscribe to. It is religion.
If you can’t explain in a logical way why I’m wrong or inconsistent, then I’m confused what your point is. Are you willing to assert unequivocally that Karen White is a woman? If so, then you should be defending that position rather than…whatever it is you’re trying to argue right now.
I’ve lost most of my sexual function and desire since being on HRT, and i’m totally fine with it. We are told the negatives as well as the positives of transitioning before agreeing to it so we can make an informed decision. Because for many transpeople, sex isn’t as important as living comfortably in our own bodies. By the age trans kids would be put on blockers, I think they would be able to agree to this.
There is no “cause” here other than to be treated equally. What she did and does is irrelevant to who she is. Once again, because we keep repeating ourselves to you: Karen White is a woman who, since she is a woman, should be housed in a women’s prison. But since she is such a monster, she needs to be kept away from other inmates for their own safety.
A woman who rapes is a woman because she has a female reproductive system. Her claim to womanhood doesn’t entirely hinge upon on having an honest and accurate mental concept of herself. That’s why sex and gender identity are world’s apart from one another. One is empirically determined and the one is a subjective claim that originates from the person it applies to.
If Karen White is expecting me to take her word for anything, she’s a fool and so is anyone else who buys the bridges she’s selling.
And that’s your problem, you say you “don’t believe in gender” so you seem to diminish and dehumanize people to just basic biology, when biology is only part of the equation when it comes to a person’s gender. I hope you realize what a fringe belief that is.
Right now, I’m just pointing out that your implication that those who disagree with you are dogmatic while you are not is unfounded. We’re all taking and exploring positions on social/institutional responses to people who present as different genders, which may or may not correspond to their primary and/or secondary sex characteristics.
As to Karen White, I haven’t clicked on any of the links about her. It seems like a massive digression into something irrelevant.
To me, the question of whether or not trans men/women are men/women and what that means has nothing at all to do with whether or not the implications of that position are easy to implement within current social systems. Should a trans woman who is a rapist be in gen pop with other women? Maybe/probably not? Should she be considered a real woman? I don’t know why the answer should be different for a rapist, an accountant, a parent, a millionaire, a college student, or anyone else.
Will there be or are there people who will lie about it in order to achieve selfish goals? Probably. Is that a reason to say that trans women/men are not men/women? No.
The belief that a male rapist has the inalienable right to opt into the same population he preys upon is what is fringe. I’m not mincing words because you need to know what you are really defending.
The last thing y’all really want is for the discussion we’re having to be tried in the court of public opinion.
Not in UK law; rape is specifically defined as non-consensual penetration with a penis. But even ignoring that, I think you’ll have a very hard time finding a cis-women whose rap sheet resembles Karen White’s.
Actually yes it is a valid reason to say that. If there is no way to confirm the truth behind someone’s identity, why act as though every claimed identity is known to be true? It’s disingenuous and most importantly, it cuts us off from critical thinking.
Whether Karen White is a woman or not shouldn’t even be a question.
If I told you that I’m a Jew because I like bagels and saying words like “schlep”, would you berate an actual Jew for being offended by it? Would you call them “indecent” for not seeing me as a fellow Jew? Or would you defer to Jews on who gets to call themselves “Jew” and butt the fuck out of the conversation?
Explain to me how it is indecent of me to perceive the “womanness” of males who have sex reassignment surgery and have lived as women for many years, but not see the “womanness” of males who have a cross-dressing fetish and have no interest in modifying their body in any way? Explain to me how it is indecent for me, an individual who has been female for over 40 years and has suffered the biological and social realities associated with this classification for the same period of time, to not see a male who has only identified as a woman for a couple of months as a sister, while still calling that person a transwoman and referring to them by their preferred pronouns? Why should you be push this person into my locker room and chastise me for being bothered by their presence? Why aren’t you pushing for the creation of third spaces for them, spaces where they don’t have to worry about people from your gender class harming them, so that people from my gender class don’t have to worry about being harmed by them? Help me to understand why gender affirmation is more important than women’s sense of security? Why should only one of these things be considered a fundamental right?
There’s a gulf of difference between “people will lie about the truth” and “there is no way to confirm the truth”. I said nothing about the latter.
And, I did not say that “every claimed identity is known to be true.” I’m not sure who or what you’re arguing against there. Maybe you’re implying that if it is conceivable that someone might lie, then we need a foolproof system to ensure 100% truthfulness for all people before we consider accepting anyone’s statement of gender as reflecting an honest report?
Why equivocate now? If I said “trans women are women” you would, I think, disagree (and have done so consistently already). Yet now you refuse to agree to the statement “trans women are not women”?