J K Rowling and the trans furore

In My Humble Opinion
3185

The civil rights movement for black Americans had nothing to do with affirming their racial identity and demanding that white Americans help their self-esteems. It had everything to with securing civil rights for them. Civil rights like the right to fair employment, housing, voting, education, and treatment by law enforcement. The “feelings” stuff was left out of legal and policy discussions for the most part. When it was discussed, it was in the context of arguing against racial segregation. The NAACP was able to show that separate but equal in the educational realm was harmful to the self-esteem of black children, for instance. But the solution they came up with for this was not Black Children are White Children. It was Educate All Races Together.

I don’t think trans people’s humanity will be destroyed if we moved away from “gender affirming” public facilities. I know that’s what many of them and their allies believe, but I don’t agree. I think women will experience harm if we do this, and I don’t like this at all. But if folks are telling me that everyone deserves to have their gender affirmed and they’re also telling me that we have more than two genders, then it doesn’t make sense to only have public spaces for two genders. Either everyone should have their own spaces or no one should. And if women are bigoted and hateful for being afraid of males, then society should not indulge this bigotry and hatefulness by maintaining separate spaces. The best way to fix this is to dismantle women’s spaces and stop telling women they are entitled to extra safety and security. That gender ideologues are not pushing for this solution is why this “biological sex doesn’t matter!” movement strikes me as more ideological than logic-based. If biological sex doesn’t matter, why are we acting like it matters by maintaining a system that was devised around it? It’s because this movement is so concerned about feelings that it doesn’t care about logic and reason. It doesn’t care about convincing the skeptics and the folks who need more than catchy slogans to get behind a cause.

3186

You’re arguing this as if self-esteem was the only civil rights issue facing trans people. It is not.

3187

That is correct. And if that were all you were doing, no one would object. You’re just describing feminism.

Problem is, as I’ve pointed out several times, the vast majority of feminism fights for the safety of women while also avoiding transphobia. You have specifically chosen the version of feminism that is attacks trans people.

You’ve made it quite clear you hate trans people, enough that you didn’t even consider that saying that people threaten suicide to get what they want would attack the very real person in this thread who said they tried to commit suicide.

The feelings of the trans person in this thread mattered so little to you that you didn’t even stop to think about whether your actions hurt them. And that’s exactly why J. K. Rowling’s letter came off so badly. It was all about defending herself, and not a single thing about trans people and their feelings.

That’s how it works. You make them out to be a threat, you don’t care about their feelings. You dehumanize them, because that’s how you can justify hating them.

I’m sorry. I tried my best to get you to do the basics and just substitute your fear for that of any other majority group against a minority, but you refuse. You refuse to think about it like “what about the white people who say that accepting black people is a threat to white people?” You refuse to think “what about the men who think women are a threat to manhood?”

They are a minority. You outnumber them. They are not a threat. The only reason you even feel threatened is because you’ve voluntarily chosen to be part of a group who is fighting against their rights–the “gender citical feminists” aka the “trans-exclusionary feminists.”

Every other feminist fights for and dedends women without also attacking trans people. You’re choosing to be in the group that attacks them.

3188

Going to add intersex people to your sheet to ensure the full erasure bingo, eh?

3189

Oh, and FYI, the trans sports thing has been brought up in ways that aren’t transphobic, like separating groups into high and low testosterone instead of by sex/gender.

If you actually do care about their feelings, you can actually try to navigate a way to deal with any actual problems.

3190

It’s kinda implicit in the whole argument. If gender identity is the only thing that makes you a man or a women then there is no such thing as male or female biology. And this is what TRAs are trying to implement, with sports being the most obvious example.

3191

Gender and sex are not the same thing. And people are more than their biology.

3192

Now where’s Acsenray to ask whether ‘erasure’ is a scare word meant to evoke Stalin having people photoshopped out of pictures and deleted from news stories after they were sent to the gulag?

3193

I doubt Stalin played bingo.

Although if he did, I’m sure he always won.

3194

We’re also still subject to our biology. Redefining ‘healthy’ doesn’t cure disease, and redefining ‘woman’ doesn’t erase sex differences.

Are there any circumstances where you consider sex to be more important than gender?

3195

I don’t want you to feel subjugated, I’m reading (well listening to) a book where the main character is describing her online fights with those who oppose her, and the way she thrives on the conflict and the two groups coalescing into rigid absolute opposites made me think a lot about this thread, my participation in it, and not really making me happy about myself or the way the discussion is going in general.

You asked me earlier what I meant by TWAW being institutional policy. What I meant was that 20 states (and local municipalities I hadn’t considered before) that encompass 140+ million Americans have enacted Transgender Protection laws that boil down to TWAW in practice. They do not have strict identification requirements, surgery or hormone therapy requirements, at the most, they have a “consistency” requirement, and many not even that. In these spaces, any man who asserts “I am a woman” can get legal protection to use women’s spaces.

What this means is that science, facts and figures are open to us for review. 140 million men and women living with these laws means when incidents happen, they get reported. They don’t all get reported, of course, but that is a constant that science and statistics can control for, because what we want to find out is if attacks happen more than before, and science can give us that.

I found two studies of exactly this issue. Implementation of transgender protection laws surrounding public accommodations, and:
A) the impact of that on the total number of reported incidents study from UCLA School of Law
B) whether reported incidents involved a man using the guise of being a woman or transgender to gain access to the space National Police Foundation study

I did not find any research to support your claims of increased risk*. If anyone can find legitimate scientific research to support those claims, I would listen to it, add it to the mix, and request that everyone on my side listen as well.

*The unisex changing room study from the UK is useful, at least to highlight the idea that forcing all men and women into the same changing room, is a bad idea. It doesn’t directly address transgender protection laws, but does suggest that one idea to manage the issue may cause more problems than it solves.

3196

Yet someone it’s not erasure when the word ‘woman’ is literally erased from articles about female reproductive biology. Because that’s different.

3197

Medical contexts, for one.

3198

It’s not “erasure” when a term of greater specificity is used instead.

3199

Intersex is not a sex class and the condition should not be conflated with being transgender.

Many intersex persons believe they are being used as pawns in the gender discourse and resent the hell out of it. Everytime you, @Kimstu, and others exploit their existence to argue for self-determined gender identities, you undermine the concerns of just one more stigmatized group.

Below is what an intersex person has to say about arguments like yours. I don’t expect you to care about their opinion, but there may be others reading this thread who do.

3200

Thanks for your post that’s actually producing evidence rather than just browbeating us.

This is almost coming full circle because one of my main concerns when I started this thread was how toxic the discussion is and that it’s seemingly impossible to have a moderate view without being accused of transphobia. I would feel a lot more confident about going ahead with these changes if I felt my views and those of women like me were being listened to and taken account of, and that if there were any problems in future then the media would report them and the government act to fix them. Because right now I don’t feel confident about that at all.

3201

Talks about “sex class”
Links to page talking about gender.
Thinks that makes an argument.

Didn’t do that. That’s why I said add to your sheet, as you so clearly already have trans on there.

3202

You seriously don’t think the media would report if this all backfires?

3203

I won’t bother to argue with you since you believe my feelings are unimportant.

3204

Like posting that isn’t an argument …