I’m trying to understand the blanket statements about violence against TW.
Are TW a monolith all leading subpar lives with no support no jobs no place to live or do many have their shit together and live freely.
Okay, last time (maybe, anyway – certainly if the insults continue).
Here is the exact text of the Obama/Biden guidance on trans participation in sports, which was rescinded by Trump, and which Biden wants to restore:
There is plenty of leeway in that guidance for schools and such to protect cis girls from larger and stronger individuals who might impact fairness or safety in sports (including trans kids, when applicable). By my reading. Maybe your reading is different. But different understandings can exist.
I’m not the only one pointing out your blind spots.
Instead of taking it personal (and trust, I know this is easier said than done), I want you to think about what we are saying. You’re essentially saying it’s a myth that trans rights activists are campaigning against “sex is real”. But when you think about it, how could they not be campaigning against it? The whole gender affirmation movement hinges on us ignoring the reality of sex. If female human beings are no longer entitled to even the word “female” when talking about periods and pregnancies, it means “sex is real” is under attack.
Just saying “I see things differently” isn’t adding anything to the discussion. Of course you see things differently, but why is the question.
(Still pretending to be a moderate fence-sitter concerned about my daughters.)
“Well, that language certainly reads like a lawyer earned his/her keep, but it still seems to be saying my daughters might one day be forced to play against males privileged enough to skip out on the physical handicaps of female puberty. And I can peep the disingenuous use of “transgender stereotypes” as shorthand for sex-based differences. If Biden seriously wants us to ignore the reality of sex when granting Title IX exceptions, he is insulting our intelligence. Males, no matter how feminine they are, have bodies that put them at a natural advantage over females.”
Giving schools “plenty of leeway” is actually problematic, @iiandyiiii. The whole reason we have constitutional protections is to prevent errors and abuse by local officials. You can’t have a workable transgender policy that keeps some males out but not others, because the minute a parent finds out their kid is excluded for being built too powerfully to play with girls safely, they could file a discrimination complaint against the school.
Biden is for the erosion of Title IX sports because he wants to guarantee males have access to female sports. Even if it’s only a subset of males, he is still denying girls the right to single-sex sports.
That’s just a wildly different reading of the facts than mine. I think that guidance does an admirable job of protecting cis girls from possible violations of fairness or safety without unfairly leaving out trans girls. You disagree, and I’m fine with leaving it there.
Do you interpret the policy as allowing a subset of males to play girls sports?
If the answer is yes, then you have the same interpretation of his platform that I do. And yes, this violates Title IX according to the Department of Education. Allowing males to compete against girls, denies:
“… female student-athletes athletic benefits and opportunities, including advancing to the finals in events, higher level competitions, awards, medals, recognition, and the possibility of greater visibility to colleges and other benefits,” the office said.”
This erodes Title IX by violating it, @iiandiiii. What we’re discussing isn’t simply a case of potato/potahto. The matter has been tried in court and ruled upon.
Absolutely not. Different usages of the word “male”, one of the sticking points of this whole discussion.
Okay. So you understand why we’re saying trans rights activists are attacking the reality of sex.
It really makes no sense for you to deny that’s what they are doing when you actually support their corruption of the word “male” when it absolves them from displacing women and girls from athletic opportunities.
Male doesn’t always refer to sex. It’s sometimes used for gender.
When female gender identities are equated with female sexed bodies in contexts where sex-specific differences are of ultimate importance (like sports), sex-based protections are run roughshod.
I think you understand this well. Just being explicit for those who are watching at home.
According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, 19% of people who are transgender or gender nonconforming experience homelessness at some point in their lives. More details here. Transgender youth tend to spend a longer period of time being homeless than their straight, gay, lesbian, or bisexual peers. Of those transgender adults who tried to access a shelter, 55% were harassed by shelter staff or residents, 22% were sexually assaulted by shelter staff or residents, and 29% were turned away from a shelter altogether.
According to this website, 25% of transgender people have been fired for being trans, and 75% have experienced some kind of workplace discrimination. Early this year the Supreme Court ruled that you can’t fire someone based on gender identity, but of course in a country with at-will employment that just means all you have to do is make up some other excuse to fire someone. Will it help? I hope so.
A lot of LGBTQ youth end up homeless (they comprise 43% of homeless youth), and so it’s easy to see how early life instability can lead to future instability. Generally speaking those who have their “shit together” usually come from families that support their gender identity rather than throwing them out into the streets. The more supportive their environment, the higher their chances of leading a better quality of life.
Some transwomen are rich, powerful and influential; that’s one of the reasons for the surprisingly quick and not-so-well-publicised advance of transgender rights campaigns and laws. Also probably a reason platforms like Twitter and Reddit are so anti-women. Reason is that they transitioned late in life, after having all the benefits of living life as seemingly cishet white men, with wives to raise their children while they focused on their careers, etc. Other transwomen come out as teenagers, get thrown out by their families, end up living on the streets. These are the ones who are abused and murdered, by and large. And some are in the middle, they have mostly decent lives but suffer discrimination at work, suffer harassment, etc. And transmen often fly under the radar, they tend to pass better and don’t attract as many objections and controversy. Definitely not a monolith.
I will say that thread has given me a lot on insights as to the nature of bigotry and the psychological contortions that bigots use to justify their positions. I understand Trump supporters a little better now.
Fear
It’s all about fear
Unfounded irrational fear.
Of all of the things said in this thread that could remotely be called bigoted, you picked the one thing only an insane person would dispute.
“Sex is real”
“All lives matter”
Both argumentative positions that are true on the face of it, but are in fact reactionary aggressions designed to accuse the opposition of taking a position they never took.
I appreciate the links. I am sympathetic to the plight of homeless youth, the forces that drive kids away seeking safety from chaotic homes and into precarious situations is heartbreaking.
If you’ve got a critique of a specific citable remark or remarks made to or about Rowling by any of those unidentified “people”, feel free to cite it and see if anybody here actually disagrees with you about it.
We all seem to be entirely in agreement, for instance, that abusive and threatening language was not an appropriate or defensible response to Rowling’s statements, dumb and/or disingenuous though they were.
Exactly. The problem with using “sex is real” rhetoric as an argument against acceptance of transgender identity is that it dishonestly implies that the other side is trying to claim that sex isn’t real.
Sure, sex is real in the sense that (as I said above) the physical characteristics that factor into the assignment of what we call biological sex are indeed real physical characteristics that objectively exist. Nobody AFAICT is denying that.
The basic point that transgender-rights advocates are making is not that sex isn’t real, but rather that biological sex is not the only determinant of gender identity. The fact that their opponents have to distort that point into an implied strawman claim that “sex isn’t real”, in order to make any kind of persuasive argument against it, shows the fundamental weakness of the opponents’ position.
When people say “All Lives Matter”, they are implicitly saying that they don’t believe black people are disproportionately victimized by society. They are saying they don’t give a fuck about racist or police brutality.
When I hear someone equate “sex is real” with bigotry, I hear them saying that they don’t believe women are disproportionately victimized by society in large part due to their biology. I hear them saying that women who make this claim are delusional or insincere. I hear them saying that women and men are the exactly the same in every way except one group wears skirts and the other group doesn’t.
When I hear someone say “sex is real”, I hear them saying that sex doesn’t transmutate or disappear just because pronoun usage and clothing may change.
The panties-twisting over “sex is real” is super bananas to me. I’m not getting it at all. If sex is not something material and concrete, then there is no “trans”. There’s no “cis”. These prefixes exist because we treat biological sex as if it exists. Because it does exist
What does it mean to be gay and lesbian or straight in a world where sex isn’t real? Is everyone who claims these sexual identities just a pansexual in denial?
It’s funny to me that Transwomen Are Women is a slogan not based on fact and it is being used by progressives to shout down anyone who wants to have a serious discussion about what gender ideology looks like in action. “Sex is real” is a slogan that is actually based on fact, but we’re being told that it is hateful and bigoted and shall never be uttered because it hurts people’s feelings. But not 50% of the humanity’s feelings, which is the proportion who probably do not want their sex class turned into a freakin’ clown car. It is less than 1% of people’s feelings who are bothered that biological sex is not something you can opt out of it just by saying some magical words. You have to actually do something besides change your outfit and name to alter biological sex. Why is this so controversial?
The fact that this is controversial only validates JKR’s position that women (biological females) have every reason to be concerned about where we’re headed. If women can’t even point out that males have a natural physical advantage over them without being rhetorically kicked in the teeth, then feminism is dead in the water. And I have to say, if women just cheer while this happens, maybe they deserve being kicked out of their own sports leagues and displaced from their own scholarships and run out of their own locker rooms and restrooms. Maybe we don’t deserve a club, if we’re so willing and eager to let others define who gets to be in the club.
If I said, “People who pee standing at a urinal” as a general description of men, would I run the risk of upsetting people who are disabled through accident of birth or injury? Or could one reasonably expect that most men, regardless of physical disability or infirmity of age, would know who and what I’m talking about.
My point is that relying on unreasonable objections is not a good basis for an argument or claim. I can find thousands of people who believe the earth is flat. It wouldn’t further the validity of the flat earth argument.
The irony is that All Lives Matter coveys the same insidious dismissiveness as “people who menstruate” and “individuals with a cervix” do. Guess who has bent over backwards defending weaponized inclusivity in this thread? It isn’t me and isn’t you. Isn’t JKR either.
Black lives matter.
Female human lives matter.