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.
Do you need me to remind you that you were the one that lectured me n how gender is not biological sex? If gender is not biological sex, then “sex is real” doesn’t undermine transgender identity acceptance at all. It is simply asserting that changing one’s gender does not change one’s sex.
TRA and allies seem to be fucking confused on what gender really is. And it’s harming the messaging big time. The confusion makes me feel like the movement is being led by a bunch of intellectual light weights. I don’t give a fuck about gender identity or expression. If you want to identify as a man because you like wearing flannel shirts and Dockers, I’m always gonna say “do you, boo” and keep it moving. But I should not have to pretend that you are a male. Just like I shouldn’t have to pretend you’re a 7’ tall, 500lb person when you’re actually a 50-lb little person. Gender is a social construct. Biology is not.
By getting so worked up over “sex is real”, TRAs and their allies are shouting from the rooftops their intention to get rid of all the guardrails to deal with the biological differences between the sexes. Gender isn’t a big deal, but biological sex IS a big deal. It’s a big deal to most people, but especially women. How does a movement expect to get widespread buy-in if it refuses to validate the way 99% of humanity experiences gender?
It used to be that folks who pushed a political idea would put some effort into selling their idea to the skeptics and non-believers. They would do something to help people see that their idea, while radical, was thoughtful and considerate of all the sides. And proponents would demonstrate this by validating people’s fucking concerns. I’m not seeing this at all from your side of the conversation. All I’m hearing from your side is “that’s bigotry!” and “that’s hurtful!” You know what’s hurtful for me? Hearing people say “Fuck biology!” in a conversation about gender.
As long as my feelings keep being hurt, I’m gonna have a hard time receiving what you and your side is saying.
I do not doubt your sincerity in this regard nor with respect to women’s rights and #metoo issues. May I ask whether you’ve spent the same time and energy having conversations with women who are perhaps not associated with trans issues on this topic. Have you asked them how they feel about the real world impact and consequences that you advocate for with respect to how you’d like to see trans-women integrated into what have traditionally been women only spaces and area of life? If I’m honest, before the start of this conversation, I felt very much like you. I see no reason why we ought not to strive to live in a more just society that is more accepting of everyone. As I started to learn more about this subject I realized that as a while cis male, this evolved position comes at a minimal personal cost. I lose nothing, I risk nothing, in asking women to share their space with trans-women. Having transmen in my locker room is equally non-threatening to me. Whatever awkwardness I might feel is certainly not associated with any fear for personal safety. So when I hear some clearly well thought out arguments from the handful of posters who are presenting points of view I had not previously considered, many of them women, I am forced to re-examine my position. Which leaves me wondering, being the strong advocate for women’s right that I believe you to be, what has prevented you from questioning your position on trans issues? Is it perhaps that you’ve not taken the time to speak with enough women like YWTF and monstro, IRL? Why do you find their arguments less compelling on this issue vs other women’s issues that you care about?
My entire position comes from hearing from and reading from cis woman feminists and trans people themselves. The vast majority of the cis woman feminists I know (and know of) have the same or similar views as @Ann_Hedonia and @Spice_Weasel. I named several of the more prominent feminists whose views I’m following on this issue earlier in the thread.
I wouldn’t take a position on this issue if I hadn’t heard from variety of both cis women and trans people about it.
I have rethought my take on this issue, and at least I understand the opposition of trans-rights skeptical people a bit better than I did before. But I still don’t see any significant conflict between trans rights and women’s rights. I haven’t changed my view that it was obnoxious and foolish of JKR to rhetorically erase trans men and others and to mock a sincere attempt at using inclusive language (among some other shitty things she said, delineated in detail earlier in the thread).
It’s worse than that. When women like JKR say they they are upset by being referred to by their biological functions and body parts, their objections are ignored and considered evidence of bigotry. Why would that be?
If I started advertising a birth control method for ‘people who inseminate’, you might not feel too thrilled about the new inclusive language either (on the other hand, I’m sure iiandyiiii would gladly embrace any sacrifice - but he has no right to demand women do the same).
This is why the language debate doesn’t work. The traditional meaning of ‘men’ and ‘women’ represent useful categories which tell us a lot of relevant information about a person. Gender identity does not. Before transition, Caitlyn Jenner presumably had a female gender identity, but had a standard male body, dressed like a man, won medals in a male Olympic competition, married women and fathered children with them. She never had to worry about abortion laws or being denied equal pay. A categorisation scheme that lumps pre-transition Caitlyn Jenner in with women just isn’t a very useful one.
I understand them better too, as a result of this thread and others. When minorities have a problem, progressives say we need to listen and believe them, and also listen and act on their suggestions on how to solve it, because the people concerned are best placed to know. (And I think that’s a good attitude to have.)
But when other Americans have problems not related to being a minority, or even caused by progressive policies, they are told that they are the problem, and that the people in charge have no intention of fixing it, or that politicians thousands of miles away who have no experience of their lives know better than them what they need. It’s not that people are voting for Trump out of spite at being called bigots. It’s that someone who won’t listen to your problems, wishes and preferences cannot possibly do a good job representing you in government, and it would be illogical to vote for them.
I’ve made my own case, with extreme brevity but it was there, and I also cited the more eloquent than myself.
Now, there is a streak of dishonesty showing up. That’s clear. But I’m not sure how big it is, nor how bad the problem is in the grand scheme of things. “Look at all these people on the other side of this issue behaving so badly!” is basically a constant in political discussions, including this one, but it’s pretty much always going to be the case that we notice the worst excesses of the “other side” on any issue we care about. That’s not a fair sample. It makes it very hard to know what the genuine underlying proportions are.
There is always going to be a strain of the “sex isn’t real” attitude, along with other obvious falsehoods, among the ignorant blank-state left. The question isn’t whether these people exist (they do) or whether they will continue to exist (they will). The issue is how big they actually are, and how more reasonable people can insulate themselves from the worst excesses of the worst people, to whatever extent possible.
People have a proprietary attitude toward language.
There are useful guidelines. Don’t call people what they don’t want to be called. Or the reverse: Do call people what they do want to be called. But these guidelines can harden into a feeling of outright ownership. The feeling is that the word is theirs. Under this viewpoint, to deny a community’s proprietary control in the word they’ve chosen to describe themselves is to be contemptuous of the community itself. “Why else deny us the term that is clearly ours?” Must be bigotry, is the conclusion offered from this attitude.
I don’t know that I’d call this Orwellian, but I agree it’s no good. These sorts of proprietary instincts over language, and over culture more generally as is also being argued now, genuinely do tend to be poisonous. But that’s a more general problem than just this current debate.
The problem with this debate is that it is all based on catering to a minority group’s feelings at the expense of another minority group’s feelings. We’ve never had a situation like this before–where one group is hitching their wagon to another group and progressives are the one enabling the hitching. And doing the shouting down and the silencing when the people being hitched to try to speak up and express their concerns. The feminists of the 60s and 70s would have never envisioned that women of today would have to endure lecturing about how they should spare male feelings by not talking about their unique biology. The feminists of my parents’ generation would have rolled their eyes at this. But now feminists are vilifying the women who didn’t get the memo that our biology is once again taboo. Supposedly the only way we can talk about our biological realities is to dewoman our language and erase ourselves from the conversation. And we’re supposed to censor ourselves and walk on egg shells without worrying about the other bullshit we will eventually be told we have to do in order to appease less than 1% of the population. This segment of the population seems to be the only one allowed to care deeply about gender. Everyone else is supposed to believe that gender is no big deal and not have any opinion other than “yasss, queen” and “do you, boo”.
It’s getting to be too much for me.
I say if we’re going to have a political debate about feelings, then ALL feelings need to be represented, spoken to, and catered to. If I’m supposed to endure lectures about how the statement “sex is real” is harmful and bigoted, I want someone to respect my opinion that ideas like “fuck biology!” are equally harmful and bigoted. The language policing needs to go both ways for me to take this discourse seriously.
One language problem is that although both of these statements may be true:
“Cow milk is milk”
“Almond milk is milk”
The term “milk” refers to different definitions of milk. It’s through context that we know which one means from the mammary glands and which one means an seed extract. It’s the same with TWAW. It may be true that they are women, but it’s not the same definition of women as in “Ciswomen are women”. The problem we’re having is that trans activists want to say that they unequivocally meet the same definition of women as ciswomen and are interchangable. This is clear when want unrestricted access to women’s sports. They are not not acknowledging that the term women in “women’s sports” and “transwomen are women” refer to different definitions of women.
And yet you’ve insist that ‘cancel culture’ is not a thing. It’s precisely this kind of inconsistency of logic and woke fragility that undermines this line of argument.
I’ve yet to hear your side come up with anything like a good argument. Plenty of slurs of bigotry, but no real argument about why we need to redefine biologically sound terms as opposed to inclusion of new terminology for trans people and associated inclusive rights that aren’t enforced at the risk/expense of others.
I’ve said cancel culture (if that means that sometimes people face criticism for things they say) is not something we need to worry about much. And this is consistent.
This is a very vague and uncited objection. If you object to the arguments I’ve actually made, please cite them. I’ve made many, many posts in this thread.
And even better analogy is “bad”. It’s conventional meaning is something unpleasant, faulty, and/or malicious. But it colloquially can be used as the opposite: desirable, awesomely good, and/or impressive.
@iiandyiiii seems nothing wrong with using “male” to denote a specific sex class. But he’s also okay with using “male” to denote a specific gender identity. The problem with this dual meaning should be obvious when it’s employed in a legal context: if “male” can refer to both things at the same time then you can’t enforce single-sex protections. “Your Honor, the plaintiff is calling my client a male to argue Title IX has been violated, but they really are female! Behold, a female is anyone who claims a female gender identity!”
Truly, it is like arguing that Voldemort is a awesomely good character because he is the “bad” guy.
Among my own social circles (academic and university adjacent), the issue of the language is essentially closed. It’s over. Finished. Trans men are men, trans women are women. It’s so fully “standard” here that you’ll get the side-eye for suggesting differently. And it’s simultaneously the case, among the people I personally know best, that they don’t want a male clicking the F box to stomp all over the uni women’s soccer team.
I realize there have been all manner of policy stupidities. But that also doesn’t necessarily mean we’re dealing with anything other than a very small number of exceptionally annoying people. Uni admins, for an easy example from my perspective, are generally chickenshit of the highest order. One person with a megaphone is enough to cow most of them.
I think we should pump the brakes on TWAW rhetoric until we can understand what people mean by it. Some people (like @iiandyiiii) do not interpret it literally. Some people do. They see Shauna Brooks and the individual she’s castigating as women, both equally entitled to all the benefits and privileges associated with the woman/female identity. The second camp is winning the internet right now. The voices in this camp are so loud and popular that I’m convinced that most TRAs would rejoice to have all women’s spaces turned into sausage fests. They don’t want their numbers to stay at less 1% of the population. They would be perfectly fine with a “woman” gender comprised of just as many penis-havers as vagina-havers.
Which of course would necessitate dismantling the special protections that women have fought so hard for. There’s nothing special about wearing a skirt. Skirt-wearers don’t deserve any special considerations. Only people with unique biological circumstances do. How do people with those circumstances get recognized, if their group is no longer defined by those circumstances? Until this question is properly addressed by TWAW proponents, women should not stop pushing back on it IMHO.
What? I’ve said that she’s been rhetorically dismissive, or rhetorically “erased”, the existence of trans men. But I’m not sure what you’re referring to here.
It sounds very much like, 'It’s only cancelling when JKR is accused of doing it’. When thousands and thousands of trans-activists call for the de-platforming of JKR, that doesn’t count because she’s still famous and rich. Am i wrong?
Huh? I don’t understand this at all. She’s being criticized, and I think this much of this criticism is warranted because she said something dumb and obnoxious.