That may not be the prevailing message on the SDMB, but I assure you that it is a commonly expressed sentiment in other venues. And we have folks in this thread who don’t think transwomen need to take hormones to compete against ciswomen in sports, which suggest to me that those folks don’t think gatekeeping is kosher, even when it makes practical sense.
Can I ask you how would you gate-keep that still would be in accordance with the notion that anyone who claims a particular gender identity should be treated as that gender? Maybe you don’t subscribe to this notion, but this is the notion that folks like JK Rowling is responding to.
I’m not taking the radical position that the way people self-identity (whether it’s gender identity or race) is the end of the story. No doubt some people are whimsical, or confused, or deceiving themselves or seeking to deceive others in the way they self-identify at any point in time. But with regard to gender identity, I think the civilized starting point is to believe people when they tell you who they are and how they feel.
Heh, so species are obvious and definitive are they? I’m sure taxonomists will be thrilled to hear that.
So if your whole angle is that sex classes are bunk and bullshit, does this extend to animals? In your world, do roosters lay eggs? Do stallions give birth to foals? Can you find one report of a cow impregnating a bull? I have $100 bucks with your name on it if you prove any of this happening in the animal kingdom.
None of us would be alive on this planet if an adult female human (a woman) hadn’t risked her life and sacrificed bodily autonomy for 9 plus months to bring us into this world. I don’t think you’re consciously trying to minimize that, but it’s clear you and others feel like biology is unimportant to determining who gets to claim womanhood. Its up for grabs for anyone who wants to control it, and you’re thumbing your nose at the unique burden that females have to carry to keep the species going.
As an experiment, I would like to see what would happen if women and girls packed it up and left society behind. If gender ideology now allows us to say “fuck biology” with zero consequences, then we should expect penis-havers to start getting pregnant. By what mechanism, I haven’t a clue but it will be interesting and I can’t wait to see how it all unfolds,
Well, my gut response is simply to say that we should respect the way someone self-identifies absent some compelling reason to do otherwise. And the burden of proof lies with those who advocate that there’s some good reason not to respect what people tell us about who they are and now they feel, not to treat them with respect and dignity.
As I said upthread, I personally agree with fairly strict criteria for trans women participiating in female sport. The entire point of trans rights is recognizing that gender is a mental state, and most sports are about physical competition. The only thing I’d say is that perhaps it should not be called a “women’s” sport category, if the intent is to restrict it to people born with female bodies, or to those that have transitioned sufficiently to that physical state.
But the whole TERF narrative that treating trans women with respect and dignity somehow creates a huge danger for cis women, or is regressive for cis women’s rights, is completely lacking in evidence.
What’s principally in dispute so far as I’m concerned is your claim that no aspect of gender lies in our mental state. So what, exactly, is your model/explanation for trans people?
My explanation of trans people: some people identify with a certain gender, either because of gender dysphoria, they feel like a woman/man trapped in a man/woman body, they don’t feel any affinity with their birth sex, they’ve always envisioned themselves as the opposite sex, they have interests and habits that conform to gender stereotypes, and/or because they prefer one set of gender norms (ie. women wear dresses and look pretty) over the one associated with their birth sex (men wear pants and look handsome).
If you pay attention to what is said in online trans communities, you can find all of these motivations and more expressed. The conventional wisdom that they all are driven by dysphoria and a specific “mental state” is untrue.
Everything that you describe there is an aspect of mental state. Are you suggesting that because the mental states of trans people do not present identically, that somehow means they are less real?
So let me repeat my question - do you insist that the self-described mental state of trans people should be ignored, and that if someone is born with male sex organs to you they are defined as a man, and that’s that?
I used to agree with that. But now I kind of agree with Monstro - I’d like there to be some actual definition of a woman that isn’t the circular ‘anyone who says they’re a woman’. Same for a man. I think it should be okay to have my own opinion about who fits into that group, and it shouldn’t be a hate crime to express it.
So let me repeat my question - do you insist that the self-described mental state of trans people should be ignored, and that if someone is born with male sex organs to you they are defined as a man, and that’s that?
No I don’t think anyone should be ignored. If someone wants to go by different pronouns, I will use their pronouns. I will not stand in their way if they want access to hormones and SRS. I will treat them with dignity and respect, just as I do anyone else.
Does this mean that I will blindly accept any claim that a person is a woman,
—when the definition of woman I hold only includes female persons? No, because I’m a scientist and I’m inherently against blind acceptance for anything.
If Trump came out as trans tomorrow, there ain’t no way I’m okay with letting him in the locker room with me and my daughters. There is no way I’m going to be all like “Trump said she’s a woman so she’s a woman; trans women are women”. Since I know that I could never gaslight myself into believing Trump is as much a woman as me, my sisters, and my mother are, then I’m not going to pretend that I could do that for any other random male saying the same thing.
Based on what you and others in this thread as saying, I can only conclude it would be transphobic of me and other women to reject trans-Trump from the locker room. Do you believe this would be true? If not, why? Even if I had no reason to doubt trans-Trump’s sincerity, I still would perceive her as a male whose presence would be disruptive to my sense of safety and security.
Would it be a surprise to learn that as a woman, I would never want to make strange men uncomfortable by being naked around them? It’s a respect thing more than a fear thing. Naked men are vulnerable and so are naked women. I wouldn’t want to trigger nervousness, self-consciousness, or even involuntary sexual arousal in a man who unwittingly finds himself showering next to a me. Perhaps that is why sex-segregation isn’t such a horrible thing; it allows people to retain some measure of control and dignity.
I certainly know enough about animals to know that it can get bloody complicated in plenty of species; what with parthenogenesis, spontaneous sex changes due to external and internal triggers (some of which are reversible), and a whole load of complicated fun stuff when it comes to invertebrates, much of which we don’t yet understand. Clownfish certainly start off male then start laying eggs, gonna change the goalposts again?
More to the point, plenty of women can’t give birth; unless you’re claiming that they’re not female, which you’ve already stated you don’t, you cannot then claim the ability to give birth is an integral requirement of being female.
More to the point, plenty of women can’t give birth; unless you’re claiming that they’re not female, which you’ve already stated you don’t, you cannot then claim the ability to give birth is an integral requirement of being female.
The only reason me and you exist is because biological sex exists. Without this quirk of nature, sexual reproduction could not occur.
This is a concept that you either get or you don’t get. Birds and the bees stuff, truly. This conversation is draining to me, so this is my last post to you.
Why stop at Trump, how about trans Charles Manson? I mean, he was an insane murderer before, but everyone’s telling you that you must ignore the content of someone’s character if they identify as trans, right?
Why stop at Trump, how about trans Charles Manson? I mean, he was an insane murderer before, but everyone’s telling you that you must ignore the content of someone’s character if they identify as trans, right?
Well, yes that’s what people are saying if you take self-ID to its logical conclusion. We are not supposed to question whether a male is calling themselves trans to gain access to vulnerable women. If they say they are a woman, then we are morally obligated to treat them as we would any adult human female.
So why couldn’t Charlie Manson be a woman under the “trans woman are women” rubric? It’s not like there’s a gatekeeping committee that rejects trans applications if they come from serial murderers.
You cannot, in good faith, argue that the ability to be pregnant is not required to be female, while simultaneously requiring it when the person claiming to be female is someone you don’t want to call female. That’s just dressing up ‘it is because I say it is’ in fancy language.
There are biological indicia of “femaleness”. Reproductive organs are one, but there are others.
If I have a car and take out its radiator, it doesn’t transform into a coffee table. it’s still car. It’s just a car that can’t cool itself.
When you see an individual who has a female body (let’s saying this person is unclothed), do you spend a whole lot of time trying to peg this person’s gender, putting the person in the “agender” box until they inform you of their gender indentity? Or do you say, “This is a woman?” Do you refrain from using gendered pronouns or do you default to feminine ones?
Because if it’s the latter, then you fundamentally understand YWTF’s argument and you are just picking nits to score points.
Filbert, how do you decide if a cat is male or female? Do you say a spayed cat is male? Do you throw up your hands and say since the cat can’t tell you, there’s just no way to decide? If not, then you know perfectly well how @YWTF is judging sex in humans.
Well, no. Because she’s denying that trans women are women, because they don’t quite match the bits she thinks they require, while allowing that other people who also don’t have those bits are, in fact women. While handwaving away the fact that some people really don’t fit into either the ‘male’ or ‘female’ box as an irrelevance. I know quite a few people not in either box, as well as people who aren’t in the box she’d like to put them in, and I don’t consider them irrelevant.