The logical end result of accepting such a claim seems confusing and self defeating to me.
If gender is a construct and sex is a construct then I don’t quite see what trans people would be transitioning to or from. What would it actually mean to be a “woman” or “female”? how could one legitimately claim membership of either group?
For all I know that may be the intended end game. An erasure of gender and biological sex. If so it might be helpful, for the purposes of clarity and argument, to state that up front and be willing to discuss the problems that may arise from that and to address the problems that people would have with it.
One such problem that is clear from this thread is the unwillingness of some people to condone the grouping of unambiguously biologically female people, i.e. those wanting to keep some form of gatekeeping around that grouping which is based on shared biological factors and experiences. That somehow gets interpreted as bigotry and transphobia and though I’m not part of that group I confess I don’t see it.
Of course if the end game is actually to erase that concept of “woman” and “female” by making them so broad as to include everyone and anyone then those opposed to biological grouping can target legitimate criticism. i.e. “if everyone can claim womanhood or female-ness then any biological grouping is discriminatory”
This is not an easy question, as the thousands of posts on here testify to.
But how do you know which is which? This has also been a constant topic in this thread. It is a demonstrable fact that some advocacy and pressure groups are seeking to have self-identification as the only requirement. Were that the case then I don’t know how you’d tell one from the other and legally you may have no grounds for doing so. What criteria would you set?
That seems to be a problem. If you are against the aims of those groups then congratulations, you are actually on the same side as pretty much everyone else in this thread. The discussion now is what degree of sincerity or bodily modification is required to clear that “womanhood/manhood” bar?
Citing a website that posts obvious anti-transgender propaganda is not the road to legitimacy. I’ve looked at the claims made in that post, and I’ve compared that to what is written in the Wikipedia page on Gender Trouble, and it sure looks like there is a lot of cherry-picking and misrepresentation going on there. So thank you for sharing the article written by Dr Em, but I don’t quite think its the “gotcha” that you think it is.
You are hitting on the fundamental paradox that keeps gender ideology from holding under scrutiny. Thousands of posts ago, I summarized the two bucket of ideas that gender proponents draw from simultaneously in doublethink fashion, seemingly unaware of the incoherence this creates. See if this matches what you are seeing:
Yes, that pretty much matches the confusion I see. If viewpoint #1 holds, then sex is real and will be relevant to these discussions. If viewpoint #2 holds then “trans” makes no sense and people are misguided in assigning significance to their strongly felt biological identities, either positive or negative.
Of course in your description of viewpoint #2 you reference the terms “female” and “male” which have just been defined out of existence by the first sentence of the paragraph. A classic “this sentence is false” paradox.
Thanks for taking the time to post this. I’ve started reading the cited links to become more familiar with the subject from your point of view. Having said that, I don’t think there is a single poster on either side of this conversation who would condone any violence towards a trans person, nor would deny a trans person the acts of kindness you cited.
Oh, and cited in one of @Banquet_Bear 's links is this long document on the policy recommendations with respect to trans people and shelters:
It’s a long ass document and I’ve not fully read it. Seems comprehensive. I wonder if @Spice_Weasel would consider coming back to comment on whether this is the policy they use at the shelter where she works. What has worked and what hasn’t.
Yes! And the blatant dodging of this question only entrenches my concerns. It sounds like people want to give the “woman” card to anyone who demands it and then maybe revoke it later (like in the case of Karen White). But we won’t have actual cards to work with. Males are not going to be walking around with papers indicating that they are a Verified Woman. So why would a self-preserving woman not find this scary?
Folks like BB say they are OK with some gatekeeping but they aren’t really fleshing out what that looks like in the real life, everyday arena. Which for most people is going to be public sex-segregated facilities. Is BB et al. going to find it acceptable if women call for help when they spot someone like this using the women’s restroom? Or will that be considered TERFy, a denial of human rights, and thus very very bad? Because if it’s the latter, then we aren’t looking at something that empowers females. We’re looking at something that empowers males. We’re looking at something that makes women’s spaces safe spaces for men, not women. So males will have two safe spaces (men’s restrooms and women’s restrooms) and females will have no safe spaces. How the hell is this fair? But I guess if someone somewhere sees it as “courteous and kind”, then everything’s A-OK.
If TRA and allies are OK with ciswomen coming up with social rules to handle the complications of TWAW, then that’s super fine by me. But if they refuse to come to the table with some reasonable ideas, then they can’t complain if the social rules ciswomen come up with aren’t courteous and kind. Ciswomen should not have to be courteous and kind when their safety and security is on the line.
I’m fully prepared to do all those “courteous and kind” things. I will call the formerly known “cheese steak guy” as “cheese steak girl”. I will refer to my transwoman coworker by the pronouns she wants. I will respect folks wishes not to be “dead-named”. I will not yell at a female-presenting male person using the restroom with me.
But that’s all I’m prepared to do right now. I’m not ready to go all in on TWAW until the concerns I have are properly addressed.
I would think this courtesy should be pretty much universal no matter the situation, anyway. If someone changes their name, they change their name. It was a dick move to call Muhammad Ali or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar by their old names, right? This politeness has little to do with the transgender issue, and surely it can’t be a problem calling someone by a name that sounds like it’s associated with a different gender; no one has a problem with Leslie Nielsen or Glenn Close.
I understand that the trans community allows for a very wide allowance of presentation, including those of ‘man-by-day, woman-by-night’. So I’d very much like to know two things: Has this person actually insisted on the right to use the women’s bathroom, and if so, what does @Banquet_Bear and other trans-advocates think about this example in particular (it’s too easy to speak in generalities sometimes).
I’m more interested in whether they think Danielle Muscato and others like her should be able to have unfettered access to women’s restrooms. I don’t really care what Danielle personally wants to do. I care more about what her allies want her to do. There are lot more allies than TRAs. It’s not just the TRAs who are going to scold women for being mean ole Karens. It’s going to be the allies doing most of this.
I’ve actually read through a bit of it, and a few posts ago, I excerpted a part where it described the dangers transmen face in men’s shelters. Unfortunately lots of it seems to fall prey to the same pattern of woman-blaming found throughout the gender movement.
Take this bit:
There are no FtM shelters or rape crisis centers, so as men who face (or have faced) sexual assault, spousal abuse, and gender discrimination, there is, as of yet, no place better equipped to meet the needs of FtM’s than women’s services. FtM’s need women’s services to open their doors and their policies. This will require much revamping of policy and assumptions about men and women but it can be done. Again, working with all levels of the shelter to understand this issue will be necessary.
The authors assert that men’s shelters fail to protect and serve transmen, but instead of saying men’s shelters need to fix this problem, they lay the problem-solving at the feet of women’s shelters. This is called holding women responsible for men’s bad deeds, a lesson that every misogynist receives on the first day of misogyny school.
Mind you, these authors are proponents of gender affirmation. Where is the ideological consistency, though? Either transmen are men and entitled to shelter with other men, or they are biological females who are vulnerable to male violence and should shelter with other females. Arguing both at the same time means trying to have cake and eat it too. If transmen retain sex-based vulnerability, doesn’t this imply that transwomen retain sex-based hazard potential? It’s impossible not to make this inference, but gender proponents either ignore this or cannot connect the dots themselves.
The document does address in some part the presentation fluidity which I assume would be highly inclusive of transmen in women’t shelters. The document also makes claims to a lack of evidence for transwomen posing a threat in womens shelters. Though the latter provides no cites to actual assault statistics in womens shelters, just that the attacks are characterized as being no different than violent attacks of women on other women. Not a lot to go on there.
It’s the idea we must pretend biology is irrelevant that I object to. Biology is pretty damn relevant to why women suffer violence and discrimination. And sex is not a social construct, two sexes have existed since long before humans evolved and created a society.
Sure and I agree. I knew what you meant, I was just having a little fun at the fact that your explanation itself is rendered meaningless if the concept of sex is meaningless.