It also sets typical women up for ridicule from feminine transwomen.
“How dare you scowl at me for being in the locker room, Karen! I’m more woman than you are! You look like a damn lumberjack with that Paul Bunyan outfit you’re wearing! I’m the original butch queen, bitch!”
If a diatribe like this were ever caught on video, it would get a million “likes”. It would be on the front page of Reddit all day long. No one would see it as hateful and misogynistic. People would just see a transwoman taking down an evil Karen and not care how problematic it is.
There is a word for the logical fallacy of believing two categories of things are not different if there is no one very easily identifiable trait in which they are always different. Damned if I can remember what it is, though.
One another board (predominantly black women membership), an OP written by a trans woman posited that heterosexual men aren’t really attracted to adult females. Nay, what they are really attracted to is femininity. Long hair, makeup, twirly dresses, heels, lacy underwear…it is this stuff, according to this trans woman, that is the basis of men’s attraction to women. Our genitalia actually disgusts men (lol).
They theorized that this is why men are so into transwomen. Apparently males know how to attract men better than women do.
I bet you can predict how well that thread is going for the OP right now. The misogyny of the trans movement has pushed many women off the blind support train.
My wife has long hair but she hardly ever wears makeup, or heels, or a skirt. She likes football, is in a stereotypically male profession, and is handy with power tools. She’s still a woman, though, and very feminine indeed.
This is the sort of direction I was nudging BB when pushing on what criteria would be used to assess the seriousness of a person’s gender choice.
They seem very reluctant to allow that any/all/some of the factors above or others not mentioned could be evidence of that seriousness and commitment (or lack thereof)
I think it is a “have the cake and eat it” approach.
It remains possible for them to imply that they don’t think a simple declaration is enough (and so appear reasonable to those wary of such a path)
But by never actually voicing an opinion on which factors might show a lack of serious intent they can continue to claim absolute support for any trans activist position.
It is certainly a neat balancing act, and who wouldn’t want to please everyone? but seeing as we know how messy and complicated this subject is, I don’t think the conversation is very well served by trying to have it both ways. Better to own the problems and potential hypocrysies that each of our positions may entail.
It remains possible for them to imply that they don’t think a simple declaration is enough (and so appear reasonable to those wary of such a path)
But by never actually voicing an opinion on which factors might show a lack of serious intent they can continue to claim absolute support for any trans activist position.
I totally get why people don’t want to say “no”. It’s hard to say “no” to someone you sympathize with and shut the door in their face when they ask to be let inside.
But this is what we need to do if “woman” is to mean anything. We can’t let the door be open to literally everyone. If literally anyone can be a woman, then woman doesn’t exist as a sociopolitical group. It’s more like a personality trait, like “introvert”. We don’t have public spaces devoted to introverts because why would we? I don’t want some derp to say one day “Why do we have public spaces reserved for women? That’s like having a public space reserved for introverts! That’s ridiculous!” I want people to understand that women are a vulnerable class. Not because they identify as women, but because they have a natural disadvantage.
…Alma chooses to not conform to gender norms. She can shave if she wishes. She chooses not too. That’s a choice: not a result of a gender anomaly.
Well who gives a fuck about honor? When did honor become the standard? I look at Alex Drummond and the way she carries herself looks very feminine to me.
…but how they appear influences how they will be treated in a bathroom. Without a genital inspection Alma is going to get challenged in the bathroom, probably every single time. Are you okay with that?
Several of us here are seeing the “have your cake and eat it to you too” implications of the whole enterprise. This is not a product of imagination; it is inferred from the precepts gender theory is based on.
But here’s the thing:
If it was obvious this movement from coming from right-wing authoritarians, I think progressives would widely be up in arms about it. We wouldn’t be acting like it’s by some unfortunate coincidence that “have your cake and eat it too, XY-havers!” is the end result of all of this stuff. We’d be reacting as if it was designed to give XY-havers this privilege, because we would see this as part of a long right-wing tradition of men trying to take power from women.
But it’s coming from the left (at least from what I can see). Since liberals don’t see themselves as part of patriarchal oppression, progressives are giving the movement a massive benefit of the doubt. We are ideologically blinded right now and this has made us vulnerable.
Consider how you are framing this as the result of “people pleasing”. But is it, really? Surely the people leading this movement aren’t people pleasers, because if they were they’d have stopped what they were doing a long time ago. I can only assume that women aren’t people to them. So if they are people pleasers, they feel absolutely no compulsion to include women in that population.
…don’t throw this back at me. This isn’t about me. My position is clear. People should be allowed to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.
The question is about you. Which bathroom do you think a transman who presents clearly as a man should be forced to use?
An anomaly is something that is statistically unusual or rare. A woman with extensive facial hair is rare. A woman who doesn’t remove or treat her facial hair is also rare. So from a gender perspective, it is an anomaly for a woman to both have a beard and to not remove it. Whether or not she has a beard doesn’t change that she’s a woman, but a beard on a woman is not gender normal/common/frequent/whateverwordyouwantouse.
Sure, she has many feminine traits, but her full and thick beard is a very masculine sign and weakens what is meant by “living as a woman”. This was in response to the post about signing a declaration that the person would commit to “living as a woman”. It highlights how such a commitment doesn’t really mean anything if the person is free to pick and choose whatever they want to do no matter how rare and uncommon it is.
A transman is entitled to use a woman’ restroom because they are adult females. They have female plumbing and therefore need access to toilets that accommodate the biological needs unique to females.
A woman who mistakes a transman as an intruder is also well within their rights to view them as a potential intruder. If a transman doesn’t like that, then a transman then can pee somewhere else. They can’t claim to be men and then get offended when they are seen as men; that’s not how this works out here in the streets.
Do I care if a transman chooses to use the men’s room? Not at all. Why should I care? It’s not my place to police that space.
…and transgender people assaulting people in bathrooms is such a vanishingly rare thing as well. So I’m not sure why being “unusual or rare” is important here. This thread has over 4000 posts and has been going for months over things that are unusual or rare. It can stand a few extra posts about a genetic anomaly. If you encountered Alma and Alex in a women’s bathroom: without a genital inspection which one would you kick out?
When I hear people say something like this, I hear “Trans people should be allowed to use whatever space they want while cis people need to stick to their own spaces.” I say this because it seems like everyone is fine with keeping normies out of at least one kind of space, while trans people are allowed to access all the spaces. It’s OK to tell a man to get out of the women’s restroom, but not a transman. It’s OK to tell the straight ciswomen she can’t stay at the LGBT shelter, but the lesbian transwoman should get to stay at the women’s shelter. Trans folks are the ultimate wild card. It’s like gender rules don’t apply to them at all.