Damn, another one! What exactly keeps inducing white women to pretend to be black?
Your point was a little mis-stated, so I didn’t quite understand.
“[women] need access to toilets that accommodate the biologicals needs unique to females” implies that some toilets do not accommodate those unique needs.
What you’re actually stating is something more like: “women require access to toilets to a different degree than men”?
In other words, it’s not the toilets that are accommodating their needs, but the access to the toilets.
Thanks for the clarification. It just popped out as a “what are we talking about” moment.
It is, actually, and some forms of discrimination are fine. Females need extra things sometimes. Any male who refuses to believe that needs his head examined.
One must assume there is some psychological issue there whereby a person is capable of truly epic levels of lying in an effort to garner sympathy and attention. This is a rather weirdly specific thing, though.
The Satchuel Cole case, though… her real name’s Jennifer… it appears she named herself after the legendary Negro League ballplayer Satchel Paige (she used “Satch Paige” as an avatar name.) Except she misspelled it. Holy moly.
We live in an age where claiming membership to a marginalized, stigmatized group gives a person gravitas. With gravitas there are perks. People listen to you. People defer to your opinion. People cite you as a reference. They treat you as a spokesperson and buy your books and pay good money to hear you speak.
I am OK with some of this because lived experience should count for something. It makes sense to listen to a black person talking about black issues more closely than a white person talking about black issues. Because the black person will have lived experiences that the white person doesn’t have.
So I understand why white folks might feel jelly and thus be tempted to fabricate an identity. I can sympathize not wanting to be a “basic white woman”, because that is a stereotype that exists. “Look at that Becky, talking about Black Lives Matter like her pumpkin-spice-latte-drinking-ass could possibly know what the fuck that means.” If I were white, I would be bothered by this characterization. If I were white and lacked moral fiber, I probably would do crazy shit like pretend I’m something I’m not. Especially if I could do so without anyone ever being able to provide proof that challenges my claim. Especially if I had a whole army of defenders who’d flip out on anyone who tried to challenge my claim.
Now that black folks are aware that people are trying to fake the funk, we’re gonna be more skeptical and guarded about who we call fam. Which will no doubt make it harder for racially ambiguous black folks to be taken seriously, but such is life. It isn’t that hard to justify one’s black identity if it is in fact genuine (“My father is black and I was raised in the black community. You can verify this through my records if you care that much about it.”)
I’ve gotten asked why I identify as black throughout my life. I have two black parents and it obvious to me that I look black, but apparently my appearance is ambiguous enough that some white folks can’t always easily categorize me. I might get a little flummoxed and exasperated when this has happened, but I don’t act like my humanity has been denied me. I don’t act mortally wounded. Because I understand that no one is obligated to see me as I see myself. My race really isn’t that big of a big deal, so I try to talk about it in that light.
For this “gender identity” stuff to work, it needs to operate with similar social rules. Misgendering needs to stop being equated to a lethal assault by default. Questioning someone why they are claiming a gender identity needs to be no different than questioning someone why they are claiming a nationality or a religious identity. If gender identity is treated more preciously than we treat all the other social constructs, then we’re not treating it as a social construct. It’s bad enough that folks are trying to degrade the meaning of “woman”. They need to be stopped from degrading the meaning of “social construct”, because otherwise one day the introverts might seriously demand special accommodation one day and we won’t be able to tell them they are wrong without looking super hypocritical.
(And I say “we” excluding myself, because I will be the main one marching in the street for introvert empowerment.)
I suppose it was the situations they found themselves in that made adopting a black identity the best way to get sympathy, respect and/or attention. And it seems like at least a couple of them attacked real black people as a way to divert suspicion, or because they weren’t secure in their new identities.
I was thinking, it’s not so much that a bunch of people all decided to masquerade as black all at once, so much as that after one was discovered, people start getting more suspicious and others got found out too. Which is less weird…
I guess some people don’t see the point. We’ve had a couple of suggestions on how to reorganise sports so categories are no longer based on male and female. They all sounded detrimental to biological women.
The folks yelling TWAW seem to take it on faith that no one will ever masquerade. They think the only males who will claim “woman” will be the ones who are women. In the past I might have been charitable and assumed these folks were just naive and idealistic. But now I think a lot of them are misogynists (yes, even the women). Because only a misogynist would think that no self-respecting man would ever stoop so low so as to call himself a “woman”. In their minds, the only males who would do that are the males who are “girly” and thus not “real men”.
If gender wasn’t such a big deal, I wouldn’t care about masqueraders. If black people weren’t an oppressed group still fighting for civil rights and fair representation, I wouldn’t give a fuck if we discovered there are a million Satchuels. But black people are oppressed. Americans are seeing this oppression play out on every day on the evening news. So we need “black people” to be a meaningful sociopolitical term and not be turned into a personality type that any rando can opt into when they think it is fashionable. Black people aren’t oppressed because we listen to hip hop and clap on the 2 and the 4. Black people are oppressed because our bodies have been coded as inferior. We are considered “dirty”. Just like women’s bodies are considered “nasty”.
So I have an uncomfortable question. How much of the objection to trans-women sharing intimate spaces with women is based on the threat you feel of predator men masquerading as trans-women, vs. the larger theme going through your post regarding white people masquerading as being black without having to live through the experience of being born black in America. That is to say, do you feel there is any part of your objection to TWAW due to the fact that these men are transitioning to being women without ever having lived as actual women in the physical sense, regardless of whether they feel like they were born misgendered.
Not trying to light you up. Just wondering if this may play a part.
Yup. We’ve only seen the tip of the Rachel Dolezal iceberg.
No problem!
If I’m honest with myself, I have to say both of those things are in the back of my mind when my eyes roll in response to TWAW. There’s the practical issues regarding safety and security-. But then there’s also the discomfort of being forced to share an identity with folks who enjoy male privilege and being frustrated that there are no ways to “check” those people when they get carried away with their new found identities.
Like, I’m light-skinned black person. I enjoy privilege that my darker bretheren and sistern don’t have. I know I can move in this world in a different way than others of my racial group. Do I like it when light-skinned people are told we aren’t “black enough”? Of course not. But I totally understand why it’s gotta be like this sometimes. Sometimes light-skinned black folks need to be told to STFU, because light-skinned black folks can be clueless and stupid and derpy. Privilege has a way of doing this to people. Rhetorically snatching the negro card from someone is a great way to sit someone down when they are being a huge derp.
I want to be able to do this with transwomen. To me, they are like light-skinned black folks who have negro cards only because the club was originally was constructed around “one drop”. Transwomen can be in the woman club using a rubric just as superficial (“They look kinda-sorta like women”). I’m kinda-sorta OK with this. But I still want to be able to snatch up a transwoman who is acting like the oppressor. I want to do this without sparing their feelings and without a bunch of bleeding hearts crying about how I’m denying that person their humanity. Oppression has denied women of their humanity for millions of years. So it seems to me that the verified members of womanhood–the folks who define this group–should be empowered to kick out anyone who sounds like an existential threat to them, even if the “kicking out” is just through words rather than literal actions.
If someone is living as a woman (according to my own concept, not some derpy man’s concept) and experiencing the hardship of womanhood, then that’s enough for me to grant them a “woman” card. But if I’m looking at a person who is no different than any other rando man, then no. For safety and security reasons, I’m going to say “no”. But I’m also going to say “no” for sociopolitical reasons. In this sexist society, it is way too easy for a male-presenting male to be validated and treated like a serious human being. So it is ridiculous for a male-presenting male to expect even MORE validation and gravitas by hitching their wagon to a group that has been fighting for those things for centuries. They can get their gender affirmation from the genderfuckers on social media if they are that starved for attention. They don’t need literally everyone to affirm them.
I appreciate your honesty and I feel like have to be honest with you, @YWTF and @DemonTree. I am not fully convinced that the safety argument is sufficient to keep trans-women out of women only spaces. Men who are predators will always find a way to pray on women. I’m not sure that faking being trans is going to make it much easier for them to do so. That said, I find myself in agreement with you with respect to above, and various other good arguments made in this long thread re: sports, certain aggressive aspects of trans-activism, consistency of reasoning for TWAW, etc. So thanks for helping me understand the nuances of this topic much better than I did before.
Interesting and relevant article about JKR here:
I don’t think predatory men will necessarily fake being trans (e.g., dress up in a women’s wear). I am worried that if people go all in on TWAW with institutional policies, predatory men will be emboldened to come into women’s spaces since those spaces will become safe space for males. Not just males in dresses, but males in general.
Appreciate your input even if I strenuously disagree that safety isn’t a valid concern.
I know restrooms keep coming up, but the safety concerns are most significant in spaces like shelters and prisons. Right now there is a bill in California proposing to place transwomen in women’s prisons.
I would caution anyone who espouses “Male predators are going to attack women anyway so what does it matter if we let transwomen in” to really think hard about what they are saying. It is really no different than saying “blacks are going to be victims of homicide anyway so no big deal does if cops kill them too”. I just don’t have any patience with this attitude, sorry not sorry. It is just wrong on so many levels.
Thought I’d share this interview from a former female inmate from Canada. She speaks of her experience sharing prison with a transwoman convicted of violent sex crimes.
To be clear, I’m not saying that women’s prisons, bathroom and locker room doors need to be flung open to all men who claim they feel like a woman (props to Shania Twain). The other objections expressed are sufficient reason not to do so. I’m simply undecided whether predators will take significant advantage of the most liberal of TWAW policies if fully enacted. That said, I’m not willing to roll the dice and see what happens given the other objections and work-arounds.
Interesting. Looks like the Canadian penal system (CSC) is failing women inmates and women prison guards.
Self ID again. Do these politicians have no common sense at all? And they also allow anyone claiming to be non-binary to choose their prison, so male criminals won’t even have to pretend to be women to get moved to the women’s jail. How can they care so much about one minority and completely ignore the effects on another?
I’m not sure how much we should use the behavior of trans people who are sexual criminals in order to understand the issue of trans people in general society. It seems the problem is putting a dangerous criminal in with a vulnerable population. That could happen with a dangerous female as well. It may very well be true that some transwomen are more dangerous that some females, but I’m sure there are some females who are more dangerous than some transwomen. I don’t know that a transwoman in prison presents an abnormally high risk just because she’s a transwoman alone. I’m sure some transwomen would be model prisoners in the women’s prison and some females would be complete troublemakers.
But with transwomen in prison, I think it would be a problem if “instant self ID” was allowed. That is, if the transwomen could say at any time “I’m a woman” and the system has to treat them as a woman. There should be some kind of lookback period which starts well before the person was arrested. Just like sports has a look-back period, so should criminals. If someone was a transwoman for years before they got arrested, then it’s reasonable to treat them as a woman. But if someone says they are trans for the first time after they get arrested, they should be treated as their birth sex.
I wonder if this is part of why the amount of denial is so high. Accepting that this is happening means accepting that modern-day institutions are incompetent, indifferent, or evil on a scale the average person has never witnessed. It’s hard not to be in denial about it.