I don’t get it either. If gender doesn’t exist why on earth are you voluntarily missing out on job opportunities because of it? First world problems…
Actually I think this illustrates the bigger problem with this gender theory. Young people have been brought up to believe that sex=gender and gender is nothing more than what clothes you like to wear. They’re taking a real division of humanity, that still is the cause of a great deal of discrimination, replacing it with something trivial and irrelevant, and declaring that sex is therefore trivial and irrelevant, not worth caring about or recording. And just when feminists are fighting to get women included properly in drug trials, car safety testing, and address underdiagnosis of diseases due to criteria being based solely on symptoms in men.
I blame the absence of an official spokesperson for this. You’ve got so many people on the internet espousing gender identity opinions, but we have no idea if they are actually representative of anything.
Like, what are the bonafieds of the person in that HuffPost piece that @YWTF link to? Are they an activist for gender minorities’ rights, someone who will be held accountable by a specific organization or a constituency that has appointed them to speak for them, or are they just a rando with their own opinions, who doesn’t care if their opinions step on the arguments being made by other gender minorities? Based on the short bio offered at the end of the piece, it sounds like the latter. I think if I were a trans woman, I’d be pissed off by a rando who denies the realness of gender in a mainstream publication. I’d be more pissed off by this rando than I would be JKR, actually. Because at least JKR hasn’t said that gender isn’t real. She has just said sex is real, which I gotta think the majority of trans folks (especially those who have modified their biology) would cosign. If neither gender nor sex is real, then trans folks aren’t folks who are especially burdened by anything but the strong desire to wear a certain style of clothing. Which is exactly what gender critics have been saying all along: all this stuff people are calling “gender” is just performance. There’s nothing special about performance.
So I’m think a lot of the kerfuffle around JKR isn’t being led by the trans folks who have traditionally represented the movement. I think it is being driven by folks like that nonbinary writer and folks who gone all in on gender ideology. Folks who want gender to be really about costume and performance rather than anything deep-seated and lived or neurological (the “mental state” concept). Genderfluids and nonbinaries and genderfuckers are pushing this stuff. Some of them are adopting the “trans” moniker because they know that it will give them gravitas. But they aren’t the trans folks that most people would choose to give gravitas. I don’t think anyone but a very tiny minority wants to see women’s spaces filled with males. A very tiny minority actually does want to see this, though, because something like this would validate their view that gender is big joke.
This is why I think it is important not to give the trans community absolutely everything they are demanding. Not all of the people making demands are sober-minded, politically conscientious individuals.
You are probably the only person I know that thinks elite sports are unfair because some people have more natural ability than others. Not saying that this means you are wrong, but you are clearly looking at this in a way that is alien to me.
It would not make sense for me to spend time debating this position. Not saying this to be snarky. I just know my limits. Maybe someone else will, I dunno.
Yeah, if someone of the so-called cis persuasion wrote “gender doesn’t really exist”, there would probably be outrage trending on Twitter right now.
You really need to drop this fairness in sports argument. It’s clear you haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. There is no merit award in sports based on level of effort based on granting a handicap for date of birth and lack of natural, height, strength and talent. Nobody gets medals for trying harder and suffering more than the winner but still coming in last.
I’d like to highlight another questionable passage in the piece that @YWTF linked to:
This means that, at every single step of my life from an online form to a waiter referring to me as ‘sir’, I am reminded of my otherness. I’m well aware that these are rarely acts of malice, but regardless of their intention, the effect is always detrimental to my mental health. We need to make the world a more inclusive place for trans and non-binary people, and a very simple way to do this is by adapting our language to be less binary. When 48% of trans people have attempted suicide, and 84% of us have considered it, this seems like a no brainer.
I’m really tired of suicide being used like this. When people do this with respect to trans rights, it always reminds me that we’re dealing with a community that is disproportionately mentally unwell and emotionally unstable. Are they mentally unwell and emotionally unstable because people say stuff like “Come on, guys!” instead of “Come on, folks!” Or are some of them bothered by certain words because they are mentally unwell and emotionally unstable? If people don’t want me to think the second is a real possibility, they should stop taking me down this rhetorical path.
Racial minorities and women have historically been shat on. They’ve been erased from language. They’ve been discriminated against. They’ve been treated like subhumans. No one argued for their civil rights by citing their vulnerability to suicide. Probably because the folks fighting for their liberation were savvy enough to know that portraying these groups as emotionally fragile undermines the position that they are just like everyone else. If mere diction is enough to make people take a flying leap off a bridge, then everything less than ideal is liable to make them take a flying leap off of a bridge. "If you don’t replace the term “mother’ with ‘birthing person’, people will kill themselves!” is just a step away from “If you don’t want to date a person who identifies as a ‘birthing person’, people will kill themselves.” I just can’t deal with this kind of extortion. I’ll listen to a reasonable, logical argument about why certain words are better than others. But I’m not going to be moved by “Change the way you speak if you want people to stop killing themselves! It’s a no-brainer!!”
I’m not sure it’s all that massive - I mean, the standard for elite women’s 100m sprinting is about 11 seconds to make the Olympics. The fraction of men who can run the 100m in eleven seconds is not massive. It isn’t one percent of all men in the correct age range; walk down the street and ask yourself how many guys you think could run that fast. It ain’'t many. That’s REALLY fast.
But even at half of one percent, that means no one born female would ever make any international competition. Ever. How many women get to run the 100m dash in the Olympics? There are thousands of men who could outrun the women’s champion.
I don’t really get the “it’s not fair anyway” argument, either. Of course it’s fair. Fairness means people are treated with the same rules. Sports is as consistent a meritocracy as we have - not perfect, but closer to perfect than almost anything else.
If gender doesn’t really exist, what is the source of all this suicidality if not poor mental health? They are having psychological reactions to words that are not based on anything real, by the author’s own admission.
Or maybe ‘the source of all this suicidality’ [1] is the terrible, unimaginable (to me, at least) discomfort that comes with gender dysphoria, combined with the way our society has been so dismissive of their experience – uour post being a perfect example of said dismissiveness.
[1]my God, that’s a callous way to put it…
I’d love for you to elaborate on this bit because that hasn’t been my experience AT ALL (but admittedly I am a man and if your experience as a woman is different I would love to hear about it).
In my experience, sexuality for women as treated as this prized thing that must not be sullied while for men it is treated as no big deal. For example, when a high school student and a teacher have sex, the narrative when the child is a woman and the teacher is a man is one of exploitation and sexual abuse, whereas when a male student sleeps with a female teacher, even if she does suffer legal consequences, the narrative is “what’s the big deal? That lucky dog should be CELEBRATING!”
I think this attitude is harmful to both men and women, mind you, but it doesn’t jive with this idea that women should be cool with dicks flying around but it is understandable for men to be put off by vaginas. In my experience the idea that women don’t want random dicks shoved at them is understood, while the idea that a man may be put off by unwanted sexual attention is suspect - because in our culture, the idea that ANY sexual attention directed at a man is unwanted is simply inconceivable.
Again, I’m not trying to paint men as the victims here, and much of this attitude is enforced BY men in the first place. I’d just love for you to elaborate so I can broaden my own experience and understand what you’re referring to 
If gender isn’t real, what the hell is gender dysphoria?
Nothing I said was callous. I’m pointing out the obvious. Poor mental health (which is what gender dysphoria is) causes their reaction to being called “sir”. It’s not because of their gender or lack thereof. Gender doesn’t exist. That’s the top line statement of the essay.
This is likely the crux of our disagreement. I don’t think people choose to be trans. I mean, it’s like sexuality, sure, there are some border cases who could identify as straight, or bi, or gay. But most don’t really have that freedom.
Same with trans people. There are people who are profoundly uncomfortable with the gender they were assigned at birth. There is likely a biological cause for this – both the brain and other organs are modified by sex hormones in utero, but at different times. So some people have brains that are wired “wrong” as compared to their genitalia. And the high suicide rate of trans people suggests it’s a serious problem for these people.
This is not some whim.
Yeah, if you think that the distribution of physical and other traits people are born with is fair, we really can’t discuss the issue at all. We are too far apart.
I’d love for you to elaborate on this bit because that hasn’t been my experience AT ALL (but admittedly I am a man and if your experience as a woman is different I would love to hear about it).
I mean that you don’t hear very many stories about females feeling entitled to be naked in men’s spaces, and I think it’s because everyone understands that men can’t help feeling a certain away (in a noticeable way) around naked female bodies. We fundamentally grok that men will have unpleasant, embarrassing reactions if female nudity became a normal feature of men’s locker rooms. But we don’t have this collective sympathy for women. “It’s just a penis! Don’t look at if it bothers you so much, you silly ninny!” How many of us would tell men “It’s just breasts, hips, thighs, ass, and pussy, you silly ninny! Don’t look at if it bothers you so much!”
I think most of us would tell the female bodied person who identifies as a man but hasn’t modified their biology that they can’t go in the men’s locker room and expect to be accepted as “one of the boys”. I don’t see a lot of people shaming men for not seeing an an intact female as “one of the boys”. But for some reason, we expect women to do this for intact males. For some reason, people have no problem shaming women for disqualifying someone from the “woman” classification because they are biologically no different than any other male.
Have you ever looked at the history of homosexual rights and acceptance? Not all that long ago. homosexuality was considered a mental illness in large part because a lot of gay people were suicidal and otherwise mentally unhealthy. And then something changed. Society stopped saying “you are morally wrong to be homosexual. You are perverted. Hide your shame.” and wow, now homosexuals have a similar mental health profile to anyone else.
I remember when homosexuals came out. No one knew any homosexuals, and then suddenly everyone did.
Trans is the same. Trans people are only just now coming out. Soon I expect everyone to know some, and to have more personal sympathy, and better understanding. And to recognize that a lot of transwomen actually do “feel feminine” and transmen “feel masculine”.
I’m not sure that everything transpeople are asking for right now is exactly the right “ask”. I’m not sure that homosexuals asked for exactly the right things at first, either. (And they failed to ask for some of the right things, too. Like marriage.) I think the really big thing that transpeople need is acceptance. Moral and emotional approval from other human beings.
The high suicide rate is a huge red flag. And I believe it flags that WE, the cis majority, are a real problem. We are killing our trans brothers and sisters, our neighbors, our closeted friends.
I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I see a really big problem. And I want to be on the side of trying to fix it, not of shoving those inconvenient people out of sight and out of mind.
I don’t think concern for the MEN’S feelings is the reason that no one talks about women going into men’s naked spaces. Rather, it’s the idea that men want sex and can’t be trusted not to act on those wants, so we have to keep them out of women’s naked spaces to prevent them from groping, staring, or worse; but WOMEN would never even THINK of going into a men’s space, for much the same reason that Daniel wouldn’t be very happy in the Lion’s Den.
I think people would tell a female bodied FTM trans person that he would have to be suicidal to take his female body into a men’s space, because men can’t be trusted to control themselves. Not because we are worried that men will be squicked out by vaginas.
You don’t?
And yet, most of the gender-ambiguous people I know, of both biological sexes, use “mens” spaces. It’s something I have been curious about, so I’ve asked several. They chose "mens’ spaces because they don’t scare people there. And my non-gender-conforming-male friend says that he often does discomfit men, and has been told he’s in the wrong rest room dozens of times. (Usually from someone who sees him fully clothed, from behind – at that angle, he looks like an ordinary woman.) He faces them with his close-shaved stubble and apologizes, and explains that there really isn’t a “right” restroom for him.
So why aren’t you hearing about it? I think it’s because people care more about women’s spaces and woman’s privacy than about men’s.
Do you have the same objections to lack of fairness as to intellectual abilities and physical appearance?: ‘We should all be smart, beautiful, thin and able to run a 4 min mile.’
Why do you think that is?