If I were a transwoman and I told you I’m afraid that men will dress up in women’s clothing so they could act a fool and in the process discredit transwomen, I really doubt that you’d be so condescending, so dismissive. I think you would at least listen to that view respectfully and not try to mansplain it away.
I don’t think they realize women can clearly see a difference between how men talk about trans women and how men talk about women.
“Trans women are who they are say they are.” vs
“She’s just telling these lies because she’s a transphobic bigot.”
“Trans women are raped, murdered, and assaulted far more than another group.” vs crickets after multiple cites were produced showing global patterns of female-targeted murder, rape, and oppression
“Trans women will be attacked and harassed if they go to men’s restrooms” vs “ A female rape victim freaking out over the prospect of naked penis in the shower is no different than white people freaking out over black people in the 60’s.”
The bias towards the transwomen point of view wouldn’t be problem if it didn’t seem like the bias against women was directly proportional to it. It’s a telltale sign that men actually don’t believe TWAW.
I think this hysterical restroom fear is not only wildly overblown, it’s backwards.
I have a cousin that was born female but identifies as male. He’s smart and has a high paying tech job and a gorgeous wife. He presents as a short yet muscular man with a full beard.
These bathroom restrictions would require him to be the burly man in the ladies room. It would cause him a lot of consternation because he’d scare women every time he has to pee, plus he’d be forced to out himself to strangers constantly if he wants to go out in public. He presents as fully male and if you met him you wouldn’t know his biological sex unless he confided in you. Unless you pass laws strictly for the purpose of making sure he can’t keep intimate intimate details about his body. I think it’s an invasion of privacy and I’m surprised it hasn’t been litigated as such. And it’s even worse for trans women, who have to add the fear of physical assault to the invasion of privacy.
It’s typical conservative policy, the cruelty is the point and the goal is to make life as painful as possible for an already marginalized minority.
The points about fear of assault if someone with a penis breaches the doorway of a women’s room is ridiculous and if you are that fearful then you probably just shouldn’t go out in public.
If someone is going to follow you into the ladies room for the purpose of assaulting you, it’s not going to matter one little bit what the law on bathrooms is. Heck, your mythical burly man could just claim he had a vagina -
If someone in all sincerity presents as female and purports to be female, I have no trouble treating them as female. It’s basic manners at minimum. It’s trivially easy in 99% of life situations, including public restroom behavior. Yes, there are differences that may matter in occasional situations — competitive sports and public sex-segregated facilities that involve full nudity (bathhouses, spas and some locker rooms) as well as some medical procedures and research and these need to be discussed -
I’m always going to acknowledge that there is a bright line physical difference between a cis woman and trans woman that may have to be dealt with carefully in a few situations.
I’m just saying that it doesn’t matter except in these few specific situations and in most of life’s everyday activities it’s considered unseemly to focus too much attention on the genitalia of the people you interact with.
I don’t have to have a fully developed belief or a lot of knowledge on the science of transsexuality or the neurology of gender in order to honor their wishes and treat them as female if that’s what they want and to respect their privacy instead of dissecting their psyche and motivations.
By the way, thank you, YWTF , for bringing up all those sources referring to men’s medical issues. I hadn’t thought of those (though they’re not surprising to see) but they do represent some of the broader ways society could still be improved to be more inclusive and accepting of trans people, IMO.
You are welcome.
But you know that “man” will never be subjected to the policing that “woman” is, right? We can pretend this will be where the next phase of warm and fuzzy inclusiveness is gonna go, but I promise you the minute anyone tries to erase men from “manly things”, the powers that be are going to pull the plug on the silly whole game.
“Top 5 Shaving Tips for People with Hairy Faces” is good for laughs, though.
Calling women ‘people with vulvas’ is terrible and offensive.
Calling a group containing women ‘people with vulvas’ is totally fine.
These terms are better because they’re more accurate! Accuracy is the important thing!
‘Cis men and trans women and some non binary people’ is preferred over ‘biological males’.
Bonus round:
Telling people of colour to be nicer is just an excuse to stop listening to them.
J K Rowling is an evil witch for her sarcastic tweet calling out this problem. Burn her books!
…I’ve found the original tweet, which is here. Adrienne said this happened at Booz-Allen-Hamilton which is a Consulting Firm, and I very much doubt she would have been carrying a fencing sword around with her at the time.
Can you verify that the screenshot you posted (the tweet and the photos) are of the same event? Or is someone (not you) playing silly games? Did someone really encounter a “sword-carrying person” or did they just encounter a person?
It took me all of two minutes using Google and Twitter to verify it did happen, it’s a fencing sword (a fencing foil isn’t really a sword in the sense of an edged weapon) and Corea seems proud of it.
…it took me all of two minutes using Google and Twitter to verify that the tweet is indeed real (I linked to the tweet) and that the image is, indeed real. I said as much in the post you literally just replied to.
What we haven’t established is that the photo was taken at the same time as the incident. Can you verify that it was and if you can can you provide a link?
…YWTF claimed that “the woman encountered a sword-carrying person.”
At no stage (as far as I can see, please feel free to correct me) did Adrienne claim that "she was carrying a sword. She stated that she was at Booz-Allen-Hamilton which is a Consulting Firm, which makes it even more unlikely she would have been holding a sword, a fencing foil, or whatever it is you want to call it.
So I believe what Adrienne said. I’m asking if you can verify the claim that YWTF has made. I’ll take that as a “no you can’t.”
Why not just call women women? Transpositive people don’t seem to have a problem with that. You seem to want to make a mountain out of that molehill. The only difference is that I don’t have a problem calling anybody a woman that wants to be called a woman… and you do.
If for some reason I needed to specify something specific about people with vulvas (for whatever reason) then yes, “people with vulvas” is a perfectly cromulent term, as it includes women, girls, and transmen. Again, you are taking offense for reasons I can’t grok at all on this. “Women” doesn’t encompass all people with vulvas, even taking transpeople out of the equation.
Cismen etc… Uh, fine with this cismale. I have zero problem being grouped with transmen or non-binary persons or gay men or anything that would have been unthinkable even when I was a kid.
I won’t even touch your “bonus round”… It’s essentially dogwhistling at this point.
I don’t want to make your cousin use the ladies room. I don’t want laws saying people have to use the restroom of their birth sex, and I don’t want laws saying we have to let people use the restroom/sauna/locker room/prison of the sex they claim to be. Or that we have to let people compete in sports as the sex they claim to be (even without taking hormones in some cases, which the ACLU is campaigning for). But those things are what trans activists are currently campaigning for.
I think we could find a compromise that satisfies everyone, but that’s not possible when one side is being shouted down and insulted and told their fears are irrational (how familiar that is ) .
At no stage (as far as I can see, please feel free to correct me) did Adrienne claim that "she was carrying a sword. She stated that she was at Booz-Allen-Hamilton which is a Consulting Firm, which makes it even more unlikely she would have been holding a sword, a fencing foil, or whatever it is you want to call it.
So I believe what Adrienne said. I’m asking if you can verify the claim that YWTF has made. I’ll take that as a “no you can’t.”
To maintain your denial of what the entire tweet communicated, you have to ignore the comment she made about “unlocking achievement” by freaking out her first ciswoman. Maybe I could do that if there wasn’t a selfie showing her standing in the middle of the restroom with a sword in her hand, but I’m a believer in using context clues and critical thinking. I ask myself key questions such as:
Why is there a picture of a sword in this pic if she wasn’t holding a sword when this happened? It certainly looks like she’s standing in a restroom, right? Not a fencing arena. What are the odds of that?
If the sword is just a random non sequiter that mysteriously found its way in this pic, how did that happen and why did she choose to tweet a selfie with it?
You are not believing what Andrienne said; you’re ignoring it and positing the existence of some alternative storyline that could answer the questions above. Your bias in favor of Andrienne unfortunately necessitates negatively judging the woman she “freaked out”. This woman could never receive a fair hearing from you. You just know she can’t be anything other than transphobic bitch for avoiding the loo—which for all we know, had nothing to do with Andrienne; could’ve just wanted to take a dump without an audience present.
The hyperfocus on “dewomanizing” language while “men” language has been left largely untouched is perhaps the biggest eye-opener for me, and I do appreciate my sister for helping us to see that. I was thinking about that shit all last night.
Strictly from a power dynamic standpoint, if all gendered language is inherently problematic and oppressive, then we need to focus on cleaning up all the “men” stuff first. Only when the privileged gender class demonstrates it’s going along with the program should the marginalized gender class be compelled to go along with the program. This makes perfect sense when you appreciate that getting “woman” language has been a relatively new development. For much of our history, “man” and “men” were the default for “person” and “people” and women endured it for as long as we could before putting a stop to it once we were able to grab some of the microphone. So it should be totally understandable why women don’t want to give up the power of saying “women” whenever we want to say it. We just acquired that power. People who have always had that power shouldn’t be telling us to do anything, at least not until they clean up their house first.
If the focus is going to always be on fixing “woman” language while men get to gallop along like everything is fine on their end, then yeah, it’s very eye-rolling for men to lecture women on how the linguistic changes benefit everyone. If the benefits really are universal, then it shouldn’t be a problem for men to remove all the offensiveness from their lexicon first.
And yes, the thread has been a bit depressing. We can be calm and dispassionate and back up our arguments with cites, but we will still be dismissed and belittled. Meanwhile, the concerns of folks who aren’t even participating in this thread are afforded much respect and gravitas.
As I’ve said repeatedly, I’m not totally on the JK Rowling train. I don’t consider myself a gender critical proponent. I am a supporter of trans rights. I am sufficiently “woke”. I just don’t subscribe to untestable bullshit. I just don’t think we’ve reached enough of a social or scientific consensus for folks to reflexively assume that a statement like “sex is real” is such a horrific and stupid statement. This matter may have been settled by the gender extremists, but it hasn’t been settled by humanity en mass. We can’t seriously talk about gender being a social construct and then not give the “social” any voice. If we don’t want people to push back on all gender theory, we need to find some middle ground. “Anyone who says they are a woman is a woman” is NOT a middle ground. It is an extreme that harms both ciswomen and transwomen. “Anyone who requests feminine pronouns and and expresses a woman gender identity should be afforded respect” is something that I think we garner near-universal support for. It does not require any brainwashing. It just requires us to treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves.
I’m going to try to be hopeful and optimistic, though. I don’t think the more extremists views are going to catch on. Just like with any social movement, I think we’re going to make some mistakes along the way and eventually course-correct when the excesses of gender inclusively are made apparent to a critical mass of people (particularly those in power). All we can hope for is that 1) the harm that is experienced along the way isn’t too severe, 2) people don’t allow that harm to turn them into bigots, and 3) the conversation never becomes one-sided, with female folks being too afraid to speak out about harm they’ve observed with their own eyes. That last thing has played out since the beginning of time, and it is very much played out.
I wasn’t aware of this either, but it shouldn’t have been surprising to me - like everything else, the starting point for this will be that men get what they want; women are stomped over along the way. It doesn’t change my criticism of JKR, but woman critics like her will get extra special heat that men with the same positions don’t get.
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