[quote=“RickJay, post:996, topic:855795”]
That isn’t analogous. It didn’t involve redefining “men” and “women.” Taking away the assumption of heterosexuality still left the fundamental meaning of those words in place[/quote]
It left in place what many people NOW consider the “fundamental meaning” of those words. But many people before the gay-rights era did not hold your modern view that it could be possible, for instance, to take the assumption of heterosexuality out of the word “man” without redefining the fundamental meaning of the concept.
Many homophobic people back in the day were perfectly willing to assert that, e.g., homosexuals were not men (as in the case of the 1895 newspaper that proclaimed after the Wilde sodomy trial “Oscar Wilde is not a man, but a horror that one shudders to approach”).
There are plenty of people even today who will similarly proclaim that [anti-gay slurs redacted] “are not men” (or “are not women”). Just because many homophobes past and present were willing to acknowledge that “those creatures” had, e.g., male anatomy, and you happen to consider that having male anatomy is the only true “fundamental meaning” of the category “man”, doesn’t mean that they didn’t believe that heterosexuality was fundamental to maleness.
What you mean is that no one actually thought Alan Turing didn’t have a penis, and sure, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean that everybody agreed he or other homosexuals qualified for the social category “man”. (Consider, for example, the early sexological definition of “Uranians” (what we’d call gay men) as “not men at all, but women: women in manly shaped bodies”.)
Once again, this gives the impression that you’re somehow claiming to speak for cisgender women as “your” group. Plenty of us other cisgender women disagree with you on how the social category “woman” should be defined.
Also, as I pointed out to RickJay, commonly accepted definitions of “woman” and “man” as a social category have in fact changed over time. Nowadays you may believe that heterosexuality isn’t a necessary qualification for the social category “woman”, but that hasn’t always been a commonly accepted view.
This sounds pretty reasonable to me. If we were allowed to hold the conversation as we should be, then we could probably come up with a compromise that gives everyone what they need.
I hope this happens and the trans activists don’t succeed in shutting down all debate. When Stonewall (a publicly funded organisation created to campaign for LGBT rights) is coordinating a campaign of harassment against a progressive left, black, lesbian, it really does feel like society has jumped the shark.
…it should come as absolutely no surprise that Stonewall, a publicly funded organisation created to campaign for LGBT rights, would come into opposition with the LGB Alliance, a Gender Critical organization that explicitly excludes the T from the LGBT. Its called Stonewall for goodness sakes. What exactly would you be expecting?
And I don’t see anything actionable there. It looks like all those who contributed to the crowdfunding campaign have thrown their money down the drain. Certainly no evidence of (as you claim) a coordinated campaign of harassment. You should be very careful about the allegations you make here.
I think Monstro is right, the strict biological definition has the virtue of simplicity, but not many people these days are going to accept it. I agree it would be better to focus your energy on opposing having no definition at all.
Re Kimstu’s views, I’d say the important thing with looks, dress and behaviour is being seem as a woman by society. Trans women may well need to wear makeup, dress more femininely etc in order to achieve this, while cis women are freer to dress androgynously, but the end result of being treated a certain way is the same.
Like I said before, my concern is with policy. In this thread, we’ve been primarily talking about how society sorts people in a way that is consequential to women and trans rights.
Since policy is what I’m focusing my energy on (and what I think everyone should be most concerned with), I’m for a definition that works for policy. I’m having a really hard time figuring out how society is supposed to execute policy around a persons gender expression/appearance. It just seems like a recipe for discrimination for both women and trans women who don’t conform to the right image of femininity, and that position is shared by many others.
You and @monstro are saying you have different concept for woman than me, but isn’t it interesting that we’re all agreement on policy? It probably means you are using the same definition for woman that I am in matters that connect with rights. On the question of who can be perceived as a woman in routine social situations, you are of the belief that “looking like a woman” is sufficient. I agree with that too.
What we’re saying is that even with policy, you don’t have to have a “water tight” definition.
I work in water quality. We monitor state waters. What is a “state water body”? Is it a farm pond? A private lake? A ditch feeding to a creek? We have a formal definition that we use as a guideline, but practically every day we encounter “gray areas”. Like the farm pond that during heavy rains overflows and feeds into a ditch when feeds into a creek. If I always went by strict “dictionary” definition, my job would be easier but there would be unhappy people out there who’d feel I was being a pedant for no good reason…
There’s no reason to think policies for women couldn’t be implemented with the same discretion.
But they are performers. And their bodies haven’t been modified. They are playing-acting. (And your little insinuation is stupid, by the way).
Wearing a zombie costume doesn’t transform someone into a zombie. Wearing a woman costume doesn’t turn a man into a woman. A lived experience presenting as a woman does, along with biological modifications.
I’m curious whether you have the same answer to the question I asked ywtf.
Arthur and Geneva are both intersex, with fairly similar bodies at birth. Arthur was raised as a boy, and Geneva was raised as a girl. Arthur identifies as a boy, and Geneva identifies as a girl.
Once again, this gives the impression that you’re somehow claiming to speak for cisgender women as “your” group. Plenty of us other cisgender women disagree with you on how the social category “woman” should be defined.
Well let’s see. Should we put this to a vote and see which of these choices women prefer?
I’m seriously tempted to post this as a poll to Reddit or something. Only thing holding me back is it might draw attention to how the shittier option is coming from progressives. This subject, and this subject alone, could peel away enough support from female voters to make a difference in November.
It is making me scream inside my head,
Also, as I pointed out to RickJay, commonly accepted definitions of “woman” and “man” as a social category have in fact changed over time. Nowadays you may believe that heterosexuality isn’t a necessary qualification for the social category “woman”, but that hasn’t always been a commonly accepted view.
This is some “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia” nonsense. The definitions for woman and man have not changed as you’re insisting upon. The only thing that has changed are attitudes toward gender norms and expectations. A man has always been an adult penised-having person and a woman has always been an adult vagina-haver.
In a routine social situation, where the only thing of real consequence is deciding which pronoun or title to use (ma’am or sir), sure, a drag queen can be regarded as a woman. The stakes are so low that it doesn’t matter.
In the vast majority of social interactions, sex/gender doesn’t dictate a whole lot. It’s just fluff. The exception to that is sexual relationships. I will stop perceiving a drag queen as a woman the minute he starts flirting to me and expressing romantic interest in me.
But I’m not seeing what they would look like. Even the prison example you gave with the person who transitioned in their teens, I didn’t see you posit anything about their looks. That’s all I’m saying.
I’m not against case-by-case discretion, but there still needs to be objective criteria for exceptions. I’m in favor of gatekeeping criteria that don’t unfairly penalize trans women who lack the money or the ability to transform themselves into Barbie dolls.
A person who is not a biological female who identifies as a woman should only be automatically admitted in the female prison when the following conditions are met:
She always identifies as a woman.
There is evidence she has been identifying as a woman and presenting as such for at least X period of time.
Her style of dressing/grooming resembles other female individuals belonging to her culture or it is ambiguous enough that most individuals (not knowing anything about her) do not default to male pronouns when referring to her.
She does not posses external male genitalia.
She takes testosterone blockers or estrogen.
For individuals who don’t fit all of the criteria but hit four of them, their case would be subjected to another review by a committee comprised of sufficiently woke but reasonable-minded policy folks. If there’s an individual who is pretty close to ticking all of these boxes but isn’t quite there yet (maybe she still has a penis, but she’s been on hormones for years), maybe the committee recommends that this person be housed in the female prison but in the block for sexual and gender minorities. So if they can’t afford to get reassignment surgery but that’s what they want, they could get that done and then be switched over to gen-pop when they’ve fully transitioned.
But the men who are into cross-dressing can’t game the system by claiming “woman”, because those dudes haven’t changed their biology or their “every day” experience. Just wearing a dress sometimes doesn’t turn a man into a woman. The male prisoner who wakes up one day and decides they’re a woman wouldn’t be able to transfer to the female prison unless they spend a year in the sexual and gender minority cell block and they actually transition to the degree required by the checklist and by the committee, who would be tasked with interviewing this person and deliberating over their file to reach a consensus on whether their narrative is convincing.
Would such a system be completely immune to abuses? No. But it would go a long way to keeping out the edgelords and fraudsters while giving a nod to the understanding that “woman” can mean more than “biological female” without the sky falling down.
All of these I can behind except #3. A gatekeeping committee would never be able to assess this one reliably. Are they going to ask the male applicant for the women’s prison how many skirts they own? Query them on their taste in jewelry? There is no way they could know how often they are clocked as male by the general population.
Most of us who live in cosmopolitan areas will cross paths with transgender individuals at least occasionally. It’s not unusual for me to know I’m seeing a trans person, which by definition means I can clock their birth sex. In spite of this, I don’t need to be told what pronouns to use. People who wear clothing from the women’s department typically want to be seen as “she”, even if their naked bodies are no different than a man’s.
So just because people don’t default to male pronouns when a male is in a dressed state doesn’t mean that in a naked state (say, in locker room) they would blend in.
But like I said before, I’m good with the rest of the things on this list for gatekeeping exemptions in situations like women’s prisons and shelters. For women’s sports, I don’t believe there should be any exemptions.
You can look at me and tell that I “look like a woman”. You can make that determination despite not knowing how many skirts or dresses I have in my closet or how much jewelry I have. You can tell that even if you never see me unclothed. This really isn’t rocket science, YWTF.
If this woman showed up on your doorstep wearing nothing but an orange prison jumpsuit with no makeup, you wouldn’t default to a male pronoun. Your mind would be all, “She just escaped from prison!”
But this woman will not get the feminine pronoun by default. So at this point it is appropriate to ask what other signs of “womanness” do they have, if their birth certificate indicates they were born male. Do they have a structure between their legs that looks more or less like a vulva? Or they taking hormones? If the answer is yes, then let’s bump her case to the reasonably woke committee, who will make the final decision on whether this individual gets moved to gen-pop or a special block for the genderly ambiguous. There’s no need to make a huge deal over the fact you can tell they were at one time a boy.
We know that masculine-looking women are a thing. The two of us are the biggest fans of a masculine woman. We know she’s a bad-ass bitch. There’s no reason that we have to treat masculine-looking biological males any differently (at least in the context of prison) as long as their sex parts don’t scream I’M A BIG OLE DUDE! If female prisoners don’t want to live next to a masculine-looking woman who is as biologically female as technologically possible, then those female prisoners really are transphobic and I’m OK saying that. No one has the right to not share initimate living space with someone who has a different chromosome than them. But I don’t think it is unreasonable to say that someone shouldn’t be forced to sleep in a small room next to a person with a penis.
I agree it’s not rocket science, which makes this sidetrack so baffling to me.
We’re talking about which males should get into women’s prison, correct? I said that I agreed with everything on your list except the one about dressing a certain way, correct?
I explained the logistical problem with tasking a gatekeeping committee with assessing whether a male (standing before them in a jumpsuit most likely) “does woman” in terms of clothes and other accoutrements.
Can you engage this position of mine? I mean, it doesn’t seem ludicrous to me at all. What does women clothing have to do with prison anyway? As you point out, they will be wearing unisex jumpsuits.
Odds are the two transwomen you’ve cited differ in regards to the other exemption criteria you came up with. So if we lland on the same conclusion as to who gets in or not, I don’t see why your #3 belongs in the analysis.