Your claims about being attacked for your views would be a lot more credible if you weren’t the most hostile person in this conversation.
I don’t know what standards that prison uses for determining where to house trans prisoners. If you can dig them up, we can discuss them and see if they’re reasonable. Your implication that there are no standards is unfounded - you’re assuming that the prison has adopted the most extreme version of gender theory.
Your suggestion that she’s supposed to be regarded as female because she’s “a gay male” is just fucking bizarre.
Um. What standard for membership do you think applies for homosexuals, other than self-identification?
Sexual arousal is observable and verifiable. I experience my husbands heterosexuality often.
Can you tell me if you disagree with any of these statements?
Same-sex attraction means being attracted to members of your own sex class.
A person falls in a certain sex class if their body comes equipped with one of two types of reproductive systems. The male system impregnates; the female system gestates. Each system has its own type of gametes, gonads, and genitalia.
Gender identity is not sex, because sex is based on objective biogical criteria. Gender identity is not.
Lesbians are human females sexually attracted to human females. Gay men are attracted to gay men. This is what same-sex attraction means.
Males can not be lesbians. Their gender identity doesn’t overrule their sex class. A lesbian is under no obligation to view a transwoman as a fellow lesbian, regardless of whether that would convenience him sexually. Lesbians are only attracted to female human beings because that is what being lesbian means.
My deal with this specific situation is this: It seems like the only reason it doesn’t provoke universal outcry is because it is a rare case. We don’t see an epidemic of male-presenting biological males trying to get into women’s prisons, so we’re able to shrug it off as a “no big deal” situation.
But let’s say there was a lot of men claiming the woman card to get into the women’s unit. Does gate-keeping seem reasonable at that point. Or is that still TERFy? At what point does it NOT become TERFy to question someone’s gender identity?
Like, I get that people don’t think we need to worry about men rushing into the women’s prison anytime soon. But it seems to me that it is very easy to not worry about that when you are not the woman who is stuck in a woman’s prison. If it’s just a navel-gazey exercise for you and you really don’t have any skin in the game, then of course it seems like a ridiculous thing to worry about.
Seems to me if gender is such a “no big deal” situation that we’d let a biological male who presents as a male into a women’s prison, then we shouldn’t have a woman’s prison. Why even bother with gender segregation? What purpose does it serve?
I’ll plainly admit it: I’m OK giving a pussy pass to male-presenting folk as long as their numbers remain small. If I join a woman’s club and I know that the male-presenting biological males are allowed but their numbers are always super small, then I’m not going to feel any particular way about their presence in the club. But if I’m at a women’s club meeting and I see just as many male-looking people as I do female-looking folks, I will not feel like I’m in a club for women. I will feel like I’m at a “anyone can join” kind of club. Why would make that club different from any other club? And would bailing out of such a club on that basis be “TERFy”?
So, you with the face, I wonder if the concerns you, DemonTree, and JK Rowling have are reflexively dismissed around here because people are assuming that we’re always going to have a negligible number of people trying to game the gender system–never enough to fret over. There won’t be an epidemic of women getting raped in public bathrooms, because no more than a very tiny minority of men will try to take advantage of the system and go that far. We don’t have to worry about men pushing women out of the sports arena, because only a very teeny tiny minority of men would be so callous. We don’t have to worry about men taking over women’s prisons because only a tiny minority of men would be evil enough to do that. And why should the rights of innocents be denied over the fear of what the “tiny minority” might do? I think that’s what a lot of people are thinking.
While I think the bathroom fears are unreasonable, those other things I listed? I am not prepared to assume those would be “very tiny minority” things. I think in those instances, we really do need to gate-keep. And I’m unapologetic about that.
It seems to me if we rely on the “tiny minority” argument, it would be dishonest to not acknowledge that transfolks also are a tiny minority. The number of men who menstruate is tiny compared to the number of women who menstruate. If folks don’t see anything wrong about belittling the fears that women have about letting men into their spaces, why should women hesitate to belittle the tiny minority’s angst triggered by “women” instead of “menstruators?” Seems to me that the discussion of legal rights belongs in a discussion separate from how people talk about gender, relate to each other through gender, and feel about gender. To listen to some people, pushing back on some of these newfangled notions is also pushing back on transgender rights. I think that’s a toxic mindset and my mind shuts down when I hear it.
I’m seeing a lot of stuff you think others should or shouldn’t like. You want to put everybody in neat little boxes. You need to have a quiet think about where you/your views fit into all this.
You want everybody to be a boy or a girl and like boys or girls :: pick a side!:: “you cannot be a transsexual lesbian”— why the fuck not? Why should anyone do anything to conform to your weird ideas?
I’ll add an example off people that don’t fit your boxes—
How about a boy who likes boys but feels like she should be a girl. Should their lover just drop them if they start to transition? — irl still a couple — you think they are cheating somehow?
[I suck at the pronoun thing: I plead Dutch]
We need to figure something out as a society that lets everybody be who the fuck they want to be AND allow for private “single sex” spaces — I think unisex toilets with private rooms instead of stalls (I think stalls are on the way out either way) Prisons where you can have a reasonable expectation not to be sexually assaulted seem a good idea regardless of anyones gender. The only part where I don’t see an obvious solution is (professional) sports. Maybe we should look at that on case-by-case basis. Nobody really cares if a trans-man comes in 4th— the trouble starts when they start winning:(
If I was writing something about pregnancy and wanted to be absolutely 100% inclusive, the same argument *would *apply. But since the percentage of pregnant people who also consider themselves men is likely vanishingly small, I think I could safely stick with “pregnant women.”
OTOH, the percentage of people who menstruate who also consider themselves men is certainly much higher, so the argument for using the more inclusive term is stronger.
Finally, I never said the opinions of transmen who have been pregnant should “outweigh everyone else’s opinion” – I just said I’d be curious to hear from them.
Short version: this whole current “menstruator” fuss was spawned by Rowling’s silly illogical objection to an op-ed’s perfectly reasonable and appropriate use of the phrase “people who menstruate” instead of “women” to refer specifically to people having to cope with menstruation hygiene practices and their exacerbated difficulty during the current pandemic.
Since a large minority of women no longer (or never did) menstruate, and a small minority of people who menstruate identify as male or nonbinary, the term “people who menstruate” is more accurate in that context. Especially if you’re going to declare, as you did in the subsequent part of your post, that the term “woman” automatically implies “adult”, which would exclude menstruating minor girls from the category “women” as well.
The headline and article both specifically acknowledge that the problems of coping with menstruation hygiene are not confined solely to women:
Those are perfectly reasonable descriptions IMO of the terms “cisgender women”, “cisgender female”, “biologically female”, etc.
If you insist that nobody should be called a “woman” or “female” who doesn’t conform to those descriptions, then what are we supposed to call transgender women? Do we just pretend they don’t exist? Do we write them all off as deluded nutcases who don’t understand their own identity? Do we have to use an entirely different term for them? Or what?
ISTM that where such viewpoints are, at best, embracing ignorance is in their disregard for the reality of transgender identity, and their refusal to consider that human sex/gender is more complex than the simple binary norm of “male/man/penis”, “female/woman/vagina”.
Like it or not, either we have to expand the definitions of the social gender categories “male/man” and “female/woman” so they can include more biological variation, or we have to create and use additional social gender categories to accommodate that variation. What won’t work any more is merely declaring that every adult human must be either a man with male genitalia/chromosomes or a woman with female genitalia/chromosomes, and everybody who doesn’t fit into that simple binary classification should just pretend they don’t exist.
Well, as I said above, it depends on how you define “womanhood”. We are not obligated to define our social category “woman” to be identical with the scientific category “biologically female”. I know we’ve (mostly) done so in the past, but it’s clear these days that that definition is not adequate to represent the reality of variation in human sex/gender identity.
Certainly it would be unscientific and reality-denying for someone with a penis to claim that they don’t have a penis or weren’t born with a penis. I don’t see anybody defending the right to make any such false claims. But I don’t see anything unscientific or “anti-scientific” about someone with a penis saying that they personally identify as a woman and want to live as a woman.
In fact, AFAICT, the existing science on gender identity strongly supports the hypothesis that transgender identity is a biologically real phenomenon. In other words, yes, you really can have typically male genitalia/chromosomes and also have some typically female brain characteristics that make it natural for you to think of yourself as female, or vice versa. If that’s the scientific reality of human variation in sex and gender identity, then we can’t just go on pretending it doesn’t exist.
Completely agree. We should not use gender diversity to reinforce gender stereotypes. There is no one right way to “be a woman” or to “be a man”, as far as the social categories “woman” and “man” are concerned.
And IMO that applies to people’s chromosomes and genitalia as well as to their dress, behavior, feelings about the color pink, etc. Sure, there are differences between, for example, transgender women and cisgender women, and it would be unscientific to deny such differences. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t have a social category “woman” that includes both transgender women and cisgender women.
I repeat: If you don’t want to expand the definition of the social category “women” in that way, then how do you think we as a society should deal with the reality of transgender women’s existence?
So, if I tell you I’m queer, do I also need to show you a picture of me fucking another dude? Or are you willing to just take my word for it?
Disagree, given the definition of “sex class” you offer in #2. There are plenty of lesbians and gay men who identify as exclusively homosexual, and who are okay with dating trans people. I don’t think that makes them “less gay” than someone who refuses to date trans people.
Soft disagree, in that intersex people are a thing, but I’m okay with it as a general principle. However, I don’t agree with linking “sex class” (as you’ve defined it here) to “same-sex attraction” as you used it in #1. Sexual attraction is not, primarily, based on genitalia, but on secondary sexual characteristics - generally, the stuff you can see about a person when they’ve got their clothes on. Nobody’s out at a club thinking, “I might be attracted to that person, but I won’t know for sure until I see their dick.”
Agree, in a biological context. In casual conversation, “sex” and “gender” are often used interchangeably. It’s a mistake to assume that every casual usage of “sex” (such as in “same-sex attraction”) is necessarily using the strict distinction between “sex” and “gender” that you’re employing.
Disagree, for reasons stated earlier. Lesbians are women who are attracted women. Gay men are men who are attracted to men.
Hard disagree on the idea that a trans woman can’t be a lesbian. I agree in general that nobody is obligated to enter into a relationship with any other person. It’s okay to not want to sleep with a person who has a penis, regardless of their expressed gender. A lesbian who doesn’t want to date trans women shouldn’t be criticized for that, assuming she’s not otherwise being shitty about trans women as a whole, such as insisting that they’re not “real” lesbians.
I agree that the standards applied to trans women should be the same as the standards applied to trans men.
Yes, it already is. It’s recommended by the British Medical Association and I’ve seen it used on several pregnancy advice sites and forums. It did bother me; feels like they are trying to erase women from one of the most quintessentially female experiences. It’s like, gender neutral language is supposed to be neutral, but nearly always brings men to mind first, the same way ‘unisex’ clothes are in fact designed for men’s bodies (another thing we are not supposed to say any more, I suppose). Pregnancy is one of the few areas where women were considered the default.
I also saw the risible ‘chestfeeding’ used in a few places. So transmen can get pregnant, give birth to a baby, and breastfeed it, all without suffering dysphoria, but being honest about the organ they are using to do so isn’t allowed? I bet this idea didn’t even come from them.
It’s not clear to me from the linked article that we’re talking about someone who is male-presenting at all. Certainly, they’re male presenting in the photos, but those appear to have all been taken during the trial, or from before they killed that guy, when (if I’m understanding the timeline here) they still identified as a gay man. Before I can get outraged over this, I’d need to know things like, “How are they presenting now?” “Are they on hormones?” And most importantly, “How much danger are they in of being sexually assaulted themselves if they’re housed with the male prison population?”
Prisons, as I’m sure nobody in this thread needs to be told, are absolutely abysmal at protecting their inmates from sexual assault, but they’re particularly poor at protecting trans inmates. Nearly 60% of trans inmates housed in male prison populations have been victims of sexual assault. Admittedly, trans inmates do commit a disproportionate amount of sexual assaults in women’s prisons - something like 5% of sexual assaults committed in women’s prisons were by trans inmates. That’s terrible, and needs to be addressed, but any attempt to address the second statistic without considering the first statistic is not acceptable.
In addition one meaning of ‘breast’ being a synonym for chest. So if there are people (and there may or may not be) who want to avoid referring to their breast-as-in-mammary, they still have a breast-as-in-chest, so they are literally suckling the child at their breast in another sense.
The same argument could be offered to support the blacklisting of communists. Yet it used to be believed, among the previous generation of the left, that blacklisting people of a different political orientation was a wrong thing to do, even if it was legally allowed. Not everything morally wrong should be illegal.
This argument would also imply that blacklisting of unionizing workers should be allowed. “Freedom of the speech of the workers to argue for unionizing does not mean freedom from the consequence of being fired.” But how many people actually believe that? Almost everyone is happy to carve out legal protections for speech – protection from consequences – if they feel the political purpose is important enough.
And this is just absurd.
I can defend another person’s right of free speech, while also disagreeing with the content of what they say or their personnel decisions.
This is pretty remarkable. You’re maintaining a position that was the default, the “common sense,” in the US for the entire 20th century. You’re referring to transgender identification as an “epidemic.” The suggestion that there’s anything brave about denying people their identity, that you’re the maverick, that it’s other people adopting ideology, is just so profoundly wrong.
It’s worth considering how the pushback against trans rights maps to the pushback against gay rights. How the language is so similar, treating trans identity as a disease. How the arguments are made about how threatening it is to straight (cis) folks to be in proximity to gay (trans) people. How the identity itself is denied.
What seems like common sense to you is received cultural prejudice. It’s common because it’s so integral to your culture. But that received cultural prejudice is being challenged. And sure, that might feel threatening to you.
It could be offered as such, but not in a rational, accurate, or valid way.
The problem with the Communist blacklisting is that much of the information was collected and/or fabricated by the government who pressured and assisted Hollywood to deny certain people work.
Can you clarify where I suggested that everything morally wrong should be illegal?
In fact it does not. J. K. Rowling, a private citizen, does not work for me. There are no power dynamics between us except our choice to speak our minds about one another and to purchase each other’s products. Do you see how this is distinctly different from the employee/employer relationship?
Can you clarify what part of “cancel culture” you disagree with, in concrete terms?
Do you think that if I, as an individual, disagree with someone then I must keep it to myself and never speak of it?
Lisa Littman, the researcher who published a paper on Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria that challenged the current orthodoxy, lost her consulting job as a result. If you lose your job for expressing your views, it doesn’t really matter whether your employer objected personally or just gave in to the pressure of social media outrage. The chilling effect on others in the same position is identical.
You weren’t asking me, but I think speaking out in opposition is fine and healthy. Calling for people to lose their jobs, sending threats, harassment etc are not.
Breast can be a synonym for chest - at least if you like reading Victorian novels - but I’ve never seen the converse used seriously. There’s no breastfeeding without breasts, and I find it fairly ridiculous that someone can choose to breastfeed but can’t stand to talk about it honestly.
And why the heck is it simultaneously considered transphobic to say that women don’t have penises, and that men can breastfeed?