Universal health care is another thing we should try to secure before we go all willy-nilly into the brave new world of “anyone can be a woman”. If we all had access to free or low-cost medical care, then it would not be at all unreasonable to expect all women to possess a certain biological reality to be legally treated as such.
Actual surgery is the last step, and is usually not just a single surgery anyway. Even if you can afford it or if it is covered by a hypothetical UHC.
What bathroom do they use if they are mid-transition? They still have a penis, but they have breasts, no facial hair, and have been on hormones for a year or so? Should their ID still list them as male at this point?
This strikes me as a perfect as the enemy of the good. I don’t know that we will ever have UHC in this country. I would imagine that most of the people who would be for transgender rights are also for UHC. I would also think that there is a significant overlap between those who are against UHC as well as transgender rights.
To wait to work on transgender rights until we have a UHC may be a long wait for a bus that doesn’t come.
I don’t think being able to use whatever restroom you feel entitled to is a right. I think which restroom you have access to is a separate issue than you being to able to pee without risking your life.
Everyone should be entitled to a safe restroom and a safe locker room. But I don’t think everyone is entitled to a restroom or locker room that validates their self-perception.
What I’m hearing folks say is "It’s easier to tell women to open the door to anyone who wants to use their restroom or locker room than it is to…
– enact universal health care
– get men to stop being hateful violent transphones
– create third spaces
– tell transfolks that it simply isn’t true that anyone who says they are a woman is a woman.
– carve out some social rules so that women don’t feel like they have no control over what’s happening to their spaces
“…so let’s go with the easiest option and hope women like monstro, YWTF, and Demon Tree understand that’s just how it’s got to be.”
It doesn’t have to be like this.
Anyone who works in government and convenes stakeholder groups understands that all stakeholders (those who have a vested interest in the outcomes of a proposal) have valid concerns. And those concerns need to be listened to and accommodated as much as possible so that there’s collective buy-in for the final proposal. When you have collective buy-in, the final proposal will have a better chance of succeeding.
When it came to racial discrimination in the 1960s, folks realized that there was big monetary and social cost to maintaining racially segregated spaces. Enough people understood that there is nothing inherent about skin color and hair texture that justifies segregating along those lines, so they could see these high costs came with no benefit. Enough people were on the same page and that is why we don’t have formal racial discrimination anymore.
Are we really about to say that sex segregation is similarly purposeless? Is it really true that biology doesn’t matter, or is that just what a minority of people want to believe?
All I’m saying is let’s treat this gender stuff like it’s political, because that’s exactly what it is. It’s 100% political, which means all stakeholders need to be brought to the table and have their concerns respected, so that there can be buy-in for the final decision. If the final decision isn’t made with buy-in from all the impacted communities, then the decision isn’t going to work for everyone.
Gotta disagree: I think that would be super unreasonable, since it would be slapping the same stringent biological-essentialist conditions on the use of the social gender category “woman” that I’ve been criticizing all along.
Being classified as a “woman” for ordinary social purposes, such as using female pronouns in public or using a women’s restroom, should not be dependent on whether or not you possess a vagina that nobody in that social situation is going to be seeing anyway. Neither a natural-born vagina nor a surgically constructed vagina should be a prerequisite for using “woman” as one’s social gender identity category among people who can’t see your genitals and have no business trying to imagine them.
Requiring some minimum degree of conventional gender-conformity at the level of visual appearance would be more sensible in theory (but still hella unworkable in practice, ISTM). After all, everybody’s saying all along here that they are not particularly worried about dangers posed by genuine transgender women in the women’s restroom, especially ones who present as unambiguously female-appearing. That isn’t changed if the woman in question happens to have a penis in her underwear that you will never even know about unless you are creepily peering into her stall.
ISTM that what you’re after is not so much the exclusion from female-designated spaces of invisible penises that you never even know about, but exclusion of individuals who exceed some maximum threshold of looking like they probably possess a penis.
Because allowing in the tiny number of such “masculine-looking” individuals who self-identify as women is, in these hypothetical speculations, somehow going to make it significantly more likely for predatory men to be able to victimize women. I still haven’t seen any persuasive arguments that such risk increases really would be significant, rather than just subjective inferences stimulated by people’s natural feelings of threat in response to the “man in the ladies’ room” mental image.
But okay, let’s say that I want to work on reducing this perceived risk, whether it’s real or imaginary, and am trying to accommodate this demand that everybody using a female-designated space needs to “look female” enough not to trigger those “man in the ladies’ room” feelings of threat.
How the hell are we going to specify and enforce an agreed-upon appropriate level of “female appearance”? “No visible penises in the clothing-optional women’s locker room” is an easy bright line, but how about in other spaces? What are the specific particular criteria about appearance that you want to use for screening, and how exactly do you propose to implement that screening?
I’d like to see some specific answers here, not just more generalized complaining that advocates of transgender rights aren’t being considerate enough of other women’s safety. If you’ve got nothing except the blanket demand that all transgender women need to stay out of the women’s room—even if they look at least as “feminine” as 90-something percent of cisgender women do—then say so.
I get what you keep hearing folks say, but I don’t know how to do anything about that. I can only say what I mean, and if you hear it differently, very differently from what was said and what was meant, then I guess we are having a serious breakdown in communicating effectively.
I don’t see how a transgendered person can follow all of the “social rules” that are being imposed without either simply not existing or never leaving the house.
If we are saying what we are hearing from the other, it would be, “Yes, sure I care about these people, but until all these other unrelated problems are solved, their problems are not important.”
UHC is a bit of an uphill battle, I’m sure you would agree. I’m a man, I’m not a hateful violent transphobe, but to make is so that there are no men who are is even harder to implment than UHC.
Creating third spaces is easier to say than to do. Are we going to put a third bathroom and locker room in for every place that there are sex segregated spaces currently? If we do not put third spaces into every single restroom and locker room in the country, then what should a transgendered person do in the case that the facility they are at does not offer one?
I find that telling someone that anyone who says they are a woman is a woman isn’t true to be easy. However, I find it a bit harder to tell someone who is willing to sign legal documents and affidavits under the penalty of perjury that they are a woman that they are not a woman. I consider medical conditions to be an entirely separate matter.
I’m not sure what social rules you are asking for here, other than people with penises not be allowed in their spaces.
I don’t think that there are any easy options, well, the easiest option is to tell transgendrered people that they aren’t allowed to be transgendered anymore, and that’s just how it’s got to be.
I agree, it doesn’t have to be like this, and I don’t think that it is like this, either. I am not sure why, but everything that I have seen from the side that is looking to find a way for transgendered people to enter society gets twisted into the worst meaning and intent possible.
I don’t have a problem with penis-havers using the women’s restroom.
But I feel differently about locker rooms. Or prison cells. Or shelters. In these spaces, seeing exposed genitalia is not unusual. And while I know myself to not be super concerned about the nature of the floppy, fleshy organs that might be hovering in my peripheral vision, I really don’t feel comfortable telling another woman who feels differently that she needs to get over it because her feelings don’t matter as much as some other person’s. Because maybe that woman has a very good reason to be concerned about what kind of floppy, flesh organs are in her space. And I think I probably would be more concerned if I had children. For instance, if I send my hypothetical female child off to sleep-away camp, I don’t want to know that she’ll be pressured to shower with someone with a penis or else face the wrath of the woke police. I want it to be OK for my hypothetical daughter to be in a space where she feels comfortable. I also want the trans girl to be comfortable. But I don’t want her comfort to be given priority over my hypothetical daughter’s comfort.
I could understand the analogue to race if sex was just as superficial as race. But it isn’t. From any early age we teach children that boys have penises and girls have vaginas. We teach little girls that it is OK to be undressed around girls and women while it is not OK for boys and men (with some exceptions) to expect to see your naked body. How do we square these lessons with “anyone who says they are a woman–even people with penises, even people who look like straight-up dudes–are women”? We cannot. And since we cannot, it really does make sense to put some brakes on all this ideological stuff until we can come up with some reasonable social rules. At the very least. That’s all I’m asking for.
Most major insurance companies cover mastectomies,hysterectomies, oophorectomies and orchiectomies.
From Aetna:
genital reconstructive surgery (i.e., vaginectomy, urethroplasty, metoidioplasty, phalloplasty, scrotoplasty, and placement of a testicular prosthesis and erectile prosthesis in female to male; penectomy, vaginoplasty, labiaplasty, and clitoroplasty in male to female)
They also consider puberty blockers for children medically necessary even though they not approved for this purpose by the FDA.
Cross sex hormones are also covered by most major insurance companies.
What are the reasonable rules that you are looking for?
Like I said, I think that a person’s gender can be defined by what is on their ID, and they would have to have signed an affidavit under perjury that they think of themselves as a woman.
I don’t think that people would do that lightly.
Honestly, when I have been in shared spaces with men in unclothed situations, I have done my damnedest to not take particular interest in their equipment.
And what I’m hearing is, “Trans rights are the least important thing. We can worry about them when we’ve fixed literally every other thing in this country, but until then, they can just suck it.”
That counts out anyone who doesn’t have insurance, and being one of those individuals, I think it is relevant.
It also counts out anyone who doesn’t have great insurance, and having been one of those individuals when I have had insurance, still is relevant.
And just because insurance “covers” something doesn’t mean that it does so for free, or even for cheap, or even for an affordable copay/deductible.
And that’s all assuming that you can have it all done in network and is approved.
There are a million reasons why we should have a UHC, and I’ll be happy to argue for them. Requiring UHC before we can move on with transgender rights shouldn’t have to be one of them.
Okay, but then I don’t understand what you meant by saying that “it would not be at all unreasonable to expect all women to possess a certain biological reality to be legally treated as such”. That sounds as though you’re arguing that in order to have the right to identify as female—including having the right to use the women’s restroom with other female people—an individual should be required to “possess a certain biological reality”, i.e., female genitalia (whether naturally or surgically created).
Well, like k9bfriender, I’m not sure what “social rules” you’re asking for here.
So you don’t want visible penises allowed in female-designated spaces: okay, we can argue about whether we think that’s a good or bad rule to have, but at least it’s a clearly articulated rule.
And you say that you don’t mind penis-havers using the women’s restroom. Even if they “look like straight-up dudes”? What “social rules” are you suggesting for situations in female-designated spaces where penis-havers who identify as women are not showing their penises, but are not looking conventionally “female” either?
Without impugning the bona fides of any of the participants in this particular thread, who I think are being honest about their feelings and not motivated by anti-trans spite, I think that the overall mindset being promoted by the “gender critical” movement against transgender rights is wilfully irrational and unworkable, with the specific goal of getting people to give up on supporting transgender rights because it’s just “too complicated”.
I’ve suggested what I think are some quite reasonable “social rules” for this situation, and they’re pretty simple and straightforward. Namely, we support people living as whatever gender they consistently, insistently and persistently identify as (to rule out the random “oh hai I’m transgender today” trollfolk), irrespective of what they look like. And we take the issue of their birth genitalia and/or chromosomes into account specifically in circumstances when that issue is relevant and important.
If you disagree with those social rules, what, specifically, are your proposed alternatives or modifications to them? If the acknowledgement and enforcement of the rights of transgender people has to wait on establishing “social rules” about them, then ISTM that we are ethically obligated to get on that task toot sweet.
I hope you aren’t hearing me say that because I do support trans rights. I just don’t support “let’s give trans folks everything they want, even when what they want might actually affect me negatively.”
The two of us are in agreement, it sounds like. The difference between us (from what I can tell) is that I’m not hesitant to talk about the harm that could result if we take gender ideology too seriously and I’m not hesitant to talk about how women will be disproportionally impacted by this harm and I’m not hesitant to express my feelings over how especially shitty this is considering the fact that women have always carried the brunt of gender shittiness.
Can you explain what material harm comes to someone who cannot get F on their legal documents because they have a penis? I can explain the harm that comes with making it easy for men to change their legal sex to F.
I think this is exactly the point. When Rowling responds to “people who menstruate” with “sex is a real thing,” that’s extremely shady. That’s why the backlash against her has been so strong. It’s because she’s not simply making a statement of biological fact.
The people who wrote the paper using the term “people who menstruate” are not refusing to recognize that “sex is a real thing.” To suggest that they are is very dishonest. I might even call it demagoguery.
I want to know how these ID checks would work.
Say, my nephew enters the ladies room because of some law requiring people to use the bathroom of theit biological sex. Now I’m pretty sure that he would hate this law because it would force him to shock and scare the women in the bathroom, because of his full beard and big tattooed muscular arms and shoulders. His priority would be to do his business as fast as possible and get back out. Probably, two, three minutes at the most.
So who asks him for his ID? Do YOU think you should have the right to do a gender check of your fellow citizens? Or do you detain him until law enforcement gets there? Is he going to have to risk being late for work just so you can confirm that he has a pussy? If he doesn’t have ID on him do you make him pull down his pants so you can have a look? What if I have my doubts about your genitals? What if, despite your totally gender conforming appearance, I decide you might be male? Can I make you show me your ID? If you aren’t carrying ID with you, should you be required to show me your genitals so I feel safe? Or do I need to detain you and call a cop to check out your vagina.? I have so many questions about the execution of your ideas.
I realize we all have our hang ups, but I’m really glad I don’t freak out because the person peeing in the dead bolted cubicle next to me might have a penis.
Medicaid and Medicare cover gender reassignment surgery as do many Marketplace plans.
I understand we are twins, but that was what YWTF said. I’m not in favor of the police involving themselves in women’s restroom enforcement.
But I’m gonna say, I have no problems with a certain biological reality being required to change “F” to “M” and vice versa on your birth certificate or driver’s license. Meeting the nebulous criteria for the social constructness of “woman” does not and should not obligate the government to recognize you legally as female, IMHO. I am adamant that femaleness and maleness continue to mean the things they’ve always meant, or come pretty damn near close to those definitions. If “must have a vagina that looks no different than a natural-born vagina” is overly restrictive for the trans activitist folks, I get it. That’s why I said a “certain biological reality”. If a male can’t be arsed to do anything to their body to make it conform in any discernable way to “female”, I fail to see why they should be entitled to “female”. I fail to see why just calling her a “transwoman” isn’t enough for her.
My social rules aren’t that oblique. I just want women to be allowed to govern what happens in their spaces (within reason) without getting TERF screamed at them. Kicking out a female-presenting transwoman who is respectful of the space and not taking any liberties in the space = not reasonable. But kicking out the transwoman who isn’t respectful of the space–even if they haven’t done anything objectively wrong–should be acceptable. So in the context of the locker room, it would not be TERFy for the women to complain to a gym manager about the transwoman who refuses to change in a stall when nicely asked to do so. Cuz allowing penis in a women space is not the same as wanting penis to be out in the open. So this would be a social rule: “If we can see your dick in this space reserved for women a little too much, we might ask you to leave and we don’t want you to blast us on social media about it. Because this is a rule we all agreed on when we signed off on this 'anyone who says they are a woman is a woman” business’."
Another social rule: If a woman says she’s uncomfortable about using a restroom with a male presence, then she shouldn’t be shamed over it. Her friends shouldn’t roll their eyes at her and invalidate her feelings. They shouldn’t tell her she’s being hysterical.
Yet another social rule: If I’m running a women’s social organization (let’s say it’s a sexual abuse support group), I should be able to determine who would be a good fit in the support group along the lines of gender perception. If I believe that the majority of women in the group will be triggered by your maleness/masculinity, it should be socially acceptable for me to discriminate against you and turn down your request to join the group. If I decide I don’t feel comfortable making that kind of executive decision and I decide to give you a shot in the group and multiple women express their discomfort about your presence, then it should be socially acceptable for me to apologize and gently ask you for you to not return. And I know people are going to say “Well, does that mean you’re OK with the rejection of masculine ciswomen!?” My answer to that is, “It depends.” Is she masculine in an androgynous sense, where you can clearly see she’s woman-identifying and female but she’s just not wearing lace and pearls? Because I would not be OK with rejecting her from the “woman” category on that basis. But if her manner of dress, speech, and mannerisms are indistinguishable from that of your average man’s? Then perhaps I would. Especially if there are available alternatives for her, so it’s not like I’m kicking her out into the darkness all alone.
For prisons, I really think we need more than social rules. I don’t think someone with a penis should be in gen-pop at the women’s prison, sorry. Even if she’s super femme, I think that’s going too far. But we can create a prison space that can accommodate gender non-conforming folks. That’s not being hateful. That’s just saying, “While you are entitled to safety, there’s a certain biological reality that must be met before you can be in gen-pop.”
I don’t think these rules are that unreasonable. But YMMV.
Yes, I believe if they have penis, they are male and don’t have the right to change their ID to say otherwise.
Hormones can be started and stopped at any time, so why should that be sufficient to make permanent changes to one’s legal documents? If you take E for a year, get a legal sex change, and then decide to stop taking E because of it’s suppressive effect on your libido, your ID is still going to show you as a female. That’s a problem to me, so I think it’s reasonable to expect you to have permanent changes to your genitalia if you are going to have a permanent change on your government records.
This is my philosophy: If someone is a male, they don’t have a right to enter female-segregated spaces. However, in restrooms, the stakes are so low that it’s okay to use enforcement discretion for trans women who are clearly making an effort to pass as women. For locker rooms and other intimate settings, no one has made a persuasive case for giving males the right to spaces reserved for females. In other words, no one has explained how it’s unjust, impractical, or inherently dangerous to restrict males to male spaces and females to female spaces. Until that case is made, I’m not going to be in favor of allowIng a male to self-identify their way into these spaces, because I know this will mean increasing women’s exposure to predators (as if we need more of that shit) for no direct benefit.
Imagine a woman and her daughter are at the YMCA. The mother makes a bee line for the fitness room; the girl heads to the swimming pool. To change into her swim suit, she goes to the locker room.
While she is undressing, a 6’2 person with a bushy dmustache and male-pattern baldness enters. The person sits down not too far away from her and starts unzipping their jeans.
The daughter runs out of the room and finds her mother. “There is a man in the women’s locker room”.
They go to YMCA management. The manager goes to the locker room to investigate. They ask the person if they are a man or woman. If they say they are a woman, they can verify this by looking up the persons name in their membership records. Rejection occurs if the person is listed as a male.
Do you think this is unreasonable? Should the daughter be scolded for acting on her impulse to get out of there? Should no one care enough to investigate potential rule breaking of this type?