If a woman is “Someone who consistently, insistently and persistently identifies as a woman,” that is exactly the same as “a woman is someone who identifies as a woman.” Which means nothing; that definition is circular and completely empty. You can’t define something with the word itself.
Did you read YWTF’s hypothetical?
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?
Do you think the little girl acted unreasonably here? Is the hypothetical mother a hateful monster for teaching her daughter to run for help if she’s ever in a situation like this one? Or is she like 99.9% of good mothers–just trying to teach her daughter how to protect herself in a world full of rapists and sex perverts?
Can you really sit there and say that a person who is concerned about such a situation has the same narrow-mindedness as a racist bigot or a homophobe?
Maybe once we endure a long history of interacial couples and same-sex couples raping and sexually assaulting women, I’ll understand the point you’re making here. Sex is nothing like race and sexuality. I don’t know my cat’s race. I don’t know his sexuality. But I know he’s a male. He acts like a male. He has the parts of a male. And female cats know it too. I see how they run away from him. He’s cute and adorable to me, but to them he is scary. Cuz he can be hella aggro. That aggro isn’t due to socialization. it’s due to biology. His maleness.
I just can’t “unsee” sex the way you and your fellow ideologues are insisting I do. My biological programming has served me well these last 43 years. You’re going to have to do better with your argumentation to convince me to give up this programming.
Actual language use and individual feelings of identity aren’t obligated to conform to theoretical semantic rules. The reason that transgender women identify as women is because that identity means something to them. The reason that large numbers of us cisgender people acknowledge transgender women as women is because we consider their identity meaningful.
Your fuming that that violates your preferred semantic boundaries doesn’t invalidate how that meaning is actually perceived and conveyed, any more than grammar prescriptivists’ fuming about people’s using the word “literally” in a non-literal fashion renders their statements meaningless.
It’s not just crime stats that are behind my position.
I’m in favor of keeping the status quo (penis-havers in one room, vaginas in another) because no one has showed how a net societal benefit would accrue from changing to another model (penis-havers can identify into the vagina-haver rooms if they choose to do so). This is how policy change should work: a cost-benefit analysis needs to be done that factors in the well-being of everyone. Not just a small fraction of the population.
During Jim Crow, it was clear that racial prejudice combined with political disenfranchisement and poverty was a source of black suffering. One could also argue that this environment taxed white society, because it required constant work to keep the unhappy black underclass from rising up. Racial segregation was just one component of a costly and inhumane system of oppression that caused more problems than it solved.
Sex-segregation has no resemblance to this at all. Men are not restricted from women’s spaces because women decided they are inferior sub-humans. Men are not restricted from women’s spaces because women hate them. Women’s spaces don’t come with perks that men’s spaces lack due to females having more political clout than the males. There is nothing in common between racial-segregation and sex-segregation where it materially matters, and seeing this argument repeatedly raised in this thread seriously makes me want to go outside and tip a car over (again).
I’m not in fact saying that. You’re the one who made the sweeping generalization that “In any discourse, those who are upset and offended should always be listened to more attentively than those who don’t care”. So are you now walking back that sweeping generalization because you agree that racist bigots and homophobes actually shouldn’t be “listened to more attentively”, no matter how “upset and offended” they are?
Sex is “nothing like” sexuality, in the sense of sexual orientation, you mean? That’s a pretty recent attitude in the history of our culture. A scant few decades ago, it was a near-universal conviction that sex and sexual orientation were fundamentally interlinked and multually determined by the strongest of biological tendencies, and that anybody who believed that their sexual orientation wasn’t correlated with their sex in the usual way was simply, obviously delusional and/or horrendously unnatural.
And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how strongly most people in our culture, until relatively recently, used to be convinced of the fundamental biological reality of massively significant differences associated with racial categories.
Nobody AFAICT is asking you to “unsee” biological sex in all circumstances forever. Just to be willing in certain circumstances to decouple biological sex from nominal socially recognized gender category. Which doesn’t seem like such a lot to ask of you and your fellow ideologues.
It outs them as transgender, primarily. From my understanding, most transgender individuals just want to live their lives as the gender their brain tells them they are without having to justify or explain themselves, or expose themselves to busybodies who want to opine on their “lifestyle choice”. That becomes impossible if they have to go into sex-segregated spaces based on what their genitals look like instead.
Powers &8^]
Has anyone in this thread said they think the little girl acted unreasonably there?
I see nothing here that shows that trans women are more frequently victims of sexual assault as women. The parts you quote don’t support this either, so I can’t figure out what the takeaway is.
According to this CDC study, 43.6% of women experience sexual violence in their lifetime. According to this report, 37% of trans women report sexual violence. So it looks like women are more often attacked than trans women (and is this really that surprising?)
Like I said before, none of this has anything to do with my position in this thread. Even if trans women had significantly higher rate of victimization than women do, it wouldn’t be a justification for entitling them access to women’s spaces. The solution to crime is to go after criminals, not create lousy workarounds that actually cater to male intolerance.
I don’t think it happens all the time – but when it does, it shouldn’t be waved away.
I think the daughter was absolutely in the right, and what you’re describing is quite disturbing. To be called a TERF for feeling this way is ridiculous. It’s not unreasonable for the daughter to feel that way, it IS unreasonable to scold her. If I were her mother, I would no longer patronize such place.
I hate to say it, but as far as locker rooms go, I don’t know how they can be addressed, just like sports. Bathrooms seem easy, but the others? I really don’t have a solution. I know that’s a cop-out.
This isn’t about “gatekeeping”. Like it or not, words have meaning. That’s how language works. We wouldn’t be able to communicate otherwise. To say, “a woman is someone who says they’re a woman”, well, then being a “woman” no longer has meaning. Hell, then being TRANS has no meaning. What’s the point anymore? It’s not an attempt to be a bigot, it’s an attempt to understand one another.
I don’t think people who feel this way are necessarily transphobic. Transgenderism is a complicated situation to wrap one’s mind around. And as the whole thing gets vaguer and vaguer, and people ARE going to be confused. They’re not being hateful. And I certainly don’t think YWTF or monstro are being unreasonable. They both have good points. I’ve never seen either of them to be bigots, or transphobes. Just pointing out it’s not a black or white issue.
Maybe I also read too much Tumblr or too many Youtube videos. (Medium and Everyday Feminism can be a little much as well)
May I propose that the purpose of “a woman is someone who says they’re a woman” – which, I emphasize, is not the same as “transwomen are women” – might be to emphasize how transwomen should be treated by other people (that is, as women), not as a declaration that anyone who one day feels like saying the words “I am a woman” should be so treated?
Powers &8^]
I think you’ll find that they feel dramatically different than you’re assuming here. To say it doesn’t materially matter and is not worth considering due to “net societal benefit”… is just not true to transgendered people struggling with gender dysphoria.
Anyhoo, I’ve said what I needed to say and it’s become clear to me that we’ll never see eye-to-eye on this. No hard feelings.
I do agree here. Do not punish everyone because of the actions of the few.
The general consensus I’ve heard from the trans people I know is that if you don’t agree that trans women are women, and don’t think they should share the same space, then you’re a TERF. Feel free to seek a second opinion from a transgendered person… but if they didn’t think it was transphobic why would they be pushing to share these spaces at all? These are people trying to get by today, right now. They’re not hypothetical specters.
No, I’m not walking back shit.
We know racism is wack. There’s no evidence at all that black people are inferior to white people. There’s no evidence there’s more order and happiness in the world if the races are kept separated. Race is 100% socially constructed. Saying that black people need to pee in separate rooms than white people is like saying that people who wear black underwear need to pee in separate rooms from people who wear white underwear.
But sex isn’t a social construct. It really is real. I would lose my biologist credentials if I said sex was not real. There’s a reason why biological males don’t menstruate and have erections while biological females do and don’t. It has nothing to do with “mental state”. It has everything to do with the organs they possess in conjunction with genes and hormones. And there are perfectly valid reasons why many people feel more comfortable being naked only when they’re around members of their sex class. This is especially true for women, but I don’t think men are hatelords for not wanting women to see them naked either. Sex is tied to sexual activity and reproduction. So humans naturally have very intense feelings about sex. There’s nothing else like it in the human experience. Just because you don’t have this attitude doesn’t mean 90% of humanity is wrong.
What I want to know, Kimstu, is why you can’t fucking entertain YWTF’s hypothetical? I’m sorry to be cussing you out right now, but I am not feeling like you are being a fair debater. I feel like you’re blasting me with slogans and mindless whataboutisms. You aren’t changing my mind about anything. You’re just vindicating my belief that certain people around here have drunk way too much of the koolaide and can’t really hear what the other side is saying.
You’re just vindicating my belief that women such as myself will never be taken seriously by folks on your side. It’s either we go all in on gender ideology or we’re hateful TERFy transphobes. There is no moderate position, seems like. Not only is someone like me supposed to open the door to the locker room wide open, I’m also supposed to be happy about it. Fuck that shit, sis. I’ll open the door wider than I really feel comfortable opening it, but 'll be damned if I’m going to put a fake-ass smile on my face and be quiet about it. Because to expect otherwise is to be in favor of my oppression and the oppression of others like me. And I’ll be damned if I let a male act in threateningly gender-nonconforming ways in a space reserved for my gender class without me telling them how I feel about it. Because gender is political. The public is invited to participate in all politics. Everything that’s political is fair game for critique and debate.
To help you see what I mean, if we go back to the 1960s when black people fought for civil rights, we will see that they didn’t get absolutely everything they wanted. If they had gotten everything they’d wanted, we wouldn’t still be talking about reparations right now. I’d probably be a much weathier person if black people had gotten everything they had wanted. Why didn’t black people get everything they wanted? Turns out political will isn’t infinite. Having a sad tragic story of 300 years of oppression does not entitle you to an infinite amount of sympathy from the dominant group. So black people spent their capital on the shit that really matters the most. If black folk had come out of the gate talking about reparations, white people would have bucked big time and black folk would have left empty handed. The proposals that black folks put on the table had sufficient white buy-in for them to be passed and implemented halfway successfully. Black folks didn’t get up in white faces with a bullhorn and shout RACIST in their face over and over again to effect change. They used arguments that managed to convince a critical mass of white people to see that helping black folks would not result in harm to them. Black activists did not rely solely on slogans and mantras. They had facts and truths on their side.
I want trans activists to stop screaming slogans and mantras at me and instead treat me like a stakeholder.
As long as you agree with me that women can be regulators of their own spaces and they can craft their own codes of conduct to keep themselves safe in this brand new world of “anyone can be a woman”, then we are cool. But if you think even this is too much and you think transwomen should be dictating all the terms of womanhood, then no. Just no. I just can’t with that.
But we’re talking about trans women that would stand out as male in the women’s room. This makes it unlikely that using the room of their birth sex will “out” them; anyone who is coded as male in the locker room is probably going to be coded by male elsewhere.
I would like people to see things from this angle: Women’s best defense is their ability to pick up on warning signs of a predator well before they decide to pounce. One of those signs is self-awareness and empathy. If a trans woman stands out as male in the locker room and doesn’t realize this, that means we’re dealing with someone who lacks self-awareness. If a trans woman stands out as male in the locker room and knows it but doesn’t care about the effect this has on occupants in the room, this is a sign of someone who lacks empathy. If a trans woman stands out as male and knows it but does care about the feelings of others, then they are moot because they are going to be using the men’s room or a unisex room.
So really, when it comes down to it, what is being defended the most ardently in this thread is the right for the least self-aware and the least empathetic male-presenting males to claim space in female-restricted spaces. I just can’t help but see these defenses as an implicit fuck you to women who have been traumatized by creeps and are sensitive to creepy traits.
I didn’t say that trans-women weren’t women. HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater. And what does it take to BE a transwoman?
In YWTF’s scenario, this was a person who was balding, a heavy stache, they had been wearing mens’ clothes, etc. They had never bothered to transition – how can one be expected to be treated as a woman then? Shouldn’t there be SOME criteria? People aren’t mindreaders.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you’re not going to live your life as a woman, then why should you be permitted to use the womens’ facilities?
I’m sort of amazed at how carefully virtually everyone in this thread has been about not throwing around terms like “TERF,” and yet you’re still complaining about being victimized by it. Nowhere in anything Kimstu has written has she called you a TERF, or anything like it.
What do you think “treat” means? This isn’t a gotcha. I’m just curious.
If someone who is an obvious male tells me she prefers feminine pronouns, I will treat her respectfully by using feminine pronouns. Is this me treating her as a woman? Or am I just being respectful?
I don’t think someone’s usage of feminine pronouns turns that person into a woman. I don’t think it obligates others to give them all the privileges of “woman”. If someone says they identify as a woman but they do not resemble a woman in any shape or form, I will not describe them as a woman to someone who has never met them. Like, I will not be saying “You know Bob, right? She’s the woman with the beard and the linebacker physique.” For someone else, though, I wouldn’t hesitate to describe her as a woman. Is this hateful? Disrespectful? Or is this me doing the calculus that Bob will never been perceived as a woman, at least visually, so it doesn’t make sense for me to describe her as a woman if my intention is to be understood by others?
I would not block Bob’s entrance into the women’s restroom. However, I might be pissed if Bob enters the showers with me. Does that mean I’m not treating her like a woman? Or does it mean I’m not interested in showering with someone with a penis?
Seems to me that trans allies and activists have a different definition of “treat” than I do. I can treat someone respectfully all day long. But if by “treat” they mean, “relate to me how you would any other woman”, no. I can’t go there. I may have perfectly valid reasons to discriminate against different kinds female-identifying folks, so I want to preserve my right to discriminate the way I see fit.
The solution is that one that progressives don’t want to hear, but it’s the one that is actually the fairest. We need to stop conflating gender identity with biological sex.
Guess what, Miller? The world is a lot bigger than the SDMB! There are places all over the internet where a person can’t get a word in edgewise without being called a TERF. JKR knows this all too well.
I don’t have a definitive answer that would cover every case people can build hypotheticals around… but if you say you’re trans, generally you’re trans. What makes someone gay? Do you need evidence or do you take their word for it? Generally it’s not considered a choice, and many trans people experience clinically distressing gender dysphoria.
If we want to wade deeper into hypotheticals… what would you do if someone didn’t think you looked enough like your gender to be in a locker room and wanted you kicked out? Would you say “fair enough, I’ll go get my birth certificate”?
Then what on earth did you mean when you said "“In any discourse, those who are upset and offended should always be listened to more attentively than those who don’t care”?
I’m not the one saying that people concerned about opening up female-designated spaces to non-biologically-female people are automatically equivalent to racists and homophobes. You’re the one who made a sweeping generalization about the importance of prioritizing the feelings of “upset and offended” people “in any discourse”, while apparently not really meaning the “any discourse” part.
What’s to entertain? Of course people have the right to remove themselves from situations where they feel unsafe and to report suspicious behavior and potential violations of rules.
What I’m not willing to do is to sign on to any specific set of policy requirements solely on the basis of YWTF’s speculative hypothetical. I’ve already said a couple of times, in posts you seem determined to ignore, that I think people in locker rooms are entitled to politely request other people to dial it back on the nudity if it’s making them uncomfortable. So what, specifically, do you think I haven’t sufficiently addressed?
Sure, but that was also the rationale put forward by many people who vehemently resisted treating same-sex sexual attraction as normal and acceptable. Because among other things, in their view, that acceptance was going to leave them vulnerable and exposed in gender-segregated spaces to people who were viewing them as objects of sexual predation.
The functioning of gendered spaces such as restrooms and locker rooms was predicated, for many, many, many people, on the assumption that sexual attraction was automatically absent from such spaces because everybody there was the same sex. Having to relinquish that assumption was really viscerally painful and threatening to a great many people.
At 43, you may be too young to remember the perceived social threat level of accepting homosexuality back in, say, the '70s, but I’m not making it up when I say that a lot of the expressed concerns about “transgender danger” these days remind me a lot of those days. That’s not to say that your concerns aren’t sincere and important: there were a lot of people back then too who didn’t hate homosexuals but who were sincerely concerned and distressed about the prospective dangers of normalizing their presence in gender-segregated spaces.
So, while I’m not trying to make anybody feel uncomfortable and I’ve already said repeatedly that I think people in gender-segregated spaces should be understanding and sympathetic about others’ feelings of discomfort, I am not as persuaded as you are that all the feelings of discomfort are as immutable and justifiable as you claim.