I really wish people would stop drawing false equivalencies to other minorities.
Gay rights are not claim rights. Meaning, they never asked society to give them something that required taking from another group of people.
Black people didn’t make claim rights either. They asked to be treated as regular 1st class, tax-paying citizens, same as any other first class tax-paying citizen.
A male who self-identifies as a woman and wants to be treated as such is staking a claim to female rights and protections. They are demanding that women to give up sex-segregated spaces that were put in place to alleviate disadvantage due to historical oppression and biology.
You can’t just compare different groups to one another in the attempt to argue that accepting one’s social justice movement means you gotta accept another. If gay men had been pushing for the right to use women’s dressing rooms etc. (based on the idea they aren’t a threat to women and could be attacked by homophobic males), my position fwould be the same as it is now.
You seem to be kind of all over the place with this, AFAICT. So you’ll use Bob’s preferred female pronouns when talking to her, which implies that you’re at least nominally acknowledging her claim to a female identity, because you’re not going to be rude to her by openly denying or contradicting that claim. And if I understand you correctly, you’re willing to refer to Bob as a woman in conversation with somebody else who knows Bob and knows that she identifies as female.
But you won’t refer to Bob as a woman in conversation with someone who’s never met her (although, somewhat confusingly, you’d be saying to them “You know Bob, right?” even though they’ve never met her?). How would you refer to Bob instead? How about in conversation with someone who knows her and someone who’s never met her?
ISTM that there’s an awful lot of overthinking and pointless hairsplitting going into these language choices, especially if your “intention is to be understood by others”. What’s wrong with just saying something like “So I was saying to Bob—I don’t know if you know Bob? She identifies as female but she’s very male-presenting, with the beard and the linebacker physique and the name Bob, so her pronouns may have thrown you a bit.”
Again, this seems like a lot of overthinking and hairsplitting. You don’t have to shower with anybody with a penis if you don’t want to, whether or not you consider them entitled to use the social gender category “woman”.
Some women are not comfortable showering with a lesbian, for that matter, or with a woman with a colostomy bag or any other characteristic that makes them feel physically uneasy. And I am not now nor have I ever been claiming that they should have to.
So ISTM that whether or not you consider a transgender woman “entitled” be called a “woman” in a social context if she has a penis, or if she exceeds some arbitrary threshold of linebackerness in physical appearance, or if you’re talking about her to somebody who doesn’t know her as opposed to somebody who does—or whatever the hell all these conditions and restrictions are—is not really as important as the basic principle that you’re allowed to politely request other people to make some allowances for your feelings of discomfort in vulnerable situations, such as when you’re undressing or showering.
You can’t even explain what that meaning is, and I’m not going to begin to speculate why people hold on to religious nonsense and articles of faith; it makes such beliefs no more or less fantastical if I understand the motivation.
I’m going to take a break from this thread for real this time. I feel like I’m losing brain cells the longer I post here. Plus, all the anger and frustration isn’t good for me.
If there was a panel that was discussing what gay men go through in America, and only gay men, how would you determine if a man was really gay or not? Would you just go by what they said?
Depends whose opinion you’re asking. Many straight people, as I just pointed out, felt very threatened that their assumption of a sexual “safe space”, in an environment that was gender-segregated and hence presumed to be free of sexual attraction, was “taken away” from them by the societal acceptance of homosexual people.
And many straight people felt, and still feel, that recognition of same-sex marriage “takes away” from them the specialness and sanctity of the tradition of marriage as the prototypical man-woman union.
I don’t agree with those people, mind you, but then I don’t agree with you either on this topic.
Nope, but there are a lot of other feelings about personal identity in various forms that I can’t explain either. That doesn’t mean that I think they don’t have any meaning whatsoever.
Oh, I see; well yeah, if you’re equating “means nothing” with “is a personal conviction with no demonstrable empirical basis”, then sure, a huge number of human beliefs and feelings about identity “mean nothing”.
How about if ongoing research on gender identity and the brain ends up confirming some current hypotheses that transgender identity is related to certain physical brain structures? Namely, that cisgender women and transgender women both cognitively “identify as” women primarily because of characteristics in these brain structures, irrespective of what their genitals look like? Would you consider that that would make a statement like “a woman is someone who identifies as a woman” more meaningful?
After all, if a “feeling of identity” as a cognitive phenomenon has an identifiable source in the physical brain, that sounds like a demonstrable empirical basis to me.
I have idea how this follows from what I wrote. But I’ll bite.
Sure I would go by what they said. Whether they are truly gay or just posing as gay, it would make no material difference to me. They aren’t asking me to give up any of my own rights, so I lose nothing if I’m being conned by them.
Not the same calculus with trans. People are making unfalsifiable claims of being a certain gender and then demanding society treats them accordingly. Female athletes are missing out on female-only scholarships to people with unfalsifiable gender identities. What does it even mean be to “conned” by a trans person, when there are no real criteria for being trans?
If he kept having sex with women after coming out, or his porn history only contained straight porn, I think you’d be justified in disbelieving him. (Obviously assuming no pressing reason for him to hide his sexuality.)
I mentioned earlier the fashion for teens to claim they were bisexual. It wasn’t wrong to be skeptical in that case; most of them were just experimenting or trying to be cool/fit in.
In fact that would still have been inaccurate, as the next section shows invitations depend on the gender you are registered as at the GP. Therefore invitations will be sent to women, transwomen who have changed their registered gender and transmen who have not yet changed their gender at the GP.
My point was supposed to be the absurdity that ‘women’ has apparently become such a dirty word that in their efforts to avoid using it, they failed to even mention that (cis) men will not receive invitations and do not need screening. It wasn’t intended to be a ‘gotcha’, I’m kind of amazed you’re still insisting there’s no problem with the original. An informational leaflet should not force people to read between the lines, expect them to have medical knowledge, or to be educated on transgender issues. There’s nothing wrong with using the word ‘women’; the updated version was still respectful and informative to trans people, and conveyed clear information to everyone else.
Seeing evidence he’s attractied to the opposite sex.
Every day someone discovers their partner—who they thought was straight —is really bi or gay. Usually it’s not because the partner comes out. It’s because they get caught cheating with a member of their sex class.
No it doesn’t depend on who you ask. Claim rights aren’t a subjective thing. It doesn’t do your position any favors when you suggest someone’s visceral discomfort at sharing space with a gay person is on the same plane as requiring girls to compete against males in violation of Title IX.
They are using the same argument the anti-immigration people use. Because one illegal immigrant murdered someone “that had dreams, too”, that means we should discriminate against two million people that aren’t criminals, It’s bigotry, pure and simple,
Is it really unfathomable to you why a reasonable, non-sexist, non-hateful woman might not want to shower with a male, especially one she doesn’t know, but not have problems with showering with a female she doesn’t know? Or are you just fucking with me right now?
Are you gonna honestly tell me you think that this is exactly like a white person not wanting to shower with a black person? Is this really the same thing as a person hating gay marriage or a person hating interracial marriage?
If you had a young daughter and she told you she feels uncomfortable showering with an adult male, are you going to fuck with her the same way you are fucking with me right now? Would you at least validate those feelings or would you tell her she’s being hysterical and needs to get a life?
I despise “cool chicks”. Cool chicks think because they aren’t bothered by something, women who are bothered by it must suck somehow. Just because I might be pissed at rando males stepping into the shower with me doesn’t mean I’m an unreasonable person. It means I’ve been programmed to avoid situations like that for my personal safety and I see no reason to override that programming just so folks like you will see me as “woke”. The cool chicks and the woke mob aren’t going to pay the cost if I drop my guard down. It will be me who pays the cost. So I shouldn’t have to worry about y’alls judgment of my fucking emotions. I should be able to feel however I want to feel without people acting like I’m crazy.
You know what? I don’t even think I’d be pissed at Bob. If I like Bob and trust Bob, I might be OK with seeing their naked maleness in my presence. But if I don’t know Bob from Eve and Bob steps into the shower with me, hell yeah I’m going to feel a certain way about that. What I want to know is why does this cause you to roll your eyes at me? You aren’t Bob, so why the fuck should you care how I feel? Why am I not entitled to my feelings? As long as I’m not barring Bob from the shower, why the fuck is it wrong for me to be pissed off?
I hear people in this thread validating transwomen’s feelings and fears. But I see ciswomen such as myself having their feelings belittled and trashed. It sucks so much to have other women–women that I like–be a part of this.
Sometimes I wish I could be a dude, for real. I think if I were a dude and I said I don’t want to shower with females in a public setting, people would grok why this would be uncomfortable. People wouldn’t be interrogating me and asking me why I’d only be uncomfortable with a rando female and not a rando male. Only women have full control of their limbic system. Women must be stoic and nonemotional at all times regardless of what’s going on in their safe spaces. But men? The poor dears can’t help themselves. They can’t help killing transwomen. They can’t help their erections. So let’s shit on women for being scared and pissed off and let’s shame them for not being cool. That’s easier than shaming men for being violent and threatening.
AFAICT, the initial NHS choice of wording had nothing to do with any notion of “women” being a “dirty word”. What they were trying to convey is that people who have a cervix, and only those people, are recommended to get cervical screenings.
As you quite rightly point out, many people are so ignorant of basic anatomy that they don’t even know whether or not they have a cervix, so the phrasing has to fall back on the more inexact gender category “woman” to give them some guidance. (Note that not only transgender women but also many cisgender women who’ve had hysterectomies do not have cervixes and thus don’t need cervical screenings, so whichever way you slice it, equating “woman” with “person who has a cervix” is bound to be inexact.)
That’s a perfectly reasonable compromise, but it doesn’t mean that the initial wording was in any way disrespectful or derogatory toward cisgender women, or was treating “woman” as a “dirty word”.
Can’t agree with you on that. For example, a lot of opposition to gender equality—in contexts such as letting women serve in the military, or in combat—invoked (and still invokes) the idea that concessions to women were unjustly “taking away” something from men. That the cameraderie and cohesiveness of those all-male environments made men more effective and successful in their work, and that it was dangerous and unfair to deprive men of that support just because women wanted equal opportunities. (In fact, you may have heard about the current kerfuffle surrounding the recently hired PR exec at Boeing who has just resigned after people complained that an article he published several decades ago objecting to letting women serve in combat—on exactly those sorts of grounds—didn’t sit well with Boeing’s efforts to project an inclusiveness-and-diversity image.)
That’s a very specific interpretation of demands for women’s equality as “claim rights”: i.e., benefiting women by taking something away from men. Is it a valid characterization? Well, depends on your opinion about the benefits of such all-male environments.
I’m certainly not making any such assertion, although I suppose whether or not I’m “suggesting” it is likewise a matter of interpretation.
? monstro, who is saying that you’re an “unreasonable person” just because you don’t want to shower with a “rando male”? I mean, if that makes you “unreasonable”, than Ann Hedonia has frankly confessed to being even more “unreasonable” than you, because she wouldn’t even want to shower with a rando female.
I may have missed it in the many hundred posts of this thread, but I am really not seeing anyone here disagreeing with the idea that people are allowed to have different comfort levels about physically intimate situations with strangers, and that courteously expressed feelings of discomfort in such situations should be respected and accommodated. I don’t see anybody telling you that you need to be more “cool” about showering with random strangers.