My own altercations with ChiefPedant have mostly been limited to the subject of climate change, but I think it’s illustrative of his modus operandi. On that subject he seems, at best, a borderline denialist, and if I’m remembering correctly, likes to frame his arguments around two recurrent themes:
We’re very bad at predicting the future, which in his mind settles the question about knowing anything about the consequences of anthropogenic global warming; never mind what a century of climate science has taught us – we don’t know anything, and we can’t predict the future of our climate because it’s, like, the future!
No one is willing to give up the comforts of industrialization and modern technology. This is a variation on the old straw man that “to solve global warming, we have to all end up living in caves, in cold and darkness”.
Given these two assumptions, the clear unstated conclusion is that the only sensible course of action with regard to climate change is to do nothing, which seems to be the point of his screeds on the subject, to the extent that he has any kind of point at all.
So I think this guy is just some kind of natural contrarian, always anxious to assert what he believes to be his superior intelligence and novel insights by pulling our legs and yanking our chains as a sort of entertaining sport. Which is just another way of describing a troll.
The problem you and a few others keep missing is that it’s not up to you to decide. You are not trans. So you don’t get to tell the trans person that they are wrong when they know what bigotry against them feels like, any more than you get to tell a black person that they’re wrong to think something is motivated by racism. They can tell what arguments are used.
You admitted when you started this whole thing that you didn’t know anything about trans people. The only information you have is from posters who the rest of us who actually know about trans issues have told you was being transphobic. That means you do not understand the topic and should not try to act like you’re more of an expert.
I pointed this out to you before. So why do you continue to act like you’re superior to the actual trans person?
This nonsense is one of several reasons I consider DemonTree and YWTF bigots. Every single one of their anti-trans arguments are framed in a way that ignores the experience of trans people. YWTF seems to have fallen in with TERFs (who call themselves “gender critical feminists”) who have effectively poisoned her against ever listening to trans people or activists, as they are apparently out to get her. DemonTree just seems to want to defend bigots under freedom of speech, even if it means it abridges the freedom of speech of others. And she just pulled a tactic from the alt-right to do so–the “I’m not really talking about that” tactic.
You aren’t all the way there, but the way you keep acting superior to the actual trans person and all of us who are allies is starting to seem like bigotry. Please stop acting like you know more than they do, when you admit you aren’t even well versed in the topic.
The nonsense that they push involves specifically not accepting that trans women are women (something, to her credit, monstro has been willing to do), so the rest is just an excuse to justify that bigotry. There is no reason that any of their explanations mean anything: feminism exists that isn’t transphobic, and the athletics issue is a separate issue than how you treat trans people in general.
The trans person here, get this, knows what the fuck she’s talking about.
Well, the problem is it does have an effect on other people. Which bathroom you use is a society decision, not a personal one. At least it used to be. One thing that stuck out, when I went through the JK Rowling thread, was when someone said “if we’re throwing out genders, then go unisex bathrooms and be done with it”. A man said “I wouldn’t be comfortable with women in my washroom” and nary a word was said. YWTF and monstro (the main “haters” in that thread) were saying they’re worried about penises in the women’s washroom got a lot said about. For the most part, as far as I can see, they advocated something more than a mere declaration of womanhood to gain access to women’s washrooms. They never said trans people should be banned. They never said transwomen are a serious threat. They said that a slippery slope is opening where the women’s washroom could eventually no longer be a safe place.
Of course trans people and activists have something to teach us normies. But they don’t deserve full authority on how this is best dealt with. This is a long negotiation that includes the entire society.
ChiefPedant found ways to combine the two topics, there is an effort by some groups to justify ending immigration from third world countries because they will allegedly increase their carbon footprint and there where some threads about that.
I made an observation a long time ago, I do agree with some thinkers that racism is a concentrated form of ignorance that uses more ignorance to get going, right now DemonTree, damuriajashi and a third stooge do think that citing Wikipedia or twitter makes a good argument for trying to claim that some nuts on the internet are the same as all the ones that are for affirmative action and critical race theory. While at the same time they willfully ignore that Blacks and Hispanics have less chances now to go to better schools.
? You must be misremembering. Quite a lot was said in that thread about whether and to what extent there’s an asymmetry between the genders in terms of their entitlement to single-gender restrooms, and that discussion included the stated preference of one of the male posters for non-unisex men’s rooms.
I don’t know that this is the appropriate thread to discuss the issue, if you want to continue discussing the issue, but you’re mistaken if you think that the remark you mention was ignored or passed over in that earlier thread.
As Ritterspot and others noticed, DemonTree, damuriajashi and now ZosterSandstorm are a group of racists. In the now closed thread about the magnet school in Virginia, they continued with their also anti-intelectual arguments (Asians that are involved in academics and are involved in the schools with diversity issues are “tokens”, traitors, etc. if they support increasing diversity.)
Not content on getting Critical Race Theory wrong, (not every lack of diversity issue in a school has your favorite bogeyman pulling strings, guys) they resort to to insults and then to call me and the whole lot in support of weak affirmative action “racists”.
That’s not an accurate summary at all. You’ve mixed together a ton of different things, and it’s really hard to address them all. I’ll just address a few flaws (besides the one Kimstu said.)
A man saying he doesn’t want a woman in the same restroom as him is not equivalent as someone saying they don’t want someone with a penis in the same restroom as her. For one, said man could (and, in my experience would) be okay with a man with a vagina being in the room with him. For another, the only way you’d know the genitals of the other person is if you’re some sort of creep. (No, you can’t tell by looking as some ciswomen look masculine, etc.) So one statement is worrying about a trans woman (aka transphobia) while the other is not.
You mixed together YWTF and monstro’s positions, which were not the same at this point in the thread, and missed a whole lot of what they said in many other parts of the thread. YWTF very much did argue that all transwomen were threats and weren’t actually women (see my previous post about her in this thread).
If allowing trans people (with penises) in the same restroom is a slippery slope that would lead to an unsafe space for women, then that is saying that allowing them into their restrooms is a threat. It is saying that accepting one of the things trans people advocate for is a threat.
The threat that they were worried about is that a man might dress as a woman to get access to the women’s restroom. But there’s nothing stopping that from happening now. If it doesn’t happen now, why would accepting trans women result in it happening? Again, no one checks anyone’s genitals.
The slippery slope is a logical fallacy. Saying that X is not bad, but that it will lead to Y which will lead to Z which will lead to Ω, which is bad–that is a just fear mongering unless you can show how each step inevitably leads to the other.
There’s no reason for a cis woman to fear a trans woman, even if they are in the same restroom together. And there is no reason to assume that allowing trans women in women’s restrooms will lead to men dressing up like women and going into women’s restrooms, let along that they will be sexual predators.
Every other minority has had that. There wasn’t some big conference where black people compromised with white people over what racism is acceptable. Men and women didn’t compromise over what misogyny is acceptable. Gay people didn’t compromise with straight people over what homophobia is acceptable.
What happened was that each minority was oppressed, and then rose up to tell their oppressors they weren’t going to accept it anymore. They didn’t ask permission, and they didn’t compromise. Nothing less than equality was acceptable. There was no negotiation.
What I found most annoying is that YWTF is black, and both she and DemonTree are women. So they should know what its like to have (white) men tell them that giving them their full rights, by saying that allowing those rights would result in something that is a threat to them. Any argument that allowing them their equality was a “slippery slope” to harming their “Safe space” would be correctly seen as ridiculous.
But, since the group denying the minority included them, suddenly it was okay.
Every single argument made (including by monstro) that allowed for discrimination against trans people would be one that had been used (in some form) against them as black people, women, and black women. But they were blind to that simply because it was about a group they weren’t a part of and didn’t have friends in.
Just like we white men didn’t decide what was and wasn’t acceptable for black women, cisgender folk don’t get to decide what is and is not acceptable for trans folk. It is, as I said, not up to those who are afraid of/worried about trans people to decide.
@QuickSilver, if he’s actually interested in the topic, should talk to actual trans people and their activists, and not the ones who are against them. That’s like getting your ideas of black people or black activism from a racist.
And, yes, this is the trimmed down version of my post. I had like 10 points and wasn’t finished before.
Aww, I don’t think you’re a racist, GIGObuster. Just that some of the policies you support are.
But there very much is a live argument about what constitutes racism (see above), and the same with sexism, and how we should deal with these things as a society - affirmative action, programs to encourage women to go into STEM, etc. Saying admissions tests are racist doesn’t make it so, and saying that treating transwomen differently to ciswomen - in any situation at all - is transphobic, also doesn’t make it so.
We do know, and your argument is still not convincing. So get a better argument.
And there’s no reason for cis women to fear a man either, right? That’s the argument you need to be making.