Because in almost no other area of human existence do people simply get to claim something and demand that everyone else believe it is true. Even if we accept the fact that some people born with an XY chromosome can be defined (legally? socially? morally?) as a “woman” it still cannot be true based solely on someone’s personal declaration. Sex and/or gender must have a recognized definition or else it is meaningless.
There has to be some objective standard. Some people are tricksters and con artists. Maybe some guy doesn’t really believe he is a woman, but has a version of Munchhausen’s Syndrome where he gets a perverse joy from the pats on the back from the left by declaring he is a woman and/or somehow revels in the victimhood status he achieves by facing discrimination. Do we just keep feeding his illness?
Do we require any objective evidence such as dressing like the other sex, or some steps towards surgery? If not, how do we stop the next serial rapists from simply declaring that he is a woman to gain access to restrooms, domestic violence shelters, etc. so that he can prey on his next victim?
If we start down this road, there is no endpoint and any gender classification will be meaningless. As a man, can I get an affirmative action preference by declaring myself a woman?
You keep grabbing your total ignorance about what transgender is out of your pocket and waving it around like you’re proud of being ignorant. You have an incredible opportunity here to learn, with multiple trans people on this board, but you’d rather act like the vast majority of transgender are “just playing” to get into the opposite sex’s bathroom.
You did not address my objection at all. Assuming for the sake of argument that transgender is exactly as your side defines it and I am just woefully ignorant by not understanding the latest decree from the liberal ivory tower, how do we determine who is being truthful and who is simply declaring that they are transgender for whatever reason?
I am not saying that the latter category describes all people who claim to be transgender, or even a substantial number of them. All I am asking is how do we tell when the standard is to take everyone at their word?
How do we stop it now? Nothing currently stopping a hypothetical serial rapist from impersonating the opposite sex. How many times has a rape occurred under those circumstances?
What’s the “objective standard” for determining what somebody’s nickname is?
If you know a guy whose legal first name is William and he says “I go by Bill”, do you refuse to call him Bill because that’s not the name on his birth certificate?
If he gets tired of dealing with nitpicking obstructionists calling him William and legally changes his name from William to Bill, is that enough of an “objective standard”?
The analogy is relevant because one’s gender identity, like one’s name, is a mixture of circumstances over which individuals have no control and their personal feelings about what they identify with.
Being born with a vagina and being a woman are not the same thing. In the vast majority of cases they do overlap, but sometimes they don’t. While being born with a vagina is a matter of medical record, being a woman is ultimately about an individual’s own gender identification.
Similarly, being assigned a name on a birth certificate is a matter of legal record, while the name that you choose to use is ultimately about what name you want to have.
Just as you don’t get to police people’s name choices by insisting on calling them by the name on their birth certificate, you don’t get to police people’s gender identification by insisting that it has to correspond to their birth-assigned gender.
For one thing, there’s no evidence whatever that people just casually “declare that they are transgender” if they don’t really mean it. On the contrary, as everyone who knows transgender folks will testify, coming out as transgender is usually a very prolonged struggle that requires a hell of a lot of consistency and courage.
Subject to correction by the better-informed, AFAICT there’s nobody, statistically speaking, who wants to be transgender. Even people who are transgender generally wish that they had been born with the biological sex that corresponds to their gender identity. “Pretending to be transgender” is not a significant thing and is not going to become a significant thing.
As for “how we tell” which people who present as gender-binary are transgender and which are not, the answer is simple: We don’t. Because we don’t fucking care. Gender identity in clothing-wearing societies is inferred based on how people present themselves, not by checking what’s on their birth certificate or in their underwear.
If your real question, as so often in these kinds of outraged denunciations, is actually “How can I as a straight non-transgender man ensure that I’ll have 0% risk of possibly being sexually attracted, or making sexual advances, to a woman who unbeknownst to me has or at one time used to have a penis?”, the answer is equally simple: You can’t.
Console yourself with the knowledge that very, very few women have or ever have had penises, so you are not likely to find yourself in such a situation. And if you do ever unwillingly encounter or become aware of the existence of a penis in circumstances where you did not expect one and do not want to interact with one, it is your right to politely excuse yourself and leave.
Ah, but while you quoted my post, you didn’t quote the one it was replying to.
He wrote:
Strictly speaking, I don’t need to propose a position. I merely noted that, given his position – putting forth effort to correct his weaknesses for the sake of achievement is good, defining proper conduct in terms of effortless gratification is bad – he can already answer questions by declaring that (a) you should strive to be a productive member of society, a law-abiding citizen who works hard and pays his taxes and does his duty; and (b) if you’re doing all of that, your choice of restrooms is irrelevant; and, if you’re not doing all of that, your choice of restrooms is irrelevant.
Given his position, you should work to get better at saving lives in the operating room, or winning Olympic gold in pistol marksmanship – or both! – and, so long as you’re doing stuff like that, whether you’re wearing frilly girl-type panties doesn’t matter; and, so long as you’re not doing stuff like that, it still doesn’t matter.
Isn’t that his value system, rather than mine?
[QUOTE=UltraVires]
You would say that those people are bigots, so nobody cares about what they think, but at the base level, you are just saying that your value judgment is better than mine. If there is no universal truth, then you cannot claim to own it.
[/QUOTE]
But I wouldn’t say they’re bigots, or that nobody cares what they think; and, for the trifecta, I’m not yet claiming to own universal truth.
I merely note that his value judgment (or subjective opinion, or stated position, or however we put it) involves prizing effort spent correcting weaknesses for the sake of achievement; and, given that, it makes perfect sense to advocate working to become a brave test pilot or whatever – and to stare blankly and blink if said brave test pilot says he’s marrying a man, because how is that germane?
(Likewise, if some guy isn’t brave and doesn’t work to achieve stuff and wants to marry a man – well, I see why Chihuahua would object to two out of three, as per his stated position. But why would he object to the third?)
What objective standards does one have to meet to be a Jew, Odinist, Pagan, Christian, Hindu, Agnostic, Atheist, or Buddhist? How about Hispanic or black? When something so universally held and fundamental to human interaction as religion is up for self-identification, pretending that it’s impossible to use self-identification is just silly.
You really think a serial rapist, who by definition breaks the law on rape, is going to care about some bathroom ordinance that you appear to think should not be enforced?
This just shows that you are absurdly and blatantly ignorant of the struggles that transgender people actually go through. If you had any clue what you’re talking about, the idea of someone pretending to be trans for advantage would not come close to crossing your mind. Trans people risk being fired, beaten, and killed on a daily basis by simply existing, it’s not something they do on a lark.
um, unless you’re interested in having a sexual relationship with someone, why does it matter what sex or gender the person is? The only other reason it might matter is if you think one sex or gender needs to be treated differently, aka, like a sub-human. People are people. Treat them like people.
rape is illegal regardless of sex or gender. Most rapists are heterosexual men.
murder is illegal regardless of sex or gender. Most murders are committed by heterosexual men.
pedophilia is illegal regardless of sex or gender. Most acts of pedophilia are committed by heterosexual men.
spousal abuse is illegal regardless of sex or gender. Most acts of spousal abuse are committed by heterosexual men.
It does / they do. It is undergoing societal change.
Old: sex/gender are one and the same. you got boys/men with male bits and then you got girls/women with female parts. end of story.
Current trend: you are born with a set of biological parts. you grow up in a social environment in which there is a meaning, some roles, some expected behavior, an attributed personality, etc, that usually goes with those parts, which will be attributed to you based on which parts you’ve got. some people would be a FAR better fit for the meaning, roles, behavior, personality, etc, that usually go with the OTHER set of parts. we find in their favor: it is OK to be who they are, despite their parts. and if they want to change their parts to match their identity, that’s their business and you should accept it.
Future: some would like to see gender become meaningless, indeed. just get rid of it. no different set of meaning, roles, behavioral expectations, personality being attributed, based on your bio parts. just identical people except some have innies and some have outies, no gender attached to sex. others think we should continue to have gender, but with a lot more flexibility or a lot more recognition of the exceptions to the rule as valid and healthy specimens.
And who says that gender classification is any kind of meaningful? For me, it is an exotic novelty, and one which most people from my culture find very strange. Y’all like it, fine, but it’s not necessary - at all. I’d much rather live in a culture in which there’s no need to come up with specific labels for every goddamn little variation of taste, dress, behavior, bodily configuration, hobbies, home-life arrangement, professional interests and whatever else I haven’t thought of.
I don’t really feel like this is correct. IMO, this just fuels the notion that transpeople just want to “act” a certain way. Being trans doesn’t have to do much with “acting” a certain way. Obviously a lot of transwomen can be very feminine, but I think that the transwomen we see presented to us by the media also overrepresent the feminine. “Former male athelete wears makeup and pretty dress” is much more radical and eye-popping than “transgirl kind of a tomboy that still likes the stuff she used to but maybe wears makeup and sometimes finds a cute skater dress, but mostly just dresses in street clothes.”
Transpeople are people. Transwomen are women, they inhabit the same broad spectrum of personality traits and interests as cis women. Some are tomboys, some are girly girls, some are butch, some are gender non-conforming. Same with transdudes. I know so many transdudes who miss the scope of women’s fashion, or still wear foundation.
I feel it’s very reductive to boil transness to “personality”, “behavior”, and “social roles.” A lot of transpeople adopt some of the mannerisms of the opposite gender out of necessity. You see it a lot where just transitioning transwomen go all-out with the fake boobs and dresses and manicures because it forces people to see them as feminine, and then a couple years in after the hormones, confidence, experience, and so on they hit “fuck it” mode and start dressing down.
Being trans doesn’t really have to do with gender presentation, it has far more to do with feeling “correct”. While presentation, social recognition, and behaviors can be and are often a large part of that, gender identity is way more fundamental. It’s about being “right”: physically, chemically, and mentally.
It is, of course, totally fine to act like a girly girl if you’re a man and know you’re a man. Totally within your right and you should not be beaten, threatened, bullies, or anything else. But there’s a fundamental gulf between “guy who acts and talks like all his female friends” and “transwoman.”
What if I am white, but I feel like I am black? Am I black? Sort of the Enimem syndrome.
And understand that it isn’t a snarky question, but I want to see the limits of this. What else in society can I really, really feel that I am something and thereby make it true. So true, in fact, that there is no room for reasoned discussion on it; anyone who does not recognize my truth is a bigot?
Again, though, I’m accepting the hypo for purposes of debate. What about a man who doesn’t feel he is a woman, but claims to be a woman simply for an affirmative action program, or a community business loan program? No remedy?
Deceit is possible and has always been possible. There’s no perfect remedy and there never has been. This is not a new or novel challenge or problem – it’s always existed, and the existence of trans people doesn’t change it at all. There’s no more danger of people pretending to be trans than there has been throughout history for people pretending to be something other than what they are. It happened in the past and will happen in the future, but it’s not a particularly significant problem, and certainly not worth curtailing the rights or dignity of anyone to stop.
I understand that this is a joke, but it is a very stupid one. Eminem has never pretended to be Black, has never claimed to be Black…and the idea that rapping and embracing other cultural signifiers is just some White dude “feeling” like he’s Black is ridiculous and insulting.
Eminem grew up around black people in a poor Detroit suburb. His mannerisms are largely a product of the environment where he was raised. He doesn’t self-identify as “black” though. If you listen to his music (or saw 8 Mile), one reoccurring theme is his struggle for acceptance as a white rapper in a primarily black industry. Eminem isn’t appropriating black culture or using his whiteness as a gimmick.
That sounds like the plot of a bad 80s comedy.
The serious answer is that race, sex or gender should not be the basis for granting a loan.
One of the reasons I don’t believe in affirmative action is that puts people into arbitrary buckets to meet some sort of idealized (and also arbitrary) ratio and has nothing to do with the actual standards for entry.
