[erimir]

tbh it seems like some people are tiptoeing in their responses. If Jerome or some other rando came here to say some of this stuff, I doubt they'd get such a subdued reaction.

Most notably: that transwomen are not women, transmen are not men, that transwomen should use the men's restroom, that their pronouns should not be recognized, that recognizing trans people in anti-discrimination law (apparently in the "wrong way") would somehow destroy all the gains of feminism, etc.

Originally Posted by maddog

That's not what "people are saying." That's an equivocation of language to make it appear that "people are saying" something that they are not. The tweeter has confounded sex and gender, as if they are the same. They are not.

If anything, "people are saying" that sex, not gender, is biological. Gender *is* a social construct.

The tweeter is mocking precisely the people who would claim that gender is not a social construct and that there is no distinction between sex and gender.

Most people don't care if a man wears a dress.

Citation needed. It's true that men can wear a dress with little repercussion in certain situations, in many (most?) places in the world - for a movie or TV show, or Halloween, or whatever. A man who wears a dress casually on the street or to work or whatever is another matter.

Any alleged "freaking out" happens when he insists that the performance of gender stereotypes imposed on females, e.g., wearing a dress, somehow turns him into a woman, and that his actual biological sex is changed.

This is a roundabout way of saying what bothers you is being asked to refer to a transwoman as a woman. It's not 100% clear whether you further have a problem referring to a transwoman as female or with feminine pronouns, etc., but based on you referring to a transwomen later consistently with "he" it seems that you do. I don't know why you don't just come out and say that's what bothers you.

For myself, I reject "gender" entirely. As far as I'm concerned, I have no gender. Internally, I feel like a person, a human being. My body has a sex, though, and there's nothing I can do about that. I refuse to be pushed into the gender box.

Perhaps in modern parlance you'd be agender or non-binary. It seems to me that you're basing your views about how "meaningless" gender is somewhat on your own experience of gender though, which is atypical.

Originally Posted by maddog

Yes, people should be protected in law from violence based on group characteristics, like race, religion, or sex, for example. No one that I know supports violence against trans people.

I don't see the relevance of your personal knowledge of people who support violence against trans people has. That there are people who are violent against trans people and support violence against them is plainly true. I don't personally know people who hold quite a lot of vile beliefs that I know exist in the world (or, I don't know that some people I know hold those beliefs). What is the relevance?

As to "dismissal of the existence of trans people," what does that mean? It's a plain fact that trans people exist.

Yes, and some people would claim that a transwoman is just a confused man, or is possessed by demons, or any number of things, and that therefore there isn't really any such thing as a transwoman. Like, transphobia is a thing that conservative Christians do, it isn't all about you and your social circle where these sorts of beliefs don't exist.

I'm not sure why you're acting so confused. Have you not read much about the subject?

Who says transwomen don't exist? Of course they exist, big as life. That being said, it doesn't mean that they get to use the women's bathroom. They are transwomen, i.e., men. They belong in the men's bathroom. Stay in their lane, no problem. Doing away with sex-segregated bathrooms and other spaces does nobody any favors, most especially women. It's not safe or dignified for women; that's the reason spaces are sex-segregated to begin with.

You're saying a lot of shit here without really explaining why it is the case.

My sister should use the men's room? Because if she used the men's room, that would be "doing away with sex-segregated bathrooms"? Her presence in the women's room is not safe or dignified for you? On the basis of fucking what? You provide absolutely no support for these claims, and they are, frankly, unsubstantiated bullshit.

Meanwhile, I suppose you think her using to the men's room is safe for her? Like, have you even given a second's thought to that question? Or does it just not matter to you?

(To clarify, my sister is trans, specifically a transwoman.)

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

I do find the whole issue of transgender perplexing. Putting aside people who are born with ambiguous sex characteristics, I understand 'transgender' to be the preferred term for someone who was born with the anatomy of one sex now identifying fully as the other biological sex. Whereas 'transsexual' has become offensive.

I don't think that its the case that transsexual is considered offensive. It's probably the case that transgender is the more commonly used term because transgender is the broader term, and activism nowadays is not generally focused on protections for transsexual people without including transgender people.

Additionally, transsexual status may be considered to require surgery and so forth and knowledge of that sort of thing isn't necessarily considered information they want to or should have to reveal.

torn to shreds for the suggestion that a 'transwoman' is not in fact 100%, biologically, a woman

I don't think that talking about being "100% biologically a woman" is considered a particularly relevant factor. It's more that the focus on whether someone is "100% biologically a man/woman" would be considered a red flag.

Originally Posted by maddog

Some of her comments (e.g., about "feminists" who are "transphobic" for having arguments about what transgenderism is or means) are indicative of the definitional problem in familiar discourse these days, that paints women as "against" transgender people, when in reality most women/feminists don't have any issue with (and are in favor of) protections for transgender people as a class, in the same way that other classes are protected: protection against violence, against discrimination in housing, employment, public accommodations, etc.

Meanwhile, you seem to be conflating feminists who hold your views on transgenderism with feminists or even women generally. Who is painting "women" as against transgender people?

Quite a lot of women and feminists do not agree with your views, and also quite a lot of them would include transwomen in the category of women - this is, of course, your point of contention.

Your game here is, of course, defining the things you advocate for as not being discrimination and being protection. Transwomen should use the men's restroom. They should, presumably, by the natural extension of what you've said, be housed in the men's prison, or men's dormitories (in residential schools or other sex-segregated housing situations). But the evidence is that this very much does not protect trans people. Saying that you're opposed to the abuse and violence that transwomen would face under your preferred policies doesn't change the fact that you are opposed to the simplest solution to that problem: treating them as women and placing them with other women, instead of with men.

The fact is that you have conservative allies who would agree that transwomen should be placed in those dangerous situations, but would disagree with your goals of making those situations safe. Practically speaking, advocating for transwomen to be placed with men is advocating for them to be placed into abusive environments.

You think women need protection from men, and therefore to be segregated away from them. But then you turn around and claim that you don't wish to deny transwomen any protections while advocating for them to be placed in precisely the the situation that's too dangerous for you. And which honestly, may be more dangerous for them than for you.

So, people (like me) who fully advocate for anti-discrimination protections for transgender people, who are as appalled as anyone by violence against transgender people, and who fully believe people are entitled to live however they want, are nonetheless cast as enemies of transgender people, and are directly blamed for violence against transgender people, when they favor anti-discrimination protections commensurate with those afforded to other groups, and when they have committed no such violence.

Well, it's because you're appalled by violence against transgender people, but not so appalled that you would accept policies that reduce it because of how they supposedly are a danger to you - a danger that you don't bother to substantiate.

The issues need much further delineation and definition and explanation and analysis and discussion, so that the proper changes can be made to ensure anti-discrimination protections are put in place for transgender people. For example, the "Equality Act" presently before the US Congress proposes to make statutory changes by making specific amendments to the provisions for SEX-discrimination protections, rather than creating a separate category of protection for gender-non-conforming people. The amendments propose to change the actual definition of "sex" to INCLUDE two things that are not "sex": both sexual orientation AND "gender identity." I think that this is a serious mistake. This is the conflation at the heart of the matter, because sex and gender are entirely distinct. Once "sex" (reproductive biology of a person) becomes defined AS "gender" -- an idea or notion in someone's head -- then protections for people on account of actual biological SEX disappear. That means that all the gains of feminism in the last 50 or 60 years are wiped out at a single stroke. These ideas need to be kept separate, and not conflated together.

This is, without any concrete examples or evidence, nothing more than a slippery slope argument. How will this Equality Act undo "all the gains of feminism" of the past half-century, specifically? Can you show any examples?

There are jurisdictions which already provide anti-discrimination protections to trangender and non-binary people, etc. How have such laws in those jurisdictions undone all of second- and third-wave feminism?

It seems to me that much of your complaints are this sort of unsubstantiated hyperbole.

Sex is: which biological reproduction function does your body have? 99% of all human beings are clearly of one type or the other.
[...]

That's an important aside, as DSD's, or disorders of sexual development, have almost zero to do with transgender people.

I don't see any evidence for your claim here.

What reason is there to suppose that biological sex characteristics don't include neurological characteristics? Studies have found differences in the brain structure of men and women, and between trans men and women compared to cis men and women, with studies finding that, for example, certain structures in trans women's brains are more similar to those of cis women's than cis men's, and likewise for trans men's brains resembling cis men's. And other "biological" differences (acting as if there's a hard distinction between biology and psychology is of course a big basis for your claims, and it's a rather dubious basis) as well.

You say that 99% of people are clearly of one type or the other (that specific number is obviously just one you made up, rather than one based on scientific investigation, but some number in the mid- to high-90s is probably right based on the prevalence of transgenderism and intersexuality). It seems to me that you then assume that trans people are all in that 90-something% who are clearly one or the other, rather than potentially another manifestation of an ambiguity in the expression of sex.

I don't think any of the most prominent transgender activists are so-called "intersex." Many transgender advocates point to the existence of intersex people, or people with DSD's, and go from there to the notion that "sex is more complicated than just XX and XY" (a true statement), and then extrapolate the conclusion that "therefore sex is a spectrum." It is not.

Human beings are sexually dimorphic: the only available means of reproduction is through the male and female sexual systems. The disorders of sexual development are anomalies in the development of male bodies, or in the development of female bodies. That's it.

This is mostly just assertion.

Maybe sex isn't a spectrum in the sense of being a one-dimensional spectrum where you go from 100% male to 100% female. Various intersex conditions can't necessarily be placed along a line from one end to the other, although some conditions maybe could be. But just because you say you can place almost every variation into one binary category or another doesn't prove that that binary is any more objective than a different categorization.

Intersex conditions, or DSD's, happen to male people or female people.

This just assumes your conclusion. You can't refute the idea that intersex people might not be completely male or female by saying that they simply are completely male or female people with "conditions".

Some intersex people were, therefore, brought up as girls when they had male gonads (undescended testicles or the like), or brought up as boys when they actually had female reproductive organs. These surgical interventions often ended up unsatisfactorily; the victims sensed or knew that their body was wrong or didn't fit, and they were right. Males brought up as girls (and vice versa) "knew" that something was wrong. I think that people with DSD's today advocate to wait for further development before undertaking any surgical "assignment" to a possibly erroneous determination of sex.

Not all intersex people identify as male or female as you say. A fair number don't identify with either sex. How are you deciding which sex they "really" are?

You keep asking "what is transphobia". Given how much you go on about how clear sex is, you'd think you might define it at some point.

Transgender people and intersex people may have in common the feeling that something is wrong with their bodies or their sexual development. The difference is that transgender people are, by and large, perfectly normal specimens of the sex that they actually are. The genitalia are not ambiguous. The gonads are clearly either male or female. Their chromosomes are normal XY or normal XX.

The brain is also an organ which demonstrates differences between men and women, and cis vs. trans people. It seems like you're completely unaware of this given how you think it's the end of the story when you talk about chromosomes and genitalia as the only biological differences.

I think that is generally true as to the usage of "transgender" versus "transsexual."

I have sometimes seen "transsexual" used to describe people who dress according to the gender stereotypes for the opposite sex without any surgical or hormonal alteration, and perhaps without any intention to portray oneself as the opposite sex in all contexts. For example, I think some gay men who dress in drag use the term transsexual, to make clear that they are not transgender. By contrast, "transgender" would refer to people who have had surgical or other alterations to appear like the opposite sex, with the intention to do so in all contexts of life.

You have pretty much reversed the terms.

I don't claim to be someone who hangs out with drag queens, but I am gay, and my sister is trans, and I am unaware of drag queens commonly calling themselves transsexual. Most would not even call themselves transgender.

Yes. Trans men (biological women) refer to themselves as "men." Trans women (biological men) refer to themselves as "women." People can refer to themselves however they want to. They have full control over themselves. Other people (non-trans people) have exactly the same right. Non-trans people can refer to themselves by whatever term they like. People do not have the right to control what other people say.

I don't know what you mean by "control" exactly.

Do black people have the right to "control" what other people call them? Is that what's going on if someone loses their job because they called someone black by a slur? Could you lose your job by consistently referring to a cisgender person by the wrong gender and using the wrong pronouns, etc.? Is that "controlling" people, or violating their freedom of speech? If you prefer to be referred to with a title, or with a certain nickname (or by no nickname, insisting on the full form of your name), etc. and someone consistently refuses to do so, do you consider that disrespectful?

Nobody is taking away your first amendment rights here, but you basically want to be disrespectful to trans people, while simultaneously chiding people who call out your behavior as disrespectful as "controlling" you. Unfortunately, we don't all get to say whatever we want to say at all times. Yet I'm sure you don't complain as much about the other ways you have to watch what you say.