If everything is constructed, if everything is relative, if everything is subjective and if everything is on a spectrum then what are we even arguing about?
Nobody fits their gender norms perfectly. No culture has identical gender norms. Even physiologically chromosomes are more nuanced than X and Y.
Because not everything is constructed, nor relative. And the spectrum is not evenly. People are also not always honest, be it on purpose or by ignorance. And Science, as also society still has many open questions. That's why people are still arguing.
And then there are also the gazillion of traumatized people who just fight against those who abuse them, whether it's justified or not, whether they hit the right target or the wrong one.
I don’t believe everything is constructed and I don’t believe in most statements of moral relativism. However the people involved in the arguments generally favor some view of subjective truth and/or moral relativism, at which point why do they care?
(Similar to the question of: if people claim gender is a social construct how can someone be the wrong one?)
I think the solution is nothing new, it relies on going back to teaching a classical liberal definition of tolerance and the objective morality of empathy and compassion. No need to reinvent the wheel.
Doesn't it say more about our prisons that this is a real concern though? That the lack of ability to prevent prisoners from sexually assaulting one another is the expected norm? And it isn't like there aren't women capable of sexually assaulting each other, but I guess that's more acceptable somehow?
You are literally allowing men who sexually assaulted women to say they are women and house them with women.
What percent of male sexual offenders will sexually assault women, vs the general female prison population assaulting women?
You are literally locking foxes with the hens.
On a sidenote, your excusing away of this behaviour under the guise of "it happens anyway" is ridiculous. I wonder under what prison in the world assault and violence is a solved problem. Oh, complete isolation prisons I guess.
> You are literally allowing men who sexually assaulted women to say they are women and house them with women.
We literally house women who've sexually assaulted women with other women, and men who've sexually assaulted men with other men.
> On a sidenote, your excusing away of this behaviour under the guise of "it happens anyway" is ridiculous.
I am not excusing the behavior, rather the opposite: I'm saying that we shouldn't allow sexual assault in prison period. Ever. I think it is ridiculous that we accept it at all.
A lot fewer percent of women assault women sexually than men, and vice versa. That was my whole point.
And we haven’t even begun to discuss the strength differences and if an assault by a penis is different to a lesbian assault…
And We don’t accept it. That’s not why it happens. It happens because it’s not possible to prevent it.
You clearly have some utopian vision of humanity but the reality is different.
To a certain extent that is true and we can't prevent sexual assault in all sorts of circumstances, but I think that is irrelevant. What parent is arguing is that simply having a male incarcerated with females increases the chance of sexual assault so significantly that we need a different solution for transwomen. I am saying that I think it says a lot about how we conceptualize both prison and gender that we find the incidence of male-male and female-female sexual assault in prison acceptable by comparison, because that's what we're saying here: put transwomen in male prison and transmen in female prison.
Besides which, I reject the notion that we cannot do a better job prevent sexual assault in prison. In the US at least, prison conditions are horrifically bad because a significant portion of the population likes it that way. We're a cheap, vengeful, petty people on the whole.
Yes, we can't make it perfect. So what? Perfect is the enemy of good. I think we would be better served by dealing with the problem of prison's high incidence of sexual assault in general instead of just this one narrow case.
I take a really libertarian stance on this stuff: why should I care? If someone wants me to call them 'she' when they were biologically born 'he', why not? They're not hurting me or anyone else. If it's not my thing, that's fine. Guess what? One of the cornerstones of libertarianism is: everyone is not like me and that's okay.
The whole thing is obvious right-wing outrage trolling. Yes, before someone says it, the left does outrage trolling too.
TL;DR: I am vetoing this because it's pointless theatrics that could hurt people.
I must also add that this is a tiny percentage of people here. Even if (hypothetically) this is not a good thing, it's not going to cause the (rolls eyes) collapse of Western civilization.
A nuclear war on the other hand could destroy Western civilization. I hear one of the extreme right's favorite strongman buffoons is threatening such a thing right now.
Sorry but try as it might the Babylon Bee is just not funny. It reads like some right wingers wanted to create a "safe space" version of The Onion where the humor would never turn on them. It reads like that because that's what it is, which is why it's not funny. It's also not funny because it punches down. Punching down is never funny, which is why the left needs to stop making fun of "rednecks" (read: poor white people).
This particular joke isn't funny because if the story were real it would be badass. The USA could put nukes in space in a heartbeat. We even have a fucking space force. We could put tons of nukes in space with giant reusable stainless steel rockets. That would give us transsexual admirals commanding 1950s-style sci-fi shiny rockets full of nuclear space missiles, which would totally badass.
It would be the ultimate nightmare vision of the evil liberal industrial rational West's Kali Yuga vaporizing the brave strongman soldiers of Traditionalism. Take that Dugin! Take that Putin-on-a-horse!
Even worse... make the atomic trans space admiral Jewish...
It's showing that the priorities of pushing identity politics down everyone's throat is soo out of perspective. Identity politics driven agenda's are such a idiosyncratic luxury that's only possible because of serious people doing serious things.
The serious things are what matter, the out of perspective moral outrage over LESS important things is so overblown. The silent majority is sick of it, totally sick of it.
> Identity politics driven agenda's are such a idiosyncratic luxury that's only possible because of serious people doing serious things.
Civilization is frivolous. This conversation is frivolous. Culture of any kind is only possible because of "serious people doing serious things." Farmers stop farming and power plants shut down and most people will stop writing novels, making films, playing music, or yes debating the edge cases of social norms like gender. Unless you code for power, farming, or health care applications you'd probably stop coding too.
The right only invokes this "get serious" line when it's something they personally think is unnecessary, ignoring the fact that 90% of what they do is also unnecessary.
The bigger and wealthier civilization gets the more frivolous things it will produce. Pretty soon we'll be spewing rocket ships to the Moon and Mars, which are really damn frivolous over any time scale that matters to any living person.
Also I'm sure for people who strongly feel that they are gender-atypical this is a serious issue. There's an article somewhere about someone who posed as trans for a week to gonzo-report on just how shitty trans people are treated.
Edit: you can do your own experiment in the frivolity of "identity politics." Find a stock photo of a cute girl and pose as her in programming forums for a week or two. Hope you like weird and inappropriate come-ons, lewd messages, and a 50/50 split between people pretending to hang on your every word and people ignoring your opinion. I have never dealt with any of that shit as a white male programmer but I've heard loads of stories.
I do get the concern about trans women in womens' sports. As far as I know that is the only "edge case" where the people pushing back on trans rights have an actual point. The rest of it is pure moral outrage trolling and obsessing over things other people are doing that don't impact you. There is no other job or activity I can think of where this matters. The outrage over it is as stupid as the outrage over plastic straws.
Gender isn't sex, and people can claim any gender they want. I believe there are hundreds of them nowadays. But with sex, almost everyone is either unambiguously male or unambiguously female, and intersex conditions are close to a rounding error, statistically. Also, trans has nothing to do with intersex, so mixing up all that X and Y stuff into this discussion doesn't really help.
It's up to you, but you have a choice between either letting go of this idea, or continuing to hold slightly wrong beliefs. (I am a scientist, but this is not my specific area of expertise)
It is "that simple", those who suffer from Klinefelter syndrome are men. With modern fertility therapy some of them can impregnate women. You can try to complicate matters but this does not add veracity to such statements, it just shows that 'gender ideologues' will latch on to medical conditions in a search for legitimacy to the detriment of those who suffer from such conditions.
> According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary—their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions—known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs)—often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD.
Nor is it only XXY which is the issue:
> For many years, scientists believed that female development was the default programme, and that male development was actively switched on by the presence of a particular gene on the Y chromosome. In 1990, researchers made headlines when they uncovered the identity of this gene, which they called SRY. Just by itself, this gene can switch the gonad from ovarian to testicular development. For example, XX individuals who carry a fragment of the Y chromosome that contains SRY develop as males. ...
> The gonad is not the only source of diversity in sex. A number of DSDs are caused by changes in the machinery that responds to hormonal signals from the gonads and other glands. Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, or CAIS, for example, arises when a person's cells are deaf to male sex hormones, usually because the receptors that respond to the hormones are not working. People with CAIS have Y chromosomes and internal testes, but their external genitalia are female, and they develop as females at puberty.
Noting "But they are rare—affecting about 1 in 4,500 people." (The "some form of" is for a wide range of issues, like "surgeons reported that they had been operating on a hernia in a man, when they discovered that he had a womb. The man was 70, and had fathered four children.")
I see your one article by one activist and raise you the whole body of literature on sexually reproducing species, to be more specific of mammals - of which we are one - as written by non-activist biologists. I would encourage you to read some of it and enlighten yourself. Do you want some pointers?
Respectfully, you're talking to a scientist, and as such I do have some passing familiarity with "the whole body of literature" or, perhaps more pertinently, the scientific consensus roughly speaking.
The article I shared, while an editorial, is representative of the scientific consensus. Not only that, but it is a reprint of an editorial (a well-referenced, well-cited, well-received and not particularly scientifically controversial one, mind you) which was first published in Nature [1], basically one of the most respected scientific journals: I just don't think it's reasonable for you, without doubt a non-expert, to dismiss it as an "activist" piece of rhetoric. The author is a perfectly respectable science journalist with a PhD in developmental biology, and no particular "activist" agenda. [2]
I don't have any skin in this game: I am a cisgendered heterosexual male, and I honestly don't care either way. I'm just a super curious guy who cares about edge cases, and how society accommodates (or possibly fails to accommodate) these edge cases. I don't know who you are, but you've taken your layman's "common sense" and gone on a mini comment crusade to try to persuade the world that things are simpler than they really are, and I also find that interesting.
> Klinefelter syndrome is a genetic condition in which a boy is born with an extra X chromosome. Instead of the typical XY chromosomes in men, they have XXY, so this condition is sometimes called XXY syndrome.
> Men with Klinefelter usually don’t know they have it until they run into problems trying to have a child.
When people say things like "males have XY chromosomes," it's a somewhat fuzzy shorthand for the idea that "maleness" is determined by the natural progression of certain biological processes. That those processes can rarely take a few unusual twists and turns to get to that phenotype doesn't invalidate the core idea.
> ...and I am not merely referring to Klinefelter syndrome. There are a myriad nuances.
And I wasn't exclusively referring to it either. My point there's a legitimate idea there that isn't undermined by slight fuzziness or technical imprecision in layman definitions.
This isn't a perfect analogy, but Wikipedia has red as light with a wavelength of 625–750nm [1]. A lot of these discussions are a lot like trying to undermine the concept of red itself by noting that 624nm light exists.
As a biologist, it is hard to understand how anyone could believe something so outlandish. It’s a belief on a par with the belief in a flat Earth. I first saw this claim being made this year by anthropology graduate students on Facebook. At first I thought they mistyped and were simply referring to gender. But as I began to pay closer attention, it was clear that they were indeed talking about biological sex. Over the next several months it became apparent that this view was not isolated to this small friend circle, as it began cropping up all over the Internet. In support of this view, recent editorials from Scientific American—an ostensibly trustworthy, scientific, and apolitical online magazine—are often referenced. The titles read, “Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic,” and “Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum.”
Even more recently, the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, Nature, published an editorial claiming that classifying people’s sex “on the basis of anatomy or genetics should be abandoned” and “has no basis in science” and that “the research and medical community now sees sex as more complex than male and female.” In the Nature article, the motive is stated clearly enough: acknowledging the reality of biological sex will “undermine efforts to reduce discrimination against transgender people and those who do not fall into the binary categories of male or female.” But while there is evidence for the fluidity of sex in many organisms, this is simply not the case in humans. We can acknowledge the existence of very rare cases in humans where sex is ambiguous, but this does not negate the reality that sex in humans is functionally binary. These editorials are nothing more than a form of politically motivated, scientific sophistry.
The formula for each of these articles is straightforward. First, they list a multitude of intersex conditions. Second, they detail the genes, hormones, and complex developmental processes leading to these conditions. And, third and finally, they throw their hands up and insist this complexity means scientists have no clue what sex really is. This is all highly misleading and deceiving (self-deceiving?), since the developmental processes involved in creating any organ are enormously complex, yet almost always produce fully functional end products. Making a hand is complicated too, but the vast majority of us end up with the functional, five-fingered variety.
What these articles leave out is the fact that the final result of sex development in humans are unambiguously male or female over 99.98 percent of the time. Thus, the claim that “2 sexes is overly simplistic” is misleading, because intersex conditions correspond to less than 0.02 percent of all births, and intersex people are not a third sex. Intersex is simply a catch-all category for sex ambiguity and/or a mismatch between sex genotype and phenotype, regardless of its etiology. Furthermore, the claim that “sex is a spectrum” is also misleading, as a spectrum implies a continuous distribution, and maybe even an amodal one (one in which no specific outcome is more likely than others). Biological sex in humans, however, is clear-cut over 99.98 percent of the time. Lastly, the claim that classifying people’s sex based on anatomy and genetics “has no basis in science” has itself no basis in reality, as any method exhibiting a predictive accuracy of over 99.98 percent would place it among the most precise methods in all the life sciences. We revise medical care practices and change world economic plans on far lower confidence than that.
People have 2 arms and 2 legs with 5 fingers/toes at the end of each. This is a fact, not changed by the fact that indeed there are some people with more than 5 fingers/toes, some with fewer or even none at all. Those people are the exception to the rule.
In the same vein a woman is an adult human female, characterised by having double-X chromosomes, producing large gametes and generally being capable of conceiving and nursing children. The presence of people with a double-X + Y chromosome (who are, in fact, men, not women, search for 'Klinefelter syndrome' [1]) does not change this fact, nor does the fact that some women - yes, of course they are still women - can not conceive or nurse children.
Heuristics are by definition approximations. If all you're claiming is that it's a heuristic, I suspect you're not making the argument you probably think you are.
It's a physical law, which is a heuristic so accurate that exceptions are almost unheard of. We don't say "the 3rd Newton heuristic" just because in some weird curcumstances it's not accurate.
> People have 2 arms and 2 legs with 5 fingers/toes at the end of each. This is a fact, not changed by the fact that indeed there are some people with more than 5 fingers/toes, some with fewer or even none at all. Those people are the exception to the rule.
> Those people are the exception
If there are exceptions, then it's not a fact. At best, it's an approximation that works well in most situations, and is subject to exceptions where it is simply false.
That's just sophistry which doesn't add anything to the discussion. Given that the vast majority (99.98%) of humans do end up either male or female [1] it is a fact that humans are sexually dimorphic with male and female phenotypes with the exceptions being just that: exceptions.
Are you aware that other species have a wide variety of mechanisms for determining sex? Which means that evolution can and does result in the modification of fundamentals, at least if you take common descent for granted.
This can only happen if a mostly bimodal distribution is not entirely bimodal - what would provide the material for evolution to something different otherwise?
Hence, the outliers are not insignificant at all, except according to some arbitrary value system.
I don't have a reference, but I vaguely recall reading that the asymmetry between the X and Y chromosome has developed under evolutionary pressure and eventually the Y chromosome may disappear entirely.
Note, very importantly, XXY syndrome implies infertility; the people who have this do not reproduce or contribute to the evolution of the germline at all.
I would not place such a person in either a "biological sex" category of male or female, but I wouldn't have any problem with them identifying with either of those, in terms of naming and pronouns.
They are men with one or more extra X chromosomes. Men. Some men who suffer from this syndrome can be treated so as to be able to impregnate women with their own sperm. I assume that this only works for men who have partial/mosaic Klinefelter, otherwise their sperm could also contain double-X chromosomes - but maybe it also works for them, leading to an increase in children being born with this condition?
That's an entirely reasonable position. It acknowledges that "male" and "female", while useful concepts, are ultimately just a classification system that not everyone will fit into neatly; and if they don't, it's probably best to say so instead of trying to force them into one or the other.
Are all infertile people without bioligical sex then? What about those past (or before) their reproductive years? What about those that only choose not to reproduce, or had surgery to prevent it?
No one needs to be an “expert” to understand basic English and biology. It’s very clear that until, very recently, male and female have always been biological terms. Even today a scientist studying a frog would call the frog “female” or “male”, and everyone would know what they mean by that. No educated, sane, person would protest “Did you ask the frog what gender they felt they were!”
Historical precedent is not a very strong argument when it comes to scientific questions.
What's the model? How can that model explain the observed phenomena? "XY = male and XX = female" is a very simplistic model and it doesn't seem to adequately explain everything that we see in the world. Perhaps it works for 97% of the cases (just guessing).
We can do better than 97%. Let's work on finding a model that explains the world more accurately.
P.S. Frogs can't talk :P So yeah, it would be rather silly to try asking it a question.
What is the model you ask? It’s very simple XX chromosome is female, XY is male.
Is that 100% of all cases ever. No, but hardly anything at all in science, or life, is. How do you classify a hermaphrodite? Does it matter? It’s a rare biological anomaly. Life is weird and strange things happen sometimes, that doesn’t mean that you throw the baby out with the bath water. It’s useful in life, science, and medicine to classify things biologically by their sex. If there are a few outliers that just go in “other” then so be it.
> Frogs can’t talk
That’s the whole point. How a frog feels, or perceives itself, is entirely irrelevant as to weather it is classified as a male or female. So why is it any different with humans? When we talk about male or female with other species there is no notion of a “social construct”, but somehow when talk about humans it’s supposed be different and not follow the rules we use with every other species on the planet? Why? Because some people feel bad? Sorry, not a good argument.
>with other species there is no notion of a “social construct”
That's only coming from our limited human perspectives. We can't communicate with another species at this point in time. We can't ask them about nuance in their social structures. We also can't assume that it doesn't exist because it's hard to observe.
Nothing you said refutes the fact that biological sex classification is 1) useful 2) has and continues to use the terms “male” and “female” for all species 3) such classification are scientific descriptions, not social constructs at all.
Are there traditional gender roles that are social constructs? Sure. Is gender itself a social construct, not even remotely. Reproduction is quite well documented and known, it isn’t some abstract thing that society made up.
In 99.9 % of the cases you can tell women and men apart in a fraction of a second. We can identify sex from the bones of million-year-old humanoids. For the burka-dressed robbers we could identify they were men just by their gait.
You're trying to make it seem like the 0.1 % means we can't know anything about anything.
1) We've fucked up in this area before (e.g. being gay was considered a medical disorder), so let's be really careful to not fuck it up again.
2) Humans are vastly complicated systems and our understanding has grown immensely in recent centuries. So arguments like "aspect X of the human experience has always been understood this way" should be taken with a huge grain of salt, especially when people are making scientific claims (e.g. in this case, about biology / psychology).
3) Unless if I have a good reason not too, take people at face value. Treat them with respect. Make small concessions even if I don't fully understand why they want it. It doesn't cost me much, and it makes them happy.
Saying "people have made mistakes before" and "it's complicated" is just... not a convincing argument. You can literally do that with any topic anywhere.
The problem is that we’re treating personal discoveries like they are universally applicable. Always treat people with respect, but don’t allow pseudoscience to propagate just because you dont want to hurt their feelings. I’ve been through enough coding interviews to know that y’all don’t care that much about hurting peoples feelings =P
"Unless if I have a good reason not too, take people at face value."
I disagree with this. Or rather, I think there are always a plethora of good reasons not to take people (that you don't already know well and trust) at face value.
If we are claiming that biological sex and gender are different than what makes someone a woman goes beyond biology/evolution. If we are claiming that gender is socially constructed then gender dysphoria is a spectrum which we are all probably on as nobody aligns perfectly with all the gender norms in their society.
But if it is constructed and everything is on a spectrum then what are we even arguing about?
By definition, literally, your secondary definition is meaningless.
The more diluted a term is, the noisier it becomes, until it no longer conveys information. From everything I can see, this dilution appears intentional for the purpose of establishing new dominance hierarchies.
As I'm sure you are fully aware, sometimes we find that certain concepts don't fully match reality as it is, and we then have to work to update our conceptual frameworks.
Is it that hard to imagine that "woman" and "man" might be one of those concepts? Especially given the amount of scientific progress that has occurred in the past few centuries?
Not saying I have all of the answers. It's just interesting to me how some people seem completely closed off to the idea that we may need to improve our understanding in this area.
The reality and the science is very clear. What you're saying is that science should be adjusted to take into account people's feelings.
That is not science.
And it's only being made more ridiculous when the proponents for the fuzziness of the concept of what a women is also insist that there are a multitude more genders and that you can change between them on the fly several times a day.
It's curious how politics and activists tend to approach definitions backward. Anyone who aims to be rigorous (as politology and sociology should be) knows that you first must define clearly a term and then reason about it. Instead, we usually see attempts to redefine well-established terms, not by adding an additional meaning, but by replacing the original one. In a purely rational reasoning system, this change would be irrelevant because the important thing is the meaning, not the significant. But we humans are fallible beings, and we tend to transfer the perceptions and logical conclusions attached to the meaning to the significant itself. This way, when a redefinition is done in a society, the term will drag for a while the concepts related to the old meaning. This is a powerful manipulation weapon and I think it's the reason why it's so prevalent in those fields.
This is not saying that you shouldn't redefine anything. As you said in our daily lives there are a lot of terms that have lossy definitions that don't match perfectly with our mental models. But you should be cautious with the real intent of the redefinition, especially if it comes top-down.
I knew someone born by the name Todd. He hated the name, and changed it to John. Anyone who knew he wanted to be called John and still called him Todd got an earful - because he asked not to be.
But there is a definition: female mammals are XX and have female morphology. So you're not helping the conversation by investigating consequences of a false premise.
Using an identifying word, that you've asked not to use, is a dick move. Accidents can happen, until you get used to something, and most people are fine with that and will give a gentle reminder. But continuing to use a term you've been asked not to, isn't fine.
Let's put it another way.
There's a girl I know, who was born Tiwi. However, though she looks Tiwi, she asks not to be referred to that way, and prefers Australian or native, or indigenous. For why? Every single one of the Tiwi Elders raped her, at one time or another. She shouldn't need to explain that horrifying background for you, reliving those oh-so-pleasant memories, for you to see reason in not calling her Tiwi. Because she's asked not to be.
Similarly, people have asked to be identified a certain way. Some of the reasons may be traumatic. They shouldn't have to relive that trauma, just for you to consider acquiescing to their effortless request.
All that should matter... Is they asked not to be. Fin.
The two words are brutally honest in what they mean: a man is a creature with manas (i.e. intelligence), and a woman is a man with the "wo" body parts.
People are confusing their psychological mind with their physical reality. You don’t just get to decide you’re a bird and be able to fly. Why do we debate this stuff? Instead of getting so offended stop Defineing yourself by something so insignificant
No one is claiming to be a bird. That's a non-sequitur.
We debate these things because some people say "I feel X" and others say "You aren't allowed to feel that way and here is how we will marginalize you for that".
These are complicated issues. We should be willing to listen more and not assume we have all the answers about people who may have a very different life experience than you or me.
> We debate these things because some people say "I feel X" and others say "You aren't allowed to feel that way and here is how we will marginalize you for that".
Talk about missing the plot. This is 100% incorrect and not at all what the debate is about. No cares how anyone feels, people can feel any way they want, this is not the complaint.
The issue is “I believe I am <gender>, and I demand you treat me as <gender>, and also demand that you also agree that I not only feel like <gender>, but that I actually am <gender>.”
Yeah, sorry no that isn’t how biology works. It’s also selfish and narcissistic to demand everyone else partake in your self perception. Demanding everyone use your “pronouns” is just as silly if I demanded that everyone use the adjectives “strong and handsome” when they refer to me because that is how I feel and perceive myself. Having my own adjectives is extremely pompous, and so is having your own pronouns. You can feel however you want that’s fine, but you don’t get demand every else in the world must take part in your self perception and compel their speech and behavior to do so.
Equating gender / identity phenomena with wanting to be considered "strong and handsome" is not very... charitable.
The whole pronoun thing is massively overblown from what I've seen. Very, very, very few people are asking for unusual pronouns. Calling someone "they / their" is not hard. I live in LA and only come across someone asking once or twice. It's not a big deal.
For what it is worth, I sort of agree with you on the unusual pronouns. I'm not sure what I would do if someone asked me to call them some pronoun I've never heard of. I'm usually pretty agreeable, so I would try to be polite. But it would probably weird me out a bit. However, I don't even know if I will ever face this scenario. I'm not too worried about it :)
I dont think it is a lie if everyone’s truth is “equal” but I also dont think my preferences should be able to control others speech, even though I personally don’t mind using preferred pronouns. Even if offense was intended, you don’t tend to get jail time for insulting someone.
We already do this in our every day life. If you talk to someone named Johnny and repeatedly call them John against their wishes (perhaps they just hate that shorthand name for whatever reason), you're likely going to get them to a point where it agitates them. And if you keep doing so at work it'll likely get you fired.
Your source is a site solely dedicated to anti-transgender propaganda. Every second headline on the front page is "transgender person commits crime". The headline for this article even invents the unwieldy term "Male Who Identifies as Female" so that it can avoid saying "Trans Woman," presumably because it would be too respectful of her.
I wasn't able to find a better source than this, presumably because "Man Jailed 21 Days, Fined For Harassing Woman In Street" isn't the kind of headline to make international news (and I don't speak Norwegian).
Transgenderism is the treatment to dysphoria. Dysphoria is a condition that is just as demonstrably provable as depression or any other mental illness.
If you were to wake up tomorrow in the wrong body you would also have dysphoria, and you would also try to treat that.
Humans are not some machines of perfect logical emotions and reasoning - you are no exception. On the contrary, it's narcissistic and selfish to think everyone has to be you, someone whom doesn't have dysphoria. That you are somehow the arbiter of what gender is. From what source is your knowledge based?
I used to think things were defined in books and by experts, turns out we know jack about humans, all we can really know is by experiencing them, and I can tell you first hand dysphoria is enough for good people to kill themselves. So, think on why that is, and look to the truth for an answer.
Saying transgenderism is the treatment to dysphoria is itself an extremely controversial statement and not one you can present as as a pillar of any argument. There is a contingent that _don't want_ anything other than transgenderism to be the solution to dysphoria, because it would put a lot of question marks over the accepted dogma.
This was previously on the WPATH Wikipedia page but has since been removed:
In 2021, WPATH's President-Elect, Marci Bowers called the association intolerant of dissenting opinions. She said, "There are definitely people who are trying to keep out anyone who doesn't absolutely buy the party line that everything should be affirming, and that there's no room for dissent."
It's not controversial, and the vast majority of transgender individuals belong to no orgs nor follow them. They're just people that are looking for solutions. There is always going to be political organizations using people and muddying the narrative for clout.
It's not a "treatment" at all. By definition a treatment (in this context) is:
`The use of an agent, procedure, or regimen, such as a drug, surgery, or exercise, in an attempt to cure or mitigate a disease, condition, or injury.`
Transgenderism is the rejection of any treatments, and an insistence there is no disease, condition, or injury.
> On the contrary, it's narcissistic and selfish to think everyone has to be you
I never claimed this. That said, if you want to have any useful discussions and dialog there has to be an agreement on things like definitions and facts. Otherwise communication is completely a useless endeavor.
> That you are somehow the arbiter of what gender is.
Again, never claimed I am somehow solely the arbiter or what gender is.
>From what source is your knowledge based?
From 1,000's of years of human history and language of people classifying biological sex. Also, just having common sense and the ability to do basic reasoning.
If you receive surgery to stop your back from hurting, is that not a treatment?
Transgenderism does not reject that there is a problem. It exists exactly because there's a problem it is resolving.
I'm going to make a number of assumptions.
1. Your ideas of transgender comes from fabricated ideas you've heard other people say.
2. You've never experienced what working with real humans is like, nor do you care to.
3. You didn't learn this topic before deciding to talk about it.
To have an honest conversation you have to do honest work to learn something. From what I see you have chosen to watch a few YouTube videos or sources that align with your pre conceived ideas. Therefore, you are not interested in being convinced.
If you're actually interested in learning the topic you're going to have to accept humans are different from you, feel things you don't, and have to live lives you do not. Look into why, be honest, and persue truth over whatever fancy you're having here.
> If you receive surgery to stop your back from hurting, is that not a treatment?
Yes that would be treatment. If you look back at the definition of a treatment you will see they are all things you do only to the affected individual. Treatments are directed inward to fix an issue with the self. Transgenderism, at least in its current form, is directed outward demanding everyone else prescribe to an ideology, that is not a treatment, that is tyranny.
> I'm going to make a number of assumptions.
Feel free to make all the assumptions you want about me. However, all the ones you have listed are 100% false.
> To have an honest conversation…
Seems to me your idea of an “honest conversation” is simply me siding with your point of view, anything less in your view is somehow “less than honest”. There doesn’t seem to be any room for disagreement in you definition of an “honest conversation”.
> From what I see you have chosen to watch a few YouTube videos or sources that align with your pre conceived ideas. Therefore, you are not interested in being convinced.
Now you are simply attacking my character and dismissing me rather than trying to dispute my arguments or engage in, as you put it, an honest conversation.
> If you're actually interested in learning the topic you're going to have to accept humans are different from you, feel things you don't, and have to live lives you do not.
I have never disputed that people can’t feel whatever the hell they want. That’s fine. I don’t expect, or even imagine, that anyones life experiences have been the same as mine. You are totally misrepresenting what I have argued.
Look the fundamental problem here is that the world, the universe, exists inside a framework, and we exist in that framework. We can manipulate it to some extent, but we aren’t gods. We cannot rewrite the framework. You don’t have to like the framework, but you can’t fundamentally change it either.
For example, someone paralyzed from the neck down may hate that they are paralyzed. They may wish with all their being that they weren’t paralyzed. They may feel that they are in the wrong body and that they should be in an abled body. And no doubt being paralyzed probably causes people to go through emotional hell. But reality isn’t going to change. Treatment is accepting reality, however fucking hard that may be, and playing the best hand you can with the cards that are dealt. Not demanding that you are able bodied, and asking the world to agree that you are able bodied because that is how you feel. And by no means am I ridiculing, or disparaging paralyzed people here. There are paralyzed people that have accomplished amazing things, and have done way more impressive things than I could ever hope to do. But those people didn’t, and never would have, accomplished those things if they refused to accept the cards they were dealt and instead became hyper focused on their disability and how it made them feel. No technology exists, yet anyway, that can change a persons XX chromosomes to XY, or vice versa. You might think that sucks, you might hate it, but it is the framework and reality that exists.
If your asking me to denounce that framework (reality), and enter into a delusion, then sorry but my answer is no.
"Look the fundamental problem here is that the world, the universe, exists inside a framework, and we exist in that framework. We can manipulate it to some extent, but we aren’t gods. We cannot rewrite the framework. You don’t have to like the framework, but you can’t fundamentally change it either."
This is a belief, not a fact. Delusion is where you use mental gymnastics to represent your beliefs as facts. Humans don't fit into frameworks, and you nor I know what those would be even if they do. Psychology, again, is a heavily flawed and infant science that can't treat the overwhelming majority of people.
Biology says nothing of how we as humans identify ourselves, it says nothing of sexuality. The deeper you look into biology you discover the core differences are almost entirely hormones. The science of biology is why we can transition our bodies, it does not prevent it.
Xy and xx chromosomes don't represent sex either. They're signals of what may be identifiable as man or woman but are not exclusive. When you look at the difference of male to female reproductive organs the core difference is a few genetic switches and hormones at an early stage. 8th grade science class on human body development is not representative of this more complicated reality.
Your framework is not based on reality, and you nor anyone else can claim they have a framework on human biology or psychology. That's not how science works. If you want actual answers look towards those that study genetics in relation to body development. We have more questions than answers.
>This is a belief, not a fact. Delusion is where you use mental gymnastics to represent your beliefs as facts. Humans don't fit into frameworks...
If you believe biology, and physics, etc. are not factual frameworks (which they are), then I am afraid there isn't much of a discourse or discussion here. Since we can't seem to agree on fundamental concepts.
>Biology says nothing of how we as humans identify ourselves
Agreed. And male and female are biological terms, that have absolutely nothing to do with how anyone identifies or feels.
> it says nothing of sexuality.
Incorrect, biology explains a lot about sex, namely how reproduction fundamentally works.
> Xy and xx chromosomes don't represent sex either.
Of course they do, that is the literal definition of male and female.
>Your framework is not based on reality, and you nor anyone else can claim they have a framework on human biology or psychology.
Unfortunately your framework is the one not based in reality. You are operating under a crazy assumption that biology is so complex that no one could possibly understand it, and we have so much more to learn! What you are actually doing is rejecting what science has known for 100's of years, and projecting yourself as some profound "deep" person who is able to see beyond what science has already settled.
>We have more questions than answers.
Agreed, there are so many unknown things in the universe, and things to discover, which is why its ridiculous to waste time disputing basic biology 101 things like "What is a male, and what is female" when this has been answered for 100's of years.
> We debate these things because some people say "I feel X" and others say "You aren't allowed to feel that way and here is how we will marginalize you for that".
Sounds like a straw man fallacy. Some people are saying "I feel like such and such", and the others are saying "you have a mental condition, let's seek medical treatment".
Being gay used to be considered a medical condition, but now everyone agrees that was a huge mistake. We should tread carefully here.
Maybe there are genuine disorders affecting some aspects of the less commonly found gender / identity phenomena. I'm not an expert. I don't know. I'm guessing you aren't either.
I'd prefer to error on the side of respecting the way someone feels if they aren't hurting anyone or imposing a large burden.
> Maybe there are genuine disorders affecting some aspects of the less commonly found gender / identity phenomena. I'm not an expert. I don't know. I'm guessing you aren't either.
You don't have to be an expert to see the parallels between this and any other fad we've seen before, such as hipsters and goths and emos and punks.
> I'd prefer to error on the side of respecting the way someone feels
We're witnessing postmodernism today, where everything is relative, and no absolute truths exist anymore. What you mentioned is a symptom of that way of thinking.
We have an intrinsic sense of morality by means of what Islam calls "Fitrah" - the natural disposition which God instilled in us. This is why people are naturally inclined to believe in The Creator. This does not mean that the Fitrah cannot be concealed and/or corrupted. A lot of society today still has remnants and fragments of Truths from the previous Messages. In the West, this manifests through the remnants of Truth from Judaism and Christianity, even though they have been corrupted, generally speaking.
Once we establish, through proof and evidence, the True message from God, then it is only rational to obey and submit (e.g. see https://www.provingislam.com/). What is wrong, or why something is wrong may not be immediately apparent to us. As long as God ordained it, we would be irrational not to obey.
This is one of many opinions. In a diverse society it’s better not to speak in absolutes, lest you fall for the relativistic trap of ‘there is no absolute truth except this sentence’.
I would say hormone blockers in prepubescent teens without parental consent is not treading lightly.
The de-transition community on reddit and Twitter can more concretely explain and show the harm being done under the desire to be blindly supportive and affirming.
Hormone blockers in prepubescent teens has been used for decades before transgender people had the option available. It was frequently used to treat people going through early puberty. We know how safe and effective they are because we have a whole body of scientific literature around people being on hormone blockers for 5-6+ years.
It's only as a result of the fear around transgender people that this is causing problems and, as usual, it also affects cisgender children because they issue blanket bans on treatments.
On a case by case basis, sure. However we are seeing a mass psychosis around trans identity in middle school. The rates of middle school girls identifying as something other than CIS are reaching levels as high as 40% in some school districts.
Maybe that is not a problem for some but that will be a problem for society in about a generation.
It's easy to look at all the forums where people regretted what they did. These fads are not reversible, and when people grow out of them, as many are, there will be ill effects on society.
Bluntly society exists to serve current and future generations. All future generations are predicated on a nuclear family. No significantly large human cultures without a basis around a nuclear family have survived from an evolutionary perspective.
For society to continue to exist it needs to primarily serve and be determined by people who meet, have kids, and form a nuclear family. While there are societies that do not do this they do not last more than a generation or two at the most.
While good societies should be inclusive and welcoming of non paired or alternative lifestyles they by definition need to remain alternative for society to continue to flourish or else the society dies as its members do.
We already have a birth rate below replacement rate. Societies where that is the trend typically do not last long either and have some fairly bad outcomes while they disappear.
Yeah I agree that hormone blockers in teens is not an action to take lightly (my understanding is that it is not reversible). I don’t have a ton of knowledge on it, but it seems we should be careful with that.
Note that there is no ethical way to determine if hormone blockers on children are nonreversible due to the known long term possible side effects of any medication.
The otherkin community does believe they are birds, and the overlap between them and trans people is likely quite high (specifically I claim that many more otherkin are trans than would be expected from non otherkin)
Same with furries but less extreme. Also lots of overlap.
That seems to be the stance most people take on these kind of things because they are such minefields, but its allowed trolls to basically walk all over society because of our collective fear of offending anyone.
See the "lemmywinks" south park episode from 20+ years ago.
Agreed. The intro to the article claims that few feminists hold positions that there is a difference in the experience of being biologically female vs identifying as female. I would disagree. From what I've observed, many believe there are differences but are tired of being shouted down and "canceled," so they stay quiet. This is especially a problem in women's sports, which has long been a strength for women but is now a hotbed of anger and infighting.
The mind of a person, in its authentic and self-aware form, has no gender. Any gender normative behaviour is imprinted by habit or selected by the subject by choice, because that's how they choose to identify.
This person then has two options: to not mind what body they have, because it's irrelevant to who they are; or to select to alter their body because they don't like it, or prefer the aesthetic properties of another body enough to make the alterations.
Analogy: imagine everyone is born and given a car. All the cars are identical in speed, economy and safety, but differ in terms of status and social stigmas attached to the badge on the hood.
When they're old enough to drive it, if they think philosophically about it, it's irrelevant what brand the car is, provided that it works, and we'll say for argument's sake that all the cars work.
However, plenty of people would pay to change their Skoda or Honda for a Mercedes or Tesla badge, and vice versa. This is because the brands have acquired a series of associations in the public consciousness -- Mercedes is associated with prestige, wealth and luxury; Honda with reliability, value for money, fuel economy, and so on.
Some of these associations are deliberate results of marketing and design, and some (in particular negative connotations regarding the drivers) have been earned through what are essentially memes.
Many people jokingly stereotype Mercedes and BMW drivers as assholes, and others stereotype drivers of Japanese or Korean cars as poor -- because they're not in a German luxury car, not because the Japanese and Korean manufacturers don't make expensive luxury cars.
Let's get back to bodies. Since you cannot currently swap your body for another one, and since it has yet to be determined conclusively that there is a neat Cartesian division between mind and body (evidence suggests that the contrary is true, and that the line between mind and body is pretty blurry), people must resort to paying for modifications to their body to acquire the looks they want.
The aesthetic construct of the body is obviously tightly coupled to the modifier-type person's sense of identity. It isn't simply that they want to be more beautiful, they want to feel more beautiful, and they want beauty to be a defining characteristic.
This may stem from abuse in their developing years teaching them that their looks are coupled to their identity (you're ugly so you aren't good enough to play with us) or it may simply be their nature -- this debate is volatile, but more importantly it is irrelevant.
Why is it irrelevant? Because it doesn't matter whether working to unwind the abuse to help people accept their natural body would reduce the popularity if plastic surgery or not, to try and make that judgement across the whole human race or indeed the subset that seeks out body alteration is both dangerous and not possible to do without misjudging someone. There are always outliers, people who get plastic surgery because they see no harm in it and just want something they see as an imperfection removed or corrected. And that's okay, it's every person's choice and no one should be made to answer for their choices in life provided that they didn't hurt anyone else in the process.
This simply covers cosmetic alteration, of course.
When coming to the question of gender re-assignment, it is not so much more complicated as it is more delicate. For starters, it's a bigger change that enlarging breasts or straightening noses.
And while philosophically it makes no difference to the authentic, self-aware person's mind, in reality it is the culmination of a decision in that person's mind to change gender (which may not simply be a desire to look different, but rather a way to visibly manifest and perhaps even justify/normalise their desire to behave in line with gender norms that oppose their biological gender.
Additionally, even if the person behaves no differen...
What is a woman? Some might answer that woman is a mother, a sister, a daughter, a protector and someone who needs protecting -- but if you generalise these to parent and child, you get a protector and a protectee without gender anyway. So that can't be it.
Like I said, the mind has no gender. If you genderise the mind, you're just falling back on, or forming new gender norms that aren't accurate and shouldn't be accurate.
The more interesting question is what is identity? If someone chooses to identify with effeminate behaviour, are they doing so authentically? Or because they like the way it encourages others to behave? Or because they like the way they think it encourages others to behave, even if it really doesn't?
In a perfect world, we would categorise nothing by gender. That residual primitivism exists even today with the toilet division thing. It's only because in our past humans were sexually predatory and remorseless for such behaviour that today it is deemed civilised to separate the genders, but if the species were truly civilised, that civility would speak for itself and we would just all piss in cubicles for the sake of privacy, or perhaps this would be optional. But we don't trust ourselves even now, and why would we? Most people I've met are driven by the same things that animals want. They want to eat, sleep and reproduce, have a decent nest, look better than the other animals and make sure their offspring are going to be good at all of the above.
I personally have no interest in any of these things. I'm most comfortable alone, speaking with others when I can be bothered, I sleep and eat out of necessity, and the only thing that really drives me is my desire to learn and master things, to understand the universe and its contents, and to write or create things with that knowledge. I care not for what I leave behind, when I am dead, my consciousness presumably dies too, and being conscious of things is what I truly take pleasure in, so I wish to learn of as much as possible before my death. There is no gender in this, but crucially, there's no gender in the instinctive desires to have children or to eat, to sleep or to have a nice warm secure home.
Genders are around because people were taught that there were two genders, and that each gender should behave a certain way because that's what was taught before. These behaviours were taught for a menagerie of reasons, some of which to guarantee that children will grow up behaving in a manner that would not offend a future mate, others to make sure that children would grow up being employable, and so on.
All of this is based on the same daft notion that the way you behave with respect to your reproductive organs somehow has any bearing on your ability to produce a child or be good at a job.
Gender is just BS. There is no female brain, and if there are differences in a brain from a woman compared to one from a man, they will be the result of thousands of years of stereotyping having a physiological/epigenetic manifestation.
You're understanding of biology is rather outdated. There are several X & Y chromosomal variations that are rather common but frequently undiagnosed. The X & Y Variations include 47, XXY OR Klinefelter Syndrome, 47, XYY (Jacob’s Syndrome) , 47, XXX (Triple X). There are also several variant disorders which include Tetrasomy X, Pentasomy X, 49, XXXX, 48, XXXY, 48, XXYY, and 49, XXXXY. So no, it's not quite simple.
Not outdated. The cases you mentioned are extremely extremely rare, and are indicative of physical ailments. The are no excuse to generalize across the population to attempt to redefine what "man" and "woman" mean. A child can tell you what a man and woman are.
Minorities still matter even if there aren't many of them. At what boundary does something being rare enough mean it's ok to not consider it a seperate form of sex?
We do not consider people who suffer from dwarfism a separate species, they are humans with a condition which limited their growth. People with Hypertrichosis are not seen as a separate species either, they are humans who show abnormal hair growth over their bodies. People with Syndactyly are just as human as those who do not have webbing between their fingers or toes.
In short, the presence of abnormal conditions does not create separate categories nor does it void existing categorisations, it just means that the individual who has that condition differs from the normal in some way.
Yeah but it's a matter of perspective. It's logical that the majority matters so much more, won't someone think of the majority? Majorities have rights, too
Exceptions to a rule are just that - exceptions. They don't refute the general rule.
I might draw a hand with a thumb and four fingers. The fact that some people are born with more or fewer fingers doesn't change the fact I drew a hand.
Lia Thomas has XY chromosomes, always has, has benefited from their advantages, and continues to do so.
Everyone knows DSDs exist, but most of the time they are brought into this debate, they are merely a rhetorical device rather than any real attempt to address the specific situation. One of my close relatives has Klinefelter's, and I can assure you he finds this sort of thing extremely upsetting.
I think he feels like a prop for someone else's agenda. Imagine living a long life with congenital issues that seriously impacted your physical development, made you infertile etc., then suddenly loads of people are talking about your condition. But it's rarely in order to benefit you, and very often just a sort of debating tactic, to advance the goals of XY people who don't share your condition at all and whose goals you disagree with. I would also find that upsetting.
I have a PhD in biology. You are wrong: the idea that human sex isn't essentially binary (with the usual rare edge cases of biology) is something that has been pushed by non-scientists with an ideological axe to grind; the essentially binary nature of human (and mammalian) sex is not something that mainstream researchers question in any significant numbers.
When actual scientists speak out, they get downvoted by the delusional who refuse to accept reality. Thank you for speaking up, and keep at it please. We live in a clown world today that is hanging on to the last remaining strands of sanity.
> Quite simple: a person with XX chromosomes. Or are people starting to deny biology now?
This is a really common response, and I do honestly empathise with it because for most people (me included most of the time) in everyday life there's not really any need to think about it too deeply. Like you said in another comment "A child can tell you what a man and woman are."
But can they? Or can they just point at people and guess, with about the same accuracy as you or me? They probably can't _actually_ tell you what a man and woman _are_ in any useful way any more than most grown-ups.
Like you agreed in that other comment too, there are some "extremely extremely rare" cases where a child would probably say they're a man or woman but their chromosones aren't what you'd expect.
That highlights that chromosones aren't really a deciding factor though right? The child isn't using chromosones when they decide, and I've never been asked about my chromosones, or heard of anyone else being asked about theirs outside of a hospital.
So to answer your question, I don't think anyone is denying biology, it's just that biology isn't as relevant as it might seem at first thought.
I can see your point here, but would argue that biology is the underlying reason that you don't have to think about it too much.
Think of it this way... in your lifetime of genuine interactions with people (e.g. conversations), how many XX people have you mistaken for XY people, and vice versa? For most people the answer is very close to zero, but why is that?
I would argue it's because billions of years of evolution (a biological process) have already helpfully trained us to detect even the tiniest differences between males and females. We have been a sexually dimorphic species for a very long time. And those differences (whether massive or tiny) are directed in large part by the chromosomes inside our trillions of somatic cells - skin, hair, bones, eyes, brain, etc. etc.
Also, for those rare cases you mention, the chromosomes often are a major deciding factor in how we do the classification, e.g. we might be confused about someone with a DSD because although they were "assigned female" since birth, they continue to show some male characteristics, due to the Y chromosome present in their organs, skeleton, etc. Surgeons can operate on genitals etc., but they can't alter all of the trillions of somatic cells in the body.z
> how many XX people have you mistaken for XY people, and vice versa?
I have no way to know, that's my point.
Most of us have a basic biology education to drawn on that allows us to look back and in hindsight say "The men I know probably have XY and the women XX chromosones" but it's never part of the process any of us actually use.
To me, chromosones just seem like a distraction. It promises to replace all of the messy, political, social uncertainty with a polite, clinical, objective answer if only everyone would realise it's just about the biology.
The trouble is, the biology can't seem to answer the questions that are the most contentious. I have no idea what my chromosones are in reality, but I know how I'd like to live my life and mostly there's no problem, no one checks, no one asks, and if they did, how would that knowledge justify overriding my autonomy?
Conflating genetic sex, with cultural identity, is the mistake being made here. One doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the other.
There are people who prefer a different outward expression of who they are. The underlying genetics are as important as your blood type. Useful for a doctor, irrelevant when choosing shoes.
The morphology, function, and complexity of the modern phone is such that it probably isn't even recognisable as a phone from even thirty years ago. The concept of what a phone is has gone through so many changes, from a device that sends audio down a physical line, to what it is today that very rarely even has a physical line attached, that it probably demonstrates how words and identity can evolve new meanings better than any other example you could have picked.
This is detracting from the point. Again, a child can tell you that a phone is not a washing machine, just like a child can tell you that a man is not a woman. Men and women have been the same as men and women from thousands of years ago. We did not magically change species or something.
Do physical conditions exist (XXY, XYY, etc) exist? Yes they do, but what we're seeing today is mass hysteria around a mental issue. What should be done is start looking at the underlying causes. Hormone imbalances? childhood trauma? Depression? Wanting out of the current lifestyle? Lack of religion? People with too much time on their hands that they start inventing problems? All these and more should be investigated
> just like a child can tell you that a man is not a woman. Men and women have been the same as men and women from thousands of years ago. We did not magically change species or something.
Ah. You have a very limited background. Right.
We have been the same species for thousands of years. And for thousands of years there have been male and female (sex) groups that have presented as men and women (gender), that is not the same as the one you might assign to them. (The galli priests of Rome, the Hijras of India, the khanith of Arabia, etc.)
And no... No, a child is not always able to tell them apart. Nor does a child, necessarily, instinctively call them either man or woman. If you were to ask a child of the Tiwi tribe what one of their ladyboys are, today, man or woman, they would answer "ladyboy". If you press the point - the child becomes confused. The ladyboys have been present in the Tiwi for roughly the last eight to ten thousand years or so ("kirrijamiyagirraga" in Tiwi). They are as much a part of the social fabric as man or woman. Tiwi is a gendered language, and has three genders (kirri - male, makirri - female, rraga - ladyboy), as well as a fourth tense that is used for gender-neutral terms (ramiya). And, well, if you assume that they're all genetic males, you'll get that wrong as well.
I'm very well aware of Arabian culture. khanith is a homosexual and/or effeminate male, and is heavily used as an insult today (almost like "fag" in english). It was never a "third gender" as you're trying to claim. So no, the entire basis is incorrect.
Repeat after me, there are two genders. Everything you described has one of two parts between their legs, barring physical ailments like intersex, which are extremely extremely rare.
> Repeat after me, there are two genders. Everything you described has one of two parts between their legs, barring physical ailments like intersex, which are extremely extremely rare.
As the Tiwi would say today (and have been saying for an order of magnitude longer than most nations have existed - about eight thousand years or so):
To roughly translate into English... "If you cannot see if it is a woman, nor a man, why must it be either?"
It loses a little bit of meaning, as it uses four genders and English is not a gendered language, but you can get the gist. (Naramiya is closer to "bear witness" or "absolutely determine" in a somewhat-legal sense. It's a stronger phrase than English really has.)
You are conflating the genetics of _sex_ with the cultural status of _gender_. No one is denying the genetics side. They have just managed to understand the difference between how one presents oneself, and something else that only their doctor need know.
Does it really matter what a woman is? Trans people just want to stop being discriminated against and have the same rights as everyone else.
When you start to introduce other moral issues like whether people under the age of 18 should be allowed to take medication that allows them to transition that's a much more debatable subject.
Who are we to say what people can / can't feel based on two chromosomes? Sure I have an XY chromosome but I'm not going to let that define every decision I make in life.
i think the more interesting questions are what is a women when adjudicating a rule involving who is a woman. it may even make sense to have multiple definitions of who a woman is depending on the rule. for example i don't think it makes sense for people who were previously men to compete in women sports when one of the main reasons for segregating women's sport is to protect them from competition from men who are biologically better at these sports. but that doesn't mean the same person should be excluded from being considered a woman when deciding some other rule.
people also seem to deliberately be conflating sex and gender. clearly a lot of 'rules' seem to be based on sex but then people will claim gender identity is fluid and then try to use gender identification to backdoor a rule that is based on sex.
I think sport is a a exemple on why gender is a bad measure.
Why are we doing separate competitions for men and women? Because men have physical differences that give them a significant advantage on many sports. For simplicity purpose I will assume this is only because they generate more testosterone though I'm sure it's more complicated.
So people generating more testosterone have a significant advantage on sports. Why should then we care wether they are men or women, whatever that means? A good illustration of this are women who have hyperandrogenism, who are, ironically, sometimes excluded from competing in women competitions because of the unfair advance their high testosterone give them compared to other women, even though they are biological women. I'm sure some men have low level of testosterone compared to the "standard" level of most men, which would give them an unfair disadvantage in men competitions.
So my question is, why, rather than doing men/women competitions, don't we do high/low testosterone competition, regardless of the gender?
After countless female leads in fighting roles pushed in agenda based Hollywood brainwashing, and the era of immense sociopolitical pressure to push the 'women can do anything' line, perhaps the answer is just don't segregate.
Instead of the subjectivity, remove all the segregation and let reality sort it out.
Would certainly clear up a lot of cognitive dissonance.
Yes, teenage boys (even 13 and 14 year olds) frequently beat female world records. In almost all athletic sports, a "combined" Olympics would have no female participants at all.
This is why women fought for sex segregation in the first place.
And that is why I advocate that we remove all divisions from sports. Allow all doping and body modifications. And either allow all or ban all equipment, including clothing. Let us achieve best possible results.
The advantages of male puberty and the Y chromosome extend far beyond testosterone.
It's also irrelevant how much testosterone a person produces today. You can reduce the testosterone levels of a Michael Phelps type to female levels (though it would ruin his health), yet he would retain insurmountable advantages over every woman who has ever been born on this planet.
My point is that you can’t reverse all the advantages of the years of previous testosterone (i.e. male puberty) just by cutting today‘s testosterone levels. You can make that person perform worse than other males, sure, but it’s not enough to reach a level playing field with females. There may be exceptions for specific sports - I’m talking about the general case, which is what we base policies on.
In general you also can’t give a female athlete sufficient testosterone to counteract the absence of male puberty and make them competitive with men. You can make them better than non-doping women, sure, but it’s not enough to reach the level of post puberty males, and the more you give the worse the impact on their health. The GDR already ran that experiment.
Sure, the testosterone level was just a simplification as I said. Whatever measurable thing that give an advantage would work. For example the muscular mass, I don't know. Whatever the past, there is always something different now that gives the advantage for the current race.
We do segregate many sports on other dimensions, e.g. by weight in boxing.
The problem with trying to do something like that across the sexes is that the performance gap between elite men and elite women (i.e. those at the top of their statistical distributions) is so large in so many sports (even when controlling for height or weight).
For example, a large number of amateur men who are well under 6 feet tall can dunk a basketball (and Spud Webb was 5 foot 7!), but it's remarkable to find even a professional female player of the same height who could do this. Similarly being tackled by an 85kg male rugby player is a whole other universe of pain compared to being tackled by an 85kg female. Anybody who knows sports can find similar examples. It’s not about testosterone or some other individual item - it’s the whole complex biological organism acting in concert. When you are working with so many dimensions and those are also interacting in real time, it is very hard to divide things into "fair" categories.
Because of these issues, women fought very hard for (and won) the right to have their own competitions, free of male competitors.
For more examples, see https://boysvswomen.com/#/. If Olympic events were mixed sex, most events would have no female competitors at all. Teenage boys routinely beat female world records.
I don’t understand why this is being posted now, nor why it’s trending. There are far more up-to-date sources to be found. Human rights should not be a debate
Almost by definition a “human right” is debated because it’s based on time and culture. It used to mean the right to be alive, then freedom from slavery was added, then access to food.
Shelter isn’t even an established right, what makes you think wanting to be treated differently from how you used to be would be?
What about access to sex? Internet? A car? Mass transit?
A British former TV writer who became a very prominent transphobe years ago was just interviewed and claims to have had his life ruined as a consequence of publicly vilifying a vulnerable segment of society. Be prepared for a new wave of anti-trans sentiment wherever you get your content as new people take up his ridiculous crusade.
His life is ruined because of how he is online, as much as what his crusade was. While most people who spoke up for sex-based rights "buttoned it" when they were piled on and called TERFs, he decided the only way to clear his name was to fight the battle, but he found himself without many allies because he can be so toxic. He drove away his own friends and called people out on Twitter for not backing him up.
However, while I say "this is as much about him as it is about his crusade", he behaved the same way during the Irish abortion campaign (he was for abortion rights btw) and Gamergate. The reason he wasn't "ruined" back then was because the trans rights issue is far more toxic. Nobody is allowed question the current narrative.
The idea that 'no one is allowed to question the current narrative' is rather absurd, considering I live in a state which has openly investigated and harassed families with transgender kids.
The reason why the debate is 'far more toxic' is because there are places which are outright attacking and removing rights of transgender individuals. Naturally this means people are going to be far more defensive because they don't want to be marked as less-than-human.
Again, this is objectively false. I live in a state which has been actively removing the rights of and harassing transgender individuals. This is not something that's up for debate.
To say that 'nobody is removing rights for those who want to live as the other sex' is to deny reality.
What state, and which rights are being removed? Give us some pointers to the laws related to those rights which are being removed. If you can show proof that men and women who want to live as the opposite sex are granted fewer rights than others I will concede your point.
I think this all very much depends on where you live.
For example, the UK only introduced the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, and that law still stands. The UK doesn't have self-ID, but there are plans to update the GRA to include it. This is very much in line with what trans activists want.
The problem with self-ID is that it necessarily clashes with existing sex-based protections in the Equality Act, and whether you agree with women's rights or trans rights or both, these contradictions need to be discussed. The problem is that the discussion is enough to get you piled-on, blocked, fired etc.
First, Katy is trans, so where trans rights clash with female sex-based rights, I would assume that Katy is firmly on the trans side. Before using this article as the conversation-ender you think it is, go and steel-man the opposition before you claim that their fears are "at best, overblown"
Second, this article compares being trans with being gay. They're two different things entirely. The only "right" gay people wanted, above being left alone, was equality in law: the right to get married. Gay marriage ask nothing of us. But trans rights asks for something: to believe, and act as if we believe, the reality inside someone else's head, even if it conflicts with our own senses. Personally, I'm fine with that. I'm a married man, long gone from the dating pool. But let's say a woman is about to enter a private space to get undressed and she sees someone that she percieves to be male, but that person says "I am a woman and you must treat me in all respects as if I am a woman". Does that affect her? I would say yes, because she must override the powerful urge to protect her personal safety. Remember, according to this very article, the trans woman in the changing room doesn't need to have undergone surgery, taken hormones or obtained a Gender Recognition Cert. They may look absolutely male while undressed. So this woman must disbelieve her eyes and ignore the inner voice warning her of a possible risk.
On the one hand we tell women to be careful and avoid risks, choose a safe route home, carry pepper spray etc. But when they refuse to get completely naked in a room with someone who looks like "a male stranger"? Bigot!
Third, the article effectively says "look, it's not big deal anyway because you don't even need hormones/op/GRC to change the sex marker on you ID, change sports category, enter the spaces provided for the opposite sex or even have your crimes recorded as being committed by the opposite sex". So... Give us self-id because we effectively have it anyway? That doesn't work, particularly if a lot of people are opposed to it.
Certain trans rights clash with certain female sex-based protections, and many women are only finding out about it when they read stuff like this [1] in the newspapers. Of course they're pissed. This problem isn't going away. It needs to be worked out.
> Second, this article compares being trans with being gay. They're two different things entirely. The only "right" gay people wanted, above being left alone, was equality in law
Presenting this as a difference is a lie. There is no difference. Trans people only want to be left alone and to have equality in the law. (No, misgendering does not qualify as leaving them alone.)
You can solve all of these situations by treating the transgender woman the same way one would treat a cisgender woman in that situation. Nobody is obligated to be comfortable undressing in front of a trans woman, in the same way they are not obligated to be comfortable undressing in front of a cis woman. Nobody's going to call them a bigot just for not being comfortable getting naked in front of a stranger.
Transgender people are liable to get beaten for using the changing room or restroom, so many try to avoid public changing rooms anyways.
> So... Give us self-id because we effectively have it anyway? That doesn't work, particularly if a lot of people are opposed to it.
No, it's more like "Give us self-ID because it will help us, and all the reason anyone will give to oppose it are false." This is what the article is about. It will help them get married with the correct name on the certificate, along with some other boring administrative things, which, like gay marriage, asks absolutely nothing of you. It is entirely irrelevant to your example with changing rooms. The hospital example, which is mostly behind a paywall, seems more to do with a horribly sexist notion popular in Britain that a woman cannot commit rape than with the gender of any parties involved. (Note that I am referring to "rape", not "things that British law would consider rape", which is also subject to this notion.) In any case, it too has nothing to do with GRA reform.
What even is a "sex-based right" anyways? Most legal civil rights are equality rights, which apply to everyone equally.
It shocks me how many low-quality, misinformed comments are allowed to stay in this thread. It’s not hard to understand the difference of gender vs. sex. People think it’s fine to publicly harass and harm someone because their existence confuses them. Language like this is why I have friends who can’t step out the house to do something as simple as grocery shopping without something humiliating happening to them. It wasn’t nearly this bad before, and it’s getting worse as this topic becomes more heated. There is a terrible war happening right now, but people are instead obsessed with making others feel as ashamed as possible for their existence.
I think a lot of us on the terf side of the debate have no intention of publicly harassing or harming anyone. We just don't think trans women are the same as women, and the differences ought to be respected by sports, family locker rooms, etc.
Leaving aside the question of sports, do you really not see how banning someone who looks feminine from women's restrooms would cause awkwardness or discomfort for that person? If a transgender women is being abused by her male partner, you think that she should be barred from any women's resources or support groups even though she is going through the very situation that these resources were designed for?
Also, what about trans men. Do you feel comfortable with a bunch of bearded men with deep voices in the women's facilities? Or, do you instead think by some sort of double standard that trans men are men but trans women are not women?
I'm sorry, but unless you can answer these questions reasonably then your claim that you have no intention of harming anyone doesn't hold up.
That must be so frustrating for those women who now see that they have no chance due to genetics. I'm surprised that having male bone density isn't considered "doping" if you compete as a female.
Isn't there always going to be someone better due to genetics? As a cis man, I know that even if I trained 24/7 with the world's best trainers, I'd never be as good a runner as some Kenyan dude or as good a basketball player as a tall and lanky dude. I have no chance due to genetics, even though I have a male body.
It's not like humans were made equally. Each body has genetic advantages and disadvantages, and your early childhood nutrition permanently changes your athletic potential too. You can't exactly level the playing field to begin with.
Why don't these sports have brackets instead of gender divides? Is a biological man/woman divide really the most useful distinguisher between athletes?
I guess for context, I just don't get the brouhaha. I am fairly active and tremendously enjoy several sports, even though I'm no good at them despite years of training and effort. A large part of it may be genetics. These are just hobbies and games.
Professionally, doing what I do for work, I'm also mediocre at best. There are people more intelligent than me, better communicators than me, more ambitious than me, more focused than me. Some of that is genetics too, though harder to tease apart.
So what? We don't know the upper limits of human potential, especially the environmental and epigenetic contributors that keep producing better and better athletes and thinkers. We're not static chess pieces with finite moves, but constantly evolving animals whose body plans keep adapting to new conditions as they arise and work to our advantage.
You can slice and dice a million humans into subgroups and there are always going to be statistical clumps, much of which is genetic. But so what? Why is that such a big deal for concern?
If the goal is to tease out the absolute best, only a no holds barred competition (with or without doping) can reveal that, and the competitors will likely get better over time. Anything else is just a handicap made for spectacle and entertainment, so why does it matter HOW you bracket? Why is the sex bracketing more important than race or weight or height or mental ability or leg strength or whatever other distinguisher? Humans never were equal to begin with.
People have been worrying about trans women in athletics for the last fifty years and the discourse against them competing has never changed. Underlying all the arguments is the belief that trans women are not women. A cis woman who is stronger, bigger, and faster than her peers is never called out for the circumstances of her birth and upbringing that allowed it to happen. But the circumstances of a trans woman's birth and upbringing is a matter of controversy instead of being a normal variation. If Lia Thomas was a cis woman with the same physical capabilities she does now, nobody would care.
Yeah, I understand there is that controversy (should newcomers with different bodies be able to displace old timers)... and presumably there isn't as much controversy about trans men who can't perform as well as cis men?
But what I don't get is why women's brackets are so much more important than, say, racial or height or any other brackets.
As a cluster, are "people born with vaginas" more similar in athletic ability than "people born of a certain ethnicity" or "people who reliably ate at last 1500 calories a day" or whatever.
Presumably this goes the other way too, with cis women being better at ultra endurance sports than cis men. So what?
Like isn't the whole point of brackets to give lesser athletes a moment to shine in the spotlight, even though they aren't technically the best? So why don't they just make more brackets not based on genitalia?
Underlying everything is the science that says that a person who goes through puberty as a male gets permanent increases in bone and muscle density over people who go through puberty as a female.
In day to day life this ends up washing out in a sea of averages and individuals. In competitive sports, on the other hand, where we're no longer talking about averages but about peaks of performance, peak performers that experienced male puberty will always outperform peak performers that experienced female puberty. The advantage does not go away with hormone therapies, either. You'd get the same controversy if you let heavyweight boxers identify as welterweights too.
Many sports have handicapping systems that restrict or normalize natural advantages to allow fair competition. In track and field, for example, the most basic of these was the male-female split.
Lia Thomas is cheating the handicapping system. It's not fair.
No, it’s very different. We’re not talking about 90%+ of women, we’re talking about the women who previously held records, who now can no longer compete because we’ve expanded the definition of “woman” to include anyone who claims to be one.
We used to separate men and women in sports exactly so this wouldn’t happen. Now, you have no chance unless you are born male.
So by your own argument, are Caster Semenya or Christine Mboma not women? In the fear around transgender individuals competing and somehow dominating all records (which is a small amount of an even smaller minority) you end up outright excluding cisgender women because they don't fit your increasingly narrow idea of what a woman is supposed to be.
Those cases are different and you know it. The athlete mentioned above is Lia Thomas. From wikipedia:
> In the 2018–2019 season she was, when competing in the men's team, ranked 554 in the 200 freestyle, 65 in the 500 freestyle, and 32 in the 1650 freestyle. In the 2021–2022 season, those ranks are now, when competing in the women's team, 5 in the 200 freestyle, first in the 500 freestyle, and eight in the 1650 freestyle.
How am I excluding cisgender women? I am arguing that forcing cis women to compete against trans women, who have the undeniable advantage of being born with a male body, is unfair. Athletics are separated by sex because, as a rule, men are just bigger and stronger than women. Like another commenter pointed out, if we remove this separation, 99% of female athletes would no longer be able to compete.
I brought up examples of women who were born with an undeniable advantage. They are faster and stronger than most other women because of their genetics. Should they be not considered women? Should they have to compete in their own bracket? Saying that it's 'different' isn't much of an argument.
I bring this up because part of the problem was transgender fears is what fuels the discrimination those individuals face despite being cisgender women.
If your answer is 'it's complicated' then you're admitting that defining what is and isn't a woman is more complicated than how it seems. The majority of transgender women competing in these sports do not break records or anything of the sort.
If we start to limit who can enter women's competitions based on traits, should we do same with males too? Like maybe not allow above average height players in basketball, to make more even field?
> are Caster Semenya or Christine Mboma not women?
My apologies for posting under a shitty throwaway, but fyi, the two athletes you mentioned are XY and thus not women by the simplest and most straightforward of definitions.
It is a very common position that they should be excluded from women's sports. In fact, the fact that all three medalists in the women's 800m at the 2016 Olympics have XY chromosomes is a very strong argument for doing so!
I'm with you on that reasoning, but it is worth noting that were we to drop the gender segregation in athletics then many female athletes lose their careers. It is easy to see why that's a concern for them, even if you don't agree that it is a good reason to keep the segregation.
I think you ought to tell the women who beat her that they had no chance of beating her.
In the NCAA Division I Women's Championship, she competed in the 100 yard, 200 yard, and 500 yard Freestyle events. She won only the last of those. This makes sense, as pre-transition, the longer freestyle events were her best ones.
Human Rights were made by humans. They are not natural, nor given by god. They emerged from the suffering of people and debates. Thus, we MUST debate them, especially when new aspect appear, and we must adapt our views to a new world.
And debates also serve for learning. People learn the reasoning, the history and the deeper implications of something through debate. And regarding human rights this today is more than necessary. Just look at how the peoples are acting today, on social networks, twitter, in debates. They all know the humans rights and take them for granted, yet openly violate and break them, because they don't understand them and just focus on their own single-minded ideology. Especially in the last two years with the pandemia and now the war this became very visible.
Thus, we do need far more debates about those things again. Every generation need to debate it anew to understand it.
Changing entire social norms to include a very small population will only lead to problems.
Accepting trangenders for who they are is a much better strategy in the long run. Why are they so keen on fitting into existing definitions, social norms and binary gender tropes when they are not the same? It's absolotely ridiculous.
> But, if that’s true, why would men demote themselves to womanhood? For reasons of sexual fetishism, says Jeffreys
i just looked up some stats on trans death. it was hard to get a good international life expectancy source; most seem to peg it at about 32-40, or half the general population's. i did definitively find that 2 in 5 living american trans people self-report attempted suicide. must be quite the fetish, Sheila.
the paradox of tolerance: tolerating bigotry replaces your alienated userbase with bigots until it stops couching itself in virtuous newyorker articles.
the article that you linked is trying to debug the US life expectancy claim. i specifically wrote "international". your own article cites a (quite thorough! better than i found on short notice) analysis in latin america estimating the number between 30-35 as its 772nd citation...
Because it's a comment consisting of only four words that adds nothing to the discussion, and has little to do with the article? Or maybe it's because the evil SJW lobby has infiltrated Hacker News. It seems more reasonable to assume the former.
As the saying goes: keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out.
The more that things are discussed, analysed, out-analysed, over-analysed, the more they devolve into a cacophony of views. Particularly with hot-button topics such as this, there are many people pushing an agenda rather than trying to arrive at the truth. We are living in an age of moral relativism with the bleating of a thousand views, but no guiding principals to sort the wheat from the chaff. In the end, all we can do is throw our hands up and declare all views are right, and all views are wrong.
As your first paragraph alludes, logic is a good test for what is actually wrong and should be pushed back on. That includes detecting those agenda driven drivels!
I would suggest that declaring all views to be right and all views to be wrong is indistinguishable from your brain having fallen out. We can do better.
Libertarians where too focused on Right Authoritarians we got flanked by Left Authoritarians and never saw it coming,
the problem now is too many liberty minded people are see the Right Authoritarians as allies to the cause of liberty making the same mistake as the 90's when we allied with left authoritarians to put down the right.
Enemy of my Enemy of my friend is ALWAYS terrible doctrine
Hollywood was changing in the 90's but it was very mixed then, more balanced. that was a time where Congress was holding hearings on Violence in Video Games, and wanting to ban pornography and other things like that.
Academia was similar, left for sure, but libertarian left
The Right was very much the authoritarian "side" of politics in the 90, started to change in 00's. then in 2016 Trump drove the Left right into Full blown totalitarian frenzy
”As members see it, a person born with male privilege can no more shed it through surgery than a white person can claim an African-American identity simply by darkening his or her skin.”
Gotta admit I find it hard to disagree with this, even if I usually disagree with extremist ideological groups.
How is that the same though? They're comparing privilege to identity. Two different things. "Male Privilege" is based on the fact that society treats you differently as a male than as a female. Not because you're born with some innate power that you collect once at birth and can never give away. This is why a surgery CAN shed male privilege. Maybe not all of what benefits you've accumulated this far, but you may have many years on this earth left afterwards which would not include that "privilege" anymore.
Isn't skin color based privilege the same though? If someone darkens their skin so everyone perceives them as black instead of white, then that person lost their privileges of that point forth.
White privilege is very much a treatment by society. Racism and sexism are both enacted upon by people based on social norms.
The overarching phenomenon is ‘dominant privilege’. In a gender studies program certain people have privilege. In Japan certain people have privilege, within a ghetto certain people have privilege, within Fortune 500s certain people have privilege.
However people mainly focus on certain dominant groups in select socio economic areas of the US. But this phenomenon is found everywhere.
I can disagree. someone that decides to be a different gender than what his appearance dictates is definitely similar to someone that takes up the african culture even though his appearance dictates differently. it’s not the surgery that makes one transgender, they were transgender before and they chose the surgery to minimize the contradiction between identity and body
The point is not that they are not entitled to their chosen identity, but that they should be more sensitive to issues that go beyond the identity and not try to suddenly magically become part of it. Nobody will forbid a white man to use ghetto clothes, but if he suddenly starts to act like he is suffering with racism, that will sound weird. If trans people can’t understand and empathize with the fact that they did not experience the prejudice before, and have the common sense to stay out of the specific issue, then sorry but they are the ones being insensitive and screwing their own chosen ”equals”.
If person can force everyone around them to acknowledge the gender of their preference. Why can’t I force people to acknowledge the race or age of my choosing?
Age is literally just a fact AND people try to identify as different ages all the time, but the race question is interesting.
It seems to me the ultimate goal should be to greatly minimize the differences between sexes and races (drop the traditional, ignorant differentiations we’ve created) and then the urge to identify differently to your physical expression may subside.
If you acknowledge that there is discrimination towards transgender people then you acknowledge that transgender people have a lot to lose by outing themselves to the world.
I'm not here to say that transgender discrimination = discrimination women encounter based on their gender, and I don't believe that the argument that transgender people are making either. Instead, why not look at transgender people as a newly oppressed group that encounter entirely distinct issues?
Transgender people understand that they have not grown up with the same experiences as a natural born Woman, and they do not claim to be able to speak for Woman's experiences in that sense. So all they are asking for is to be recognized as legitimate people and to not be seen as suicidal, depressed, mentally ill people.
I respectfully disagree. They are asking for us to believe that “trans women are women” with absolutely no wiggle room (e.g. collegiate sports). I thought there was wiggle room, but alas…
You have a good point and I basically agree with it 100%. I don’t think any feminist would disagree that transgender people have their own issues to deal with. What they want is to make sure different things are treated differently, and I think it’s reasonable.
I think this is dead wrong, actually. There are a lot of minorities who adopt certain styles, language, or even names, precisely as a way to fit in better with the (in America, white) majority. I am white, but I was born in a rural area where people have a distinctive accent. Growing up, I was told by some teachers that we needed to shed the accent and adopt a more conventional way of speaking so that people wouldn't look down on us. One teacher even shared his own experience of intentionally modifying his voice in college so that he would get more respect.
If a person modifies their methods of speech to better match a different identity group, for whatever reason, would they not begin to receive the level of privilege, or lack thereof, associated with the other identity group?
Now I agree that a person can't claim an "African-American identity" just by changing their skin, that seems wrong. However, if a person looks "black" then they will be treated by society like they are black, so they have to some degree shed white privilege. In the case of Rachel Dolezal, this actually worked to her benefit because of the social justice circles she was in, at least until she was unmasked. The way others treat you is related to the way others perceive your identity, not the "census definition" of your identity.
Trans women often look completely feminine. In that case, a stranger would treat them as a women, unless said stranger knew of their sex. What is privilege, if not the sum of the ways in which other individuals treat you? So, these trans women do not have male privilege, at least going forward.
Sometimes, trans women don't look feminine. They are visibly transgender. In that case, they are probably not being treated like women. However, it's glaring obvious that openly transgender people aren't treated very well by society at large. If you don't believe this, then try an experiment. Wear a wig and a dress (if you're male), or a get a haircut and "he/him" pronoun badge (if you're female), and spend some time hanging out in public spaces. Be sure to visit the bathroom. I think you'll find out pretty quickly the type of abuse that trans people face daily.
So, if openly trans people are treated badly, perhaps even worse than women, then logically they have less privilege. The radical feminist objection that they retain male privilege makes no sense.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadNobody fits their gender norms perfectly. No culture has identical gender norms. Even physiologically chromosomes are more nuanced than X and Y.
And then there are also the gazillion of traumatized people who just fight against those who abuse them, whether it's justified or not, whether they hit the right target or the wrong one.
It's all not that simple...
(Similar to the question of: if people claim gender is a social construct how can someone be the wrong one?)
I think the solution is nothing new, it relies on going back to teaching a classical liberal definition of tolerance and the objective morality of empathy and compassion. No need to reinvent the wheel.
What percent of male sexual offenders will sexually assault women, vs the general female prison population assaulting women?
You are literally locking foxes with the hens.
On a sidenote, your excusing away of this behaviour under the guise of "it happens anyway" is ridiculous. I wonder under what prison in the world assault and violence is a solved problem. Oh, complete isolation prisons I guess.
We literally house women who've sexually assaulted women with other women, and men who've sexually assaulted men with other men.
> On a sidenote, your excusing away of this behaviour under the guise of "it happens anyway" is ridiculous.
I am not excusing the behavior, rather the opposite: I'm saying that we shouldn't allow sexual assault in prison period. Ever. I think it is ridiculous that we accept it at all.
And We don’t accept it. That’s not why it happens. It happens because it’s not possible to prevent it.
You clearly have some utopian vision of humanity but the reality is different.
Unfortunately like most things our desires eclipse our capabilities and/or resources.
Besides which, I reject the notion that we cannot do a better job prevent sexual assault in prison. In the US at least, prison conditions are horrifically bad because a significant portion of the population likes it that way. We're a cheap, vengeful, petty people on the whole.
Yes, we can't make it perfect. So what? Perfect is the enemy of good. I think we would be better served by dealing with the problem of prison's high incidence of sexual assault in general instead of just this one narrow case.
The whole thing is obvious right-wing outrage trolling. Yes, before someone says it, the left does outrage trolling too.
Read Utah's Republican governor's letter on his veto of an anti-trans bill: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/read-utah-governors-...
TL;DR: I am vetoing this because it's pointless theatrics that could hurt people.
I must also add that this is a tiny percentage of people here. Even if (hypothetically) this is not a good thing, it's not going to cause the (rolls eyes) collapse of Western civilization.
A nuclear war on the other hand could destroy Western civilization. I hear one of the extreme right's favorite strongman buffoons is threatening such a thing right now.
"arms race heats up just as china reveals space nukes america responds with trans admiral"
https://babylonbee.com/news/arms-race-heats-up-just-as-china...
This particular joke isn't funny because if the story were real it would be badass. The USA could put nukes in space in a heartbeat. We even have a fucking space force. We could put tons of nukes in space with giant reusable stainless steel rockets. That would give us transsexual admirals commanding 1950s-style sci-fi shiny rockets full of nuclear space missiles, which would totally badass.
It would be the ultimate nightmare vision of the evil liberal industrial rational West's Kali Yuga vaporizing the brave strongman soldiers of Traditionalism. Take that Dugin! Take that Putin-on-a-horse!
Even worse... make the atomic trans space admiral Jewish...
It's showing that the priorities of pushing identity politics down everyone's throat is soo out of perspective. Identity politics driven agenda's are such a idiosyncratic luxury that's only possible because of serious people doing serious things.
The serious things are what matter, the out of perspective moral outrage over LESS important things is so overblown. The silent majority is sick of it, totally sick of it.
Civilization is frivolous. This conversation is frivolous. Culture of any kind is only possible because of "serious people doing serious things." Farmers stop farming and power plants shut down and most people will stop writing novels, making films, playing music, or yes debating the edge cases of social norms like gender. Unless you code for power, farming, or health care applications you'd probably stop coding too.
The right only invokes this "get serious" line when it's something they personally think is unnecessary, ignoring the fact that 90% of what they do is also unnecessary.
The bigger and wealthier civilization gets the more frivolous things it will produce. Pretty soon we'll be spewing rocket ships to the Moon and Mars, which are really damn frivolous over any time scale that matters to any living person.
Also I'm sure for people who strongly feel that they are gender-atypical this is a serious issue. There's an article somewhere about someone who posed as trans for a week to gonzo-report on just how shitty trans people are treated.
Edit: you can do your own experiment in the frivolity of "identity politics." Find a stock photo of a cute girl and pose as her in programming forums for a week or two. Hope you like weird and inappropriate come-ons, lewd messages, and a 50/50 split between people pretending to hang on your every word and people ignoring your opinion. I have never dealt with any of that shit as a white male programmer but I've heard loads of stories.
I do get the concern about trans women in womens' sports. As far as I know that is the only "edge case" where the people pushing back on trans rights have an actual point. The rest of it is pure moral outrage trolling and obsessing over things other people are doing that don't impact you. There is no other job or activity I can think of where this matters. The outrage over it is as stupid as the outrage over plastic straws.
should add a ‘to me’ at the end. It’s extremely popular.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/01/22/as-christ...
Realizing that one is in a bubble that has definitions of what is and is not funny is the first step to understanding a neighbor :)
It's up to you, but you have a choice between either letting go of this idea, or continuing to hold slightly wrong beliefs. (I am a scientist, but this is not my specific area of expertise)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the...
https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome
> According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary—their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions—known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs)—often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD.
Nor is it only XXY which is the issue:
> For many years, scientists believed that female development was the default programme, and that male development was actively switched on by the presence of a particular gene on the Y chromosome. In 1990, researchers made headlines when they uncovered the identity of this gene, which they called SRY. Just by itself, this gene can switch the gonad from ovarian to testicular development. For example, XX individuals who carry a fragment of the Y chromosome that contains SRY develop as males. ...
> The gonad is not the only source of diversity in sex. A number of DSDs are caused by changes in the machinery that responds to hormonal signals from the gonads and other glands. Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, or CAIS, for example, arises when a person's cells are deaf to male sex hormones, usually because the receptors that respond to the hormones are not working. People with CAIS have Y chromosomes and internal testes, but their external genitalia are female, and they develop as females at puberty.
Noting "But they are rare—affecting about 1 in 4,500 people." (The "some form of" is for a wide range of issues, like "surgeons reported that they had been operating on a hernia in a man, when they discovered that he had a womb. The man was 70, and had fathered four children.")
Respectfully, you're talking to a scientist, and as such I do have some passing familiarity with "the whole body of literature" or, perhaps more pertinently, the scientific consensus roughly speaking.
The article I shared, while an editorial, is representative of the scientific consensus. Not only that, but it is a reprint of an editorial (a well-referenced, well-cited, well-received and not particularly scientifically controversial one, mind you) which was first published in Nature [1], basically one of the most respected scientific journals: I just don't think it's reasonable for you, without doubt a non-expert, to dismiss it as an "activist" piece of rhetoric. The author is a perfectly respectable science journalist with a PhD in developmental biology, and no particular "activist" agenda. [2]
I don't have any skin in this game: I am a cisgendered heterosexual male, and I honestly don't care either way. I'm just a super curious guy who cares about edge cases, and how society accommodates (or possibly fails to accommodate) these edge cases. I don't know who you are, but you've taken your layman's "common sense" and gone on a mini comment crusade to try to persuade the world that things are simpler than they really are, and I also find that interesting.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/518288a
[2] http://claireainsworth.com/about
> Unfortunately, it just is not that simple.
Unfortunately, it probably is that simple:
https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome:
> Klinefelter syndrome is a genetic condition in which a boy is born with an extra X chromosome. Instead of the typical XY chromosomes in men, they have XXY, so this condition is sometimes called XXY syndrome.
> Men with Klinefelter usually don’t know they have it until they run into problems trying to have a child.
When people say things like "males have XY chromosomes," it's a somewhat fuzzy shorthand for the idea that "maleness" is determined by the natural progression of certain biological processes. That those processes can rarely take a few unusual twists and turns to get to that phenotype doesn't invalidate the core idea.
And I wasn't exclusively referring to it either. My point there's a legitimate idea there that isn't undermined by slight fuzziness or technical imprecision in layman definitions.
This isn't a perfect analogy, but Wikipedia has red as light with a wavelength of 625–750nm [1]. A lot of these discussions are a lot like trying to undermine the concept of red itself by noting that 624nm light exists.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum#Spectral_colo...
Even more recently, the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, Nature, published an editorial claiming that classifying people’s sex “on the basis of anatomy or genetics should be abandoned” and “has no basis in science” and that “the research and medical community now sees sex as more complex than male and female.” In the Nature article, the motive is stated clearly enough: acknowledging the reality of biological sex will “undermine efforts to reduce discrimination against transgender people and those who do not fall into the binary categories of male or female.” But while there is evidence for the fluidity of sex in many organisms, this is simply not the case in humans. We can acknowledge the existence of very rare cases in humans where sex is ambiguous, but this does not negate the reality that sex in humans is functionally binary. These editorials are nothing more than a form of politically motivated, scientific sophistry.
The formula for each of these articles is straightforward. First, they list a multitude of intersex conditions. Second, they detail the genes, hormones, and complex developmental processes leading to these conditions. And, third and finally, they throw their hands up and insist this complexity means scientists have no clue what sex really is. This is all highly misleading and deceiving (self-deceiving?), since the developmental processes involved in creating any organ are enormously complex, yet almost always produce fully functional end products. Making a hand is complicated too, but the vast majority of us end up with the functional, five-fingered variety.
What these articles leave out is the fact that the final result of sex development in humans are unambiguously male or female over 99.98 percent of the time. Thus, the claim that “2 sexes is overly simplistic” is misleading, because intersex conditions correspond to less than 0.02 percent of all births, and intersex people are not a third sex. Intersex is simply a catch-all category for sex ambiguity and/or a mismatch between sex genotype and phenotype, regardless of its etiology. Furthermore, the claim that “sex is a spectrum” is also misleading, as a spectrum implies a continuous distribution, and maybe even an amodal one (one in which no specific outcome is more likely than others). Biological sex in humans, however, is clear-cut over 99.98 percent of the time. Lastly, the claim that classifying people’s sex based on anatomy and genetics “has no basis in science” has itself no basis in reality, as any method exhibiting a predictive accuracy of over 99.98 percent would place it among the most precise methods in all the life sciences. We revise medical care practices and change world economic plans on far lower confidence than that.
https://quillette.com/2018/11/30/the-new-evolution-deniers/
Written by an evolutionary biologist - one of the many who speak up in reaction to gender ideology.
In the same vein a woman is an adult human female, characterised by having double-X chromosomes, producing large gametes and generally being capable of conceiving and nursing children. The presence of people with a double-X + Y chromosome (who are, in fact, men, not women, search for 'Klinefelter syndrome' [1]) does not change this fact, nor does the fact that some women - yes, of course they are still women - can not conceive or nurse children.
[1] https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome
What, in your words, is a woman?
Women and men often -- but not always -- are cisgender/cissexual.
You are allowing for an exception to the heuristic in the first case, but not the second.
> Those people are the exception
If there are exceptions, then it's not a fact. At best, it's an approximation that works well in most situations, and is subject to exceptions where it is simply false.
[1] the prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0022449020955213...
This is a parochial viewpoint.
Are you aware that other species have a wide variety of mechanisms for determining sex? Which means that evolution can and does result in the modification of fundamentals, at least if you take common descent for granted.
This can only happen if a mostly bimodal distribution is not entirely bimodal - what would provide the material for evolution to something different otherwise?
Hence, the outliers are not insignificant at all, except according to some arbitrary value system.
I don't have a reference, but I vaguely recall reading that the asymmetry between the X and Y chromosome has developed under evolutionary pressure and eventually the Y chromosome may disappear entirely.
ffs
Do you possess full knowledge of how sex and sex-specific behaviors evolved over millions of years and all of the resulting complexity?
What's the model? How can that model explain the observed phenomena? "XY = male and XX = female" is a very simplistic model and it doesn't seem to adequately explain everything that we see in the world. Perhaps it works for 97% of the cases (just guessing).
We can do better than 97%. Let's work on finding a model that explains the world more accurately.
P.S. Frogs can't talk :P So yeah, it would be rather silly to try asking it a question.
Is that 100% of all cases ever. No, but hardly anything at all in science, or life, is. How do you classify a hermaphrodite? Does it matter? It’s a rare biological anomaly. Life is weird and strange things happen sometimes, that doesn’t mean that you throw the baby out with the bath water. It’s useful in life, science, and medicine to classify things biologically by their sex. If there are a few outliers that just go in “other” then so be it.
> Frogs can’t talk
That’s the whole point. How a frog feels, or perceives itself, is entirely irrelevant as to weather it is classified as a male or female. So why is it any different with humans? When we talk about male or female with other species there is no notion of a “social construct”, but somehow when talk about humans it’s supposed be different and not follow the rules we use with every other species on the planet? Why? Because some people feel bad? Sorry, not a good argument.
That's only coming from our limited human perspectives. We can't communicate with another species at this point in time. We can't ask them about nuance in their social structures. We also can't assume that it doesn't exist because it's hard to observe.
Are there traditional gender roles that are social constructs? Sure. Is gender itself a social construct, not even remotely. Reproduction is quite well documented and known, it isn’t some abstract thing that society made up.
You're trying to make it seem like the 0.1 % means we can't know anything about anything.
1) We've fucked up in this area before (e.g. being gay was considered a medical disorder), so let's be really careful to not fuck it up again.
2) Humans are vastly complicated systems and our understanding has grown immensely in recent centuries. So arguments like "aspect X of the human experience has always been understood this way" should be taken with a huge grain of salt, especially when people are making scientific claims (e.g. in this case, about biology / psychology).
3) Unless if I have a good reason not too, take people at face value. Treat them with respect. Make small concessions even if I don't fully understand why they want it. It doesn't cost me much, and it makes them happy.
I disagree with this. Or rather, I think there are always a plethora of good reasons not to take people (that you don't already know well and trust) at face value.
But if it is constructed and everything is on a spectrum then what are we even arguing about?
women (noun)
1) An adult female person 2) Whatever we say it means
Typically in context it's not difficult to determine which definition people are using.
The more diluted a term is, the noisier it becomes, until it no longer conveys information. From everything I can see, this dilution appears intentional for the purpose of establishing new dominance hierarchies.
Is it that hard to imagine that "woman" and "man" might be one of those concepts? Especially given the amount of scientific progress that has occurred in the past few centuries?
Not saying I have all of the answers. It's just interesting to me how some people seem completely closed off to the idea that we may need to improve our understanding in this area.
That is not science.
And it's only being made more ridiculous when the proponents for the fuzziness of the concept of what a women is also insist that there are a multitude more genders and that you can change between them on the fly several times a day.
I need a more detailed explanation than “they have a medical disorder”.
This is not saying that you shouldn't redefine anything. As you said in our daily lives there are a lot of terms that have lossy definitions that don't match perfectly with our mental models. But you should be cautious with the real intent of the redefinition, especially if it comes top-down.
I knew someone born by the name Todd. He hated the name, and changed it to John. Anyone who knew he wanted to be called John and still called him Todd got an earful - because he asked not to be.
If there is no definition of what a woman is, then being identified incorrectly can't exactly be condemned.
Using an identifying word, that you've asked not to use, is a dick move. Accidents can happen, until you get used to something, and most people are fine with that and will give a gentle reminder. But continuing to use a term you've been asked not to, isn't fine.
Let's put it another way.
There's a girl I know, who was born Tiwi. However, though she looks Tiwi, she asks not to be referred to that way, and prefers Australian or native, or indigenous. For why? Every single one of the Tiwi Elders raped her, at one time or another. She shouldn't need to explain that horrifying background for you, reliving those oh-so-pleasant memories, for you to see reason in not calling her Tiwi. Because she's asked not to be.
Similarly, people have asked to be identified a certain way. Some of the reasons may be traumatic. They shouldn't have to relive that trauma, just for you to consider acquiescing to their effortless request.
All that should matter... Is they asked not to be. Fin.
No one is claiming to be a bird. That's a non-sequitur.
We debate these things because some people say "I feel X" and others say "You aren't allowed to feel that way and here is how we will marginalize you for that".
These are complicated issues. We should be willing to listen more and not assume we have all the answers about people who may have a very different life experience than you or me.
Talk about missing the plot. This is 100% incorrect and not at all what the debate is about. No cares how anyone feels, people can feel any way they want, this is not the complaint.
The issue is “I believe I am <gender>, and I demand you treat me as <gender>, and also demand that you also agree that I not only feel like <gender>, but that I actually am <gender>.”
Yeah, sorry no that isn’t how biology works. It’s also selfish and narcissistic to demand everyone else partake in your self perception. Demanding everyone use your “pronouns” is just as silly if I demanded that everyone use the adjectives “strong and handsome” when they refer to me because that is how I feel and perceive myself. Having my own adjectives is extremely pompous, and so is having your own pronouns. You can feel however you want that’s fine, but you don’t get demand every else in the world must take part in your self perception and compel their speech and behavior to do so.
Equating gender / identity phenomena with wanting to be considered "strong and handsome" is not very... charitable.
The whole pronoun thing is massively overblown from what I've seen. Very, very, very few people are asking for unusual pronouns. Calling someone "they / their" is not hard. I live in LA and only come across someone asking once or twice. It's not a big deal.
For what it is worth, I sort of agree with you on the unusual pronouns. I'm not sure what I would do if someone asked me to call them some pronoun I've never heard of. I'm usually pretty agreeable, so I would try to be polite. But it would probably weird me out a bit. However, I don't even know if I will ever face this scenario. I'm not too worried about it :)
I wasn't able to find a better source than this, presumably because "Man Jailed 21 Days, Fined For Harassing Woman In Street" isn't the kind of headline to make international news (and I don't speak Norwegian).
If you were to wake up tomorrow in the wrong body you would also have dysphoria, and you would also try to treat that.
Humans are not some machines of perfect logical emotions and reasoning - you are no exception. On the contrary, it's narcissistic and selfish to think everyone has to be you, someone whom doesn't have dysphoria. That you are somehow the arbiter of what gender is. From what source is your knowledge based?
I used to think things were defined in books and by experts, turns out we know jack about humans, all we can really know is by experiencing them, and I can tell you first hand dysphoria is enough for good people to kill themselves. So, think on why that is, and look to the truth for an answer.
This was previously on the WPATH Wikipedia page but has since been removed:
In 2021, WPATH's President-Elect, Marci Bowers called the association intolerant of dissenting opinions. She said, "There are definitely people who are trying to keep out anyone who doesn't absolutely buy the party line that everything should be affirming, and that there's no room for dissent."
It's not a "treatment" at all. By definition a treatment (in this context) is:
`The use of an agent, procedure, or regimen, such as a drug, surgery, or exercise, in an attempt to cure or mitigate a disease, condition, or injury.`
Transgenderism is the rejection of any treatments, and an insistence there is no disease, condition, or injury.
> On the contrary, it's narcissistic and selfish to think everyone has to be you
I never claimed this. That said, if you want to have any useful discussions and dialog there has to be an agreement on things like definitions and facts. Otherwise communication is completely a useless endeavor.
> That you are somehow the arbiter of what gender is.
Again, never claimed I am somehow solely the arbiter or what gender is.
>From what source is your knowledge based?
From 1,000's of years of human history and language of people classifying biological sex. Also, just having common sense and the ability to do basic reasoning.
Transgenderism does not reject that there is a problem. It exists exactly because there's a problem it is resolving.
I'm going to make a number of assumptions. 1. Your ideas of transgender comes from fabricated ideas you've heard other people say. 2. You've never experienced what working with real humans is like, nor do you care to. 3. You didn't learn this topic before deciding to talk about it.
To have an honest conversation you have to do honest work to learn something. From what I see you have chosen to watch a few YouTube videos or sources that align with your pre conceived ideas. Therefore, you are not interested in being convinced.
If you're actually interested in learning the topic you're going to have to accept humans are different from you, feel things you don't, and have to live lives you do not. Look into why, be honest, and persue truth over whatever fancy you're having here.
Yes that would be treatment. If you look back at the definition of a treatment you will see they are all things you do only to the affected individual. Treatments are directed inward to fix an issue with the self. Transgenderism, at least in its current form, is directed outward demanding everyone else prescribe to an ideology, that is not a treatment, that is tyranny.
> I'm going to make a number of assumptions.
Feel free to make all the assumptions you want about me. However, all the ones you have listed are 100% false.
> To have an honest conversation…
Seems to me your idea of an “honest conversation” is simply me siding with your point of view, anything less in your view is somehow “less than honest”. There doesn’t seem to be any room for disagreement in you definition of an “honest conversation”.
> From what I see you have chosen to watch a few YouTube videos or sources that align with your pre conceived ideas. Therefore, you are not interested in being convinced.
Now you are simply attacking my character and dismissing me rather than trying to dispute my arguments or engage in, as you put it, an honest conversation.
> If you're actually interested in learning the topic you're going to have to accept humans are different from you, feel things you don't, and have to live lives you do not.
I have never disputed that people can’t feel whatever the hell they want. That’s fine. I don’t expect, or even imagine, that anyones life experiences have been the same as mine. You are totally misrepresenting what I have argued.
Look the fundamental problem here is that the world, the universe, exists inside a framework, and we exist in that framework. We can manipulate it to some extent, but we aren’t gods. We cannot rewrite the framework. You don’t have to like the framework, but you can’t fundamentally change it either.
For example, someone paralyzed from the neck down may hate that they are paralyzed. They may wish with all their being that they weren’t paralyzed. They may feel that they are in the wrong body and that they should be in an abled body. And no doubt being paralyzed probably causes people to go through emotional hell. But reality isn’t going to change. Treatment is accepting reality, however fucking hard that may be, and playing the best hand you can with the cards that are dealt. Not demanding that you are able bodied, and asking the world to agree that you are able bodied because that is how you feel. And by no means am I ridiculing, or disparaging paralyzed people here. There are paralyzed people that have accomplished amazing things, and have done way more impressive things than I could ever hope to do. But those people didn’t, and never would have, accomplished those things if they refused to accept the cards they were dealt and instead became hyper focused on their disability and how it made them feel. No technology exists, yet anyway, that can change a persons XX chromosomes to XY, or vice versa. You might think that sucks, you might hate it, but it is the framework and reality that exists.
If your asking me to denounce that framework (reality), and enter into a delusion, then sorry but my answer is no.
This is a belief, not a fact. Delusion is where you use mental gymnastics to represent your beliefs as facts. Humans don't fit into frameworks, and you nor I know what those would be even if they do. Psychology, again, is a heavily flawed and infant science that can't treat the overwhelming majority of people.
Biology says nothing of how we as humans identify ourselves, it says nothing of sexuality. The deeper you look into biology you discover the core differences are almost entirely hormones. The science of biology is why we can transition our bodies, it does not prevent it.
Xy and xx chromosomes don't represent sex either. They're signals of what may be identifiable as man or woman but are not exclusive. When you look at the difference of male to female reproductive organs the core difference is a few genetic switches and hormones at an early stage. 8th grade science class on human body development is not representative of this more complicated reality.
Your framework is not based on reality, and you nor anyone else can claim they have a framework on human biology or psychology. That's not how science works. If you want actual answers look towards those that study genetics in relation to body development. We have more questions than answers.
If you believe biology, and physics, etc. are not factual frameworks (which they are), then I am afraid there isn't much of a discourse or discussion here. Since we can't seem to agree on fundamental concepts.
>Biology says nothing of how we as humans identify ourselves
Agreed. And male and female are biological terms, that have absolutely nothing to do with how anyone identifies or feels.
> it says nothing of sexuality.
Incorrect, biology explains a lot about sex, namely how reproduction fundamentally works.
> Xy and xx chromosomes don't represent sex either.
Of course they do, that is the literal definition of male and female.
>Your framework is not based on reality, and you nor anyone else can claim they have a framework on human biology or psychology.
Unfortunately your framework is the one not based in reality. You are operating under a crazy assumption that biology is so complex that no one could possibly understand it, and we have so much more to learn! What you are actually doing is rejecting what science has known for 100's of years, and projecting yourself as some profound "deep" person who is able to see beyond what science has already settled.
>We have more questions than answers.
Agreed, there are so many unknown things in the universe, and things to discover, which is why its ridiculous to waste time disputing basic biology 101 things like "What is a male, and what is female" when this has been answered for 100's of years.
Sounds like a straw man fallacy. Some people are saying "I feel like such and such", and the others are saying "you have a mental condition, let's seek medical treatment".
Maybe there are genuine disorders affecting some aspects of the less commonly found gender / identity phenomena. I'm not an expert. I don't know. I'm guessing you aren't either.
I'd prefer to error on the side of respecting the way someone feels if they aren't hurting anyone or imposing a large burden.
Citation needed. Not everyone agrees.
> Maybe there are genuine disorders affecting some aspects of the less commonly found gender / identity phenomena. I'm not an expert. I don't know. I'm guessing you aren't either.
You don't have to be an expert to see the parallels between this and any other fad we've seen before, such as hipsters and goths and emos and punks.
> I'd prefer to error on the side of respecting the way someone feels
We're witnessing postmodernism today, where everything is relative, and no absolute truths exist anymore. What you mentioned is a symptom of that way of thinking.
Morality is an evolved trait. It doesn’t come from a god, so that’s why don’t need to worry that a religious book tells you ”being gay is wrong”.
Once we establish, through proof and evidence, the True message from God, then it is only rational to obey and submit (e.g. see https://www.provingislam.com/). What is wrong, or why something is wrong may not be immediately apparent to us. As long as God ordained it, we would be irrational not to obey.
This is one of many opinions. In a diverse society it’s better not to speak in absolutes, lest you fall for the relativistic trap of ‘there is no absolute truth except this sentence’.
The de-transition community on reddit and Twitter can more concretely explain and show the harm being done under the desire to be blindly supportive and affirming.
It's only as a result of the fear around transgender people that this is causing problems and, as usual, it also affects cisgender children because they issue blanket bans on treatments.
Maybe that is not a problem for some but that will be a problem for society in about a generation.
> Maybe that is not a problem for some but that will be a problem for society in about a generation.
Why will that be a problem for society?
For society to continue to exist it needs to primarily serve and be determined by people who meet, have kids, and form a nuclear family. While there are societies that do not do this they do not last more than a generation or two at the most.
While good societies should be inclusive and welcoming of non paired or alternative lifestyles they by definition need to remain alternative for society to continue to flourish or else the society dies as its members do.
We already have a birth rate below replacement rate. Societies where that is the trend typically do not last long either and have some fairly bad outcomes while they disappear.
Same with furries but less extreme. Also lots of overlap.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin
See the "lemmywinks" south park episode from 20+ years ago.
But the cultural ideology trolls clearly need to be pushed back on and put in place in the larger perspective, where their concerns are overall minor.
This is a great illustration of the point I like to use -
arms race heats up just as china reveals space nukes america responds with trans admiral
https://babylonbee.com/news/arms-race-heats-up-just-as-china...
[1] https://war-games.fandom.com/wiki/Stephen_Falken
This person then has two options: to not mind what body they have, because it's irrelevant to who they are; or to select to alter their body because they don't like it, or prefer the aesthetic properties of another body enough to make the alterations.
Analogy: imagine everyone is born and given a car. All the cars are identical in speed, economy and safety, but differ in terms of status and social stigmas attached to the badge on the hood.
When they're old enough to drive it, if they think philosophically about it, it's irrelevant what brand the car is, provided that it works, and we'll say for argument's sake that all the cars work.
However, plenty of people would pay to change their Skoda or Honda for a Mercedes or Tesla badge, and vice versa. This is because the brands have acquired a series of associations in the public consciousness -- Mercedes is associated with prestige, wealth and luxury; Honda with reliability, value for money, fuel economy, and so on.
Some of these associations are deliberate results of marketing and design, and some (in particular negative connotations regarding the drivers) have been earned through what are essentially memes.
Many people jokingly stereotype Mercedes and BMW drivers as assholes, and others stereotype drivers of Japanese or Korean cars as poor -- because they're not in a German luxury car, not because the Japanese and Korean manufacturers don't make expensive luxury cars.
Let's get back to bodies. Since you cannot currently swap your body for another one, and since it has yet to be determined conclusively that there is a neat Cartesian division between mind and body (evidence suggests that the contrary is true, and that the line between mind and body is pretty blurry), people must resort to paying for modifications to their body to acquire the looks they want.
The aesthetic construct of the body is obviously tightly coupled to the modifier-type person's sense of identity. It isn't simply that they want to be more beautiful, they want to feel more beautiful, and they want beauty to be a defining characteristic.
This may stem from abuse in their developing years teaching them that their looks are coupled to their identity (you're ugly so you aren't good enough to play with us) or it may simply be their nature -- this debate is volatile, but more importantly it is irrelevant.
Why is it irrelevant? Because it doesn't matter whether working to unwind the abuse to help people accept their natural body would reduce the popularity if plastic surgery or not, to try and make that judgement across the whole human race or indeed the subset that seeks out body alteration is both dangerous and not possible to do without misjudging someone. There are always outliers, people who get plastic surgery because they see no harm in it and just want something they see as an imperfection removed or corrected. And that's okay, it's every person's choice and no one should be made to answer for their choices in life provided that they didn't hurt anyone else in the process.
This simply covers cosmetic alteration, of course.
When coming to the question of gender re-assignment, it is not so much more complicated as it is more delicate. For starters, it's a bigger change that enlarging breasts or straightening noses.
And while philosophically it makes no difference to the authentic, self-aware person's mind, in reality it is the culmination of a decision in that person's mind to change gender (which may not simply be a desire to look different, but rather a way to visibly manifest and perhaps even justify/normalise their desire to behave in line with gender norms that oppose their biological gender.
Additionally, even if the person behaves no differen...
Like I said, the mind has no gender. If you genderise the mind, you're just falling back on, or forming new gender norms that aren't accurate and shouldn't be accurate.
The more interesting question is what is identity? If someone chooses to identify with effeminate behaviour, are they doing so authentically? Or because they like the way it encourages others to behave? Or because they like the way they think it encourages others to behave, even if it really doesn't?
In a perfect world, we would categorise nothing by gender. That residual primitivism exists even today with the toilet division thing. It's only because in our past humans were sexually predatory and remorseless for such behaviour that today it is deemed civilised to separate the genders, but if the species were truly civilised, that civility would speak for itself and we would just all piss in cubicles for the sake of privacy, or perhaps this would be optional. But we don't trust ourselves even now, and why would we? Most people I've met are driven by the same things that animals want. They want to eat, sleep and reproduce, have a decent nest, look better than the other animals and make sure their offspring are going to be good at all of the above.
I personally have no interest in any of these things. I'm most comfortable alone, speaking with others when I can be bothered, I sleep and eat out of necessity, and the only thing that really drives me is my desire to learn and master things, to understand the universe and its contents, and to write or create things with that knowledge. I care not for what I leave behind, when I am dead, my consciousness presumably dies too, and being conscious of things is what I truly take pleasure in, so I wish to learn of as much as possible before my death. There is no gender in this, but crucially, there's no gender in the instinctive desires to have children or to eat, to sleep or to have a nice warm secure home.
Genders are around because people were taught that there were two genders, and that each gender should behave a certain way because that's what was taught before. These behaviours were taught for a menagerie of reasons, some of which to guarantee that children will grow up behaving in a manner that would not offend a future mate, others to make sure that children would grow up being employable, and so on.
All of this is based on the same daft notion that the way you behave with respect to your reproductive organs somehow has any bearing on your ability to produce a child or be good at a job.
Gender is just BS. There is no female brain, and if there are differences in a brain from a woman compared to one from a man, they will be the result of thousands of years of stereotyping having a physiological/epigenetic manifestation.
Is it 10% of the population, 5%, or 0.5%? Why?
In short, the presence of abnormal conditions does not create separate categories nor does it void existing categorisations, it just means that the individual who has that condition differs from the normal in some way.
I might draw a hand with a thumb and four fingers. The fact that some people are born with more or fewer fingers doesn't change the fact I drew a hand.
Everyone knows DSDs exist, but most of the time they are brought into this debate, they are merely a rhetorical device rather than any real attempt to address the specific situation. One of my close relatives has Klinefelter's, and I can assure you he finds this sort of thing extremely upsetting.
This is a really common response, and I do honestly empathise with it because for most people (me included most of the time) in everyday life there's not really any need to think about it too deeply. Like you said in another comment "A child can tell you what a man and woman are."
But can they? Or can they just point at people and guess, with about the same accuracy as you or me? They probably can't _actually_ tell you what a man and woman _are_ in any useful way any more than most grown-ups.
Like you agreed in that other comment too, there are some "extremely extremely rare" cases where a child would probably say they're a man or woman but their chromosones aren't what you'd expect.
That highlights that chromosones aren't really a deciding factor though right? The child isn't using chromosones when they decide, and I've never been asked about my chromosones, or heard of anyone else being asked about theirs outside of a hospital.
So to answer your question, I don't think anyone is denying biology, it's just that biology isn't as relevant as it might seem at first thought.
Think of it this way... in your lifetime of genuine interactions with people (e.g. conversations), how many XX people have you mistaken for XY people, and vice versa? For most people the answer is very close to zero, but why is that?
I would argue it's because billions of years of evolution (a biological process) have already helpfully trained us to detect even the tiniest differences between males and females. We have been a sexually dimorphic species for a very long time. And those differences (whether massive or tiny) are directed in large part by the chromosomes inside our trillions of somatic cells - skin, hair, bones, eyes, brain, etc. etc.
Also, for those rare cases you mention, the chromosomes often are a major deciding factor in how we do the classification, e.g. we might be confused about someone with a DSD because although they were "assigned female" since birth, they continue to show some male characteristics, due to the Y chromosome present in their organs, skeleton, etc. Surgeons can operate on genitals etc., but they can't alter all of the trillions of somatic cells in the body.z
I have no way to know, that's my point.
Most of us have a basic biology education to drawn on that allows us to look back and in hindsight say "The men I know probably have XY and the women XX chromosones" but it's never part of the process any of us actually use.
To me, chromosones just seem like a distraction. It promises to replace all of the messy, political, social uncertainty with a polite, clinical, objective answer if only everyone would realise it's just about the biology.
The trouble is, the biology can't seem to answer the questions that are the most contentious. I have no idea what my chromosones are in reality, but I know how I'd like to live my life and mostly there's no problem, no one checks, no one asks, and if they did, how would that knowledge justify overriding my autonomy?
Forcing radical viewpoints on all of society over extreme outliers is ridiculous.
> Forcing radical viewpoints on all of society over extreme outliers is ridiculous.
"Don't take away basic human rights from people with more than 1 head" doesn't seem all that radical to me, but maybe I'm out of touch.
There are people who prefer a different outward expression of who they are. The underlying genetics are as important as your blood type. Useful for a doctor, irrelevant when choosing shoes.
The morphology, function, and complexity of the modern phone is such that it probably isn't even recognisable as a phone from even thirty years ago. The concept of what a phone is has gone through so many changes, from a device that sends audio down a physical line, to what it is today that very rarely even has a physical line attached, that it probably demonstrates how words and identity can evolve new meanings better than any other example you could have picked.
Do physical conditions exist (XXY, XYY, etc) exist? Yes they do, but what we're seeing today is mass hysteria around a mental issue. What should be done is start looking at the underlying causes. Hormone imbalances? childhood trauma? Depression? Wanting out of the current lifestyle? Lack of religion? People with too much time on their hands that they start inventing problems? All these and more should be investigated
Ah. You have a very limited background. Right.
We have been the same species for thousands of years. And for thousands of years there have been male and female (sex) groups that have presented as men and women (gender), that is not the same as the one you might assign to them. (The galli priests of Rome, the Hijras of India, the khanith of Arabia, etc.)
And no... No, a child is not always able to tell them apart. Nor does a child, necessarily, instinctively call them either man or woman. If you were to ask a child of the Tiwi tribe what one of their ladyboys are, today, man or woman, they would answer "ladyboy". If you press the point - the child becomes confused. The ladyboys have been present in the Tiwi for roughly the last eight to ten thousand years or so ("kirrijamiyagirraga" in Tiwi). They are as much a part of the social fabric as man or woman. Tiwi is a gendered language, and has three genders (kirri - male, makirri - female, rraga - ladyboy), as well as a fourth tense that is used for gender-neutral terms (ramiya). And, well, if you assume that they're all genetic males, you'll get that wrong as well.
I'm very well aware of Arabian culture. khanith is a homosexual and/or effeminate male, and is heavily used as an insult today (almost like "fag" in english). It was never a "third gender" as you're trying to claim. So no, the entire basis is incorrect.
Repeat after me, there are two genders. Everything you described has one of two parts between their legs, barring physical ailments like intersex, which are extremely extremely rare.
As the Tiwi would say today (and have been saying for an order of magnitude longer than most nations have existed - about eight thousand years or so):
> Kirrijamiyagirraga naramiya makirri kirrikirriramiya
To roughly translate into English... "If you cannot see if it is a woman, nor a man, why must it be either?"
It loses a little bit of meaning, as it uses four genders and English is not a gendered language, but you can get the gist. (Naramiya is closer to "bear witness" or "absolutely determine" in a somewhat-legal sense. It's a stronger phrase than English really has.)
You are conflating the genetics of _sex_ with the cultural status of _gender_. No one is denying the genetics side. They have just managed to understand the difference between how one presents oneself, and something else that only their doctor need know.
Current supreme court nomination can’t define a woman.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/24/supreme-court-nominee-judge-ke...
When you start to introduce other moral issues like whether people under the age of 18 should be allowed to take medication that allows them to transition that's a much more debatable subject.
Who are we to say what people can / can't feel based on two chromosomes? Sure I have an XY chromosome but I'm not going to let that define every decision I make in life.
people also seem to deliberately be conflating sex and gender. clearly a lot of 'rules' seem to be based on sex but then people will claim gender identity is fluid and then try to use gender identification to backdoor a rule that is based on sex.
Why are we doing separate competitions for men and women? Because men have physical differences that give them a significant advantage on many sports. For simplicity purpose I will assume this is only because they generate more testosterone though I'm sure it's more complicated.
So people generating more testosterone have a significant advantage on sports. Why should then we care wether they are men or women, whatever that means? A good illustration of this are women who have hyperandrogenism, who are, ironically, sometimes excluded from competing in women competitions because of the unfair advance their high testosterone give them compared to other women, even though they are biological women. I'm sure some men have low level of testosterone compared to the "standard" level of most men, which would give them an unfair disadvantage in men competitions.
So my question is, why, rather than doing men/women competitions, don't we do high/low testosterone competition, regardless of the gender?
Instead of the subjectivity, remove all the segregation and let reality sort it out.
Would certainly clear up a lot of cognitive dissonance.
Yes, teenage boys (even 13 and 14 year olds) frequently beat female world records. In almost all athletic sports, a "combined" Olympics would have no female participants at all.
This is why women fought for sex segregation in the first place.
It's also irrelevant how much testosterone a person produces today. You can reduce the testosterone levels of a Michael Phelps type to female levels (though it would ruin his health), yet he would retain insurmountable advantages over every woman who has ever been born on this planet.
It's really, really not. And if we didn't know that before (we did), trans athletes on HRT provide pretty clear evidence of that, in both directions.
In general you also can’t give a female athlete sufficient testosterone to counteract the absence of male puberty and make them competitive with men. You can make them better than non-doping women, sure, but it’s not enough to reach the level of post puberty males, and the more you give the worse the impact on their health. The GDR already ran that experiment.
The problem with trying to do something like that across the sexes is that the performance gap between elite men and elite women (i.e. those at the top of their statistical distributions) is so large in so many sports (even when controlling for height or weight).
For example, a large number of amateur men who are well under 6 feet tall can dunk a basketball (and Spud Webb was 5 foot 7!), but it's remarkable to find even a professional female player of the same height who could do this. Similarly being tackled by an 85kg male rugby player is a whole other universe of pain compared to being tackled by an 85kg female. Anybody who knows sports can find similar examples. It’s not about testosterone or some other individual item - it’s the whole complex biological organism acting in concert. When you are working with so many dimensions and those are also interacting in real time, it is very hard to divide things into "fair" categories.
Because of these issues, women fought very hard for (and won) the right to have their own competitions, free of male competitors.
For more examples, see https://boysvswomen.com/#/. If Olympic events were mixed sex, most events would have no female competitors at all. Teenage boys routinely beat female world records.
Shelter isn’t even an established right, what makes you think wanting to be treated differently from how you used to be would be?
What about access to sex? Internet? A car? Mass transit?
However, while I say "this is as much about him as it is about his crusade", he behaved the same way during the Irish abortion campaign (he was for abortion rights btw) and Gamergate. The reason he wasn't "ruined" back then was because the trans rights issue is far more toxic. Nobody is allowed question the current narrative.
The reason why the debate is 'far more toxic' is because there are places which are outright attacking and removing rights of transgender individuals. Naturally this means people are going to be far more defensive because they don't want to be marked as less-than-human.
To say that 'nobody is removing rights for those who want to live as the other sex' is to deny reality.
For example, the UK only introduced the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, and that law still stands. The UK doesn't have self-ID, but there are plans to update the GRA to include it. This is very much in line with what trans activists want.
The problem with self-ID is that it necessarily clashes with existing sex-based protections in the Equality Act, and whether you agree with women's rights or trans rights or both, these contradictions need to be discussed. The problem is that the discussion is enough to get you piled-on, blocked, fired etc.
[1] https://katymontgomerie.medium.com/addressing-concerns-over-...
Second, this article compares being trans with being gay. They're two different things entirely. The only "right" gay people wanted, above being left alone, was equality in law: the right to get married. Gay marriage ask nothing of us. But trans rights asks for something: to believe, and act as if we believe, the reality inside someone else's head, even if it conflicts with our own senses. Personally, I'm fine with that. I'm a married man, long gone from the dating pool. But let's say a woman is about to enter a private space to get undressed and she sees someone that she percieves to be male, but that person says "I am a woman and you must treat me in all respects as if I am a woman". Does that affect her? I would say yes, because she must override the powerful urge to protect her personal safety. Remember, according to this very article, the trans woman in the changing room doesn't need to have undergone surgery, taken hormones or obtained a Gender Recognition Cert. They may look absolutely male while undressed. So this woman must disbelieve her eyes and ignore the inner voice warning her of a possible risk.
On the one hand we tell women to be careful and avoid risks, choose a safe route home, carry pepper spray etc. But when they refuse to get completely naked in a room with someone who looks like "a male stranger"? Bigot!
Third, the article effectively says "look, it's not big deal anyway because you don't even need hormones/op/GRC to change the sex marker on you ID, change sports category, enter the spaces provided for the opposite sex or even have your crimes recorded as being committed by the opposite sex". So... Give us self-id because we effectively have it anyway? That doesn't work, particularly if a lot of people are opposed to it.
Certain trans rights clash with certain female sex-based protections, and many women are only finding out about it when they read stuff like this [1] in the newspapers. Of course they're pissed. This problem isn't going away. It needs to be worked out.
1. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hospital-dismissed-claim-...
Presenting this as a difference is a lie. There is no difference. Trans people only want to be left alone and to have equality in the law. (No, misgendering does not qualify as leaving them alone.)
You can solve all of these situations by treating the transgender woman the same way one would treat a cisgender woman in that situation. Nobody is obligated to be comfortable undressing in front of a trans woman, in the same way they are not obligated to be comfortable undressing in front of a cis woman. Nobody's going to call them a bigot just for not being comfortable getting naked in front of a stranger.
Transgender people are liable to get beaten for using the changing room or restroom, so many try to avoid public changing rooms anyways.
> So... Give us self-id because we effectively have it anyway? That doesn't work, particularly if a lot of people are opposed to it.
No, it's more like "Give us self-ID because it will help us, and all the reason anyone will give to oppose it are false." This is what the article is about. It will help them get married with the correct name on the certificate, along with some other boring administrative things, which, like gay marriage, asks absolutely nothing of you. It is entirely irrelevant to your example with changing rooms. The hospital example, which is mostly behind a paywall, seems more to do with a horribly sexist notion popular in Britain that a woman cannot commit rape than with the gender of any parties involved. (Note that I am referring to "rape", not "things that British law would consider rape", which is also subject to this notion.) In any case, it too has nothing to do with GRA reform.
What even is a "sex-based right" anyways? Most legal civil rights are equality rights, which apply to everyone equally.
Well, let's just call each other liars then
Also, what about trans men. Do you feel comfortable with a bunch of bearded men with deep voices in the women's facilities? Or, do you instead think by some sort of double standard that trans men are men but trans women are not women?
I'm sorry, but unless you can answer these questions reasonably then your claim that you have no intention of harming anyone doesn't hold up.
US supreme court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson can't define 'Woman': https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/us/politics/ketanji-brown...
Lia Thomas breaks women's records and nearest swimmer by 38 seconds: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10282301/Transgende...
It's not like humans were made equally. Each body has genetic advantages and disadvantages, and your early childhood nutrition permanently changes your athletic potential too. You can't exactly level the playing field to begin with.
Why don't these sports have brackets instead of gender divides? Is a biological man/woman divide really the most useful distinguisher between athletes?
Professionally, doing what I do for work, I'm also mediocre at best. There are people more intelligent than me, better communicators than me, more ambitious than me, more focused than me. Some of that is genetics too, though harder to tease apart.
So what? We don't know the upper limits of human potential, especially the environmental and epigenetic contributors that keep producing better and better athletes and thinkers. We're not static chess pieces with finite moves, but constantly evolving animals whose body plans keep adapting to new conditions as they arise and work to our advantage.
You can slice and dice a million humans into subgroups and there are always going to be statistical clumps, much of which is genetic. But so what? Why is that such a big deal for concern?
If the goal is to tease out the absolute best, only a no holds barred competition (with or without doping) can reveal that, and the competitors will likely get better over time. Anything else is just a handicap made for spectacle and entertainment, so why does it matter HOW you bracket? Why is the sex bracketing more important than race or weight or height or mental ability or leg strength or whatever other distinguisher? Humans never were equal to begin with.
But what I don't get is why women's brackets are so much more important than, say, racial or height or any other brackets.
As a cluster, are "people born with vaginas" more similar in athletic ability than "people born of a certain ethnicity" or "people who reliably ate at last 1500 calories a day" or whatever.
Presumably this goes the other way too, with cis women being better at ultra endurance sports than cis men. So what?
Like isn't the whole point of brackets to give lesser athletes a moment to shine in the spotlight, even though they aren't technically the best? So why don't they just make more brackets not based on genitalia?
Underlying everything is the science that says that a person who goes through puberty as a male gets permanent increases in bone and muscle density over people who go through puberty as a female.
In day to day life this ends up washing out in a sea of averages and individuals. In competitive sports, on the other hand, where we're no longer talking about averages but about peaks of performance, peak performers that experienced male puberty will always outperform peak performers that experienced female puberty. The advantage does not go away with hormone therapies, either. You'd get the same controversy if you let heavyweight boxers identify as welterweights too.
Many sports have handicapping systems that restrict or normalize natural advantages to allow fair competition. In track and field, for example, the most basic of these was the male-female split.
Lia Thomas is cheating the handicapping system. It's not fair.
We used to separate men and women in sports exactly so this wouldn’t happen. Now, you have no chance unless you are born male.
> In the 2018–2019 season she was, when competing in the men's team, ranked 554 in the 200 freestyle, 65 in the 500 freestyle, and 32 in the 1650 freestyle. In the 2021–2022 season, those ranks are now, when competing in the women's team, 5 in the 200 freestyle, first in the 500 freestyle, and eight in the 1650 freestyle.
How am I excluding cisgender women? I am arguing that forcing cis women to compete against trans women, who have the undeniable advantage of being born with a male body, is unfair. Athletics are separated by sex because, as a rule, men are just bigger and stronger than women. Like another commenter pointed out, if we remove this separation, 99% of female athletes would no longer be able to compete.
I bring this up because part of the problem was transgender fears is what fuels the discrimination those individuals face despite being cisgender women.
If your answer is 'it's complicated' then you're admitting that defining what is and isn't a woman is more complicated than how it seems. The majority of transgender women competing in these sports do not break records or anything of the sort.
My apologies for posting under a shitty throwaway, but fyi, the two athletes you mentioned are XY and thus not women by the simplest and most straightforward of definitions.
It is a very common position that they should be excluded from women's sports. In fact, the fact that all three medalists in the women's 800m at the 2016 Olympics have XY chromosomes is a very strong argument for doing so!
In the NCAA Division I Women's Championship, she competed in the 100 yard, 200 yard, and 500 yard Freestyle events. She won only the last of those. This makes sense, as pre-transition, the longer freestyle events were her best ones.
Human Rights were made by humans. They are not natural, nor given by god. They emerged from the suffering of people and debates. Thus, we MUST debate them, especially when new aspect appear, and we must adapt our views to a new world.
And debates also serve for learning. People learn the reasoning, the history and the deeper implications of something through debate. And regarding human rights this today is more than necessary. Just look at how the peoples are acting today, on social networks, twitter, in debates. They all know the humans rights and take them for granted, yet openly violate and break them, because they don't understand them and just focus on their own single-minded ideology. Especially in the last two years with the pandemia and now the war this became very visible.
Thus, we do need far more debates about those things again. Every generation need to debate it anew to understand it.
Accepting trangenders for who they are is a much better strategy in the long run. Why are they so keen on fitting into existing definitions, social norms and binary gender tropes when they are not the same? It's absolotely ridiculous.
i just looked up some stats on trans death. it was hard to get a good international life expectancy source; most seem to peg it at about 32-40, or half the general population's. i did definitively find that 2 in 5 living american trans people self-report attempted suicide. must be quite the fetish, Sheila.
the paradox of tolerance: tolerating bigotry replaces your alienated userbase with bigots until it stops couching itself in virtuous newyorker articles.
Which sources? The frequently cited 35 years figure is nonsense: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/09/23/41471629/is-the-...
The more that things are discussed, analysed, out-analysed, over-analysed, the more they devolve into a cacophony of views. Particularly with hot-button topics such as this, there are many people pushing an agenda rather than trying to arrive at the truth. We are living in an age of moral relativism with the bleating of a thousand views, but no guiding principals to sort the wheat from the chaff. In the end, all we can do is throw our hands up and declare all views are right, and all views are wrong.
Then something went wrong and the authoritarians took over, wanting to make everything about group identity again.
Such a shame.
the problem now is too many liberty minded people are see the Right Authoritarians as allies to the cause of liberty making the same mistake as the 90's when we allied with left authoritarians to put down the right.
Enemy of my Enemy of my friend is ALWAYS terrible doctrine
We're a long way from the right authoritarians to regain any sort of power.
I do agree on your broad point though. There shouldn't allegiances with extremists of any kind.
Hollywood was changing in the 90's but it was very mixed then, more balanced. that was a time where Congress was holding hearings on Violence in Video Games, and wanting to ban pornography and other things like that.
Academia was similar, left for sure, but libertarian left
The Right was very much the authoritarian "side" of politics in the 90, started to change in 00's. then in 2016 Trump drove the Left right into Full blown totalitarian frenzy
White privilege is very much a treatment by society. Racism and sexism are both enacted upon by people based on social norms.
The overarching phenomenon is ‘dominant privilege’. In a gender studies program certain people have privilege. In Japan certain people have privilege, within a ghetto certain people have privilege, within Fortune 500s certain people have privilege.
However people mainly focus on certain dominant groups in select socio economic areas of the US. But this phenomenon is found everywhere.
It seems to me the ultimate goal should be to greatly minimize the differences between sexes and races (drop the traditional, ignorant differentiations we’ve created) and then the urge to identify differently to your physical expression may subside.
I'm not here to say that transgender discrimination = discrimination women encounter based on their gender, and I don't believe that the argument that transgender people are making either. Instead, why not look at transgender people as a newly oppressed group that encounter entirely distinct issues?
Transgender people understand that they have not grown up with the same experiences as a natural born Woman, and they do not claim to be able to speak for Woman's experiences in that sense. So all they are asking for is to be recognized as legitimate people and to not be seen as suicidal, depressed, mentally ill people.
If a person modifies their methods of speech to better match a different identity group, for whatever reason, would they not begin to receive the level of privilege, or lack thereof, associated with the other identity group?
Now I agree that a person can't claim an "African-American identity" just by changing their skin, that seems wrong. However, if a person looks "black" then they will be treated by society like they are black, so they have to some degree shed white privilege. In the case of Rachel Dolezal, this actually worked to her benefit because of the social justice circles she was in, at least until she was unmasked. The way others treat you is related to the way others perceive your identity, not the "census definition" of your identity.
Trans women often look completely feminine. In that case, a stranger would treat them as a women, unless said stranger knew of their sex. What is privilege, if not the sum of the ways in which other individuals treat you? So, these trans women do not have male privilege, at least going forward.
Sometimes, trans women don't look feminine. They are visibly transgender. In that case, they are probably not being treated like women. However, it's glaring obvious that openly transgender people aren't treated very well by society at large. If you don't believe this, then try an experiment. Wear a wig and a dress (if you're male), or a get a haircut and "he/him" pronoun badge (if you're female), and spend some time hanging out in public spaces. Be sure to visit the bathroom. I think you'll find out pretty quickly the type of abuse that trans people face daily.
So, if openly trans people are treated badly, perhaps even worse than women, then logically they have less privilege. The radical feminist objection that they retain male privilege makes no sense.