Kalbear

It is remarkable to me that folks are still okay with the nhs decision and have now switched to the apparent argument that it is perfectly reasonable for people to have a religious objection to being seen by a doctor with gametes that do not match their gametes. Or that it is reasonable to segregate people because of either their gametes or their ability at some future time to have them. I would love to understand the logic there.

It is not implicit in the goal of eradicating hamas. It isn't even necessary depending on what other things you're willing to do. Which they aren't doing, so that is either a failure in policy or not the policy. But it is not clear anyway, so again you're about empty platitudes and symbols that can be misinterpreted. Same thing - empty slogans for the win. So they should be able to leave now, then. Good to know. It isn't obvious. Why would you allow hamas to exist in the west bank? Or Lebanon? What does operational capacity actually mean? The ability to do another 10-7, the ability to launch cheap rocket attacks, what? It's all vague and subject to declare victory or not based on anything you want. Another war on terror.

Arguably apartheid is not since it's against other DEMOCRATIC states. And there exist no democratic states in existence right now that have anything like that. Mostly, however, I think it's real clear that this will be abused anyway, because the definition of antisemitism before this was being abused and this expands that.

I think this is a good place to start as to what people see as problematic: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/apr/24/un-ihra-antisemitism-definition-israel-criticism

FUCK YOU I'M A GREAT KISSER

NOW KISS

It's even odder to hold this view while also celebrating what the NHS decided. So why celebrate the NHS policy changes? Why accept that it might be a 'valid' religious view to discriminate against trans people and just deal with that as the cost of doing business?

There have been so many varied suggestions. You've shot them all down. I'm not sure how valuable it would be to reiterate them again. But I'll try a bit. You need to actually state what the goal of the war is. "eradicating Hamas' is not a goal that is either achievable or reasonable any more than a war on drugs or terror is. It is a slogan. If Israel wants to take full operational control over the Gaza strip that is at least closer, though probably unwise as a goal - but at least it is feasible. You need to choose what your timeline is, and what the costs and benefits of doing it faster or slower are. Right now there is very little operational value in going fast. There is little chance of any reasonable rearming or fortification that cannot be stopped ahead of time, there is no actual momentum to be had, there is no chance of catching leaders on the battlefield or causing extra damage because of speed, there is no surprise. There is no particular active threat to Israeli people from Hamas, at least from Gaza. Therefore, you can afford to take significant time to get it right. That might be not as viable politically but that isn't a great reason to keep up civilian bombardment. You need to decide what your costs are going to be. Destroying your allies relationships is a risk. That said, Israeli's government probably is in the right in the sense that anything they do to keep the war painful to Palestinians makes it more likely that they will have a more friendly government in power in most places at very little cost to them, so it makes political sense to continue as they are. Finally, you need an actual exit strategy. When are you actually done? Again, 'eradicate Hamas' is not an exit goal or at least isn't an achievable one. So what should Israel do? Evacuate the Palestinians in Gaza to Israel while the war is going on. Removing them to Egypt and Jordan has too much of a historical burden and putting them in Israel allows Israel to maintain maximum operational security on those people while ensuring that Israel likely doesn't want to keep them there. Focus on destroying important infrastructure after evacuation. Even if that means significantly long lag time between warning and striking. The goal is to dismantle the actual structures in place in Gaza first and foremost. The people will come eventually, but it's a lot easier to deal with the enemy when they no longer have places to hide Start immediately working towards a postwar Gaza. Give up more than what you need to get back the hostages so you can then focus on dealing with the remainder. As long as you aren't having to accept a full indefinite cease fire almost anything should be on the table. Stop fucking off and attacking Iran. Geezus, read Sun Tzu or something

@Ran, I'll respond to your edits but it's very difficult to follow the conversation or respond to it when you've edited well after I've posted. It also makes my posts look very odd and selective, which I don't think is your intent. I was responding to people to whom it very much does matter. If it doesn't matter to you that's fine, but clearly it did to others in this topic. Furthermore, they were the ones using biological sex instead of sex assigned at birth, which is why I decided to point out that that term can mean a whole lot of things. But they were the ones celebrating giving people the ability to discriminate to choose sex at birth people instead of any trans person, or require that trans people cannot be in the same wards and areas as sex at birth people. Those aren't the same civil rights and protections as 'any other person'. Those are absolutely separate, distinct, and discriminatory. I think it would have been significantly more productive for you to pick chromosomally male or female; you wouldn't have to focus on the production of gametes that way, and it would have been significantly harder to pick apart the idea or even care about it. The conversation was about biological sex, which there is quite a bit of debate about in the world right now - including using it at all. I took a different approach to it. There is no specific reason that I can see why someone would need to request a person they'd feel more comfortable with because that person had the ability to produce sexual gametes of a certain choice. To me, it's relatively obvious that the comfort level exists with being around someone phenotypically of the sex of their choice (if that is an argument at all). Do you disagree? Or is there some intrinsic value about talking to someone who was able to produce eggs at birth?

Presumably you do that so that you aren't just randomly killing aid workers and 5 month old babies while not achieving much operationally. That isn't what is being argued and is again a silly thing to say. Should we also do the same thing - say that Israel shouldn't support killing every Palestinian on the planet? It's roughly equivalent.

What I actually said. What the fuck are you trying to say - that you can declare that you are going to eradicate Hamas but keep their leadership alive? How the fuck does that make any sense? Then maybe don't say 'eradicate Hamas' as your goal? Especially if they're not just in Gaza - they're in the West Bank, they're in Qatar, they're in Egypt, they're probably in Lebanon and Syria and Iraq? Like I said, you're into empty platitudes and slogans, and that AFC South championship banner is Very Important.

Okay, so you are saying that 100% biological sex is biological sex at birth. That isn't what people generally use or mean by it, but as long as you're clear about it I guess that's fine. That's not what trans activists appear to use it as, but at least you're clarifying where you lie on the spectrum. I do appreciate that the phrase 'biological sex' rose as another way to deny trans people rights, so that's interesting. Anyway, I think this has gone far enough in terms of trying to score points off of people and pointing out values. I appreciate your clarifying exactly what you believe and how you define what a male and female is and how that differs from a trans male and trans female.

So why care about their ability, one way or another, to produce sperm or eggs? Why is that the specific goal and differentiator? It seems arbitrary and capricious. I'm not the one who brought it up as a way to differentiate - you did that. I don't see how calling you on the argument you made is going after a strawman. I don't know why you're going for this argument or where you think it's going, but either you're arguing that the definition of a biological woman and man is based on their sexual organs and their ability to reproduce (and therefore until we can do that, a transperson cannot be a male or female), or you're just bringing up an interesting facet about biology that isn't particularly relevant. Since I don't want to be accused of strawmanning I'll just ask - what is your point in bringing up the procreative abilities of males and females?

But that's not what you said you wanted, and that's not what they've said they're wanting. Ignoring the fact that we likely could have gotten him in 2002 if we hadn't fucked up operationally, you also shouldn't announce goals that you know are not possible. You also don't say that hostilities will continue in Gaza if your targets are not in Gaza. But that's what Israel has done.

It has a whole lot more than that. Are you suggesting that infertile people or people who cannot produce sperm and eggs are not male or female? Are there no male or female children, then? There are a whole lot of other physiological markers beyond that for male and female sex. And for a whole lot of those we CAN medically change them. I think it's far more dangerous to ignore ANY possible position on the spectrum and say, simply, absolutely no trans woman can be a woman and we're going to segregate them from any position that a cis woman has, which is what the NHS is currently doing. None of them are 'the biological sex at birth' however.

If they're wanting to get the masterminds you have to figure out how to lure them out of hiding or commit to killing them in ways that are significantly different and politically potentially far more costly. Destroying Gaza does not particularly help you with any of that and potentially makes it significantly harder or impossible. I personally don't see a lot of value in going after them. They aren't special on their own, they are useful to negotiate with while safe, they can be largely made toothless with a whole lot of processes and options. There's no value in saying you're going to 'eradicate' Hamas unless you're really wanting to fight an endless war. And if you're doing that, hey, that's cool, but I prefer ones that end and have a good goal. It seems you prefer empty symbolic gestures and slogans.

I didn't say anything about Israel not fighting Hamas. I do think Israel should have significantly different goals than what they've espoused having, and if they have the goal of killing the masterminds they probably shouldn't have started with invading Gaza.

In which case trans women who have transitioned medically have the biological sex of a woman. Or do you disagree with that?

Unless you're proposing that Israel goes to war against Qatar and Egypt...yes? If that's your war aim you should probably be pretty open and honest about that.

I don't think it's clear that HoI was referring to biological sex as 'sex at birth'. Maybe you have a problem with language, in that case? It's certainly not the 'standard' to refer to biological sex as a differentiator between trans women who have medically transitioned and cis women; the standard there is to actually refer to the sex at birth as 'at birth'. Biological sex literally means the sex of your biology, and that can actually be medically changed. Now if you're wanting to be that loose with the definitions that's on you. There's a lot of debate on whether or not someone's gender and biological sex should differ or can differ, but the discussion about trans people really has nothing to do with that and that's why I have such a hard time with you characterizing this as a language issue.

How is saying 'trans women are women' obfuscating anything? It's 4 words, two of the words are literally the same thing. But yes, the point is that there are a whole lot of people, including those in this thread, who believe that trans women are not women and should not be afforded the rights of women. Like the NHS, who apparently believes it's okay to differentiate and separate people. Again I'm not going to let you get away with this framing as 'not liking the language'. People don't like being treated differently or being segregated. If you don't think that trans women are women and you're okay with people saying that they don't want to be treated by a woman doctor if that woman is trans, then it is emphatically not a language issue; that is a change in behavior and is discriminatory by design.

This is only true if you're not a government; if you're choosing to differentiate and discriminate based on one definition over another it matters quite a bit.

But this is hardly a 'language' dispute, much less a silly one. It's literally the whole point of the question. If you don't think that trans women are women and should be excluded from cis women, that is not a language disagreement. If you do so despite what medicine and science indicate, that indicates that it's not particularly based in logic or expertise. It's also not very confusing, honestly. Either you view trans women as women with all that entails or you don't. There is very little ambiguity or room for movement. Since you said that it's a 'ridiculous language game', I think that it's important to push back on how it absolutely is not a language game. Really, the point is whether or not you define trans women as women. I don't know how that is a ridiculous language viewpoint. Framing it as such is only choosing to frame the whole argument and concern as a silly thing, allowing you to dismiss it without considering it or any ramifications of it.

Hey now, we're incredibly keen on doing it now too!

I'm not missing your point. I get that you're viewing a medical report as a good excuse to change unrelated policies. I'm questioning why you think this is a good thing and questioning the people who previously said that the Cass report was apolitical. In particular, I'm pointing out that the person who brought this up specifically stated that the Cass report impacted the NHS in some good way, even though nothing in the Cass report related to the changes being brought, and appeared to consider that a win. That has nothing to do with this at all, and you know it. In particular these specific trans individuals are wanting to be treated as women and considered women biologically and gender-wise. The people who are wanting something else are the ones who are specifically requesting that they are only with people who have the biological sex at birth that they want. The difference is that these people say that there can never, ever be a person who changes their biological sex and that a trans woman is not a 'true' woman. That's a VERY different viewpoint than talking about what gender means, what sex means, about queerness or anything like that. And that's fine, but let's not think this is some language issue and it's all very confusing.