The Witch Trials, anyone else?

[Kalbear]

Put it another way @Phylum of Alexandria - this whole thing starts with the idea that cis women (or really, anyone born with female sex) should be given specific rights that trans women are not. That sexual organs at birth are the primary determinant of sex and that this cannot be changed. 

How does introducing a third gender contradict this? If it doesn't, that means you are advocating for exactly the same thing she is - which also obviously means trans people do not have those same rights. There isn't really any way around it. Either the third gender is meaningless as far as conveying rights goes (in which case why bother) or it isn't, in which case you are saying that a trans woman isn't a woman.

And if you're arguing that a trans woman is both a woman and this third gender...what does that get you? We've already got "trans" in there as a way to delineate minority status and potentially protected status. 

Edited April 17 by Kalnestk Oblast

[Phylum of Alexandria]

2 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

From a SAT syllogism perspective, the parent in adoptive parent is equivalent to the woman in trans woman. If you're arguing that trans women should not be considered women, you're arguing that adoptive parents should not be considered parents. 

You've got the first part right! The parent and the woman are the two analogous components. When did I talk about rights specifically? I didn't, really.

The closest I got, funnily enough, was my analogy for adopted parents. Are you saying that I said adopted parents have no rights? Because I didn't say that. If this bad faith interpretation thing happens one more time, sorry, I ain't got time for that shit. Please try harder, or don't respond at all.

I did say that there is a difference, at least in specific contexts. For instance, with respect to health and heritable diseases. An adopted parent saying "I'm their parent, full-stop, so they almost certainly won't get leukemia" would be absurd.

My point in bringing up the difference of transness is their clear minority status with respect to the rest of the population. How does that translate to policies? I don't know. There would need to be a good faith conversation about various people's concerns, and then policies can be proposed and modified accordingly. I don't really know what you're expecting me to say here.

12 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

You've said that trans people should advocate for a third gender. When they want to be men and women. That by its nature would mean they are not, actually, men and women. They are this third gender.

All I was advocating for was allowing others to hold a different model of understanding gender and transness with respect to the rest of society. Third Gender was used as a possible example, but it really depends on what the larger populace best understands and accepts. That's all I was saying.

[Week]

6 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I don't dispute the seriousness of such policies, and the impact it can have on people's lives. That's very different from telling someone that they are literally killing trans people based on an argument they make, or language they use, or an attitude, or a person they "associate with," etc. Yes, some of these issues have high stakes. But perhaps given that, or due to other things like social media rage virality, or something else, such rhetoric is also often abused.

I'll generally agree with you to a point. You're right that as you get to the most tenuously related - i.e., language or a person they associate with (potentially). However, that's not typically where I've ever seen that language used. When used in political discussions where the ramifications are exactly what I pointed to, and you acknowledged, then yes such strong language is justified.

When we know that the rates by which trans people are killed, commit suicide, and are assaulted/bullied/etc. it seems pretty callous to say - "hey settle down, in THIS instance trans people aren't directly being killed". Tone policing in the face of actual, credible, ongoing and worsening danger is pretty unpleasant.

[DMC]

Damn this thread blew up fast.

I watched this past Friday's Bill Maher the other day, Piers Morgan was on.  I was expecting to get pissed and disagree with him, but on most of the issues he was very agreeable - til they brought up a trans issue. 

And I do have to say, people like Morgan, Rowling, and Maher are simply on the wrong side of history on this issue.  Twenty years from now they will be remembered as such.

Whining about NCAA sports is just an absurd issue that doesn't matter.  There are maybe 50 trans athletes in the NCAA tops.  That's 0.02 percent of women athletes.  Let the NCAA figure it out.  Amplifying this issue is just a way to spread hate - which demonstrably is the much more serious concern right now.  Same thing with children.  Why should the government be involved in their health care?  If the child, parents, and their doctors are all on board, why should anyone else be trying to legislate this?  I understand these are complicated questions, but they shouldn't be as politicized as they are.  And it's very obvious why they are.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

2 minutes ago, Week said:

I'll generally agree with you to a point. You're right that as you get to the most tenuously related - i.e., language or a person they associate with (potentially). However, that's not typically where I've ever seen that language used. When used in political discussions where the ramifications are exactly what I pointed to, and you acknowledged, then yes such strong language is justified.

When we know that the rates by which trans people are killed, commit suicide, and are assaulted/bullied/etc. it seems pretty callous to say - "hey settle down, in THIS instance trans people aren't directly being killed". Tone policing in the face of actual, credible, ongoing and worsening danger is pretty unpleasant.

But what I'm decrying here isn't bold rhetoric or flamboyant style, I'm decrying the instances of outright psychological abuse and moral panic that are rife in online activist mobs more generally. Both on the left and the right, yes, but too many people on the left minimize the shit when it's on their side, or go into whataboutism or whatever.  

As for trans moral panics, have you seen Contrapoints' video about her own abuse at the hands of the angry mob? And the contamination effects it had for anyone associated with her? That's just one instance, but it's everywhere.

Sure, there are good instances where one might tell someone that they're helping to get trans people killed. But at the same time there is a lot of hysterical abuse of that idea. And this feeds into the larger phenomenon of some people turning "harm" and "violence" into meaning really anything that makes them uncomfortable.

I consider that separate from the real issue of harm that trans people face, but it's definitely present in this mix, and actually quite common. And that's what I am decrying.

[Tywin et al.]

47 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

American bathrooms have huge gaps in the doors. I think that's why so many of you are so massive, bloated with shit cos you can't relax and take a dump. 

I guess I don't know the difference here. I just hope one day we can have locks that are hands free cause some of you are nasty. I love a good dive bar, but whoof. 

41 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

I mean - aren't these the same fucking arguments for not having gays in the locker room? They sound pretty similar to me. Guess the main difference is that with gays it was the men feeling threatened by being objectified the way they objectify women.

It's the same, just with a new twist. From personal experience there were a lot of dudes on my HS football team that said they didn't want to have gay guys in the locker room. Then one of our best players came out. One or two people still said it and well, our Captain was a giant offensive lineman and he...dealt with it. No one ever had an issue with it again because all Budda wanted to do was take a shower in peace after practice, just like all of us. 

Edited April 17 by Tywin et al.

[TrackerNeil]

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

Same thing with children.  Why should the government be involved in their health care?  If the child, parents, and their doctors are all on board, why should anyone else be trying to legislate this?  I understand these are complicated questions, but they shouldn't be as politicized as they are.  And it's very obvious why they are.

I think it's fairly clear that children's health care is different from that of adults because a) they are children, often with different needs; and b) consent for children is different. 

(Before anyone starts, I don't like these laws either, but I think a strong case can be made that government has different obligations to children than to adults.)

[Phylum of Alexandria]

52 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

American bathrooms have huge gaps in the doors. I think that's why so many of you are so massive, bloated with shit cos you can't relax and take a dump. 

And here I thought it was because we cram ourselves with junk food and we don't exercise enough.

[BigFatCoward]

5 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

And here I thought it was because we cram ourselves with junk food and we don't exercise enough.

Nope. Full of shit. Literally. 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

I sit on the board of an ethics institute of a major US university.  At the last board meeting, in the context of a discussion on civil discourse, two members of faculty (one law school, one medical school) spoke on their experiences of trying to have a civil conversation on gender issues in the current climate.  One of them leans a little rightward, one of them leans a little leftward.  Both of them have been canceled, doxxed, and threatened (and showed the receipts, so to speak).  One of them had the gall to try to ask questions about gender fluidity and single sex sports.  By the way, their paper had no conclusion - it was enough that they asked the question to elicit the response.  The other had the gall to question medical intervention (not affirming mental health care, which they said they supported) for children on the theory that there was not enough data on the long-term physical consequences and some discomfort with what they felt was quasi experimental therapies on children.  I personally have no fully formed view on either of these topics (I have less of a view on the former than I do on the latter since I have more personal anecdotal experience with the latter at least being very helpful from a mental health perspective, but that's only an aside).  And I have not read either paper - only the excerpts that were posted on the slides, so I acknowledge (and we acknowledged in our discussions) the limitations of their reported experiences.  But merely expressing these ideas should not elicit the response they got.  It is disproportionate, and frankly it gets in the way of people  who want to learn and understand (hopefully not the minority I fear it is) actually learning rather than receiving dogma.  

I will say there were other panelists as well and we talked about a range of issues, including self-censorship.  It was sort of fascinating, including that one of the panelists was not a tenured professor.  I was interested in their perspective in particular.

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I think it's fairly clear that children's health care is different from that of adults because a) they are children, often with different needs; and b) consent for children is different. 

Of course!  All the more reason the decisions on child health care should be dealt with privately, again, between their parents, themselves, and medical professionals!  Legislators have no business getting involved in this process.  If there is abuse or something else going on there are still of course the courts to deal with it.  Just like divorce/custody.

[Kalbear]

28 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

You've got the first part right! The parent and the woman are the two analogous components. When did I talk about rights specifically? I didn't, really.

If you're talking about people advocating for a third gender why else would you be talking about it when we are in a topic largely defined by trans rights?

Apparently I misinterpreted your whole point because it had nothing to do with what we wete talking about. In which case i apologize, as I clearly made a mistake thinking you were wanting to talk with us on topic.

28 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

My point in bringing up the difference of transness is their clear minority status with respect to the rest of the population. How does that translate to policies? I don't know. There would need to be a good faith conversation about various people's concerns, and then policies can be proposed and modified accordingly. I don't really know what you're expecting me to say here.

I was expecting you to have a consistent view of how advocacy leads to policy goals, since that was one of your earlier complaints. 

28 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

All I was advocating for was allowing others to hold a different model of understanding gender and transness with respect to the rest of society. Third Gender was used as a possible example, but it really depends on what the larger populace best understands and accepts. That's all I was saying.

Again, follow that thought through, with the specific focus on how proposing a third gender and making people think that way helps trans people's goals.

- does it give them the same rights as men and women?

- does it give them accommodations for their status?

- does it solve the policy issues they currently have? For instance, how does this solve the bathroom thing? Or sports participation?

- does it solve the barriers to wanting reassignment or other medical treatment?

Most importantly - how does it help a trans woman have the rights of women?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Just now, Kalnestk Oblast said:

If you're talking about people advocating for a third gender why else would you be talking about it when we are in a topic largely defined by trans rights?

Apparently I misinterpreted your whole point because it had nothing to do with what we wete talking about. In which case i apologize, as I clearly made a mistake thinking you were wanting to talk with us on topic.

There's a perfectly reasonable logic to why I brought it up. (hint: it's about building coalitions and being politically pragmatic rather than puritanical and reactionary). 

I would prefer that you go back and read all of my comments again, this time trying a little harder to do so in good faith. But that's just me. If you don't feel like doing so, well, there are other people here you can have one-sided arguments with.

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

There's a perfectly reasonable logic to why I brought it up. (hint: it's about building coalitions and being politically pragmatic rather than puritanical and reactionary). 

I got that. What i don't think you did is do the math on where that road leads you.

For example - how does making your position more acceptable to JK Rowling help you when her position is diametrically opposed to yours? This is what I meant by "just a little bit of extermination". You appear to want to appease people whose goal is to say "you are not a woman" to trans women. I get that you, specifically, want to equate this to nonbinary or genderfluid spectrum discussion - which I called you on earlier - but JK Rowling is not just worried about that. She is worried that trans women may actually be in the places women are because she believes that they are not women. 

So okay, you build a coalition where you all believe that trans women are not women. How does that help the goal for trans women or men? As soon as you change that the coalition is broken. This is, pun intended, a largely binary choice - you either believe trans women are women (with all the potential mess that might bring) or you don't.

 

 

 

[TrackerNeil]

2 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

So okay, you build a coalition where you all believe that trans women are not women. How does that help the goal for trans women or men? As soon as you change that the coalition is broken. This is, pun intended, a largely binary choice - you either believe trans women are women (with all the potential mess that might bring) or you don't.

I disagree, and I don't speak for Phylum, it should be noted. I think you could build a coalition of people who support civil equality for trans folks, but who may differ in their belief that trans women deserve access to all women-only spaces. This coalition would ensure that trans people can work, find housing, and access medical care, which would be a tremendous step forward. Sure, there would be some areas of disagreement, but then, that's why it's a coalition and not an echo chamber.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

14 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

I got that. What i don't think you did is do the math on where that road leads you.

 

You think I'm going to give the rest of your comment a read after you tell me that my statement is a complete waste of time relative to this thread, simply because I didn't tie my comment to a specific policy gain? Craziness, dude. 

The thread is arguably much more about the toxicity surrounding the whole phenomenon. My initial suggestion was given in the spirit of an idea to try to reduce that toxicity. 

I typically do a 3 strikes you're out rule, but I actually gave you a few more passes. Nevertheless, you're out. Peace!

 

Edited April 17 by Phylum of Alexandria
Softening

[Kalbear]

8 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I disagree, and I don't speak for Phylum, it should be noted. I think you could build a coalition of people who support civil equality for trans folks, but who may differ in their belief that trans women deserve access to all women-only spaces. This coalition would ensure that trans people can work, find housing, and access medical care, which would be a tremendous step forward. Sure, there would be some areas of disagreement, but then, that's why it's a coalition and not an echo chamber.

I think I disagree. I don't think that worked well for things like gay marriage and it was clearly not what the gay community in aggregate wanted or were willing to compromise on. There were similar discussions about other segregating principles. I could be wrong, but my suspicion is that any coalition of trans rights that stars or even has the positive acceptance of JK Rowling at this point is going to be exceedingly closer to overall conservative goals of segregation, alienation and nonpersonhood. 

ESPECIALLY if it's along the lines that trans women are not women but are instead a new gender.

Furthermore, if you're attempting to reduce toxicity having everyone agree that trans women are not women does not remotely seem like the right choice. Whenever you do things like this - create special labels for people, especially ones they do not themselves particularly want, it is an open cause for active discrimination, othering, violence. I guess you can argue that they have this already, but this would be even more new and awesome. 

But even the above - where trans women can work, find housing, and access medical care - this is still fraught with basic problems based on the negation of access to essential women's places. Do you now mandate gender-nonspecific bathrooms in every employment location? If you don't, how do they actually work in these places? If you do, how do you get that past the businesses and other areas that now have a regulation they have to abide by? Same with locker rooms - any job that has a locker room or dressing area now will require what, a special place for them? There are going to be a lot of things like that which continue the othering, cause resentment, or simply won't actually work without a more broad scope of rights. 

Finally I don't see how bringing folks like Rowling is going to actually help move anything forward. At least in the US this is about as partisan as you can get. Who is going to agree to move over here? On the one side you have people saying that trans women are women; on the other side you have people saying trans women are pedophile groomers. 

[DMC]

Are we actually re-litigating the dumbass bathroom debates?  Seriously?  

[Kalbear]

22 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

You think I'm going to give the rest of your comment a read after you tell me that my statement is a complete waste of time relative to this thread, simply because I didn't tie my comment to a specific policy gain? Craziness, dude. 

The thread is arguably much more about the toxicity surrounding the whole phenomenon. My initial suggestion was given in the spirit of an idea to try to reduce that toxicity. 

I typically do a 3 strikes you're out rule, but I actually gave you a few more passes. Nevertheless, you're out. Peace!

 

So I went back and reread what you wrote again - I've done it twice now - and while I'm sure you have me on ignore this is for the rest of the folks who might be on the fence as to if I went too far.

Quote

 

I can't say for sure, but based on what she said on the podcast, I imagine that Rowling would accept something like a "Third Sex" interpretation of transgenderism. It's a minority case in which some people don't fit so well into one gender or another.

She definitely does not accept the prevailing interpretation of transgenderism as "gender is fluid/just a social construct/mostly arbitrary/limited only by our imaginations/or whatever I feel it is."

That's the more radical genderqueer version, and it's one that seeks to shatter the norm of how people view gender, rather than simply exist as a special exception to the larger rule.

 

Again, not really what we were talking about - this appears to be a problem with JK Rowling not accepting genderqueer people, which I'm sure she also doesn't, but this has very little to do with the notion of JK Rowling as a TERF or her being specifically transphobic. And as I pointed out, transgenderism's prevailing interpretation is assuredly not 'just a social construct'. 

I'm sure that Rowling WOULD accept an idea of a Third Sex notion, because it means those trans women are no longer women. 

Quote

 

If trans activists allowed other people to indulge something like the "Third Sex" interpretation of trans people without calling them evil bigots, there would be a lot less contention and poison in the air. That's not to say that there wouldn't be arguments about specific policies and whatnot, but right now activists are taking any challenge to their specific concept of gender and transness as dehumanizing. Sometimes it is, and that likely comes from someone who doesn't want to be any sort of ally.

But often the older, more normie people are simply clinging to the norm of gender that works for most of humanity. I am left handed, and I thank the Lord that I wasn't born in a time or place when being left handed was interpreted as evil or some kind of defect. It certainly has been, as the word "sinister" reflects. Offering basic protection and acceptance as a human is paramount. But that's different from saying that handedness is arbitrary, or the word "sinister" should be expunged due to its oppressive history.

 

I'll point out, again, that the notion of trans in practice is far simpler than multiple genders, and this overcomplicates it. And it isn't just activists who are taking their concept of 'gender and transness' wrong here. This is a pretty basic point for trans people - that they are the gender they're going to. Not only that, that is the actual norm that you say humanity is clinging to. Instead of creating a third gender, having them say "I am a man" is not particularly complex. It also aligns with what the vast majority of trans people actually want. 

And saying that you're not that? Well...why? You might not be an evil bigot, but you're going specifically against the medical science, you're going against that person's wishes, and you're attempting to make them not something they want to be. The older, more normie people here don't have any fucking idea what you mean when you talk about multiple genders! How would creating a third gender make them on your side? 

After reading this again I'm even more baffled; not only is it a self-defeating advocacy, it also does nothing to help toxicity. You're giving folks like Rowling a slur to use against trans people and you're also telling trans people that they have to accept the use of that. That it's just fine to be labeled a gender that you do not identify with but they're not really bigoted; they're just choosing to use this slur instead of using the easier 'woman'. 

Quote

And most trans people out in the real world indeed just want to live their lives without much of a fuss. It's the "radical" (i.e., too-online) folks regurgitating academic theory making it a lot more difficult--as well as the too-online older people radicalizing themselves in opposition to them.

JK Rowling is not being attacked by people because of academic theory. She's being attacked because she believes that a woman is defined entirely by genitals at birth and that also connotes certain rights and privileges that should not be shared by trans women. That isn't a highly online viewpoint. That's Fox News. 

[Ran]

8 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Do you now mandate gender-nonspecific bathrooms in every employment location?

This seems like a pretty obvious necessity, especially when we recognize that there are dozens of genders, some of whom do not identify as particularly congruent with men/women/male/female and would be more comfortable with a more private space.

It's also something that can be dealt with practically with a mix of regulation, incentives, etc. It's just a matter of time. Unisex bathrooms are increasingly common here in Sweden, with individual facilities with locking doors.