Cont: Trans Women are not Women II: The Bath Of Khan

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The Atheist said:
No sooner do the lockdowns lift than the trans/women debate rears its head yet again.

First off, J K Rowling makes the perfectly reasonable statement about using the term "people who menstruate" being a bit unnecessary, since "women" works fine: https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/j-k-rowling-accused-of-transphobia-over-twitter-commentary.html

And first out of the gates in ticking her off is Harry Potter himself, who, along with many others, seems to think that insisting women are different from trans-women is transphobic: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/daniel-radcliffe-jk-rowling-trans-tweets_n_5edee596c5b6948cbc5c685b

Period poverty is a real thing many women have to face, but no trans will ever have to.

It's so bad that the NZ government has just announced free menstrual products will be available at all schools, because up to 1/3 of girls have missed school while menstruating due to lack of access to those products.

This is a perfect example of why the claim that trans women are the same as biological women is complete nonsense.
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It's another example that TERF's never miss an opportunity to delineate trans women from "real" women, no matter how petty.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
It's another example that TERF's never miss an opportunity to delineate trans women from "real" women, no matter how petty.
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Would you expect a trans woman/girl pupil in one of those NZ schools to be offered free menstrual products just like the cis women/girl pupils?
 
GlennB said:
Would you expect a trans woman/girl pupil in one of those NZ schools to be offered free menstrual products just like the cis women/girl pupils?
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Is it worth caring about? God forbid a couple dozen people get sanitary pads they don't need.
 
The Atheist said:
This is a perfect example of why the claim that trans women are the same as biological women is complete nonsense.
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Nobody is claiming that trans people are biologically identical to their gender. That's a stupid straw man, and a moment's thought would reveal it - in the context of this particular discussion alone. If people were insisting that trans people were biologically identical to their gender, then how could the argument be made that trans men can menstuate?

But even leaving aside the whole trans vs TERF issue, Rowling's statement was stupid and wrong anyway. The article in question was about menstruation. Therefore "people who menstruate" is a better term than "women". Do you kow why? Again, just take a moment to think about it. You yourself referred to schools. Why schools? Because school pupils menstruate. An ex-girlfriend of mine started menstruating when she was 9. Did that make her a woman? Are you making the argument that the schoolgirls you referred to are women?

So, even if we were to accept the argument that trans people are only their biological sex, it's still not only women who menstruate.

There's a problem in Rowling's statement from the other direction as well. The implication that "people who menstruate" is synonymous with "women" is implies that people who don't menstruate are not women. So anybody who's gone through the menopause is no longer a woman. A relative of mine had a hysterectomy in her 20s. Did she cease being a woman then?

If you address an article to "women", and then exclude a large number of women, then you'd be better off using a term that better describes who the article is aimed at/talking about. Like "people who menstruate". Because that's what the article was about - menstruation, rather than gender or biological sex.

Rowling was being stupid and, judging by her history of being a TERF, she was also being bigoted.

Don't fall into the trap of reflexively agreeing with something stupid that someone has said just because it aligns with your prejudices. Apply some thought first. In this case it really shouldn't take much to see the obvious flaws in Rowling's tweet.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Is it worth caring about? God forbid a couple dozen people get sanitary pads they don't need.
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A few people who don't need pads getting them anyways is not very important. But the ability to tell the truth, even the truth about trivial matters, is vital. And that's under attack here.
 
Ziggurat said:
A few people who don't need pads getting them anyways is not very important. But the ability to tell the truth, even the truth about trivial matters, is vital. And that's under attack here.
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Trans-men also menstruate. There was nothing wrong with the verbiage of the article JK Rowling is crying about. There are people who menstruate who don't identify as women and it's just good manners to be polite about such things.

TERFs just making sure that trans-women know they aren't real women and will never be accepted.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
Trans-men also menstruate. There was nothing wrong with the verbiage of the article JK Rowling is crying about.
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Actually, if you think about it, the writer of the article was being even more exclusionary. She was the one talking about creating a more equal world "for people who menstruate." That specifically excludes transwomen.
 
Brainster said:
Actually, if you think about it, the writer of the article was being even more exclusionary. She was the one talking about creating a more equal world "for people who menstruate." That specifically excludes transwomen.
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It's an article about menstruation and menstrual health. It's not bigoted of it to exclude people who don't menstruate.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Trans-men also menstruate. There was nothing wrong with the verbiage of the article JK Rowling is crying about. There are people who menstruate who don't identify as women and it's just good manners to be polite about such things.

TERFs just making sure that trans-women know they aren't real women and will never be accepted.
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Well, they aren't real women. It's sometimes preferable to pretend otherwise, but it's still pretend. As for acceptance, what does that even mean? Seriously, that's a non-trivial question. Accepted as what? As women? Depends on the circumstance. Pre-op transwomen will never be accepted as women for the purpose of sexual partners by most heterosexual men. Most post-op transwomen won't get a lot of acceptance for that either, to be frank. That's got nothing to do with TERFs. And nobody deserves acceptance on every level that they might desire.
 
Heh. The other day I ran across a Reddit post that opened with the claim of being a fully-transitioned trans-man, and then explained that he was pregnant (the post was asking advice about keeping the baby).

I'm all in favor of accepting someone's claim of transition at face value. Even if it's just their state of mind, I accept that.

But having a pregnant uterus doesn't seem to me like a full transition to manhood by any standard.
 
Brainster said:
Actually, if you think about it, the writer of the article was being even more exclusionary. She was the one talking about creating a more equal world "for people who menstruate." That specifically excludes transwomen.
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You do know that not all women (whichever definition you are using that is actually used in the world) menstruate?
 
theprestige said:
Heh. The other day I ran across a Reddit post that opened with the claim of being a fully-transitioned trans-man, and then explained that he was pregnant (the post was asking advice about keeping the baby).

I'm all in favor of accepting someone's claim of transition at face value. Even if it's just their state of mind, I accept that.

But having a pregnant uterus doesn't seem to me like a full transition to manhood by any standard.
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Have to admit I do struggle with how to reconcile how I would use the word "full" in this context but since you are already happy to take someone at "face value" it's not much more of a stretch to accept they use the word "full" in a different sense as well.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
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An ex-girlfriend of mine started menstruating when she was 9. Did that make her a woman? Are you making the argument that the schoolgirls you referred to are women?
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Let's hope not. We should all know that only men in dress and adult females are women.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
People are trying really hard to get upset and thereby back Rowling over this, aren't they?
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I think it was a group of people from the Twitterverse who are trying really hard to get upset. She just made a tweet. A comment on the absurdity of saying "people who menstruate" instead of "women".


That triggered the daily does of wailing and moaning and people calling J.K. Rowling was a bigot or a TERF or whatever it is that they say about her.


I suppose as long as I'm here, I'll back Rowling over this, but really, there isn't much to back. It's worth a forum post, but that's about it.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Also, FWIW, science indicates that sex isn't binary, and that there are biological differences between transgender and cisgender people

If, you know, anybody is concerned with having their opinions informed by the facts rather than their prejudices.
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So does there exist a scientifically objective test like a blood test which can differentiate XY transwomen from XY males and/or XX transmen from XX females? I'm genuinely curious.

ETA: To clarify, I'm not referring to the effects of hormone treatments.
 
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Meadmaker said:
I think it was a group of people from the Twitterverse who are trying really hard to get upset. She just made a tweet. A comment on the absurdity of saying "people who menstruate" instead of "women".


That triggered the daily does of wailing and moaning and people calling J.K. Rowling was a bigot or a TERF or whatever it is that they say about her.


I suppose as long as I'm here, I'll back Rowling over this, but really, there isn't much to back. It's worth a forum post, but that's about it.
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Some people take exception to Rowling's body of work on this matter because they suspect it falls into line with the worst elements of TERF discourse, where treating trans people with human dignity is seen as an attack on women and feminism.

Rowling's whole twitter personna is obnoxious in general, including on issues unrelated to her being a TERF, so it's a bit of a wash anyway. She seems generally unpleasant.

People of a certain age care what she says because they took the Harry Potter books a bit too seriously.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
Some people take exception to Rowling's body of work on this matter because they suspect it falls into line with the worst elements of TERF discourse, where treating trans people with human dignity is seen as an attack on women and feminism.
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Sure, but some others are concerned with some of the extreme hyperbole that's used by both sides on this topic. Remember when luchog considered any disagreement on the topic to dehumanise trans people? That can't be reasonable.
 
Belz... said:
Sure, but some others are concerned with some of the extreme hyperbole that's used by both sides on this topic. Remember when luchog considered any disagreement on the topic to dehumanise trans people? That can't be reasonable.
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It's hard to be reasonable when asked to defend your own human dignity. People tend to get a little heated about it.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
It's hard to be reasonable when asked to defend your own human dignity.
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But no one is asking anyone to do that. This is a claim of SOME posters here but they have never made an argument supporting that claim.

And you've avoided my point: is it dehumanising to disagree on any aspect of the topic of transgenderism, regardless of what that aspect is?
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Also, FWIW, science indicates that sex isn't binary, and that there are biological differences between transgender and cisgender people

If, you know, anybody is concerned with having their opinions informed by the facts rather than their prejudices.
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My understanding is that there are essentially two paths of sex expression, and it's a binary setting which path your body goes down. However, the degree to which your body goes down the XY or XX path is variable from person to person.
 
Belz... said:
But no one is asking anyone to do that. This is a claim of SOME posters here but they have never made an argument supporting that claim.

And you've avoided my point: is it dehumanising to disagree on any aspect of the topic of transgenderism, regardless of what that aspect is?
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No, but my point that you shouldn't be shocked that what is an academic discussion for you may be intensely personal for another.

People that have been targets of intense bigotry for decades may not be the most receptive to a "facts and logic" approach to their self-identity.
 
Meadmaker said:
I think it was a group of people from the Twitterverse who are trying really hard to get upset. She just made a tweet. A comment on the absurdity of saying "people who menstruate" instead of "women".
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She said something that was wrong and stupid and, with her history of transphobia, isn't entitled to the benefit of the doubt any more.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
No, but my point that you shouldn't be shocked that what is an academic discussion for you may be intensely personal for another.

People that have been targets of intense bigotry for decades may not be the most receptive to a "facts and logic" approach to their self-identity.
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Granted, but the whole point of this forum is to discuss varous topics, some of them difficult or complex. If a topic makes you too mad to have that discussion, don't participate.

On the other hand, can YOU understand why other posters may have grown frustrated by the aforementioned hyperbole and the various means used to shut down discussion on this topic entirely?
 
Ron Obvious said:
So does there exist a scientifically objective test like a blood test which can differentiate XY transwomen from XY males and/or XX transmen from XX females? I'm genuinely curious.

ETA: To clarify, I'm not referring to the effects of hormone treatments.
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As the article says, both sex and gender are a lot more complicated than is generally believed, and are both a spectrum.
 
Ziggurat said:
It is impermissible for transgenderism to be biologically based, because that means basing everything on self-identification is wrong.
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I honestly have no idea what this drivel is supposed to mean but, judging by your past body of work, I'm assuming it's both ignorant and bigoted.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
She said something that was wrong and stupid and, with her history of transphobia, isn't entitled to the benefit of the doubt any more.
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Yeah....ummm…..if enough people repeat that, it will be true.

I mean, people repeated the other side of the "people who menstruate" debate for millenia, and it is so hard to shake that belief from people.
 
Belz... said:
Granted, but the whole point of this forum is to discuss varous topics, some of them difficult or complex. If a topic makes you too mad to have that discussion, don't participate.

On the other hand, can YOU understand why other posters may have grown frustrated by the aforementioned hyperbole and the various means used to shut down discussion on this topic entirely?
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I'm not familiar enough with luchog's positions to say.
 
Today, even for inter-sex babies identified they check the fundamental biological sex wiring, i.e the binary format of reproductive coding. They check if the human being is Wolffian or Mullerian coded, and if need be adjust surgical procedures along those lines. So, whatever biological or social eccentricities that we might experience... we're either Wolffian or Mullerian coded. That's pretty binary, regardless of the subsequent miniscule variations (which nevertheless might prove to be psychologically significant in some rare cases).
 
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