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Cont: Transwomen are not women part XII (also merged)

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Paul2 said:
There's nothing stopping the law from defining sex as biological, as you said upthread.
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Point 2 of the Impossible Triangle. We can't set up genital check stations and there's no other way to determine biological sex on a day to day functional level that is going to be socially acceptable to anyone who isn't just horrible. The law would be impossible to enforce.

Again:

- We have to separate by biological sex because vagina owners have to be protected/separated from penis owners for things like bathrooms and sports.
- But we can't like... check for penises and vaginas at the literal or metaphorical door because that's just... all kinds of horrible.
- But we also can't go "Okay penis and vagina owners you have to do X (dress a certain way, act a certain way, "code" in a certain way, whatever) so we know if you're a penis or vagina owner without checking what's in your pants."

1. Social separation of the biological sexes in certain situations.
2. Transgenderism.
3. No sexual stereotypes.

You have to, have to, have to, have to, HAVE TO, remove one of those three for the other two to stay up and we can't agree on which one has to go.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Point 2 of the Impossible Triangle. We can't set up genital check stations and there's no other way to determine biological sex on a day to day functional level that is going to be socially acceptable to anyone who isn't just horrible. The law would be impossible to enforce.

Again:

- We have to separate by biological sex because vagina owners have to be protected/separated from penis owners for things like bathrooms and sports.
- But we can't like... check for penises and vaginas at the literal or metaphorical door because that's just... all kinds of horrible.
- But we also can't go "Okay penis and vagina owners you have to do X (dress a certain way, act a certain way, "code" in a certain way, whatever) so we know if you're a penis or vagina owner without checking what's in your pants."

1. Social separation of the biological sexes in certain situations.
2. Transgenderism.
3. No sexual stereotypes.

You have to, have to, have to, have to, HAVE TO, remove one of those three for the other two to stay up and we can't agree on which one has to go.
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I agree. I've yet to see any proposed solution that's better than "mind your business and worry about criminal behavior rather than gender identity" as a workable solution.
 
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TurkeysGhost said:
I agree I've yet to see any proposed solution that's better than "mind your business and worry about criminal behavior, rather than gender identity" as a workable solution.
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Which has always been my solution; a gender neutral (indeed a world where "gender" is a meaningless concept) and more effort to just stop violence.

But I didn't say a solution "I" liked, I said one we can all (or a tipping point) can agree on.

d4m10n said:
Criminal behavior other than voyeurism and indecent exposure?
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Which of the 3 points of the impossible trifecta do you suggest we get rid of?
 
JoeMorgue said:
Which of the 3 points of the impossible trifecta do you suggest we get rid of?
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It's not obvious to me why we need to get rid of any, unless you define transgenderism to include obvious males intruding into spaces previously reserved to females. That might count as social affirmation of transgenderism (assuming the females are welcoming) but it is not the same thing as having a gender identity at variance with one's sex.

That said, we probably need to get rid of the first one whenever someone passes for the opposite sex, since it would ruin the appearance of social separation if we put folks like Buck Angel back into the ladies' locker room.

Come to think of it, the third one is pretty questionable too.
 
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d4m10n said:
It's not obvious to me why we need to get rid of any, unless you define transgenderism to include males intruding into spaces previously reserved to females.
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I can't imagine a definition of transgenderism that doesn't allow access to the spaces of the identified gender that makes any sense.

I don't think "You get to be a woman, but only when we say so" is a solution worth putting on the table.

And besides outside of bathrooms, sports, and pronouns there's nothing else.

Sure we can fix the problem by just defining the distinctions away, but that's not what I was going for.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I can't imagine a definition of transgenderism that doesn't allow access to the spaces of the identified gender that makes any sense.
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If your body is male but you believe you are or ought to be female, then you are transgender. This is true regardless of whether anyone else validates your belief by, for example, inviting you to engage in female sports leagues or lesbian dating apps.

JoeMorgue said:
I don't think "You get to be a woman, but only when we say so" is a solution worth putting on the table.
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I disagree. This would have been a perfectly appropriate thing to say to the woman mentioned in the OP, who was hoping to break female weightlifting records in the Olympics.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
I can't imagine a definition of transgenderism that doesn't allow access to the spaces of the identified gender that makes any sense.
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If the definition includes access to sex segregated spaces, then it cannot be self-ID.

I don't think "You get to be a woman, but only when we say so" is a solution worth putting on the table.
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You have it backwards. That's the ONLY category of solutions that are possible if you want to allow transwomen to "be" women. There must be some form of gatekeeping, or sex segregation falls apart completely, and that's not tolerable. Whether you want to do it by sorting different sorts of transwomen (ie, not all transwomen get access to female spaces) or whether you want to do it by sorting who counts as a transwoman (ie, you need to meet certain criteria, self-ID is completely gone), there has to be gatekeeping.

The other category of stable solutions is that transwomen are never women. You may not like such a solution, but it can work.

And besides outside of bathrooms, sports, and pronouns there's nothing else.
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You forgot prisons. But even that's not quite right. We also have in some cases quotas for the number of women in a group. Do transwomen count towards those quotas or not?
 
d4m10n said:
If your body is male but you believe you are or ought to be female, then you are transgender. This is true regardless of whether anyone else validates your belief by, for example, inviting you to engage in female sports leagues and lesbian dating apps.

I disagree. This would have been a perfectly appropriate thing to say to the woman mentioned in the OP, who was hoping to break female weightlifting records in the Olympics.
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If she's not a woman in sports, the bathroom, prison, or pronouns in what way is she a woman that actually matters?

Again we're back in "If a transgender person with no form is floating in an empty void" level.

Again we're talking social norms, you can't be a transgender outside of that context in anyway that matters.
 
JoeMorgue said:
If she's not a woman in sports, the bathroom, prison, or pronouns in what way is she a woman that actually matters?
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Most people don't engage in highly competitive sports or undergo incarceration as adults, but we still see them as men or women pretty much of the time. Probably bathrooms and changing rooms are the only time we actually have to self-segregate by sex in everyday life, and I'm content to allow businesses and patrons to police themselves based on prevailing cultural norms in such situations. As to pronouns, I don't really care at all. Use whatever pronouns you want, for whomever you want, whenever you want. No skin off my nose.
 
JoeMorgue said:
If she's not a woman in sports, the bathroom, prison, or pronouns in what way is she a woman that actually matters?
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Matter to whom? If you're a transwoman, you will never, ever get to dictate who actually considers you a woman, even if you get access to all the female spaces in the world and force everyone to use your preferred pronouns.

And the law cannot dictate many of the ways that actually being a woman matters. We don't really talk much about it in this thread precisely because it's outside the reach of government, and thus not susceptible to trans activist pressure, but an obvious big one is the dating pool. This is actually one of the most important ways in which a person can be a woman. Whether or not any particular transwoman is considered a woman by someone filtering their dating pool by that category is going to be entirely up to the person doing the filtering. You cannot impose standards on this decision externally.

For some, no transwoman can ever be a woman for that purpose. For some, a transwoman can be a woman for that purpose if they've had a full medical transition. For some, maybe it's enough if they can just pass. But it's absolutely not something you can dictate, it will never be the same for all transwomen, and it won't even be the same for a given transwoman for different people evaluating that transwoman.

tl;dr: no, it's not actually all about the things that government can dictate.

ETA: and maybe the person you're asking about isn't a woman in any way that actually matters.
 
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d4m10n said:
Probably bathrooms and changing rooms are the only time we actually have to self-segregate by sex in everyday life
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You actually missed a big one I talked about above: romantic relationships. That's one of the biggest social sex segregations we have, and it happens every day. It doesn't get talked about much in this thread because government can't touch it.
 
Ziggurat said:
You actually missed a big one I talked about above: romantic relationships. That's one of the biggest social sex segregations we have, and it happens every day. It doesn't get talked about much in this thread because government can't touch it.
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Until relatively recently, the government could and very much did dictate these kinds of interpersonal relationships. In many parts of the world this is still very much the case.

I'm not sure I see your point. Loosening social mores around sexuality have been generally corrosive to the strict barrier between the genders. Homesexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism or general gender queerness are all eating away at the simpler, strictly biological view of how romantic relationships work in society.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
Until relatively recently, the government could and very much did dictate these kinds of interpersonal relationships. In many parts of the world this is still very much the case.
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Only in the direction of prohibition. Even totalitarian societies generally stopped short of trying to force relationships to happen by government mandate.

I'm not sure I see your point. Loosening social mores around sexuality have been generally corrosive to the strict barrier between the genders. Homesexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism or general gender queerness are all eating away at the simpler, strictly biological view of how romantic relationships work in society.
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Only at the edges. There's much greater tolerance for such relationships, but the majority of people still want heterosexual relationships. That's always going to be the case. If it's ever not, society is doomed.

As for my point, the question of whether transwomen are women in the ways that matter can never be fully answered by any government decision (I'm discounting nightmare dystopian totalitarian government scenarios, we don't need to consider them here), so Joe's previous questions kind of missed the mark.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
Loosening social mores around sexuality have been generally corrosive to the strict barrier between the genders. Homesexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism or general gender queerness are all eating away at the simpler, strictly biological view of how romantic relationships work in society.
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Transgenderism is not loosing social mores, it's making a new one. There's a difference. That doesn't make it a bad thing, we often do need new social mores, but call things what they are.

There's a difference between getting rid of social standards and making social standards so complicated nobody can follow them.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Transgenderism is not loosing social mores, it's making a new one. There's a difference.

There's a difference between getting rid of social standards and making social standards so complicated nobody can follow them.
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People argued that people asking for gay marriage were also asking for "new" rights.

I'm not sure what you mean for your second point.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
People argued that people asking for gay marriage were also asking for "new" rights.
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Yes. They were.

I'm not sure what you mean for your second point.
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Trans activists are primarily trying to tighten, not loosen, social controls. Unlike social conservatives, they're just trying to tighten them in a direction they haven't previously been tightened.
 
d4m10n said:
Criminal behavior other than voyeurism and indecent exposure?
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It sounds to me like if we could just get most people to agree on rules that don't require gender checks we could sidestep the whole thorny issue. No loitering, no staring. For the venues that are FOR naked loitering, no junk out unless you're in the junk out room (which happens to be the mens' side of the spa). You'll get a lot of arguing about "I wasn't staring!" but on the plus side you'll make it easier to kick out the existing same-sex voyeurs. I've heard that some spas have trouble with voyeuristic men in the men's room, just apply whatever rules that work to curb that problem to everyone.

You don't need the people who currently police the bathroom by coming in to tell Tom Selleck to leave the ladies' for being a guy to actually tell Tom Selleck to leave the ladies' for being a guy when you can just tell Tom Selleck you're going to chaperone another patron who is uncomfortable with the vibes and there's no loitering in the bathroom and here's the definition of loitering so. Giddyap. You'd do the same for a woman who decided to be a weirdo in the bathroom.

There will be some people who complain they should have the right to have their junk out in the women's spa or the right to stare, but I think the case against actual voyeuristic and exhibitionist behaviour (as opposed to the case against the potential opportunity to engage in voyeuristic and exhibitionist behaviour) would be pretty easy to make to pretty much the entire public. All you'd need is a clear definition of exactly what that behaviour looks like.

I think the 'bend over backwards for trans' thing is not the juggernaut it's portrayed as and would not even begin to have real clout in an attempted argument for the right for everyone to loiter and stare in any space they have access to. A few people would complain that it was a cover for persecution; just demonstrate that it isn't and if it isn't, presto no real controversy. And added bonus, we don't have to harass butch women anymore.

Side note, I love how it's apparantly misogynist to get sarcastic about sentiments like 'it's you trans rights people's fault we have to harass butch women in the bathroom cause they might be men, and also it's trans rights people's fault if trans men get beat up in the women's bathroom'
 
Here's something that the reactions to can show that concern for women's sports is not transphobic. A transman just won his third straight boxing match. Against biological men.

Any of us upholding women's sports in this thread upset about this? My initial reaction was some slight concern for the transman, but then I watched part of the bout. Holy crap, it is hard to believe that person was born a woman. But I've got no problem with it, and I can't imagine anybody else does.
 
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