Drag Shows

[Emily Lake]

I explain in post #160 what drag generally is. In the UK, the 'Black and White Minstrel Show' was not generally produced with the intent of mocking and belittling black people. It was people doing song and dance numbers for entertainment

Your explanation is not accurate, so.. not much to say really.

Okay. So no moral difference. You just find one okay and not the other because reasons.

I'm in a particularly snarky mood at the moment, so I'll be frank: One is okay because, generally speaking, women's feelings don't matter to men. Even men who view themselves as progressives still tend to discount women in general, and our feelings in particular.

 

[Emily Lake]

I don’t think the intent of drag is to offend the gender being …portrayed. I was a little …shocked when I saw my first drag show because it seemed to lampoon femininity without intending to or realizing it was. It seemed to…embrace or revere all the things I was told were ‘feminine’ but that I saw as being artificial and attempts to control women and give women some false sense of power—

But that’s my take and I’m certain is not the point of drag to the artists. I just see it as having nothing at all to do with actual women. And perhaps that’s the point: do we attach the name female or male based on how someone dresses, wears their hair, walks? Are we attracted to the person or the persona? And are we not allowed to express all the various aspects of ourselves instead of being restricted to whatever society deems is appropriate based on our genitalia?

To respond to Jarhyn’s post above: What I found offensive, jarring was what I saw as depictions of all the stereotypes that were shoved at me as feminine but I rejected as female or feminine. Or sexy. Or desirable, attractive, female. To me the expectation that I look, dress, behave in ways that I found inauthentic and foreign to be considered female—which clearly I was/am female —was extremely offensive. Female/male isn’t something you put on or off.

I generally agree - drag may not have the intent of being insulting toward women... but that doesn't make it not insulting. Even if many women find no harm in it, that doesn't negate my (or your) view of it as offensive.

Lots of little girls loved Barbie. Lots of adult women loved Barbie. That didn't make Barbie's unrealistic dimensions, constantly feminized clothing, and her frequent portrayal as an unintelligent "math is hard" stereotype any less insulting over all. The fact that Barbie has been re-engineered to have a less hyperbolic shape, and now has access to a wider array of clothing and professional gear speaks to the fact that something can *be* offensive, without ever having *intended* offense.

To me, as well as many other people, drag is a caricature of femininity. My sex is not a character to be worn, half the human race isn't a a stereotype for the purpose of entertainment.

 

[Emily Lake]

I'm still wondering how the 'R' in TERF is defined, and how one goes about deciding when it's use is appropriate.

What makes a TEF a TERF?

In its earliest days, the phrase was coined by Radical Feminists. It was coined, rather explicitly, to describe feminists who did not wish to allow males of any sort into their feminist-specific events. These were female-only events... and there were some transgender identified males who wanted to take part and were denied because they were male, regardless of how they viewed themselves.

The term as it's used now has virtually nothing to do with Radical Feminism. It gets used for pretty much any female who objects to males being granted right of access to female-exclusive spaces and services. It's nothing more than a way for a man to call a woman a cunt without using a swear word. It's an epithet that conveys that it's perfectly fine to threaten and harass a woman, as long as she's been called a TERF. It's the modern equivalent of naming a woman a witch so that burning her at the stake is seen as "justified".

 

[Emily Lake]

I'm still wondering how the 'R' in TERF is defined, and how one goes about deciding when it's use is appropriate.

What makes a TEF a TERF?

It's the public attacking of trans people that makes the difference. No one actually cares what you think about things in the privacy of your own mind.

"Public attacking of trans people" such as?

Be honest. What we're really talking about is women objecting to males invading our intimate spaces and taking spaces in our athletics organizations. We're talking about the male colonization of out sex, based on how those men feel about themselves on the inside. We're being told to deny reality, deny our observations, and to ignore the reality of a male-bodied person so that we don't hurt the feelings of some few men. Men who - by the way - have been excluded from the ranks of manhood, because other men don't tolerate gender-nonconforming men.

It's the tendency of men to strictly define what constitutes a man that has caused this mess. Women have been accepting of gender nonconforming women since, well, forever pretty much. Men are not so tolerant. Women have no problem accepting that a muscly women with a male-typical haircut, wearing combat boots and a leather jacket is *still* a woman. We've been perfectly fine with butch women still being women for ages and ages. It's men who can't manage to accept effeminate men as still being men.

It's not women who are the problem. It's not women who attack and kill transwomen - it's men who do this thing. Women are not a danger to transwomen - but nor are we a treatment for their dysphoria. We should not be required to open ourselves to risk in order to accommodate the danger that men represent to other men.

And you may say that nobody care what we think in the privacy of our own minds... but I call you out on that. You sure as fuck DO care. You care enough to try to COERCE the use of female pronouns for people who are clearly, unquestionably, undeniably male. And you do so on pain of public censure, and in some countries threat of legal action.

You might say that you don't care what we think... but you DEMAND that we say there are five lights, and that we genuinely mean it.

 

[Emily Lake]

The real problem is that none of the words in that are particularly clear.
Every single one is quite subjective, quite vague.

They are Trans, Exclusionary, Radical, and Feminist.

If there were any honesty in the world, it would be "MEW" or perhaps "SSSS" That being "Male Exclusionary Women" and "Single-Sex Space Supporters"

But the benefit of labeling it "TERF" is that those throwing the label around get the double whammy of painting "feminist" as a bad word (hearken back to the feminazi slurs) and simultaneously feeling justified in harassing and threatening women.

 

[Emily Lake]

A TERF is a person who has an unusually strong commitment to promoting and defending the rights of women, while absolutely rejecting any broadening of the definition of "woman" beyond its most limited possible definition.

Well, to be fair, broadening the definition of "women" to include both males and females really does make the word meaningless.

There's also the follow-on effect of that conflation of the sexes resulting in an inability to actually address male violence against women, and to track sex-based statistics in a meaningful way. It also, by the way, leaves women without the words to actually describe our experiences as women. We can't talk about women's issues... because those issues now must include issues faced by men.

The "limit" to which you are objecting is the very real, very meaningful, very objective limit of our sex. Males are not females, females are not males. Males cannot become females. Sperm producers will never produce ova. Testiculators will never be menstruators. This is an evolutionary divide that spans the entirety of the mammalian class, indeed the vast majority of the phylum of chordata. Obscuring the meaning of the term that describes the adult female half of the human species isn't going to make that divide any less real.

 

[Toni]

I don’t think the intent of drag is to offend the gender being …portrayed. I was a little …shocked when I saw my first drag show because it seemed to lampoon femininity without intending to or realizing it was. It seemed to…embrace or revere all the things I was told were ‘feminine’ but that I saw as being artificial and attempts to control women and give women some false sense of power—

But that’s my take and I’m certain is not the point of drag to the artists. I just see it as having nothing at all to do with actual women. And perhaps that’s the point: do we attach the name female or male based on how someone dresses, wears their hair, walks? Are we attracted to the person or the persona? And are we not allowed to express all the various aspects of ourselves instead of being restricted to whatever society deems is appropriate based on our genitalia?

To respond to Jarhyn’s post above: What I found offensive, jarring was what I saw as depictions of all the stereotypes that were shoved at me as feminine but I rejected as female or feminine. Or sexy. Or desirable, attractive, female. To me the expectation that I look, dress, behave in ways that I found inauthentic and foreign to be considered female—which clearly I was/am female —was extremely offensive. Female/male isn’t something you put on or off.

I generally agree - drag may not have the intent of being insulting toward women... but that doesn't make it not insulting. Even if many women find no harm in it, that doesn't negate my (or your) view of it as offensive.

Lots of little girls loved Barbie. Lots of adult women loved Barbie. That didn't make Barbie's unrealistic dimensions, constantly feminized clothing, and her frequent portrayal as an unintelligent "math is hard" stereotype any less insulting over all. The fact that Barbie has been re-engineered to have a less hyperbolic shape, and now has access to a wider array of clothing and professional gear speaks to the fact that something can *be* offensive, without ever having *intended* offense.

To me, as well as many other people, drag is a caricature of femininity. My sex is not a character to be worn, half the human race isn't a a stereotype for the purpose of entertainment.

Yes, but I'm wondering if it isn't the point: lampooning the false outer trappings that supposedly convey feminine ideals or womanliness. If those false trapping: exaggerated boobs, exaggerated hair, eyelashes, makeup, heels, etc: if THAT is what is attracting men, then they aren't really attracted to women but to the theater, the accoutrements, the costume. And if it's the costume, then does it matter who is wearing it? Or: Don't (an awful lot of men) really want someone who is like a (stereotypical/cartoonish) woman on the outside but is really like a man underneath all of that?

Above, I'm asking questions, not making suggestions.

I would even go so far as to wonder if the point of drag isn't to lampoon exactly what it is that is supposed to be a feminine ideal on behalf of women as well as men. Why can't women dress simply, modestly, even and be seen as beautiful and feminine? Why can't men take special care with their clothing and hair, etc. even including makeup, etc. to look as beautiful as they want to? Why is that not manly?

I don't know. When I was a small child, I found the adult insistence that I wear dresses in order to go to school, that I dress a certain way or act a certain way in order to be an acceptable girl to be extremely offensive. And then here are these grown men, wearing that crap on purpose....because it makes them feel beautiful? To me, that seems incomprehensible but I've learned to accept that different strokes/different folks and all of that stuff. But those clothes! I only found it ugly and uncomfortable and definitely not me at all. What I did learn to do was to tune out all of those stupid expectations of what was feminine or beautiful or womanly and just be myself. And eventually, I stopped going things just because someone told me that girls couldn't do that or couldn't do that as well as boys could and eventually--but not until I was really grown up---just did things that I wanted to do because I wanted to do them, not to prove that I could do them.

 

[Toni]

A TERF is a person who has an unusually strong commitment to promoting and defending the rights of women, while absolutely rejecting any broadening of the definition of "woman" beyond its most limited possible definition.

Well, to be fair, broadening the definition of "women" to include both males and females really does make the word meaningless.

There's also the follow-on effect of that conflation of the sexes resulting in an inability to actually address male violence against women, and to track sex-based statistics in a meaningful way. It also, by the way, leaves women without the words to actually describe our experiences as women. We can't talk about women's issues... because those issues now must include issues faced by men.

The "limit" to which you are objecting is the very real, very meaningful, very objective limit of our sex. Males are not females, females are not males. Males cannot become females. Sperm producers will never produce ova. Testiculators will never be menstruators. This is an evolutionary divide that spans the entirety of the mammalian class, indeed the vast majority of the phylum of chordata. Obscuring the meaning of the term that describes the adult female half of the human species isn't going to make that divide any less real.

Women who undergo mastectomies and hysterectomies are still women. Men who lose their testicles to injury or to testicular cancer are still men.

There is the absolute biology, the chromosomal array that is associated with male and female and there are many variations on that one standard allotment of an X and a Y or two X's. There are intersex individuals; there are hermaphrodite individuals--rare, but still existing. There are individuals who have never, ever felt comfortable as the sex they were presumed to be at birth but who have always felt as though their true self was always the other sex. I've known such people. It's not fake. It's not for attention. It's not mental illness. It's how they perceive themselves and how they wish others to see them. Don't we all wish to be seen as our true selves?

How people perceive themselves is much, much more complicated and has to do with a lot more than chromosomes or secondary sex characteristics or ovaries vs testes.

 

[Metaphor]

And you may say that nobody care what we think in the privacy of our own minds... but I call you out on that. You sure as fuck DO care. You care enough to try to COERCE the use of female pronouns for people who are clearly, unquestionably, undeniably male. And you do so on pain of public censure, and in some countries threat of legal action.

You might say that you don't care what we think... but you DEMAND that we say there are five lights, and that we genuinely mean it.

Do you remember the thread about the 26 year old man who had sexually assaulted a ten year old girl, who was put in a juvenile female facility? I can only quote myself:

I post these stories because each time I think somebody might peak trans by reading it. Somebody might say "hmm, that is actually a not very good outcome that has resulted from catering to trans activist demands". Or, in this case, I thought people might say "that's fucking mental that is, how could they put an adult male in a juvenile female facility? Has the world gone absolutely fucking bonkers-insane?". But I didn't get that. I got people saying "what's the problem?" "You're making a fuss over nothing".

The trans ideologists are not ascendant; they are in power. Dylan Mulvaney, an adult man, was invited to meet the President of the United States of America, because he has a mental illness and cosplayed as a parody of a girl in his 'days of girlhood' TikTok series. In Australia and Canada, the government punishes people with 'misgendering', a fictive crime. In the UK, women are arrested for the 'hate incidents' of saying women are adult human females.

 

[Oleg]

I don't know. When I was a small child, I found the adult insistence that I wear dresses in order to go to school, that I dress a certain way or act a certain way in order to be an acceptable girl to be extremely offensive. And then here are these grown men, wearing that crap on purpose....because it makes them feel beautiful? To me, that seems incomprehensible but I've learned to accept that different strokes/different folks and all of that stuff. But those clothes! I only found it ugly and uncomfortable and definitely not me at all. What I did learn to do was to tune out all of those stupid expectations of what was feminine or beautiful or womanly and just be myself. And eventually, I stopped going things just because someone told me that girls couldn't do that or couldn't do that as well as boys could and eventually--but not until I was really grown up---just did things that I wanted to do because I wanted to do them, not to prove that I could do them.

Are you suggesting that if a child does not fit gender norms it does not mean the child was born in the wrong body?

 

[Oleg]

The trans ideologists are not ascendant; they are in power.

 

[Emily Lake]

Yes, but I'm wondering if it isn't the point: lampooning the false outer trappings that supposedly convey feminine ideals or womanliness. If those false trapping: exaggerated boobs, exaggerated hair, eyelashes, makeup, heels, etc: if THAT is what is attracting men, then they aren't really attracted to women but to the theater, the accoutrements, the costume. And if it's the costume, then does it matter who is wearing it? Or: Don't (an awful lot of men) really want someone who is like a (stereotypical/cartoonish) woman on the outside but is really like a man underneath all of that?

Above, I'm asking questions, not making suggestions.

I would even go so far as to wonder if the point of drag isn't to lampoon exactly what it is that is supposed to be a feminine ideal on behalf of women as well as men. Why can't women dress simply, modestly, even and be seen as beautiful and feminine? Why can't men take special care with their clothing and hair, etc. even including makeup, etc. to look as beautiful as they want to? Why is that not manly?

I don't know. When I was a small child, I found the adult insistence that I wear dresses in order to go to school, that I dress a certain way or act a certain way in order to be an acceptable girl to be extremely offensive. And then here are these grown men, wearing that crap on purpose....because it makes them feel beautiful? To me, that seems incomprehensible but I've learned to accept that different strokes/different folks and all of that stuff. But those clothes! I only found it ugly and uncomfortable and definitely not me at all. What I did learn to do was to tune out all of those stupid expectations of what was feminine or beautiful or womanly and just be myself. And eventually, I stopped going things just because someone told me that girls couldn't do that or couldn't do that as well as boys could and eventually--but not until I was really grown up---just did things that I wanted to do because I wanted to do them, not to prove that I could do them.

I don't think it's about lampooning the false trappings of femininity. The history of drag in the US (can't speak for UK on this, I believe it's a bit different) is a lot more about lampooning heterosexuality. It's gay men, dressing in exaggerated feminine costume, and performing in ways that are generally enticing to straight men... and everyone getting a laugh about the straight men being somewhat titillated by another man.

There is likely an element of intentionally making straight men moderately horny, because well... sorry guys, but human males are very visual and are much more inclined to respond to overt sexuality than women are (generally speaking). Give men the evolutionary signals of sexual rediness in a female, and they respond - as they've evolved to do. Women aren't driven by quite the same signals.

That said... there's a point where the exaggerated feminine costume as a prop for gay men to toy with straight men has kind of run its course. I think I've had enough of being a costume so that men can play with each other for laughs.

 

[Emily Lake]

Women who undergo mastectomies and hysterectomies are still women. Men who lose their testicles to injury or to testicular cancer are still men.

You're right - women who undergo mastectomies and hysterectomies remain women no matter what. Men who undergo orechtomy or phallectomy remain men.

There is the absolute biology, the chromosomal array that is associated with male and female and there are many variations on that one standard allotment of an X and a Y or two X's. There are intersex individuals; there are hermaphrodite individuals--rare, but still existing.

People with disorders of sexual development are still either male or female. Karyotype variances are sex-specific. And true hermaphrodites, in the biological sense, do NOT exist among humans (nor among any mammals). No human has the ability to produce BOTH sperm and eggs. No human has the ability to fertilize themselves. There's a lot of casual use of technical language that happens with these discussions, and we really, really can't mix them up. You can't use a casual version of 'hermaphrodite' as meaning a person with ambiguous genitalia at birth when also discussing genotypes and the biological functioning of sexual reproduction.

There are only two sexes among humans - male and female. No human is any other sex, nor is any human both sexes, nor is any human some in-between sex. Each individual's sex is ultimately determined by the type of gamete around which their reproductive anatomy is arranged. Even people with DSDs have anatomies that are ultimately arranged around the production of sperm or the production of ova... even if they are not able to actually produce those gametes.

There are individuals who have never, ever felt comfortable as the sex they were presumed to be at birth but who have always felt as though their true self was always the other sex. I've known such people. It's not fake. It's not for attention. It's not mental illness. It's how they perceive themselves and how they wish others to see them. Don't we all wish to be seen as our true selves?

I respect you, Toni, but I disagree here. Yes, people with deep-seated gender dysphoria do exist. It's an unenviable condition, and I have immense sympathy for people with that condition - my sister's oldest child is one. But whether they subjectively feel uncomfortable with their sexed body, or if they genuinely feel like their "true self" is the other sex... their true self is inextricable from the body in which their brain resides. Unless you wish to posit the existence of a soul as being separate from the body, then we're going to be at an impasse here. I do not believe in souls, and I definitely don't believe in gendered souls that the magical sky-daddy accidentally stuck in the wrong body. I do believe that people can have delusions, and that people can have neurological disorders that disrupt their perception of themselves. Whether you wish to view that as a mental illness or not is up to you - to me it is entirely irrelevant. A male is a male is a male. A female is a female is a female. No matter how strong my <nephew's> dysphoria, no matter what lengths they go to to present and live as if they were a woman, they are NOT a woman, and they never can be. Luckily, they are also intelligent and caring, and they accept this reality. I will call them by their chosen female name, because I love them dearly. But they are well aware that they are still male.

How people perceive themselves is much, much more complicated and has to do with a lot more than chromosomes or secondary sex characteristics or ovaries vs testes.

How people perceive themselves is complex, yes. But how people perceive themselves does not override reality, nor should it obligate any other person to accept their perception of themselves when it is in opposition to observable reality.

We can be compassionate, we can be caring, we can be sympathetic. We can do all of this without having to sacrifice the observable reality around us. And we can do all of this without having to sacrifice the dignity and rights of women on nothing more than the claim of some men. It is not uncaring nor cruel for women to deny access to female-only spaces to males as a right. At our discretion, with our consent? Perhaps. But as a right based on self-declaration? No, I don't think women should be obligated to surrender our spaces and our hard-won advances to magic words. I want something more than self-declaration.

 

[Emily Lake]

And you may say that nobody care what we think in the privacy of our own minds... but I call you out on that. You sure as fuck DO care. You care enough to try to COERCE the use of female pronouns for people who are clearly, unquestionably, undeniably male. And you do so on pain of public censure, and in some countries threat of legal action.

You might say that you don't care what we think... but you DEMAND that we say there are five lights, and that we genuinely mean it.

Do you remember the thread about the 26 year old man who had sexually assaulted a ten year old girl, who was put in a juvenile female facility? I can only quote myself:

I post these stories because each time I think somebody might peak trans by reading it. Somebody might say "hmm, that is actually a not very good outcome that has resulted from catering to trans activist demands". Or, in this case, I thought people might say "that's fucking mental that is, how could they put an adult male in a juvenile female facility? Has the world gone absolutely fucking bonkers-insane?". But I didn't get that. I got people saying "what's the problem?" "You're making a fuss over nothing".

The trans ideologists are not ascendant; they are in power. Dylan Mulvaney, an adult man, was invited to meet the President of the United States of America, because he has a mental illness and cosplayed as a parody of a girl in his 'days of girlhood' TikTok series. In Australia and Canada, the government punishes people with 'misgendering', a fictive crime. In the UK, women are arrested for the 'hate incidents' of saying women are adult human females.

And in Scotland, self-id is the law of a land. To such an extent that by law, a man arrested of rape, a man who has behaved as a man his entire life, can declare himself a woman... and by dint of such magic words, he must be placed in the women's prison - among his victims - and he cannot be denied that placement.

Oh, and the women who are incarcerated with him must "respect" his identity and use his preferred pronouns, or they shall be punished.

I mean, where has common sense gone? Sympathy and compassion is one thing... but this - this is reckless disregard for the safety and well being of half the human population.

 

[ZiprHead]

The trans ideologists are not ascendant; they are in power.

Where do you come up with these pieces of bull squat? Is it like a club for stupid stuff you join?

 

[Metaphor]

And you may say that nobody care what we think in the privacy of our own minds... but I call you out on that. You sure as fuck DO care. You care enough to try to COERCE the use of female pronouns for people who are clearly, unquestionably, undeniably male. And you do so on pain of public censure, and in some countries threat of legal action.

You might say that you don't care what we think... but you DEMAND that we say there are five lights, and that we genuinely mean it.

Do you remember the thread about the 26 year old man who had sexually assaulted a ten year old girl, who was put in a juvenile female facility? I can only quote myself:

I post these stories because each time I think somebody might peak trans by reading it. Somebody might say "hmm, that is actually a not very good outcome that has resulted from catering to trans activist demands". Or, in this case, I thought people might say "that's fucking mental that is, how could they put an adult male in a juvenile female facility? Has the world gone absolutely fucking bonkers-insane?". But I didn't get that. I got people saying "what's the problem?" "You're making a fuss over nothing".

The trans ideologists are not ascendant; they are in power. Dylan Mulvaney, an adult man, was invited to meet the President of the United States of America, because he has a mental illness and cosplayed as a parody of a girl in his 'days of girlhood' TikTok series. In Australia and Canada, the government punishes people with 'misgendering', a fictive crime. In the UK, women are arrested for the 'hate incidents' of saying women are adult human females.

And in Scotland, self-id is the law of a land. To such an extent that by law, a man arrested of rape, a man who has behaved as a man his entire life, can declare himself a woman... and by dint of such magic words, he must be placed in the women's prison - among his victims - and he cannot be denied that placement.

I know the (failed) amendment you are talking about. In a way, that is internally consistent with their religion. After all, a woman is anyone who declares themselves so, and someone does not stop being a woman just because he raped someone with his penis.

Oh, and the women who are incarcerated with him must "respect" his identity and use his preferred pronouns, or they shall be punished.

Indeed. And also a state of affairs supported by many on this message board.

I mean, where has common sense gone?

Common sense is transphobia.

 

[Oleg]

The trans ideologists are not ascendant; they are in power.

Where do you come up with these pieces of bull squat? Is it like a club for stupid stuff you join?

I dunno. The trans-identitying men saying wearing girl clothes makes them girls. Are you saying they’re wrong?

 

[ZiprHead]

The trans ideologists are not ascendant; they are in power.

Where do you come up with these pieces of bull squat? Is it like a club for stupid stuff you join?

I dunno. The trans-identitying men saying wearing girl clothes makes them girls. Are you saying they’re wrong?

Does whoever does the dishes where girl clothes?

 

[Toni]

And you may say that nobody care what we think in the privacy of our own minds... but I call you out on that. You sure as fuck DO care. You care enough to try to COERCE the use of female pronouns for people who are clearly, unquestionably, undeniably male. And you do so on pain of public censure, and in some countries threat of legal action.

You might say that you don't care what we think... but you DEMAND that we say there are five lights, and that we genuinely mean it.

Do you remember the thread about the 26 year old man who had sexually assaulted a ten year old girl, who was put in a juvenile female facility? I can only quote myself:

I post these stories because each time I think somebody might peak trans by reading it. Somebody might say "hmm, that is actually a not very good outcome that has resulted from catering to trans activist demands". Or, in this case, I thought people might say "that's fucking mental that is, how could they put an adult male in a juvenile female facility? Has the world gone absolutely fucking bonkers-insane?". But I didn't get that. I got people saying "what's the problem?" "You're making a fuss over nothing".

The trans ideologists are not ascendant; they are in power. Dylan Mulvaney, an adult man, was invited to meet the President of the United States of America, because he has a mental illness and cosplayed as a parody of a girl in his 'days of girlhood' TikTok series. In Australia and Canada, the government punishes people with 'misgendering', a fictive crime. In the UK, women are arrested for the 'hate incidents' of saying women are adult human females.

And in Scotland, self-id is the law of a land. To such an extent that by law, a man arrested of rape, a man who has behaved as a man his entire life, can declare himself a woman... and by dint of such magic words, he must be placed in the women's prison - among his victims - and he cannot be denied that placement.

Oh, and the women who are incarcerated with him must "respect" his identity and use his preferred pronouns, or they shall be punished.

I mean, where has common sense gone? Sympathy and compassion is one thing... but this - this is reckless disregard for the safety and well being of half the human population.

First of all, if he’s in a juvenile facility, he’s not housed with women but with girls.

Secondly, if memory serves, he is housed separately so he has no contact with the girls nor they with him and indeed they cannot even see each other.

 

[bilby]

The "limit" to which you are objecting

I didn't object to anything.

I'm well aware that people have a wide range of opinions on whether, and to what extent, there's a sharp divide, or a grey area, between the two categories "male" and "female". Like most dichotomies, it's useful until it isn't, and extremists of both kinds - those who deny that there is more than one category, and those who insist that there's no overlap at all - are more wrong than they are right.

Biology doesn't support either of these extreme positions.

But my earlier post doesn't object to either, nor to anything in between those extremes; Any "objection" is entirely an artefact of your expectations about what you imagine I might think.

I am not responsible for your imaginings.

The limit I am describing certainly exists, albeit in a different place depending on who you ask. I didn't express an opinion on the value of placing it at any given point, I just pointed out that TERFs by definition have an opinion that lies close to one extreme and far from the other.