... if you think Emily is misrepresenting your position, cue Loretta Swit playing the world's smallest violin just for you.
@Politesse Alternatively, if you think I'm misrepresenting your position, perhaps you might actually let me know exactly where you disagree with how I've framed your view, and what it is that I've gotten wrong?
This is the third time I'm asking you this:
How about you tell me which part(s) of this argument you disagree with?
That is quite a wall of text you're asking me to respond to. I'm going to be deeply annoyed if I go through the trouble of answering it, and you simply ignore or dismiss the answers with some flippant bullshit about spergs. But answer it I will.
- A person's gender identity is whatever that person says their gender identity is.
This statement seems neither fully true nor fully untrue, and I'm not clear whether you mean "disagree with" in the sense of thinking it is factually untrue, or "disagree with" in the sense of supporting or opposing your political views. It is factually incorrect to say that gender - one's social identity - is entirely up to individuals, or we would not have any occasion for public debate on the subject. All humans in all societies known to history and ethnography have assigned gender categories, and children are sorted into them at some point in their very early life. An individual obviously has no say in this first assignment, and changing other people's perspectives on your gender later in life tends to be, at best, a strenuous and long-term process for the affected. So, no, a person cannot always change the perceptions of others concerning their gender. Not everyone who feels misgendered in interior life feels safe to even
try to change the perceptions of others on the matter, and even people who are "out" and living their lives fully as their preferred gender usually face kickback from those friends and family that knew them before their transition, government interference, church and mosque interference, and so on. All of that affects gender, which is never fixed as a concept, but a perception that changes and evolves over time. I know many trans people, and none who would describe society as having fully accepted their transition. Not even in a gay bar could universal acceptance be assured to any trans person - they are everyone's dart board.
On the other hand, politically I would certainly
prefer a society in which a person could change or correct their gender in the eyes of others, and that is something that many people have accomplished in their lives, however incompletely. In that it is a choice, acceptance of others is a choice many people make, and should make in my personal opinion. As you yourself know perhaps better than anyone, given as it is how we first met and why you "hate" me, I take an incredibly dim view towards people who intentionally misgender, deadname, or otherwise dehumanize trans people.
What a person says their gender identity is cannot be challenged, and must be accepted by other people as being true.
This is obviously untrue. You yourself challenge people's gender identity routinely, as do many others like you.
- A person who has just realized their true gender identity an hour ago is just as valid as a person who has had a stable gender identity for as long as they can remember.
I have no idea what you mean by "valid" here, so I don't know what you mean exactly. But I've never met anyone who deduced that they are transgender on the strength of merely an hour's self-reflection. Negotiating what gender is, and means to you, is a complex and usually lifelong process. Surely you yourself, though cis, have experienced change and evolution in your personal understanding of womanhood and what it requires of you. What it allows, what it restricts, what others expect of you, and what you are willing to accept.
- Some people have a gender identity that is fluid depending on time or mood, and that's also valid and real.
That certainly is a real phenomenon. Whether it is "valid" or not likely depends on who you're asking and in what context. I presume you consider that "invalid" somehow yourself, though I'm curious what you think that invalidity should mean in practical terms. Do you just mean that you don't like it, or do you believe there should be some sort of governmental interference with those who might otherwise choose to identify as gender-fluid?
- Cisgender people are not required to dress in sex-typical clothing, or to present as typical for their sex.
Required by whom? Some societies in the world and even in the country do formally restrict what clothing persons of a certain gender are permitted to wear, at least without facing severe social or legal consequences, and gender and sex tend to be closely related. I do reject your misclassification of sartorial taboos as being
sex-related. Expectations concerning clothing vary according to culture, and are a part of culture; they can only and do only correspond to gender categories. Thus, expectations for clothing vary along with whatever gender categories may be acknowledged by that culture. Along with whatever complicating factors may affect sartorial taboos. Age, for instance, often affects gender expectations concerning clothing, with the general universal trend being toward more fluid and possibly altogether non-delineated dress expectations concerning children, but strictly gender-divided rules concerning adults.
Cisgender females can have short hair, wear no make-up, wear trousers and steel-toed work-boots; cisgender males can wear make-up, have long hair, and wear dresses.
They obviously can do so, though that personal freedom will almost certainly come at a social cost. I assume you mean in your home country and culture, not universally? Obviously not all cultures have identical expectations of external affect. But even the US, the above would comes as a considerable point of dispute in most communities. During the "Second Wave" of political feminism, securing the right of women to wear trousers and appropriate work-related PPE was a major item of political dispute and activism, as I am sure you remember. There has been no such advancement of clothing-freedom for men, and a man who wears "female" clothes is subject at least to considerable social ridicule, and is very often at risk of real personal danger. In many states, he can also be fired from a job, expelled from a courtroom, or many other such formal consequences for his choices. Most legislation aimed at illegalizing "drag shows" has this very behavior in mind, and often the law itself makes no provision for context.
So I think I would rate this one as "mostly true in the US" as concerns "females", and "mostly untrue in the US" as concerns males.
- A person's clothing and presentation choices do not dictate their gender identity.
This seems neither altogether true nor altogether false to me. Obviously clothing and presentation are not the
only ways in which gender is perceived or expressed. They are important, though, definitely gender-coded, and one of the ways in which gender norms are often both communicated and enforced to the next generation. If someone makes "choices" that do not conform to common social expectations, they can be assured of at least some social consequences for doing so, some positive and some negative depending on their situation.
- Given that presentation does not dictate gender identity, transgender people are also under no obligation to present in the ways considered typical of the opposite sex.
I can't make heads or tails of what you're trying to say with this one, sorry. What does one have to do with the other? And what kind of "obligation" do you mean?
- Surgical and/or hormonal alteration can be expensive. It often has other health risks as well. Because of this, neither hormonal nor surgical alteration is required for a person to be transgender.
Required by whom? I don't see how this one can have a universal answer that applies equally well to all communities. Some people would accept this and some would not. Certainly within LGTBQ-tolerant communities it is generally understood that an incredibly expensive surgery performed by only a handful of providers and not covered by insurance is not going to be on the cards for most people whether or not that is "right". It is also true that not everyone who is transgendered even wants to attempt such a transition, and that transitions of this kind are a procedure of relatively recent invention and are not equally available in all communities or nations.
- A female person can have breasts, vagina, uterus, and no exogenous testosterone and still identify as a transman, and their gender identity is completely valid.
- A male person can have chest hair and a beard, penis and testicles, and take no estrogen supplements and still identify as a transwoman, and their gender identity is completely valid.
- A person of either natal sex can take any combination of hormones or alterations or take none at all and still identify as nonbinary, and their gender identity is completely valid.
All three of these are repeating this notion of "valid", and once again what you mean by valid is less than obvious. Valid according to whom? What is it that you think validity means or should mean? Obviously there are many people who woud not consider any of those situations "valid", for a host of reasons.
- People should be given the right by law to use facilities and services that align with their gender identity in all circumstances.
People already
have that right in most polities, but I do disapprove of attempts to use the law to take away that right.
People should not be denied participation in sports for which they qualify on the basis of their physical sex, and should be given the right by law to participate on the basis of their gender identity.
"Should not" in the moral sense? I would agree with that. I think it is very wrong to make children, especially, targets for social rejection and violence on the basis of social norms they have no real power to affect.
Politically and legally, I don't think the government should be telling people who can or cannot participate in a sport in the first place, let alone with formal sex discrimination as their sole guide to enforcing said rules. Why would anyone consent to that? If that had always been the law, women would not be allowed to participate in most sports, as they were historically barred from them in almost all cases, and were only able to change those conventions by violating perceptively male spaces (and, once again, sartorial rules).
Therefore, any male that says they identify as a woman must be granted access by law to female services, spaces, and athletics.
Again, I tend to agree with this as a question of morality, but disagree that the government should be enforcing any one culture's views over anothers on "services, spaces, and athletics" should be allowed for whom. That can only lead to conflict, inequality, and ultimately violence.
