Can We Discuss Sex & Gender / Transgender People?

[Emily Lake]

By the way, transgender boys attempt suicide at a higher rate than transgender girls. I speculate that the combined problems of being transgender and being assigned female at birth must be pretty hard on them. I do not even slightly envy them if their families are not supportive.

I read something recently looking at the stats for suicide for LGBTQ+. They disambiguated on the basis of sex, and found that the elevated rate of suicidality was extremely highly correlated with sex, with both lesbians and transboys having materially higher rates than gay boys and transgirls. The rate for lesbians and transboys was a fair bit higher than the level of suicidality exhibited by teenage straight cisgirls. The rate for gay young men and transgirls was lower than for straight cisgirls, and higher than for straight cisboys, but not as much higher than their female counterparts.

I'll have to see if I can find it.

 

[Metaphor]

Plus: women do like to be able to escape to the ladies to do hair, make up, escape for a few minutes from someone at their table. Finding some guy in the bathroom is not a nice surrise

I've always suspected it and now I have proof. Ya'll are going in there to braid each other's hair and talk about boys.

 

[Metaphor]

Therefore, I actually was born different. Gender dysphoria is not anything so transient as a daydream in my head or an idea. It is actually something that is objectively different about me. I am literally not really the same thing as a cis-man. I am something different.

But I haven't said there isn't something different about your brain compared to the brains of people who are not transgender-identified males. Your brain being a particular way does not change your sex. And when we form sex-segregated spaces, your sex is what matters, by definition.

Pull back Met, pull back.

Sigma hasn't conflated sex and gender. She has claimed a neurological cause of her gender dysphoria. She also seems to be quite reasonable when it comes to shared spaces. I'll also add that not all sex-segregates spaces are as vital to maintain sex-segregation. Some, like public restrooms, are a lot less controversial overall than others, like prisons.

I know you get tired to the wall of "Oh Tnoes it's Met so it's Wrong" idiocy, but don't forget to let other people have nuanced views as well.

I am pointing out I never made a claim that gender dysphoria was not real. So are anxiety disorders.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

By the way, transgender boys attempt suicide at a higher rate than transgender girls. I speculate that the combined problems of being transgender and being assigned female at birth must be pretty hard on them. I do not even slightly envy them if their families are not supportive.

I read something recently looking at the stats for suicide for LGBTQ+. They disambiguated on the basis of sex, and found that the elevated rate of suicidality was extremely highly correlated with sex, with both lesbians and transboys having materially higher rates than gay boys and transgirls. The rate for lesbians and transboys was a fair bit higher than the level of suicidality exhibited by teenage straight cisgirls. The rate for gay young men and transgirls was lower than for straight cisgirls, and higher than for straight cisboys, but not as much higher than their female counterparts.

I'll have to see if I can find it.

I do know that transgender girls get more attention than transgender boys. It has bothered me for years.

 

[Metaphor]

...we'll just try to prosecute the rapist after the fact, and if we're lucky they'll go to jail. And well, if they're trans, they get put in the women's prison... and if they just happen to rape one of the women who cannot get away from them and has no way to protect themselves, well, we'll just add more time to their sentence and leave them in with their victims?

Who is advocating for this?

All of the people in this thread who take the position that self-declaration of gender identity is sufficient to grant a person 100% complete access to anything and everything intended for the opposite sex, and that no reasonable safeguards should be put in place. Everyone who insists that we should throw open to doors and let any male whos says magic words enter, and that the sex-offenders will out themselves at which point they can be prosecuted.

And with respect to prisons specifically... The states of California, Maine, New Jersey, and all of Canada.

And all of England (possibly all of the UK).

 

[Emily Lake]

I dealt with being transgender by moving to an area where people's attitudes and beliefs were different, and I was never again surrounded by a violent gang and beaten and then given platitudes and unwanted advice by the police officer I called afterward. The culture that I live in matters to me more than it does to most people.

I am not sure if this is applicable.

Not exactly applicable. It's an unfortunate fact that predatory men exist just about everywhere. The best I can do is be on guard, be prepares, and avoid places that increase my vulnerability. It's more or less how most women live their lives. That's about as close to moving to a place with less dangerous culture as we can pull off.

I'm not sure if it got carried over, but we had a couple of threads that asked the women on this board what they would do differently if men had an early curfew. It's an absurd hypothetical, but it was also a really clear indication of the degree of worry and concern that most women deal with in our every-day lives. IIRC, every single woman who posts on this board had been sexually assaulted more than once, and most of us had been victims of attempted or completed rape. It's just not something that most male people have to give any thought to, although it is something that some transwomen have experienced.

 

[Emily Lake]

How so? What process do you believe ensures that all sex offenders will be revealed as such?

Oh that's easy - they'll be revealed AFTER they've assaulted or raped someone (assuming that person reports it and is taken seriously), or AFTER they're literally caught in the act of placing spy cameras. In either case, it's extremely likely to be female humans that get harmed by this experiment, and we all know that they don't matter.

They don't matter. That's kinda the point in this discussion.

"Why can't a woman be more like a man"? Why can't they be as free and easy as guys are? What's wrong with you chicks? Are you on your period or something?
Tom

Not all men though I say that in complete sincerity. A lot of men, but definitely not all of them.

 

[TomC]

Plus: women do like to be able to escape to the ladies to do hair, make up, escape for a few minutes from someone at their table. Finding some guy in the bathroom is not a nice surrise

I've always suspected it and now I have proof. Ya'll are going in there to braid each other's hair and talk about boys.

And topless.

That's why males who want access to the ladies room want it. What other possible reason would there be for a guy to want into the Ladies room?

Us guys can pee any where. And we do.
We might not tell the wimmins that we pee in the kitchen sink. Better if we don't.

And not always. I never said we always do.

Never mind.

Tom

 

[Metaphor]

I mean, does the duckbill platypus piss you off too?

No, monotremes do not piss me off. In fact, they can do Very Cool Things. But like any mammal, they cannot change sex.

7 gender-bending animals in the animal kingdom

There are many other species in the animal kingdom apart from our own that don't adhere to a gender binary.

www.sbs.com.au

Some of those animals really are gender-bending--if by gender we mean the sex-role of the animal. None of the mammals in the list can change sex, but the clownfish does, in fact, change sex.

Humans are not clownfish.

 

[Emily Lake]

I am sensing bad faith from you that I have not sensed from anybody else. I might not always agree with others, but I have never felt they intentionally called my character into question.

I am open to the possibility that I have misinterpreted you, though.

I don't think it's bad faith, so much as complete frustration. There are clearly a couple of people in here that have just automatically placed you on "the other side", and it biases their responses. I can understand, it's a tense topic for several people.

For some history, there's also a fair bit of one side insisting that @TomC and @Metaphor have "genital fetishes" and are inherently "transphobic" because they're gay men who are exclusively attracted to dick. Which is pretty damned offensive, and I don't blame either Tom or Met for having their hackles up.

 

[Emily Lake]

It sounds like a great idea! Let's raise taxes and fund it!

I love the idea, but MRI scans are a little bit expensive.

If it's definitive enough, I would pitch in to help fund it.

I'm not sure if it's predictive though - that hasn't been tested so far as I can tell. I would want to be at a point where we can take a blinded brain scan and determine sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity with say... 80% accuracy?

It is raw, at this point, yes. It would be great if we had affordable MRIs and a rigorously tested system for diagnosis, but we are still working on it, I think. I am optimistic for the not-too-distant future, though.

Agreed, and so am I. I honestly think the biggest barrier to that is the critical-theory driven cohort.

 

[Emily Lake]

I don't think @Sigma has hand-waved away concerns.

You are way nicer than I am.

Tom

I'm female. I've been conditioned to be nice.

In all seriousness, I try to take people at face value as much as I can. I personally am really bad at inferring intonation from text alone, and I know that I can infer the wrong intention. I'm also not all that great at expressing my own intent. I tend toward formality in writing (although I've goten better with age), which often comes off as very arrogant and has frequently resulting in my written word being misunderstood when I don't think the same would have occurred in person.

 

[Metaphor]

The 14th Amendment to the US requires equal treatment under the law regardless of sex, and the 4th prohibits unlawful search and seizure. Your proposed policy cannot be enforced without violating both.

Gender Identity Is Not Sex

No, but you cannot enforce any rules concerning gender without violating the fourteenth amendment. If you're using people's genitals or chromosomes to determine what class of law should apply to them, that's a violation of sex equality, not gender equality.

Having sex-segregated facilities is not a 'class of law', nor does it violate the US Constitution.

The facts of your physical body actually are a question of biological sex, so using your physical body as the justification for suppressing individual liberties is sex discrimination even if gender was the presumptive target of the oppressor. And as others have repeatedly pointed out, transgendered people often are intersex biologically anyway,

Non. Just like the non-trans population, most trans people are not intersex.

making their case a very clearcut case of sex discrimination. Indeed, as SigmatheZeta has been rightfully elucidating, most transgendered person's nervous systems might indeed be identifiably different (and determinate) in ways that we are only now discovering, making them biologically intersex from a biologist's perspective,

What? No.

even if socially they had never been identified as such. In that case, nearly all cases of discrimination against trans people would also be sex discrimination in a very clear-cut fashion. This is is why I have the right to marry a man, incidentally; even though laws preventing gays from marrying were squarely aimed at punishing me for a behavior inappropriate to my gender

Inappropriate for your sex, not for your gender. Two males, with penises, would not have been allowed to marry each other if one of them said his gender was 'woman'.

 

[Emily Lake]

You have no idea how scary it is to be surrounded by five or more violent individuals, and you don't know whether they are trying to scare you, this time, or actually intent on killing you.

Not exactly no. But I know how scary it is to have three large, violent men follow me on a dark night, making sexual comments to me and trying to convince me to wait for them. I know how scary it is to have one person who I thought was nice try to pin me down and yank my pants off.

It's not the same, but there's a qualitative similarity to finding yourself in a situation where stronger, more aggressive people are in a position to severely hurt or even kill you. It's not easy to put into words. But it definitely emerges in my physical and emotional reaction to reading what you wrote.

 

[Metaphor]

Bottom-line: there is clear neurobiological evidence for the argument that transgender people are probably born transgender, I just have to pee, I really strongly like people that bother to ask about my pronouns, and parental support can take a transgender kid's chances of attempted suicide from 60% down to 3%.

Objections seem to be, primarily:

A) semantics arguments, which are...semantics arguments...and

B) objections against critical theory, which I do not even really follow.

Does that about sum it up?

No.
What this looks like to me is a combination of mansplaining and male privilege.

What matters to you is all that matters. And you'll tell us why what you care about is important, while hand waving away the concerns of women, like @Emily Lake.

Does that about sum it up?
Tom

I don't think @Sigma has hand-waved away concerns.

@Loren Pechtel, @Jimmy Higgins, and @Jarhyn have though. It's the people who insist that sex doesn't matter, genitals are not a problem, and that women should just shut up and accept the risk of having people with penises in their spaces, because hey, what could go wrong? They're the ones hand-waving away concerns.

It's the male born-and-raised people who insist that because penises have never been a problem for them, and because they wouldn't be concerned to have a naked female in their midst, that the same thing should apply to women. They're the ones who see to think that the statistics for rape and sexual assaults are irrelevant, and that women just be crazy hysterical overreacting and all that.

As someone that is both queer and transgender,

Slight derail: what makes you queer?

 

[Emily Lake]

Plus: women do like to be able to escape to the ladies to do hair, make up, escape for a few minutes from someone at their table. Finding some guy in the bathroom is not a nice surrise

I've always suspected it and now I have proof. Ya'll are going in there to braid each other's hair and talk about boys.

And shoes. Don't forget shoes.

 

[Emily Lake]

...we'll just try to prosecute the rapist after the fact, and if we're lucky they'll go to jail. And well, if they're trans, they get put in the women's prison... and if they just happen to rape one of the women who cannot get away from them and has no way to protect themselves, well, we'll just add more time to their sentence and leave them in with their victims?

Who is advocating for this?

All of the people in this thread who take the position that self-declaration of gender identity is sufficient to grant a person 100% complete access to anything and everything intended for the opposite sex, and that no reasonable safeguards should be put in place. Everyone who insists that we should throw open to doors and let any male whos says magic words enter, and that the sex-offenders will out themselves at which point they can be prosecuted.

And with respect to prisons specifically... The states of California, Maine, New Jersey, and all of Canada.

And all of England (possibly all of the UK).

I considered adding that, but technically it's not the law, just practice. And it's been challenged during the last year, so I'm not entirely sure what the current status is.

What is it in Australia?

 

[Metaphor]

...we'll just try to prosecute the rapist after the fact, and if we're lucky they'll go to jail. And well, if they're trans, they get put in the women's prison... and if they just happen to rape one of the women who cannot get away from them and has no way to protect themselves, well, we'll just add more time to their sentence and leave them in with their victims?

Who is advocating for this?

All of the people in this thread who take the position that self-declaration of gender identity is sufficient to grant a person 100% complete access to anything and everything intended for the opposite sex, and that no reasonable safeguards should be put in place. Everyone who insists that we should throw open to doors and let any male whos says magic words enter, and that the sex-offenders will out themselves at which point they can be prosecuted.

And with respect to prisons specifically... The states of California, Maine, New Jersey, and all of Canada.

And all of England (possibly all of the UK).

I considered adding that, but technically it's not the law, just practice. And it's been challenged during the last year, so I'm not entirely sure what the current status is.

What is it in Australia?

There's no national policy and it depends on state. According to this (very pro gender ideology article, as expected from the ABC, which of course conflates sex and gender within the article)

In some states, prisoners are supposed to be put in facilities according to their self-identified gender, but in other jurisdictions, authorities decide based on whether someone has been through surgical intervention.

• NSW, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania: all have an explicit self-identification policy.

This means trans, intersex and gender diverse people are supposed to be placed in a facility that aligns with how they identify.

But there are cases where that doesn't happen and sometimes prisoners are held in a prison of their birth sex.

This can be based on security or safety reasons or if prison authorities think the person's trans status is not "authentic".

• Queensland, the Northern Territory and South Australia: the policy is not clear-cut, people can indicate whether they want to go to a male or female prison but placements are considered on a case-by-case basis.
• Western Australia: does not have a policy dedicated to how transgender prisoners should be managed.

 

[Metaphor]

...we'll just try to prosecute the rapist after the fact, and if we're lucky they'll go to jail. And well, if they're trans, they get put in the women's prison... and if they just happen to rape one of the women who cannot get away from them and has no way to protect themselves, well, we'll just add more time to their sentence and leave them in with their victims?

Who is advocating for this?

All of the people in this thread who take the position that self-declaration of gender identity is sufficient to grant a person 100% complete access to anything and everything intended for the opposite sex, and that no reasonable safeguards should be put in place. Everyone who insists that we should throw open to doors and let any male whos says magic words enter, and that the sex-offenders will out themselves at which point they can be prosecuted.

And with respect to prisons specifically... The states of California, Maine, New Jersey, and all of Canada.

And all of England (possibly all of the UK).

I considered adding that, but technically it's not the law, just practice. And it's been challenged during the last year, so I'm not entirely sure what the current status is.

I would say if the housing of prisoners on the male or female estate is a matter of administration and not law, that situation is even worse. The legislature presumably reflects the will of the people--or at least it reflects it closer than administrators free to make their own arrangements would surely do.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

I am sensing bad faith from you that I have not sensed from anybody else. I might not always agree with others, but I have never felt they intentionally called my character into question.

I am open to the possibility that I have misinterpreted you, though.

I don't think it's bad faith, so much as complete frustration. There are clearly a couple of people in here that have just automatically placed you on "the other side", and it biases their responses. I can understand, it's a tense topic for several people.

For some history, there's also a fair bit of one side insisting that @TomC and @Metaphor have "genital fetishes" and are inherently "transphobic" because they're gay men who are exclusively attracted to dick. Which is pretty damned offensive, and I don't blame either Tom or Met for having their hackles up.

Plenty of dudes are attracted to trans-men, or Jockpussy dot com would not exist. Gay trans-men probably do what I do. Someone is either attracted to me or not. I honestly could not possibly have sex with everybody, and I like guys better if they are really into me. It makes a guy 10x more attractive to me if he recognizes that I am awesome. I just do not really have a serious shortage.