Can We Discuss Sex & Gender / Transgender People?

[TomC]

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

 

[KeepTalking]

I am talking when they are single-occupancy bathrooms, and they are unnecessarily segregated. I find that shit creepy.

I don't usually go to places that would have multiple occupancy bathrooms, though, and I haven't been in one in a while.

It might just be 'tradition'... although I would suspect that the men's restroom includes a urinal and the women's restroom includes feminine hygiene dispensers and disposal units.

With men's restrooms, you get a bit of both. I would say most do have a urinal, but there are definitely those that do not. In bars, we often get condom machines instead of those that dispense feminine hygiene products. I don't see any reason why a gender neutral restroom couldn't have both in both cases.

 

[Emily Lake]

I am going to rant a little bit about critical theory. Sorry, no, I will not say "rant" because I am not going to rant. I am going to make what I think are some reasonable statements. The problem with critical theory is that, while it DOES inflame the passions of a loyal political base, it also polarizes people into an approximate 50/50 split on whether to elevate you to sainthood or have you slain as a devil-worshiper, with very little middle-ground.

For instance, I think that, without critical theory, it would have been substantially easier to get someone like @Emily Lake as an ally, although not without her own reservations. I think that people like her are not inherently enemies.

I'll second your non-rant about critical theory, and raise you a dollop of postmodernist theory smeared on top.

I also completely agree. And I actually don't think I am your enemy. I think I'm your ally... but I have to admit that I'm not the ally of the twatter posters out there and their gormless followers.

It really reminds me of the earlier days of the gay rights movement. Early on, when it was kicking off, NAMBLA attached itself to the cause, and tried to piggy-back. There was a period where lesbians tended to object to pedophiles being included, and gay men tended to think that all support was good support. This ended up leading to the "homosexuals are pedophiles" bullshit. When NAMBLE finally got kicked to the curb, and were well-separated from gay, lesbian, and bisexual people... acceptance escalated fairly swiftly.

I really think there's a similar thing going on right now, particularly in terms of people with ill-intent or with paraphilias who are trying to piggy-back on an otherwise extremely good cause.

 

[Emily Lake]

Well, until we develop a litmus test, we are stuck with human judgment.

How do you feel about the litmus test being that of a diagnosis by a qualified clinician who has accounted for other conditions that might affect the perception of the kid?

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

 

[Emily Lake]

"Single occupancy" - to be clear you mean a single stall in a room with no common areas for hand washing/drying etc - is already unisex, surely?

Honestly, I cannot get the image of a horse with a dong growing out of it's forehead out of my mind.

 

[Emily Lake]

If this is the case and one can make this determination via a MRI or other scan, then why isn't this either a litmus test or the next best thing to one in terms of determining if someone is actually trans?
If it can be used to provide an objective datapoint one can point at when one claims to be trans, then why shouldn't it be used as such?

I finally got the time to read that paper last night. It was interesting (even though there are terms I don't understand), and it was a well-designed study. It is the first I've seen that controlled for sex as well as sexual orientation, even though it's still relatively small sample sizes.

One of the things I found most valuable about it is that they excluded from consideration people with neurological disorders, including autism or ASD, people taking neuroactive or psychotropic drugs, any hormonal disorder, and anyone who had ever had hormone treatment with the exception of females taking oral contraceptives. They also only included transgender people with a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria or transsexualism. That made it about as clean a comparison as you can possibly get, and removes complications from anything that would otherwise affect the brain.

Now I'd really like to see a similar study comparing this transgender population to one that has no treatment but is only self-declared.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

You take it for granted that I consider @Emily Lake's concerns to be a priority,

I took no considerations, on your part, for granted.

I recognized, early on, that you don't take anybody's concerns seriously unless they match yours. Anything else, you ignore. Or you hand-wave away.

When @Emily Lake expresses a nuanced opinion that you don't like, you describe her as angry. An enemy. I don't remember you describing her as transphobic, but the angry and enemy part I do.

So, let's take this post full circle, back to what you posted and I quoted. I don't find your concerns a priority. I'm more concerned about the priorities of the female members of society than yours.
Tom

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.

 

[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?

 

[Emily Lake]

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?

My objection is (and for 99% of elements always has been) around self-declaration of being transgender. There is neurobiological evidence that people without neurological or hormonal comorbidities who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria are probably born transgender - I've never actually doubted that there is a set of people who are innately transgender.

I'm not, however, all that convinced that all of the people currently claiming to be transgender actually fit the description above.

For example, I really don't believe that Jessica Yaniv or Jeffrey Marsh would fit that description.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

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.

 

[Emily Lake]

It is rare for a trans woman to be housed in a women’s prison compared to the number of guards in women’s prisons who are male.

How do you know? The ACLU blocks freedom of information requests to get statistics of the number of transwomen in the female estate.

Also, are you implicitly agreeing that transwomen are in fact male and that maleness is a threat to the women in the female estate?

The people making those FOIA requests are trying to identify the transwomen, not merely count them.

False. They did not ask for identifying information, they asked solely for counts.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

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?

My objection is (and for 99% of elements always has been) around self-declaration of being transgender. There is neurobiological evidence that people without neurological or hormonal comorbidities who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria are probably born transgender - I've never actually doubted that there is a set of people who are innately transgender.

I'm not, however, all that convinced that all of the people currently claiming to be transgender actually fit the description above.

For example, I really don't believe that Jessica Yaniv or Jeffrey Marsh would fit that description.

That is reasonable. I feel that we need better diagnostic procedures, to be honest.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

 

[Metaphor]

It is rare for a trans woman to be housed in a women’s prison compared to the number of guards in women’s prisons who are male.

How do you know? The ACLU blocks freedom of information requests to get statistics of the number of transwomen in the female estate.

Also, are you implicitly agreeing that transwomen are in fact male and that maleness is a threat to the women in the female estate?

The people making those FOIA requests are trying to identify the transwomen, not merely count them.

No, they're not. It was stopped on the basis that identifying those transwomen was a possibility from fulfilling the request, but you have no basis whatever to claim that was the purpose of the request.

 

[TomC]

I am sensing bad faith from you

So does Metaphor.

I have a more nuanced opinion than you have. My lack of faith in your ideological purity is now "sensing bad faith", according to you.

Oh well. The RCC also sensed my lack of faith. I really don't much care about other people having opinions about my faith.

But I do understand your opinions. I don't like or agree with them. But I understand them.
Some people are in the category with you, Trausti, the Pope, and Metaphor. Just to name a few.
Tom

 

[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.

 

[TomC]

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

You are way nicer than I am.

Tom

 

[none]

"Single occupancy" - to be clear you mean a single stall in a room with no common areas for hand washing/drying etc - is already unisex, surely?

Honestly, I cannot get the image of a horse with a dong growing out of it's forehead out of my mind.

ehrm... yeah, lets not get criminal here @Emily Lake i.e. #503

 

[SigmatheZeta]

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, I have never fully understood it. Gay and bisexual men, in my life, have been considerate and respectful. My negative encounters, with the human race, have mostly been violent ones.

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. Yes, I could tell you that living that way messes a person up, but I cannot really communicate it, even if you would choose to believe me. It is like explaining color to a blind person. This happened to me in the same year that Matthew Shepard was murdered. I don't know how to get it across.

It is like you trying to explain rape to somebody that wants to understand it, but a real understanding never gets through. It is a qualia that can only be understood by having felt it. And I STILL cannot genuinely understand that, except maybe I can understand the frustration of trying to explain color to a blind person and just feeling very alone because of that.