Gender Roles

[Bomb#20]

The problem here is that the set of AFABs includes some who do not appear sufficiently female

I reject your linguistic assumption. Sex is not assigned at birth. Sex is recorded at birth, observed very early in the pregnancy via ultrasound, developed between the sixth and twelfth week of gestation, and is determined at conception.

The point of AFAB is to avoid any debate about what gender a trans person is.

Well, that's not going to succeed.

Güevedoce - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Bomb#20]

So you want all trans in the men's room.

... What I want is women's boundaries to be respected. Transmen have a right to be in the women's room -- they're women. Transwomen who actually present as female can go in the women's room because nobody will try to stop them. And if women are willing to welcome in some categories of male-presenting transwomen, that's their option. One-size-fits-all solutions are not good solutions.

The problem here is that the set of AFABs includes some who do not appear sufficiently female. You need a rule.

It seems to me the old rule -- be courteous -- worked pretty well, back in the day. The folks who insisted we switch to a new rule -- self-ID -- spoiled things for everyone. So where do we go from here? I think at this point the least bad rule that handles women like your SIL who don't appear sufficiently female is for them to show ID with an F on it if somebody challenges them. Sure it's offensive for them to have to do that, but then it's offensive for every cis-male voyeur and his brother to be given a green light to violate women's boundaries. This is kind of a "needs of the many outweigh needs of the few" situation.

Transwomen who can't convincingly present as female but go out in public anyway are outing themselves. For those who can present as female, making it socially acceptable for women to use the men's room makes transwomen safer. Women often have good reason to use men's rooms -- shorter lines and cleaner toilet seats.

Depends on the location. I've seen women show up in the men's room at tech events several times. I've never seen it elsewhere, though. The people who are at tech events do not represent anything like an average of the population.

Not yet. Normalizing it would be good for harm reduction. Easy enough to do -- all the idiots changing the signs on bathrooms from "Women" to "Gender Neutral" need to be instructed to change them back, and if they really need a "Gender Neutral" sign, to put it on the men's room.

 

[Jokodo]

So you want all trans in the men's room.

... What I want is women's boundaries to be respected. Transmen have a right to be in the women's room -- they're women. Transwomen who actually present as female can go in the women's room because nobody will try to stop them. And if women are willing to welcome in some categories of male-presenting transwomen, that's their option. One-size-fits-all solutions are not good solutions.

The problem here is that the set of AFABs includes some who do not appear sufficiently female. You need a rule.

It seems to me the old rule -- be courteous -- worked pretty well, back in the day.

Back in the good old days when weirdos knew their place and didn't make unreasonable demands - like, I don't know, expecting to be reasonably safe in public spaces - things sure seemed to work pretty well. If you were normal. As to how well it worked for those whose mere existence was by many seen as uncourteous, let's ask them, shall we?

The folks who insisted we switch to a new rule -- self-ID -- spoiled things for everyone. So where do we go from here? I think at this point the least bad rule that handles women like your SIL who don't appear sufficiently female is for them to show ID with an F on it if somebody challenges them.

That's a pretty clear expression of wanting to throw people under the bus right there.

Secondly, and almost as importantly, how is this going to work in reality? If Vermont drops the Fs and Ms in their IDs effectively according to self assignment, New Hampshire changes it for post-op individuals, and Maine only records birth sex, do you expect people to produce local ID everytime they cross state lines?

Sure it's offensive for them to have to do that, but then it's offensive for every cis-male voyeur and his brother to be given a green light to violate women's boundaries. This is kind of a "needs of the many outweigh needs of the few" situation.

Or maybe it is a "none of the above, we can do better than both of that" situation? If you think things worked a few decades ago, at don't you try to formalise the implicit rules people where following instead of jumping on the Republican train?

 

[Emily Lake]

If you think things worked a few decades ago, at don't you try to formalise the implicit rules people where following instead of jumping on the Republican train?

The "implicit rule" that was being followed a few decades ago was case-by-case discretion, with the expectation of good courteous behavior from those to whom accomodations were being granted, with the understanding that those accommodations were granted on the basis of clinical diagnosis of a severe mental health condition, oversight by a psychologist which included on-going counseling, and surgical removal of the penis and testes.

If you want to formalize that, I'd probably support you. Progressives would likely label you an evil transphobe though, so choose carefully.

 

[Bomb#20]

... What I want is women's boundaries to be respected. Transmen have a right to be in the women's room -- they're women. Transwomen who actually present as female can go in the women's room because nobody will try to stop them. And if women are willing to welcome in some categories of male-presenting transwomen, that's their option. One-size-fits-all solutions are not good solutions.

The problem here is that the set of AFABs includes some who do not appear sufficiently female. You need a rule.

It seems to me the old rule -- be courteous -- worked pretty well, back in the day.

Back in the good old days when weirdos knew their place and didn't make unreasonable demands - like, I don't know, expecting to be reasonably safe in public spaces - things sure seemed to work pretty well. If you were normal. As to how well it worked for those whose mere existence was by many seen as uncourteous, let's ask them, shall we?

Reasonably safe from whom?!? From other men!!! Why on earth should we assume that letting "weirdos" into a place that's currently safe from men because it excludes men will be an effective way to make the "weirdos" safe from men once we've stopped allowing that place to exclude men?!? You might as well propose that unvaccinated people be let into a venue that requires proof of vaccination on account of that place being so much safer for them than the ones full of people infected with COVID.

The demand to let men into women's intimate spaces is blatantly not motivated by safety concerns. It appears to be motivated by a feeling that trans people are more oppressed than women and a conviction that justice lies not in applying principles but in prioritizing the interests of whoever is most oppressed. It's the same reason a lot of people think OWS protestors should be allowed to block streets and vandalize businesses.

The folks who insisted we switch to a new rule -- self-ID -- spoiled things for everyone. So where do we go from here? I think at this point the least bad rule that handles women like your SIL who don't appear sufficiently female is for them to show ID with an F on it if somebody challenges them.

That's a pretty clear expression of wanting to throw people under the bus right there.

"Wanting"? Good grief. I don't "want" to throw anyone under the bus. The non-ops' demand to take as their right a privilege women had generally been kindly granting to pre-ops and post-ops has created a situation where somebody is inevitably going to be thrown under the bus. They've put us all in the position of having to figure out how many, how badly, and whom.

Secondly, and almost as importantly, how is this going to work in reality? If Vermont drops the Fs and Ms in their IDs effectively according to self assignment, New Hampshire changes it for post-op individuals, and Maine only records birth sex, do you expect people to produce local ID everytime they cross state lines?

I expect if someone's mannish-looking SIL shows an F on her out-of-state ID and a Maine cop arrests her anyway because he says Vermont ID sex is meaningless, she's going to collect a massive judgement against the state, and after that Maine is going to order its cops to accept out-of-state IDs as definitive.

Sure it's offensive for them to have to do that, but then it's offensive for every cis-male voyeur and his brother to be given a green light to violate women's boundaries. This is kind of a "needs of the many outweigh needs of the few" situation.

Or maybe it is a "none of the above, we can do better than both of that" situation? If you think things worked a few decades ago, at don't you try to formalise the implicit rules people where following

I'm pretty sure I covered that when I wrote "And if women are willing to welcome in some categories of male-presenting transwomen, that's their option." Formalizing the new rule shouldn't be up to me. I shouldn't get a vote. The rule should be whatever women generally want it to be.

instead of jumping on the Republican train?

Oh for the love of god. This is really getting tiresome. Why do you keep on trying to shove other people's words into my mouth? Strawmanning doesn't seem like your style. Are you just having a tough time wrapping your mind around the idea that hard-assed Republican doctrine and hard-assed progressive doctrine do not jointly exhaust the space of possible policies?

 

[Bomb#20]

So on other words, "newspeak" when said by a conservative (rather than someone who actually read the book and understands the concept) is a dog whistle used to complain that English is a living language, and usage of words change...

As usual, the explanation you come up with for an opponent disagreeing with you is make-believe -- a pure invention ungrounded in any observation. You are not competent to model other people's minds; you know this about yourself; you ought to take this into account when you feel the urge to impute disreputable thoughts to people.

Of course English is a living language. Of course usage of words changes. You have seen exactly zero examples of anyone complaining about that here. But English is a consensus of the usages of all its speakers. The language changes when the consensus changes. Demanding that people change their usage is not sufficient to change the language and is not evidence that the language has changed. Adoption of a new usage by a narrow subculture is not sufficient to change the language and is not evidence that the language has changed. Pointing out that you personally are not the Academie Anglaise, and that you personally have neither the power nor the authority to change English by mere force of your wishful thinking, and that you personally have not supplied any evidence that the consensus of English speakers has in fact changed to whatever you wish it were, do not constitute complaining "that English is a living language, and usage of words change." Your entire line of argument is asinine.

How dare we understand the foundations of common words at an academic level!

You misspelled "make up a just-so-story to rationalize creating new technical jargon, and then pretend new jargon makes the old usage wrong."

Plenty of argument has been made to demonstrate than "man" and "woman" are social concepts only loosely linked to physical realities,

Certainly. And then you promptly discard that conclusion that was plentifully demonstrated, and indulge yourself in the fairy tale that "social concept" has nothing to do with society and instead means "it's whatever my ideology proclaims -- society's concept be damned".

A person's gender is not the category he puts himself in; it's the category society's consensus puts him in. That's what it is to be a "social concept". A person is of course free to categorize himself any way he pleases, but he cannot force others to categorize him as he pleases. Categorization is the fundamental linguistic operation, prior to all considerations of naming and syntax, and all speakers of a language are free to do it any way they like. It's called "freethought" -- deal with it. And if it turns out most of us freely choose to do it the way we observe others doing it, so that we can more easily communicate with them, well, that's where consensuses come from. That's the reason it's possible for languages to work in the first place. This is not rocket science.

The ability to think and express this concept -- the concept that a person's "gender" is socially rather than individually chosen -- is what you have been attempting to suppress by promoting your Humpty Dumpty language: your idiolect in which you use "gender" to mean "gender identity" and in which you retain no word still meaning "gender".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There's a difference in childhood in brain structure:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn4202

Small, but detectable.