Split Gendered spaces, split from Drag Shows

[Toni]

Men telling women there is no issue are anti-female.

I don't think I'd go that far but the dismissal of women's feelings is quite astounding.

But not at all surprising.

 

[Bomb#20]

The same people arguing that they are just trying to protect women by banning trans women from women’s lockers and bathrooms would be lined up to maim or kill the $@&&€£ that dare go in a men’s room. Hence trans women probably don’t want to use a men’s locker.

That's an extraordinary claim. Do you have any evidence for it? Your claim appears to be trumped-up hate speech on a level with "The same people arguing that they just want to worship God in their own way at their own synagogues would be lined up to eat Christian babies in their Satanic rituals."

 

[Politesse]

Men telling women there is no issue are anti-female.

I don't think I'd go that far but the dismissal of women's feelings is quite astounding.

Time and a place, is the thing. If someone wants to talk about their trauma for its own sake, or work through the feelings they have about a social issue, I'm all ears. We should absolutely support people who are suffering, and I do my best to do that in daily life. But when someone is weaponizing their own fear and trauma to impinge on another person's rights, that's not good. And giving into that and letting them do so will not heal their wounds.

Those of us in the LGBT community are not just familiar with, but very tired of hearing, the line of reasoning which goes "I'm scared of people who are different, therefore society should protect me from needing to ackowledge them, even if their rights are curtailed to make room for that false sense of security." Countering that attitude has been a constant refrain throughout the entire history of gay rights, bi rights, interracial rights, trans rights, Native rights.... Certain folk are scared of their neighbors, but pandering to that fear neither eliminates the fear (it's still there, it's always going to still be there because your fear of the other is truly located in your mind, not inside that other) nor does anyone else a speck of good.

And no, men are not the only people who support trans rights, nor are all women intolerant of them. That's a false dichotomy, nothing more.

 

[Jarhyn]

Finally: Should not everyone be able to expect to feel safe in showers and dressing rooms?

You mean, "the majority", right?

No, I mean EVERYONE.

Policies that target minorities as though they were a dangerous outgroup do not make them "feel safe", as a general rule.

Why should a person who is male on the outside, female on the inside, feel unsafe in a men's locker room? And should we not necessarily mistake belonging with safety?

I have never felt safe in the locker room. Not in my entire life.

I feel safe-ish in bathrooms, but locker rooms?

Never.

Bear in mind that I have been forced by others in my life to shower alone because I am "gay" for weeks on end, in BCT. There's a story to my platoon finding out before DADT ended, and me not getting discharged over it at that time, but I'm not going to tell it.

Needless to say, I can attest to the abuses that LGBT people have suffered over such sentiments. They treated me like that, and we have similar parts. Mine is even a bit above average. I'm literally the only one in that locker room that didn't look at anyone else's dick, except once when prompted and only because I was expected to. Even that felt like an assault. Even before they knew I was somewhere in (LGBT+) I still didn't look explicitly because I didn't want to experience... That...

So while some people may say "it's different", NO IT FUCKING IS NOT.

It's as reasonable as people demanding separate showers by race in Jim Crow.

If someone is not the person that did ___, you have a responsibility not to treat them like the person that did ___. You don't have a responsibility to like them, you don't have a responsibility to want to be around them.

You may never be entirely OK with them.

You do have a responsibility to be civil.

 

[Bomb#20]

... Biology is complex enough that there are myriad ways things can end up not as intended. ...

I think there is folly in thinking something has gone wrong or using words like "as intended".

There certainly is a baseline, and there is certainly deviation from the baseline. And those deviations seem to be quite inevitable.

Yeah, I'm considering the baseline to be "as intended".

If there is any conceptual difference between a "baseline" and a Platonic Form, it isn't apparent. Do either of you know of some repeatable experiment two scientists can perform that will allow them to empirically determine who is correct in the event that they disagree with each other about what some species' "baseline" is?

The statistical method is to look at the sum total of states within the population, every member, and calculate what the modes are of the system.

As a result one will see peaks on the multidimensional graph of quanta, and their expression.

To actually identify this, someone would need to do an absurd amount of work and carefully dissect every thing in existence on a cellular or even chemical level to establish a single momentary baseline on the instantaneous shared properties of groups.

So, while it's something that can be described, I don't think it's a thing that can be done.

If there is any conceptual difference between a "baseline" and a Platonic Form, it isn't apparent. ...

Yeah, its called a bell curve and measuring the distribution of gender traits. I had no idea you'd find statistics to be controversial.

If the peak or average of a distribution is what you meant by "baseline" then you're using the word in a nonstandard way. More importantly, that is clearly not what Loren took you to mean by it when he wrote:

Yeah, I'm considering the baseline to be "as intended".[/intended]

Note his use of the past tense. Where the peak or average of the distribution of gender traits lies is a property of the present moment -- statistics are time-varying. But any "baseline" getting described metaphorically as what evolution "intended" must refer to some time in the past when the trait in question was selected. Whatever height evolution may have figuratively "intended" for us, it can hardly have been for us to be two inches taller in 2000 than what it "intended" for us in 1900.​

 

[Bomb#20]

... The entire notion of gender being determined by self-identification amounts to defining "woman" as "person who regards ta's self as a woman". Note the presence of the word "woman" in the definition of "woman". That's a circular definition. Circular definitions utterly fail to explain what words mean. ...

If I ask you to describe the colors red and blue to a blind person, and you are unable to systematically explain those colors to a blind person, does this mean anything? Does this make the colors red and blue non-existent? Does it mean you are a failure at explaining things?

Haven't ever tried, but I don't think I'd be any more unable to systematically explain those colors to a blind person than I'd be unable to explain bat echolocation to a human who can't echolocate. I'd have to explain about photons and lenses and rods and cones and brain wiring specialized for responding to neuron activation ratios and so forth, and it would provide intellectual rather than gut-level understanding, but it would tell the blind person a whole lot more than saying "Red is things that look red."

What we have are a very small portion of the population that say they feel as if they are the opposite gender. That their identity is that of the opposite gender. It isn't a phase. It isn't a wish. It is engrained in their psyche.

It certainly appears to be engrained in their psyche and not a phase; but why do you say it's not a wish? It sure sounds like they wish they were the other sex. In any event, people are all individuals and claiming it isn't a wish is at the very least an overgeneralization.

So instead of asking folks to explain what they mean when they say a "transwoman is a woman", perhaps you need to step back and ask yourself, what is within the entirety of a gender?

Why would I ask myself? It's not up to me -- it's up to the perceptions of the whole community. A gender is an intersubjective category people divide one another into because as children they observed and learned to imitate the categories their elders divided one another into. It's a self-reproducing meme.

How much is our gender is the chromosomes and how much in the DNA and how much in the neurology?

None, none, and none. English* speakers divide people into genders on the basis of anatomical criteria. We learned these criteria by trial and error, comparing possible criteria to our observations of the examples of people the previous generation categorized as male and female. XY people with androgen insensitivity, as well as women who thought of themselves as men, have been among the canonical examples English speakers have observed earlier generations calling "women", and copied; consequently, chromosomes and neurology were not among the criteria we all learned.

(* Sapir-Whorf is alive and well; how people think is influenced by the structure of our languages. So I make no claims about how equivalent English's "man" and "woman" concepts are to their conventional translations in other languages. I suspect speech communities that don't gender themselves anatomically like English speakers are rather rare, but there are thousands of language communities and I have expertise on only one. (Of course many languages have nongendered pronouns like "Estonian's "ta", but that commonly just means pronouns aren't the place in the language where their gender categories show up.))

And which part of that matters the most in our personal identity?

The neurology matters the most in our personal identity; but to draw any conclusion about gender from that is begging the question. No matter how constantly gender ideologues make believe that gender identity is the same thing as gender and no matter how stridently they bully the rest of us to do likewise, those remain two different concepts and treating them as interchangeable is a vanilla equivocation fallacy.

(Moreover, claims that transwomen have "female neurology" and transmen have "male neurology" invariably turn out to be based on some measurement of some sexually dimorphic brain feature -- but there are hundreds of sexually dimorphic brain features. To infer that an anatomical male has a female brain from the fact that it falls into the typical female range along one axis, even though it falls into the typical male range on some other axis and hasn't even been measured along a hundred other sexually dimorphic axes, is an exercise in simply caring more about the one axis than the hundred others. Science does not tell us what to care about. Consequently, all claims I've seen that neurology makes somebody's brain a sex other than his or her anatomical sex are unscientific claims.)

 

[Toni]

Men telling women there is no issue are anti-female.

I don't think I'd go that far but the dismissal of women's feelings is quite astounding.

Time and a place, is the thing. If someone wants to talk about their trauma for its own sake, or work through the feelings they have about a social issue, I'm all ears. We should absolutely support people who are suffering, and I do my best to do that in daily life. But when someone is weaponizing their own fear and trauma to impinge on another person's rights, that's not good. And giving into that and letting them do so will not heal their wounds.

Those of us in the LGBT community are not just familiar with, but very tired of hearing, the line of reasoning which goes "I'm scared of people who are different, therefore society should protect me from needing to ackowledge them, even if their rights are curtailed to make room for that false sense of security." Countering that attitude has been a constant refrain throughout the entire history of gay rights, bi rights, interracial rights, trans rights, Native rights.... Certain folk are scared of their neighbors, but pandering to that fear neither eliminates the fear (it's still there, it's always going to still be there because your fear of the other is truly located in your mind, not inside that other) nor does anyone else a speck of good.

And no, men are not the only people who support trans rights, nor are all women intolerant of them. That's a false dichotomy, nothing more.

FFS, it has NOTHING to do with being 'afraid' of people with penises.

Women are conditioned/trained/learn from experience that naked strangers with penises standing next to them in showers are to be regarded as threats. It is extremely unlikely that any woman taking a shower at her local gym and observing that the person stepping up next to her is a naked person with a penis is immediately going to think: This is a pre/nonsurgical trans woman. Or even: This MIGHT be a presurgical trans woman. Their immediate and gut reaction would be that this is someone who likely intends me harm and react accordingly.

The same way they would if they were taking a shower in their own home and a naked stranger with a penis approached them. Or in their kitchen or living room. Or if they woke up at night and found a naked stranger with a penis standing next to their bed. Or in their garage. Or following them out of the building as they head towards their car in the parking lot--day or night!

The issue is NOT women being afraid of penises or of people with penises. The issue is that encountering a naked person with a penis in a place where one does not anticipate finding one is at the very least startling and uncomfortable. It's more than that if you are yourself naked. The initial reaction is that that person is an immediate threat to you. The immediate reaction is not: I need to ask this person some questions (which, I would guess, would make the naked person with a penis uncomfortable if they are in fact a transwoman). The immediate reaction would to to yell for help and assume you needed to defend yourself. If you had previously been sexually assaulted by a person with a penis, you would likely be extremely upset, frightened, panicked, traumatized. You might even reflexively act to protect yourself against the perceived threat.

I am betting that ANY man on this board who found a naked stranger with a penis standing next to him in their home or following them to their car would not assume anything good about the naked stranger. I am guessing that they would perceive the naked person as at least a potential threat.

I am betting that very few men would find it upsetting to encounter a naked person with a penis standing next to them in the men's locker room BECAUSE YOU WOULD EXPECT TO SEE NAKED PEOPLE WITH PENISES IN THE MEN'S LOCKER ROOM.

WOMEN DO NOT EXPECT TO FIND NAKED PEOPLE WITH PENISES IN THE WOMEN'S LOCKER ROOM.

 

[Politesse]

Men telling women there is no issue are anti-female.

I don't think I'd go that far but the dismissal of women's feelings is quite astounding.

Time and a place, is the thing. If someone wants to talk about their trauma for its own sake, or work through the feelings they have about a social issue, I'm all ears. We should absolutely support people who are suffering, and I do my best to do that in daily life. But when someone is weaponizing their own fear and trauma to impinge on another person's rights, that's not good. And giving into that and letting them do so will not heal their wounds.

Those of us in the LGBT community are not just familiar with, but very tired of hearing, the line of reasoning which goes "I'm scared of people who are different, therefore society should protect me from needing to ackowledge them, even if their rights are curtailed to make room for that false sense of security." Countering that attitude has been a constant refrain throughout the entire history of gay rights, bi rights, interracial rights, trans rights, Native rights.... Certain folk are scared of their neighbors, but pandering to that fear neither eliminates the fear (it's still there, it's always going to still be there because your fear of the other is truly located in your mind, not inside that other) nor does anyone else a speck of good.

And no, men are not the only people who support trans rights, nor are all women intolerant of them. That's a false dichotomy, nothing more.

FFS, it has NOTHING to do with being 'afraid' of people with penises.

Women are conditioned/trained/learn from experience that naked strangers with penises standing next to them in showers are to be regarded as threats. It is extremely unlikely that any woman taking a shower at her local gym and observing that the person stepping up next to her is a naked person with a penis is immediately going to think: This is a pre/nonsurgical trans woman. Or even: This MIGHT be a presurgical trans woman. Their immediate and gut reaction would be that this is someone who likely intends me harm and react accordingly.

The same way they would if they were taking a shower in their own home and a naked stranger with a penis approached them. Or in their kitchen or living room. Or if they woke up at night and found a naked stranger with a penis standing next to their bed. Or in their garage. Or following them out of the building as they head towards their car in the parking lot--day or night!

The issue is NOT women being afraid of penises or of people with penises. The issue is that encountering a naked person with a penis in a place where one does not anticipate finding one is at the very least startling and uncomfortable. It's more than that if you are yourself naked. The initial reaction is that that person is an immediate threat to you. The immediate reaction is not: I need to ask this person some questions (which, I would guess, would make the naked person with a penis uncomfortable if they are in fact a transwoman). The immediate reaction would to to yell for help and assume you needed to defend yourself. If you had previously been sexually assaulted by a person with a penis, you would likely be extremely upset, frightened, panicked, traumatized. You might even reflexively act to protect yourself against the perceived threat.

I am betting that ANY man on this board who found a naked stranger with a penis standing next to him in their home or following them to their car would not assume anything good about the naked stranger. I am guessing that they would perceive the naked person as at least a potential threat.

I am betting that very few men would find it upsetting to encounter a naked person with a penis standing next to them in the men's locker room BECAUSE YOU WOULD EXPECT TO SEE NAKED PEOPLE WITH PENISES IN THE MEN'S LOCKER ROOM.

WOMEN DO NOT EXPECT TO FIND NAKED PEOPLE WITH PENISES IN THE WOMEN'S LOCKER ROOM.

So you argument is "I'm not 'afraid', I'm just 'uncomfortable' and 'upset' by things you don't 'expect'?

 

[Toni]

Men telling women there is no issue are anti-female.

I don't think I'd go that far but the dismissal of women's feelings is quite astounding.

Time and a place, is the thing. If someone wants to talk about their trauma for its own sake, or work through the feelings they have about a social issue, I'm all ears. We should absolutely support people who are suffering, and I do my best to do that in daily life. But when someone is weaponizing their own fear and trauma to impinge on another person's rights, that's not good. And giving into that and letting them do so will not heal their wounds.

Those of us in the LGBT community are not just familiar with, but very tired of hearing, the line of reasoning which goes "I'm scared of people who are different, therefore society should protect me from needing to ackowledge them, even if their rights are curtailed to make room for that false sense of security." Countering that attitude has been a constant refrain throughout the entire history of gay rights, bi rights, interracial rights, trans rights, Native rights.... Certain folk are scared of their neighbors, but pandering to that fear neither eliminates the fear (it's still there, it's always going to still be there because your fear of the other is truly located in your mind, not inside that other) nor does anyone else a speck of good.

And no, men are not the only people who support trans rights, nor are all women intolerant of them. That's a false dichotomy, nothing more.

FFS, it has NOTHING to do with being 'afraid' of people with penises.

Women are conditioned/trained/learn from experience that naked strangers with penises standing next to them in showers are to be regarded as threats. It is extremely unlikely that any woman taking a shower at her local gym and observing that the person stepping up next to her is a naked person with a penis is immediately going to think: This is a pre/nonsurgical trans woman. Or even: This MIGHT be a presurgical trans woman. Their immediate and gut reaction would be that this is someone who likely intends me harm and react accordingly.

The same way they would if they were taking a shower in their own home and a naked stranger with a penis approached them. Or in their kitchen or living room. Or if they woke up at night and found a naked stranger with a penis standing next to their bed. Or in their garage. Or following them out of the building as they head towards their car in the parking lot--day or night!

The issue is NOT women being afraid of penises or of people with penises. The issue is that encountering a naked person with a penis in a place where one does not anticipate finding one is at the very least startling and uncomfortable. It's more than that if you are yourself naked. The initial reaction is that that person is an immediate threat to you. The immediate reaction is not: I need to ask this person some questions (which, I would guess, would make the naked person with a penis uncomfortable if they are in fact a transwoman). The immediate reaction would to to yell for help and assume you needed to defend yourself. If you had previously been sexually assaulted by a person with a penis, you would likely be extremely upset, frightened, panicked, traumatized. You might even reflexively act to protect yourself against the perceived threat.

I am betting that ANY man on this board who found a naked stranger with a penis standing next to him in their home or following them to their car would not assume anything good about the naked stranger. I am guessing that they would perceive the naked person as at least a potential threat.

I am betting that very few men would find it upsetting to encounter a naked person with a penis standing next to them in the men's locker room BECAUSE YOU WOULD EXPECT TO SEE NAKED PEOPLE WITH PENISES IN THE MEN'S LOCKER ROOM.

WOMEN DO NOT EXPECT TO FIND NAKED PEOPLE WITH PENISES IN THE WOMEN'S LOCKER ROOM.

So you argument is "I'm not 'afraid', I'm just 'uncomfortable' and 'upset' by things you don't 'expect'?

No, my argument is that women have a good reason to be, at the very least, startled or uncomfortable if they encounter a naked stranger with a penis in a place where they do not expect to see one and especially if they, themselves are undressed and vulnerable. It would be completely understandable and rational to be upset by encountering a naked stranger with a penis in some place you did not expect to see one.

Seriously, how would you expect your mother to react to a naked stranger with a penis standing next to her in a shower? Her own or the one in the women's locker rom at the gym?

How would you react if you saw a naked stranger with a penis step in your shower with you at home? I'm guessing a lot differently than if you found a naked stranger with a penis step into the shower next to you at the gym. Because you expect the second but not the first.

 

[Jarhyn]

it has NOTHING to do with being 'afraid' of people with penises.

Women are conditioned/trained/learn from experience that naked strangers with penises standing next to them in showers are to be regarded as threats

"It has nothing to do with fear, it just has everything to do with fear."

This means deprogramming, not deferral.

 

[Jarhyn]

hey encounter a naked stranger with a penis in a place where they do not expect to see one

It is exactly the expectation to not see a penis in a public locker room for all women, which is at issue here. Why should you be able to expect that? IT is like being able to  exoect there to be no black people by the white people ATM.

In your home? It's expected because utter privacy for every individual is the expectation there. Seeing someone, anyone in the shower next to me without pants on* at home is cause for me to rip down the shower curtain, drape them, and then beat them until they stop moving.

*Except as invited.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Men telling women there is no issue are anti-female.

I don't think I'd go that far but the dismissal of women's feelings is quite astounding.

Time and a place, is the thing. If someone wants to talk about their trauma for its own sake, or work through the feelings they have about a social issue, I'm all ears. We should absolutely support people who are suffering, and I do my best to do that in daily life. But when someone is weaponizing their own fear and trauma to impinge on another person's rights, that's not good. And giving into that and letting them do so will not heal their wounds.

Those of us in the LGBT community are not just familiar with, but very tired of hearing, the line of reasoning which goes "I'm scared of people who are different, therefore society should protect me from needing to ackowledge them, even if their rights are curtailed to make room for that false sense of security." Countering that attitude has been a constant refrain throughout the entire history of gay rights, bi rights, interracial rights, trans rights, Native rights.... Certain folk are scared of their neighbors, but pandering to that fear neither eliminates the fear (it's still there, it's always going to still be there because your fear of the other is truly located in your mind, not inside that other) nor does anyone else a speck of good.

And no, men are not the only people who support trans rights, nor are all women intolerant of them. That's a false dichotomy, nothing more.

FFS, it has NOTHING to do with being 'afraid' of people with penises.

Women are conditioned/trained/learn from experience that naked strangers with penises standing next to them in showers are to be regarded as threats. It is extremely unlikely that any woman taking a shower at her local gym and observing that the person stepping up next to her is a naked person with a penis is immediately going to think: This is a pre/nonsurgical trans woman. Or even: This MIGHT be a presurgical trans woman. Their immediate and gut reaction would be that this is someone who likely intends me harm and react accordingly.

The same way they would if they were taking a shower in their own home and a naked stranger with a penis approached them. Or in their kitchen or living room. Or if they woke up at night and found a naked stranger with a penis standing next to their bed. Or in their garage. Or following them out of the building as they head towards their car in the parking lot--day or night!

The issue is NOT women being afraid of penises or of people with penises. The issue is that encountering a naked person with a penis in a place where one does not anticipate finding one is at the very least startling and uncomfortable. It's more than that if you are yourself naked. The initial reaction is that that person is an immediate threat to you. The immediate reaction is not: I need to ask this person some questions (which, I would guess, would make the naked person with a penis uncomfortable if they are in fact a transwoman). The immediate reaction would to to yell for help and assume you needed to defend yourself. If you had previously been sexually assaulted by a person with a penis, you would likely be extremely upset, frightened, panicked, traumatized. You might even reflexively act to protect yourself against the perceived threat.

I am betting that ANY man on this board who found a naked stranger with a penis standing next to him in their home or following them to their car would not assume anything good about the naked stranger. I am guessing that they would perceive the naked person as at least a potential threat.

I am betting that very few men would find it upsetting to encounter a naked person with a penis standing next to them in the men's locker room BECAUSE YOU WOULD EXPECT TO SEE NAKED PEOPLE WITH PENISES IN THE MEN'S LOCKER ROOM.

WOMEN DO NOT EXPECT TO FIND NAKED PEOPLE WITH PENISES IN THE WOMEN'S LOCKER ROOM.

So you argument is "I'm not 'afraid', I'm just 'uncomfortable' and 'upset' by things you don't 'expect'?

Is that what you seriously got from that post?

 

[Toni]

hey encounter a naked stranger with a penis in a place where they do not expect to see one

It is exactly the expectation to not see a penis in a public locker room for all women, which is at issue here. Why should you be able to expect that? IT is like being able to  exoect there to be no black people by the white people ATM.

In your home? It's expected because utter privacy for every individual is the expectation there. Seeing someone, anyone in the shower next to me without pants on* at home is cause for me to rip down the shower curtain, drape them, and then beat them until they stop moving.

*Except as invited.

Because until a couple of years ago, that's EXACTLY what anyone and everyone would expect. It is STILL what I would expect. An exception would be if the gym informed all members and visitors that there were presurgical trans individuals using the facilities and they had a right to be there.

When trans people are as common as black people, get back to me.

Your described reaction to a naked stranger in your shower at home? That's EXACTLY how most women would react to finding a naked stranger with a penis next to them in the shower--at home or in the gym. Because they don't expect to find such a person and the immediate perception would be that such a person intends them harm.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

it has NOTHING to do with being 'afraid' of people with penises.

Women are conditioned/trained/learn from experience that naked strangers with penises standing next to them in showers are to be regarded as threats

"It has nothing to do with fear, it just has everything to do with fear."

This means deprogramming, not deferral.

Does it? Because transgender people being allow in opposing locker rooms doesn't mean women are no longer under threat of sexual violence. Toni's post seems to imply that there is almost no way to make a distinction between transgender that belongs here verses I need to make with self-defense.

 

[Toni]

it has NOTHING to do with being 'afraid' of people with penises.

Women are conditioned/trained/learn from experience that naked strangers with penises standing next to them in showers are to be regarded as threats

"It has nothing to do with fear, it just has everything to do with fear."

This means deprogramming, not deferral.

So, women should be deprogrammed to not be afraid of naked strangers with penises in places they do not expect to encounter them?

Women should ignore the threat of rape and sexual assault? Women should just assume any naked stranger with a penis is a benign individual who intends them no harm?

 

[Politesse]

So, women should be deprogrammed to not be afraid of naked strangers with penises in places they do not expect to encounter them?

They should not be allowed to discriminate against other women on the basis of their personal fears. There is a huge difference between being afraid of someone and assaulting them, or trying to get the government to do it for you.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So, women should be deprogrammed to not be afraid of naked strangers with penises in places they do not expect to encounter them?

They should not be allowed to discriminate against other women on the basis of their personal fears. There is a huge difference between being afraid of someone and assaulting them, or trying to get the government to do it for you.

Women have to deal with those fears every day. Women have several limits on what they can and can't do in order to reduce the risk of assault, like running outdoors. Sure, almost all women that run outdoors will not be assaulted (much like most schools don't have shootings... yet), but some will... and the number isn't as high as it could be because women have to take precautions. Like in bars or at parties.

Women have a disproportionally high percentage rate of being victims of sexual assault... and those guilty have a disproportionally high percentage of being males. This issue can not be removed from the calculus is trying to accommodate transgenders. The trouble with locker rooms is the higher percentage of vulnerability women are in.

The goal is for transgenders to be able to be where they are comfortable, but locker rooms are a bit harder because acceptable transgenders don't have branding on them to make a distinction from them and someone that means harm. The solution might mean entry can't be pre-surgical.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

If there is any conceptual difference between a "baseline" and a Platonic Form, it isn't apparent. ...

Yeah, its called a bell curve and measuring the distribution of gender traits. I had no idea you'd find statistics to be controversial.

If the peak or average of a distribution is what you meant by "baseline" then you're using the word in a nonstandard way. More importantly, that is clearly not what Loren took you to mean by it when he wrote:

*sigh*

Baseline in my industry means what is to be expected. Sure, I might be mixing some terminology, but you seem to get where I'm going with it, so I'm uncertain why you need to even raise the issue to begin with, other than being hyper-technical and not wanting to actually talk about the biology.

Yeah, I'm considering the baseline to be "as intended".[/intended]​

​

Note his use of the past tense. Where the peak or average of the distribution of gender traits lies is a property of the present moment -- statistics are time-varying. But any "baseline" getting described metaphorically as what evolution "intended" must refer to some time in the past when the trait in question was selected. Whatever height evolution may have figuratively "intended" for us, it can hardly have been for us to be two inches taller in 2000 than what it "intended" for us in 1900.​

The claims that statistics are time-varying is unestablished and its significance even less established. Gay and transgenders have existed for a long while. We are only accepting it these days, well some of us. What Loren meant was clear, he was talking about what on average are the human gender traits. We know the reproduction process is flawed and there are deviations from the average traits. That we are taller today because of our diet, is not remotely relevant.

 

[Toni]

So, women should be deprogrammed to not be afraid of naked strangers with penises in places they do not expect to encounter them?

They should not be allowed to discriminate against other women on the basis of their personal fears. There is a huge difference between being afraid of someone and assaulting them, or trying to get the government to do it for you.

Really? Because if the government mandates that pre/nonsurgical transwomen must be allowed in the same public showers as women, then the government isn't just sanctioning sexual assault but mandating it.

Because exposing yourself to someone who is not a willing participant is sexual assault. Which women, apparently, are expected to tolerate.

There is no reason that all showers and dressing rooms in any gym or similar facility are not outfitted with private stalls with doors that provide privacy for whoever is using them. I realize that this is an adjustment for a lot of men but too bad. Your need/desire for the comradery of shared nudity in gym lockerrooms and showers should not trump women's need/desire for safety and comfort.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

...wait... slow down. So every other girl in that photo was a 10 to TSwizzle?

Um, yeah, that totally follows from what I said.

Oh for the love of god, did you seriously analogize beauty contest performance to "actual talent"?!?

It isn't just a beauty contest anymore.

Is that what Playboy said to you when you were totally reading it for the articles?

Man, nothing like having a post dissected out of context and just shat on.