Reconciling competing rights

It's hard to give a blanket reason because, well, there isn't one!

You might not be able to give a blanket reason for segregation, but in each case there has to be a clear reason, other wise it's just discriminatory. I can think of some reasons for sex segregation, some reasons why spaces that are currently segregated by sex should be unisex, and some instances where there is a reason to share single sex space with trans people of the opposite sex.

I can't think of a single reason why it's necessary to segregate by gender.

I realise that it is difficult for many trans people to talk in terms of biological sex, but I think we have to talk in those terms in order to achieve any kind of compromise.

Completely agree about the scarcity thing

DN4GeekinDerby

I can define my experience without gatekeepers. I can define myself and discuss myself however I want. I do not have any rights to make other people believe or make them define me in any which way no matter what my legal status is.

Yes, this.

and good god, the experiences you describe .

Well interesting Crit I do agree with a large portion of it, however without searching your username and going just on the little information in that post it appears we've started from similar principles and ended up at remarkably distant destinations :)

A lot of trans and other dysphoric people support "gatekeepers" aka medical professionals being involved in the process to ensure that transition is best for an individual because the hormones and surgeries involved have risks that must be balanced against the benefits. Many of us fight for there to be more face to face time with a range of medical professionals before, throughout, and after transitioning as well as care for dysphoric people who don't transition.

The thing is, I can define my experience without gatekeepers. I can define myself and discuss myself however I want. I do not have any rights to make other people believe or make them define me in any which way no matter what my legal status is. I regularly see people call masculine women men, particularly if they don't like what they're saying. My sons have both been called girls, both by people trying to be nice and to insult them. I can't make people see me or see my kids how we see ourselves. I have no right to change how others see anyone, that wouldn't work.

My experiences, however I define them, and who I am in the eyes of the law or in the eyes of a place that service providers is not the same thing. I have the experience of having lived my entire adult life in the UK, having four British kids and married to a British man, and regularly weirding out Brits when I use a Britishism when they use an Americanism. Even though it could be argued I've "lived as a Brit" for many years, I'm still American (even though I haven't been there since 2003), still an immigrant, still don't have British citizenship no matter what my experience is because I haven't go through the gatekeeping the law requires: the over a grand in fees, the paperwork and references, the test, the giving of my biometrics (which many immigrants have to do to be legally employable in the UK at our own costs). That means my rights and responsibilities aren't exactly the same as a Brit. That's just how it is, I could fight to change the law but I can't just 'define my experience' to make who I am in the law any different.

I think we should have single sex and mixed sex services for sexual assault survivors and other victim services. I mean, while the law disagrees, I've been raped by women. I've had women hold me down and force objects into me until I bled enough for them. All the most violent people in my life have been women. I'm not sure if I went to survivor services whether I'd want single sex or mixed sex services. I think the options should be there and that single-sex services and facilities should be protected. As a female dysphoric person, women's services have done a lot for me, I know men who have benefitted from domestic violence services for male victims, and I think there can be room for all of it though I don't think there is enough for either sex or mixed sex options at this time.

Kinda starting to feel like a lot of this is a scarcity issue. Mental health services and therapists, victim care and services, even public toilets and facilities which lots of councils are closing as cost-cutting measures, no one has enough of what would help us be fully well and involved in society and rather than deal with that, it's easier for those in power to promote 'demedicalization' and pointing fingers at each other.

Disagreement should be cause for celebration, as it reveals somebody somewhere has the opportunity to learn something! And that is just as likely to be me as anyone else.

Your post directly above that is Crit, only now reading your longer one. Won't it be strange if I agree entirely with your second but not at all with your first! Let's find out :)

Indeed @CritEqual, that's exactly the nub of it for me.

The take home from this @RatRolyPoly is that truth and knowledge (in the objective scientific sense) is immutable, but our language is fluid, organic and ever changing. We have to be mindful in how we try to use language and realise it's limitiations and transitory nature.

Trying to make language immutable and non-changing is an excercise in futulity, as it trying to use to it to control the thoughts of other people.

RatRolyPoly Its been patiently explained to you time and time again

Upstart I have to say I am not someone who doesn't understand the broad position they're arguing against here. I think that's quite clear. I simply, for the most part, do not agree. God forbid a woman does not agree. But that's me.

No one here has a problem with trans people.

Yes they do. But it's bizarre that you would assume you know the thoughts are feelings of everyone who has ever posted here. Or did you mean to say "most people" - because then I'd agree with you. But it's not "no-one".

Gasping hmm, yes, perhaps it could be womanhood... but then how does that work with other people letting Jonathon stay in their house and setting a precedent? Are they letting Jonathon into their definition of womanhood? Because what does anybody's definition of womanhood have to do with transwomen in "women's" spaces? It doesn't matter what my definition of womanhood is and who I "let in", it matters who the people who control those spaces want to make them available to and the reasons they have for setting those limits. So all around I don't think that makes the "anal joy" any more functional.

Are you serious Upstart? Can you please explain to me how Jonathon isn't transpeople in Barracker's analogy?

RatRolyPoly Its been patiently explained to you time and time again. Its there in my answer.
Trans people can ask for their own spaces and services instead of fighting to let any man who self ID's into ours.

No one here has a problem with trans people. And;
No one here wants to give up our sex based rights and protections. The need for those has never been addressed.

All rights essentially stem from property rights, flowing from perhaps the most significant one of all: Self-ownership. However we've gotten ourselves in a mess by trying to reframe things across socialist ideaological lines where ideas of ownership are muddied through conceptions of collective/state ownership

BarrackerBarmer's post is spot on. It's a violation of basic property right's if I make a claim on her property it doesn't matter if I can get a mob of people to agree with me to take/share her home to give the claim an air of legitimacy it's still a violation of the non-aggression principle. It matters not wether it is an individual or a collective of individuals that violate it. It's still a violation.

What we are seeing is a natural extension of what happens when people try to shift and claim ownership of language itself. Politically people have been trying to re-draw the meanings of words. There is an unholy alliance, and has been for sometime between liberal left leaning academia and agents of the state to enforce certain reframings of language and ideas onto the genreal population.

Usually discussion of women's right's and feminism has been one of the ideaological beneficiaries of these biases. The trans debate is fascinating for a few reasons, one it is seeing a lot of feminist being hammered by some of the same rhetorical tricks they have used against opponents in the past and second it reveals that ultimately there IS a colossal amount of sexist abroad in the world, as even in the liberal-left leaning circles the promotion of women's rights have been used as an ideaological device to control and win more power, and not sadly in truth from a genuine idealogical belief in women's equality.

I must confess I didn't really realise the full extent of how badly the deck is stacked against women until this whole thing blew up. I'm coming increasingly to the view that women's rights such as they exist nowadays have not come from an extension of any "natural" impulse, but rather from the hard work, blood sweat and tears of a great many women who have fought very bloody hard to win them.

As with any conception of liberty what liberties we do have we owe to those who came before us and bloody fought for them. We cannot and indeed must not let them be lost now. My worry now is that it's through those who use the language of equality and fairness that we are most risk of losing them...

It all boils down to this though:

Women’s spaces are generally a safety thing. A significant number of men have, do and will continue to harm women, so women’s spaces are so women can be safe

Allowing men into those spaces destroys that. And puts women at risk.

Men’s spaces are less for safety and more for privacy and dignity. But women space is a safety thing.

Trans women have Male offending patterns. I cannot see any argument that convinces me that they should be in women’s spaces.

Ahhh I see your autocorrect is sentient and evil like mine 😂

Hey flowers! I think it's different reasons for different spaces/facilities isn't it? It's hard to give a blanket reason because, well, there isn't one! But you're right I think that the reason in each particular instance is at the heart of how much that "rule" should be bent for transpeople. Again, there can't be a blanket solution.

Ugh, but I just stressed myself out a bit so I'm going to get a beer.

Are you serious Upstart? Can you please explain to me how Jonathon isn't transpeople in Barracker's analogy?

Did anybody here take Jonathon to be anything other than transpeople?

But you know what, I'm getting really quite angry about that analogy. I wanted to veer away from doing it, but I'm going to call transphobia on that. When you make a direct analogy between a group of people and something you have specifically painted as a "bad thing" (i.e. selfish, self-absorbed, narcissistic, rights-trampling Jonathon), that's the equivalent of saying that that whole group exhibit those negative qualities. Not one individual, but a whole group painted in a derogatory light.

This is the exact means throughout history that groups have been othered and societies turned against them. Be very, very careful about making such comparisons, or indeed in cheering them on!

Transpeople are not Jonathon trying to get you to budge up in your own home.

That's outrageous.

But hey, look, if Jonathon isn't transpeople you can throw everything I just said out of the window!

Rat, as usual, you make some cogent points. But the fundamental question (that I asked you on another thread, and you didn't answer) remains the same - Why do you think certain spaces are segregated by sex now?

Who said jonathon is a trans person in the analogy? With self ID, anyone can be jonathon.

The fact the rights are described as 'competing' by someone who supports them demonstrates the problem. They are not rights, they are privilege; demands for access by people who do not have the legal right to access.

It's a well-written analogy Barracker, and it looks good on paper, but it rather falls down in that women's toilets, women's shelters, women's changing rooms etc. are in no way analogous with privately owned property. I mean they're completely different. Women don't own "women's" spaces just because they're women!

Some women's spaces are democratically appointed; so in your example you would be sharing "your" house with a number of other people. You vote and the majority of residents want Jonathon to move in. So... that means he gets to live there, because that's the rules of the democracy that you're a part of.

Some women's spaces are owned by someone else and provided on their terms; so your house is owned by someone else who is letting you stay there for free. They decide they want to let Jonathon stay there for free too, and if you want to continue to live there too you can either appeal to the owner (who may not agree), or simply get on with it.

So in either case it - in all cases in fact - it isn't really for any of us "as women" to claim ownership over "our" spaces in this way, because ownership is a poor, poor analogy for the relationship we actually have with them, and how - if at all - we can exert control over them.

I feel it gives people a false perception and paints transpeople as the ones who are forcing their claim on "your" property - as it does in your post - where the reality is that other people are in control of these spaces. Other people feel they want to include transpeople (where that is the case), other people are the ones you should appeal to just as transpeople have done if you want them to hear you, and transpeople should not be represented as this shadowy, selfish, narcissistic "Jonathon" of your example - because I think that's pretty damaging (not to say inaccurate!) a representation, don't you?

Delusional thought has a very defined medical meaning. It’s used too much as a slur to mean ‘anything I personally think is ridiculous’

It’s basically a belief that is at odds with reality (there are some slightly fudgy nuances around religion and cultural beliefs - for example animism wouldn’t be classed as delusional if you’d been brought up in that culture etc)

So to believe one has gender dysphoria and one would prefer a body as analogous to that of the opposite sex as possible is not delusional.

To believe that one IS the opposite sex would be delusional. Just as other delusional beliefs about the self - that one has too many limbs for example, or that one is fat when one is actually starving.

One can have opinions about ones own experiences yes. But you can’t expect or force others to believe them. No more than you can force someone to accept god. Or the existence of demons.

The people who believe in god believe it very sincerely indeed. That’s their right to do so and I don’t have a right to demand they don’t. But nor do they have a right to make me say I believe, or to adjust the laws of the land to disadvantage me if I don’t.

That’s why we have a secular (ish...) society. It means that no one can legally be discriminated against for belief in the gods of their choice or acting accordingly until, and this is very important - until those beliefs run up against the law and custom of the land

So if you believe in demons ok. I don’t. I’m not going to tell you you’re an idiot for going so. But if you harm a child in a five day exorcism ritual you’ve broken the law.

And if you believe you’re female when you were born Male ok. I dont agree but I’ll defend your right not to be fired for it or beaten up. But you don’t get to tell me what I believe or to remove the rights of others

Wow, just wow! Fantastic post Barrackerbarmer

@Barrackerbarmer nailed it.

"For me, equal rights must include the right to define your own experience"

What, like the way women get to define their experience as rape and the law backs them up in that? Oh wait...

No, equal rights clearly do not include the right to define your own experience.

And it most certainly does not include the right to force everyone else to submit to your definition of your own experience.

If it did, then we would have to admit that anorectic teenagers should be allowed to starve themselves to death, because they define themselves as disgustingly obese and they have the right to define their own experience. We would have to accept that Rachel Dolezal is black. Do you accept that she's black? I don't. Am I denying her a basic human right by believing that she's a caucasian woman with big hair? (I don't know when that got to be the definition of "black", it used to just mean it was the eighties.)