‘Philosophical problems with the GC feminist argument against trans inclusion’

You're not supposed to be able to understand it.

It's utter hogwash, written using long words to make you feel like the reason you don't understand it is because you're stupid, rather than because it is hogwash.

And it quotes Judith Butler, an utter moron who is unemployable in any field other than "gender studies" and whose ability to pay her mortgage literally depends on the answer to the question "what is a woman?" being more complicated than "an adult human female".

An assumption which the emerging evidence, regrettably, appears to disprove.

In society, 99% of men commit all the violence, and only 1% of women do.
The TRA argument goes because TW are in fact women, they neatly and perfectly encapsulate that 1% of previously men who weren't violent, literally a 1 to 1 correspondence with the 99% of women who aren't violent, and who they now are.
But because there's no exterior measure or judgement, no science, purely the expression of authentic self by the man purporting to be a woman, if society and in particular women in society were to give this at the very least the benefit of the doubt, the scenario would be that close to every man IDing was a woman would be the 1% who would never be violent, paralleling the 99% of women who are non violent.

Beardy man says women are wrong.

Have people’s responses helped, OP?

I don't think writing like this is supposed to based on any truth or robust analysis. More a resource to be used by others as references to launder the idea that trans ideology is real.

Someone writes a paper, that paper is used as reference in other papers, and so on. Eventually, there are thousands of academic texts about how trans ideology is true, and criticism of it is wrong.

Its an academic way to make something thats clearly not true, true because theres a whole load of writing about it.

Its nothing more than Pete Boghossian grievance studies scam.

That's exactly my point. However the circular nature of the TWAW mantra negates the second idea that a transgressing TW is not a woman.

This is the trans "have the cake stall and eat the entire supply of cake on it" exemption.

Even if the hypothetical random male does wholeheartedly self-ID as trans, why should anyone assume that this one fundamental difference in self-perception between him & the other members of his sex class equates to his being less of a risk to women?

This suggests all kinds of unthinking assumptions re. massively complex issues - nature, nurture, the male-female brain… It’s a remarkably arrogant (ignorant?) claim to make.

And that’s before the obvious problem that women can’t possibly know how authentic hypothetical-male’s self-identification as trans is…

Exactly, Helle.

By “arbitrary”, I don’t mean to deny or dismiss the existence of debilitating gender dysphoria. The “potentially” is important here. We’re being asked to disregard overwhelming statistical evidence in favour of what is, effectively (from the lone-woman-in-the-public-toilet’s perspective) a random male stranger’s say-so + a dangerously optimistic assumption with no evidence base.

Yes, this is the section I was referring to.

There is NOT an absence of evidence. So it is a falsity from the very start.

By logical extension, shouldn’t we assume innate behavioural differences between other potentially arbitrary class distinctions in the absence of all evidence to the contrary? Assume ginger cats behave inherently differently to black cats (as typically all we have to go on to ID a trans woman is outer appearance)?

It’s almost comical:

the reasonable assumption to make is… that there should be a difference in behavioral patterns between natal males as a class… and trans women [natal nales] as a class.

I don't even have to read it to know it will be a load of old bollocks. They never actually understand what being gender critical is so can never coherently argue against it.

Oops. Had intended to quote this bit:

The effect of the argument is to treat as evidence of sameness an absence of evidence of difference, despite the fact that the reasonable assumption to make is just the oppo- site—namely, that there should be a difference in behavioral patterns between natal males as a class (the vast majority of whom are cis men), and trans women as a class.

Why is that the reasonable assumption? What the heck kind of logical fallacy is that?

I got to “cis” and gave up. Not sorry 😂

Because we now have two circular arguments that taken at face value can't be denied. TWAW, it is what it is. Those TWAW who cause damage are impersonators. It is what it is.

If you concede that some people are really trans but others are just pretending to be trans, then self-ID must be off the table, we can all agree on that, right?

And then there is this, which is self-refuting to anyone who reads this board. It made me check the date on the article. It was published in 2020. I really wonder if any TRA would have the effrontery to write the same thing in 2023.

Stock (2018b) argues, “The problem here is male violence . . . [We] have no evidence that self-declared trans women deviate from male statistical norms in relevant ways.” Something true of natal males as a class (their proneness to violence against women) is here assumed to be true of trans women as a (sub)class, on the basis of an absence of evi- dence. The effect of the argument is to treat as evidence of sameness an absence of evidence of difference, despite the fact that the reasonable assumption to make is just the oppo- site—namely, that there should be a difference in behavioral patterns between natal males as a class (the vast majority of whom are cis men), and trans women as a class.

There’s also a long section on how preventing abuse is very difficult and impractical and you can’t do it without being mean to men so really why are women even bothering, it’s an awful faff. Frankly it smacks of motivated reasoning.

I skimmed 2-3 pages. Skipping over the guff, it promises to make the case that GC is bad philosophy therefore it’s ok to deplatform GC feminists. It does a bit of “well if you assume TWAW then GC philosophy is incoherent, also women have moral obligations to include us.” (If you assume TWAW all philosophy is incoherent. That’s what happens when you assume a contradiction. To the “moral obligation” part, I will only say “fuck off.”)

then it does a close reading of one of Kathleen Stock’s arguments. The crux of the triumphant “refutation” of Stock’s argument is that if you convert a lesbian woman to a “straight trans man“ with medical treatment it’s not “conversion therapy” because she still fancies women. Also the lesbian might really be a man.

then I stopped reading because it was much too stupid to continue. How can a TRA argue with a straight face that you haven’t done conversion therapy if you convert a gay person to identifying as straight? Is “identity” the be-all and end-all, or is it not?

Maya Forstater has already picked this (paid for) article apart.

Is it yet more "angels dancing on the head of a pin" elitist bs to justify the wants of the men who demand that we call them women?

I'm not interested.

I won't JADE - Justify/Argue/Defend/Explain.

It's really simple. Men are not women. You can't change sex. We're saying no and we want our stuff back.

I too laughed at quoting Hines. And this author expects people to consider their work well reasoned? Fuck that.

Why don’t you tell us the sections you are struggling with OP rather than posting it without your thoughts? Because right at this moment this thread has started in a slightly different but all too similar approach as many others which start of with an article that supposedly is a ‘gotcha’ about how poor feminist arguments are or something to prod feminists with from posters with new user names.

Regular posters are right to wary of these threads particularly ones asking to evaluate a very long paper that is ideologically driven from the start. And particularly from new posters.

It seems to be arguing that we are ignoring all the “progress” that’s been made in pushing the idea that some men are women and that we are being mean in not accepting that men who claim they are women need to use women’s spaces for their safety.

He keeps quoting Sally Hines, who writes transactivist word salad and periodically embarrasses herself on Twitter by what many suspect are inebriated, incoherent rants.

According to one of his sources, we have a moral obligation to show solidarity towards men who claim they are women.

There’s criticism of Kathleen Stock for writing in non-academic journals, while simultaneously stating her academic credentials.

There seems to be objection over Stock’s claim that a therapist failing to affirm that a young woman who is sexually attracted to women is a lesbian (because of her claim to be a boy) “looks like conversion by omission” is incorrect because there has been no attempt to change who she is sexually attracted to.

I suspect, though I’m not completely au fait with Stock’s work, that the problem here might arise from Stock’s acceptance that a young lesbian can actually be “trans and heterosexual” rather than confused or delusional, which is what she would have been seen as before.

Then moving on to whether men who claim they are women should be in women’s spaces, he starts with the observation that those men are already doing this, this self-ID is already effectively in place. He describes this as the “pre reform system” ignoring the fact that women never agreed to this reform in the first place and that it was achieved largely by stealth.

I think he then wanders into a discussion over whether it’s morally right to exclude men from women’s spaces as that might not provide the optimal solution for society (women shouldn’t get special treatment, we need to look at what’s best for everyone, I think, but I have to go out now. Presumably someone who understands all the specific philosophical theories scattered throughout might make a better hand of it anyway, but I will read the rest later.