Looking for a neutral summary on trans issues

[catkind]

I won't pretend I don't hold strong (GC) views myself, but I would find it really useful to have a neutral summary of the positions both sides (and subcamps) are taking. I want to be able to explain to friends who have no idea about trans politics what this is about and what the disagreements are, in terms that friends who are on the transactivist side of the debate won't disagree with. Anyone got any good links for me?

Ah this is where we come up against being unable to conceive of other people's beliefs as different to yours. Yes, that's going to make describing your beliefs without asserting them difficult. I consider that TWAM is a fact, but I'm still able to understand that other people don't agree with me and frame it as a statement of what I believe rather than fact.

But trans women are women. For instance, their passports say female and the Government cannot misrepresent facts in an official document. So it is fact not belief.

I do think it is telling that Snappity only complained about 1 word (validate) in my original post. So I can't have been too far out, even though this thread is now over 200 posts.

I didn't entirely agree with Snappity's re-writing of my rewriting (it used a phrase like 'transwomen are women' whereas I think maybe 'transwomen say they are women' (or believe they are) would be a more neutral way of expressing the view) but I think we are probably close enough (though poles apart).

x-post. Bother. I do not want to get into a debate here on TWAW, irrespective of what people's passports may say. That is a debate that has been rehashed over and over, and gets people very heated.

It is not what this thread was set up for.

Trans activists additionally believe that how you feel is more critical than biology and that people should be treated on how they feel not their biology. Thus they believe that trans people should have access to spaces that hitherto have been single sex. They also believe that jobs that have hitherto been single sex (by which I mean whereby someone can request someone of a specific sex) should be made available to someone who feels they are of that gender, even if their body is naturally of the opposite gender. Furthermore they believe they should always be referred to as the gender they have transitioned to.

I also dislike that paragraph because it sets out separate beliefs. It should be.

"trans women are women and do not believe that they should be treated differently to other women"

Bother. I do not want to get into a debate here on TWAW, irrespective of what people's passports may say. That is a debate that has been rehashed over and over, and gets people very heated.

But that shows it is fact not belief. It is crucial to this thread.

I think we'll have to find a different trans advocate to discuss this with, snappity clearly doesn't understand the idea of neutral phrasing.

I don't know why you are bothering to debate with someone who thinks that women without a uterus and men who have surgery are both the same, both with their 'blind canals'.

The funny thing is - the TRAs report to get things deleted and people banned; whereas the women want their abuse and rhetoric to stand so that everyone can see them for what they are.

Saying transwomen are women is a statement of faith.

I know people say that the protected characteristic of gender reassignment protects them, but it does not. If they are paid less than their male colleagues, for instance, they need to be able to bring a sex discrimination claim as women. Gender reassignment does not help.

Again, ‘gender reassignment protects them’ is not something taken from a GC woman’s view.

I’m very aware that gender reassignment does not protect transpeople adequately though they would have a claim under gender reassignment based on a comparison with their own sex currently. If they are unhappy to be paid as women are, less than men, then why do they want to identify into the opposite sex category thereby destroying the ability to bring shared characteristics claims (indirect discrimination)?

What is stopping the government making and trans people asking for legislation to protect their gender identity and their sex?

And no snappity it shows that the govt has legislated to allow male people to be treated as female for the purposes of passports if they satisfy the conditions required to do so...

If transwomen are women, i am not a woman.

No, neither is any woman... that’s the problem...

and this is why we should (I think) have two sets of classifications. One to describe gender and one to describe sex. We can then have a discussion about a)the cases in which sex OR gender based exemptions are reasonable/necessary and b) whether it should be sex OR gender

I have my own (quite strong) views on this but we cannot talk about it if we keep on going round in semantic circles

"trans women are women. For instance, their passports say female and the Government cannot misrepresent facts in an official document. So it is fact not belief."

There is a difference between what actually, biologically, is (= fact) and what we accept as true for legal purposes.

For example, corporations are considered legal persons by law. Is a corporation really a person? No.

Another example: Laws say a 15.5-year-old teenager is a child and a 16-year-old teenager is an adult. Is a hairy 6-foot lad a child the day before his 16th birthday? No. Does he become an adult the day after? No.

Exactly!

It is not difficult. Sex discrimination laws and gender identity discrimination laws... the only possible reason to actually object to that is if you want to pretend that your sex doesn’t exist. It does though and you can’t even be trans without it existing, no-one can claim discrimination or harassment based on gender identity/expression without sex existing...

Someone put it really well on another thread: a corporation is a person but if I break the windows of Tesco I get prosecuted for criminal damage not ABH.

But unbelievably that is supposed to be a transphobic, anti-trans position... a position of concern for how we protect trans people from trans based harms and women from sex based harms...

It’s insane!

Hello OP, I haven't rtft but I thought I'd give you my two cents.

I come from the starting point that everyone has the right, as far as possible, to live their lives as they see fit. And that society should aim to strike a balance between protecting our citizens and enabling them to live freely. If you become too protectionist you bring about the death of personal liberty, and if you are too liberal you enable people to take advantage of each other.

So personally I don't care all that much what trans people believe. Or what "gc" feminists believe. Both have the right to live freely according to their realities. I mean I know enough about both sides to defend either against accusation of lunacy, or irrationality; because both do make sense, in their own way; and I don't think it's fair to assassinate someone else's worldview so that you don't have to consider how to accommodate it in society - if indeed it can be accommodated.

What I care about is "what will be the outcome if we do this?". Will it be good for women, good for men, good for trans people, bad for women, bad for humanity? In my opinion the super-protectionist attitude of some feminists would go so far in its attempt to protect women that it ends up infantilising them in a way which is not proportionate to the reality of life in 2018 Britain, and curtailing their freedom and liberty in the long run. If you send a message out to society that women are more more weak and vulnerable than is proportionate, society will believe it. And women will too. It will set us back so many years.

I came into this debate when everyone was talking about self-ID legislation (now everyone bangs on about the ideology, but like I say I think that's unnecessary and morally dubious). When thinking, "what will actually happen if self-ID comes in?", I came to the conclusion, "not an awful lot". Trans people have existed in fairly stable numbers for a long time now, and they have - as far as anyone can establish - been using the facilities for their chosen gender for all that time. Hospitals and prisons have found a way to accommodate that, so have refuges, and no woman was scared that the person in the cubicle next to her might have a penis. Literally no measurable bad has come from it.

Could it be exploited by the rare nefarious sex-offender type? Perhaps. Someone out there sufficiently informed and sufficiently motivated could get around almost any system anyone put in place; people are clever. But so are the people around us every day; prison guards can spot a lying criminal. Bouncers can spot a lying criminal. Even swimming pool changing room attendants can spot a lying criminal. Not every time (no-one can spot them every time) but enough that they aren't going to fall for the "I'm a woman today" bullshit.

So again it comes down to protectionism. Protect your citizens because your citizens can't be trusted. Well I'm of the opinion that society is very largely based on trust. There are those who would abuse it, but we are a civilised nation and we have built that on a foundation of personal liberty, tolerance, mutual social trust and respect. I don't want to see that going backwards any time soon.

rat I agree with your general take - we need to do what works best for everybody BUT

there is ambiguity in the current law and any changes might make it worse. Thus an organisation might not be able to prevent person A from entering even though they (and most other people) believe them not be female. - and here the semantics matter because a clever lawyer will be able to argue that female bodied person B is not a woman because she does not have a female identity - therefore why should person A not be allowed in

I think you're trying very hard to concoct a problem there drwitch.

Good post Rat
I find myself agreeing with some of it and I think it demonstrates that you are trying to take a balanced, even handed blow.

I think the point that you are overlooking is that of self ID resulting in the eradication of the ability to categorise by sex. If the definition of woman and/or female changes to include natal males, how will we know if natal females are impacted or not?

No matter what we label people and how we organise society, if the human race is to continue it will continue to have 2 distinct reproductive roles that are determined at conception. Which reproductive role you are assigned will impact on many aspects of your life. Some of these are universal and others depend on which society you live in.

I struggle to give credibility to anyone who overlooks this fundamental issue.

Perhaps you are right, some people are over protective and infantilising, perhaps this has pernicious effects. However, how will will know if we do not evaluate?

Well... IMO it’s basically ‘we’re a civilised country, I trust it will work out’ which is an incredibly naive position to take IMO and completely ignores how much these laws have shaped us to where we are today and all the stuff that is still happening despite these laws...

If the majority of the Glasgow bin men were transwomen and the carers women then there would have been no case to answer for sex discrimination... Of course this wouldn’t change that the council knows the transwomen are male or targeting higher pay at people who are male...

I think the point that you are overlooking is that of self ID resulting in the eradication of the ability to categorise by sex. If the definition of woman and/or female changes to include natal males, how will we know if natal females are impacted or not?

Because we can differentiate people along more axes than merely sex? I mean if you want to evaluate the impact of something on BAME women vs non-BAME women you can do so, right? If you want to evaluate the impact of something on women vs trans women you can do that too. We are allowed to collect equality statistics based on equality data; sometimes it's self-recorded, sometimes it's recorded by police officers etc. It's not 100% accurate but it's good enough in volume. Why would we not be able to record someone's gender reassignment status as well as their sex?

If the majority of the Glasgow bin men were transwomen and the carers women then there would have been no case to answer for sex discrimination... Of course this wouldn’t change that the council knows the transwomen are male or targeting higher pay at people who are male...

You are aware the trans people make up less than 1% of the population and that that figure has been stable for... oooh... years? It would take every single Scottish transwoman to be a Glasgow bin collector, no doubt, to achieve the apocalyptic scenario you describe.

Because we can differentiate people along more axes than merely sex? I mean if you want to evaluate the impact of something on BAME women vs non-BAME women you can do so, right? If you want to evaluate the impact of something on women vs trans women you can do that too. We are allowed to collect equality statistics based on equality data; sometimes it's self-recorded, sometimes it's recorded by police officers etc. It's not 100% accurate but it's good enough in volume. Why would we not be able to record someone's gender reassignment status as well as their sex?

Wouldn't that be considered 'othering' transpeople? Why would someone who believes "TWAW" tick the 'i am trans' box on the data gathering forms?