Genuinely willing to discuss in good faith

[beachcitygirl]

Hello.

This is a thread for those who are uncomfortable with black and white and less than civil discourse around self id.

I welcome those with different views but I don't on this thread welcome those who only want to state their firm settled opinion without nuance or discussion that self id is absolutely wrong.

It's my view that there is no point in discussion if mind firmly made up.
I'll respect your legal right to that view but there's not much point chatting about it and pissing each other off.

There are plenty threads of gc women hoping to create more gc women and that's fine.

I'd like this to be a different space. A place for anyone with genuine questions, discussion points and where we all try to be civil and attempt to answer each other in good faith. Anyone who is unsure, let's talk:

My views are that trans women should be treated in every aspect as women and they are our natural allies against misogyny and the patriarchy and that women are more than their biology.

Thanks for the reply. To address your questions:

1. I'd question your distinction that including the word "menstruating" has the advantage of greater accuracy: naming the function involved is demonstrably not necessary given this term is a recent proposal prompted not by women's needs for greater precision, but trans people's needs, and it can be more confusing to some - see Otters' post, and comments re. individuals with limited English, including from disadvantaged groups. The argument re. this advantage really holds up only if you're implicitly demean women further by suggesting they - "they" only being those with a sufficient grasp of English to know the terminology - experience remarkable confusion about their needs when menstruating.

2. Similarly, I'd challenge your claim that ”trans identifying male” is no more accurate than “trans woman”. Until the last 10 or so years, using "woman" in the context would have been unanimously agreed to be inaccurate. The redefinition of "woman" to include men actually obscures what was a previously clearly defined social and political class, and it makes it actively difficult for women to advocate for their rights. Multiple people still think that "transwomen" are females "living as" men. As such, it's not a factual description (as "trans-identifying male would be), but a politically-motivated euphemism.

Now, there are arguments for and against using "transwoman". I'm aware of the counter-arguments, including avoidance of triggering dysphoria by misgendering as well, and, because of these (and, I sometimes think, to my own detriment, as indicated in 2) above), I actually do use it as opposed to more literal alternatives.

In the light of the above, I'm still keen to understand from you the difference between the statements below that makes a) worthy of attention and b. irrelevant.

a. ("Trans-identifying male") just misgenders (transwomen).
b. ("Menstruating person") just dehumanises (women).

In the interests of accuracy and empathy, "transwoman" goes beyond a politically-motivated euphemism when used to describe genuinely dysphoric individuals - this is precisely why I use it, out of kindness. But that second, political, application does make using it out of kindness potentially problematic when attempting to defend women's rights, by obscuring what lies at heart of the issue.

That argument is often presented in evolutionary psychology circles. I looked into it and one reason for the finding comes from the way the original authors create their index of what 'greater equality' means. A different way of doing that index does not support the same findings. I will try to dig up the references I had for that.

It is more accurate. Because it corectly identifies their sex, whilst also acknowledging they have a trans identity.

I am eagerly looking forward to all the articles discussing erectile dysfunction for 'people with penis', seeing Fathers' Day celebrated as the 'impregnating parent's day', watching condom ads for 'people who ejaculate' and so on.

Seeing how what is now falsely called 'inclusiveness' was used almost entirely to erase the female sex from language, with the assistance of lots of women, felt to me as if I was awarded a seat in watching a film about how women got subjugated in the first place.

The sexism in how those two trends differed from each other was so clear to me, yet completely invisible, it seems, to most intersectional feminists. I am seeing the very beginnings of the erasure of the male sex from language, and only because gender criticals have criticised this one-sidedness.

It will be fascinating to see what happens next.

Here is an interresting article which shows/suggests that women in the most unequal societies tend to represent a higher proportion of women in STEM subjects, than those in the supposedly most equal societies - such as Finland, Norway and Sweden:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/

This is the article discussing that question

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797619872762?icid=int.sj-abstract.similar-articles.1

And here is a blog post which summarises the issues in a shorter amount of time

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/countries-with-less-gender-equity-have-more-women-in-stem-huh/

... important and useful to be clear about exactly what we mean ...

Indeed.

Now the question about what a woman is arises when the slogan 'TWAW' comes up.

For, given that a trans woman is (by definition) a man who transitions (whatever that is; let it go for now, some sort of 'change' at any rate) into a woman, and that an ordinary meaning of 'woman' is 'adult human female' (or 'female adult human', etc.), it is clear that for 'TWAW' to have any chance of being true, 'woman' must mean something other than this latter.

-- Why? Because otherwise, a man transitioning ('changing') into a woman is ruled out; it is a priori that men (adult male humans) cannot change into women (just as drakes (adult male anatids) cannot change into ducks, bulls (adult male bovines) cannot change into cows ... etc.)

So 'woman' in 'a trans woman is a women' must mean something different, and not (the ordinary meaning) 'adult human female', if there is to be a possibility of 'a trans woman is a women' being true.

Hence the question: what does 'woman' mean in 'TWAW' if this is not false a priori?

Or, in material mode, what is a woman, if TWAW?

I am not expecting an answer, mainly because it seems there is no answer that doesn't involve either metaphysical fantasy or a misogyny of stereotypes, and this becomes all too plain when answers to this question, in this context, are essayed.

But, well, please do go ahead and confound such expectation.

SpookyFBI · Today 15:59

I think you’ve misunderstood me.

That's interesting because you were insisting your way of refering to women was:

important and useful to be clear about exactly what we mean

I think you'll find that this is one of those TRSOH irregular verbs

"Seeing how what is now falsely called 'inclusiveness' was used almost entirely to erase the female sex from language, with the assistance of lots of women, felt to me as if I was awarded a seat in watching a film about how women got subjugated in the first place."

That's exactly it, Nepeta. To watch the way in which governments, "unbiased" national institutions, national companies etc. have redefined me, to my cost, in the name of another group's interests has honestly shaken my world view. I really hadn't realised the depth of misogyny out there til then. I use the phrase "the way in which" very deliberately: had this been done following discussion, or with at least some acknowledgement of different perspectives and the potential problems therein, I think I'd feel very differently indeed. But it's not even that this stage was quietly bypassed - instead, it was actively prevented, aggressively silenced, labelled as bigotry.

https://twitter.com/BBCLookNorth/status/1640625011168870401?lang=en-GB

It's been a revelation to me that headlines like this, and the distress it causes me (if he's a woman, then what am I? it leaves me wordless, or redefined in a way I personally simply don't understand - and if I feel that way, how on earth must his victim feel?!) have not just been discretely ushered in - that would be unsettling enough - but are brandished as unambiguously progressive.

The Guardian recently asked about women's experiences of misogyny online. Hey, Guardian, hi BBC: the most viscerally scary examples of misogyny for me aren't the threats of violence and explicit abuse from internet randoms, they're you, and your policies. I find it genuinely distressing.

Thanks, liwoxac. That's just it.

@suggestionsplease1 , I have now requested that bathroom paper. It's very odd not to have it easily available, however.

On the question how self-id might affect women's rights:

The bunch of countries which have it is comprised of many where women's rights, to begin with, are absolutely not a priority and where it is unlikely statistics will record things about such rights in much detail (Pakistan comes to mind and some South American countries and Malta), so just having self-id does not itself correlate with women's rights.

So perhaps a better way of looking at your argument is that having self-id won't affect women's rights either way? Finland, though, just changed the law so data from there would currently be nonexistent.

That means we should look at the few countries which remain and which are also high in women's rights, to see if self-id has made any difference or not. I believe we should certainly do studies on that and would read all of them, but so far I have not seen any mentioned. If you are aware of any, please let us know.

But in the absence of such studies we might be allowed to speculate. I wrote earlier in this thread that even the very small numbers of transwomen and transmen and nonbinary identifiers are going to show up on statistical data in fields where women are currently very rare:

-As perpetrators of voyeurism and exhibitionism and pedophilia and rape. Because so few women are found guilty of these crimes, even small absolute increases in the numbers will affect the statistics and show an apparent increase in female perpetrators of such crimes. This could lead to misallocation of preventive resources etc.

-In IT, say, where individual firms can now show greater numbers of women hired in senior management even if no female people were actually promoted, given that transwomen can now also be used to fill those positions to meet various diversity requirements. This is a problem, because nobody thinks that transwomen are not capable of mathematical and logical thinking; all the prejudice in the field has been aimed at what might now be called vulva people.

I'm not certain if we can evaluate the possible impact of self-id in a short-term framework, because it takes time for predators to really understand that they can now tick boxes for the kind of prison experience they prefer, even without taking any hormones, and female prisons tend to be preferable to male prisons to many male inmates.

And it takes time for predators to realise that they can, indeed, now unquestioned enter spaces where women and girls undress.

It also takes time to see the pipeline for girls into, say, weight-lifting and other elite sports to dry up.

Yes. A heartfelt yes. I do feel erased and shocked about the ease with which or the hard-won gains of women are deemed at most collateral damage, at worst the hoarding of (presumably undeserved) rights.

It's horrified me.

Billy Bragg on Twitter a couple of years back:

"If you have respect for all, then you’ll surely recognise that, in order for the victims of discrimination to be accommodated within universal human rights, the status quo are required to make some room."

https://twitter.com/billybragg/status/1462074533402263555

this is new information - crivens

Hi suggestions, I’ve found your research, but could you please clarify what a gipando is, at it forms a large part of the explanation of pairing.

I can’t copy the link to it on my phone sadly, but I googled the authors hasenbush Herman and Flores and found the full pdf on refunding.gov

That should read reginfo.gov

Well, exactly, PorcelinaV. That's what I find so upsetting! Men (status quo = millennia of years of dominance) are resistant to budging up to accommodate transwomen. This means that women (status quo = hardly yet worthy of the name & vulnerable as heck - able to vote for less than 100 years, effective property of their husbands re: marital rape within the last 30 years, over 70% more likely to be seriously injured in a car accident bc their physiology is disregarded in crash tests etc.) are being asked to budge up and jeopardise everything they've fought for & are still fighting for instead.

I couldn't have put it better.

Okay, I’ve found a massive gaping hole, I think. The study looked at crime rates within restrooms. It did not look at crime rates within women’s restrooms.

But only on this board.

Biscuits abound on other boards.

Ah, but the women's restrooms now include men. Who are women. Oh, lord.