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.

You will see earlier in this thread where I have explained that using the term 'gender' would not artificially inflate the figures compared to if the term 'sex' was used.

It is well known that, in the whole, transpeople score poorly across all the measures used in that index...if transwomen are IDing as women in that study they will bring down the scores for women, not elevate them.

I gave an explanation with some examples as to why yesterday.......you didn't respond.

Some of those countries passed Self ID as apart of a job lot with equal gay civil rights ( Ireland, for example) - without any public consciousness or awareness. The debate we are now starting to have in the U.K is only just getting going in many of those countries - now that the negative impacts are becoming more apparent and people are strating to wake up ( Australia and New Zealand)

Some of those countries are only now starting to advice caution, or actively pausing the use of puberty blockers in children. ( Netherlands, Sweden, Finland)

Using such statistics shows that women in Argentina are doing well using your measure; and yet Self Id was passed there long before abortion was made accessible. That measure also ignores the fact that violence against women is endemic in Argentina and S.American countries - to the extent that 'femicide' is a separate charge.

Your measure only measures one type of thing and ignores many other women's issues.

I'm still waiting to hear how we can know anything about the status of women in countries that allow men to define themselves as women and are included in the data.

@Helleofabore
CAIS women do have advantages over women in sport. Barr bodies testing flagged them up and they were overrepresented amongst winners in women's competition compared to their incidence in the general population. They are taller and stronger than women, though not as dramatically so as males whose bodies have developed normally. The best solution for CAIS women might be a disability category.
Also, boys have two mini-puberties before the main event. Men and boys have significant athletic performance advantage over women and girls at every stage of life. So the formulation "No male athletes in women's or girls' sport" would be fairest - and simplest.

You might see this as 'waking up' but it can as easily be perceived as agitation of an emotive issue designed to appeal to people's prejudices.

Of course, at times like these, with failing economies it is a ripe time for this to occur, it follows a historic, expected pattern of prejudice that comes to the fore in times of economic hardship and frustration. And governments of course take advantage of this to redirect pressure from them and their failings. Similar to Suella Braverman's language about refugees.

It is that time in particular for the UK, as we are now worse positioned than many other countries we were on a par with, so it is more fertile ground for this sentiment to develop now

I don't downplay issues, I have concerns about how young people might receive inappropriate medical treatment, women's achievements in sport etc. But I still think these questions can be addressed in a broader framework of self ID, and I will be looking to countries who are doing much better for women than the UK is, to see how they are managing in these areas.

@Catiette I 100% agree with what Wait said!

Don't you dare think about going back to lurking!

Isn't this the crux of the matter?
Proposition...that the use of women as a definition is ambiguous, depends on the circumstance, no two women are alike, muddies the waters.
Proposition...that trans women are women.

So, women is a vague, wispy, confusing term, that really should be avoided.
But it's ok to call a trans woman a woman, here the use of woman is ok, and unrelentingly laser focused
.
And so now we have a confusing term that is suddenly crystal clear when another group want to co-opt the definition.

So, all the natal women out there are discouraged from using the term women, but the new group can absolutely use it. And that group then enter the new group and tell the previous users of the group that is so passe to use this definition, while weaponising the definition for themselves within the group.

This is one of the most bad faith, disingenuous mind fucks I think I've ever seen in my mere 59 years living on planet Earth.

yknow what, after giving it some thought, I think there is a difference between ‘trans identifying male’ and ‘trans woman’. It’s subtle and I didn’t really realise the difference at first but I think it really gets to the heart of where our disagreement stems from. Hopefully I’ll be able to explain it clearly, but the difference as I see it is - do you see a trans woman as a man who happens to identify differently to other men, or a woman who happens to have a different body to other women? I see a trans woman as a woman who happens to have been born in a different body, so I could concede to use ‘trans identifying male’ in an attempt to explain what a trans woman is to someone who had never heard of the term ‘trans woman’ before, but ultimately I would see ‘trans woman’ as more correct. Whereas I think you see trans women as men who have a different identity, so you concede to using ‘trans woman’ out of politeness, but ultimately see ‘trans identifying male’ as more correct.

I don’t really have a defence or argument for my position, I guess this is the first time I’m really analysing the distinction, so I guess you’ve given me something to think about. I still don’t agree that just because a word has always had a particular definition, that means we should change it. To me this change of definition is similar to expanding the definition of marriage to include same sex couples. There were plenty of people who honestly believed that they were losing something by redefining marriage in this way, who would believe that I had been taken in by the homosexual agenda to support the change of definition. But to me it seemed like a sensible change in response to the existence of gay (and bisexual and other same sex attracted) people and the fact that they have loving and committed relationships which are no different to heterosexual relationships. In the same way, changing how we define ‘woman’ in order to include trans women, and changing the way we define men to include trans men, seems like a reasonable response to the existence of trans people. I can understand how this might not make sense if you have the ‘trans women are men who identify differently’ perspective.

I had to look up Isla Bryson and after a quick google search I can certainly understand the fear that defining a woman as anyone who says they are a woman could open the door for cis men to lie, and while I have no idea if Isla Bryson is genuine or lying, the fact that it’s possible should not be swept under the rug. But I think that rather than saying ‘biological men shouldn’t be in women’s prisons in order to protect women from sexual assault’ and leaving the discussion at that, I think it’s worth probing further. Ideally, everyone should be protected from sexual assault. And sexual assault in men’s prisons is a big problem which is not addressed by ‘biological men shouldn’t be in women’s prisons’. Maybe there is an opportunity for society at large to rethink how we deal with violent criminals, to really think about whether putting them all in the same building is a safe or useful thing to do. Maybe we should work towards figuring out a better way to deal with violent crime, so that it doesn’t matter how Isla Bryson identifies, other people will still be protected from her/him.

PS I also want to thank you for engaging with me respectfully and in good faith, you have given me a new perspective on gender criticals even if I ultimately still don’t agree with your position.

Damn typos! Lol.
I meant to say...the new group enters the existing group.

So did you then go and look at the World economic forum and did you look at one of the commonalities that the top ‘4’ had - a female head of state.

Did you then look at the rest of the Top 10? So you are going to state that Namibia is ”doing so well for so long, for so many women”? And Nicaragua and Rwanda?

Really?

Ok. Show us how. How did a country in the bottom 50 for women dying in childbirth, is doing at number 6 on statista?

How does NZ with such an appalling record in domestic violence rate in the top 5? And Namibia, Nicaragua and Rwanda with women not even bothering to report violence against them to be even registered are in the Top 10?

Or admit that this is a very poor measure of “doing so well for so long, for so many women”.

And that it doesn’t measure VAWAG which is an obvious and irrefutable measure of safety of women.

It is not 'prejudiced' to want to protect the dignity and integrity of women and girls or to try to prevent the erasure of women.

If you campaign was for third spaces, services and sporting categories you wouldn't be here now failing to convince us of your belief - and that would also be a good way to achieve the inclusion and respect for everyone ( including women) that you say that you believe in.

You cannot build a liberation movement on the colonisation and appropriation that which belongs to another historically oppressed group ( and in many countries around the world 'patriarchy' is still very much a thing).

Ideally, everyone should be protected from sexual assault but this is not within the remit of feminism.
Its women's rights that are being removed, right now, and what's happening in women's prisons right now would be classified as a war crime if it was taking place in a POW camp.

Article 25 (The Geneva Conventions) states that in mixed sex POW camps, women and men must have separate dormitories.
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.32_GC-III-EN.pdf

As this will probably be full by the time i loop back round to this thread.

If having read all these posts some people are still confused as to the definition of a woman it's very simple

Woman = Adult Human Female

No more. No less. it includes all actual women and certainly doesn't include men, no matter how they identify.

So you have to wonder why some people are having such an incredibly hard time with it.

Now I'm off to get breakfast.

I'm having CAKE! LOTS OF CAKE

”gender criticals”

Please stop using dehumanising language. On this board no one uses ‘the transes’ or just ‘transes’ because that has the effect of dehumanising people. By detaching the adjective from the noun. On this forum any post with ‘transes’ or ‘the transes’ is deleted and rightly so.

Using this type of dehumanising language makes it easier to dismiss violence against feminists because they are described as ‘they are gender criticals’.

No. Removing the noun has the effect of dehumanising people.

There clearly are no comprehensive criteria that can incorporate and weigh every dimension of women's lives that everyone could agree on.

We would all weigh things differently and elevate those areas that we consider most pressing.

Similarly there will be countries that score in unusual patterns. I think the best that can be done is to try to look for trends, especially in countries that are demographically similar to the UK, and I think the trend is that, in countries similar to the UK, but doing better for women, they are more open to looking at self ID, or gave already proceeded with it.

@SpookyFBI you haven't answered my assertion that we have defacto self ID in UK. Do you think we don't? If not how to you explain Isla Bryson?

"You might see this as 'waking up' but it can as easily be perceived as agitation of an emotive issue designed to appeal to people's prejudices".

What type of person sees safeguarding children and protecting women's rights as an emotive issue designed to appeal to people's prejudices ?

We all know the answer to that one!

If you are using this measure for the purpose of how ‘good’ women’s lives are in countries with Self ID, measuring VAWAG is the first measurement that should be taken.

Hand waving that away leads everyone to see you are in effect dismissing VAWAG to prove your point.

Hi again @SpookyFBI. Going to rush this a bit, as should be working (miserable on a Sunday, I know), and anticipate the thread filling up before I reply (maybe we need a follow-up thread with the same encouraging title, now that it's become somewhat less ironic?)

"Whereas I think you see trans women as men who have a different identity, so you concede to using ‘trans woman’ out of politeness, but ultimately see ‘trans identifying male’ as more correct." This is absolutely the case. I'd have thought this would be my right, not least as my perception in this area directly shapes decisions I make relating to my safety and well-being. I find it, frankly, little short of terrifying that society is telling me that my perception of reality is not only objectively wrong, but fundamentally unethical.

The same-sex marriage one is interesting. I need to give this more thought, but my first instinct is to say that what was (perceived as) "lost" here by some groups and individuals related to value judgements made in relation to a social construct (same-sex marriage as undermining the Christian concept of marriage, and therefore, by extension, the validity of their own marriage). What we fear we're losing is, conversely, the right to perceive objective scientific truth in the name of upholding our fundamental human needs and rights ("the security of person", standards of"degrading treatment" as defined in the Geneva Convention re. imprisonment) - and also, arguably, "the right to recognition as a person before the law", and, especially, "freedom of thought" (see my second paragraph above).

Re: "But I think that rather than saying ‘biological men shouldn’t be in women’s prisons in order to protect women from sexual assault’ and leaving the discussion at that, I think it’s worth probing further. Ideally, everyone should be protected from sexual assault.", I'm afraid this feels like a bit of a red herring / logical fallacy (can't recall which). By this I mean that my focussing on women's safety in prisons doesn't exclude the possibility of my being concerned about everyone more generally. The fact is, though, that the stats show that women are proportionately far more likely to be subject to attack by men, especially sexual, than by other women, and have a physical disadvantage that makes them more vulnerable to severe injury/death (& pregnancy) in this context. I'm honestly not sure how concern re: violence in prisons generally can serve as a counter argument to the (Geneva Convention standard of) sex-segregated prisons as one step towards resolving this wider issue.

A person who wishes to distract from VAWAG perhaps?

I don’t know… maybe they haven’t thought that one through, Mrs O. But it certainly looks that way when you strip it down

But as I think you've already noted, this can be hard to accurately measure in some countries due to underreporting, and differences in crime definition between countries

So these indexes are unlikely to attempt to do that because they know they can not do it well to reflect the full truth for women.

So these use other other measures easier to standardise and that tend to correlate with these areas as well.

Crime against women will tend to correlate with those measures they have used.

No it won't be perfect, but nothing possibly could be.

“There clearly are no comprehensive criteria that can incorporate and weigh every dimension of women's lives that everyone could agree on.”

No.

There is a complete fail in logic to elevate countries with appalling VAWAG records to be wonderful places for women. You have just tried to do this.

Did you even bother to look at the World Economic Forum pages for each country? Or was this yet another bit of ‘homework’ you didn’t do because (insert reason here).

See you all on the next thread.

How can those countries be in the top 10?

You dismiss the VAWAG issue in NZ too.

Not sure how you can think not mentioning those particular issues which are going to be directly impacted by self ID is a convincing argument.

Or should we now ask you what increase would be acceptable collateral for Self ID? 1 extra women or girl attacked? 2? 10? 100?

And if the women and girl don’t report it, then what? It never happened and all is wonderful for Self ID? And you are posting here on a feminist board!