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

[AgentK]

A friend pointed me in the direction of this journal and I don’t really understand what it is trying to say. Can anyone paraphrase and/or critique it please?
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2158244020927029

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 “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.

Exactly, Helle.

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…

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.

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.

Have people’s responses helped, OP?

Beardy man says women are wrong.

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.

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

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".

Yes that’s why I double-checked the date! Even in 2020 it was clear from the available evidence that TW are not less likely to pose a risk of sexual violence to women than other men. But not many people were looking at the evidence back then.

Since then, there have been too many highly publicised examples of trans-identified rapists and other sex offenders for that paragraph to pass the laugh test.

I only skim read it but on the issue of the "separate but equal solution" (in layman's terms, third spaces), the author rejects this for two reasons. The first, which is actually a reasonable point, is that the small number of trans women makes trans women only spaces unviable. But then he concludes that the most practical solution is for trans women to share women's spaces. He never contemplates the even more practical solution of trans women sharing men's spaces. The second reason is that trans women only spaces wouldn't be validating, but he describes this as trans women being "unintelligible as women". In layman's terms, it would be a sign that people do not believe they are women or accept them as women.

The reason this article and others like it are written using such complicated language is that if they were written using plain English, anyone reading it would be like, "Well, that's because they aren't women, obviously."

so one 'point' in the waffle seems to be that we are assuming that data re male offending applies to TW too without evidence to substantiate that. There is some debate about the data pertaining to the high number of trans identified males in the prison system. But how many rapes are now committed by 'women' and what about the evidence of our own eyes as regards the violence, intimidation and genuinely just being a nasty viscious shit human that we ser at let women speak rallies etc.? If you're hanging your arguments, in any part on the idea that men who demand to be called women are any less dangerous than other men then you may as well hang up your hat now.

The other point that gets completely lost when discussing whether trans women's offending pattern is the same as men's or not is that including trans women in women's spaces would still be dangerous to women even if all trans women were completely harmless, because there is no practical means of allowing trans women in but keeping other males out.

A rebuttal from Maya. I despair of academia

a-question-of-consent.net/2020/06/01/aleardo-zaghellini/

Seriously scary he has the credentials he has & gets such a basic point of law wrong & writes such manipulative, unacademic waffle. I used to assume those in academa, politics, positions of leadership must, on average, be somehow brighter, more logical, more ethical than me. Not all, but most.

The cream rises to the top.

I miss those days.

I honestly think it's the other way round now - that the more authority & power someone has, the more like they are to be natively ideological or cynically self-interested. The system doesn't reward nuance or reason.

The top is all foam - hot air?

(There's less polite ways of saying it...)

Just seen. Naively. Not natively.

This strange article also seems (to me at least) to assume the basic TRA lie that people who deny that TWAW are seeking to deny the existence of trans people and/or that they should have equal rights to everybody else.

It makes as much sense as saying that, because somebody states that Belgians are not the same as Dutch people, that somehow foments hatred against one of the two groups - with the supposition that one should have fewer human rights than the other - when what we are clearly saying is that people can have the same/equivalent human rights and be treated as valuable as any other person, yet they can still be different.

Most Belgians cannot get a Dutch passport or driving licence, but they can get the Belgian equivalents that are appropriate for them, that allow them to have exactly the same rights and privileges - and vice versa. In the same way, everybody is entitled to various single-sex facilities, which allow them basic human privacy, dignity and safety, but they will be the appropriate single-sex facilities for them.

If we are being hateful in seeking to keep males who identify as women out of women's single-sex spaces, then we must be just as hateful in seeking to keep out all males - the vast, vast majority of whom have no desire whatsoever to invade female single-sex facilities, instead of their own equivalent appropriate ones - and I haven't seen or heard a single TRA fighting for the rights of ordinary male men to also be allowed to use the inappropriate single-sex facility for them (in the highly unlikely event that they may wish to)... so it seems like the TRAs are extremely in favour of 'the right kind of discrimination'. Remind me: who are the haters again?

It really should not need to keep being said, but when it comes to single-sex spaces, the equal (sex-based) human rights that trans people should rightly have are, thankfully, very much in place. The only problems come when certain of them wish to take those same rights away from women and add them on to their own.

It's extremely simple to understand, even for the youngest child, as long as you have a fair mind and no ulterior motive or agenda. If Jimmy is given five special personalised sweets with his name on them by his mummy, and his sister Jenny is given five of the same kind of sweets with her name on by mummy, they have been treated completely equally and fairly. Jimmy is not being discriminated against for not being given the Jenny sweets and Jenny is not being discriminated against by not being given the Jimmy sweets.

It does NOT in any way make it fair if Jimmy then wails and screams to mummy that she must hate him and that, to prove otherwise, she really must give him Jenny's sweets as well as his own and ensure that he too has some sweets - whilst completely ignoring the fact that so doing would then leave Jimmy with double sweets and Jenny with no sweets at all - and then both Jimmy and mummy turning on Jenny and calling her hateful, bigoted and a nasty, wicked little Jimmyphobe who needs to check her privilege for even suggesting that she should also be entitled to the same or direct equivalent as Jimmy has had safeguarded for him all along.

OP, if this was a well-intentioned query, I hope you'll be back soon (or, if you're not back, that you're ok & not going through a tough time - always a possibility).

Alternatively, if this was someone just trying to make a point (to be generous, again) then what exactly do you think you've achieved?

Currently, the likeliest interpretation to me is that you're a bit taken aback by how easily posters critiqued the article, & don't have a comeback. If this is the case, hopefully you're either re-thinking your own preconceptions, or can rebut some of our thoughts...

Alternatively, you may be smugly chuckling to yourself that we took the "bait" & wasted our time posting. If so, the joke's on you. Posters love dissecting, debating, trying out different perspectives & testing different arguments here.

And it's our readiness & ability to do this time & time again that reassures us we're on the Right Side of History.

And, meanwhile, any lurkers are reading & learning all the time, looking for your reply and wondering why there isn't one. And drawing their own conclusions accordingly.