£10,000 prize for arguing both sides of trans debate

[IcakethereforeIam]

This could be interesting. I expect to see FWR being cited 😁

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/10k-essay-prize-for-arguing-both-sides-of-trans-debate-vvfgmbc8k

https://archive.ph/NzNEy archive link

Although, the journalist quoted seems to have transwomen/trans women mixed up.

Transmen are, once more, conspicuous by their absence.

Thank you. I usually use transwoman but was worried I was using the 'wrong' word. I can see I'm not.

I got told off on my Facebook page for using transwoman in an entirely non-terfy post about a fairly interesting talk I had been to given by a relatively reasonable transwoman who wasn't towing the TWAW line and other sane diversions from the TRA handbook. Even though my review of the talk included that the transwoman had said that the slogan TWAW is meaningless and unhelpful, this person's reply to my post was just to helpfully let me know that I should never use the word transwoman as it carries an implication that transwomen aren't women.

I have to override my phone autocorrecting transwoman to trans woman...

Apple autocorrect does this by default. However, it does NOT extend the same logic or courtesy to "transman", which is autocorrected to "tradesman". Why would that be, I wonder?

And why is this contest, which claims to be "arguing both sides of the trans debate", focused exclusively on whether transwomen/trans women are "women" and completely ignoring whether transmen/trans men are "men"?

I'm a UK undergraduate, I could take part in the competition.

The TWAW claim seems to hinge on the idea that we all have a gender identity, and in the case of TWAW, there is a mismatch between their gender identity and their sex.

I know the arguments debunking the idea we all have a gender identity, but where could I find good quality academic arguments that support it?

I think "good quality" is optimistic, but you can find academic philosophers looking at why TWAW.

philpapers.org/rec/JENAAI

This seems to have some useful references

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5844490/

I know the arguments debunking the idea we all have a gender identity, but where could I find good quality academic arguments that support it?

you could have a look at the blog post I linked upthread. Not “academic” per se but it’s intelligent people writing, light years from the average TRA.
https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/intellectual-turing-test-results/

Also there is an argument by a well regarded academic philosopher centred around the concept of “gender feels” which tries to make “gender identity” into a coherent concept and does pretty well considering what there is to work with. (The resulting framework is still dumb as shit, naturally.) I think it was Kathleen Stock who reviewed the book? Sorry I can’t remember the name!

Haha yeah, I mean journal articles, not blog posts and the like.

A cogent argument is a cogent argument whether it’s presented in a blog post or a journal article, and the quality of academic arguments on this topic is usually embarrassingly bad. But it’ll be your loss.

Actually I think you have a point. I was going with an academic essay needs academic references, however, how non-academics understand transwomen to be women will be very relevant.

Surely the issue isn't whether there's a space between trans and woman or not. It's the fact that the word woman is incorporated in a descriptive of someone born a man. So a man who dresses as a woman is a transvestite. A man who has been castrated is a eunuch. A woman is always a person born a woman.

@currantname

It's the fact that the word woman is incorporated in a descriptive of someone born a man.

By their own admission, trans means being "on the opposite side of" something.

And we all know what's on the opposite side of being a woman...

Catherine McKinnon is an academic arguing for trans women to be treated as women - though I'm not sure that she comes out and says that trans women are women:

https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/18252/88.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Catherine McKinnon is an academic arguing for trans women to be treated as women...

Poor woman is in her dotage.

Is she arguing for trans women to be treated like shit? You know, the way women are actually treated?

Or is she arguing that we should say that trans women are women and let them into women's spaces whilst still treating them with the same consideration and respect we give to men?

there is a mismatch between their gender identity and their sex

What does a match look like? It looks like gender stereotypes.

I suspect she thinks, maybe not even consciously, that if men(M) are seen as women(x) that means bodies have stopped being noticed so women(F) will be accorded the same status and respect as men(M).

And pigs might fly...

Indeed, but I think this does underlie the "feminist" support for TWAW. Something like... Women are marginalised because if their sex. Men are not. So if Woman is defined in only in terms male people can and do exhibit and if womanhood can be shown to include male people then the reason women are marginalised will have gone away so all women will get the same default level of respect as male people currently do. If people would just stop noticing sex then sexism goes away.

Yeah, I know it's bollocks but I reckon that's the unconscious thinking behind it.

Ooh a potential 10k coming your way. Crack on dear I hope you win.
As for arguments supporting gender ideology, ummm nope, maybe twitter/X
Oh good quality, yeah, nope sorry.

there is a mismatch between their gender identity and their sex

A mismatch requires you to believe there is such thing as a match.
To acknowledge a match, eg woman matches female, you have to acknowledge there is something female about a woman, to know what a a TW is identifying into.

You are claiming either that there is a set of personality traits that "match" your body.... or, as I said was the more sympathetic argument, that so many people believe there is, that this match may as well exist. If everyone is going to stereotype you, why not at least switch the stereotype to one that you feel is closer to what you're like?

(I guess people do this in subtle ways anyway , "expressing themselves" through clothes- trying to look like a sporty person, urban, fashionable, geeky etc. As there's not really any harm in, say, thinking someone is sporty when they're not we don't say "tracksuit wearers are runners, deal with it". Or "glasses wearers are intellectuals, deal with it".)

But when it comes to being dishonest about your sex, that's where we draw the line. Sex matters.

sigh

I am claiming no such thing, I am merely repeating a common argument made by those who believe TWAW. Hint, the part of my sentence you DIDN'T quote makes it clear I'm r referring to a claim made by those who believe TWAW.

If I decide to enter this competition I will need to engage with the idea that we all have a gender identity, and try and find any strengths to this argument.

People who don't believe they have a gender identity are agender.

Agender is a type of gender identity. People who don't believe they have a gender identity are sane.

That's the gender identity term for it, yes. I don't believe in "gender" in the same way genderists do though. I have a sex. I don't have a "gender identity" as an innate property that's distinct from my sex.