Cont: [ED] Discussion: Trans Women are not Women (Part 5)

[JoeMorgue]

Is there any reason to believe Yaniv's trans status is insincere?

Is there any reason to believe Yaniv's trans status is sincere?

There is absolutely no possible way to have a "No True Scotsman" discussion in the middle of this discussion without the whole thing become so farcical as to descend into Theater of the Absurd Surrealism.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Is there any reason to believe Yaniv's trans status is sincere?

As far as anyone can tell, she's been living as a woman for years.

If that's a long-con, you gotta admire the determination.

 

[theprestige]

Canada has self-ID now, and has for a couple years. It requires filling out some forms and having official IDs changed.

That sounds pretty reasonable. I wonder if Boudicca agrees that official government ID should be a part of any self-ID regulation.

Do you happen to have the Canadian regulations handy? Does Canada require that you have the government ID in your possession? Or do they require that self-ID be honored even if the claimant does not or cannot produce the ID?

One concern I have about government ID is the same as my concern about medical transition as a requirement. When we talk about voter ID, there is HUGE push-back on the grounds that not everybody can easily get one. Voter ID is held to be regressive, effectively a poll tax, and essentially bigoted in nature.

So it seems to me that requiring government ID would be similarly problematic. It doesn't seem fair to tell Boudicca and others, "you can't fully live your identity until the government signs off on some paperwork".

Now, if trans rights advocates were to take that position, "it's not quite fair, but it's a good solution and it's the one we support", I'd be willing to accept it as well. But is that a TRA position?

You've said that Canada has this policy. You haven't said if you agree with it, or why you think it's a good policy.

 

[Emily's Cat]

How long has it been since you stopped beating your husband? Maybe stop asking me and other posters loaded questions for once.

It's not a loaded question. All of your policies are based on the premise that society as a whole, and women in particular, should be obligated to grant access to female spaces, services, and honors to male-bodied people as a right, based on their declaration of internal identity that is unverifiable, entirely subjective, and in direct opposition to observable reality.

The justification for this obligation is because transowmen need to feel affirmed and validated in their identity - excluding transwomen makes them feel like people don't believe they're actually women.

It is entirely for the purpose of supporting the feelings of transwomen that this obligation is being placed on the shoulders of females.

This obligation, however, puts females at risk, reduces their right to privacy, reduces their right to object to being looked at by penis-havers, or to object to being made to view testicle-bearers against their will. It increases the risk of rape and sexual assault for females.

Your policies very clearly place the feelings of transwomen at a higher priority than the safety and dignity of females.

So... what reasoning do you employ in order to justify placing the feelings of transwomen above the safety and dignity of females?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Exactly. Cops are notoriously indifferent to sexual crimes and domestic violence issues against women, especially women from marginalized groups like racial minorities, the poor, and LGBT women.

You acknowledge that sexual crimes and domestic violence against women are not adequately convicted or even charged... but you simultaneously propose policies that *increase* the exposure of women to those crimes and *decrease* their ability to charge the offenders?

Why would you support such a policy?

 

[theprestige]

That you equate restroom access with access to reproductive healthcare shows a profound lack of appreciation for the difference between "sex based rights" and rights based on medical need. I am very much in favour of the latter.

Why is it medically necessary to allow transwomen access to female safe spaces?

Why is it medically necessary to allow transwomen to compete in women's sports?

Why is it medically necessary to count transwomen as women in crime statistics and affirmative action quotas?

 

[TurkeysGhost]

That sounds pretty reasonable. I wonder if Boudicca agrees that official government ID should be a part of any self-ID regulation.

Do you happen to have the Canadian regulations handy? Does Canada require that you have the government ID in your possession? Or do they require that self-ID be honored even if the claimant does not or cannot produce the ID?

One concern I have about government ID is the same as my concern about medical transition as a requirement. When we talk about voter ID, there is HUGE push-back on the grounds that not everybody can easily get one. Voter ID is held to be regressive, effectively a poll tax, and essentially bigoted in nature.

So it seems to me that requiring government ID would be similarly problematic. It doesn't seem fair to tell Boudicca and others, "you can't fully live your identity until the government signs off on some paperwork".

Now, if trans rights advocates were to take that position, "it's not quite fair, but it's a good solution and it's the one we support", I'd be willing to accept it as well. But is that a TRA position?

You've said that Canada has this policy. You haven't said if you agree with it, or why you think it's a good policy.

I don't know, but I would add that many of these concerns are exactly why many crisis shelters often do not require ID. They don't want to turn away desperate women just because they don't happen to have their papers or haven't jumped through the appropriate bureaucratic hoops.

Helping homeless or otherwise vulnerable women get these papers in order is often one of the tasks that staff help with.

 

[Emily's Cat]

This is such a weird discussion...

If dealing with anything physical, your sex matters. If it's how you think of yourself, it's your gender. Real, physical situations like medical treatment, sports participation, imprisonment, and intimate interaction with others are gauged by sex. How you want to be addressed or live as is a gender concern.

A guy who wants to be addressed as 'she' should be obliged. Not so for a locker room or cellmate or athletic competitor.

Hell, let's keep it real simple: a very real physical thing that affects females is menstruation. We have periods... which necessitates pads and tampons in order to be able to even leave the bathroom, we deal with occasional leaks or early starts that actually physically show up as visible to other people, we deal with cramps that are frequently near-disabling, and a whole lot of females experience severe nausea and diarrhea along with their cramps.

But sure, sex doesn't matter.

 

[d4m10n]

There's nothing magical about court filings. Someone making a strange claim in a legal filing is no more interesting to me than someone making a strange claim on a street corner.

I find it interesting b/c the Ontario Human Rights Code doesn't seem to have a loophole which would allow beauty pageants to discriminate based on Yaniv's sex at birth and transition status. It's fine that you don't find that interesting, but it's a bit weird that you refuse to state a position on how such cases ought to be decided in a thread primarily about public policy. At least Boudicca90 bit the bullet and made the call.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

You acknowledge that sexual crimes and domestic violence against women are not adequately convicted or even charged... but you simultaneously propose policies that *increase* the exposure of women to those crimes and *decrease* their ability to charge the offenders?

Why would you support such a policy?

The continuation of a discriminatory practice is not an acceptable cost to pay.

I am not convinced that trans exclusion is the only means, nor even the most direct way, to protect women from sexual violence. Given the tremendous cost of trans women incur by having their human rights systematically denied, it's not a justifiable solution.

The battle for equality and equity is never ending, but it's not acceptable to throw one marginalized group under the bus to protect others.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Have you considered this rebutal?

TERFTearsRSalty.biz

I am unsurprised by your resort to ad hominem and denigration of females who disagree with your sexist dogma.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I'd say I consider them similar, but not exactly the same. I see sex as dealing with more physical aspects and gender as more social. I say I'm a female as well as a woman because I am transitioning my body to become more female, whereas in everyday life since gender is what we see more publicly, I am a woman.

I do think in society the distinctions of separation of the sexes is really the separation of genders. So Gender>Sex when it comes to the issues we are discussing.

Look, I completely understand that Gender > Sex FOR YOU in these issues.

That, however, is not necessarily the case for females in general, and certainly not for several of the females in this discussion.

I'd say it's certainly not true for the imprisoned women being raped by the penises of transwomen.

 

[JoeMorgue]

//Meta//

Hey can we get another split Mods? I'm seeing double posting and it's taking a long time to make posts again.

 

[LondonJohn]

This is such a weird discussion...

If dealing with anything physical, your sex matters. If it's how you think of yourself, it's your gender. Real, physical situations like medical treatment, sports participation, imprisonment, and intimate interaction with others are gauged by sex. How you want to be addressed or live as is a gender concern.

A guy who wants to be addressed as 'she' should be obliged. Not so for a locker room or cellmate or athletic competitor.

So - to address one of your negations above - which locker room (given a choice of "men" and "women") should a transwoman use when she visits her local municipal sports centre?

(Or, of course, which locker room should a transman use in the same circumstances?)

 

[Emily's Cat]

There's already a thread for pearlclutching about this.

Yeah, there's also an MA.

 

[theprestige]

No, I insulted sportswomen who use transphobia as an excuse to why they lost their competitions.

Show me a single sportswoman anywhere who used transphobia as an excuse for why they lost.

There are female athletes who use the very real biological differences between males and females as an explanation for why they lost to a male competitor.

The only time "transphobia" gets thrown around is when the male competitor claims to be a woman and competes as a woman.

When the US Women's soccer team loses to a team of 14 year old amateur males, they don't use gender or sex as an excuse. They quietly accept it as the reason. When Serena Williams loses a tennis match to a man, she doesn't complain about transphobia. She doesn't even blame herself for not training harder. Nor does anyone else - except perhaps you.

When a female athlete loses to a transwoman athlete, nobody but you says she lost because she's a transphobe who didn't train hard enough. Everybody else says she lost because her competitor was biologically male and in a whole other athletic class. And that it's kinda BS that he gets to set all his athletic competition to Easy Mode by identifying as a woman.

And yes, it's a bell curve. Transwoman athletes are rarely at the top of their game to begin with. There are females who can and do train hard enough so that at the top of their game they can give all but the top tier of males a run for their money. But being a male competing in female sports grants a significant advantage over female who isn't at the top of their game. Such male athletes can compete at any given level with a fraction of the training and effort that females have to put in just to qualify.

So.

What is the medical need for transwomen to compete as females in sports?

 

[Ziggurat]

The continuation of a discriminatory practice is not an acceptable cost to pay.

Acceptable to whom?

It's discriminatory to not let me into the women's bathroom. Why is that acceptable? Why does it become unacceptable as soon as I declare that I'm actually a woman?

Given the tremendous cost of trans women incur by having their human rights systematically denied

What tremendous cost? No such tremendous cost has ever been demonstrated here.

Keep in mind that nobody here is saying that transwomen cannot ever use women's changing rooms.

 

[Emily's Cat]

As far as anyone can tell, she's been living as a woman for years.

If that's a long-con, you gotta admire the determination.

Yeah... might be worth considering that she's been 'living as a woman' since right after self-id went into effect in Canada... and has been successfully been using self-id to harass women and to engage in predatory behavior.

Self-id is what allows Yaniv to be a predator and get away with it.

• If you want to accept that Yaniv's trans status is sincere, then you must also accept that at least some transwomen are sexual predators that put females at risk.
• If you reject Yaniv's trans status as insincere, then you must also accept that at least some malicious males will exploit the giant gaping loophole of self-id in order to put females at risk.

 

[LondonJohn]

I don't think that transwomen should be allowed to compete in elite-level sports where success in that sport is at least in part influenced by musculoskeletal and/or cardiopulmonary factors.

So I think that elite-level sport ought to be separated from true rights issues such as locker rooms, public lavatories, or prisons.

 

[theprestige]

Genitals don't determine sex or gender.

True. Sex determines genitals.

Sex also determines all the other primary and secondary morphologies that inform our perception of gender, and which are the basis for gender as a social construct.