Trans women are not women (Part 8)

[Meadmaker]

3) A very compelling appeal to humanity, pointing out that of a state of 75,000 student athletes, only 4 of them are trans and only 1 of them is a transgirl competing in girls sports:

Be careful with that argument. We are changing rules, policies, customs, and in some cases architecture to accommodate transgenders. "There's only four." cuts both ways.


I was surprised by the vetoes. I think both governors seemed to be saying that this is a small problem in their states and they didn't think legislation was required to deal with a very small problem. They also both seemed to think that a case by case analysis was more reasonable than a sweeping ban. I can understand the line of thought.

Sadly, the extremists aren't going to be happy. Suburban Turkey is fighting the culture war. He might be happy with a small victory here, but that happiness is temporary. It won't be complete until total victory is achieved. Had the Governor of Utah signed the less restrictive bill, he would have been vilified as a bigot. That's the problem with culture wars, and frequently with real wars. There's no real incentive to compromise.

On sports, I'm willing to compromise, a little, but so little that none of the left wing culture warriors would be satisfied. The basis of my compromise would still be, quite obviously, "You aren't really a girl, but we'll go along under some very limited circumstances." It would involve possibly allowing transgirls to compete in not very important competitions, but not be eligible when it comes time to actually pass out the medals. In the end, not every kid gets a trophy. There's only one gold medal. There are only eight spots in the final. There are only 12 places on the Varsity team. There are only a limited number of places where someone can achieve the specific milestone that would make them feel like they accomplished their particular goal. In women's sports, those places should be taken by women, or whatever word you call them.

 

[shuttlt]

"You aren't really a girl, but we'll go along under some very limited circumstances." It would involve possibly allowing transgirls to compete in not very important competitions, but not be eligible when it comes time to actually pass out the medals.

Why though? You know that that gain will become the new normal and the argument will reset and they'll start pushing on the new front line. What is the principle that we believe in that means they should be allowed to compete? Is it that we don't want people to call us nasty names? I kind of feel like our reasoning for saying "yes" to this would apply an awful lot more widely if we were consistent.

A much easier line to hold is to say "no, women are adult females and that person has a cock and balls and can't compete in the women's division".

 

[JoeMorgue]

We all kind of can see that's where this is gonna wind up; the whole "Gender/sex is a spectrum" thing slowly turning into a gender/sex is a "flickering state" thing.

 

[shuttlt]

We all kind of can see that's where this is gonna wind up; the whole "Gender/sex is a spectrum" thing slowly turning into a gender/sex is a "flickering state" thing.

My guess would be that the process that has made the working class white men, who were the target of progressivism back in the early 20th century, into the enemy will continue to move white women into that category.

 

[Meadmaker]

Why though? You know that that gain will become the new normal and the argument will reset and they'll start pushing on the new front line. What is the principle that we believe in that means they should be allowed to compete? Is it that we don't want people to call us nasty names? I kind of feel like our reasoning for saying "yes" to this would apply an awful lot more widely if we were consistent.

A much easier line to hold is to say "no, women are adult females and that person has a cock and balls and can't compete in the women's division".

Interesting question.

As a practical matter, you're right. No one would be satisfied with the compromise.

However, in this case, I'll address it from a place of principles rather than practicalities. There's two aspects to athletic participation. There's the individual effort, where winners and losers are not as important as just being in the game. You are trying to win, but not necessarily "win" so much as just honing skills, putting forth effort, being on a personal quest. In the case of a racer, her opponent isn't really the girls around her. Her opponent is the stopwatch that keeps ticking until she crosses the finish line. In the case of team sports, it's a bit harder to define who is the opponent. There are many people on a team, and there is always a team who is actively opposing, as oppsed to a race where it's just comparing times at the end. Nevertheless, there are some sports matches where winning and losing isn't the ultimate measure of success, but rather quality of play, measured against your own ability.

I want people to experience that, and I'm willing to do things that make people comfortable when they do that, in order to get more people into the game.

However, there is an undeniable aspect of competition, winning and losing, to sports as well. In that case, it's not just how fast you can stop the second hand. It's wanting to stop your second hand on your stopwatch before the girl in the next lane stops her second hand on her stopwatch. There are medals and victors, and finalists, and praise and reward based not on "doing your best", but on winning. In those cases, I'm willing to tell the transgirl, "Sorry, but you have an advantage over the regular girls. We can't let you play in this match."

So the principle is that I want people to be allowed to live as they wish, up until the point where the way they are living encroaches on someone else's freedom. That line is very, very, difficult to find sometimes, but finding it is an ideal. In the case of sports, the goal is to let everyone play in a setting they feel comfortable when playing is the goal, but if winning is important, then we have to enforce all the rules. If a division is created for people with a natural disadvantage, i.e. women, then only people with that natural disadvantage can be allowed in.



And, as previously noted, none of the activists, and not many people in general, will actually be happy with that. It sends the strong message, "Trans women are not really women." so the left won't be happy. It sends the message, "It's ok for people to live as the opposite sex." so the right won't be happy. It's somewhat confusing, so the middle won't be happy.

Other than that, it's perfect policy.

 

[shuttlt]

So the principle is that I want people to be allowed to live as they wish, up until the point where the way they are living encroaches on someone else's freedom. That line is very, very, difficult to find sometimes, but finding it is an ideal. In the case of sports, the goal is to let everyone play in a setting they feel comfortable when playing is the goal, but if winning is important, then we have to enforce all the rules. If a division is created for people with a natural disadvantage, i.e. women, then only people with that natural disadvantage can be allowed in.

The difficulty I have is that most of the effects of changing the definition of "woman", or any such accommodation, are too subtle to detect in the short term. You look back 50 or 100 years later and go "wow, that had a profound effect". Judging this by the visible and obvious first order effects is like thinking you can navigate around icebergs by just paying attention to what is above the water. Liberals tend to look at everything on an individual level..... this will change the culture.

I think what you would be doing is pausing things for a generation or maybe two, and by that point trans-women being women will have been normalised and you will find you were on the wrong side of history.

I think if you actually disagree with this, a line has to be drawn and held before the point where there is an opportunity to normalise it. What you are proposing is the plan conservatives have ended up accepting decade after decade since the 60s.

And, as previously noted, none of the activists, and not many people in general, will actually be happy with that.

It sends the strong message, "Trans women are not really women." so the left won't be happy. It sends the message, "It's ok for people to live as the opposite sex." so the right won't be happy. It's somewhat confusing, so the middle won't be happy.

Other than that, it's perfect policy.

Ultimately the left will win out of this policy. I'll add that this is typical of how things go. The reasonable, middle of the road position ends up being that the right accept that the left are going to get something and the left accept that they aren't going to get everything they want today. Then tomorrow the game begins again with the same result. That's how the culture has gone from the 50s to where it is today. Either you draw a line in the sand and say "no" or why even bother pretending? - just accept that trans-women are women.

 

[Ziggurat]

So the principle is that I want people to be allowed to live as they wish, up until the point where the way they are living encroaches on someone else's freedom. That line is very, very, difficult to find sometimes, but finding it is an ideal. In the case of sports, the goal is to let everyone play in a setting they feel comfortable when playing is the goal, but if winning is important, then we have to enforce all the rules. If a division is created for people with a natural disadvantage, i.e. women, then only people with that natural disadvantage can be allowed in.



And, as previously noted, none of the activists, and not many people in general, will actually be happy with that. It sends the strong message, "Trans women are not really women." so the left won't be happy. It sends the message, "It's ok for people to live as the opposite sex." so the right won't be happy. It's somewhat confusing, so the middle won't be happy.

Other than that, it's perfect policy.

I think you're wrong about the middle, at least in regards to sports. A rule that only biological females can compete in the female category is actually very, very simple. It's far simpler than one where we're testing hormone levels and treatment durations. I think the middle will quite readily accept it.

And it has another virtue as well which may not be obvious at first glance but will matter a lot in the long run: it's stable. The IOC approach of allowing trans athletes to compete under certain conditions is NOT stable, because the consensus of what hormone levels are sufficient to level the playing field is going to keep evolving. The middle likes stability. It doesn't want to keep fighting over the same crap endlessly.

 

[theprestige]

I think you're wrong about the middle, at least in regards to sports. A rule that only biological females can compete in the female category is actually very, very simple. It's far simpler than one where we're testing hormone levels and treatment durations. I think the middle will quite readily accept it.

And it has another virtue as well which may not be obvious at first glance but will matter a lot in the long run: it's stable. The IOC approach of allowing trans athletes to compete under certain conditions is NOT stable, because the consensus of what hormone levels are sufficient to level the playing field is going to keep evolving. The middle likes stability. It doesn't want to keep fighting over the same crap endlessly.

At some point, all Olympic competitions will end up being judged competitions, with the judges scoring based on execution, errors, and effort to pass as the opposite sex.

 

[Ziggurat]

I think what you would be doing is pausing things for a generation or maybe two, and by that point trans-women being women will have been normalised and you will find you were on the wrong side of history.

I don't think this is a safe assumption at all.

One of the reasons I don't think so is that consequences of decisions now will not all play out in the future like people advocating them think. For example, the push for acceptance of trans adolescents may very well lead to a lot of de-transitioners in a couple decades time. There will be horror stories, not of bigotry against trans people, but of troubled kids being surgically mutilated and psychologically tormented. And then our current treatments of trans adolescents may indeed start to look like the whole recovered memory cluster ****.

There's a lot of acceptance that goes on when people don't see much of a downside. But that can and does change when the downside becomes apparent, even if that takes time and even if acceptance was normalized.

Ultimately the left will win out of this policy. I'll add that this is typical of how things go. The reasonable, middle of the road position ends up being that the right accept that the left are going to get something and the left accept that they aren't going to get everything they want today. Then tomorrow the game begins again with the same result. That's how the culture has gone from the 50s to where it is today. Either you draw a line in the sand and say "no" or why even bother pretending? - just accept that trans-women are women.

This is a common dynamic, but it is not a universal one. Seriously, look back at the 60's and 70's, and how common it was to try to push drug use and "alternative" sexuality. It wasn't uncommon to people to advocate for what's now considered pedophilia, not to mention polyamory. Age of aquarius and all that. It didn't stick, because it doesn't work. Few people can regularly use drugs without suffering considerable negative consequences, and polyamory in practice always turns out to be regressive, not progressive. Human nature isn't as malleable as the left wants it to be, and that will always thwart some of what the far left wants to accomplish. Sex is on that list.

 

[Ziggurat]

At some point, all Olympic competitions will end up being judged competitions, with the judges scoring based on execution, errors, and effort to pass as the opposite sex.

That reminds me: did you know that Turing's original formulation of the Turing Test (which he called the "imitation game") was not to see if a computer could pretend to be a human and fool someone, but rather if a computer could pretend to be a woman as well as a man could pretend to be a woman?

 

[Max_mang]

This is a common dynamic, but it is not a universal one. Seriously, look back at the 60's and 70's, and how common it was to try to push drug use and "alternative" sexuality. It wasn't uncommon to people to advocate for what's now considered pedophilia,

Can you provide a cite for the highlighted? I was born too late to experience the hippie movement, was this really part of the culture?

 

[Meadmaker]

That's how the culture has gone from the 50s to where it is today.

As it turns out, I like almost everything that has changed since the '50s, so this isn't really a compelling argument for me.

I don't like everything. but most of the things I don't like are very recent developments. I'm not willing to concede yet that there is no way to turn back from the few things I don't like.

 

[Ziggurat]

Can you provide a cite for the highlighted? I was born too late to experience the hippie movement, was this really part of the culture?

Not universally, but it was definitely a thing. At the extreme end:
https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-authorities-placed-children-with-pedophiles-for-30-years/a-53814208

There were plenty of intellectuals of the time who also pushed the idea that the prohibitions on underage sex were just like any other pointless repressive restriction on sex, and should be discarded in the new age of enlightenment.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/feb/24/jonhenley

There's more if you care to dig, but it's not exactly a fun subject, so that's all the digging I'm up for doing today.

 

[shuttlt]

I don't think this is a safe assumption at all.

One of the reasons I don't think so is that consequences of decisions now will not all play out in the future like people advocating them think. For example, the push for acceptance of trans adolescents may very well lead to a lot of de-transitioners in a couple decades time. There will be horror stories, not of bigotry against trans people, but of troubled kids being surgically mutilated and psychologically tormented. And then our current treatments of trans adolescents may indeed start to look like the whole recovered memory cluster ****.

There's a lot of acceptance that goes on when people don't see much of a downside. But that can and does change when the downside becomes apparent, even if that takes time and even if acceptance was normalized.

That is a different issue to the sports thing. Sure, it may turn out that lots of people transitioned who shouldn't have. There is clearly some background level of men who want to be accepted as women. That presumably isn't going to go away when the current craze dies off, if it dies off. The question is whether those man who want to be accepted as women are accepted as such.

This is a common dynamic, but it is not a universal one. Seriously, look back at the 60's and 70's, and how common it was to try to push drug use and "alternative" sexuality. It wasn't uncommon to people to advocate for what's now considered pedophilia, not to mention polyamory.

Yes, indeed.... you have pedophilia acceptance being advocated in exactly these terms going back a long way and quite intertwined with left wing philosophy and politics. It has been pushed back because people's natural conservative revulsion to it has been able to hold the line. The same thing should be done here. These kinds of ideas naturally appear in progressive thinking and liberation movements.

If I was trying to normalise it, I'd be insisting on doing sex ed with younger and younger kids and getting society used to the idea of young children having a sexuality and it being natural that they are "interested in their bodies". You slowly build from there.

Age of aquarius and all that. It didn't stick, because it doesn't work.

It didn't stick because they didn't manage to normalise it.

Few people can regularly use drugs without suffering considerable negative consequences, and polyamory in practice always turns out to be regressive, not progressive.

Now that depends very much on what you mean by Progressive. Eugenics was Progressive back in its day. It's about the idea of progress, not whether the thing being advocated makes the world better. Otherwise we have some kind of no true scotsman definition where Progressivism can never be wrong.

Human nature isn't as malleable as the left wants it to be, and that will always thwart some of what the far left wants to accomplish. Sex is on that list.

Sure, but at the same time you can run societies with very maladaptive features for long periods of time. We have a situation where women are supposed to have careers just like men, and sleep around just like men.... so women delay having children and get on in their careers with a bit of help from affirmative action. But sex is, as you say, not as malleable as the left want to believe, so women still want to settle down with a man who is higher status than they are and have babies. So, you end up with a bunch of high status men who have no need to settle down because they can sleep with endless young women they meet on Tinder, lots of unhappy high status women who can't find anybody they want... a bunch of young women having fun and not looking at the clock and a bunch of low status men who get table scraps if they are lucky. Failure to achieve the promised utopia doesn't mean a reversion to the status quo, it can easily mean dystopia.

Obviously the left wing vision of all these diverse atomised individuals getting on and having sex with whatever animal, mineral or vegetable their gender or sexuality for the day dictates in some bacchanalian heaven will not happen. It's perfectly possible to create a horrible mess in failing to achieve it.

 

[Ziggurat]

That is a different issue to the sports thing.

Is it? Not in the sense that I think things will change when the downsides are broadly visible.

I think the sports dynamic will follow the same path: if trans women are allowed to compete broadly, then it will have a devastating effect on womens' sports. People will see how it ruins competitions, and they will tune out, sports organizations will start to lose money, and eventually the pendulum will swing back.

Now that depends very much on what you mean by Progressive. Eugenics was Progressive back in its day. It's about the idea of progress, not whether the thing being advocated makes the world better. Otherwise we have some kind of no true scotsman definition where Progressivism can never be wrong.

I mean progressive in a more restricted sense than just better or worse. For example, progressive vs regressive tax codes. Polyamory concentrates sexual and reproductive success among an elite group of men, and hurts lower status men. It also relegates women to second class citizens. I consider these bad things, yes, but they are also antithetical to one of the central goals that progressives claim to want, namely equality.

Sure, but at the same time you can run societies with very maladaptive features for long periods of time.

True. But that usually happens when individual actors are still trying to maximize their personal situation even if things are globally worse as a result. Society can get into a sort of local min/max which isn't a global min/max, but can't get to that global min/max because there's effectively an energy barrier to do so. But I think this is a case where most people can still maximize their own situation by taking a more conservative approach here, which will push society towards a more global min/max. In other words, I don't think there's really a barrier to change in this case. And to be clear, I'm not talking about hating trans people or anything like that.

Obviously the left wing vision of all these diverse atomised individuals getting on and having sex with whatever animal, mineral or vegetable their gender or sexuality for the day dictates in some bacchanalian heaven will not happen. It's perfectly possible to create a horrible mess in failing to achieve it.

We kind of have. It's called Tinder.

 

[theprestige]

Seems to me the drop in rank from less than one year of HRT demonstrates how much these therapies mitigate any inherent advantage males have. An athlete who started off heavily muscled up and was actively training during the therapy still plummeted in performance. A stark testament to the importance that these hormones play in sexual differences.

On top of everything else, I have no respect for an "athlete" who intentionally downgrades their physical capability in order to "compete" according to their gender self-identity, rather than putting themselves to the test against similarly motivated people of like mind and body. Lia Thomas may or may not be cosplaying womanhood, but she's absolutely cosplaying sports and sportsmanship. From here on out, all her trophies are essentially participation trophies - awards won not for winning, but for participating in sports as a woman. Awards that no woman can win, by the way.

 

[theprestige]

Overheard elsewhere on the Internet: "Lia Thomas is the Rachel Dolezal of Caitlyn Jenners."

 

[shuttlt]

As it turns out, I like almost everything that has changed since the '50s, so this isn't really a compelling argument for me.

Sure you do. I know the overton window on this forum and I'd be stunned if you thought anything else. If you go through the education system 10 or 20 years from now, you'll come out of it thinking trans-women are women. The whole idea of what a good liberal person thinks slowly moves forward. If you went back to the first wave feminists now, they'd come across like Richard Spencer on lots of issues.

I don't like everything. but most of the things I don't like are very recent developments.

Of course that's the case. In every revolution there is always this process of people getting on board and then in time it goes too far for them and they find that where once they were at the forefront, now they are not radical enough. If you'd been born 30 years earlier, probably something else would have been the thing that was going too far.

I'm not willing to concede yet that there is no way to turn back from the few things I don't like.

The thing is that progressive liberalism has a direction to it, and momentum. It's all very well liking the things it delivers on the part of the journey you bought on to it for, but it doesn't stop just because you want to get off now.

 

[Max_mang]

Not universally, but it was definitely a thing. At the extreme end:
https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-authorities-placed-children-with-pedophiles-for-30-years/a-53814208

There were plenty of intellectuals of the time who also pushed the idea that the prohibitions on underage sex were just like any other pointless repressive restriction on sex, and should be discarded in the new age of enlightenment.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/feb/24/jonhenley

There's more if you care to dig, but it's not exactly a fun subject, so that's all the digging I'm up for doing today.

For anyone who didn't click the links - they are about incidents that happened in Berlin and France. Luckily those countries have now caught up w/ the rest of us that children cannot consent and that sexual contact with them is a terrible form of abuse.

Is there any evidence that liberalism in America has a goal of normalizing sexual contact with children and that voting republican is the only way to protect children from being assaulted?

 

[shuttlt]

Is it? Not in the sense that I think things will change when the downsides are broadly visible.

By that point it will be too late to wind most of it back. It usually is. Is anybody going to roll back any of the social changes that caused single parent families to sky rocket and all the good things that go with that? Of course not. The only progressive idea I can think of that has ever gotten traction and then been knocked back while it was still socially relevant is eugenics, and that took WW2 to stop it.

I think the sports dynamic will follow the same path: if trans women are allowed to compete broadly, then it will have a devastating effect on womens' sports. People will see how it ruins competitions, and they will tune out, sports organizations will start to lose money, and eventually the pendulum will swing back.

Maybe, or maybe society will catch up and we'll realise that they are women and just as we shouldn't begrudge some 6'6'' women her advantage in basketball over her shorter sisters, we shouldn't begrudge a woman with testicles and male testosterone levels her advantage. If you took somebody from 100 years ago and showed them how modern society functioned I'm sure they'd be horrified in all sorts of ways and consider things that we believe are steps forward as steps back. Same here.

I mean progressive in a more restricted sense than just better or worse. For example, progressive vs regressive tax codes. Polyamory concentrates sexual and reproductive success among an elite group of men, and hurts lower status men.

Yes, but so did ending traditional marriage, pushing sexual equality in the workforce and the sexual revolution. Does that make those things regressive? I would say when talking about progressivism it is normally best to stick to intentions and underlying philosophy rather than outcomes.

It also relegates women to second class citizens.

Maybe, but then again, isn't progressive liberalism about freeing people from societal judgements and living and identifying as they want? Is the idea that, like how Communist Man would appear somehow and operate in a way were equality and liberty didn't clash, and European Man when he arose was going to have no attachment to people or nation, that Progressive Liberal man would for some reason just not want to live in polyamory?

It seems much more like it leads to single mothers living off the state, or the child support of multiple fathers rather than in polyamorous communities, so maybe you are right. Maybe some of the high status men that the sexual revolution has benefited will go for polyamory? There does seem to be some sort of human drive towards it.

I consider these bad things, yes, but they are also antithetical to one of the central goals that progressives claim to want, namely equality.

Yes, but equality is nonsense. Men and women aren't equal, speaking generally... they are different, they don't want the same things, and the same rules don't apply to them. The idea that men and women should be "equal" in any none metaphysical sense is the same reality denying, anti-human, ideology as the trans-activists are following.... just less far down the rabbit hole.

True. But that usually happens when individual actors are still trying to maximize their personal situation even if things are globally worse as a result. Society can get into a sort of local min/max which isn't a global min/max, but can't get to that global min/max because there's effectively an energy barrier to do so. But I think this is a case where most people can still maximize their own situation by taking a more conservative approach here, which will push society towards a more global min/max. In other words, I don't think there's really a barrier to change in this case. And to be clear, I'm not talking about hating trans people or anything like that.

How does a society do that if the founding myths and societal concept of "the good" say that the maladaptive behaviour is progress? It's all very well recognizing the malaise, but recognizing it isn't the same as fixing it. It's not as if Rome didn't know that it's culture was drying through decadence and lack of vitality.... Some processes, once they are begun, must be run to their end.

We kind of have. It's called Tinder.

Well, yes and no. These utopian visions always seem to turn out to be like wishes from genies, where you get what you want..... but not how you wanted it.

Is women sleeping around with a small number of random anonymous men and having fewer and fewer children later and later only to end up alone with cats complaining how there are no good men, while men find it harder and harder to get a date and young women compete in a race to the bottom to prostitute themselves on OnlyFans what utopia was supposed to look like?