And the traits that therefore make up an adult, a human, and a female? Certainly you're not going to try to say that these are immutable as well.
Guess I should just define every key word that's a part of the definitions of adult, human, and female, then define every key term of those key terms, then define the key terms of those key terms... not only am I not obliged to do this, it's a complete waste of time.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Guess I should just define every key word that's a part of the definitions of adult, human, and female, then define every key term of those key terms, then define the key terms of those key terms... not only am I not obliged to do this, it's a complete waste of time.
Again, not important. The discussion isn't about what a human, adult, and female are, it's about transgender men/women being men/women.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
@Ulfsaar: So, you're using scientific objectivity then, based on repeatable results?
No, he is saying that we can subjectively measure what a word means. For example we understand what the word 'dog' means - it is an objective word that describes a type of creature.
So we can look at things like a chihuahua, coyote, wolf, fox, and a hyena and measure those creatures against the word 'dog' to see if those creatures fit into what the label dog means.
Is there a creature I named in my list that doesn't fit what the word dog means?
Quote from Teia Rabishu »
This leaves me wondering what, supposedly, you think I ought to have "learned," especially given that I spent quite a bit of my last reply to you pointing out where you genuinely misread me, trying to gain more insight into the specifics of your position, and even admitting where I messed up. If all that's somehow infuriating, then I'm truly at a loss for what one can reasonably expect.
What is infuriating is that you substitute using good logic and reasoning in replace it with fallacious reasoning and bad logic; by taking things out of context, creating strawmen, contradicting yourself, being a hypocrite, equivocating words, use arguments from authority, back peddling, using special pleading, and then when we point these things out to you - you don't learn from it and instead continue to do and use the same fallacious reasoning over and over again.
You don't even try to understand what is being said, you simply have done nothing but fabricate arguments and use fallacious reasoning. There's no point to arguing with you when you continue to do these things even after they have been pointed out to you and explained why.
Like I said to you before, your arguments speak for themselves. People can (and have) read them and can judge for themselves who is right here. There's no need to continue rehashing and pointing out why your logic and reasoning is bad. I'm not trying to convince you (because you can't be convinced) but other people who are reading this discussion, so there's nothing to be gained by me wasting my time on you.
Teia
Reading this and thinking of such technology being aimed at, say, homosexuality is a rather disturbing thing. Speaking as someone both queer and trans, I definitely wouldn't want either to have been "fixed" that way.
I just want to point out that I don't think he intended to pull an X-Men III: The Last Stand here. I doubt he was wanting all the mutants to line up for the cure - so to speak, but it is an interesting comparison. Would transpeople want the fix? I think just like in X3 - some would, and some wouldn't.
Teia, if you had been fixed to begin with, you wouldn't even know the difference, or how would you know?
You wouldn't want them to "fix" who you are NOW, neither would I want to be changed from who I am NOW. But WHO WE ARE would be significantly different had we been changed in the first place.
If we figured out what caused the brain-body confusion, dysphoria, or whatever you want it to be called, should it be fixed?
I think so.
Please understand I would not force, I wouldn't even ASK people who have already been born trans to fix anything. That's up to them.
My thing would be fetus therapy. If we can go in at 10-15 weeks and test the baby for this issue (should it turn out to be a neurological-biological confusion) and fix the issue. I think everyone should be for it. If we FIX the issue so that they are born with their mind, body, and gender lined up correctly (CIS) then they wouldn't be born and grow up having gender identity problems. They wouldn't need surgery, or hormones, or be treated differently, or be bullied, or be attacked with insults and even violence.
They would be CIS, everyone would be CIS (well, except for the transpeople born in places where the medical infrastructure sucks, like a 3rd world country or something :()
That being said, then the issue is, which direction do we go?
If the above statement were true, would you argue that the correctional steps taken with the fetus be in favor of the neurology or the biology?
If we could fix a baby in the womb, do we fix their body, or do we fix their brain?
Take Jenna for example. If we could have fixed her in the womb - should we fix Jenna to be born a cismale, or a cisfemale?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Again, not important. The discussion isn't about what a human, adult, and female are, it's about transgender men/women being men/women.
What?
No. You don't get to shirk this. You say "objective defintion of woman is 'adult human female'." If you cannot provide the objective definiton of "adult" "human" and "female" then you cannot say with any certainty that a transgender man-to-woman is not just a "woman." Because transgender man-to-woman could very well meet the requirements of "adult" "human" and "female." Quite easily, in fact. Especially since the part of it being "adult" contradicts your "must be born" sentiment.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Asking people to remove quotes in their signatures is tyranny! If I can't say something just because someone's feelings are hurt then no one would ever be able to say anything! Political correctness is stupid.
No. You don't get to shirk this. You say "objective defintion of woman is 'adult human female'." If you cannot provide the objective definiton of "adult" "human" and "female" then you cannot say with any certainty that a transgender man-to-woman is not just a "woman." Because transgender man-to-woman could very well meet the requirements of "adult" "human" and "female." Quite easily, in fact. Especially since the part of it being "adult" contradicts your "must be born" sentiment.
What significance do the definitions of "adult" or "human" have in this conversation? I can't see any.
What significance do the definitions of "adult" or "human" have in this conversation? I can't see any.
Are you just trying to give him busy work here?
Adult matters to the relevance of "they are only a woman if they are born a woman."
Human clearly is irrelevant though.
The point overall was that a transgender man-to-woman could qualify as just "woman" if you delve further into the definition's statues. Simply saying "Must be adult human female, they aren't so there." is insufficient.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Asking people to remove quotes in their signatures is tyranny! If I can't say something just because someone's feelings are hurt then no one would ever be able to say anything! Political correctness is stupid.
Then why do doctors call it gender identity disorder?
Probably a similar reason to why homosexuality used to be classed as a mental disorder: It was classified that way originally due to ignorance over the issue, and sheer inertia is making it difficult to change that classification.
Total agreement here. The name doctors happen to call it today, is not the definitive answer to a debate about what doctors SHOULD call it.
Quote from Teia Rabishu »
Quote from dcartist »
they become EXCLUSIONARY to anybody who isn't born neatly into one of those two classes. They become "OTHER", which is a pretty crappy place to be classified to...
Quoting this part mainly to emphasize this assessment. It's basically what I've been saying all along, that what you're assigned at birth is expected to rule the day, and trans people are "othered" to the point where we're treated like some kind of third gender (i.e. as women sometimes, as men other times, and even treated in ways distinct from men and women yet other times), but in a cognitively dissonant way where people don't think of it in terms of creating a third gender category.
I agree with your dissatisfaction. We have FEMALE, MALE, and OTHER, with "OTHER" being a fairly ****ty category to be dumped into.
I am not sure what the EVENTUAL SOLUTION should be. For example, one solution is to make the broader legal and societal categories of FEMALE AND MALE more INCLUSIVE... Another solution is to keep expanding further down the pathway of what gay marriage has opened up... which is simply doing AWAY with societal and legal MALE-FEMALE categorizations:
The legal solution for the Gordian Knot of the exclusionary nature of male-female traiditional marriage... was to simply emphasize "adult person unions". They didn't go the route of saying "Male-female unions and female-female unions and male male unions"
If you think about it, from a LEGAL standpoint, we've already spent so much historical time trying to make MALE and FEMALE CATEGORIES "EQUAL in POWER"... how many legal DISTINCTIONS do we really need between MALE and FEMALE? The best route might be to FORGET the legal distinction between MALE and FEMALE ALTOGETHER. And just let the law worry about PROTECTING the any person from "GENDER BASED DISCRIMINATION".
In society, where does the exclusionary nature of the FEMALE or MALE categorization system ever come up at all? ONLY in the realm of competitions with exclusionary rules? (sports and pageants?). In academics, do we really need a BOY MATH CHAMPION and A GIRL MATH CHAMPION?
Only sports where GIRLS have such a huge biological athletic disadvantage can there be much justification for that. And even before the "TRANS controversy" came up, exclusion & division in sports based on gender was already demonstrating serious problems. Is it FAIR to have a WOMEN'S basketball league excluding males, but demanding an OPEN basketball league excluding nobody (with exclusion of women being the result of sheer inability to compete)?
Looking at Miss Universe and comparing it to MALE SPORTS that have excluded "non-males" from competing (and refusing to compete with girls. with the ultimate solution being "let her compete if she has teh ABILITY" )... one could almost argue that the optimal solution to Miss Universe pageant controversy is to allow any PERSON to compete if they "HAVE THE ABILITY". It's only prejudice and embarrassment on the part of women "being beaten by a trans" and the organizers of the competition not wanting to be perceived as "freak show" by allowing a "freak" to participate. Is it really that different from a wrestling league where the players don't want to be embarrassed by losing to a girl?
Are the "sanctity" of beauty pageants in their current form really so important to preserve?
Quote from Teia Rabishu »
Quote from dcartist »
It's not enough that I have to deal with testicular feminization and finding out that I'm not fertile, but now society decides that I'm a DEFECT
Again not arguing against you so much as commenting on something, but I see a lot of people try the "defect as clinical, factual term" approach and it more or less ignores the heavy stigma around being labeled as "defective." You (royal you) can't ignore those kinds of stigmas and implications when using words to describe real, actual people.
I chose the noun "defect" as an "identity noun" deliberately there, to emphasize the ugliness of societal definition and judgment.
Quote from Teia Rabishu »
Quote from dcartist »
The fact that there is a MEDICAL problem should not be COMPOUNDED by EXCLUDING THAT PERSON from the MALE/FEMALE 2 party system.
Long as we're being put into the correct category rather than forced into the one we don't want, then I agree fully.
Well as I said at the top of this post, I'm not even sure there should BE a "2 party system" from a legal standpoint.
I think MALE/FEMALE for purposes of defining SPORTS or other GENDER SPECIFIC COMPETITION EXCLUSION might have to be defined along new lines with more practical reasons for "WHY can't a 'boy' compete in a beauty contest?" OR "WHY aren't 'boys' allowed to compete on the field hockey team? Because they're too strong? Well, what if the boy is weak? Or has congenital weakness?" Even without the "trans controversy, it may have to be rethought.
Quote from Teia Rabishu »
Quote from dcartist »
For the hundreds of thousands of people in the US who do not fit into a traditional MALE or FEMALE classification, the "transgender/intersexed thing" is not an issue that occasionally comes up. For that person, it's 100% everyday, forever a kind of issue.
You know, certain cis people sometimes wonder just how it is I can be on about trans issues every single day. And you basically said it here: I can't escape them. Not a single day goes by where I don't look in the mirror and see a trans woman. I can't leave the house without the subject of "do I pass?" being a big deal. I can't talk to others without wondering whether or not my voice passes. Even ignoring all the forum-posting I do, I still have to concern myself with trans issues more in one day than most cis people do in a year.
No kidding. People who only occasionally are "inconvenienced" by the 'trans controversy' seem to often act like their whole year was irrevocably ruined because they were "forced" to see a trans person in the bathroom or something. It reminds me of people who get pissed that disabled people appear in restaurants in their power chairs and ruin their appetite (yes, as a guy who volunteered at ventilator camp for 15 years, I saw this many, many times at restaurants. People who are actually wondering out loud why they have to be subject to looking at a quadriplegic guy in a wheelchair at the Macaroni Grill, since it put them off their food... they're lucky I didn't jam their steak knife in their eye socket, ****ing *******s).
Quote from Teia Rabishu »
Quote from dcartist »
Taylor Rabinowitz
Heh. I have to admit, this amuses me.
I just look at the whole thing like...
if the 30 of us on this thread were on a desert island, and we were starting from scratch, woudl we REALLY tell one of our members, "Sorry, you are not a MALE and you're not a FEMALE by traditional societal roles, so why don't you sit out EVERYTHING that happens to involve those categories?
Wouldn't we just all PARTICIPATE and try not to be *******s to each other?
I just want to point out that I don't think he intended to pull an X-Men III: The Last Stand here. I doubt he was wanting all the mutants to line up for the cure - so to speak, but it is an interesting comparison. Would transpeople want the fix? I think just like in X3 - some would, and some wouldn't.
Teia, if you had been fixed to begin with, you wouldn't even know the difference, or how would you know? ...
<snip>
...if we could fix a baby in the womb, do we fix their body, or do we fix their brain? take Jenna for example. If we could have fixed her in the womb - should we fix Jenna to be born a cismale, or a cisfemale?
These kinds of theoretical questions are all just that, "theoretical". Such treatments are not currently technologically feasible in any way, shape or form. Its a "cheat". Its actually BYPASSING the question entirely. Because when you say you're going to alter the baby's brain, that's just saying you're going to make a different baby. One could just as easily speculate changing the baby's BODY entirely by genetic magic, without changing its identiy.
For some reason, this actually reminds me of Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and "What if we genetically altered the brains of cows so they'd WANT to be eaten?"
-
And really, this is the reason why in my original post, I emphasized finding a minimum morally acceptable FRAMEWORK for gender that is NOT by nature exclusionary.
I think after this post, I'm now more of the mind of feeling this:
(1) The last century has been spent trying to make MALE and FEMALE CATEGORIES "EQUAL"... Now that marriage between PERSONS is my legal standard, do we may not need ANY legal DISTINCTIONS between MALE and FEMALE? Just let the law worry about PROTECTING the ANY person from "GENDER BASED DISCRIMINATION".
(2) For SOCIETY, that leaves competitive sports and contests as the BIG OFFENDERS in exclusing males or females. Do we need a boy spelling bee champ AND a girl spelling bee champ? No. Make it merit based. In sports, the unlimited league (previously male) only excludes females by ability now. Male football is the "open league". So are all "male sports", right? Females are only excluded by an ABILITY TEST, not a gender test.
Maybe beauty contests can be the same? If a person born a man "HAS THE ABILITY" to beat the people born women, then LET THAT PERSON PLAY!
Which only leaves the issue of what kinds of "protected leagues based on INABILITY" should be allowed? HANDICAPPED SPORTS COMPETITION? 6'0" and UNDER BASKETBALL LEAGUES? Is it even right to have a GIRLS FIELD HOCKEY LEAGUE? Maybe an ENLIGHTENED society shouldn't have it? Maybe it should just have a "athletic ability level 1, 2, 3, plus an OPEN CATEGORY. And if you're "too good" at level 1, you move up to level 2?
Just spitballing here, but I really think we have to step back and rethink. Especially since we've legally made MALE and FEMALE equal, and male league is really now just the unlimited/open league (which hammers home the point that the "female league" is really a form of "protected JV", and doesn't have the strong justification to exclude a "trans" or a "t-fem" or a "Turner").
Total agreement here. The name doctors happen to call it today, is not the definitive answer to a debate about what doctors SHOULD call it.
The name doctors should call it though should also NOT be dictated to them by social taboo.
We clasify everything ever. From Bosons to Hydrogen atoms to Apes, to Ants, to the sexes of Human Beings.
I see nothing wrong with clasification nouns. Maybe we change the noun to be inclusive, that's fine, but we still should have nouns.
I agree with your dissatisfaction. We have FEMALE, MALE, and OTHER, with "OTHER" being a fairly ****ty category to be dumped into.
Why is it so ****ty? Is it because the name doesn't fit, or is it more because people treat other people who are different like ****?
I happen to think it is because people treat other people like ****. Let's solve THAT.
I am not sure what the EVENTUAL SOLUTION should be. For example, one solution is to make the broader legal and societal categories of FEMALE AND MALE more INCLUSIVE... Another solution is to keep expanding further down the pathway of what gay marriage has opened up... which is simply doing AWAY with societal and legal MALE-FEMALE categorizations:
The legal solution for the Gordian Knot of the exclusionary nature of male-female traiditional marriage... was to simply emphasize "adult person unions". They didn't go the route of saying "Male-female unions and female-female unions and male male unions"
We are getting there, sadly like molasses in winter.
Let me make it clear. I do not want to do away with gender nouns. Not completely. I think they are somewhat essential.
If you think about it, from a LEGAL standpoint, we've already spent so much historical time trying to make MALE and FEMALE CATEGORIES "EQUAL in POWER"... how many legal DISTINCTIONS do we really need between MALE and FEMALE? The best route might be to FORGET the legal distinction between MALE and FEMALE ALTOGETHER. And just let the law worry about PROTECTING the any person from "GENDER BASED DISCRIMINATION".
Equal under the law maybe. True equal is a grey area concept that may never be reached.
In society, where does the exclusionary nature of the FEMALE or MALE categorization system ever come up at all? ONLY in the realm of competitions with exclusionary rules? (sports and pageants?). In academics, do we really need a BOY MATH CHAMPION and A GIRL MATH CHAMPION?
I don't know - who we have SEX with maybe? That seems like a big one to me.
We touched on this earlier.
Now true, that a person shouldn't need a NOUN labeled upon someone in order to be sexual attracted to another person. Heck, I don't. I'd have a sex sandwich with Ryan Gosling and Hugh Jackman anytime.
But countless people DO care. That some people become enraged when they find out the male/female they just got jiggy with was not what they thought is a testament to that fact.
Only sports where GIRLS have such a huge biological athletic disadvantage can there be much justification for that. And even before the "TRANS controversy" came up, exclusion & division in sports based on gender was already demonstrating serious problems. Is it FAIR to have a WOMEN'S basketball league excluding males, but demanding an OPEN basketball league excluding nobody (with exclusion of women being the result of sheer inability to compete)?
Yes, yes, we are EQUAL but we are NOT
Looking at Miss Universe and comparing it to MALE SPORTS that have excluded "non-males" from competing (and refusing to compete with girls. with the ultimate solution being "let her compete if she has teh ABILITY" )... one could almost argue that the optimal solution to Miss Universe pageant controversy is to allow any PERSON to compete if they "HAVE THE ABILITY". It's only prejudice and embarrassment on the part of women "being beaten by a trans" and the organizers of the competition not wanting to be perceived as "freak show" by allowing a "freak" to participate. Is it really that different from a wrestling league where the players don't want to be embarrassed by losing to a girl?
Embarrassed to "lose to a girl" is not the ONLY reason some boys refuse to play against girls.
The same is true for the converse issue.
Some reasons are religious, or based on upbringing.
Some reasons are rooted in a "this is our club" mentality.
I believe that there is nothing wrong with the establishment, and the perpetuation of "boys clubs" or even "girls clubs".
There is no reason why, as long as all people are equally protected under the law, that Men and Women cannot form their own private exclusive organizations.
FORCED inclusion is not any healthier than exclusion.
Are the "sanctity" of beauty pageants in their current form really so important to preserve?
Just because I would say NO to that question, doesn't mean that people who want to privately run beauty pageants do not have the right to do so. Furthermore, as a PRIVATE organization, it is unconstitutional and downright intrusive upon liberty for the government to dictate their acceptance policies.
The KKK has a legal and constitutional RIGHT to exclude black sor jews or whoever they see fit, no matter how disgusting we think they are.
Likewise, a beauty pageant organization has a RIGHT to exclude certain sets of people. Women over 27, under 17, married with children, whatever. If that happens to include transwomen. That's their business.
I chose the noun "defect" as an "identity noun" deliberately there, to emphasize the ugliness of societal definition and judgment.
Eh. Arguments from emotion don't really sway me.
There is difference between recognizing the existence of defects within people, and calling the person defective/freaks/mutants etc.
We need to recognize when someone has a defect in order to treat it after all.
In fact, it's the person who suffers from the defect themself who often must recognize their own defect in order to seek treatment for it.
Jenna herself had to recognize that her body wasn't right with her mind. She then worked to fix it as best we can.
Well as I said at the top of this post, I'm not even sure there should BE a "2 party system" from a legal standpoint.
Well, we are way past 2 party system here. Gays are not "OTHERS". They are "MALES" and "FEMALES". Yet we still have a long road to travel in order to grant them the equal rights they deserve as people.
I think MALE/FEMALE for purposes of defining SPORTS or other GENDER SPECIFIC COMPETITION EXCLUSION might have to be defined along new lines with more practical reasons for "WHY can't a 'boy' compete in a beauty contest?" OR "WHY aren't 'boys' allowed to compete on the field hockey team? Because they're too strong? Well, what if the boy is weak? Or has congenital weakness?" Even without the "trans controversy, it may have to be rethought.
Boys have their own pageants, or do male models not exist? Boys have their own field hockey teams, or where those Duke boys faking it?
Here's the thing.
What I hear you saying is this: "We shouldn't exclude people based on gender. We should exclude them based on how bad they suck."
The weak and unskilled are already being excluded through natural selection, and have been since the dawn of time. Or do you think physically weak pathetic kids get sports scholarships, or make pro?
No kidding. People who only occasionally are "inconvenienced" by the 'trans controversy' seem to often act like their whole year was irrevocably ruined because they were "forced" to see a trans person in the bathroom or something. It reminds me of people who get pissed that disabled people appear in restaurants in their power chairs and ruin their appetite (yes, as a guy who volunteered at ventilator camp for 15 years, I saw this many, many times at restaurants. People who are actually wondering out loud why they have to be subject to looking at a quadriplegic guy in a wheelchair at the Macaroni Grill, since it put them off their food... they're lucky I didn't jam their steak knife in their eye socket, ****ing *******s).
Eh. Nothing can spoil my appetite.
Stabbing people who react negatively to the image of a disabled or crippled person is the correct response yes, lucky indeed.
if the 30 of us on this thread were on a desert island, and we were starting from scratch, woudl we REALLY tell one of our members, "Sorry, you are not a MALE and you're not a FEMALE by traditional societal roles, so why don't you sit out EVERYTHING that happens to involve those categories?
Well first, I'd say more like 18 of us (in this general debate area), not 30.
Second, if we were all stranded indefinitely on some island together,
Don't you think we would want to know which people can have babies together?
Zombie Apocolypse would have been a beter analogy I think.
Wouldn't we just all PARTICIPATE and try not to be *******s to each other?
Well yes, we'd all fish, and cut wood, and look for food, and play cards, and get suntans together. But maybe, just maybe, going out on a limb here, guessing we don't have a modern invetro fertilization lab, we wouldn't ALL get to participate in the courtship dance for posterity.
These kinds of theoretical questions are all just that, "theoretical". Such treatments are not currently technologically feasible in any way, shape or form. Its a "cheat". Its actually BYPASSING the question entirely. Because when you say you're going to alter the baby's brain, that's just saying you're going to make a different baby. One could just as easily speculate changing the baby's BODY entirely by genetic magic, without changing its identiy.
We really aren't THAT far away from being able to fix genetic issues.
Yes, I agree that fxing the BODY to match the BRAIN is the more preferrable choice.
That being said, even if we fixed the brain instead, a 15 week old fetus doesn't HAVE an Identity yet. Changing the brain of a 15 week old fetus to be wired correctly has NOT damaged or changed WHO that person IS. WHo they ARE hasn't even developed and doesn't really begin to develop until 2-3 years old.
For some reason, this actually reminds me of Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and "What if we genetically altered the brains of cows so they'd WANT to be eaten?"
I think you are wrong though.
I believe most if not ALL transpeople would have rather been BORN IN THE RIGHT BODY as opposed to being born in the wrong one.
If we can fix the bodies in the womb to match the brain wiring - I think even Teia would agree we SHOULD do that.
I'll repeat again, I would agree with you that fixing the body to match the brain would be the preferrable choice.
And really, this is the reason why in my original post, I emphasized finding a minimum morally acceptable FRAMEWORK for gender that is NOT by nature exclusionary.
If we have genders AT ALL, and we do, then one is always going to exclude the other.
You already said you didn't like the "2 party system" - but that's what we would stil lhave, even IF we had a 4 party system, a 7 party system, or even a 1 party system. Someone somewhere at sometime is going to be excluded from the(a) party.
(1) The last century has been spent trying to make MALE and FEMALE CATEGORIES "EQUAL"... Now that marriage between PERSONS is my legal standard, do we may not need ANY legal DISTINCTIONS between MALE and FEMALE? Just let the law worry about PROTECTING the ANY person from "GENDER BASED DISCRIMINATION".
I agree.
Execpt I want to be clear that EQUALITY UNDER THE LAW=/=BIOLOGICAL EQUALITY
(2) For SOCIETY, that leaves competitive sports and contests as the BIG OFFENDERS in exclusing males or females. Do we need a boy spelling bee champ AND a girl spelling bee champ? No. Make it merit based. In sports, the unlimited league (previously male) only excludes females by ability now. Male football is the "open league". So are all "male sports", right? Females are only excluded by an ABILITY TEST, not a gender test.
I have NEVER seen a segregated spelling bee in my life. I won my 3rd grade spelling bee back in what, '86. I competed against girls and boys.
I understand you want an open league. I just hope you realise that instead of being barred from the football based on gender, a woman under that system with just get excluded from the team because she was severly injured by a guy 80-90lbs. heavier hitting her while running his 5.8-40.
Maybe beauty contests can be the same? If a person born a man "HAS THE ABILITY" to beat the people born women, then LET THAT PERSON PLAY!
Absolutely! So long as it's a government run pageant where the government has control over the rules of the organization.
The government does NOT have the power to tell a private organization who it has to allow in.
The Boy Scouts don't have to let girls in. The Girl Scouts don't have to let dboys in.
And the government forcing them too, is overreaching and unconstitutional.
Which only leaves the issue of what kinds of "protected leagues based on INABILITY" should be allowed? HANDICAPPED SPORTS COMPETITION? 6'0" and UNDER BASKETBALL LEAGUES? Is it even right to have a GIRLS FIELD HOCKEY LEAGUE? Maybe an ENLIGHTENED society shouldn't have it? Maybe it should just have a "athletic ability level 1, 2, 3, plus an OPEN CATEGORY. And if you're "too good" at level 1, you move up to level 2?
I might actually support this idea of yours with the
Skill Level 1, 2, 3, Open.
Sounds reasonable. I can actually get behind that idea.
Just spitballing here, but I really think we have to step back and rethink. Especially since we've legally made MALE and FEMALE equal, and male league is really now just the unlimited/open league (which hammers home the point that the "female league" is really a form of "protected JV", and doesn't have the strong justification to exclude a "trans" or a "t-fem" or a "Turner").
If Brandon Jacobs or Ray Lewis got a sex change, I'd STILL say it is unfair and irresponsible to allow him to play against women.
Let's not let the desire for legal and social equality turn us blind to thousands of years worth of evolutionary engineering.
Reading this and thinking of such technology being aimed at, say, homosexuality is a rather disturbing thing. Speaking as someone both queer and trans, I definitely wouldn't want either to have been "fixed" that way.
I wasn't talking about homosexuality at all, more towards the issue of trans in comparison to say dwarfism or being deaf. Of course some people would want to remain being a little person and people do choose to remain deaf and take part in deaf culture. The same with a person in the far flung future who is in your shoes. It doesn't hurt to have a young person sit down and decide whether they wish to go through correcting the issue through either fixing the mind or the body.
Let's be honest, the path is:
1. Not cheap
2. Complex medically, with time required to heal
3. Fraught with all sorts of psycho-social issues
And for woman to man in terms of building a ***** is more difficult than constructing a ******, so that's another issue that could use greater improvements in technology.
Now having a "pill" that can correct the issue at the neurological level, arguably isn't for everyone but it is for some. The economics can be cost prohibitive in certain areas of the world is something to tally. Even then with costs there's research into things such as artificial wombs that are designed for women with defective uteri, but advancing that technology to perhaps be used in a transgendered woman to give birth via caesarian is indeed another portion of what I mean by "opening up the sciences" and "hundreds of years off potentially."
Equally within the framework of said research, the ability to take man to woman or man to woman perfected to some ungodly level would probably be the only "true" way to achieve equality among the sexes. Which again is certainly centuries if not impossibly off. However, there are people that do "strange things" such as a man who had a bet to get breast implants for one year and then get $100k or so. The man liked the breasts, and kept them. He even has a young daughter. So indeed, the issue of having people walking around with both a ***** and ****** through more advanced techniques is another point of which I see as probably the "crash" in terms of bridging sexuality.
It's scary with the possibilities with increased greater ease to do a procedure and having new social outcomes. At the very least having far cheaper and less evasive options are improvements to transgenders, especially over today's length of time and costs which may drive some far into debt. That's inhuman and wrong.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
No. You don't get to shirk this. You say "objective defintion of woman is 'adult human female'." If you cannot provide the objective definiton of "adult" "human" and "female" then you cannot say with any certainty that a transgender man-to-woman is not just a "woman." Because transgender man-to-woman could very well meet the requirements of "adult" "human" and "female." Quite easily, in fact. Especially since the part of it being "adult" contradicts your "must be born" sentiment.
Nobody is objecting to the definitions of adult, human, or female.
The point overall was that a transgender man-to-woman could qualify as just "woman" if you delve further into the definition's statues. Simply saying "Must be adult human female, they aren't so there." is insufficient.
Why?
Quote from ICM »
I happen to think it is because people treat other people like ****. Let's solve THAT.
ICM uses common sense and reason... it's not very effective!
"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
So in other news. She is going to get to compete and they are going to change the rules to avoid this problem in the future. Good on her,I hope she wins.
Ummm because... If a person wants to be recognized as a 'woman' by society, better hope they actually took the measures to do, including but not limited to post-op + hormone therapy + electrolysis and whatever else not is involved; see also: Jenna
People can't just "decide" one day that "Guess what! I'm a woman now." and waltz into the ladies room, manmeat in tow. If you can use the standing urinal...
"Society" as an overall thing doesn't see what genitals I've got. I could have a *****, a ******, or intersex genitalia for that matter and no one in a washroom but me would ever know. HRT and other measures, sure, those affect how I'm seen by random people on the proverbial street, but SRS does nothing there. There's absolutely no reason to fixate on it quite so heavily.
Well, not entirely true, says Wikipedia: "However, there are suggestions that certain neurological and cultural influences may lead to the expression of the human-animal transformation theme that defines the condition," and, "One important factor may be differences or changes in parts of the brain known to be involved in representing body shape (e.g., see proprioception and body image). A neuroimaging study[5] of two people diagnosed with clinical lycanthropy showed that these areas display unusual activation, suggesting that when people report their bodies are changing shape, they may be genuinely perceiving those feelings."
Not that it's actually relevant to the argument... and not that you have the authority to declare what's genetically impossible.
I wasn't saying it's impossible that there's anything neurological leading to their identity. I was saying it's impossible that, say, a human could be born a cis eagle, and thus a trans eagle is out of the realm of possibility.
I'm pretty sure we aren't.
Every time someone says "oh, your identity is like me thinking I'm an eagle" or "well, I identify as the almighty God/a truffle/something else like that," they're ridiculing my identity.
You are a male that identifies as a female. Technically you're a male, but many of us in society recognize the conflict between what you are and who you are and give you the benefit of the doubt, referring to you as a female, because there's not much else for us to do. Note that this doesn't make you a woman (an adult female).
Okay, so there's an implicit third gender category being created here, one that's not explicitly called a "third gender" but still one that's socially distinct from the binary system. That was the answer I was looking for.
What particular thing lycanthropes think they are is irrelevant; what's relevant is just that they identify as something which conventional physiology-based definitions say they aren't, just as trans women do.
This is why I draw comparisons to intersex conditions rather than stuff like clinical lycanthropy. Someone who's born with an intersex condition has legitimately conflicting human structures which challenge conventional physiology-based definitions. For instance, CAIS results in someone with XY chromosomes and testicular gonads, but develops along female phenotypical lines. The principle behind transsexuality is similar to intersex conditions, just along neurological and/or genetic lines.
Lycanthropy is, in short, psychological rather than neurological. But you have not yet explained why this difference is relevant, why a psychologically-based identity is less valid than a neurologically-based one. And to be honest I doubt that you really think it is relevant.
That kind of distinction is at the core of my position, so one would hope I'd see it as being relevant.
If tomorrow it were discovered that prior neurological studies on trans women were mistaken, that they had structurally male-normal brains, and that their condition were just as psychological as lycanthropy, I very much doubt that your position on trans identity would change. After all, you say that a woman is "someone with female gender identity", not "someone with feminized neurology". And I know that in the past you've accepted parallels to other forms of body dysmorphia which are to the best of our knowledge psychological in nature. In short, you tend to argue for the primacy of a person's self-identification regardless of its origin. So I think you need to reconsider making this psychological-neurological distinction.
If, hypothetically, science somehow determined that transsexuality was entirely psychological, then my position would pretty much have to change simply out of necessity. The core of it ("trans women are women" and related arguments) probably wouldn't change, but the reasoning behind it would have to evolve, since the "feminized genetics/neurology/etc results in female identity" thing is central to my gender-by-identity definition.
Like I said to you before, your arguments speak for themselves. People can (and have) read them and can judge for themselves who is right here. There's no need to continue rehashing and pointing out why your logic and reasoning is bad. I'm not trying to convince you (because you can't be convinced) but other people who are reading this discussion, so there's nothing to be gained by me wasting my time on you.
Given that my last major reply to you involved me pointing out genuine errors on your part, a sincere attempt to gain a better understanding of your position, and an honest admission of slipping up in one respect, I think the whole "arguments speak for themselves" thing doesn't paint quite as a bleak a picture for me as you think it does.
I just want to point out that I don't think he intended to pull an X-Men III: The Last Stand here. I doubt he was wanting all the mutants to line up for the cure - so to speak, but it is an interesting comparison. Would transpeople want the fix? I think just like in X3 - some would, and some wouldn't.
And then once the "cure" exists and people start getting it, pressure will be on every trans person to have it. Society isn't liable to have it both ways, i.e. having the "cure" to make you cis being acceptable and being trans being acceptable.
Teia, if you had been fixed to begin with, you wouldn't even know the difference, or how would you know?
I might not "know" the difference, but the unique entity that is myself would have been lost in favour of someone else with their own distinct identity.
If we figured out what caused the brain-body confusion, dysphoria, or whatever you want it to be called, should it be fixed?
I think so.
Many trans people would agree with you, and yet others would want a cure for their dysphoria in the here and now, not just before they're born. I'm not one of them. The only treatment I'm interested in is aligning my body with my identity. If, for instance, they discovered how to stem-cell me up a uterus and ovaries, I'd go for that in an instant. If they discovered a way to change my brain to make me a cis male, I'd treat it about as well as people treated the "cure" from X-Men.
The X-Men are actually a good comparison from multiple perspectives, in that they also make a big deal about mutants who pass as non-mutants versus mutants who don't. It's actually a lot similar to the politics within the trans community surrounding passing privilege and what all that affects. And also with how a "cure" taken willingly by some would be extended into one socially coerced/forced onto those who don't want it.
If we FIX the issue so that they are born with their mind, body, and gender lined up correctly (CIS) then they wouldn't be born and grow up having gender identity problems. They wouldn't need surgery, or hormones, or be treated differently, or be bullied, or be attacked with insults and even violence.
At the cost of painting us as something to be medically eradicated. As above, society would put incredible pressure on parents to get that kind of treatment for their kids, and being trans would be even more socially undesirable than it is now.
Also "cis" isn't an acronym or anything. No need for the all-caps.
Take Jenna for example. If we could have fixed her in the womb - should we fix Jenna to be born a cismale, or a cisfemale?
I am not sure what the EVENTUAL SOLUTION should be. For example, one solution is to make the broader legal and societal categories of FEMALE AND MALE more INCLUSIVE... Another solution is to keep expanding further down the pathway of what gay marriage has opened up... which is simply doing AWAY with societal and legal MALE-FEMALE categorizations:
For the record, I support broadening the social definitions of "male" and "female" and also increasing acceptance and legitimacy of nonbinary genders.
In society, where does the exclusionary nature of the FEMALE or MALE categorization system ever come up at all? ONLY in the realm of competitions with exclusionary rules? (sports and pageants?). In academics, do we really need a BOY MATH CHAMPION and A GIRL MATH CHAMPION?
Sometimes in a medical sense, sometimes in a legal sense, but things like "boys math champion" and "girls math champion" are just silly and excessive. Stuff like "boys are better at math than girls" is entirely driven by social conditioning, nothing more.
Are the "sanctity" of beauty pageants in their current form really so important to preserve?
It's not actually about preserving any kind of "sanctity," but about keeping one's privileged heel on the necks of an oppressed minority—no one loses anything except their sense of pride by allowing trans women into these events. Everything else is just rationalization for this.
Well as I said at the top of this post, I'm not even sure there should BE a "2 party system" from a legal standpoint.
I don't see much need for a legal distinction between genders. A social one will pretty much always exist, and that should be much more inclusive, but legally speaking a person should be a person regardless if they're male, female, intersex, or whatever else.
No kidding. People who only occasionally are "inconvenienced" by the 'trans controversy' seem to often act like their whole year was irrevocably ruined because they were "forced" to see a trans person in the bathroom or something.
Not even getting into how people act like it's so onerous to have to tolerate my presence. Yeah, I'm sorry my lifetime of unimaginably horrible dysphoria and the ridiculous personal and medical effort required to correct a problem I've had since birth is temporarily inconveniencing you by being in a washroom with you for like a minute. I'm sorry the fact that I don't always pass is causing you some mild discomfort, because it clearly doesn't cause me any more discomfort to live with than it causes you to see me briefly.
The worst part is the sheer number of people who'd expect that kind of apology except not dripping with sarcasm. I've gotten more or less every attitude in that paragraph before, although not all at any one time.
Just let the law worry about PROTECTING the ANY person from "GENDER BASED DISCRIMINATION".
Adding "gender identity and expression" to the list of protected classes along with sex, race, religion, etc seems to be the default go-to for this kind of thing.
Maybe beauty contests can be the same? If a person born a man "HAS THE ABILITY" to beat the people born women, then LET THAT PERSON PLAY!
Basically makes me wonder just how well Andrej Pejic (people who don't know who he is can Google him) would do in one of those contests. The man is, to put it mildly, very pretty.
I don't know - who we have SEX with maybe? That seems like a big one to me.
Amusingly, that's not actually a category of people for whom gender/sex are all that relevant to me, but outside of that I agree on principle. As I keep saying, stuff like what parts I have only matters to myself, my doctors, and my sexual partners.
But countless people DO care. That some people become enraged when they find out the male/female they just got jiggy with was not what they thought is a testament to that fact.
The way I see it is, in the case of a post-op trans woman, becoming enraged on learning of her trans status would be like going back in time and becoming enraged to learn that the woman you were just with has black ancestry. It's like... it's not really relevant in the here and now.
Embarrassed to "lose to a girl" is not the ONLY reason some boys refuse to play against girls.
The same is true for the converse issue.
Some reasons are religious, or based on upbringing.
Some reasons are rooted in a "this is our club" mentality.
I wouldn't consider "I don't want to lose to a girl" or "this is our club" to be justification for sexism. It's certainly not a justification for racism (imagine someone openly wanting their thing to be white-only because they "don't want to lose to a black person"), so I've a hard time imagining why sexism would get a pass here.
There is difference between recognizing the existence of defects within people, and calling the person defective/freaks/mutants etc.
This is why I prefer referring to my transsexuality as anything but a defect. It may be an accurate term when used in a clinically detached way, but the word just has too much baggage accompanying it. Calling it a "medical condition" doesn't have the same stigma but still gets the important points across.
That being said, even if we fixed the brain instead, a 15 week old fetus doesn't HAVE an Identity yet. Changing the brain of a 15 week old fetus to be wired correctly has NOT damaged or changed WHO that person IS. WHo they ARE hasn't even developed and doesn't really begin to develop until 2-3 years old.
To my understanding, gender identity is set by week 7 or 8 or so. A 15-week old fetus is hardcoded into what identity it's going to have later in life.
If we can fix the bodies in the womb to match the brain wiring - I think even Teia would agree we SHOULD do that.
Yes.
The Boy Scouts don't have to let girls in. The Girl Scouts don't have to let dboys in.
Funny you should choose that as an example, since the Girl Scouts actually do let trans girls in.
How about we define 'human female' as an individual who has the XX karyotype and who's cell nuclei contain barr bodies and 'human males' as an individual who has the XY karyotype and who's cell nuclei do not contain barr bodies.
Now for the purposes of applying these definitions to this particular discussion, how do transgender women fit into this definition? How about transgender males?
Now then can we please move on from quibbling over whether dictionary definitions are sufficient enough to define the labels 'female' and 'male' and actually discuss whether or not transsexuals are the sex they identify with or the sex they are born with or some of the other more meaningful discussions that this thread has evolved to?
We need to recognize when someone has a defect in order to treat it after all.
In fact, it's the person who suffers from the defect themself who often must recognize their own defect in order to seek treatment for it.
Jenna herself had to recognize that her body wasn't right with her mind. She then worked to fix it as best we can.
Actually the probelm you're not getting is that when it comes to identity, nobody should have to be classified as "defective", "not defective". the DEFAULT should be "COMPLETELY ACCEPTED CITIZEN.
If one falls outside the lines of FEMALE or MALE, a medical diagnosis should not make that person a "DEFECTIVE" anything, in the eyes of the LAW.
INCLUSION should be the default status of individuals.
A person's seeking of "treatment" for a "defect" is his OWN business. It should not be REQUIRED in order to maintain full status as a GENDERED HUMAN.
If the government wants to know "male or female or other?", you should be able to say "none of your ****ing business".
HUMANS should be GENDERED by DEFAULT, regardless of whether they are easily classified. Not being easily classified should not define a person as defective.
Boys have their own pageants, or do male models not exist? Boys have their own field hockey teams, or where those Duke boys faking it?
And you're missing the whole point that a person who does NOT fall into the classic MALE-FEMALE dichotomy is unable to compete in EITHER pageant.
Boys sports have been recognized as de-facto "OPEN leagues" whereas women's leagues have been identified as exclusionary leagues. A girl can challenge to be on the the boys' team, but not really vice versa.
What I hear you saying is this: "We shouldn't exclude people based on gender. We should exclude them based on how bad they suck."
The weak and unskilled are already being excluded through natural selection, and have been since the dawn of time. Or do you think physically weak pathetic kids get sports scholarships, or make pro?
[quote]Stabbing people who react negatively to the image of a disabled orcrippled person is the correct response yes, lucky indeed.
thanks for being "that guy"... the only one who couldnt just roll with the idea that "being openly put off by disabled people daring to be in public" is kind of disgusting and infuriating enough to warrant a toothless expression of violent impulse.
Well first, I'd say more like 18 of us (in this general debate area), not 30.
Um... (1) lurkers? (2) are you kidding me? that was worth correcting?
Second, if we were all stranded indefinitely on some island together, Don't you think we would want to know which people can have babies together?
And what does that have to do with Captain Morgan declaring that nobody should dance with Teia?
Well yes, we'd all fish, and cut wood, and look for food, and play cards, and get suntans together. But maybe, just maybe, going out on a limb here, guessing we don't have a modern invetro fertilization lab, we wouldn't ALL get to participate in the courtship dance for posterity.
We really aren't THAT far away from being able to fix genetic issues.
The kind we're talking about... YES WE ARE VERY FREAKING FAR AWAY.
I have NEVER seen a segregated spelling bee in my life. I won my 3rd grade spelling bee back in what, '86. I competed against girls and boys.
And I have. and it was just a random example of a contest where we clearly don't need two winners, one in each artificial competitive category.
I understand you want an open league. I just hope you realise that instead of being barred from the football based on gender, a woman under that system with just get excluded from the team because she was severly injured by a guy 80-90lbs. heavier hitting her while running his 5.8-40.
No. She would be excluded because she CAN'T COMPETE. Not because she'd actually join and die. She'd be judged by her ability to play the game in an "OPEN league", and if she can't play, she can't play.
I'm talking about "open league" as in "unlimited class" league.
The Boy Scouts don't have to let girls in. The Girl Scouts don't have to let dboys in.
I've not made any comments about either.
All I've discussed is a framework. And I've not even detailed what "protected from gender discrimination" would constitute. All I've done is break down a framework for looking at gender issues as a government, then as a society.
I might actually support this idea of yours with the
Skill Level 1, 2, 3, Open.
Sounds reasonable. I can actually get behind that idea.
You understand. So what was all that crap about open football league and girls getting plowed? You just trying to be argumentative?
If Brandon Jacobs or Ray Lewis got a sex change, I'd STILL say it is unfair and irresponsible to allow him to play against women.
Which is why I suggested that any "protected leagues" like skill level 1,2,3 are based on skill level classifications, NOT the gender they were born with.
Let's not let the desire for legal and social equality turn us blind to thousands of years worth of evolutionary engineering.
Who's being "blinded". I've made no such suggestions that Ray Lewis play football with Selena Gomez.
I've built up a broad framework for how sports divisions might work in a world where we want to continue to have an environment where girls can compete... while being as fair as possible. None of my suggestions have involved little girls playing with giant muscular guys. You keep bringing up those bad examples and objections which have nothing to do with what I suggested.
Girls are allowed by the rules to play in the NBA. No girls have the SKILL or the BODY to compete in the NBA at this time.
The reverse does not hold for the WNBA. The issue of how to have leagues that exclude classes of people (non-women) is one I'm trying to address here. My solutions aren't perfect, but the objections you bring up are bizarre and totally unrelated to what I've come up with.
That kind of distinction is at the core of my position, so one would hope I'd see it as being relevant.
No. ****ing. ****. Now give us a reason why that is consistent not only in itself but with what you've been arguing. Because we've pointed out your hypocrisies countless times and you never respond to them.
I'm objecting to the highly restrictive definition of "female" being tossed around as if it's some kind of immutable natural law.
You're arguing that a naturally born male that identifies as a female should be referred to as a woman. You've made distinctions between man to male and woman to female (social constructs). You are not arguing that the definition of female is restrictive, and it wasn't an error of diction on your part because you've been very diligent in making the distinction between male to man and female to woman.
Every time someone says "oh, your identity is like me thinking I'm an eagle" or "well, I identify as the almighty God/a truffle/something else like that," they're ridiculing my identity.
Let me make this clear: Nobody is ridiculing your identity, nobody is saying that you don't identify as a female. People are saying, however, that you identifying as a female doesn't make you one.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
How about we define 'human female' as an individual who has the XX karyotype and who's cell nuclei contain barr bodies and 'human males' as an individual who has the XY karyotype and who's cell nuclei do not contain barr bodies.
This is, as I've pointed out, inconsistent with current medical usage of the term, e.g. those with CAIS don't ever get assigned "male" by the medical establishment even when their condition becomes known. I don't care if intersex conditions are corner cases—there's no point ignoring the exceptions to a supposed rule.
Now then can we please move on from quibbling over whether dictionary definitions are sufficient enough to define the labels 'female' and 'male' and actually discuss whether or not transsexuals are the sex they identify with or the sex they are born with or some of the other more meaningful discussions that this thread has evolved to?
That's just it, though. If you say the definition of "female" is something that excludes trans women, then trans women can't be "female" according to that definition, and there's no actual discussion to be had. You can't have it both ways here: You can't say "female means XX, male means XY, no exceptions" then try to discuss whether or not trans women are "female" or "male."
No. ****ing. ****. Now give us a reason why that is consistent not only in itself but with what you've been arguing. Because we've pointed out your hypocrisies countless times and you never respond to them.
How is it either internally inconsistent or inconsistent with my other arguments? Aside from things like people thinking my definition is somehow inclusive of clinical lycanthropy and so on, the discussion of which is going at a snail's pace because I have to repeat myself many times before any step further along that discussion gets taken.
You're arguing that a naturally born male that identifies as a female should be referred to as a woman.
Only using your terms. What I'm arguing under my terms (in the context of replying to this single point) is that a trans woman (who thus has a female identity) should be treated as a woman and recognized as one under all circumstances, seeing that, you know, she's female on a level that, say, crossdressers aren't. Which is why trans women should be allowed into women's spaces and events when extremely feminine men (who might present according to a female gender role just as a trans woman does) should not.
Let me make this clear: Nobody is ridiculing your identity, nobody is saying that you don't identify as a female. People are saying, however, that you identifying as a female doesn't make you one.
Being told that my identity should be grouped in with people who think they're animals or whatever is most definitely ridiculing it. It's saying, "Oh, look, I think your identity's about as valid as this person who thinks he's a bird." Reducing it to the terms of identifying as something subhuman, in a nutshell, with the implications bleeding over that I'm somehow delusional or something. You might not think it's ridicule, but that's exactly what it is.
And stop saying "nobody is saying that you don't identify as female." I never once claimed that people are saying I don't identify as female.
Quote from dcartist »
thanks for being "that guy"... the only one who couldnt just roll with the idea that "being openly put off by disabled people daring to be in public" is kind of disgusting and infuriating enough to warrant a toothless expression of violent impulse.
I assure you, you're not alone in those kinds of feelings.
This is, as I've pointed out, inconsistent with current medical usage of the term, e.g. those with CAIS don't ever get assigned "male" by the medical establishment even when their condition becomes known. I don't care if intersex conditions are corner cases—there's no point ignoring the exceptions to a supposed rule.
So I guess you're telling real medical doctors that they're wrong for using phenotype among other traits to aid in actual sex determination for real human beings. Real tests involve more than looking at the chromosomes.
So I guess you're telling real medical doctors that they're wrong for using phenotype among other traits to aid in actual sex determination for real human beings. Real tests involve more than looking at the chromosomes.
Teia, once again you have shown why you have no idea what you're talking about at all. Maybe you should look up what Barr bodies are and you'll realize why you have no idea what you're talking about.
Once again, transsexuals & intersexuals are not interchangeable, we're talking about transsexuals, not intersexuals. - it's a strawman.
Secondly, you said that the definition I supplied was inconsistent with the medical usage of the term - what you didn't realize is that I was supplying you with the medical definition of a genetic female/male.
Wait, what? Barr bodies, from what I understand, are [extreme cliff note's version ahead] the active preceptors of the disused X gene in an XX genotypical pairing; while it's fascinating stuff I don't see what that has to do with non-genotypical medical sexual determination as it is essentially the basis of genetics in XX/XY-paired species (such as humans).
Wait, what? Barr bodies, from what I understand, are [extreme cliff note's version ahead] the active preceptors of the disused X gene in an XX genotypical pairing; while it's fascinating stuff I don't see what that has to do with non-genotypical medical sexual determination as it is essentially the basis of genetics in XX/XY-paired species (such as humans).
Good, now are they present in transgender females?
Good, now are they present in transgender females?
generally no, but they are present in some intersex males. So I fail to see how this is an acceptable distinction between male and female. Unless you want to tell all the 47 XXY men that they are actually women.
Edit:didn't see your last edit above. we are talking about categorizing humans into male or female. You have to account for everyone. If your definition fails for anyone, it isn't worth anything. Intersex conditions are just as relevant here as trans ones.
And the traits that therefore make up an adult, a human, and a female? Certainly you're not going to try to say that these are immutable as well.
Me too.
Guess I should just define every key word that's a part of the definitions of adult, human, and female, then define every key term of those key terms, then define the key terms of those key terms... not only am I not obliged to do this, it's a complete waste of time.
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
I said nothing about terms, I asked for traits.
Again, not important. The discussion isn't about what a human, adult, and female are, it's about transgender men/women being men/women.
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
No, he is saying that we can subjectively measure what a word means. For example we understand what the word 'dog' means - it is an objective word that describes a type of creature.
So we can look at things like a chihuahua, coyote, wolf, fox, and a hyena and measure those creatures against the word 'dog' to see if those creatures fit into what the label dog means.
Is there a creature I named in my list that doesn't fit what the word dog means?
What is infuriating is that you substitute using good logic and reasoning in replace it with fallacious reasoning and bad logic; by taking things out of context, creating strawmen, contradicting yourself, being a hypocrite, equivocating words, use arguments from authority, back peddling, using special pleading, and then when we point these things out to you - you don't learn from it and instead continue to do and use the same fallacious reasoning over and over again.
You don't even try to understand what is being said, you simply have done nothing but fabricate arguments and use fallacious reasoning. There's no point to arguing with you when you continue to do these things even after they have been pointed out to you and explained why.
Like I said to you before, your arguments speak for themselves. People can (and have) read them and can judge for themselves who is right here. There's no need to continue rehashing and pointing out why your logic and reasoning is bad. I'm not trying to convince you (because you can't be convinced) but other people who are reading this discussion, so there's nothing to be gained by me wasting my time on you.
I just want to point out that I don't think he intended to pull an X-Men III: The Last Stand here. I doubt he was wanting all the mutants to line up for the cure - so to speak, but it is an interesting comparison. Would transpeople want the fix? I think just like in X3 - some would, and some wouldn't.
Teia, if you had been fixed to begin with, you wouldn't even know the difference, or how would you know?
You wouldn't want them to "fix" who you are NOW, neither would I want to be changed from who I am NOW. But WHO WE ARE would be significantly different had we been changed in the first place.
If we figured out what caused the brain-body confusion, dysphoria, or whatever you want it to be called, should it be fixed?
I think so.
Please understand I would not force, I wouldn't even ASK people who have already been born trans to fix anything. That's up to them.
My thing would be fetus therapy. If we can go in at 10-15 weeks and test the baby for this issue (should it turn out to be a neurological-biological confusion) and fix the issue. I think everyone should be for it. If we FIX the issue so that they are born with their mind, body, and gender lined up correctly (CIS) then they wouldn't be born and grow up having gender identity problems. They wouldn't need surgery, or hormones, or be treated differently, or be bullied, or be attacked with insults and even violence.
They would be CIS, everyone would be CIS (well, except for the transpeople born in places where the medical infrastructure sucks, like a 3rd world country or something :()
That being said, then the issue is, which direction do we go?
If the above statement were true, would you argue that the correctional steps taken with the fetus be in favor of the neurology or the biology?
If we could fix a baby in the womb, do we fix their body, or do we fix their brain?
Take Jenna for example. If we could have fixed her in the womb - should we fix Jenna to be born a cismale, or a cisfemale?
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
What?
No. You don't get to shirk this. You say "objective defintion of woman is 'adult human female'." If you cannot provide the objective definiton of "adult" "human" and "female" then you cannot say with any certainty that a transgender man-to-woman is not just a "woman." Because transgender man-to-woman could very well meet the requirements of "adult" "human" and "female." Quite easily, in fact. Especially since the part of it being "adult" contradicts your "must be born" sentiment.
What significance do the definitions of "adult" or "human" have in this conversation? I can't see any.
Are you just trying to give him busy work here?
Adult matters to the relevance of "they are only a woman if they are born a woman."
Human clearly is irrelevant though.
The point overall was that a transgender man-to-woman could qualify as just "woman" if you delve further into the definition's statues. Simply saying "Must be adult human female, they aren't so there." is insufficient.
I agree with your dissatisfaction. We have FEMALE, MALE, and OTHER, with "OTHER" being a fairly ****ty category to be dumped into.
I am not sure what the EVENTUAL SOLUTION should be. For example, one solution is to make the broader legal and societal categories of FEMALE AND MALE more INCLUSIVE... Another solution is to keep expanding further down the pathway of what gay marriage has opened up... which is simply doing AWAY with societal and legal MALE-FEMALE categorizations:
The legal solution for the Gordian Knot of the exclusionary nature of male-female traiditional marriage... was to simply emphasize "adult person unions". They didn't go the route of saying "Male-female unions and female-female unions and male male unions"
If you think about it, from a LEGAL standpoint, we've already spent so much historical time trying to make MALE and FEMALE CATEGORIES "EQUAL in POWER"... how many legal DISTINCTIONS do we really need between MALE and FEMALE? The best route might be to FORGET the legal distinction between MALE and FEMALE ALTOGETHER. And just let the law worry about PROTECTING the any person from "GENDER BASED DISCRIMINATION".
In society, where does the exclusionary nature of the FEMALE or MALE categorization system ever come up at all? ONLY in the realm of competitions with exclusionary rules? (sports and pageants?). In academics, do we really need a BOY MATH CHAMPION and A GIRL MATH CHAMPION?
Only sports where GIRLS have such a huge biological athletic disadvantage can there be much justification for that. And even before the "TRANS controversy" came up, exclusion & division in sports based on gender was already demonstrating serious problems. Is it FAIR to have a WOMEN'S basketball league excluding males, but demanding an OPEN basketball league excluding nobody (with exclusion of women being the result of sheer inability to compete)?
Looking at Miss Universe and comparing it to MALE SPORTS that have excluded "non-males" from competing (and refusing to compete with girls. with the ultimate solution being "let her compete if she has teh ABILITY" )... one could almost argue that the optimal solution to Miss Universe pageant controversy is to allow any PERSON to compete if they "HAVE THE ABILITY". It's only prejudice and embarrassment on the part of women "being beaten by a trans" and the organizers of the competition not wanting to be perceived as "freak show" by allowing a "freak" to participate. Is it really that different from a wrestling league where the players don't want to be embarrassed by losing to a girl?
Are the "sanctity" of beauty pageants in their current form really so important to preserve?
I chose the noun "defect" as an "identity noun" deliberately there, to emphasize the ugliness of societal definition and judgment.
Well as I said at the top of this post, I'm not even sure there should BE a "2 party system" from a legal standpoint.
I think MALE/FEMALE for purposes of defining SPORTS or other GENDER SPECIFIC COMPETITION EXCLUSION might have to be defined along new lines with more practical reasons for "WHY can't a 'boy' compete in a beauty contest?" OR "WHY aren't 'boys' allowed to compete on the field hockey team? Because they're too strong? Well, what if the boy is weak? Or has congenital weakness?" Even without the "trans controversy, it may have to be rethought.
No kidding. People who only occasionally are "inconvenienced" by the 'trans controversy' seem to often act like their whole year was irrevocably ruined because they were "forced" to see a trans person in the bathroom or something. It reminds me of people who get pissed that disabled people appear in restaurants in their power chairs and ruin their appetite (yes, as a guy who volunteered at ventilator camp for 15 years, I saw this many, many times at restaurants. People who are actually wondering out loud why they have to be subject to looking at a quadriplegic guy in a wheelchair at the Macaroni Grill, since it put them off their food... they're lucky I didn't jam their steak knife in their eye socket, ****ing *******s).
I just look at the whole thing like...
if the 30 of us on this thread were on a desert island, and we were starting from scratch, woudl we REALLY tell one of our members, "Sorry, you are not a MALE and you're not a FEMALE by traditional societal roles, so why don't you sit out EVERYTHING that happens to involve those categories?
Wouldn't we just all PARTICIPATE and try not to be *******s to each other?
These kinds of theoretical questions are all just that, "theoretical". Such treatments are not currently technologically feasible in any way, shape or form. Its a "cheat". Its actually BYPASSING the question entirely. Because when you say you're going to alter the baby's brain, that's just saying you're going to make a different baby. One could just as easily speculate changing the baby's BODY entirely by genetic magic, without changing its identiy.
For some reason, this actually reminds me of Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and "What if we genetically altered the brains of cows so they'd WANT to be eaten?"
-
And really, this is the reason why in my original post, I emphasized finding a minimum morally acceptable FRAMEWORK for gender that is NOT by nature exclusionary.
I think after this post, I'm now more of the mind of feeling this:
(1) The last century has been spent trying to make MALE and FEMALE CATEGORIES "EQUAL"... Now that marriage between PERSONS is my legal standard, do we may not need ANY legal DISTINCTIONS between MALE and FEMALE? Just let the law worry about PROTECTING the ANY person from "GENDER BASED DISCRIMINATION".
(2) For SOCIETY, that leaves competitive sports and contests as the BIG OFFENDERS in exclusing males or females. Do we need a boy spelling bee champ AND a girl spelling bee champ? No. Make it merit based. In sports, the unlimited league (previously male) only excludes females by ability now. Male football is the "open league". So are all "male sports", right? Females are only excluded by an ABILITY TEST, not a gender test.
Maybe beauty contests can be the same? If a person born a man "HAS THE ABILITY" to beat the people born women, then LET THAT PERSON PLAY!
Which only leaves the issue of what kinds of "protected leagues based on INABILITY" should be allowed? HANDICAPPED SPORTS COMPETITION? 6'0" and UNDER BASKETBALL LEAGUES? Is it even right to have a GIRLS FIELD HOCKEY LEAGUE? Maybe an ENLIGHTENED society shouldn't have it? Maybe it should just have a "athletic ability level 1, 2, 3, plus an OPEN CATEGORY. And if you're "too good" at level 1, you move up to level 2?
Just spitballing here, but I really think we have to step back and rethink. Especially since we've legally made MALE and FEMALE equal, and male league is really now just the unlimited/open league (which hammers home the point that the "female league" is really a form of "protected JV", and doesn't have the strong justification to exclude a "trans" or a "t-fem" or a "Turner").
The name doctors should call it though should also NOT be dictated to them by social taboo.
We clasify everything ever. From Bosons to Hydrogen atoms to Apes, to Ants, to the sexes of Human Beings.
I see nothing wrong with clasification nouns. Maybe we change the noun to be inclusive, that's fine, but we still should have nouns.
Why is it so ****ty? Is it because the name doesn't fit, or is it more because people treat other people who are different like ****?
I happen to think it is because people treat other people like ****. Let's solve THAT.
We are getting there, sadly like molasses in winter.
Let me make it clear. I do not want to do away with gender nouns. Not completely. I think they are somewhat essential.
Equal under the law maybe. True equal is a grey area concept that may never be reached.
I don't know - who we have SEX with maybe? That seems like a big one to me.
We touched on this earlier.
Now true, that a person shouldn't need a NOUN labeled upon someone in order to be sexual attracted to another person. Heck, I don't. I'd have a sex sandwich with Ryan Gosling and Hugh Jackman anytime.
But countless people DO care. That some people become enraged when they find out the male/female they just got jiggy with was not what they thought is a testament to that fact.
Yes, yes, we are EQUAL but we are NOT
Embarrassed to "lose to a girl" is not the ONLY reason some boys refuse to play against girls.
The same is true for the converse issue.
Some reasons are religious, or based on upbringing.
Some reasons are rooted in a "this is our club" mentality.
I believe that there is nothing wrong with the establishment, and the perpetuation of "boys clubs" or even "girls clubs".
There is no reason why, as long as all people are equally protected under the law, that Men and Women cannot form their own private exclusive organizations.
FORCED inclusion is not any healthier than exclusion.
Just because I would say NO to that question, doesn't mean that people who want to privately run beauty pageants do not have the right to do so. Furthermore, as a PRIVATE organization, it is unconstitutional and downright intrusive upon liberty for the government to dictate their acceptance policies.
The KKK has a legal and constitutional RIGHT to exclude black sor jews or whoever they see fit, no matter how disgusting we think they are.
Likewise, a beauty pageant organization has a RIGHT to exclude certain sets of people. Women over 27, under 17, married with children, whatever. If that happens to include transwomen. That's their business.
Eh. Arguments from emotion don't really sway me.
There is difference between recognizing the existence of defects within people, and calling the person defective/freaks/mutants etc.
We need to recognize when someone has a defect in order to treat it after all.
In fact, it's the person who suffers from the defect themself who often must recognize their own defect in order to seek treatment for it.
Jenna herself had to recognize that her body wasn't right with her mind. She then worked to fix it as best we can.
Well, we are way past 2 party system here. Gays are not "OTHERS". They are "MALES" and "FEMALES". Yet we still have a long road to travel in order to grant them the equal rights they deserve as people.
Boys have their own pageants, or do male models not exist? Boys have their own field hockey teams, or where those Duke boys faking it?
Here's the thing.
What I hear you saying is this:
"We shouldn't exclude people based on gender. We should exclude them based on how bad they suck."
The weak and unskilled are already being excluded through natural selection, and have been since the dawn of time. Or do you think physically weak pathetic kids get sports scholarships, or make pro?
Eh. Nothing can spoil my appetite.
Stabbing people who react negatively to the image of a disabled or crippled person is the correct response yes, lucky indeed.
Well first, I'd say more like 18 of us (in this general debate area), not 30.
Second, if we were all stranded indefinitely on some island together,
Don't you think we would want to know which people can have babies together?
Zombie Apocolypse would have been a beter analogy I think.
Well yes, we'd all fish, and cut wood, and look for food, and play cards, and get suntans together. But maybe, just maybe, going out on a limb here, guessing we don't have a modern invetro fertilization lab, we wouldn't ALL get to participate in the courtship dance for posterity.
We really aren't THAT far away from being able to fix genetic issues.
Yes, I agree that fxing the BODY to match the BRAIN is the more preferrable choice.
That being said, even if we fixed the brain instead, a 15 week old fetus doesn't HAVE an Identity yet. Changing the brain of a 15 week old fetus to be wired correctly has NOT damaged or changed WHO that person IS. WHo they ARE hasn't even developed and doesn't really begin to develop until 2-3 years old.
I think you are wrong though.
I believe most if not ALL transpeople would have rather been BORN IN THE RIGHT BODY as opposed to being born in the wrong one.
If we can fix the bodies in the womb to match the brain wiring - I think even Teia would agree we SHOULD do that.
I'll repeat again, I would agree with you that fixing the body to match the brain would be the preferrable choice.
If we have genders AT ALL, and we do, then one is always going to exclude the other.
You already said you didn't like the "2 party system" - but that's what we would stil lhave, even IF we had a 4 party system, a 7 party system, or even a 1 party system. Someone somewhere at sometime is going to be excluded from the(a) party.
I agree.
Execpt I want to be clear that EQUALITY UNDER THE LAW=/=BIOLOGICAL EQUALITY
I have NEVER seen a segregated spelling bee in my life. I won my 3rd grade spelling bee back in what, '86. I competed against girls and boys.
I understand you want an open league. I just hope you realise that instead of being barred from the football based on gender, a woman under that system with just get excluded from the team because she was severly injured by a guy 80-90lbs. heavier hitting her while running his 5.8-40.
Absolutely! So long as it's a government run pageant where the government has control over the rules of the organization.
The government does NOT have the power to tell a private organization who it has to allow in.
The Boy Scouts don't have to let girls in. The Girl Scouts don't have to let dboys in.
And the government forcing them too, is overreaching and unconstitutional.
I might actually support this idea of yours with the
Skill Level 1, 2, 3, Open.
Sounds reasonable. I can actually get behind that idea.
If Brandon Jacobs or Ray Lewis got a sex change, I'd STILL say it is unfair and irresponsible to allow him to play against women.
Let's not let the desire for legal and social equality turn us blind to thousands of years worth of evolutionary engineering.
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
I wasn't talking about homosexuality at all, more towards the issue of trans in comparison to say dwarfism or being deaf. Of course some people would want to remain being a little person and people do choose to remain deaf and take part in deaf culture. The same with a person in the far flung future who is in your shoes. It doesn't hurt to have a young person sit down and decide whether they wish to go through correcting the issue through either fixing the mind or the body.
Let's be honest, the path is:
1. Not cheap
2. Complex medically, with time required to heal
3. Fraught with all sorts of psycho-social issues
And for woman to man in terms of building a ***** is more difficult than constructing a ******, so that's another issue that could use greater improvements in technology.
Now having a "pill" that can correct the issue at the neurological level, arguably isn't for everyone but it is for some. The economics can be cost prohibitive in certain areas of the world is something to tally. Even then with costs there's research into things such as artificial wombs that are designed for women with defective uteri, but advancing that technology to perhaps be used in a transgendered woman to give birth via caesarian is indeed another portion of what I mean by "opening up the sciences" and "hundreds of years off potentially."
Equally within the framework of said research, the ability to take man to woman or man to woman perfected to some ungodly level would probably be the only "true" way to achieve equality among the sexes. Which again is certainly centuries if not impossibly off. However, there are people that do "strange things" such as a man who had a bet to get breast implants for one year and then get $100k or so. The man liked the breasts, and kept them. He even has a young daughter. So indeed, the issue of having people walking around with both a ***** and ****** through more advanced techniques is another point of which I see as probably the "crash" in terms of bridging sexuality.
It's scary with the possibilities with increased greater ease to do a procedure and having new social outcomes. At the very least having far cheaper and less evasive options are improvements to transgenders, especially over today's length of time and costs which may drive some far into debt. That's inhuman and wrong.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Nobody is objecting to the definitions of adult, human, or female.
Why?
ICM uses common sense and reason... it's not very effective!
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
"Society" as an overall thing doesn't see what genitals I've got. I could have a *****, a ******, or intersex genitalia for that matter and no one in a washroom but me would ever know. HRT and other measures, sure, those affect how I'm seen by random people on the proverbial street, but SRS does nothing there. There's absolutely no reason to fixate on it quite so heavily.
I wasn't saying it's impossible that there's anything neurological leading to their identity. I was saying it's impossible that, say, a human could be born a cis eagle, and thus a trans eagle is out of the realm of possibility.
Every time someone says "oh, your identity is like me thinking I'm an eagle" or "well, I identify as the almighty God/a truffle/something else like that," they're ridiculing my identity.
Okay, so there's an implicit third gender category being created here, one that's not explicitly called a "third gender" but still one that's socially distinct from the binary system. That was the answer I was looking for.
This is why I draw comparisons to intersex conditions rather than stuff like clinical lycanthropy. Someone who's born with an intersex condition has legitimately conflicting human structures which challenge conventional physiology-based definitions. For instance, CAIS results in someone with XY chromosomes and testicular gonads, but develops along female phenotypical lines. The principle behind transsexuality is similar to intersex conditions, just along neurological and/or genetic lines.
That kind of distinction is at the core of my position, so one would hope I'd see it as being relevant.
If, hypothetically, science somehow determined that transsexuality was entirely psychological, then my position would pretty much have to change simply out of necessity. The core of it ("trans women are women" and related arguments) probably wouldn't change, but the reasoning behind it would have to evolve, since the "feminized genetics/neurology/etc results in female identity" thing is central to my gender-by-identity definition.
If the debate is whether or not to include a group in the category "women," then the definition of "women" is by necessity still on the table.
Given that my last major reply to you involved me pointing out genuine errors on your part, a sincere attempt to gain a better understanding of your position, and an honest admission of slipping up in one respect, I think the whole "arguments speak for themselves" thing doesn't paint quite as a bleak a picture for me as you think it does.
And then once the "cure" exists and people start getting it, pressure will be on every trans person to have it. Society isn't liable to have it both ways, i.e. having the "cure" to make you cis being acceptable and being trans being acceptable.
I might not "know" the difference, but the unique entity that is myself would have been lost in favour of someone else with their own distinct identity.
Many trans people would agree with you, and yet others would want a cure for their dysphoria in the here and now, not just before they're born. I'm not one of them. The only treatment I'm interested in is aligning my body with my identity. If, for instance, they discovered how to stem-cell me up a uterus and ovaries, I'd go for that in an instant. If they discovered a way to change my brain to make me a cis male, I'd treat it about as well as people treated the "cure" from X-Men.
The X-Men are actually a good comparison from multiple perspectives, in that they also make a big deal about mutants who pass as non-mutants versus mutants who don't. It's actually a lot similar to the politics within the trans community surrounding passing privilege and what all that affects. And also with how a "cure" taken willingly by some would be extended into one socially coerced/forced onto those who don't want it.
At the cost of painting us as something to be medically eradicated. As above, society would put incredible pressure on parents to get that kind of treatment for their kids, and being trans would be even more socially undesirable than it is now.
Also "cis" isn't an acronym or anything. No need for the all-caps.
Cis female if anything.
For the record, I support broadening the social definitions of "male" and "female" and also increasing acceptance and legitimacy of nonbinary genders.
Sometimes in a medical sense, sometimes in a legal sense, but things like "boys math champion" and "girls math champion" are just silly and excessive. Stuff like "boys are better at math than girls" is entirely driven by social conditioning, nothing more.
It's not actually about preserving any kind of "sanctity," but about keeping one's privileged heel on the necks of an oppressed minority—no one loses anything except their sense of pride by allowing trans women into these events. Everything else is just rationalization for this.
I don't see much need for a legal distinction between genders. A social one will pretty much always exist, and that should be much more inclusive, but legally speaking a person should be a person regardless if they're male, female, intersex, or whatever else.
Not even getting into how people act like it's so onerous to have to tolerate my presence. Yeah, I'm sorry my lifetime of unimaginably horrible dysphoria and the ridiculous personal and medical effort required to correct a problem I've had since birth is temporarily inconveniencing you by being in a washroom with you for like a minute. I'm sorry the fact that I don't always pass is causing you some mild discomfort, because it clearly doesn't cause me any more discomfort to live with than it causes you to see me briefly.
The worst part is the sheer number of people who'd expect that kind of apology except not dripping with sarcasm. I've gotten more or less every attitude in that paragraph before, although not all at any one time.
Adding "gender identity and expression" to the list of protected classes along with sex, race, religion, etc seems to be the default go-to for this kind of thing.
Basically makes me wonder just how well Andrej Pejic (people who don't know who he is can Google him) would do in one of those contests. The man is, to put it mildly, very pretty.
Amusingly, that's not actually a category of people for whom gender/sex are all that relevant to me, but outside of that I agree on principle. As I keep saying, stuff like what parts I have only matters to myself, my doctors, and my sexual partners.
The way I see it is, in the case of a post-op trans woman, becoming enraged on learning of her trans status would be like going back in time and becoming enraged to learn that the woman you were just with has black ancestry. It's like... it's not really relevant in the here and now.
I wouldn't consider "I don't want to lose to a girl" or "this is our club" to be justification for sexism. It's certainly not a justification for racism (imagine someone openly wanting their thing to be white-only because they "don't want to lose to a black person"), so I've a hard time imagining why sexism would get a pass here.
This is why I prefer referring to my transsexuality as anything but a defect. It may be an accurate term when used in a clinically detached way, but the word just has too much baggage accompanying it. Calling it a "medical condition" doesn't have the same stigma but still gets the important points across.
To my understanding, gender identity is set by week 7 or 8 or so. A 15-week old fetus is hardcoded into what identity it's going to have later in life.
Yes.
Funny you should choose that as an example, since the Girl Scouts actually do let trans girls in.
I'm objecting to the highly restrictive definition of "female" being tossed around as if it's some kind of immutable natural law.
How about we define 'human female' as an individual who has the XX karyotype and who's cell nuclei contain barr bodies and 'human males' as an individual who has the XY karyotype and who's cell nuclei do not contain barr bodies.
Now for the purposes of applying these definitions to this particular discussion, how do transgender women fit into this definition? How about transgender males?
Now then can we please move on from quibbling over whether dictionary definitions are sufficient enough to define the labels 'female' and 'male' and actually discuss whether or not transsexuals are the sex they identify with or the sex they are born with or some of the other more meaningful discussions that this thread has evolved to?
If one falls outside the lines of FEMALE or MALE, a medical diagnosis should not make that person a "DEFECTIVE" anything, in the eyes of the LAW.
INCLUSION should be the default status of individuals.
A person's seeking of "treatment" for a "defect" is his OWN business. It should not be REQUIRED in order to maintain full status as a GENDERED HUMAN.
If the government wants to know "male or female or other?", you should be able to say "none of your ****ing business".
HUMANS should be GENDERED by DEFAULT, regardless of whether they are easily classified. Not being easily classified should not define a person as defective.
And you're missing the whole point that a person who does NOT fall into the classic MALE-FEMALE dichotomy is unable to compete in EITHER pageant.
Boys sports have been recognized as de-facto "OPEN leagues" whereas women's leagues have been identified as exclusionary leagues. A girl can challenge to be on the the boys' team, but not really vice versa.
thanks for being "that guy"... the only one who couldnt just roll with the idea that "being openly put off by disabled people daring to be in public" is kind of disgusting and infuriating enough to warrant a toothless expression of violent impulse.
Um... (1) lurkers? (2) are you kidding me? that was worth correcting?
And what does that have to do with Captain Morgan declaring that nobody should dance with Teia?
The kind we're talking about... YES WE ARE VERY FREAKING FAR AWAY.
And I have. and it was just a random example of a contest where we clearly don't need two winners, one in each artificial competitive category.
No. She would be excluded because she CAN'T COMPETE. Not because she'd actually join and die. She'd be judged by her ability to play the game in an "OPEN league", and if she can't play, she can't play.
I'm talking about "open league" as in "unlimited class" league.
I've not made any comments about either.
All I've discussed is a framework. And I've not even detailed what "protected from gender discrimination" would constitute. All I've done is break down a framework for looking at gender issues as a government, then as a society.
You understand. So what was all that crap about open football league and girls getting plowed? You just trying to be argumentative?
Which is why I suggested that any "protected leagues" like skill level 1,2,3 are based on skill level classifications, NOT the gender they were born with.
Who's being "blinded". I've made no such suggestions that Ray Lewis play football with Selena Gomez.
I've built up a broad framework for how sports divisions might work in a world where we want to continue to have an environment where girls can compete... while being as fair as possible. None of my suggestions have involved little girls playing with giant muscular guys. You keep bringing up those bad examples and objections which have nothing to do with what I suggested.
Girls are allowed by the rules to play in the NBA. No girls have the SKILL or the BODY to compete in the NBA at this time.
The reverse does not hold for the WNBA. The issue of how to have leagues that exclude classes of people (non-women) is one I'm trying to address here. My solutions aren't perfect, but the objections you bring up are bizarre and totally unrelated to what I've come up with.
No. ****ing. ****. Now give us a reason why that is consistent not only in itself but with what you've been arguing. Because we've pointed out your hypocrisies countless times and you never respond to them.
You're arguing that a naturally born male that identifies as a female should be referred to as a woman. You've made distinctions between man to male and woman to female (social constructs). You are not arguing that the definition of female is restrictive, and it wasn't an error of diction on your part because you've been very diligent in making the distinction between male to man and female to woman.
Let me make this clear: Nobody is ridiculing your identity, nobody is saying that you don't identify as a female. People are saying, however, that you identifying as a female doesn't make you one.
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
This is, as I've pointed out, inconsistent with current medical usage of the term, e.g. those with CAIS don't ever get assigned "male" by the medical establishment even when their condition becomes known. I don't care if intersex conditions are corner cases—there's no point ignoring the exceptions to a supposed rule.
That's just it, though. If you say the definition of "female" is something that excludes trans women, then trans women can't be "female" according to that definition, and there's no actual discussion to be had. You can't have it both ways here: You can't say "female means XX, male means XY, no exceptions" then try to discuss whether or not trans women are "female" or "male."
How is it either internally inconsistent or inconsistent with my other arguments? Aside from things like people thinking my definition is somehow inclusive of clinical lycanthropy and so on, the discussion of which is going at a snail's pace because I have to repeat myself many times before any step further along that discussion gets taken.
Only using your terms. What I'm arguing under my terms (in the context of replying to this single point) is that a trans woman (who thus has a female identity) should be treated as a woman and recognized as one under all circumstances, seeing that, you know, she's female on a level that, say, crossdressers aren't. Which is why trans women should be allowed into women's spaces and events when extremely feminine men (who might present according to a female gender role just as a trans woman does) should not.
Being told that my identity should be grouped in with people who think they're animals or whatever is most definitely ridiculing it. It's saying, "Oh, look, I think your identity's about as valid as this person who thinks he's a bird." Reducing it to the terms of identifying as something subhuman, in a nutshell, with the implications bleeding over that I'm somehow delusional or something. You might not think it's ridicule, but that's exactly what it is.
And stop saying "nobody is saying that you don't identify as female." I never once claimed that people are saying I don't identify as female.
I assure you, you're not alone in those kinds of feelings.
FAIL & FAIL.
Teia, once again you have shown why you have no idea what you're talking about at all. Maybe you should look up what Barr bodies are and you'll realize why you have no idea what you're talking about.
Once again, transsexuals & intersexuals are not interchangeable, we're talking about transsexuals, not intersexuals. - it's a strawman.
Secondly, you said that the definition I supplied was inconsistent with the medical usage of the term - what you didn't realize is that I was supplying you with the medical definition of a genetic female/male.
Once again you have learned absolutely nothing.
Good, now are they present in transgender females?
generally no, but they are present in some intersex males. So I fail to see how this is an acceptable distinction between male and female. Unless you want to tell all the 47 XXY men that they are actually women.
Edit:didn't see your last edit above. we are talking about categorizing humans into male or female. You have to account for everyone. If your definition fails for anyone, it isn't worth anything. Intersex conditions are just as relevant here as trans ones.