Border Reiver
Active Member
You do not seem to understand the meaning of "construct".
Is this woman a transphobe?
- Thread starter co-op
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8ball
Decolonise colons!
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
So being trans is holding certain beliefs or having certain knowledge about yourself?
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
I really, really don't think this is a productive route to go down, but if you really want to go there, then I don't think the "gender-critical" side comes out looking particular great either:
Border Reiver
Active Member
I see you attempt to avoid rational debate.
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
fash alternative famously being a left-wing organisation and/or a university
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
And yes there’s (increasingly) lots of fash who are courting GC feminism - the Irish freedom party is very keen on this. Also lots of anti-medicine nutters.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
On the whole breakdown of what "being trans" means at every level - my best answer is... I don't know.
25 years ago there was a lot of discussion around gay people - are we talking about sexual "preference", which sounds voluntary, or are we talking about being "born this way", which removed a lot of angles of stigma but created some other problems etc. etc.
It's fine to not have a fully consistent model of what it means. We still have a lot of uncertainty about homosexuality but have come to accept it a lot better in the face of that.
I do wonder whether people would still be banging on about "gay genes" and that sort of stuff if Twitter had been around 30 years ago, though.
Border Reiver
Active Member
The claim that transwomen are not women suggests that it is moral to treat trans women negatively differently from the women. This equivalent to people who claim that people from other protected groups can also be negatively treated. The law on treatment of trans people is blind to biology. A trans woman has all the rights (almost) of a cis woman.
What about people being accused of being racist towards white people?
How does that work?
Yeah, but you've got Gromit backing you up.
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
A gromit-exclusionary position is still ok right?
mauvais
on reddit or something
Yeah? And what would the first bit be, in your scenario?
That's generally what people are referring to when they talk about sex being a spectrum.
A list of dramatis personae
MickiQ
In My Defence I was left Unsupervised
What do you define as a construct? I look down and I have a cock and a couple of balls, I was too young to remember but pretty sure I was born with them, I was present when all my children were born so I know my son was and my daughters weren't. I believe I have a son and three daughters however if you can given me a definition that makes me doubt that well I would be fascinated to read it as I am sure would they. Sorry kiddo you're really a boy my bad for being wrong all this time, Youngest would have been called Patrick if she had been a boy so I'm sure she would be thrilled if I call her that from now on.
Because one was using a male name and one was using a female name and the tosser at the other end was leaping to false conclusions based on a pre-conceived notion that women are less capable than men in doing certain jobs. This is an indefensible attitude but it is a dying one no matter how firmly some people might cling to it. How many men these days would say "Women Shouldn't Have the Vote" or "Married Women Shouldn't Work" and not get laughed at. "Women Aren't Good at Certain Jobs" is a view that is a bit more persistent but it's on its way out no matter what a few reprobates think.
My middle daughter decided she wanted to be a nurse when she was about 12 or 13 but when she applied to the School of Nursing, her boyfriend at the time (who up until then I had thought was OK) objected on the grounds that he didn't want to be with a girl better educated than him.
I was frankly fucking amazed than any young man could have that opinion in 2012 so I'm not debating that dumbass attitude still exists because it does but it is now a minority view and will be a dead one long before this century is half over.
As for my daughter's ex-boyfriend he got his wish anyway he wasn't with a better educated girl within about a week of spouting that crap.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
What about trans people who've had surgery?
Exactly. How people "read" you - the social, gendered stuff - determines how you get treated, even though it doesn't change your physical biology.
Border Reiver
Active Member
Absence or presence of a penis is a fact. Interpreting that as sign of biological sex is a construct.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
I wouldn't bet on that, I thought that would be true in my generation and it isn't. It's not just your daughter's ex being a jerk, it's his feeling that he is less of a man if he is not the main earner, that he is being feminised into an inferior role. To go round trumpeting this view makes you a jerk, but just to feel it and not know exactly why you feel it, or to not feel it consciously but just find that you "don't think my girlfriend should have a higher education level than me" and not even really know why you feel that - that is much more common, it's massively widespread still. And it's clearly rooted in a patriarchal idea that a man's (gender) role is to earn money, a woman's is to fit in with what the man needs. Men are supposed to flash the cash in the pub, women count the pennies. When is that going to change? When will most men feel happy letting women buy them a drink or pay for a meal etc? I think we've a long way to go.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
This all leads off into its own worm-hole about "passing" and "passing privilege" and then, indirectly to giving puberty blockers to pre-pubescent children who are gender non-conforming and being told the only explanation for that is they are trans, when they should be given options - including being gender non-conforming
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Turns out I was woke from the start!
MickiQ
In My Defence I was left Unsupervised
Then they are still male but if they want to be viewed as and treated as female then personally I'm cool with that. In fact most of the time even if they haven't had surgery it doesn't really matter does it? Names and gender pronouns are just labels and the idea of certain types of clothing being only for men/women is basically just daft.
0/10 Sorry but that's pathetic
Idaho
blah blah blah
I've never understood all that. If someone else is getting a round in our buying dinner, game on. Their money is always good.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
For what it's worth, I agree with this post 100%.
I'm not convinced that happens, it's my understanding that the general shift in acceptance of trans stuff has precisely opened up more space for kids to be given options, including being GNC. If people are really going around telling kids that they must be trans, are they telling them that they have to be "binary" trans people, or do they at least give them the option of maybe being non-binary?
Border Reiver
Active Member
I see you have no interest in using words correctly. Or learning new information. That makes debate rather pointless.
There is a difference between a fact and a construct. Your not understanding that will make it difficult for you to gain anything from further debate.
I will give you a specific example. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome results in babies bring born with no penis, and with a vaginal canal. They do not develop testes but have internal gonads. They usually do not develop male pattern hirsuteness.
Yet they have a Y chromosome.
Before we understood chromosomes they lived their lives as females.
Absence of a penis defined their sex at birth.
Border Reiver
Active Member
Why do you refer to it as a worm hole? What evidence do you have that such behaviour is not correct?
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Just as a note regarding biological sex, I'd be perfectly happy for there to be more classifications, socially speaking.
We already kind of think of "natal sex", "legal sex" (what it says on your passport etc.) and "lived sex", even though we don't use those terms necessarily.
Having studied biology, I'm mostly wary of messing with accepted non-judgmental classifications. When evolution comes into the picture, sex can appear like a bit of a puzzle at first - even with parthenogenetic females you are basically rendering a whole bunch of organisms unable to reproduce by themselves. In this sense I'm considering sex to relate to "those individuals you can exchange genetic material with in order to produce fertile offspring" (the infertile are of tangential relevance to evolution in this case) - and those are the ones considered a different sex to you (some organisms can have more than two sexes, and producing fertile offspring means copping off with any sex other than your own).
I don't agree with the weaponised usage of biological sex definitions, and I don't think any other definitions need be seen as "lesser". We know the history of how marriage came about but most of us don't view gay marriage as a lesser thing.
We already kind of think of "natal sex", "legal sex" (what it says on your passport etc.) and "lived sex", even though we don't use those terms necessarily.
Having studied biology, I'm mostly wary of messing with accepted non-judgmental classifications. When evolution comes into the picture, sex can appear like a bit of a puzzle at first - even with parthenogenetic females you are basically rendering a whole bunch of organisms unable to reproduce by themselves. In this sense I'm considering sex to relate to "those individuals you can exchange genetic material with in order to produce fertile offspring" (the infertile are of tangential relevance to evolution in this case) - and those are the ones considered a different sex to you (some organisms can have more than two sexes, and producing fertile offspring means copping off with any sex other than your own).
I don't agree with the weaponised usage of biological sex definitions, and I don't think any other definitions need be seen as "lesser". We know the history of how marriage came about but most of us don't view gay marriage as a lesser thing.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Not really. It might conceivably turn out to be wrong, but we're back to reproductive sex again (and no definition of biological sex can avoid reproduction). So if it turns out that the baby with a penis isn't actually developing to reproduce in the 'male' way, it may be that the interpretation of the presence of a penis was wrong, but generally speaking, 'having a penis' is quite a reliable indicator, and sadly if the interpretation is wrong, that's an indication of a developmental disorder.
This is where I do have an issue with some of the language that is coming in for these things - in this instance, 'assigned male/female at birth'. What exactly are we talking about there if not sex? But the word 'assign' has connotations of an active role on the part of the assigner, as if it could have been done differently. So later, you can say 'I was assigned male/female at birth, but I'm not really'. I think that misunderstands what is done at birth tbh, and in many instances, it goes as far as suggesting that it was the gender that was being assigned, or as co-op has been saying, that sex is the construct and gender the essential to being, so you can only guess at the essential bit at birth as it only comes out much later.
There is a great deal of muddle over the difference between sex and gender - increasingly so, it seems to me, as I regularly see the word 'gender' used now when what is actually meant is 'sex'. I suspect that people don't really like thinking so hard about it each time so just plump for a default choice, which used to be 'sex' and is now 'gender'. But I see people getting it wrong who really shouldn't be getting it wrong, including science writers. We're in danger here of replacing the old obnoxious, and mostly wrong, sex essentialism with an equally objectionable, and wrong, gender essentialism.
Pre-pubescent children are being denied the option to NOT have puberty blockers? Is that really true? Is this from the Abigail Shrier book?
This is why I don't think a lot of this has nothing to do with feminism. It's just fear mongering.
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