FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
2hr ago
Do you think it's bad that female people look at male people and correctly infer that they are male?
FtttG
3hr ago
Every time I see a section of a brick-and-mortar bookshop called "booktok" I cringe.
I've heard of video games that include a little notice at the start inviting the player to stream the game on Twitch, which strikes me as tacky in the same way.
FtttG
3hr ago
And it has an obvious limitation for the small subset of "active shooters" who are ideologically motivated (Brenton Tarrant, Omar Mateen, Anders Behring Breivik). As loathsome as these men were, at least they had an ethos.
FtttG
4hr ago
I agree, all of the terms used in this debate have far too many degrees of freedom. You'll see a headline like "there have been 100 mass shootings in the US this year!" and then you dig into their data and you find that they're including gang violence, or four morons messing around with guns and accidentally shooting each other non-fatally. Or a headline like "50 school shootings this year" will include a drive-by shooting in which no students or school employees were shot, but which incidentally happened to take place within a 250-yard radius of a school and so technically qualifies as a shooting "in or near a school".
The people writing these headlines know full well that, when they say "mass shooting", everyone thinks of Pulse nightclub or Stephen Paddock; they know that when they say "school shooting", everyone thinks of Columbine or Virginia Tech. We need a specific term of art for these kinds of events (in which a lone wolf nutter seeking personal infamy shoots up a location more or less indiscriminately) which excludes gang violence and accidental discharges. For awhile it seemed that "active shooter" was going to become the preferred term, although this one strikes me as even more vague than "mass shooting": anyone who is currently firing their gun could be accurately described as an "active shooter", regardless of whether they're Eric Harris or a gangbanger.
FtttG
4hr ago
If I were to claim that I was entitled to know any other aspect of your medical chart, on the grounds that it is statistically correlated with propensity to commit assault, most everyone would agree that I was out of line.
Hard disagree. Adults applying for roles in which they are responsible for safeguarding children will often undergo vetting regarding aspects of their medical history which might make them improper candidates, such as submitting to drug tests. I don't think the claim that a person who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia or psychosis is an improper choice of guardian would strike "most everyone" as unfair.
However, this does not mean that one is entitled to know whether their deductions are correct, nor that they ought to be brought up in polite company.
Just so we're clear: the overwhelming majority of humans on this planet have zero problem, none, with people correctly pointing out that they are an individual of [sex], and that this trait of theirs has predictive power in an array of different domains. Maybe you'll say that these people are brainwashed by false consciousness and that in the post-gender utopia they'd realise how strange and inconsistent this was, but it's simply a statement of fact that most people really do not have any problem with this. Demanding that we change our entire society from the ground up, the inferences we are permitted to draw about each other, how we communicate with one another, how we refer to third parties in their absence – all to appease a tiny minority of extremely strange, emotionally stunted people, who are driven to tears and death threats by banal statements of fact like "as a male person, you are stronger than most female people". I'll reiterate: this set of policy demands would be totalitarian if it wasn't so farcical.
The statistical correlations between biological sex and violent crime are claimed by many with whom you are probably familiar to have parallels with race.
A specious analogy, as I've argued before. The difference between black people and white people is quantitative only: black people commit assault and murder more often than white people, but white people still commit assault and murder. The difference between male people and female people is both quantitative and qualitative: the proportion of female people who can forcibly penetrate people with their reproductive organs is 0. The proportion of female people who can forcibly impregnate people is 0:
if the average Untouchable could physically overpower and forcibly impregnate 99% of Brahmins against their will, while no Untouchable ever had to fear becoming impregnated and no Brahmin can impregnate someone else, I think segregating Untouchables and Brahmins in certain contexts would be perfectly reasonable.)
Moving on:
If people act on their knowledge of those statistics, innocent people of certain races are subjected to lifelong humiliation and ill-use
Is your claim that male people are currently being subjected to "lifelong humiliation" because female strangers correctly deduce that they are male (the demographic responsible for a vastly disproportionate share of rapes and sexual assaults), and treat them with the appropriate level of wariness? I still just can't fucking get over this: you find it so humiliating when a woman crosses the road to put some distance between you and herself, that female people collectively should voluntarily put themselves in harm's way, exposing themselves to greater risk of rape and sexual assault than they already do, specifically to spare you that minor indignity?
This is a positively sociopathic level of disregard for women's safety and well-being. I'm not exaggerating or being the least bit facetious: this is such a selfish, self-absorbed worldview that it sounds like something a serial killer would write. You legitimately think that "innocent men being subjected to lifelong humiliation" is a more pressing societal issue than women being raped. It reads like a parody of sophomoric MRA bullshit.
I am only asking that, when it comes to interactions with actual people, you not treat their genitals as relevant by default, and not bring up the matter any more than you would any other medical condition.
Well, your request is ridiculous, and I'm not going to. The only people capable of forcibly penetrating other people are male people. Male people have vastly higher sex drives than female people. Male people are vastly stronger than female people. Male people are vastly more prone to aggression and sexual violence than female people. All of these facts are true, and they do not stop being true just because the male person in question purports to "identify as" a woman. A person's sex (not their "genitals", as you insist on referring to them: never miss an opportunity to imply that your interlocutor is a deranged pervert) is one of the most useful traits one can know about a person and to make predictions about their behaviour, beliefs and worldview, and to say otherwise essentially amounts to mind-body dualism. I don't care if that makes some creepy men in dresses sad: it's true.
FtttG
5hr ago
I will concede that, in that case, they are justified in dividing by currently possessed genitals, i. e. the ones with which they are presented, and for this purpose, a trans-woman remains a man unless or until she has that part of her anatomy altered.
FtttG
5hr ago
Dude, this is pathetic. It's not oppression that women look at you and know that you have a penis.
Is there no historical act of oppression that trans activists won't attempt to appropriate as their own? Have you no shame?
But in any case, this doesn’t mesh with the GC worldview. Either the average person is very trans friendly, or trans people can pass and be perceived as the opposite sex.
I've never disputed the existence of androgynous people, and nor has any gender-critical person I've met. Even people who aren't trans sometimes get mistaken for being members of the opposite sex (i.e. butch lesbians). I'm just saying that such people are the exception rather than the rule, and that most people are very obviously of one sex or the other. I would imagine that if I spent a lot of time in trans spaces, I would far more frequently see people complain about being "misgendered" or "clocked" or failing to pass than I would see the opposite (people celebrating how successfully they pass).
FtttG
7hr ago
My experience is that the average person is absolutely not a sommelier when it comes to differentiating cis from even moderately passing trans people. If you look enough like a woman, you’ll get called ma’am by service workers
I appreciate your perspective, but I will point out (probably not for the first time to you personally) that there is a difference between a service worker mistaking you for a female person, and making an educated guess based on your appearance that you are attempting to present as female, and going along with it so as to avoid causing you offence.
FtttG
9hr ago
FtttG
19hr ago
And when the pro-trans faction were like, 'But this isn't right!', and sought to change it, the anti-trans faction objected
Yes. We didn't agree that "it isn't right" for people to know the sexes of people in their vicinity.
FtttG
19hr ago
Well, the fact that you have to resort to such contrived hypotheticals sort of illustrates our point, I think.
Any purpose that does not involve anyone interacting with said penes.
Well, that's just sort of stupid, isn't it? Male people have an insurmountable advantage in strength and speed over female people, and this advantage doesn't disappear even if the male people in question have "medically transitioned". Ergo, any definition of "woman" which includes people with penises will make it impossible for female people to have a fair shot at winning sporting competitions. This is true even though none of the people involved will ever interact with any of the penes involved at any point.
I know they're the same word, but the concept of "sex" has meaning and predictive power beyond the narrow domain of "sexual intercourse" and "sexual gratification".
Sometimes reality has multiple sets of joints, and at which ones we choose to cleave reality can be a function of our goals
True. And I think the goals of the trans activist movement are incoherent, quixotic and disturbing. You'll note that, unlike the various definitions for "woman" proposed by trans activists, both the current definition and the older definition of "fish" were coherent, self-consistent and non-circular. I have a hard time believing that any circular definition can possibly cleave reality at any of its claimed joints.
So you would consider someone with XY chromosomes, who, due to some hormonal-response factor, developed ovaries instead of testicles, to be female?
Does such a person exist in reality, or is this a hypothetical?
The anti-trans faction, believing themselves entitled to know, and act on the knowledge of, the genital/gonadal configurations of strangers
I am so, so fucking sick of trans activists suggesting that gender-critical people are perverts because they want to know what sex people are, by framing this desire in the most maximally uncharitable way. I've said before that the reason they frame the desire this way because they themselves are so pornsick that they can't conceive of wanting to know a stranger's sex for any reason other than sexual gratification. And, well, my opinion hasn't changed.
So let me try, once again, to explain why it's perfectly reasonable and understandable (and not in any way indicative of sexual depravity) for people to want to know the sexes of the people in their vicinity.
Female people face a disproportionate risk of rape and sexual assault, and most rapes and sexual assaults of female people are committed by male people. Male people also commit a disproportionate amount of violent acts in general, not just sexual ones. Owing to their smaller size and reduced strength & speed compared to male people, female people are particularly vulnerable to assault, including rape and sexual assault: that is, if a male person attacks a female person, then 9 times out of 10 he will succeed in overpowering her. Ergo, if a female person is walking down a darkened lane alone at night and notices someone walking behind her, it matters to her a great deal whether that person is male or female. If that person is male, the female person instantly knows that he is vastly more likely to assault her than if that person is female; and that if he assaults her, he stands a very good chance of overpowering her compared to if the person is female. Thus, knowing whether a stranger is male or female plays a vital role in a female person carrying out a risk assessment. If she's walking down a darkened lane at night and notices a female person walking behind her, she'll probably keep walking; if she notices a male person walking behind her, she might try to duck into a bar or a restaurant rather than risk being attacked.
"Propensity to commit assault and sexual assault" is predicted by sex, not by the unobservable, unfalsifiable "trait" called gender identity. Trans-identified males who have medically transitioned commit violent crimes (including violent sex crimes) at 18 times the rate of female people, which is functionally indistinguishable from the rate at which non-trans-identified males commit violent crimes. In other words, if a female person is walking down a darkened lane at night and notices a male person walking behind her, the fact that said male person purports to "identify as" a woman doesn't change the risk calculus at all. It's a completely irrelevant statement, like whether or not he likes strawberries or enjoys the films of Jean-Luc Godard.
Likewise, physical strength and speed track sex, not gender identity. A male person does not magically become less strong and fast (less capable of overpowering a female person, should he choose to) simply because he purports to "identify as" a woman.
To a lesser extent, all of the above is true of why male people might want to know the sexes of people in their vicinity. When a male person gets assaulted, it's usually by another male person, and male people (being stronger) pose a vastly higher threat than female people. Thus, if a male person wants to avoid getting seriously assaulted, knowing the sexes of the people in his immediate vicinity is of paramount importance: male people are vastly more likely to commit assault than female people, and vastly more likely to cause serious injury should they choose to. If you're a male person walking through the streets and a drunk female person starts mouthing off at you, unless she has a broken bottle in her hand then she's at worst an annoyance. But if a drunk male person starts mouthing off at you, then you may want to beat a hasty retreat, as there's a very good chance he's capable of killing you with his bare hands should he choose to.
As a final point, this really has nothing to do with "genitals". "Sex" really just refers to the reproductive organs a person was born with, not the reproductive organs they currently have. As previously established, even emasculated males are vastly more prone to committing violent crimes than female people.
avoid anyone asking why they are concerned with other people's anatomy.
Well, I just told you why they're so concerned. I've been moving in gender-critical circles for years, and most of these activists are not the least bit shy about explaining why they want to know the sexes of the people in their vicinity, especially in intimate quarters. You're acting like there's some ulterior motive they're refusing to disclose, but that's just – a lie, I guess?
the biological differences would be as private as any other medical history, HIPAA avant la lettre.
I mean, if this is the state of affairs you want to bring about, I can't stop you. But politics is the art of the possible, and what you're demanding would make King Canute roll his eyes. While sex is ultimately determined by whether you were born with the organs associated with the production of small or large gametes, contra your dark insinuation, getting a close look at these organs is rarely necessary in order to identify a particular person as male or female, and we have a range of near-instinctive heuristics to do the job for us (height, wingspan, facial features etc.). From as young as 3-6 months old, babies can already distinguish male faces from female, before they even know what genitals are. Like it or not, virtually everyone can accurately "clock" an individual's sex within seconds of meeting them, even if that person has spent a small fortune doing everything in their power to try to pass themselves off as a member of the opposite sex (as freely admitted by innumerable trans people). Certain parts of one's medical history can (and should) remain private: if you've been diagnosed with HIV, if you suffer from diabetes, if you have a prosthetic leg etc. Other parts of your medical history simply cannot remain private: if you suffer from obesity or require the use of a wheelchair, everyone you pass on the street knows about it, sorry. No prizes for guessing which category "sex" falls into. This isn't even me passing comment on whether it would be desirable if our sexes were known to ourselves and no one else: I'm just pointing out that, with very few exceptions, most people can reliably infer most people's sexes at a glance.
(I can envision one hypothetical state of affairs in which an individual's sex really was a private matter: if everyone, male and female, was required to wear burqas in public, platform shoes to normalise their height, shoulder pads to normalise their perceived wingspan, chest binders to flatten their chests if necessary, and vocal processors to disguise the pitch of their voices. Boy, it didn't take us long to end up in the trans version of the "Harrison Bergeron" universe, did it?)
It's really tiresome that you're insisting that gender-critical people are disgusting perverts simply for accurately inferring a trait about someone that pre-verbal babies reliably can before they've even achieved object permanence. Or are you suggesting that 6-month-old babies are also creepy sex pests because they can tell male and female people apart? Goddamn, this whole "every accusation is a confession" concept is really paying down dividends.
I also just want to come back to the first part of your comment I quoted:
The anti-trans faction, believing themselves entitled to know, and act on the knowledge of, the genital/gonadal configurations of strangers
I will reiterate: babies as young as three months old can reliably tell the difference between male and female faces. This is not some subtle difference that gender-critical people have carefully honed their ability to detect, like a sommelier who can estimate the alcohol percentage of a glass of wine by sight. This is a skill learned from such a young age that it might as well be instinctive. Whether people are "entitled" to know (and act on the knowledge of) the sex of people in their vicinity is beside the point: they do know, at an unconscious, pre-verbal level, and they can no more train themselves out of it than they can train themselves not to experience vertigo atop a tall building.
What you essentially seem to be demanding is that people not use a valuable, evolutionarily advantageous skill that they learned before they could talk; that they pretend not to notice the accurate information this skill is bestowing upon them; that they consciously refuse to make use of this accurate information in their decision making, even if doing so would be in their own best interests. And why should they do this?
Because it makes a bunch of autogynephiles sad when they don't. Because this group of totalitarian, controlling narcissists cannot tolerate the slightest suggestion that anyone, even a complete stranger, is failing to "validate" them and their "identity" 100% of the time, even unconsciously. You are not only demanding that cisgender people yasslight trans people, but also that they gaslight themselves. "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
I'm actually sort of astonished that someone could openly promote such a nakedly psychologically abusive worldview without once stopping to ask themselves "are we the baddies?"
FtttG
21hr ago
If your point is that "a bunch of people got shot but only one person was killed" does not reflect how the term "mass shooting" is used in common parlance, then I agree with you. Is that what you're driving at?
FtttG
22hr ago
I mean, I don't think even the TERFiest TERFs really have any objection to 16-year-olds undergoing laser hair removal, even if it's nominally under the auspices of "gender-affirming care".
FtttG
22hr ago
I still don't understand your point. The number of people killed doesn't make a meaningful difference to what does and doesn't count as a mass shooting? If a lot of people aren't killed, in what sense is it a mass shooting?
Compare "mass casualty event".
FtttG
23hr ago
a lot of trans-skeptical people have been pointed to this lawsuit as the first pebble in an avalanche.
To my eyes, far bigger than this case itself was the announcement that came a few days later, when the American Society of Plastic Surgeons recommended against carrying out gender-affirming procedures on people under the age of 19.
With the exception of hormone therapy which falls under the domain of endocrinology, almost everything we call "gender-affirming care" falls under plastic surgery. When the body in charge of that discipline is recommending against gender-affirming care for minors, that does indeed suggest we've hit an inflection point. And it's not just the US, with the UK and several Scandinavian countries also hitting pause on this prolonged experiment.
Another possible response might be "With what purpose do you inquire?".
I have a hard time envisioning a helpful "purpose" for which the answer to the question "what is a woman?" includes people with penises.
It's been awhile since I read the Sequences, but my recollection is that Big Yud put a lot of stock in the idea of definitions that "cleave reality at the joints". Like Zack Davis, I think he ought to take his own advice: I'm baffled as to how he (or anyone else for that matter) could think that the definition "a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman" is one that cleaves reality at the joints, as opposed to "a woman is an adult female human".
And what is a 'female'?
An entity born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes.
FtttG
1d ago
That principle is downstream of a more general left-wing ethos, that it is unjust for people to be limited by the circumstances of their birth
But with rare exceptions, just about every trans person is quick to claim that they didn't choose to be trans, that they knew from a very young age that they were "really" a girl, that it's not their fault they were born a girl trapped inside a boy's body. Taken at face value, this implies that their (our?) gender identity is just as innate as their sex. Why is it unjust to limit someone on the basis of one trait they have no control over (their sex) but not another trait they have no control over (their gender identity)?
Bad analogy. The question "is a hotdog a sandwich?" is a query about whether an edge case falls inside a category. In the sex/gender debate, equivalent questions might include "is an emasculated male with breast implants a woman?" or "is a person with androgen insensitivity syndrome a woman?"
It's also a bad analogy because nothing actually hinges on the question of whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich. Quite a lot does hinge on the question "what is a woman?"
The third reason it's a bad analogy is because "is a hotdog a sandwich?" is a question which inspires disagreement, but which no one feels the least bit of discomfort about answering, and will be happy to present arguments for or against ("it's a piece of meat surrounded by bread, so it's a sandwich!" "but it's only one piece of bread, while a sandwich has two pieces!"). By contrast, among progressives the stock response to the question "what is a woman?" is a sputtering refusal to answer, usually attempting to dodge it by changing the subject ("I'm not a biologist", "I take care of people with many different identities"). This is not because it's a complicated question, but because progressives know that one answer ("an adult human female") will anger woke people, while the other answer ("anyone who identifies as one") will make them look like a lunatic to people with common sense.
But why? Is it unreasonable for a woman to request a female gynecologist?
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