Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
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Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
1hr ago
it's still as applicable now as it was then.
I agree with you on that point.
It wasn't applicable then, and it isn't applicable now.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
1hr ago
I don't know what this is supposed to mean.
The planes that came back with bullet holes in certain places correspond to trans individuals whom you can tell are trans. The planes that were hit in other places and didn't come back correspond to the trans individuals who, if you aren't told that they are trans, you never suspect that they are anything other than cis.
Some concrete examples or citations would be appreciated.
Mansour, M., Fattal, A., Ouerdane, Y. et al. A 35-year-old father with persistent Mullerian duct syndrome and seminoma of the right undescended testis: a rare case report. surg case rep 7, 271 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40792-021-01354-w
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
1hr ago
I am curious how you arrived at the conclusion that sex-segregation is the best way to protect female inmates from harm amounts to "treating people as things".
It's more the conclusion that protecting the identity!female natal-gonads!male inmates is too expensive to bother with.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
1hr ago
That just means the best data you have to support the existence of gender identity roughly rivals the data we have to support astral projection. It's not skin off my nose if you want to believe in it, but if you're demanding a sweeping reform of society, I think you need to back your demands with something better.
If society were built to tell anyone who believed themself capable of astral projection, constantly, day-in, day-out, "You aren't really capable of astral projection, that isn't a thing, you are Delusional and Wrong.", and never let the matter rest, I think that that would justify 'demanding a sweeping reform of society'.
If you, as a result of some preternatural phenomenon, woke up to-morrow in a body of the opposite biological sex, how motivated would you be to reverse the change?
I just meant that he'd be allowed to take advantage of any benefits stemming from "identifying as a woman".
Precisely what benefits are those, and why ought we not extend them to identity!men?
what exactly has Mr. Mustache Twirling Villain done wrong in the exact same situation?
That depends on whether he is harming anyone with the latitude given him.
Either he is, in which case recognising the wrongness of his actions does not depend on a rejection of his claimed gender identity, or he isn't, in which case he hasn't done anything wrong.
Telling someone they're supposed to use the other bathroom is not harassment.
I was referring to the oft-invoked spectre of 'cis-man claims to be trans-woman, goes into women's toilet, does Harvey Weinstein impression', which is equally bad if the perpetrator is a cis-woman.
I don't recall phrasing "free rein" in terms of harm. I just meant there'd be no barriers to entering into women's spaces.
And? If they aren't harming anyone....
If it's a compromise then it's not a definition.
It's not a definition.
There are multiple pairs of categories into which human beings can be divided
These categories are strongly correlated, such that the members of one category will have a >90%/<10% distribution of any other pair; thus we refer to all the categories in column A as 'woman', and all those in column B as 'man'.
The pro-trans maximalist position is that the 'gender identity' category ought be used for all purposes, and none of the other categories should be acknowledged under any circumstance.
The anti-trans maximalist position is that the only categories that are relevant are those which do not change, and that any category which places trans individuals with their identified gender ought be ignored.
What I am offering as a compromise is "Default to using gender identity, use others if you have a Very Good Reason, 'we've always done it this way' doesn't count.".
how that they're having a terrible time when all of society is not forced to buy into their belief system.
...and yet demands that they buy into its beliefs.
Alice, and a mostly left-leaning coalition, believe that Alice is a woman. A mostly right-leaning coalition believes that Alice is a man.
I see no reason why it is more justified for the latter group to demand assent to their beliefs by the former than vice versa; 'it's always been this way' strikes me as a very flimsy premise, given how many times it has been used to support things which are now widely considered indefensible.
An honor system + resolving corner cases with government ID's with sex-based markers, sounds like more than enough to me.
That would last about five minutes before a woman with PCOS or endometriosis and a Maine or Minnesota driver license tries to take a leak at the same time as a TERF with an opinion and a mood disorder.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
1d ago
Why is that trans activists' attempts at "gotchas" always reside solely in the realm of the hypothetical?
Firstable, that question was not an attempt at a 'gotcha', so much as a request for clarification of your particular definition of 'sex'.
Secondable, it is not necessarily hypothetical; any chirurgeon will tell you that human organs never look like the diagrams in medical textbooks: there are always variations, and sometimes they can both be very weird and go unnoticed until the body is scanned or opened up for some other reason. I have even heard of men who were born with all the visible male parts, never considered that they were anything other than men, fathered children, and then went to hospital for some procedure and found out that they had been carrying around uteruses for seventy years!
Thirdable, I believe that the Rightful Caliph has written a defence of the use of hypotheticals in argument.
I continue to insist that asserting that one's sex ought to be kept "private" is a meaningless demand when, in 99% of cases, it can be reliably inferred at a glance.
א, cis individuals outnumber trans individuals by such a degree that, given a sample drawn from the population at large, one can get past 90% just with their gender identity.
given how many trans people will openly announce "I am a trans [woman]/[man]"
I am not claiming that biological sex be kept private at all times; I am saying that the choice should be left to the individual. If Alice wants to declare her transness to everyone, Betty wants to keep it a closely guarded secret, and Carol wants to tell her friends and the readers of her blog but not strangers in the shops when she wants to empty her bladder, their decisions should all be respected.
Returning to the analogy with other forms of medical confidentiality, if Daniel wants to post his entire medical history on his website for everyone and their brother to peruse, he is welcome to do so; other people are disallowed from making that decision for him.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
1d ago
If you continue to insist that my opposition to gender ideology is rooted in some kind of voyeuristic desire to know the genital configuration of everyone in my vicinity
I do not insist that your inquiry is voyeuristic in nature. My point is that, even though it is not born out of sexual perversion, it is still not any of your business.
I also acknowledge that you have stated that your concern is not with penis/vulva but with testicles/ovaries. (Does this mean that you would consider someone born with a penis and two viable-egg-producing ovaries to be female, and someone born with a vulva and two viable-sperm-producing testicules to be male? What about someone born with one testicule and one ovary, each producing viable gametes of its associated size?) I disagree with your claim that either of them is something which you are entitled to be told by someone who would prefer to keep to themself.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
1d ago
Someone who has a mental illness causing them to think they are Napoleon
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
1d ago
Well, that's not how any sensible person would define sex
It's how they define it when a baby is assigned male or female.
when I use the term "sex", I'm referring to whether a person was born with the organs associated with the production of large or small gametes, even if faulty.
To the best of my knowledge, when parents ask whether they had a boy or a girl, doctors and midwives do not generally take biopsies from the gonads of infants and culture them to see what size gametes they produce.
They usually look between the legs to see whether they find a sticky-outy bit or a hole.
medical technology currently admits of no way to transform organs which produce large gametes into organs which produce small gametes, or vice versa. If you were born with functioning testicles, the only kind of gamete you will ever be able to produce throughout your life is a small one
Skill issue.
Your continued insistence on trying to imply that, by virtue of being gender-critical, I'm therefore a sex pest obsessed with the genitals of complete strangers
I do not accuse you of acting out of carnal desire. However, the fact that you are not thus motivated does not change the fact that other people's organs are none of your business. The reproductive system is considered especially private in most societies, but you would still be out of line if you insisted that people use bathrooms corresponding to the configuration at birth of their heart or kidneys.
If someone wants access to your medical records, do you think they should need a Good Reason, or is the fact that they are not touching themself sufficient justification?
If some wants to know the PIN for your bank card, not out of an intention to use it for fraud, but because they think it relevant whether it is a prime/square/triangular number, does the fact that they are not technically a thief mean that they are justified in prying it out of you?
your contention that the configuration of the genitals belonging to [trans-women] are some kind of jealously guarded secret
I do not contend that all trans-women keep the state of their genitals secret, so much as that an individual trans-woman ought to have the right to decide for herself whether and when to disclose it.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
1d ago
So in your ideal world, where no compromise was required with people like me (or those uppity women who would prefer not to be raped during their prison sentences if it's all the same), how would inmates be housed?
One inmate per cell, all interactions between inmates supervised by guards sufficiently numerous to intervene in the event of violence of harassment having the potential thereof.
trans activists cannot dredge up even one example of a trans-identified male being murdered in a British prison in the last twenty-five years?
'Trans-woman murdered' isn't the only bad outcome we are trying to avoid; there is also 'trans-woman beaten up by low-life with extremely retrograde Views on gender roles as a warning to anyone else assigned-male-at-birth who might be thinking about getting in touch with their feminine side'.
I'll be more than happy to stop, if you'll stop implying that I'm a pervert for disagreeing with gender ideology. A simple trade.
I do not believe that you, personally, are motivated by sexual desire in your opposition to trans-inclusivity. That does not change the fact that other people's organs are none of your business, even when your interest in them is not sexually motivated. This is especially the case for the sexual organs, including the gamete-producing organs. If someone starts digging through your medical records willy-nilly, should the Data Protection Act only apply if they are touching themself?
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
1d ago
I was more referring to the tolerance for peaceful dissent.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
1d ago
But the people reporting it's existence aren't any better at defining or describing it than you are.
Well, they're closer to it, so they have a better view, and their statements are the best data I have.
Isn't that forbidding trans women from what we allow cis women to do, rather than forbidding cis women from what we allow trans women to do?
I reread your comment, and I apparently mis-interpreted it. I apologise for the error.
None of the drama is related to trans women being allowed to do what cis women aren't
Then whence the concern about a man claiming to be a trans-woman 'being given free rein', if he is not doing anything wrong with the acceptance given to him?
We don't, or at least shouldn't, tolerate cis-women harassing other cis-women in the restroom; thus, if trans-women aren't allowed to do anything cis-women aren't, then trans-women, or cis-men claiming to be such, are not being given 'free rein' to harm anyone.
And if you meant the former, didn't you just say you would exclude them from sports, prisons, etc.?
Those are circumstances under which I would compromise from the pro-trans maximalist position. That is not the same thing as endorsement of the anti-trans maximalist position.
Your original definition made no mention of hormone levels, nor did you say it's context dependent.
For most purposes, a woman is someone who either (a.) is of the gender identity found more commonly in people born with vulvas, or (b.) has no gender identity and has a vulva.
"For most purposes" means that some contexts might call for a different definition.
At this point your approach is just more complicated and confusing, while offering no benefits.
Other than being fairer to certain people who, to be honest, are having a terrible enough time of it already.
("Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?")
But trans activists want to keep the segregation
Then argue for the abolition of segregation entirely
Are there trans activists who have rejected offers of 'gender-neutral bathrooms for everybody, as long as the wash their hands'?
I, on the other hand, have literally never even heard of Karens demanding genital checks.
I don't know how else one would enforce the bathroom bills being proposed in the red states, given the overlap between, at a minimum, the most female-presenting quintile of trans-women and the least female-presenting quintile of cis-women.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
1d ago
I favour Granny Weatherwax's definition.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
2d ago
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market’s din
List the ominous stern whisper, from the Delphic cave within
They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.
"It's not a compromise with sin; we're just reducing expenses at the cost of throwing a rather small percentage of the population under the bus."
"Exactly what do you think a compromise with sin is?"
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
2d ago
I'm not advocating rape or anything but one must remember that men's facial bones are a lot sturdier than women's bones, and the same punch in the face has very different effects between the two.
Which is why I advise her to aim lower, and use the moments in which he is doubled over in pain to execute the Thirty-Sixth Stratagem.
Of course if you never told Alice that perhaps she should not be inebriated in the company of hulking gang members with face tattoos and multiple convictions for violent crimes, and you hold dear that whatever choices Alice make are reasonable ones that should never be looked at if she ever gets victimized, perhaps Bob is, shocker, prone to raping.
I would advise her not to be inebriated at all; however, if she chooses to disregard my advice, and is sexually assaulted, her decisions are not relevant to the questions of "How much effort ought we expend to prosecute the perpetrator?" and "What sentence ought the perpetrator, if convicted, receive?"
Indeed why aren't women just killing rapists left and right?
Because have the alternative of involving the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders, both of whom consider sexually-based offences especially heinous.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
2d ago
I wish we could just say "sex" rather than "natal sex": the sex you're born with is the sex you're stuck with.
If, as is my understanding, a distinction between 'sex' and 'gender' uses 'sex' to refer to biological factors and 'gender' to refer to mental and social factors, then biological sex is a combination of things, some of which we currently have the ability to change and some of which we do not.
If one defines 'sex' as "If I look between this person's legs (and don't get a face full of pepper spray), will I see a tallywhacker or a hoo-ha?", at least 5% and possibly as many as 13% of trans individuals (per statistics linked in a previous post by above) have changed sex from that with which they were born, and an unknown fraction more retain the sex with which they were born only due to lack of opportunity.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
2d ago
@Celestial-body-NOS, while sensible enough to recognise that putting male inmates in the women's estate is a bad idea
That is not an accurate representation of my views. A separate facility for trans-women was an offer of a compromise, and I do not appreciate the repeated assertions that agreement with the 'gender-critical' position, or whatever you call your side of the argument, is a prerequisite for being considered 'mature' or 'sensible'.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
2d ago
Do communist governments and institutions have a unique tendency to suppress dissent?
Russia and China had below-average tolerance for dissent before the Communists took power; thus 'persecute anyone who Notices that the sun doesn't shine out of our you-know-where' was seen as a more legitimate tool than it would be in the birthplaces of the Enlightenment.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
2d ago
a gang was sneaking drugs into a prison, and exchanging those drugs with addicts in return for votes for the governor
One benefit of an anonymous ballot is that the gang can never be sure that the voters are holding up their end of the bargain.
Admittedly, mail-in ballots do complicate this; perhaps it would be wise to consider alternate methods of accommodation for those citizens unable to attend polling places in their area of residence.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
3d ago
I tend to think kicking a controversial issue to the state level to let the voters decide is probably the better choice.
I've never understood how, if Alice in Austin is pregnant and does not want to be, Bob in Big Spring compelling her to remain pregnant is less of an imposition than Carol in Cambridge telling Bob to mind his own.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
3d ago
It’s in the nature of humans to form hierarchy and enforce their ideas of morality on society. It’s been that way for most of human history.
Which is why we must never rest on our laurels and assume that liberalism has decisively won. We must always be on the lookout for those who seek to turn this world into a penitentiary and themselves into warders. We must maintain CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
3d ago
Yes, he who dislikes mass immigration from foreign cultures into a continent that fails at assimilation mus surely be a hateful bigot who just wants others to suffer. Something something ideological Turing test.
Disliking immigration as a terminal value is a character flaw. Opposing it as an instrumental value, in pursuit of some other goal, leaves open the possibility of some other route to the same objective.
We Germans do not control the Rest Of The World.
I was more referring to the wealthier countries put together; the dismantlement of USAID was a bad move even from the perspective of forestalling long-term demographic change.
There is no lack of washing machines, dishwashers and vacuum cleaners in Germany. I do assure you that household appliance shortages are not the cause for our deplorable xenophobia.
That was just one example; there are many other dimensions of material circumstances that can shift attitudes.
"Education", said the soviet. "New Man", he said.
Something being tried and failing does not mean that it is impossible; otherwise, per Thomas Edison, I would be typing this by candlelight.
Yeah, I'm sure we'll social engineer our way out of this by telling so-called educators to push feminism even harder.
A pure redoubling of force on 'intersectional privilege patriarchy male-gaze blah blah blah buzzword buzzword buzzword' feminism is unlikely to be successful. An adjustment of methods, focusing on the sort of feminism that asserts that Women Are People In Their Own Right, Not The Property Of Their Husbands Or Fathers....
Great. The state of assimilation in Germany is such that urban youths without any immigrant background are converting to the more charismatic ways of our new countrymen. We are not making them advance out of their zero-sum mindset; they're convincing ours it's the better way.
And that is the problem we need to solve; less economic precarity would, I believe, at least contribute to the solution, if it weren't being blocked by manglement worried that a lack of desperation in the workforce might possibly create limits to the social dominance they can wield in the workplace.
Again, ideological turing Test. You won't believe it, but there are actual differences between having to live with different kinds of Germans and having to live with muslim arabs, subsaharan Africans and Afghans.
There was a time when the indigenous people of Europe were no better.
Look at any muslim country. Look at africa. Look, at the most optimistic, at Brazil. That is your future.
I hardly think that Brazil represents an absolute limit on the quality of life in a multi-ethnic society; and it is still much better than the last time ethnic supremacists were in charge.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
4d ago
This sounds like an argument for putting men at a high risk of being assaulted in a separate facility, not an argument for putting men who "discovered" they were trans yesterday in a separate facility.
The latter is a subset of the former.
Would men who "discovered" a trans identity even face an elevated risk of assault?
Given how many men object to the slightest hint of femininity in a natal-anatomy!man, I suspect that they would.
You are promoting the idea that violent criminals be afforded special privileges on the basis of unfalsifiable psychological states
No, I am promoting the idea that, when we choose to incarcerate certain persons, thus denying them the ability to either defend themselves or avoid attackers, we have assumed a corresponding duty to protect every single one of them from violent assault to the best of our abilities, and do not have the right to condemn a certain fraction of them to constant victimisation because protecting them is inconvenient.
You [...] seem utterly oblivious to how such a policy is ripe for abuse.
No, I understand that it is possible that a cis-man might falsely claim to be trans in order to be moved to the trans-women's section; I merely consider this a less bad outcome than abandoning actual trans-women to the ghastly fate to which your proposed policy would lead.
A policy of providing medical care to prisoners having medical emergencies has the potential to be abused, but an occasional criminal getting away with wasting the system's resources is a less bad outcome than leaving them to die on the floor when they actually need medical intervention.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
4d ago
· Edited 1d ago
It's a bit weird then to define "man" or "woman" by it. For all you know no such thing exists.
Other people's reported experiences point to it existing.
Yes, there is a possibility that they are all lying; there is also a possibility that everyone is lying about the existence of Finland.
I assign an extremely low probability (P < 0.001) to both.
None of the drama is related to trans women being allowed to do what cis women aren't
Other than using the toilet without being given the third degree regarding what ought to be no one else's business. EDIT: misread above
Mr Burly Lumberjack entering a women's boxing tournament
You stated that Mr B-L had not received, nor did they desire, hormone treatments. If (amount of testosterone in Mr B-L's bloodstream) ÷ (amount of estrogen in Mr B-L's bloodstream) yields a number greater than that observed in any cis woman, then Mr B-L may be categorised with men for the purposes of women's sports.
demanding a Brazilian wax
You stated that Mr B-L did not have surgery. If Ms Below-the-Waist Cosmetologist removes hair from vulvae, but not from scrota, she is justified in categorising Mr B-L with men for the purpose of genital waxing.
demanding to be put into a women's prison
Put him/her with other trans-women. He/she won't be able to get to cis-women, cis-men won't be able to get to him/her.
Even the toilet thing obviously causes discomfort, or else the issue wouldn't be so controversial.
That proves too much; letting Black people use the same water fountains as everyone else caused discomfort too.
Somehow we managed to achieve sex segregation all these years without resorting to that, so I don't see why we would need to start now.
We don't need to. If someone isn't harassing or assaulting other restroom-users, the rest of us can mind our own business.
I also haven't seen Karens demanding it.
Does that mean that it isn't happening? Because I haven't seen anyone pretending to be trans in order to prey on people in public restrooms.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
4d ago
That would just mean that if we have limited resources, we can't give people what they deserve.
That would be an absurd conclusion if one accepts the premise that What Is Natural Is Necessarily Just.
I do not accept that premise.
When we were struggling to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull, a child born with cystic fibrosis had little chance of seeing their fiftieth birthday. This was not an inherent, unalterable law of the universe; it was the result of our not yet having discovered the three ___caftors.
When the United Nations was founded, almost everyone contracted measles before they reached adulthood. This was not an inherent, unalterable law of the universe; it was the result of our not yet having developed the measles vaccine.
When the first airplane flew, infected wounds were often terminal conditions. This was not an inherent, unalterable law of the universe; it was the result of Mr Fleming not yet having invented antibiotics.
When the first telegraph cable was laid across the Atlantic, that events in Halifax could be known to Dubliners within the hour, anyone bitten by a rabid animal had no possibility of survival. This was not an inherent, unalterable law of the universe; it was the result of M. Pasteur not yet having developed the rabies vaccine.
Our inability for someone born with small-gamete-producing organs to produce large gametes is not an inherent, unalterable law of the universe; we just haven't figured out how. (Yet. Growth mindset!)
"For every problem the Lord has made, He has also made a solution." --Thomas Edison
And if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bang its arse on the ground.
You can't always tell what gamete-producing organs someone had at birth. If you saw this woman in a crowd of women, and were not previously familiar with her, I highly doubt that you could clearly identify her as the one individual among them who was born with small-gamete-producing organs.
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