WandererintheWilderness
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User ID: 3496
WandererintheWilderness
11hr ago
I appreciate this in turn! Thank you.
WandererintheWilderness
11hr ago
Well, certainly I don't think violent and non-violent offenders should be less segregated than they are in normal prison. That seems to be an odd epicycle to the thought experiment; is the notion that the budget requirements for both a non-violent-offenders trans wing and a violent-offenders trans wing would be a bridge too far? That seems… strange when we're already entertaining the expense of the trans prison at all.
WandererintheWilderness
12hr ago
how do you propose to distinguish (…)
I don't propose to do any such thing; I'm just choosing the lesser evil. There are some male rapists who will take the reputation hit of crossdressing to get to the pussy, but I would be surprised if it were so prevalent that the number of male-on-female rapes caused by such a policy would exceed the number of male-on-effeminate-male rapes it would prevent.
(If you're still unconvinced, it would already be a start to limit the policy to medically-transitioning MTFs; I would be really surprised if there were statistically significant numbers of male rapists willing to castrate themselves just to get to the female block. Or, of course, there's Celestial's notion of a trans-only block. There would still be a risk of opportunist male rapists declaring themselves trans to go there rather than men's prison, and then raping the legitimate MTFs - but I think the MTFs themselves, if asked, would rather take that chance than the much higher probability of such rapes if they all had to go to men's prisons; don't you?)
But I'd appreciate it if you could answer the following questions in complete honesty. (…)
Ironically, and I don't know whose case this helps if anyone's - I do, but they're biological females who identify as male. (No, not my trans relative. I know multiple FTMs.)
I do know of the type of trans woman you describe, but I still think parsing their lifestyle as a sex thing is reductive. For a start, many of them consider themselves lesbians - that is to say, they are, in biological terms, heterosexual - so I don't really buy that they get a sexual thrill from being acknowledged as women by men. Mostly, I think it's a combination of the queer community having relaxed sexual mores, and of biological males starting out hornier than the average biological female, but suddenly unlearning all the specifically male norms that cause men to disguise and obfuscate anything to do with their raw sexuality.
'Bob' is perhaps a different matter if she really was so taken with pornography, but 'Charlie' seems a very good example of the kind of thing I mean: boys in a state of nature love showing their willies to people, including straight boys showing theirs off to other straight boys. The only reason men don't do it to women is that society teaches them it's very, very rude indeed. (Perhaps ruder than it actually is, I daresay, but then, as I said, I have naturist leanings at a philosophical level, though the actual hobby has never appealed to me.) Now here comes 'Charlie', who, because she now holds herself to be a woman socially, no longer feels bound by the "it's very rude for a man to ask women if they want to see his willy" rule. But neither is she especially aware of a "it's very rude for a woman to ask women if they want to see her foofoo" rule; even if she knows of one, she'd would write it off as patriarchal prudishness. So the exchange you witnessed ensues.
I don't want to claim that the boyish impulse to show off one's cool willy is a wholly non-sexual one, or that this end result is okay; but I think it'd be wrong to necessarily treat expressions in trans women's behavior of this kind of spontaneous exhibitionism, or even more explicit male-style horniness, as a specific form of fetishism, or to conclude that they're sneakily getting off all the time just from being perceived as female.
(I don't deny that some trans women arrive at their decisions through sexual fantasies; but I don't think this means that their subsequent female identification need be a purely sexual thing, in much the same way that attraction between two people can start as sexual desire and blossom into the full spectrum of romantic love. You might put on a dress because you think it's hot, then look at yourself in the mirror, and realize, oh wait, this feels right, I want this even when I don't have an erection. It might be helpful to think of a certain kind of transition as a process of falling in love with a person you're becoming.)
And as an aside, I find it a profound insult to my intelligence that I'm expected to believe that males like this "identify as woman" or have an "internally felt sense of womanhood" (…)
Oh, the perfect-platonic-essence-of-gender-written-on-your-soul approach isn't my position either.
but I think it's fair to assume they were not complaining about these people wearing plaid despite paisley suiting them so much better. Glossing their complaint as amounting to the trans people in question "dressing in ways they don't like" is an uncharitable strawman
My intention was to gesture at the "showing skin is fine, and prudish fussie-duddies should get over it", free-the-nipple sort of liberal memeplex without getting into the weeds. I obviously didn't mean that I thought Amadan and SnapDragon thought the colors of the trans women's clothes clashed, but I did mean to imply that they were, perhaps, being judgemental in taking it for granted that revealing clothing is always "sexual", let alone "off-puttingly" so. In your example, I think Bob is doing something inappropriate insofar as his showing himself off to Alice is intended to seduce her or pressure her into sex - but if Bob, in fact, began wearing shorts because he likes the feel of them or thinks he looks good in them - if we forget about the deliberate posing - I don't think the mere fact that Alice might find the look sexually suggestive means she has a complaint against Bob, except to the extent that his genitals are so visible as to fall afoul of actual indecency laws, which is a very different conversation.
(It may very well be that at least some of the trans women SnapDragon and Amadan have encountered were doing more deliberate things in line with Bob propping his feet up when he knows Alice has to look. It certainly seems to be the case with the person you also, perhaps confusingly, called "Bob" in your other reply. But I do think I'm right in saying that SnapDragon and Amadan object to the revealing clothing itself already, hence why the sentence you quoted was focused on the clothing itself.)
WandererintheWilderness
13hr ago
The fact that women are physically weaker and hence more vulnerable than men is why protecting women from rape is a higher priority for me than protecting men.
ChickenOverlord seemed to be saying a much less anodyne thing - that even if, in fact, a lot more MTF prisoners get raped than bio-female ones, protecting the cis women is always, axiomatically, a higher priority. This is quite different from the heuristic you describe, which breaks down in a context where (a specific subcategory of) men are, for whatever reason, at an elevated risk of rape too. If we afford free women special protection out in the world because they're especially likely to be raped, we should afford MTF convicts special protection in prison because they are especially likely to be raped.
WandererintheWilderness
17hr ago
I'll go ahead and note that the latter won't actually happen because it's an apparently inborn trait for a small, sticky slice of the population whereas the former is arguably the literal purpose of cellular life.
Well, there is a body of thought behind the notion that although obligate homosexuality is an inborn minority, a much greater slice of the population can develop an interest in bisexuality depending on prevailing cultural norms, as per the Ancient Greeks.
WandererintheWilderness
17hr ago
As I said in another prong of this thread, I do agree that this is mostly symbolic in either direction - but I care about the government going the extra mile to avoid the appearance of impropriety w. regards to the franchise. In any case I didn't necessarily mean to die on the hill of this particular argument, merely to point out that in my experience that is the principal argument in favor of letting felons have the vote, as opposed to concern about their inalienable human rights yada yada.
WandererintheWilderness
17hr ago
"being trans is in practice a sex thing"
But that's not Amadan's claim. Amadan claims to know a lot of transgenders whom he finds over-sexual in their demeanor. I granted this claim; but it still leaves us with the fact that I know a very different sub-population of trans people than he does (so at most you should only conclude "being trans is in practice a sex thing for some").
Neither does it prove, for that matter, that transness itself is a sex thing even to the over-sexed transgenders that Amadan knows; there are many subcultures whose members are a lot more promiscuous than the general population, it doesn't mean that the subculture's anchor-point is itself a sexual fetish. At the broadest possible level, liberals are more likely to be sexually liberated than conservatives, even to outré extents, but that hardly makes liberalism itself "a sex thing" even "in practice".
WandererintheWilderness
17hr ago
I think we may have identified a crux: I actually agree with you that protecting MTFs from prison rape shouldn't be higher-priority than preventing it for regular men - but I don't agree that protecting cis women from rape is inherently higher-priority than protecting men from it. I think the rape of a man is as much of a tragedy and a moral outrage as the rape of a woman, women just tend to be more vulnerable to rape in the general population and thus get the bulk of the attention. So, insofar as I'm trying to decrease the number of overall rapes among prisoners, instead of valuing the rape of female prisoners 'higher', your way of thinking seems to trade a possibility that a trans inmate could rape female prisoners against a near-certainty that the trans inmate will themself be raped by male prisoners - which looks like a very bad deal, utilitarianistically.
WandererintheWilderness
18hr ago
This amounts to an argument that it's good, actually, that they're getting thrown under the bus. We're quite a ways away from "they aren't being thrown under the bus, they're no more oppressed than any other men".
I said I have an issue with trans activists. There are indeed some trans people who just go about quietly living their life, don't insert their transness into every chat, don't dress/act in intentionally provocative ways, and don't threaten heretics. They're not the ones making me miserable.
Okay, but you didn't actually specify the trans people active in your hobbies as doing any of those things in the actual post. The closest was the idea that word would spread if you told a transfem streamer she was "ridiculous" for having a female avatar over her natural male-sounding voice - but I don't think that people giving you the cold shoulder if you call them "ridiculous" unprovoked amounts to "threatening heretics". If I tell a Christian that their belief in sky-fathers is ridiculous while they're hosting an unrelated activity, I can expect to be kept at arms' length by other Christians in that activity's community, but that doesn't mean the Spanish Inquisition is back.
I also note that the list of dreadful experiences has suddenly expanded from "threaten heretics" to also include mentioning their transness too frequently and dressing in ways you don't like; if we separate them out from the fear of being ostracized should you react poorly to those things, as you seemingly do by listing them on their own, what is it that actually bothers you about those things, if it isn't an ick?
WandererintheWilderness
20hr ago
He is, however, arguably thrown under the bus if you insist on locking him in a facility with a population whose notorious Napoleon fetish causes them to brutally rape any transnapoleonics they can get their hands on, which is what I think Celestial meant. (Of course, this line of reasoning could imply that effeminate gay men shouldn't be jailed with regular male inmates, regardless of their gender identification.)
WandererintheWilderness
20hr ago
I agree. I did say I thought it was a motte-and-bailey; that's not a compliment.
WandererintheWilderness
20hr ago
Nowhere in his post (or mine) did we indicate that we are uncomfortable with trans people "existing in our vicinity."
Not in SnapDragon's original post - but SnapDragon's original post began with a claim that "[his] experience with them has been dreadful". And then most of the post amounted to listing all the spaces in which he encounters a high percentage of trans people, without actual elaboration on what made his personal experience with them "dreadful". This naturally led me to suspect that it was the sheer experience of interacting with them which he deemed "dreadful", rather than any particular objectionable behavior on their part - making the framing of the argument as "I'm only so worked up about trans people because they've been awful to me" deceitful.
I'm not saying that the worry over hypothetical scenarios where SnapDragon is ostracized for gender-critical views is paranoid or irrational. But I don't think it's honest to start with "my experiences with trans activists have been dreadful", and, when pressed, admit that in fact nothing dreadful has happened to you, you're just constantly afraid that it might. Imagine a black activist saying he's only anti-white because of his personal "dreadful experiences" with white people, but, when questioned, he admits that he just means the stress of interacting with random white people with a constant background fear that they're violent racists who'll beat him up if he ever accidentally does something to offend them. I think this would be disingenuous even if we imagine our activist living in a genuinely very racist town, where that fear isn't actually irrational. He hasn't had that experience. He just hasn't.
Moreover, I took SnapDragon's reply as agreeing that he ultimately felt an "ick" about interacting with trans people ("I do find it extremely uncomfortable dealing with people who make everything about their sexuality", where, FWIW, I glossed him as equating being trans with making everything about your sexuality, not just saying that a lot of trans people happen to be over-sexed). I'm not accusing all transphobes/GCs of only being motivated by such an ick; but SnapDragon's first post gave the impression that he, in particular, was, and his second post seemed to confirm it explicitly.
Hence:
Do you believe me that most trans people I know dress or behave in off-puttingly sexual ways, at least occasionally, in a way that seems intended to test boundaries and tolerance? Do you think this common experience is something us "transphobes" make up?
I believe you, but this is a completely different claim from the claim that being trans is inherently a sex thing and therefore discomfort with being surrounded by trans people is justifiable as discomfort with people being off-puttingly sexual in your personal space without your consent - which is what I took SnapDragon to be saying.
You very clearly did mean it as an insult.
I meant it as a reasoned accusation of inconsistency in your argument - you tried to justify your rancor as based on specific "dreadful experiences" with trans activists, then failed to actually prove this claim. I take the point that your complaint is the fear of "losing access to your hobby if [you] ever inadvertently expose [your] true feelings" but that's still not an actual lived experience, just an assumption about a hypothetical scenario. I don't think your post was honest. If your genuine complaint is that you find it extremely uncomfortable existing in the vicinity of trans people, at a basic vibes level, then don't act like your actual problem is a particular subclass of "activists" behaving in specific dreadful ways! By your new, more honest claim, you'd still be extremely uncomfortable with having to share your hobbies with totally apolitical trans streamers and gamers who gave you no indication that they'd cancel you for your opinions.
(Also, I think you are wrong that trans people are "people who make everything about their sexuality". I know too many asexual trans people not to laugh that claim out of the room. I have too many relatives who I just don't buy are incestuously involving me in a kink by asking me to use their new pronouns. But I grant you that if you're talking about an instinctive "ick" you can't suppress, rather than a rational position, this doesn't necessarily make a difference - if it feels sexual to your lizard brain, it is what it is. I can sympathize: I find the sight of people with piercings very uncomfortable, no matter how many times my higher consciousness repeats to my empathy reflex that the other monkey doesn't actually have a dirty nail driven into its flesh.)
Yeah, I almost added a parenthetical about how it obviously wasn't a live concern in today's America, particularly. But I think it's one of those things where the government ought to avoid the appearance of a perverse incentive, as one of the many nested redundancies keeping us from a slide into tyranny. Caesar's wife must be above approach, etc. etc. (Indeed, this is especially persuasive to me on this issue because convicted felons represent a largely symbolic percentage of the vote in any case, so it can't do much harm to go the extra mile to prove the government's commitment to democracy.)
The apology from the organizers at that club sounds ridiculous, but it's the only anecdote you actually mention to justify your idea that "your experience with [trans activists] has been dreadful". All the rest of your post is just complaining that you meet a lot of them, and possibly that they, uh, don't tend to like it when you tell them they're "ridiculous" out of the blue?… I don't mean this as an insult, but it's hard to avoid the impression that what fundamentally feels unbearable to you is their sheer existence in your vicinity, not anything egregious that they actually do.
WandererintheWilderness
23hr ago
it was depriving felons of their natural human rights to strip them of the right to vote while incarcerated!
This isn't really the principal argument why felons should have the vote. It's a pragmatic one about perverse incentive. If the government can deprive people of the vote by convicting them of a particular crime, oopsie, you've created an incentive for the government to drum up those exact kinds of charges against political opponents.
"Delusional" has mental-health-related connotations, and indeed, hydroacetylene explicitly inked the idea that it might be "delusional" to the claim that "transgenders have very poor mental health on average". I, on the other hand, suspect that their overblown fear of violence against them is much how any group of human beings might react under their circumstances, even if it's factually incorrect.
(To wit: I think that it short-circuits humans' evolved primate social instincts when they correctly perceive that a critical mass of other apes around them are only barely tolerating their presence and find them gross and obnoxious, even though their resulting gut feeling that they're about to get beaten up is off-target. That's civilization at work, and civilization wasn't in the training data. Argue all you want that the legal system works and most people just aren't going to jump from background antipathy to mob violence, the deep-rooted suspicion that the crowd of burly male apes giving you the stink-eye are definitely about to bash your face in is just not going to listen. I think this is a very common psychological dynamic in today's world, which lies behind a great number of persecution complexes.)
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
It may be that they die in custody without being actively executed, though I agree that there's a certain level of "herding people like cattle and torturing them to such an extent that they die in droves" that becomes indistinguishable from mass murder whether or not gas chambers and firing squads are involved.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
I mean, I don't think it is delusional as such - I just think it's mistaken. But anyway, relevant to what? I think manipulating the murder statistics would be bad even if there were an actual plague of lower-scale trans violence. Indeed, it would probably be worse in that scenario, because recklessly doing evil in the name of a good cause oftentimes has worse long-term consequences than recklessly doing evil while tilting at windmills.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
"Disingenuous" is being kind. See this example (…)
What I was describing as disingenuous was the rhetorical move where they go "a trans genocide is happening; for proof, see these examples of hate crimes against trans people". This is a classic motte-and-bailey maneuver, intended to blur the line between genocide qua mass murder, and genocide qua cultural erasure. I think "disingenuous" would be the right word even if the hate crimes being pointed at were solid cases; the validity of the anecdata wasn't what I was addressing one way or the other in that paragraph. (I agree that "disingenuous" would be an understatement for some of this stuff, but I think it's the right word for this kind of motte-and-bailey vagueness around different definitions of very loaded words like "genocide".)
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
You say "but", but I didn't intend my comment to take a position one way or the other on whether the feeling of intimidation is justified - merely to put forward an explanation for why they feel compelled to engage in these statistical misrepresentations, other than cackling machiavellianism.
I don't think "it is often a sex thing" actually follows from "trans women often dress more provocatively than cis women". I believe the main reason for the latter fact is, rather, that once you've broken one taboo, you're more likely to break another. Or to put it another way, when you've already made yourself a freak in the eyes of an appreciable fraction of society simply by transitioning, when you've already joined a class that a good deal of normies will find disgusting on principle and decided to love yourself in spite of their contempt, you're well on your way to unlearning all other socially-constructed shames. You're very likely to think "to hell with fatphobia, I don't have to disguise my figure to gain the approval of a bunch of snobs"; to think "radical feminists had the right idea, forcing women to shave their legs is patriarchal bullshit, body hair is natural, body hair is beautiful, why should I hide mine if I don't want to?"; and so on, and so forth. I believe there's a fair number of trans nudists.
And like… I think this explanation is broadly neutral? You might believe, as I do, that this is a basically healthy, enlightened attitude and that the kinds of cis women you describe, who regard small breasts and body hair as "defects", would be a lot happier if they adopted at least parts of. Or you might believe that it's a slippery slope of post-modernism where throwing out the basic division of the sexes leads inexorably to the breakdown of any belief in aesthetic principles or social norms of any kind, in favor of a kind of feel-good hippieslop. Either might follow. The point is that your observations are handily explained by my framework of "people who've transed their genders have basically thrown out the social rulebook already, so they're likely to be unconventional and scandalous in all sorts of other dimensions", with no need for transness to itself be a sex thing.
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