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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15566 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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I am trying to understand the standard policy on transphobia in online LGBT communities - that making a distinction between women and transwomen is transphobic and as a consequence results in a ban. At present, it is utterly bizarre to me, grotesque even, but I'll try to charitably present their position. Here is a paragraph explaining the rules of the lesbian subreddit, which is in line with most subreddits and forums I've been researching:

Things which are transphobic:

  • Not being interested in, or not dating, a specific woman because she is trans.

Trans women are women. They are often indistinguishable from cis women. They can't get pregnant, but neither can almost 10% of cis women, and fortunately in a lesbian couple there's usually a womb to spare. (With enough forethought you might not need a sperm donor!) Saying you're "not attracted to trans women" as a blanket statement cannot have a basis in empirical reality, but purely in prejudice. It's not like not being attracted to redheads or blondes or butches, it's like not being attracted to immigrants, children of blue-collar workers or survivors of cancer. "Trans" is, for the numerical majority of trans women, a history which says nothing about the person.

There's also an elaboration that since not all transwomen have a penis, and since not all transwomen can easily be detected as having male features, then saying that you are categorically opposed to dating transwomen (because of either a penis or male features) makes you a transphobe.

So their argument is that since (1) there are some transwomen who are physically indistinguishable from women, and (2) there are also women who cannot get pregnant but you would have no problem dating, then (3) your prejudice towards transwomen must be based on the principle that women and transwomen are ontologically different, and therefore this makes you a transphobe.

The main objection here is that there are in fact zero transwomen who are indistinguishable from women with a womb. The paragraph above was written by a transwoman and is, to me, wishful thinking. They link to an Instagram of a transwoman who is supposed to illustrate how women-like their appearance can be, but even with the best filters and makeup there is something off about them, and in person this would be easily spotted. Even if there are some who would realistically pass a first-impression test, their body (hips, jaw, Adam's apple, "vagina", body odor) would soon give them away, and possibly also their behavior would seem incongruent. And all of this is based on the premise that people's sexual preference are based on formal logic as opposed to general trends in a group's appearance - most transwomen are not even close to passing and that's why many men have a categorical aversion to transwomen.

I tried asking this question on a few different subreddits but my post doesn't even show up and I received one ban as well, so here I am. Can anyone try to justify the transphobia policy above?

I can't really justify it aside from aspirational thinking. One day you'll be able to add "become woman" to cart and click checkout and that will work perfectly and completely and tracking cis or trans will be meaningless. But until that day comes we'll just have to pretend really hard that it's already here, is the quiet part of those policies, IMO.

How aspirational can one get about this?There's a little mini lesson for kids where you tell them if they're ever lost, find a police officer for help. But that's not helpful because most of the time there are no police around. So, it's been modified to: find a woman and ask them for help.

That seems fairly uncontroversial. Women are less likely to be predators and more likely to help, by just the power of statistics.

Ever since I've heard this I've been deliberately sizing random men and random women up in public and trying to imagine how they'd react to my lost 4 year old going up to them. Seems to pass the sniff test. To be clear, overall even most men give me the sense they'd be helpful and not predators, but women even moreso (I run into zero homeless insane looking women, for example).

But, does this still work if it's a trans woman? I've never met a trans woman who has given me the sense that they'd react anything like the median cis woman would if they came across a lost child. I just don't believe saying you're a trans woman makes you less dangerous than a random male is to a small lost child. If anything I would move slightly in the opposite direction because of all of the other unfair associated baggage that comes with being unlucky enough to be trans in our society.

I am genuinely curious what a trans inclusive feminist would say here.

It does sound like a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy, doesn't it?

OTOH here's Gavin de Becker arguing for it.

https://gdba.com/best-advice-for-a-lost-child/

Is what I’ve said politically incorrect? Maybe so, but the luxury of not running for office is that I don’t care if it’s politically incorrect. The fact is that men in all cultures and at all ages and at all times in history are more violent than women — and facts are not political.

Sounds like one of those American things that make American men avoid even looking at children in public, or consider a job at a kindergarten etc, if they get told stuff like this as kids.

N=1, but I am not American, and my mom has told my brothers and I this kind of things as well. I also distinctly remember a certain amount of guilt on her face while she did, but there you go.

I was always told as a child that if I was lost and couldn’t find a police officer, I should ask a woman with kids for help, because moms were presumed to know what to do. This seemed to have loomed large, in my childhood memories- I don’t recall the lesson that I was supposed to think myself safer with random women than random men(and I was raised by a fairly strong sex negative feminist who had no problems talking badly about men in other ways), but that moms would know what to do and be able to help a child better.

I would consider it almost certain that trans of whatever description is more likely to fail the latter test than cisgender women or men, on average.

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