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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15564 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?

One minor point: lesbian subreddits have a disproportionate number of trans woman mods. You shouldn't take what they say as representative of the broader community. The very fact that we see it declared a bannable heresy is an indication that there are heretics. A majority of lesbian women prefer to date natal women.

The main point: as a thought experiment, suppose it were possible to transplant a consciousness into a body grown in a vat or something. That body is indistinguishable in every way from a natal body of the same sex. And then you start dating someone who has one of these bodies and you like them more than anyone you've ever dated, but a month later they tell you their natal body was the opposite gender of their current ones, and you react with revulsion and end things. Is it "transphobic"? I don't love that word because it carries with it an overly negative connotation, but it does seem like it would be a psychological issue that wouldn't serve your own interests well. (Although the harm here would be to yourself, not to the "trans community").

Of course, it's a very relevant point that in the reality we live in we're currently far from creating bodies that don't leave a trace of their original sex.

There can actually be something important to a potential partner about the psychology of someone who would step into that lab grown body and the framing is doing a lot of work. It's like in the same scenario but instead you find out they have made all of their life decisions by consulting an aggressive psychic who they refuse to stop consulting the psychic or agree that psychics are not purveyors of truth.

I suppose a variation of the framing would be to compare whether you'd judge a transwoman more harshly than a natal female who just took on a hotter synth female body.

You can still imagine there's just something off about someone who really didn't like their birth sex, in a way that's deeper or more problematic than someone who just wants to look hotter. But I'd want to see evidence of that (in that hypothetical world). Would gender swappers generally have worse outcomes or behavioral patterns than regular people?

This discussion would probably at some point call for an examination of Blanchard's autogynephilia hypothesis, i.e. that some men are sexually aroused by the thought of themselves as a woman, and that this is the motivational mechanism behind some trans sexuality. Now I am not the person to have that discussion because I know way too little about it. Autogynephilia sounds like the kind of thing psychologists would make up, honestly, but I am not qualified to make that claim on any proper foundation.

Many people are sexually interested in excrement, imagining yourself as the object of your desire seems like the kind of philia you'd be surprised if it didn't exist.

I think there's two different claims that need to be distinguished here.

It is undoubtedly true that some men have a "forced feminization" or "sissyfication" fetish. One only need google those two phrases, and you'd be presented with a ton of examples of this.

And at least some of the trans women online are open about formerly being AMAB with such fetishes.

However, the question is one of causality. Do the transwomen with sissyfication fetishes have them because they are trans, or are they trans because they have sissyfication fetishes?

I could easily imagine a world where people who are trans happen to like sexual fantasies where they magically get turned into women. It wouldn't be that different from women with rape fetishes - their guilt is a turn off, so a scenario that takes the control out of their hands and bypasses their guilt is incredibly attractive.

Right, and my possibly slightly spicy take on this is that this is a much more understandable and reasonable justification for identifying as a woman than most I hear from trans advocates. I'm not surprised it's what many people assume is going on in most MTF cases when they called MTF Trans women perverts. I can't figure out the internal logic on transgenderism without a motivation like this. The only other reasonable alternative is that there is some internal sense of gender that I and people like me are blind to, and this is really hard for me to believe.

Right, and my possibly slightly spicy take on this is that this is a much more understandable and reasonable justification for identifying as a woman than most I hear from trans advocates.

Understandable to who?

Because the US political milieu and arguably legal system is biased towards claims about inherent characteristics (i.e. you can't discriminate against me cause I was born this way!). I don't think the "trapped in the wrong body" position is really carving reality at the joints (at least not in the normative sense people want - someone with a foreign limb could claim they feel "trapped" in their body - nobody thinks this validates their "identity", we just think they're delusional).

But that doesn't mean that it isn't useful, politically.

Edit: removed for potential consensus building, repetition.

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