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What? I literally don't understand what this means.
"Bob is a woman for most purposes."
"Well, here is a list of the most pertinent ways in which women differ from men, or in which society treats female people differently from male, none of which are applicable to Bob. How, then, is Bob a woman?"
"None of your business."
Legitimately – what the fuck does that even mean? You're saying I have to treat Bob like a woman because he demands it, but if I express the slightest curiosity about how, exactly, Bob is a woman, you accuse me of invading Bob's privacy? I'm just supposed to take it on faith that Bob is a woman "for most purposes" (none of which he cares to enumerate) and should be treated accordingly? Wow, I can't imagine how this policy could be (has been) exploited by bad actors.
With respect: bullshit. Not only does this not describe how anybody lives their life, not only does it not describe how anyone should live their life – it doesn't even describe how you, personally, live your life. You literally aren't following the moral principle you demand everyone else follow.
When you are walking down the street late at night, and you pass a drunk person acting aggressively, I'm going to hazard a guess that the size of the berth you give them depends heavily on whether they're male or female. You do this not on the basis of what they, personally, have done (you don't know if they have a criminal record, they're a complete stranger to you). You do this on the basis of: if they're a male person who gets in your face and tries to hit you, if they succeed, they will do a lot more damage than if they're a female person.
Another example. If you're not the parent of a small child, imagine that you are. You need to leave your child alone for an evening, your child is too young to be left alone, and none of your friends or family are available to look after the child. You put up an ad saying you're looking for a babysitter, and receive two applications: a fifteen-year-old female, and a fifteen-year-old male. (If you like, the fifteen-year-old male can claim to "identify as" a girl, but still has fully intact and function male genitalia.) You aren't allowed to learn anything else about the applicants other than their age and sex. Who do you hire?
Am I wrong about any of the above? If not, I'm dying to hear your explanation for how you aren't a complete and utter hypocrite.
My worldview is also dependent on that axiom, and a related axiom that not all harms are created equal. In order to prevent harm coming to their children, it makes sense for parents to hire babysitters who are not members of the demographic responsible for the overwhelming majority of sexual assaults of children (not to mention penetrative rapes, given that this demographic is the only demographic capable of penetratively raping others with anatomy alone). I do not dispute the fact that it's upsetting for the sexually well-behaved members of this demographic to be denied employment opportunities on the basis of traits they have no control over (although most of them are mature and empathetic enough* that they can eventually learn to understand why parents are more willing to leave their child alone with a female stranger than a male, without throwing a tantrum about being the victims of sexist discrimination): I just think that the amount of mental distress caused is infinitesimal compared to the amount of mental distress caused by a child being sexually assaulted or penetratively raped by an adult male. It's a trade-off I am perfectly willing to make (along with virtually every other reasonable adult), basic utilitarianism. I think it's frankly disgusting that you're invoking the historical example of marital rape when the policy you're advocating is a rapist's credo. If parents legally could not take "candidate's sex" into account when hiring a babysitter, can you envision any scenario in which this wouldn't result in tens of thousands of additional child rape victims every year? If so, how?
But you don't dispute that: you just think a man's right not to feel sad supersedes a child's right not to be physically violated by his or her guardian.
You still, still, still have not answered my question on whether "gender identity" is innate or not. Gosh, I wonder why.
*A category which includes me but, apparently, not you.
Yes, you are wrong about both of the above.
WRT the baby-sitter, I flip a coin, and take the same protective measures for 15F as I would for 15M, 15tF, 15tM, or 15X.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger
Agreeing with you is not a sine qua non of maturity.
Disagreeing with you does not necessarily constitute a 'tantrum'.
But if you consider second-/third-/umpteenth-order effects, people being treated as suspicious by default on the basis of natal anatomy and its physical sequelae creates a precedent, which will be seized upon by the 13/50 crowd to support similar suspicion-by-default on the basis of skin colour.
This will lead to escalating tensions in society, until it boils over. If we're lucky, we get a rerun of 1968 or 2020; if the dice come up snake-eyes, society collapses and we end up less able to prosecute rapes by strangers, and much less able to prosecute rapes within families.
To make the point that, even if your sole goal is to minimise the rape of people-born-with-female-genitals, your strategy might be less than optimal.
Less of this, please.
Legally, I do not support non-discrimination law intruding into that particular case; I do not think you should end up in the dock on suspicion of favouring a woman over a man, a white woman over a black woman, or any other such distinction, in hiring, in your personal capacity, an individual for services in your personal residence, even if I disagree with your reasoning.
Teach children that certain parts of their bodies are private, that they have the right to not have them touched is a way that feels wrong, that this right supersedes parental or parentally-delegated authority; or at least don't ban books that teach this.
If their baby-sitter makes them feel uncomfortable in some un-nameable manner, listen to them and possibly find another baby-sitter rather than telling them to shut up and not be 'disrespectful'.
I believe it most likely is, per the reported experiences of transgender individuals; as I do not personally identify with gender any more than any other aspect of the meat-puppet I inhabit, I do not have the ability to say for certain.
This doesn't make you sound smart or above it all, it just makes you sound like a fucking weirdo trying to weigh in on shit you don't even fundamentally understand the way a baby would. Go find some planet of autistic aliens instead and run this shit on them, maybe they'll like it.
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In the UK among other jurisdictions, rape is defined as forcible penetration with a penis. No one has ever been impregnated via digital penetration alone. I imagine the number of people who have contracted STDs via digital penetration is vanishingly small.
Do you have young children? If so, have you really just multiplied their risk of being sexually assaulted by 9x purely to prove how progressive you are?
You claim that a basic principle of leftist thought is that it's wrong to discriminate on the basis of traits one has no control over. But by your own admission, you are demanding we stop discriminating on the basis of one trait we have no control over (sex) in favour of another (gender identity).
I wasn't accusing you of throwing a tantrum, but you claim that some males feel "humiliated" by people correctly inferring that they are male and hence members of the demographic responsible for disproportionate amounts of assault and rape, and that they might lash out in consequence. "Tantrum" seems like an accurate description of the foregoing.
No. It literally is a rapist's credo. Even if it wasn't consciously designed with the intention of making it easier for rapists to commit and get away with their crimes, that's it's practical effect. Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice and all that.
In other words, "if the babysitter has sexually interfered with them, don't hire the babysitter again" as opposed to "avoid hiring a babysitter who is a member of the demographic most likely to sexually interfere with them in the first place". Being progressive and not discriminating against male people is so important to you that you are completely fine with a male person sexually interfering with your child as many times as is necessary for your child to come to you and tell you that the babysitter has touched them inappropriately – as opposed to just taking the commonsense approach of not hiring a male babysitter in the first place.
I truthfully don't get what the threat is here. Unless we stop acknowledging that male people are male (and allow rapists and sex pests free reign to rape and sexually assault to their heart's content), then the
gamersincelsautogynephiles will rise up and wreak havoc on our society?As I've previously stated, the overwhelming majority of male people have no problem with people acknowledging that they are male and treating them accordingly. The only demographic who seems to have a problem with this is "trans women", who (as they are quick to remind us) are a tiny minority, perhaps as little as 0.5% of the population if we're being generous. They do not exist in sufficient numbers to pose a credible threat to the functioning of Western society. "Don't negotiate with terrorists" is sensible advice virtually all the time: all the more so when the terrorists in question are a tiny minority of extremely thin-skinned who can be reduced to floods of tears simply by catching a glimpse of their own reflection in a mirror or having a stranger address them as "sir".
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