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So not only is a woman "anyone that identifies as a woman", not really answering the question of what a woman is, what they're identifying with is an identity, thus also not telling us anything about what the act of identifying is supposed to be, and also the type of identity they're identifying with is a gender identity, "gender" being the category that encompasses men and women.
In other words: a woman is anyone who identifies with identifying as a woman.
I appreciate the efforts to come up with a coherent answer in the aftermath of Matt Walsh's documentary, but I think you guys still have a long way ahead of you.
What would be an indicator of bad faith?
It's not turtles all the way down; the first step, the foundation, comes from the peaks of the bimodal distribution: there are a large number of people who have XY chromosomes, a 🍆 between their legs, a higher T/E ratio, and a certain mental aspect that (if they have it at all) is of a certain type; there are a similar number of people who have XX chromosomes, a 🌮 between their legs, a lower T/E ratio, and a different type of that mental aspect (if they have it at all).
To a first approximation, we call the first group 'men¹' and the second group 'women'. Then, we sort out the edge cases, including those in which the various characteristics do not align with each other, and those in which they impart a visceral feeling of wrongness to their possessor.
There was a time when the Abolitionists had a long way ahead of them.
The following account is an attempt to construct the strongest possible such indicator:
Henry has a long history of opposing gender transition, same-gender relationships, and gender-nonconforming behavior, especially among men. He has multiple criminal charges for harassing and assaulting men, and women he thinks are men, for not living up to his standard of masculinity, including three assault charges for attacking gay couples, one assault charge for trying to hit a coworker's hand with a hammer when the coworker came in wearing pink nail polish applied by his daughter, one assault charge for shoving a visiting Scotsman into a wall for wearing a kilt (Henry wound up in hospital), one charge for leaving a wood-chipper (with an "Insert groomers here" sign) on the front lawn of a local bar owner who hosted a (21+) drag show, and two charges for beating up women who were attempting to use the men's lavatory (one trans, one when there was a long line for the ladies' room).
A public referendum is held on the question of whether trans individuals ought to be allowed to use the WC of their identified gender; Henry campaigns vehemently against it; despite this, or perhaps because of it, the referendum passes with a clear majority,
The next day, Henry announces: "I now identify as a woman; therefore, you either have to let me use the women's room, or make the [redacted]s use the men's room! Either way, they'll get what's coming to them if they don't man up, ha ha ha!"
I would state with a minimum of 95% confidence that Henry is acting in bad faith.
¹Originally we called them 'were-men' and the other group 'wif-men'; 'man' without prefix was gender neutral.
Yeah, I picked up on you setting up the "core" group with the biological definition, but we were discussing the edge cases, and I specifically asked what would they be identifying with. You didn't say they're identifying with female physical attributes, or even female psychological traits, you said they'd be identifying with their "gender identity". I even asked about the burly lumberjack scenario, so we could discuss a specific instance, and make sure this isn't just a misunderstanding or a question of poor phrasing, and your answer indicated that literally none of these things are required, only "gender identity" is. This is pretty "turtles all the way down" as far as I can tell, and puts into question whether the "core" group is even necessary for the definition.
That's what pedophile rights advocates say as well.
Uh sure, someone explicitly stating "I have been acting in bad faith this entire time!" while villainously twirling their mustache does seem like a reliable indicator of bad faith, I'm frankly surprised even with that you set your confidence at only 95%. It seems like in any realistic scenario, where they don't loudly declare their intentions, the bad faith actor will be given free rein.
I don't know specifically what gender identity means more specifically, because I do not personally experience it. If I woke up tomorrow in a body with the opposite plumbing, I would consider myself to be a different gender from what I had previously been; other individuals would experience acute dysphoria and be strongly motivated to reverse the change.
That was something I forgot to mention; not only are most people with a certain mental aspect born with 🌮, but a sizable number of the remainder have a strong sense that they should have been, and mutatis mutandis for the other common type of that aspect and 🍆.
That is why we call those types 'man' and 'woman' instead of 'veeblefetzer' and 'wakalix'.
So now we have the question of "Are the transgender activists more like the former, or the latter?". I believe that the relevant distinction is "Does this thing hurt anyone?"; to borrow a phrase from Thomas Jefferson, "Does it pick my pocket or break my leg?". A legalisation of the sexual abuse of children would be harmful; the abolition of slavery was not harmful; a more nuanced understanding of gender is not harmful.
A minimum of 95%.
I do not support allowing either a genuine trans-woman or a cis-man pretending to be a trans-woman to do anything from which we forbid a cis-woman. On the other hand, if Mr Burly Lumberjack claims to be a trans-woman in order to go into the women's room, do his business, wash his hands, and leave without bothering anyone, I would prefer him to the Karen insisting on inspecting between the legs of any woman she thinks is insufficiently feminine (many of whom are cis-women).
It's a bit weird then to define "man" or "woman" by it. For all you know no such thing exists. Even if it does, we have no way of telling whether the "gender identity" possessed by trans women actually matches that of actual women, or whether it's just a man's idea of how a woman feels.
I believe that convincing adolescent autists to block their own puberty, pump themselves full of exogenous hormones, and surgically remove healthy body parts, does actually hurt them quite a lot.
None of the drama is related to trans women being allowed to do what cis women aren't, so this seems irrelevant.
Mr Burly Lumberjack entering a women's boxing tournament, demanding a Brazilian wax, or demanding to be put into a women's prison seems plenty problematic to me, whether he's "pretending" to be trans, or actually is. Even the toilet thing obviously causes discomfort, or else the issue wouldn't be so controversial.
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. I also haven't seen Karens demanding it.
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.
Other than using the toilet without being given the third degree regarding what ought to be no one else's business.EDIT: misread aboveYou 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.
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.
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.
That proves too much; letting Black people use the same water fountains as everyone else caused discomfort too.
We don't need to. If someone isn't harassing or assaulting other restroom-users, the rest of us can mind our own business.
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.
But the people reporting it's existence aren't any better at defining or describing it than you are.
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?
And if you meant the former, didn't you just say you would exclude them from sports, prisons, etc.?
Your original definition made no mention of hormone levels, nor did you say it's context dependent. At this point your approach is just more complicated and confusing, while offering no benefits.
But trans activists want to keep the segregation, thus agreeing the discomfort is valid (or if they have other reasons for maintaining it, I haven't heard them).
The whole situation is more like if the Civil Rights movement wasn't about equality, but about maintaining segregation, while positing a class of people who should be considered white, despite their dark skin, ans African ancestry.
Then argue for the abolition of segregation entirely rather than for forcing all of society to redefine one if the most basic words in usage.
Yes. I can link you articles about bathroom sexual assaults. You can argue these cases aren't representative of trans people as a whole, but you can't argue they don't happen. I, on the other hand, have literally never even heard of Karens demanding genital checks. The idea is a pro-trans shibboleth.
Well, they're closer to it, so they have a better view, and their statements are the best data I have.
I reread your comment, and I apparently mis-interpreted it. I apologise for the error.
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.
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.
"For most purposes" means that some contexts might call for a different definition.
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?")
Are there trans activists who have rejected offers of 'gender-neutral bathrooms for everybody, as long as the wash their hands'?
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.
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.
I just meant that he'd be allowed to take advantage of any benefits stemming from "identifying as a woman". If you don't see anything wrong with that, what exactly has Mr. Mustache Twirling Villain done wrong in the exact same situation?
a) Telling someone they're supposed to use the other bathroom is not harassment.
b) 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.
If it's a compromise then it's not a definition. The point of a definition is to communicate a concept between different people, so that they can reason about it and debate it. It sounds like rather than trying to do that, you are first trying to reach a specific goal, and are tailoring the "definition" to how far you think you can get.
Oh, fair enough, the conversation is going long enough that I forgot that.
I don't think it would make it fairer to them in any way, or how that they're having a terrible time when all of society is not forced to buy into their belief system.
No one I ever talked about responded with "oh, that sounds lovely, actually" when I made that argument, and I'd say that the burden is on the trans activists to initiate the conversation with that demand, if they want to use the "civil rights" argument.
a) I notice you're showing any examples of Karens demanding genital checks, or denying my point that no Karen has ever actually done so, in any way, thus proving this is a pro-trans shibboleth.
b) An honor system + resolving corner cases with government ID's with sex-based markers, sounds like more than enough to me.
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So rapists trying to avoid serving their sentences in male prisons are not acting in bad faith when they suddenly "discover" a female gender identity immediately before going into trial, not even if they make zero effort to medically transition and only the most token effort to socially transition.
The only people you see as acting in bad faith when they "identify" as something they aren't are the people doing so ironically in order to expose how nonsensical your worldview is. You are more comfortable admitting rapists, murderers and pederasts than you are admitting infidels and gadflies.
And you wonder why the trans activist movement attracts so many bad actors.
Some of them may be acting in bad faith. I would advise putting criminals who began claiming to be trans-women after being charged in a separate facility from both cis-man and cis-women; if someone transitioned before charges were filed against her, I strongly doubt that she is lying about her gender identity.
That was the first such case I thought of, but I do not insist that it is the only possible such.
On the contrary, while I disagree with your position, I do not desire that you face legal repercussions for expressing it, nor that you be denied employment, nor that your arguments be suppressed in reaching anyone who is interested in reading them. When they come for the transphobes, I will not remain silent, lest they come for me.
Why?
Well, if we can't put them in the women's facility without endangering cis women, and we can't put them in the men's facility without their being victimised by cis men, I don't know what alternatives we have.
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. Would men who "discovered" a trans identity even face an elevated risk of assault?
At least when I insist on sex segregation in certain contexts, I'm demanding it on the basis of anatomical features which can be directly and unambiguously observed. You are promoting the idea that violent criminals be afforded special privileges on the basis of unfalsifiable psychological states, and seem utterly oblivious to how such a policy is ripe for abuse.
The latter is a subset of the former.
Given how many men object to the slightest hint of femininity in a natal-anatomy!man, I suspect that they would.
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.
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.
I wouldn't expect men who "discovered" their trans identity immediately prior to being convicted of a violent crime to display any hints of femininity at all. Because they're not men who have been struggling with their gender identity from a very young age, but rather ordinary violent men taking advantage of a poorly-thought out policy.
I can imagine a man who has been formally diagnosed with gender dysphoria and has been cross-dressing from a very young age might have a hard time in a men's prison. I have a hard time imagining that e.g. "Isla" Bryson would face an elevated risk of victimisation in a men's prison compared to the modal prisoner. Because he is a vicious, remorseless thug whose solicitor presumably advised him to take advantage of a poorly-thought out policy.
The fact that every policy implies trade-offs does not imply that all policies are created equal. A policy which is dramatically more likely to be abused by bad actors than to be used by those who legitimately need it is a bad policy on its face. The fact that doctors are allowed to administer morphine inevitably means that some drug addicts will be administered morphine who don't really need it – but a doctor who administers morphine to every patient who requests it, no questions asked, would quickly find the ratio of drug-seeking patients to the legitimately needy becoming unacceptably large. One of the many skills a doctor must learn is distinguishing the legitimately sick from the malingerers: a doctor who failed to learn this skill would be struck off, or ought to.
Your policy would not even accomplish its own stated aims: it does not even optimise for protecting the most vulnerable prisoners. It optimises, as I said, for protecting the prisoners willing to make unfalsifiable claims about their inner psychological states, with no gatekeeping of any kind. I simply don't understand your unquestioned belief that legitimately dysphoric prisoners would be safer if housed in a facility containing every prisoner who claims to identify as female, even if they only began doing so immediately prior to or after conviction. If you were a young man who'd been struggling with his gender identity for as long as you can remember and had partly medically transitioned, who would you rather share a cell with: a cisgender man who'd been convicted of tax evasion and who has never hurt a fly, or a vicious violent thug like "Isla" Bryson? I know how I'd pick.
I really do not how you arrived at your conclusion that the best way to protect legitimately dysphoric prisoners is to house them in a facility with every prisoner who claims to identify as female, even if they only began doing so very recently, even if they're violent offenders, even if they've been convicted of raping male victims. I genuinely don't know why you're patting yourself on the back about how compassionate your proposed policy is when to my mind it seems obviously worse at your stated aim of protecting female-presenting male prisoners, when compared to offering "focused protection" of the most vulnerable prisoners on a case-by-case basis.
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I find the differences in the conceptualisation of prisons quite interesting. To many, especially right-wingers and some conservatives, punishment is the point of prison, so some background level of victimization is, if anything, morally positive. To you and large parts of the progressive wing of the left, prison is a choice we hoist upon certain people, maybe even for some utilitarian benefit overall, but the fact that we do so against their will means we have some obligations towards them. To me, the point for me personally is simply just separation between us and them (as such, I consider exile the ideal punishment, it's unfortunately just not really available anymore); If they then choose to victimize each other, that is on them. Since anyone in prison is by definition a victimizer (technically only allegedly, I know), the oppressor-victim dichotomy is an absurdly bad match anyway. I actually prefer if they treat each other well, too, I just think we have relatively little obligation towards them. At least in my country, prisons are already more than nice enough, nor are prisoners lacking food or other amenities.
None of these conceptualisations is strictly speaking wrong, and they lend themselves to wildly different conclusions.
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