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How have I denied reality? I guess we can argue over the proportions of people with extreme beliefs about gender. I’m not even saying I agree with the mainstream pro trans position, I don’t, but I feel like you’re painting a straw man here.
Anyone who believes trans people literally become the opposite sex by self declaration is delusional and an idiot. That might be a big proportion of people arguing online about it, I don’t know, but I’ve thankfully never met anyone who believed that IRL.
That is so stupid it has so be a straw man or a minority of hardcore activists that don’t represent most trans people (which I have never encountered). Trans activists are all about separating gender from sex, and saying you being a man or a woman is different from you being male or female. That’s why there’s the whole “what is a woman” debate, otherwise how would that work, would they believe you can spontaneously manifest a uterus by believing you have one?
This is the vast majority of trans people I know, at least for hormones and wardrobe, behaviour is somewhat hit or miss.
Guess I’m as bad as a TERF then. If you make no attempt to present as a woman before going to the woman’s bathroom or locker room, obviously you might make people uncomfortable and they wouldn’t be out of bounds in asking you to leave.
I know that this feels like we're all piling on to you, but there are enough crazy people out there pushing extreme edges that most of us are frustrated. If it were just crazy people on social media declaring that they are trans masc non-binary female presenting two-spirit third gender folx, we'd roll our eyes and move on. But the craziness has real world consequences, from prisons to sports to encounters in everyday life.
This entire topic has become way too heated; first it was "trust the science, bigot" but now the science is inconvenient so that becomes "oh well they're all TERFs and no, that thing that happened never happened!"
I don’t even agree with mainstream transgender philosophy, I don’t believe in “gender” in the classic sex/gender dichotomy (it’s far too influenced by biological factors in my view). But everybody here is jumping to the least charitable interpretation of “gender ideology” and assuming I share those beliefs. You can’t call all trans people delusional, then when I ask what delusions I have, start bringing up straw men or viewpoints I don’t even have and have repudiated many times.
The same way the trans masc non-binary female presenting two-spirit third gender folx pushed people to the right, the “all trans people are delusional, trans healthcare should be banned, there should be laws and fines for going to the wrong bathroom” takes are gonna push people to the left. I feel like there’s already a vibe shift where the people are nostalgic for woke and seeing it as having been mostly silly and not that big of a deal. The they/thems didn’t start a war in the Middle East at least.
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What we're all is trying to drill into you is that the absurd things we describe are not strawmen. They are official policy and actual law in many places.
Yes! This makes you as bad as a TERF! Your common sense here is - and I want to emphasize that this is not hyperbole or exaggeration - against the law in California. You cannot ask a man not to use the women's shower, as this constitutes discrimination against their self-declared gender. The relevant law is the Unruh Civil Rights Act, which includes "gender identity and gender expression" as protected categories.
Here is one attempt to fix this with legislation. The site Trans Legislation Tracker declares that this is an anti-trans bill. Their own hostile summary includes this: "The Legislature finds and declares [...] Gender identity is fluid, and there is no ability for a commercial enterprise to determine if an individual's claim of a gender identity is sincere or is a pretext to obtain access to the opposite sex's intimate spaces." Which is absolutely correct! Just the acknowledgement that bad actors exist is treated as anti-trans!
You need to get your head out of the sand. Trans-aligned politics is absolutely bonkers. The vast majority of us allegedly "anti-trans" folks aren't being bigots; we're just trying to restore a measure of normalcy.
The vast majority of anti-trans people are not enacting minimum standards to use toilets or do other sex-segregated activities: they're banning trans people completely, regardless of how well they pass, how much effort they've put in, or how sincere they are. That is the mainstream anti-trans view. Your view, if you have described it accurately, is fringe.
I don't propose banning trans people (whatever that means). I don't propose rounding trans people and herding them into camps. I propose making people use the public facilities and compete in the sporting events that concord with their sex. I'm not saying "trans people can't compete in sporting events ever"; I'm saying "if they wish to compete in sporting events, trans people must compete in the sporting events corresponding to their sex, just like everyone else".
Read the entire sentence. They're banning trans people completely from using toilets or doing other sex-segregated activities. Let's set aside sports and consider only toilets. In what way are cis women harmed by sharing toilets with passing trans women? Note that women's toilets don't have urinals, only stalls. Users will never see other people's genitals. If the trans woman passes, other users won't even know she is trans. On the other hand, sharing the toilet with a passing trans man might actually be unpleasant.
I did read the entire sentence and, again, no they're not. Trans people are not forbidden from using toilets. No conservative politician is demanding that trans people be denied access to toilets of any kind. No conservative politician is demanding that trans people be forced to shit on the street. Conservative politicians are demanding that trans people use the toilets concordant with their sex, just like everyone else. You might disagree with this policy, but lying about what it entails helps no one.
But the outcome of some of the competing issues might have that happen.
The Womens Institute might be a good example. Some groups didn't want to include trans-women. They wanted to limit it to biological women (which would include trans men). Not unreasonable in my view at least. Others disbanded over that change.
However some groups didn't want trans-men (because they look like/act like men). So the "anti-trans" women side does have a split here. They don't want biological men in womens spaces, but alot of them also don't want anyone who looks like a man either.
If that gets carried through, neither trans men (biologically female) or trans women (biologically male), get to attend.
While most conservative commentators do want trans people to use the bathroom their biological sex would suggest. That does mean some pretty masculine looking bearded trans men in womens bathrooms and locker rooms. And we've already seen that can be a problem..
This isn't just hypothetical, given the UK supreme court ruling (and draft EHRC guidance off the back of it) says you could ban a trans-man from a mens bathroom (because they are biologically female) AND from a womens bathroom because their presentation as male may make women uncomfortable, so this outcome is legally supported.
See the problem? There are competing strands of what people want or don't want within the broad "anti-trans" tent and the intersection of those might well mean in practice some trans people can't use either bathroom.
Note: I put anti-trans in quotes as a short hand, but I don't think many of these people are necessarily what I would call anti-trans in actuality. I have high regard for many Women's Institute groups and I think both of their positions on the exclusion of biological men and women who look like/act men can both make sense depending on your criteria.
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Do I have to spell it out for you? Can you not infer from context that I meant banning trans people completely from using toilets or doing other sex-segregated activities concordant with their gender?
Trans people are demanding that they be allowed to use the toilets concordant with their gender, just like everyone else.
If they knew trans men existed, they'd want to exclude them from both men's (because "they're women") and women's (because they look like men) spaces. This is not hypothetical. Regarding last year's landmark UK Supreme Court ruling:
What about people like me, who insist we do not have a gender identity of any kind? Which toilet do we use?
Trans activists claim that the women's toilets are intended for anyone who has a woman's gender identity, and that bathroom bans are denying them access to a facility that female people are entitled to. People like me, by contrast, deny that women's toilets are intended for anyone who claims to have a female "gender identity", but are rather intended for individuals of the female sex.
"Gender identity" is an unfalsifiable concept, and basing public policy on unfalsifiable claims individuals make about their subjective inner experiences is a bad idea.
My flippant response was meant to highlight that you're just assuming that your viewpoint on the central topic this entire debate is about is correct and framing it as obvious and uncontroversial.
Indeed, which is why I believe there should be some minimum standards for trans people to be allowed to use their preferred facilities beyond just stating they're trans.
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...unless they use the one given to them right there, same as everyone else.
It's like saying that you're banning me from using the toilet because I'm a compulsive germophobe and you refuse to have the bathroom extensively fumigated after each person goes in. The facilities are there for trans people, they're allowed to use them, they're throwing a massive tantrum at the way they're allowed to use them. That is not 'banning'.
No, it's not the same as everyone else. They're the only group being banned from using the toilets concordant with their gender.
And if they knew trans men existed, they'd want to exclude them from both men's (because "they're women") and women's (because they look like men) spaces. This is not hypothetical. Regarding last year's landmark UK Supreme Court ruling:
That ruling is bullshit caused by the UK government's inability to ever tell women no, and I do not support it in any way.
As for the rest, trans people are permitted to use the toilets concordant with their sex, as are we all. You know this is what I meant. You may disapprove of my invisible rider that this is a good thing, but saying that trans people are being banned from using the toilet is straight up 100% rubbish and you know it. If you would like to argue that forcing trans people to take two steps to the right and use the toilet associated with their sex is evil, please go ahead and do so.
So what would your preferred policy be on the question of trans men?
You should have been able to infer from context that that was what I meant. The person I was originally responding to suggested anti-trans people just want reasonable minimum standards for trans people to use their preferred toilets (which I would support), but that's false: they want to ban trans people from using their preferred toilets completely.
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OK but that is literally the standard model of gender ideology in the real world, and if you argue for your interpretation you will get banned from half the internet and fired from every job in academia, hollywood, sillicon valley, and wherever else the woke reign supreme.
Go try and edit Wikipedia to reflect your belief that Elliot Page was a woman when he played a pregnant teenage girl. Heck, go on Wikipedia and edit the Elliot Page article to state that Page might be a man now but he still is biologically female and was born female (rather than merely being “assigned female at birth” by an ignorant doctor) If you manage to do that without getting banned or ganged upon by a rabid troupe of gender ideologues who will swiftly revert your changes, I might consider your hypothesis that gender ideology might possibly mean what you claim it means.
But who are we kidding? We both know that your conception of gender ideology doesn't exist outside The Motte. It's actually a fantastic example of the motte-and-baily fallacy. Only in The Motte, that wretched hive of scum and villainy, where people don't automatically agree that a woman is anyone who says they're a woman, does transwoman mean “person who wishes they are a woman but is a male in reality”. Everywhere else it means “woman, and if you deny it you're banned”.
You're just nitpicking about terminology. Everyone knows that "AFAB" is a euphemism for "born female". Do you campaign against euphemisms in general or is it this one specific pair of euphemisms that you consider the great political issue of our time?
No, I don't think it's nitpicking to point out that "born female" implies "born biologically female" much more strongly than the related but different term "assigned female at birth".
I understand AFAB is often used as a euphemism for "biological female" but that relies on the fact that most transgender people are the biological sex they were assigned at birth. The entire point of the Khelif controversy is that he was assigned female at birth despite being biologically male.
And although I do think an encyclopedia should avoid euphemisms in favor of clear language, I didn't bring the AFAB/born female distinction up as part of a cruscade against euphemisms on Wikipedia, but to support my point that Wikipedia does not use these words interchangably, and the choice to describe Khelif as "born female" was intended to falsely suggest that Khelif is biologically female.
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I’m surprised @MartianNight isn’t aware of the “AFAB only” spaces controversy which is the woke way of saying “biological female only”. Also “AFAB vs AMAB socialisation”.
Woke people are quite aware of biological sex. There’s probably some horseshoe theory thing at play where both woke and gender critical people end up with similar viewpoints and are both dismissive of trans people and physical dysphoria.
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