"Misgendering," Arrests, and the UK

[Worffan101]

I think people have to understand what drives "transphobes."

It's comforting to think "oh, they are just afraid of things they don't understand," or "they are just bigots."

In reality, people feel like they are in front of David Warner, being told "they identify as five lights, you bigot!"

That's really the issue; we are being told that the old biological definition of sex is bigoted, and in every way, someone who produces sperm is as female as someone who produces ova. It's not even couched in terms of accommodation of someone's peculiarities, rather we are told that reproductive function must be completely divorced in our minds from gender/sex.

That "understanding" is outdated and based on fearmongering conspiracy theories and bigoted nonsense.

In reality, there are distinct neurological differences between trans people and cis people of the same biological sex, and fundamentally, I think that any one person is better informed about their own fucking gender than some idiot on the street raving about bathrooms.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I don't think the established dichotomy of males and females is really blown out of the water with 1.7% findings. And also though, I don't think that's what the transgender establishment really aims to posit. And the social politics between progressives and conservatives will persist to have contention beyond objective facts such as that.

Given what G-Man's saying, I, myself, might be called a bigot by... people for saying that first part. Well okay then, glad I'm pretty discreet with my objective standards, though really I know there's people on the progressive side that will understand discretion in attempting to weigh objective support.

[SuccubusYuri]

I think people have to understand what drives "transphobes."

It's comforting to think "oh, they are just afraid of things they don't understand," or "they are just bigots."

In reality, people feel like they are in front of David Warner, being told "they identify as five lights, you bigot!"

That's really the issue; we are being told that the old biological definition of sex is bigoted, and in every way, someone who produces sperm is as female as someone who produces ova. It's not even couched in terms of accommodation of someone's peculiarities, rather we are told that reproductive function must be completely divorced in our minds from gender/sex.

Well that's getting into TERF territory...which is a whooooole can of worms that clings to male-supremacy as a form of feminism.

And I'm not just making coy observations (though I did have these observations for a while), when you break down their seminal work, "The Transexual Empire", it literally adopts as a postulate that society is SO patriarchal that a woman's only bargaining chip is her body and she must protect her breeding status from interlopers. And TERF-lesbians are lesbians as a philosophical rejection of patriarchy, aka, they "choose" it, and butch women are seen as a similar rejection of the patriarchy, aka, a self-imposed nunnery to make yourself undesirable on the sexual marketplace, which is also why TERFs are vicious and even violent towards butch lesbians.

TERFism isn't so big in the states though, in part because the gay community and the trans community are much more interlinked here (in the UK, white gay men are actually pretty Tory) and the US also has the extreme Evangelical church to sweep up everyone who believes this garbage in one big net.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yeah I'm not quite following the TERF reference.

[Draco Dracul]

Yeah I'm not quite following the TERF reference.

It means Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist.

[CmdrKing]

I don't think the established dichotomy of males and females is really blown out of the water with 1.7% findings. And also though, I don't think that's what the transgender establishment really aims to posit. And the social politics between progressives and conservatives will persist to have contention beyond objective facts such as that.

Given what G-Man's saying, I, myself, might be called a bigot by... people for saying that first part. Well okay then, glad I'm pretty discreet with my objective standards, though really I know there's people on the progressive side that will understand discretion in attempting to weigh objective support.

Belief in gender essentialism is generally only likely to get you that response if you show your whole ass demonstrating it. Otherwise it’s really more of a yer dad case: you are holding onto the root of the bigotry, but if you’re keeping it to yourself then... eh. People gotta grow in their own time, there’s bigger problems out there.

To touch on your underlying belief though? Human history is littered with people erasing trans folk. Roman Catholicism, European colonialism, and the literal third Reich Nazis all imposed gender binaries and, in that last case, burned the vast majority of research. All off the data we have now only goes back roughly to the 70s, so we just don’t know a lot of things.
But we do have reems of data saying that transition works and other things... don’t. So even without understanding how it works or what causes someone to be trans, the science we do have overwhelmingly suggests there’s something real there, and it’s best to proceed with that assumption.

[G-Man]

Which you can argue for as a matter of courtesy. However, when it comes to someone being sent into a prison, or someone going into a certain locker room, or competing in gender-segregated sports, things become a little different.

A lot of things also exist for the comfort for the participants. So it becomes a question of what allows the comfort of the people involved.

A transgender woman isn't necessarily comfortable in a male bathroom or safe in certain places.

(And we have Unisex ones at the place I work)

Same with prison issues.

And a lot of cis gender women are not comfortable in a locker room with someone with a penis and testicles, or in a prison with someone with a penis and testicles.

But of course, their discomfort doesn't count.

And that's the issue here. I notice that you at no point in your reply considered the discomfort of those who do not want to be naked in the presence of someone who is the opposite biological sex. In many cases, when people tried to work out a compromise where the transgendered individual was allowed to use a single-occupancy unisex restroom, it was rejected, on the basis of "separate is not equal."

No, the only acceptable outcome is that the transgendered person be spared all discomfort, and if the solution makes anyone else uncomfortable, the solution is to browbeat them into accepting it.

[CharlesPhipps]

And a lot of cis gender women are not comfortable in a locker room with someone with a penis and testicles, or in a prison with someone with a penis and testicles.

But of course, their discomfort doesn't count.

Not enough eye-rolls in the world man.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I don't think the established dichotomy of males and females is really blown out of the water with 1.7% findings. And also though, I don't think that's what the transgender establishment really aims to posit. And the social politics between progressives and conservatives will persist to have contention beyond objective facts such as that.

Given what G-Man's saying, I, myself, might be called a bigot by... people for saying that first part. Well okay then, glad I'm pretty discreet with my objective standards, though really I know there's people on the progressive side that will understand discretion in attempting to weigh objective support.

Belief in gender essentialism is generally only likely to get you that response if you show your whole ass demonstrating it. Otherwise it’s really more of a yer dad case: you are holding onto the root of the bigotry, but if you’re keeping it to yourself then... eh. People gotta grow in their own time, there’s bigger problems out there.

To touch on your underlying belief though? Human history is littered with people erasing trans folk. Roman Catholicism, European colonialism, and the literal third Reich Nazis all imposed gender binaries and, in that last case, burned the vast majority of research. All off the data we have now only goes back roughly to the 70s, so we just don’t know a lot of things.
But we do have reems of data saying that transition works and other things... don’t. So even without understanding how it works or what causes someone to be trans, the science we do have overwhelmingly suggests there’s something real there, and it’s best to proceed with that assumption.

I don't think it's so much belief in essentialism. I do actually believe that's where the bigotry stems from, with people not only not being able to let go of the absolute, but the social status quo that's been correlated to it.

For sex in terms of reproduction though, a polarity is apparently established over time preceding us. It's easy to understand that that's only as far as evolutionary selection and even that doesn't apply to each individual; that much we've established already. That doesn't really serve to give a polar framework to what something is so much as say that there is actually a notable polarity in the first place.

[Darth Wedgius]

That "understanding" is outdated and based on fearmongering conspiracy theories and bigoted nonsense.

In reality, there are distinct neurological differences between trans people and cis people of the same biological sex, and fundamentally, I think that any one person is better informed about their own fucking gender than some idiot on the street raving about bathrooms.

Why do you think someone is the best expert on their own gender?