Sure, it could be. Any large data set will include a mix. But I wanted to emphasize that I think often they are good reasons, since that is contrary to the standard redpill/manosphere position
And I don’t think it’s innate but yes I think women are typically more emotionally stable and better at long term planning. Not the other ones in your list though.
Yep.
This isn’t very convincing since men cheat more often and abuse their spouses more often, both of which I think are not great signs of honoring wedding vow commitment.
That’s not very true, there are often big downsides for women in divorce. That’s why things like alimony and child support exist, because the downsides are so big that society noticed and tried to take steps to mitigate the damage.
Also what you said is true but inverted for marriage. There is less downside to staying in a bad marriage for a man, because men are less likely to be abused/controlled/murdered by their spouse.
I don’t think I’m going off of vibes, I’m mostly going off of arguments.
Some of my opinions are informed by the sum of all men and women that I know, though, that’s true. I can see how that could be considered vibes-based.
Is there a particular bias claim you’d like me to address?
Lots of involvement in queer communities.
And it makes sense abstractly… there are arguments for it.
Queer people are under a lot more social pressure about their relationship preferences. They spend a lot more time on average thinking about those preferences, because society demands them to. They are under pressure to not have their relationships, so even having them at all involves more conscious effort and intentionality. They typically need to be more in touch with their emotions, wants, and needs.
It is much harder to just sorta coast along and take whatever society offers them.
FYI by queer I mean under a broad umbrella of atypical non-heteronormative sexual/emotional relationships. Asexual people and poly people also go here, for example. This is a normal usage of “queer” in queer spaces but I think some people outside those communities assume queer is just a synonym for gay.
Plausibly, some interracial/intercultural relationships might be similar without being queer.
Note that my earlier claim in this line of discussion was that those desirable traits were not typically decisive factors in choosing partners. So your question:
Is kind of irrelevant anyway. “Sweetened the deal” implies it was a secondary item on a pro list, not a decisive one.
Also, please look at these two statements. I’ll add bold to the quotes to focus in on what I noticed:
Do you see how these are two very different scenarios and not really comparable?
Women do not need to know anyone with “significant” wealth for them to have had many options for relationships with men who had “more” wealth than the partner they chose.
Well, kind of. I did not say women were not contributing at all as far as I recall.
You did ask that question, but it was based on a faulty premise. I clarified the faulty premise and then answered a logical alternative question you might ask.
Reminder quotes, bold added by me:
I challenged that premise, right? If I don’t hold all women in super high regard, it stands to reason I am not saying they’re contributing zero to the problem.
But I do think men contribute more than women, so I figured I could answer the less binary version of your question. Sorry if that was a bad assumption on my part.
I think there are a couple problems with this line of thinking.
For one thing, any population could have a small group of people who are criminals who want to cause harm, and will do so in an opportunistic way. So you could make the same argument about excluding any group of people from any space. If you include them, some small percentage of them will commit crimes. So including any group of people on a large scale would cause some non-zero amount of crime to happen to other people. (Unless you think there is a group that would have literally zero opportunistic criminals in it.)
Overall, trans women are much more likely to be harmed in men’s bathrooms than they are to harm cis women in women’s bathrooms.
Regarding cis women being harmed in bathrooms, women already do occasionally get harmed in bathrooms, even without trans women in them. Men who want to sexually assault women can just go into women’s bathrooms. The rules aren’t going to stop them. Women’s bathrooms are not this magical safe space where men can’t hurt you.
Given that, I think it’s possible that trans women’s presence would increase the safety of cis women in bathrooms. As you’ve previously said, trans women are on average taller than cis women, and they are at the very least perceived as stronger. I think that a lot of the type of men who would enter a women’s bathroom in order to assault women would be more afraid of trans women than cis women. So their presence could stop attacks. Men could be less likely to try, knowing that a trans woman might be there. Or, if they do try, a trans woman’s presence could stop them.
There are cis women who say they feel safer around trans women. They see trans women as more likely to defend them from an attack than to attack them. I can definitely see feeling this way with many trans women. I think, like with everyone else, how safe I feel with them depends on their “vibes”, body language, and a bunch of other things that I feel intuitively but don’t really know how to quantify. (Edit: Just to be clear, I feel safe around the vast majority of trans women that I have met in person.)
I had to go back to find what you said. I think you mean this:
I have seen some unisex bathrooms that look good and safer than the current system. They have stalls that are completely closed off, with full locking doors, and no gaps people can see through. I think those are probably better in a lot of situations than gendered bathrooms. They also have the added benefit of working better for anyone who needs to help someone of the other gender use the bathroom, including parents with children, people with disabled spouses, or caretakers.
Related to this, I also prefer when pools and swimming areas have “family change rooms” as their default, instead of gendered change rooms with an open changing area.
Your wording seemed pejorative, which is why I found it offensive. At the time that I read it, you seemed to be saying that it was not a pejorative though, which is part of why I replied to it. Your full statement was:
I think you are saying that you are just calling it how it is, and you are not attacking trans people. But you are using a pejorative. You aren’t just making a clear, factual statement about reality. You are purposely using insulting terminology.
If a woman gets a full hysterectomy, she actually loses some of the associated musculature, nerves, secretions, and structure.
If it was fully made to be like a vagina, including with a vulva, I think it would still be an artificial vagina. In the same way as if you grow an artificial ear on a rat or on your elbow, it is still an artificial ear. (If it was just the vagina without the vulva, that would be more of a gray area. But that is partly related to people not knowing what a “vagina” actually is, and commonly using the word “vagina” to refer to either the vulva, or to the vulva plus the vagina. So I think a lot of people might not recognize a vagina without a vulva as a vagina, even on a cis woman.)
I think this is reductive, and I don’t think that reductiveness is correct. This seems similar to arguments that anti-gay people make, about how the purpose of sex and marriage is procreation, so gay people shouldn’t do them. Or that two same-gendered people can’t properly have sex since male and female genital are complimentary, and their purpose is only properly fulfilled when a penis goes inside a vagina.
There is evidence that women’s genitals serve purposes other than just procreation. And there are reasons to think that sex serves other purposes than just procreation. I assume you would say that procreation is the main purpose of the organ. I’m not sure if it’s worth arguing about the “main” purpose of things. It is not the only purpose. There would be plenty of reasons it would biologically make sense that women grow vaginas even if they are infertile, and that their vaginas don’t just shrivel up and become unusable when they are no longer fertile.
Your arguments about the “purpose” of organs is also very similar to many anti-abortion arguments I have heard, as well as a lot of conservative Christian complementarian arguments. Those types of arguments are very common among these groups, and they are frequently used to enforce gender roles, deny the legitimacy of men taking on different roles, and deny rights to women and gay people. I am not sure if these are your own arguments, or if you are getting them from somewhere. But if you are getting them from somewhere, I think you should consider questioning the source, and what its philosophical underpinnings really are.
I think that the way you are approaching this might be a bit problematic. You are conceding that you were wrong. But instead of questioning or rethinking your position, your response seems to be to try to retreat a bit, to try to patch the errors.
If you are confident about something, and then find out you are wrong, it is generally a good idea to do more of a post mortem, and figure out why you made that mistake. What else might be wrong about? Are you approaching the issue in a flawed way? What deeper mistakes are you making about the issue?
If you aren’t really confident about what you are saying, then I would question why you feel so strongly about this stuff in the first place.
I was specifically responding to your wording about needing “biological gates”, and women’s sports being “pointless” without them. I was reading that as saying that women’s sports need biological gates, or else they will become pointless. Since many trans women and girls “pass” very well, I was taking biological gates as meaning some kind of standard that would keep all trans women out of all women’s sports. I don’t really see how that could reasonable be done without some kind of widespread testing.
This seems a bit motte and bailey to me. The original conversation was about keeping all trans women and girls out of all women’s sports. This includes keeping young children out of lower level just-for-fun leagues, keeping trans women out of community softball teams, and generally keeping trans women and girls out of any women’s sports that are being played, regardless of the stakes, and regardless of whether being trans gives them any advantage. But now you are talking specifically about sports with a podium, and you also seem to be talking about trans women who may have recently transitioned, and not even started hormone treatments yet.
Competitive leagues have their own rules about when trans women can be included, which are based on what might give them an advantage in the sport. There are, for example, rules about how long it has been since transition, whether the athlete went through male puberty, and current testosterone levels.
I am not an expert on either biology or any individual sports, so cannot decide what rules are reasonable. But I think that having something resembling a free market, where different leagues and governing bodies are able to make their own rules, makes more sense than having the government make some kind of blanket declaration. I don’t support total bans of all trans women competing in all women’s sports, but I also wouldn’t support a blanket rule that all trans women must be allowed to compete in all women’s sports.
If it got to the point where trans women were actually starting to dominate a sport, then I think it would make sense for a league to make changes. In general, sports leagues already try to avoid rules that lead to an imbalance, or that lead to boring game play. It is normal for rules to change over time to keep sports balanced and interesting to watch.
We are nowhere near the point of trans women dominating in women’s sports. So that is part of why it seems like a non issue to so many women. All of these people who never cared about women’s sports before are suddenly so concerned with them. It seems more like an ulterior motive than any real concern for women’s sports opportunities.
This question seems to be implying that I said or argued something that I did not. It seems to be implying that I was arguing that all trans women should be able to participate in all women’s sports, even recently transitioned women with high testosterone levels. You made up a scenario I never advocated, and then asked a question that implied that I had stated agreement with that type of scenario.
Part of my point was that these types of issues can apply to other types of surgeries, not just surgeries on sex organs for trans people.
Right, but a lot of surgeries are not, including surgeries that have the issues talked about above.
One examples is lasik eye surgery, which can be suggested as being substantially helpful, which can be fairly expensive, and which does result in a permanent change to your eyes, and can actually result in substantial impairment and pain. It can also result in worse eyesight than before, in a way that is not correctable with glasses.
Another example of a surgery that is routinely done is male circumcision. That is both routinely done to infants, and also done to children when they have issues with repeated infections or the foreskin is not retracting. There have been various justifications saying that it will substantially help. That one is not expensive, but it is destructive of part of a sex organ, and there are men who feel like they have lost some functionality because of it.
Another niche example that I just happen to know about because it involves someone I know is meniscal removal for knee pain. That is still recommended to people as being substantially helpful for their pain, but the evidence does not support it. It results in the destruction of a body part, and for some people ends up causing more pain.
I think that 18 year olds cis women getting breast implants or BBLs could also be seen as problematic. Breast implants can potentially interfere with future breastfeeding. BBL surgery can be very dangerous. And I think that a lot of cis women getting those kinds of surgeries are getting them for reasons that could be considered political. For example, the rise in red pill type content and the push for gender conformity has also coincided with what a rise in women getting cosmetic surgeries, and some people think those two things are related. That seems plausible to me.
Again, the issue here seems like selective attention to me. The same people who think that trans surgeries shouldn’t be allowed often have no problem with cis women getting cosmetic surgery to better fit their idea of what they should look like as women (so, some would call those gender affirming surgeries).
I think that talking people into surgeries, or pressuring them, or telling them that this one thing will solve all their problems, are all problematic. A few years ago, when the left was dominant, I thought it was problematic that you couldn’t give any pushback or question this stuff without risking being “cancelled”. But I think that the current pushback is even worse.
The anti-trans people are not just trying to protect children or women’s sports or bathrooms. They are not just trying to make sure no one is being pressured into surgeries. They are trying to ban people from being trans at all. They want to make any trans affirming care illegal. They are blocking trans people from getting IDs and passports. (I don’t think it is reasonable to insist that trans people have a passport with their birth gender, when it doesn’t match their current appearance at all – that kind of passport wouldn’t even be usable in some places, and would cause confusion. But in some cases, trans people aren’t even being offered that option, and are instead being denied identification.)
I think that it depends what is happening and why.
I don’t think that 10% of the population deciding not to procreate is a huge issue. I think it is a problem that young women are routinely denied permanent birth control options like tubal ligation, when they want them. (And it’s especially problematic in a climate that wants to criminalize abortion, and potentially wants to criminalize hormonal birth control and IUDs as well.)
I think that the number of cis people getting cosmetic surgeries is probably indicative of some societal problems, but I don’t think the answer to that is using government force to stop them.
HRT is used more frequently for cis people than for trans people. I don’t know the details of how safe it is and how well it has been studied.
I know that cis women are routinely given hormones as birth control, without having the side effects properly explained to them. There are serious side effects, like stroke and death, but also side effects like weight gain and mood changes which are often not taken seriously and are blamed on the individual women. I don’t think the answer to that is to make birth control illegal though.
I also know that cis men can be offered HRT when their testosterone is low, and that one of the side effects of that is that it can lower their own testosterone production and make it hard for them to conceive. And that is not always explained to them. I think that kind of thing is problematic.
I think that people should be given full information about the side effects of medical procedures, and they often are not given that information. I don’t think this is just an issue with trans healthcare. I think that the entire healthcare system has a lot of problems. I think that the anti-trans activists are focussing selectively on issues with trans healthcare, as if there is something unique there, when really that is just what the entire system is like.
That isn’t what the actual law is like right now in many states. For example, Florida requires a restraining order, police report, medical record, or other court order or documentation, in order to get an abortion for rape or incest.
Not everyone feels comfortable going to police. Some people who are being abused or trafficked feel very stuck and afraid. Leaving your abuser is the time when you are most likely to be killed by them. Many women stay in bad situations out of fear for their own lives. And many stay in bad situations out of fear for their children: either that their children will also be killed, or that if they leave their abuser, they will then be ordered to let him have unsupervised access to the children. At least if she is still in the same house, she can supervise and make sure he isn’t hurting the kids. When she leaves, she loses that option. The courts routinely grant access to abusive men even when there is evidence of the abuse. And in many more cases, there is no evidence, and it is just a he-said, she-said situation.
Also, sexual coercion in marriage and relationships is very normalized. Many women are being sexually coerced, and either do not view it as rape, or do not think that anyone else would view it as rape.
Sexual coercion and pressure in marriage is so normalized that people openly joke about it online, on their normal accounts, often under their full names. For example, this video is meant to be funny, and has plenty of comments agreeing and saying it is the truth. That same video is also on facebook, with more comments agreeing that it is both funny and true.
So if your husband is routinely coercing or pressuring you into sex, and you are giving in because it is easier, because otherwise he will be grumpy or pout and refuse to help with the childcare and housework, because otherwise he will guilt you and make you feel bad, because otherwise he will withhold financial support, because otherwise he will threaten to leave you and fight for custody of the children that he won’t take care of properly, because you are worried that if you don’t give in when he is joking it might actually escalate to real anger and violence, etc, etc, should the police be involved? I think it could be argued that they should be involved, but that actually seems like a fairly feminist position. Should those women be denied abortions if they aren’t willing to get the police involved?
That doesn’t necessarily seem shitty to me.
If she’s lying to get the abortion at all, then she is lying in order to get something that should be her basic human right. She should be legally entitled to control her own body, including controlling whether her body is used to create another life (or if you believe it is already a life, whether her body is used to incubate and save that life).
Even if she’s just lying to get the abortion for free, it doesn’t necessarily seem shitty. She’s not hurting rape victims by doing that. She’s not taking away abortions from rape victims. And if she’s lying to get the abortion for free, I assume that means she would be the one paying for it. Why isn’t the man paying? You framed this as her being shitty, but you could also see it as the man being shitty, for putting her in a position where she has to get an abortion she cannot afford, and not paying for it.
You mentioned condoms in your post, as a starting point for contraceptives. When people don’t use condoms, it is usually because the man objects, not because the woman objects. But she is the one who has to get the abortion and pay for it, and who is seen as shitty if she takes advantage of the free system.
One issue I have with this entire line of thought – I think there is a common misconception that some large number of women are out there purposely “using abortion as birth control”, and that’s just not what is happening.
Most women don’t want to get abortions. Some of them aren’t acting irresponsibly at all. Most birth control isn’t reliable enough to expect it to make unplanned pregnancies super rare. And then many women are just acting within the normal bounds of irresponsibility that are accepted in many other areas of life.
We don’t expect people to be 100% perfect. We don’t seriously penalize people if they don’t drive with the utmost caution and care, never doing anything distracting (like listen to audiobooks or talk radio or carry on conversations or switch the music), and never driving with less than a full nights sleep. Even when people cause fatal accidents, there are often no major legal repercussions for that, unless they were doing something that is seen as seriously negligent and outside the bounds of normal behavior. We also don’t try to deny people health care if they sometimes miss their medication, or if they don’t get at least 8 hours of sleep every single night and drink at least 8 glasses of water per day, or if they drink soda, or if they drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.
But with abortion, it is seen as a personal responsibility issue, and if women aren’t completely perfect – if they ever miss a pill by 3 hours, or if they don’t stand up to coercion and pressure, of if they forget an appointment for a shot, or if they don’t notice that their IUD is out of place – then it becomes their fault if they are pregnant, and people want to deny them healthcare and blame them for the outcome. We see abortion as a failure of women, when men have the power to use condoms, or even use condoms plus withdrawal at the same time, and they are the ones who are mostly choosing not to do that.
I think the issue is that it’s not really about abortion. It is about something else. It is about things like controlling women, patriarchy, misogyny, enforcing gender roles, and slut shaming.
Longer answer: Memes are strong and widespread, but apply to men too. I’ve always applied stuff to both genders and I failed to recognize how important it was that many other people did not. I’ve offended men by applying PUA ideas to them.
Yeah okay, good point. Not sure about the other stuff.
I did quote it at the time. Maybe I should have flagged it in text?
(And yeah you got the right quote)
re: unisex bathrooms, okay, glad we agree there’s potential improvement there. I’m not familiar with ‘family changing rooms’ but I guess you mean like a big completely enclosed changing stall (big enough for a family to use).
Yeah, they are just large stalls that more than one person can use. Sometimes the stalls can be in a larger room with lockers and stuff, where you aren’t supposed to change or take your clothes off in the larger room. So anyone of any gender can go into the change room, but to actually change you need to use a stall. And the stalls are big enough for multiple people to use, so families or couples can easily get changed together. This makes it easier for people with opposite gender kids, easier for families where both parents are involved, easier for anyone who needs assistance in changing, and easier for disabled people or people who need more space for some reason. It is also better for people who don’t want to change out in the open in front of everyone in a same-gendered change room.
One can use pejoratives (i.e., be insulting) and be making factual statements at the same time. Clarity maybe is debatable because pejoratives can get in the way. I can think of at least one example but it’s a bit of a distraction to pursue that discussion branch I think.
Hmm I can see your point a little more. I’m not sure exactly where I stand.
Can you point me to any?
I assume you would say that procreation is the main purpose of the organ.
Yes
There would be plenty of reasons it would biologically make sense that women grow vaginas even if they are infertile, […]
Besides it being simpler, what would some of those reasons be? (Keeping in mind that evolutionarily nothing in such genetic branches will ever directly be selected for)
[…] and that their vaginas don’t just shrivel up and become unusable when they are no longer fertile.
Right, but, evolutionarily, a lot of things aren’t selected for after infertility. Selfish genes come to mind as an exception but it’s hard to see how they’d apply here. So I wouldn’t expect reproductive organs to shrivel up unless they also did that before infertility in some situations.
I think these are mostly my own. I am taking some inspiration from other areas of philosophy but I can’t remember hearing these ideas in regards to bottom surgery. At least not in any kind of detail. I recall some general anti-trans stuff, and reading some experiences of detransitioners.
Here’s an example of an idea that I am borrowing from a bit (maybe erroneously): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya1PrgkOO98The one true philosophical theory of names - Jeffrey Kaplan [25:04]
From the description:
This is a video lecture in a course on the philosophy of language. It summarizes Gareth Evans’s theory of proper names that he puts forward in a famous 1973 paper titled “The Causal Theory of Names.”
Yes because I came up with how I characterized artificialness in an ad-hoc way. I don’t have a good reason to think that I was foundationally incorrect instead of superficially incorrect.
FWIW I can see the point about why it might be problematic but I am not sure that it actually is if it’s only done once or twice. Doing it lots of times is problematic (easy to vary / infinite theories), but arguing that something is wrong because it’s altered in this way once is also an error (or at least might be; we don’t know enough yet based on the discussion so far).
I’m not that confident about it. I’m drawing on a wide array of things, the earliest of which is a metaphysics course at uni more than a decade ago. So I don’t think the error is that deep because the way I’m thinking about artificiality is kind of ad-hoc.
The most general reason (I think atm) is my intuitive reaction, and my opposition to the erosion of meaning of words. We have names for ideas and my feeling is that a lot of stuff with lineage to postmodernism has little respect for those names and directly opposes what is understood by them. Sometimes it’s done quite deliberately which I think is a bit toxic when we could just make new phrases for things. (So gender identity and gender roles are fine, but redefining gender to not be about sex is not fine, especially when it’s done surreptitiously.)
Okay, I can see your concern. You’re right to an extent, but I think the two are related.
My only issue with what you said is re young children (which I read as roughly the same as under 12s which I don’t think are separated very often, anyway). Ignoring that, I’ll discuss the rest.
I think people have a problem with trans women winning in women’s sports, not necessarily competing. To a lesser degree there is some concerns about competing in e.g., tournament settings where a trans women might eliminate a number of women before being eliminated themselves. The concern about newly transitioned trans women is valid, I think, because otherwise we get into territory of discussing which are the ‘real’ trans women vs ‘fake’ and I don’t think that would be productive. All that is to say, whatever explanations we have must account for this particular case, and this case (winning and/or newly transitioned) deserves some special attention because it matters more than the general case.
Part of the problem then is that if we tried to restrict the restrictions to just high level competition, there needs to be some tests (similar to drug tests) available for dispute resolution at some point. For any sport where amateur stuff can lead into professional, it’s hard to say where a cutoff might be for policy.
Re podiums, for clarity, I was speaking somewhat figuratively, I mean any setting where there are winners and rankings and that kind of thing.
Okay, I’m in agreement with that, then.
I agree that a free market approach is okay here, provided that there is no legislative privilege (de facto or explicit) given to different leagues. This might present issues for e.g., Olympic selection where I think typically an ‘official’ governing body decides rules. If the olympics organizers continue to take a hands off approach (whatever is on the passport, for example), I would not be surprised to see some countries exploit this.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to put words in your mouth. I was just curious about your point of view on this kind of thing, since it was part of my thinking-through of things. I rewrote the question a few times, too, to avoid it sounding accusatory or something. I am particularly interested in your thoughts on that since you’re the only discussion participant that has identified as a cis woman. (Please let me know if you object to that term, I can use AFAB or whatever instead if you like, but my understanding is that cis means the same in this case.)
Selfish genes can be expressed and selected for outside of fertility windows because they often relate to social behavior/interactions. For example, in a super sex-egalitarian society, one reason for reproductive organs not to “shrivel up” is for still-fertile males to have sex with post-fertile females, which might have positive social benefits like reducing violence against fertile females, aiding overall survival of the group. That’s just an example off the top of my head but it seems reasonable at face value.
However, many genes don’t have this kind of impact, and their selection only matters up and to the point of reproduction. If a biological feature aids survival to the point of successful reproduction (which might mean having grandkids in a human society), but after that causes the death of the organism, this will not be selected for or against. It doesn’t matter after that point because the organisms job (evolutionarily) is done.
I’m still not clear what you mean by “selfish genes”. Like, do you mean genes for selfishness? Or do you mean selfish genetic elements, as in genes that advance their own survival even at the expense of other genes? Or do you mean selfish genes in the sense that Richard Dawkins talked about in his book, The Selfish Gene? Or something else?
I agree. I’m against circumcision (there’s some relevance to BFITF here but I’ll post that later along with my notes for that chapter).
LASIC I think is more nuanced but I’ve seen documentaries about it and problems and I think it’s at least possible for people to do their own research somewhat effectively. Also doing one eye at a time is an easy precaution so that damage can be minimized, which is not possible with some other surgeries.
Re operations that do not have evidential support, I think this is a problem but is sadly common. There are lots of bad ideas in medicine, sadly, and the arrogance of medical professionals I see as big problem and anti-science.
I agree that a lot of anti-trans people don’t seem as concerned with other problematic procedures. Even if they are (like I consider myself to be), there are trans-specific concerns such as the exceptional suppression of critical research and the age at which people are introduced to these ideas, and that it is to some extent the natural conclusion of transitioning with medical interventions (like HRT). Some of those criticisms apply to other things as well, but trans related stuff feels like a place where a lot of those concerns meet. It’s also novel, so people are more worried about normalization, whereas a lot of the other things are already normalized or appear to be normalizing much more slowly.
I agree with both and for the same reasons. I would not consider a long term relationship with someone with breast implants or nipple piercings for this reason. (Breastfeeding having both IQ and immune benefits. Formula feeding is not a substitute except in very short term situations.)
(Note: nipple piercings are more ambiguous because they might not be an issue for breastfeeding, but I don’t think that’s easy to tell before one actually starts breastfeeding, and I don’t want to take the risk.)
This is curious – my impression is that a lot of redpill type content is against this kind of thing, and against related things like heavy use of makeup.
I’m not sure where I stand on makeup because on the one hand I think women are under a lot of pressure from beauty standards which is bad, but they’re also under a lot of pressure to be beautiful (often from other women). The male redpill preference by my judgement is for naturally beautiful women who appear fertile without cosmetic surgery. Naturally here meaning with little to no makeup and no augmentation.
There does seem to be a bit of an issue when we factor in social media. Personally I think giving likes to Instagram models is sexually uncooperative behavior that makes women’s lives worse and encourages them to do bad things like put lots of time and attention into beauty and social approval. But plenty of redpill guys will still do that I think. IDK for sure who is giving them likes.
If it isn’t obvious, I think “sexually uncooperative” behavior is the biggest issue in dating atm, and is partially responsible for the gender divide (political polarization).
I think we should have both if they differ. I agree it’s an issue if you have a passport that says “Sex: F” but you have a beard and present as male. Having both isn’t perfect either because it can legitimize certain forms of discrimination.
In the passports I have access to check, they have “sex” and not “gender”, and I strongly oppose loosening the definition of ‘sex’. Adding ‘GE’ (for gender expression) or something seems like the best way forward. Or we just mostly ignore it and go by the picture instead (since it’s already problematic if the apparent gender of the picture doesn’t match how someone presents).
Sure but it’s a small % of cis people, and a large % of trans people (at least relatively, I don’t know exact numbers). Also for cis people, as I understand it, it’s supplementary and used when there is a biological problem. Even if there are side effects, provided they are not worse than doing nothing then it makes some sense. Whether it’s better than doing nothing for trans people or not is not clear.
Also, as far as I can tell, the effect of HRT for trans people around puberty is not well understood (I would guess that there are more studies on cis people). Putting aside issues of whether it’s even ethical to offer medical treatments to prepubescents, there are some studies that show a drop in IQ (~7-15 points) associated with puberty blockers. The best study seems to be around CPP which is different to trans stuff but arguably if puberty blockers are the first step in someone’s transition then the results are probably applicable.
Source: The impact of suppressing puberty on neuropsychological function: A review https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.17150
(Edit note: the authors of the review point out that the data is insufficient to draw good conclusions. I agree, but also think it’s notable that even in a small sample group there were big notable effects that only went one way and weren’t present in the control group.)
I agree with your position on the other problematic things you brought up (except maybe the focus of anti-trans activists but I discussed that earlier).
You made a linked claim though. Posting it again by itself for clarity:
Do you think that using pejoratives or being insulting could also be described as “attacking” the person you are insulting?
If so, doesn’t that mean that you are, at best by your own logic, actually both attacking trans people and also calling it how it is?
I don’t see how you could say this is only calling it how it is and not attacking trans people, while admitting to insulting trans people with a pejorative.
This is gross. I can see that it’s trying to be funny, but I don’t find it funny.
By this logic, someone born from nazi breeding camps should be grateful to the nazis. Hell, if your ancestors fled the nazis and only met afterwards, you should be grateful to the nazis. It’s super fucked up logic.
Moreover, the relationship dynamic that’s on display is one where the couple doesn’t really want to be in a relationship, or have kids, or enjoys sex. Rather it’s presented as necessarily degrading for the woman which is also fucked up. While my position on sex in relationships is moving towards ‘it’s good to wait a while’, part of the reason to be in a relationship is to have sex, and to be able to have as much of it as you (both) want. This guy, instead of seeing sex as something that makes the relationship better, frames it as something that makes the relationship worse. Like a chore that needs doing. Anyway there’s more to say but it’s maybe a bit off topic.
The like/dislike ratio is fucked too (granted we can’t see real dislike numbers anymore).
I’m not sure how feminist a position it is.
In BFITF the author has some interesting comments about rape and seems to argue that it should be taken less seriously (because rape implies that the woman is damaged somehow, partly this is based on historical context). He also argues that feminists (or at least intersectional feminists like him) want prisons not to exist. He also argues for a huge relaxation of consent laws, proposes the 1/2 age + 7 rule as a serious policy, and argues against any penalty for going outside that anyway. (He does at least acknowledge that at some point the age/2+7 thing doesn’t make sense, like after people are 23 or something.)
IMO, the women shouldn’t be denied abortions, but if they don’t want to get the police involved that shouldn’t be the end of the story. Counselling or other social support is another option. The problem is doing nothing.
Also IMO, we treat rape a bit differently to other things in this regard (presumably because of trauma). Like if you know that someone is a murderer and don’t come forward, you can be charged with a crime. I think being in immediate danger is a defense for this, but still we treat it differently. Also there’s a problem about ambiguity in rape cases: Is there an obligation if someone decides after the fact that something is rape? What about if someone is convinced something is rape when it’s not because of bad ideology? What if the law or judges are biased? What if it’s dismissed by police? These issues are much smaller/rarer in the case of murder compared to rape.
However, it does raise an interesting question: if one knows someone is a rapist, refuses to come forward, and they go on to rape more people, is one complicit to any degree? (I don’t know the answer, but it’s a natural follow-on question)
Sure, and she is before that point. I’m reminded a bit of the old humorous MTV sex-ed comics about ‘sex is no accident’. The fact there is a lot of opportunity before the point of conception is significant IMO. Especially when it’s much cheaper, easier, less invasive, etc. IMO in general it says something about someone when they are unwilling to take proactive measures but expect free stuff after the fact (not just for pregnancy).
Maybe I am overestimating how much that happens for pregnancy. If that’s the case, why wouldn’t feminists highlight this kind of data more?
Maybe there are feminist reasons not to, or maybe it’s just more of people being bad at debating big issues in public, lack of empathy, lack of consideration of all parties’ goals, etc.
I think many man would if asked, but I also think it’s often hidden from men (which I think is bad; It’s a traumatic experience and one’s partner should be there to support one through that). In general I think men aren’t given much in the way of reproductive rights.
IDK how I feel about this. My intuitive reaction is that this is kinda sexist and aligned with the ‘all men are trash’ kind of thinking. Maybe it’s just because I don’t see myself like that and don’t want to be like that. Maybe it’s also because I think there should be more incentives (which I think align with women’s actual incentives) to treat sex as more valuable than they do (i.e., withhold it more than is done). I don’t think that’s necessarily patriarchal, though it does align with patriarchy to a degree. Maybe a difference of opinion here is due to seeing different examples of things through social media etc.
Also FWIW I think it’s the lying that’s the being shitty part. I agree there can be multiple shitty parties in these cases. (I also think women should be more selective and shouldn’t have zero consequences for bad decisions. Though no one deserves violence etc. Autonomy without consequence is bad and unrealistic long-term.)
IDK, I’ve met some that are super blasé about contraception and take little to no proactive measures but will get an abortion if they fall pregnant. I know of at least one abortion performed for this reason. It’s the only abortion that I personally know about in any detail.
So while I have no data on what proportion of abortions are under these circumstances or what % of women who get abortions this applies to, it does happen IME.
If couples are especially concerned about accidental pregnancies, they can use multiple contraceptives (granted, this isn’t very common IME). I’m not sure ‘normal bounds of irresponsibility’ is a good metric for something like pregnancy. Especially if being a bit lazy means getting an invasive procedure to fix it.
Sure, so one free abortion per year seems fine in a socialized healthcare system.
Uh, we do for these. Not in an absolute sense, but you will be treated differently for illnesses and treatments related to those habits, and some options are not given (e.g., liver transplants for alcoholics).
Like any healthcare issue there are elements of personal responsibility. But also, why is having sex treated as such an urgent and important thing that foregoing it is just off the table?
I agree that it’s problematic to blame women alone for pregnancy. It takes two to tango. However, I think women do a lot of harm to themselves on this matter because it’s seen as like a good thing (often, at least) to be having casual sex. For example, if one has so many sexual partners that one could not tell who got one pregnant, it is hard to argue that one is taking precautions very seriously. This statement is one that I think feminists would find highly distasteful, but I can’t really think of a problem with it (besides that it aligns with patriarchy, maybe). But if the opposite of patriarchy is zero-accountability, then I think whoever is making that argument (in favor of lacking accountability) is missing the point, and feminists have some educating to do. Outside of coercion and normalized rape in marriage and the like, pregnancy isn’t anyone else’s fault besides the two participants.
One thing: I wasn’t aware that taking the pill was so time sensitive. That seems like a problem. I dated someone who used to run them together (which is apparently bad but I’m not sure why), and I wonder why it wouldn’t be wiser to take them 27 days apart instead of 28, or whatever. I don’t know the details anyway so probably shouldn’t really comment much.
Yeah I think I agree, to an extent. I do think there are problems if people are relying on abortions or not taking them seriously. I do think there are problems with not valuing human life until some post-birth point (although this gets ambiguous depending on how consciousness and personhood develops, which we don’t know enough about yet). I’m not religious and never have been, if it matters.
But there are also other issues, like I think that women often aren’t very forward thinking when they’re young and end up doing and learning things that are bad for them, and sexually uncooperative. (I think men are also sexually uncooperative in similar situations.) That’s something that involves abortion but isn’t itself about abortion.
