I don’t think I exaggerated. You said:
The “maybe” is about whether it provides grounds for a specific gendered issue, such as “feminization.” But your first sentence does not include the word maybe and I did not read it as being phrased as a maybe, I read it as definitive.
If you didn’t intend it that way, that’s fine.
I don’t think it necessarily contradicts that. It only contradicts that if you use the existence of a new medical solution to jump to extra conclusions about what that says about trans people, whether or not they are “real”, etc.
Those do not necessarily follow. Though I do agree that some people (who I would call transphobes) would make those jumps.
Radicals and activists of any type are often quite flawed. And a very common flaw is that they might take their position too far; that’s almost tautological in the case of “radical” I think.
On the other hand, radicals and activists are often the people who nudge public discourse. I think you agree with that; if anything I bet you think I am the one that seemed to disagree with that. I dunno if I agree that they are literally writing legislation very often, but they definitely push for rights and that sometimes results in legislation being written by more moderate politicians.
Since trans people have been marginalized and had their rights under assault, I see value in people fighting for those rights. But I may not always agree with the methods or arguments, especially of the most extreme radical activists. And I may not think the most extreme methods are effective, in addition to disagreeing with them on content.
None of this is unique to trans people BTW. The same statements have been true for other LGBT people, for black people (at least in the US), etc.
In general, the people who just want to live their lives and be left alone often significantly benefit from the actions of activists, though. If the activists fail, the “regular” people may not have the luxury of living their lives in peace.
When we discuss trans people as a generalized group I try to keep in mind all types of trans people. It seems like you primarily focus on the most extreme, most irrational activists that you’ve seen online.
It is worth noting that we currently do have a highly imperfect pill that cures gender dysphoria with various side effects, and you seem to view it pretty negatively. So I am not actually confident that if we developed a better one you and other gender critical people would embrace it. I think you would only embrace it if it cured gender dysphoria in a way that made you comfortable.
But I’ll imagine the new pill in question cures it in a way that conforms with gender critical preferences.
In which case, yeah, I think your guess is probably true. I think a lot of trans people (especially most of the people who have not begun transition) would absolutely take that pill. But I bet some wouldn’t want to, especially if they’ve already transitioned. And I bet some people that transitioned would have a negative view of other people taking such a pill.
I think this because we can see examples of this already: e.g. a lot of deaf people don’t like cochlear implants. This used to baffle me, and I viewed it as a terrible thing. I am more neutral about it now. I suspect you would still view that choice as condemnable, though. Maybe I’m wrong.
The reasons people make those choices are complex. Cochlear implants aren’t perfect, and can have many negative side effects. Realistically (not in a magic hypothetical), a dysphoria curing pill probably would not be perfect either, and have side effects. Also, marginalized communities are communities and develop their own subcultures over time. Many deaf people see getting a cochlear implant as choosing to abandon that community. They’re not necessarily wrong. Trans people also have their own communities and some of them would likely see such a pill in a similar way.
How familiar are you with academic practices and medical boards? What are you basing this impression on, exactly?
What is this based on? Can you give me some examples of trans activists shutting down research into causality? I am not denying it has ever happened, maybe it has and I just don’t know. But you seem to think it is a widespread issue. Is this claim falsifiable?
I am aware of the pop psych anti-trans book about autistic girls becoming trans men. But there has been plenty of research linking autism and gender dysphoria in general. There are apparent links there already (which is why I am skeptical that research into such links is being suppressed by powerful trans activists). It isn’t specific only to autistic girls. It seems like autistic people of all genders are much more likely to experience gender dysphoria than neurotypical people are. I don’t think any causality is known.
In general there are issues around this topic, such as people not being diagnosed accurately, suppressing feelings, gender biases in diagnosis or treatment, etc.
My understanding is that the number of trans men has gone up a lot recently, but it has gone up to become comparable to the number of trans women (it used to be much lower) — some people want to blame this on social contagion or grooming or whatever, but it seems like there are other possible explanations. The number of diagnosed autistic girls/women has also gone up a lot recently. Again, maybe this is due to tylenol or grooming or something, but also maybe it is due to some other cause, such as diagnostic criteria being gender biased.
I don’t think autism or gender dysphoria are perfectly understood. I’m skeptical of people making definitive claims about either topic based on the current research. But from what I am aware, the main reason research into this kind of thing gets shut down is because right wing governments (such as the current US government) hate research being done… I could stop the sentence there, but they especially dislike research into things they would rather see “eradicated,” and so they defund it.
I disagree but this will probably lead into a broader argument about bigotry and whether it makes sense to use a purely academic egalitarian standard or not.
Just to clarify…
It sounds to me like the laws you are discussing are about establishing rights for trans people. These laws are controversial, so it’s fine that if you dislike trans people and don’t think they are real and/or don’t deserve those rights, you would be against those laws. And you could even say the laws are being “pushed” since that’s what you do with laws I suppose. I broadly think these laws are good, you think they’re bad, cool, understood.
But you haven’t demonstrated at all that these laws are being “pushed” specifically by “people obviously bigoted against cis people” — you claim these people exist above, but you did not connect them to the laws at all. But originally this was a linked claim you made. The laws and changes to speech were being pushed by that group, specifically.
Can you let me know where this was done? I’m wondering if it is literally exactly as you say here, or if there is more context. I’m not too familiar offhand with laws outside the USA.
Yeah, but these two things are basically synonymous in this situation.
Do you think in the past there was nobody who was like… “What do you mean I can’t call them wetbacks? It’s a descriptive name because they crossed a river. The government literally called the big push to get rid of them Operation Wetback and now I can’t say that just because it hurts some feelings? I don’t care about feelings, I care about being truthful.”
Also a pretty famously offensive slur is directly derived from a simple skin color descriptive word (in a non-English language). So why should people stop using that just because it hurts some feelings?
“I am just a truth-teller, if you don’t like it that’s your problem” is a very standard defense whenever a bigoted person is told that their language is cruel or hurtful.
There’s something kinda funny that is loosely related to this topic IMO. This is my own potentially controversial aside: “facts don’t care about your feelings” is a rightwing/conservative catchphrase related to our current discussion, but as far as I can tell right now the right in America is overwhelmingly the tribe that is motivated entirely by feelings and not at all by facts. Hence why they e.g. run cover for bad stuff Trump says/does, because it feels good to see him trigger the libs or whatever.
I think you are the one that compared most to many. I said most, and in your direct reply you said many. Reposting:
See? Or did you mean something else? I think I just assumed you meant them to be comparable and tried not to sweat the slight change of framing.
I did think initially that “completely identical in every way to AFAB cis women” was basically comparable to “HRT turns you biologically into a woman” to you, because if you recognized the subtle distinctions then it made even less sense to me to call the claim insane.
HRT changes many biological characteristics to be in alignment to the ones that AFAB cis women have, so depending on what one means “HRT turns you biologically into a woman” it could be straightforwardly true or it could be controversial but still not “insane.”
If you think I am doing any of that stuff, feel free to mention it. I probably use weasel words sometimes; “weasel words” are like a negatively connotated type of hedging. Generally, if the hedging seems to be an attempt to obfuscate or be defensive, rather than simply clarify/constrain a claim. I definitely hedge a lot! It would not surprise me if you felt some examples of hedging were weasel words, and it might be useful to know which ones came across that way.
It implies they agree that there are approximately 2 types of sex characteristics, yeah. I do think I could get most trans people to say that explicitly, sure. A fundamental part of being trans is wanting to change your sex characteristics.
Sure, that’s plausible. People are inconsistent. Also, sometimes people can misunderstand someone else and think they’re being inconsistent when they are actually not, e.g. if they are discussing two nuanced related things that are different in subtle ways.
Okay. These are much shorter than the one you shared before, so it’s hard to judge them accurately. They might be dumb or they might be alluding to the nuanced differences the nyara tweet talked about in a less explicit way. I dunno. Would not be surprised if some of them are just dumb and overstating things because they are radicals.
Yeah I’m not overly concerned about this. I don’t mind terms like “biological woman” per se. Though I do think it is a bit conspicuous that gender critical people will consistently go through extra steps to resist using terms like “cis woman.” It makes any term they do use automatically kind of suspect, like they are contriving alternate terms in order to be performatively cruel towards trans people. So I understand why people who are more sensitive than me find that upsetting and have a bad association with any term they perceive as coming from TERFs.
I think you just misunderstood me. I probably wasn’t clear.
Right, he fights with right wing creators a lot now. He did not used to, e.g. I think he and Sargon used to mutually consider each other friends, not just allies or friendly acquaintances.
It’s not that he isn’t particularly right wing or left wing. He is a conservative leaning liberal; those are his words, and I think they’re accurate. That used to mean he fought with radical online far lefties and allied himself with a wide range of conservative-leaning people. But then conservatives went completely off the fucking rails, and he didn’t go with them. That is why he “was left with an audience of mostly stupid far right bigots” — he had alienated most farther left people already by being somewhat conservative, and now he is alienating all of the conservative people who (unlike him) stuck with their tribe and are now completely illiberal.
As far as I know his only remaining allies in online spaces are less radical left leaning liberals, which is a pretty small and often beleaguered or fracturing demographic in places like YouTube (despite being one of the two major political factions in the USA).
It’s not that he still treats the far-right as a threat. He used to not pay much attention to the far right, but now he recognizes that they are a threat. And not just a threat, but the major threat at this time. I think I somehow gave the opposite impression of what I intended before, sorry.
Okay. I would say that “woman” as a complex multi-faceted social role goes back at least as far as the beginning of recorded human history. My guess is it goes further than that, but I’m less confident about the specifics once you are talking about a period without any surviving written word or meaningful anthropological evidence.
Imagine we discover an alien species. During its reproductive cycle, this alien species encases fertilized embryos in an organic, self contained structure. Inside these structures, the embryos are protected from many typical dangers and are nourished by the organic material that was encased with them. Eventually, the embryo grows beyond the confines of the structure and breaks free as a newborn infant.
If we called those alien structures “eggs” is that pushing a new linguistic thing? It is an existing word being applied in a new way, to a new thing that did not exist when the word originated. But it is, as far as we can tell, the closest existing linguistic descriptor for what we’re seeing.
Of course in reality we call way less analogous stuff than what I just described *“*eggs,” as long as they roughly map onto some basic egg markers. Using they/them, which already served as a singular non-gendered pronoun, for a new category of people who do not want to be referred to by gendered pronouns is at least as logical as all the stuff we call “eggs.”
How so? It seems to reduce ambiguity, unless you just consider the existence of people who don’t want to be referred to by gendered pronouns to inherently introduce ambiguity. But that’s a different claim unrelated to linguistics, right?
(Note: copying just one numbered item changes the number to a bullet, in this quote and all the next ones. I am manually adding in the numbers.)
It’s a new application of an existing word, fitting the existing word’s existing use case quite closely.
I agree lots of right wing people now deny that they/them is ever singular, which is pretty odd.
So you’re saying you would prefer a neopronoun? I generally agree. I think they/them is linguistically kind of annoying/cumbersome when writing in some instances. A popular and widely adopted neopronoun would be great. Do you think trans people would generally disagree with us? I think they settled on they/them because they were trying to appease transphobes and trans-skeptical people with the path of least resistance, since they/them was already a gender neutral singular pronoun.
Not denying this may happen, but I am curious if you are thinking exclusively of people who explicitly say they are doing this? Or are you also lumping in people who you perceive to clearly fit one gender/sex/role and assuming they are doing it in solidarity?
Changing gender expression can be difficult. If you are e.g. AFAB with large breasts, then no matter what else you do you will generally be seen as obviously presenting as femme/a woman/female/etc. And if you say you want to use they/them pronouns people will probably assume you are doing it in solidarity or for political reasons or as a trend or whatever. But really it may just be that you have breasts and you have not yet or do not want to have them surgically removed.
Yeah, I agree that the politicization of pronouns is really lame. I wish politics wasn’t forced into the discussion.
I’m not sure I have the energy to try to explain social roles to you, but I’m going to try. I may make a second post to tackle this section specifically.
Do you think that a woman in knight’s armor who bound her breasts, went by a masculine name with a male honorific like “Sir” or similar, wore men’s clothes when out of armor, etc… would also still have been called a woman?
I think they would call her a man, unless/until they discovered her secondary sex characteristics such as breasts or vulva, at which point they would probably try to execute her or put her in a nunnery or something. There are a few historic cases of this.
Just to clarify, there can be multiple simultaneous social roles. There are many different roles associated with “woman” and “man” depending on context in any situation.
Many markers we have for identifying someone’s gender (or sex!) in social contexts involve conforming to various social roles.
A short list of examples: What style of clothes are they wearing? Are they wearing makeup? Do they have softer features? How long is their hair and how is it styled? Do they have facial hair? Do they have body hair? How tall are they? How are their fat deposits distributed? Do they have discernible breasts? Do they have an identifiable bulge?
These often involve, to various degrees, performing social roles associated with a gender or sex.
Yeah, many gendered roles involve sexism. They might involve sexism actively, or they may have involved sexism at some point in the history of the role.
Why would gendered roles presuppose something immutable about the sexes?
I think you are begging the question by dismissing gendered social roles as irrelevant, because you are starting with the premise that trans women aren’t women and only AFAB cis women are women.
Presumably you would go further and say you don’t think that having breasts makes you a woman, or having a vulva makes you a woman, right? Because trans women can get “fake” versions of these?
At a certain point we are left asking… what, in your estimation, does make someone a woman? Since it’s none of the normal markers or roles that have been used throughout history. Last time we discussed this I think you said something about gametes but not gametes themselves? Like they were “oriented around” a type of gamete or something? I forget the exact phrasing but I think I explained that it was a motte-and-bailey and never got any argument that it was not a motte-and-bailey. Regardless, I didn’t find it convincing.
But it’s a tough question to answer without something like that. The more gendered roles you dismiss, the more you run out of stuff to use to delineate “real” women from people who are just “imitating.”
Why would you ever need this collective noun outside of some clinical edge case?
Presumably because you find trans people distasteful and think they are faking/imitating, and you want a good word that clearly excludes them? So I guess you should just use “women” or “ladies” or whatever, and then you can clarify that you don’t consider trans-identified-males to be women?
You could just continue to do that, unless you find it important to explicitly exclude trans people. At which point, you should openly do that instead of these contortions.
How so? Unpack this a bit more.
No problem. Though I originally did say (inline notes added in bold) :
I said I would use gender critical, because it is the term gender critical people use for themselves. And then when I said if I was going to use a “negative term” then I would skip it, that is implied to be referring to the 2 terms I just spent a few paragraphs explaining why they were negative; TERF and TRA. I never implied gender critical was a negative term.
I think it makes sense.
It sounds to me like you may have gone from one form of radicalism to another after having a bad experience. Or maybe you were/are not radical, but you have a tendency to surround yourself with radicals by accident?
In my youth I was more far left and was involved in multiple protests and neither I nor any of the people I associated with got violent with police. I also did not advocate for oppressive social control. Then I became more right wing and participated in a couple of protests/events and still never got violent with police, or advocated for oppressive social control. Now I guess I’m more left again somehow, and I still don’t hang out with people who get violent or advocate for oppressive policies.
It is noteworthy to me that you were lefty before, and now have switched tribes so thoroughly. But this might make more sense to pause here and discuss (where relevant) in the politics megathread.