"1) You mentioned race first (and I'll bet you shot Greedo first, too!)
2) That's where I felt you kind of blew it not understanding Eve's point - she wasn't being super-rude or blindingly clueless - and she did make an argument I 'get', even if I'm not sure how I think about it."
1) Again, I didn't mention race, I mentioned the colour of …
"1) You mentioned race first (and I'll bet you shot Greedo first, too!)
2) That's where I felt you kind of blew it not understanding Eve's point - she wasn't being super-rude or blindingly clueless - and she did make an argument I 'get', even if I'm not sure how I think about it."
1) Again, I didn't mention race, I mentioned the colour of my skin because it's an objective fact. I wasn't making a racial argument at all. I could have mentioned the colour of oranges instead, but I wouldn't have been "dragging" agriculture into it. I *did* mention coin flips, but I wasn't "dragging" economics into it.
2) Caster Semenya can't be "stripped of her femaleness." She either is female or she isn't. The issue is that Caster Semenya may well not be female. But regardless, that's not the argument that Eve was making. Eve was claiming Caster had been stripped of her *womanhood*. Something which I have absolutely never done and was crystal clear during the conversation that I would never do.
But again, it's something that could only possibly happen to the roughly 0.1% of people who are intersex males who grew up believing they were females and were tested in such a way where they discovered they weren't. This isn't a threat to "every single woman on Earth." It's absolutely ridiculous to claim that it is.
So yes, her argument *was* blindingly clueless, and also blindingly racist. Because she compared trans women, who are not female, to black people, as if to suggest that we're not people. While I'm a little disturbed that you "get" that argument, I realise that you do so in good-faith. Which is why I'm trying to get you to think about it a little more.
Anyway here's the article. In which, it's worth noting, I don't even mention Caster Semenya😅
At this point, you're just arguing about semantics. 'Skin colour' IS race and I see why she thought you were pulling race into it. Not necessarily how she overreacted, but I do think you introduced the topic first. As for 'womanhood', I suspect that's just how Eve defines it, and at least for the purpose of competitive sports, there's kind of an argument to be made for it. She may be worried about a 'slippery slope' here which is not unrealistic given that we're being told that guys like Lia Thomas is a 'woman' after a few hormone injections and a declaration, not to mention a widespread belief in the left that if that's how you 'feel', that's how you are (unless you 'feel' like you're another race, like Rachel Dolezal). Good article, and ironically I just read the Sports Illustrated story about Thomas (he's a him, let's face it) and how he seemed to be 'throwing' the occasional race to make himself look less of a rank pretender and a cheater. Your idea is a good one, I've been thinking for years that at this point, there are enough people declaring themselves trans that we should just create a third category for 'other'. Let the transwomen compete against each other, and the transmen the same. Everyone stays in competitive sports, women's sports remain protected, and the only people who lose are transwomen who weren't good enough to win medals when competing against men :)
"At this point, you're just arguing about semantics. 'Skin colour' IS race."
No, I'm really not. And this is really centrally important to understanding how stupid racism is. By the logic you're suggesting here, I'm the same "race" as everybody else on Earth who has brown skin. This is pretty silly on its face. But we can go further.
What degree of skin tone variation do we need before somebody is a different race? Chocolate to Black Coffee? Cappuccino to caramel? Somewhere in between? If I have a child with an Asian woman, or even a black woman from a different part of the world (as my parents did) what "race" are they?
Are you the same race as everybody in the world with white skin? If so, what does that mean you have in common? Just melanin content? Or something else?
Do you believe you all have a common ancestor that is different to the common ancestor of all people with brown skin? If we adopt the "five race" model of races, do you believe that Asians and Africans and Europeans and Native Americans and Oceanian all came from different original human beings? And even if you *do* believe that, given the amount of "racial" mixing that's taken place since then, what does that mean for the concept of race today?
Please think about these questions seriously. I'm not being glib. It's not a gotcha. So many people have bought into the lie of race because we don't tease apart these ideas enough.
And all that aside, I'm still not sure why you are so fixated on who bought race into the conversation "first". Let's ignore the race/skin colour debate. Let's say I explicitly mentioned race first. So what? My problem isn't that she mentioned race, my problem is that her argument is *racist*.
Lastly, what is the argument to be made for Eve's version of womanhood? How can a woman (in the good old fashioned sense of the word) be stripped of her womanhood? What's the slippery slope? Because remember, Eve isn't arguing to defend womanhood as it's existed since time immemorial, she is one of the people arguing that womanhood is "a few hormone injections and a declaration."
"1) You mentioned race first (and I'll bet you shot Greedo first, too!)
2) That's where I felt you kind of blew it not understanding Eve's point - she wasn't being super-rude or blindingly clueless - and she did make an argument I 'get', even if I'm not sure how I think about it."
1) Again, I didn't mention race, I mentioned the colour of my skin because it's an objective fact. I wasn't making a racial argument at all. I could have mentioned the colour of oranges instead, but I wouldn't have been "dragging" agriculture into it. I *did* mention coin flips, but I wasn't "dragging" economics into it.
2) Caster Semenya can't be "stripped of her femaleness." She either is female or she isn't. The issue is that Caster Semenya may well not be female. But regardless, that's not the argument that Eve was making. Eve was claiming Caster had been stripped of her *womanhood*. Something which I have absolutely never done and was crystal clear during the conversation that I would never do.
But again, it's something that could only possibly happen to the roughly 0.1% of people who are intersex males who grew up believing they were females and were tested in such a way where they discovered they weren't. This isn't a threat to "every single woman on Earth." It's absolutely ridiculous to claim that it is.
So yes, her argument *was* blindingly clueless, and also blindingly racist. Because she compared trans women, who are not female, to black people, as if to suggest that we're not people. While I'm a little disturbed that you "get" that argument, I realise that you do so in good-faith. Which is why I'm trying to get you to think about it a little more.
Anyway here's the article. In which, it's worth noting, I don't even mention Caster Semenya😅
https://steveqj.medium.com/the-endangered-art-of-running-like-a-girl-83c636cffdda?sk=a16709b88a787c9757d0b12eb1cc04c7
p.s. Greedo had it coming.
At this point, you're just arguing about semantics. 'Skin colour' IS race and I see why she thought you were pulling race into it. Not necessarily how she overreacted, but I do think you introduced the topic first. As for 'womanhood', I suspect that's just how Eve defines it, and at least for the purpose of competitive sports, there's kind of an argument to be made for it. She may be worried about a 'slippery slope' here which is not unrealistic given that we're being told that guys like Lia Thomas is a 'woman' after a few hormone injections and a declaration, not to mention a widespread belief in the left that if that's how you 'feel', that's how you are (unless you 'feel' like you're another race, like Rachel Dolezal). Good article, and ironically I just read the Sports Illustrated story about Thomas (he's a him, let's face it) and how he seemed to be 'throwing' the occasional race to make himself look less of a rank pretender and a cheater. Your idea is a good one, I've been thinking for years that at this point, there are enough people declaring themselves trans that we should just create a third category for 'other'. Let the transwomen compete against each other, and the transmen the same. Everyone stays in competitive sports, women's sports remain protected, and the only people who lose are transwomen who weren't good enough to win medals when competing against men :)
"At this point, you're just arguing about semantics. 'Skin colour' IS race."
No, I'm really not. And this is really centrally important to understanding how stupid racism is. By the logic you're suggesting here, I'm the same "race" as everybody else on Earth who has brown skin. This is pretty silly on its face. But we can go further.
What degree of skin tone variation do we need before somebody is a different race? Chocolate to Black Coffee? Cappuccino to caramel? Somewhere in between? If I have a child with an Asian woman, or even a black woman from a different part of the world (as my parents did) what "race" are they?
Are you the same race as everybody in the world with white skin? If so, what does that mean you have in common? Just melanin content? Or something else?
Do you believe you all have a common ancestor that is different to the common ancestor of all people with brown skin? If we adopt the "five race" model of races, do you believe that Asians and Africans and Europeans and Native Americans and Oceanian all came from different original human beings? And even if you *do* believe that, given the amount of "racial" mixing that's taken place since then, what does that mean for the concept of race today?
Please think about these questions seriously. I'm not being glib. It's not a gotcha. So many people have bought into the lie of race because we don't tease apart these ideas enough.
And all that aside, I'm still not sure why you are so fixated on who bought race into the conversation "first". Let's ignore the race/skin colour debate. Let's say I explicitly mentioned race first. So what? My problem isn't that she mentioned race, my problem is that her argument is *racist*.
Lastly, what is the argument to be made for Eve's version of womanhood? How can a woman (in the good old fashioned sense of the word) be stripped of her womanhood? What's the slippery slope? Because remember, Eve isn't arguing to defend womanhood as it's existed since time immemorial, she is one of the people arguing that womanhood is "a few hormone injections and a declaration."