I don’t love beating on the far left or far right.
A trans-woman is dealing with incongruity in their (avoiding her or his) life. Similar to how I as a gay man am dealing with incongruity in my sexuality versus the goal of my sexuality from a societal and maybe more significantly evolutionary…
I don’t love beating on the far left or far right.
A trans-woman is dealing with incongruity in their (avoiding her or his) life. Similar to how I as a gay man am dealing with incongruity in my sexuality versus the goal of my sexuality from a societal and maybe more significantly evolutionary perspective.
Understanding what it meant for me to actively be gay took 40 years. Why? Because I look at life as something more than my innate sexuality versus my biologically driven goal for my sexuality. How does actively being gay create meaning in my life!
Trans-people who care about meaning in life versus some simple self serving goal will struggle with the same issue.
Maybe the better discussion is not about whether the word woman is understood by a trans-woman. Maybe it’s about how trans-woman are just trying to sort themselves out.
The large majority that is neither trans or gay or any other letter on the LGBTQ+ spectrum doesn’t have to think about that. The bottom line is that the normal majority are pushing hard to claim the word woman without considering the challenges of a trans person.
The dialogue you site and the bottom line you’re driving toward certainly seem to imply that!
"The bottom line is that the normal majority are pushing hard to claim the word woman without considering the challenges of a trans person."
Nope, you have this almost perfectly backwards. Trans women are pushing hard to claim the word woman without considering the challenges or simply the realities of being a woman.
Women came first.
I have no doubt that trans women have to struggle to "sort themselves out." And I fully acknowledge that I don't know what that's like. But that in no way gives them the right to appropriate somebody else's identity. If a white person decides they don't feel white, well, that's nothing to do with me. But if they demand to be described, legally and socially, as black, I think black people will take issue with that.
A trans woman who is trying to "sort themselves out" starts that process being described as a boy or a man. Because that's what we've called male human beings since the dawn of language. During that process, they may decide they prefer to be referred to as a trans woman. Okay, great, trans women are trans women. This is factually and uncontroversially true. But the word woman is already taken. And it's taken by a group of people who face their own unique challenges.
The word woman as an identity is certainly being fought over. I have a hard time thinking that the minority can really claim a word if the majority pushed back. I'm not disagreeing with the way you feel about it, I'm just looking at it in all practicality. The majority is already unraveling any adoption by the "politically correct" crowd on the word woman. The bud light backlash is certainly proof of that.
Its no different than the word marriage. Many gays wanted the term marriage as an identity. Aside from the identity, civil unions wouldn't work legally. There are too many laws and case law that is attached to the word marriage that doesn't exist for civil unions.
The same legal issues are in all practicality true for the word woman with a trans-woman and for that matter a trans-man. Where are trans people supposed to go to the bathroom without putting themselves in legal jeopardy by being the wrong sex in the bathroom?
The absolute on the use of the word woman (and man) totally ignores the legal issues that trans-people have.
My conclusion is that the vocal left has created more of a problem for the trans community by wanting to claim the words woman and man. They will not succeed and have created a backlash. There was nothing to be gained by getting into a war with JK Rowling about the word woman. Would have been much more productive had they engaged JK Rowling and come up with a win-win solution.
It's very different. Marriage is an institution, or a social construct, as the kids like to say. Women are people.
Gay marriage doesn't infringe on anybody else's marriage. If we all decided tomorrow that animals can get married, everybody else would remain exactly as married as they were before. As long as you don't downgrade the legal status and rights of married people, it makes no practical difference. So objections to the change were based purely on what people thought the man in the sky might think.
But women's rights are based on practical, physical realities related to being female. If you change the definition of "woman" to include men, you necessarily infringe on the rights and safety of women.
And yes, I've said many times that trans women are women was an insane and self-sabotaging hill to die on. A legal compromise that allowed trans women to use certain women's spaces had already been found. It was the trans lobby that spent the last years demolishing all those safeguards, ignoring the negative consequences they created.
So now, sadly but unsurprisingly, people are less willing to compromise.
I’m not aware of any compromise on the legal issues of using a bathroom that doesn’t align with biological sex.
There are no explicit laws making it illegal but there are many implicit laws. It could be considered sexual harassment (eg exposing oneself), could be considered disturbing the peace. Bottom line, trans people are at the mercy of others on the restroom.
Is gay marriage similar. Absolutely. There are many legal issues that are clarified by being married? Does gay marriage infringe on others rights? That’s proven thru the legal issues that have already been litigated. Is a religious person required to acknowledge gay marriage?
It comes down to whether the majority will make concessions for a minority. The issues are complex because the majority has to relinquish some of their “normality” to support the minority.
In the case of “woman” from a legal perspective, not an identity perspective, Rowling as an example is concerned about trans-woman in woman’s rest rooms. Riley is concerned about trans-woman in woman’s sports. Str8 men are concerned about flirting with someone who is a trans-woman (a.l.a. The song Lola).
The challenge is making it about “identity” versus just clarity on whether the majority is willing to adapt. Especially on the basic practical issues of life!
"I’m not aware of any compromise on the legal issues of using a bathroom that doesn’t align with biological sex."
Haven't you asked yourself why, after transsexual people have been a thing for decades, trans inclusion is suddenly this huge issue? It's not because straight men are worried about flirting with trans women. It's because of self ID.
JK Rowling never said a single word about trans inclusion before the Scottish government tried to make self ID the law of the land. Trans people in sport was a non-issue except in a very few isolated cases, most of which involved intersex people, not trans people. The "trans women are women" mantra coincided with calls for self ID.
The compromise was that there was a meaningful process for legal recognition of your transition that made it much harder men with bad intentions to masquerade as trans women. You had to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, you spent time with a therapist, you spent time "living as the opposite gender" and then your transition was legally recognised.
While this was the process, almost nobody had an issue with trans inclusion, and those who did were easily classified as bigots.
Fast forward to 2020 or so, and trans activists have dismantled all of those safeguards with cry bullying and disingenuous references to "conversion therapy". To such an extent that we see male rapists claim to be trans IN THE MIDDLE OF THEIR TRIAL FOR RAPE and get transferred to female prisons once they're convicted. We see businesses terrified to prevent men from getting naked in communal female changing rooms alongside women and girls if they utter the magic words, "I identify as a woman."
Children as young as twelve are having their breasts cut off because apparently it's transphobic to ask a child who suddenly wants to denounce their sex as they start going through puberty (often with some other sexual trauma or mental illness thrown into the mix) whether they're sure they want to commit to a lifetime of medicalisation and infertility.
So it's not so much about whether the majority will make concessions for the minority, it's whether the concessions the minority are asking for are reasonable or even sane. It's whether those concessions will negatively impact far more people than are *in* the minority. And it's about whether another group (women), who may be large but are still vulnerable to male violence, deserve to have their rights taken seriously too.
Long after WWII you could see concentration camp tattoos on elderly Jews in areas like New York City. A jeweler would reach into a case, his sleeve would pull up, tattooed numbers.
Years from now there will be victims of the "trans" cult, mutilated men and women, the majority of them in regret for the remainder of their shortened lives.
Love the analogy on str8 v gay and woman b man.
I don’t love beating on the far left or far right.
A trans-woman is dealing with incongruity in their (avoiding her or his) life. Similar to how I as a gay man am dealing with incongruity in my sexuality versus the goal of my sexuality from a societal and maybe more significantly evolutionary perspective.
Understanding what it meant for me to actively be gay took 40 years. Why? Because I look at life as something more than my innate sexuality versus my biologically driven goal for my sexuality. How does actively being gay create meaning in my life!
Trans-people who care about meaning in life versus some simple self serving goal will struggle with the same issue.
Maybe the better discussion is not about whether the word woman is understood by a trans-woman. Maybe it’s about how trans-woman are just trying to sort themselves out.
The large majority that is neither trans or gay or any other letter on the LGBTQ+ spectrum doesn’t have to think about that. The bottom line is that the normal majority are pushing hard to claim the word woman without considering the challenges of a trans person.
The dialogue you site and the bottom line you’re driving toward certainly seem to imply that!
"The bottom line is that the normal majority are pushing hard to claim the word woman without considering the challenges of a trans person."
Nope, you have this almost perfectly backwards. Trans women are pushing hard to claim the word woman without considering the challenges or simply the realities of being a woman.
Women came first.
I have no doubt that trans women have to struggle to "sort themselves out." And I fully acknowledge that I don't know what that's like. But that in no way gives them the right to appropriate somebody else's identity. If a white person decides they don't feel white, well, that's nothing to do with me. But if they demand to be described, legally and socially, as black, I think black people will take issue with that.
A trans woman who is trying to "sort themselves out" starts that process being described as a boy or a man. Because that's what we've called male human beings since the dawn of language. During that process, they may decide they prefer to be referred to as a trans woman. Okay, great, trans women are trans women. This is factually and uncontroversially true. But the word woman is already taken. And it's taken by a group of people who face their own unique challenges.
The word woman as an identity is certainly being fought over. I have a hard time thinking that the minority can really claim a word if the majority pushed back. I'm not disagreeing with the way you feel about it, I'm just looking at it in all practicality. The majority is already unraveling any adoption by the "politically correct" crowd on the word woman. The bud light backlash is certainly proof of that.
Its no different than the word marriage. Many gays wanted the term marriage as an identity. Aside from the identity, civil unions wouldn't work legally. There are too many laws and case law that is attached to the word marriage that doesn't exist for civil unions.
The same legal issues are in all practicality true for the word woman with a trans-woman and for that matter a trans-man. Where are trans people supposed to go to the bathroom without putting themselves in legal jeopardy by being the wrong sex in the bathroom?
The absolute on the use of the word woman (and man) totally ignores the legal issues that trans-people have.
My conclusion is that the vocal left has created more of a problem for the trans community by wanting to claim the words woman and man. They will not succeed and have created a backlash. There was nothing to be gained by getting into a war with JK Rowling about the word woman. Would have been much more productive had they engaged JK Rowling and come up with a win-win solution.
"Its no different than the word marriage."
It's very different. Marriage is an institution, or a social construct, as the kids like to say. Women are people.
Gay marriage doesn't infringe on anybody else's marriage. If we all decided tomorrow that animals can get married, everybody else would remain exactly as married as they were before. As long as you don't downgrade the legal status and rights of married people, it makes no practical difference. So objections to the change were based purely on what people thought the man in the sky might think.
But women's rights are based on practical, physical realities related to being female. If you change the definition of "woman" to include men, you necessarily infringe on the rights and safety of women.
And yes, I've said many times that trans women are women was an insane and self-sabotaging hill to die on. A legal compromise that allowed trans women to use certain women's spaces had already been found. It was the trans lobby that spent the last years demolishing all those safeguards, ignoring the negative consequences they created.
So now, sadly but unsurprisingly, people are less willing to compromise.
I’m not aware of any compromise on the legal issues of using a bathroom that doesn’t align with biological sex.
There are no explicit laws making it illegal but there are many implicit laws. It could be considered sexual harassment (eg exposing oneself), could be considered disturbing the peace. Bottom line, trans people are at the mercy of others on the restroom.
Is gay marriage similar. Absolutely. There are many legal issues that are clarified by being married? Does gay marriage infringe on others rights? That’s proven thru the legal issues that have already been litigated. Is a religious person required to acknowledge gay marriage?
It comes down to whether the majority will make concessions for a minority. The issues are complex because the majority has to relinquish some of their “normality” to support the minority.
In the case of “woman” from a legal perspective, not an identity perspective, Rowling as an example is concerned about trans-woman in woman’s rest rooms. Riley is concerned about trans-woman in woman’s sports. Str8 men are concerned about flirting with someone who is a trans-woman (a.l.a. The song Lola).
The challenge is making it about “identity” versus just clarity on whether the majority is willing to adapt. Especially on the basic practical issues of life!
"I’m not aware of any compromise on the legal issues of using a bathroom that doesn’t align with biological sex."
Haven't you asked yourself why, after transsexual people have been a thing for decades, trans inclusion is suddenly this huge issue? It's not because straight men are worried about flirting with trans women. It's because of self ID.
JK Rowling never said a single word about trans inclusion before the Scottish government tried to make self ID the law of the land. Trans people in sport was a non-issue except in a very few isolated cases, most of which involved intersex people, not trans people. The "trans women are women" mantra coincided with calls for self ID.
The compromise was that there was a meaningful process for legal recognition of your transition that made it much harder men with bad intentions to masquerade as trans women. You had to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, you spent time with a therapist, you spent time "living as the opposite gender" and then your transition was legally recognised.
While this was the process, almost nobody had an issue with trans inclusion, and those who did were easily classified as bigots.
Fast forward to 2020 or so, and trans activists have dismantled all of those safeguards with cry bullying and disingenuous references to "conversion therapy". To such an extent that we see male rapists claim to be trans IN THE MIDDLE OF THEIR TRIAL FOR RAPE and get transferred to female prisons once they're convicted. We see businesses terrified to prevent men from getting naked in communal female changing rooms alongside women and girls if they utter the magic words, "I identify as a woman."
Children as young as twelve are having their breasts cut off because apparently it's transphobic to ask a child who suddenly wants to denounce their sex as they start going through puberty (often with some other sexual trauma or mental illness thrown into the mix) whether they're sure they want to commit to a lifetime of medicalisation and infertility.
So it's not so much about whether the majority will make concessions for the minority, it's whether the concessions the minority are asking for are reasonable or even sane. It's whether those concessions will negatively impact far more people than are *in* the minority. And it's about whether another group (women), who may be large but are still vulnerable to male violence, deserve to have their rights taken seriously too.
Long after WWII you could see concentration camp tattoos on elderly Jews in areas like New York City. A jeweler would reach into a case, his sleeve would pull up, tattooed numbers.
Years from now there will be victims of the "trans" cult, mutilated men and women, the majority of them in regret for the remainder of their shortened lives.
It just won't be tattoos.