You are talking past (versus at) Peaceful Dave. No one on this substack is saying sincere (versus malicious) trans people do not exist, yet you keep asking for that acknowledgement.
People are making valid points that also are statistically valid about trans people, yet somehow you are suggesting that "no true trans person" (no true scots…
You are talking past (versus at) Peaceful Dave. No one on this substack is saying sincere (versus malicious) trans people do not exist, yet you keep asking for that acknowledgement.
People are making valid points that also are statistically valid about trans people, yet somehow you are suggesting that "no true trans person" (no true scotsman argument) would do them. You also seek constant validation that true transpeople exist, despite no one on this substack claiming that sincere transpeople do exist. THEY EXIST! Let that soak in. Was that satisfying?
People are making points that, even where every trans person involved is assumed to be sincere, that infringements on the rights of others is being requested. This is one of the few places where they can openly discuss that without ad hominem attacks.
Yes, sincere trans people are real, and apparently no one is opposing you on that. I suggest you move on to related topics:
1 How distinguishing sincere trans from malicious trans is possible/practical in the real world,
2 How to address the righteous/reasonable demands of trans that are not being met today, while balancing everyone's rights (not removing some for others).
There are men who sincerely believe that they are God's gift to women and that women will realize that if those women would just "cuddle" (euphemism) with them. Does that mean that women should be compelled to "cuddle" with those sincere men, because then they will experience the wonders of God's gift? I don't think so!
Same with men who sincerely believe that they are women. That does not mean that girls and women should be compelled to share female single-sex spaces with those men, or that those men should be allowed to compete in athletics as if they were in fact female. It does not matter that some women may not mind having males in female spaces. No woman can give consent on behalf of other women. Women who have no problem being with men in restrooms should go use the men's restrooms. (I am not actually approving of women accessing men's spaces. Just making a point about no woman can waive other women's rights to privacy and safety.)
Don't try to put words in my mouth. I have not denied that there are legitimate gender dysphoric and abnormal chromosome people. But gender fluid, non-binary and phony for bad reasons is not gender-dysphoria where someone ALWAYS feels that they are the sex opposite their plumbing. As you wrote easy to distinguish with those tells. Words have meaning.
I have no idea how to balance rights that infringe upon the rights of others. That's why we are having this discussion.
All "abnormal chromosome people" are either male or female. "Aneuploidy" is an abnormality in the number of chromosomes in a cell due to loss or duplication. In humans, aneuploidy would be any number of chromosomes other than the usual 46. Any individual with the SRY gene, which enables the formation of testes, is male. The SRY gene is almost always found on the Y chromosome, so the shorthand way of saying how a male can be identified is to say that any individual with a Y chromosome is male. In very rare cases, the SRY gene will have migrated to and be found on the X chromosome which every male has. This is a great resource for understanding what sex is, how it is determined, and what Disorders of Sexual Development are: https://theparadoxinstitute.com
How do we balance the rights of men who "feel" they want to have sex with a woman with the rights of women who do not want to have sex with those men? We have criminal and civil laws and penalties against non-consensual sex.
That's the answer to how to treat individuals who "ALWAYS feel that they are the sex opposite their plumbing." They are objectively, materially, NOT female, no matter how they feel, and should not be treated as if they were female, no matter how they feel.
"No one on this substack is saying sincere (versus malicious trans people do not exist"????????
Steve made this explicit statement in his original post: "They(i.e. the trans community) shared none of the concerns that sane men and women felt about rapists and perverts in women’s spaces."
I guess I did some interpretation but it suspiciously seems to align with my statement implying that all trans-woman are malicious men.
Even Steve replying to the state above with
"Not necessarily, of course not. I've never said it does. But it *does*, 100% of the time, equal man"
Seems to imply that assume a trans-woman is a malicious man until proven otherwise.
That makes life extremely difficult for a trans-woman.
Yes its a complicated discussion now that the trans issue is out in the open.
I read an article by a trans-woman. They made an interesting statement.
"They feel more comfortable using a woman's bathroom in a rural Iowa town than they do in San Francisco". Why? Because in the rural Iowa town, very few people have trans on their mind. They just view the person as a woman. Because, like Sarah McBride, they look like a woman. Why would other woman even question it.
"Seems to imply that assume a trans-woman is a malicious man until proven otherwise."
This is absolutely ridiculous. Even for you.
And I clearly state, just above the paragraph that you disingenuously quoted, that I'm talking about trans activists, not the trans community in general.
Danger in using the pronoun "They". I took it as the trans-community. I doubt the trans-activist community is aligned with rapists and perverts in woman's spaces.
Just you and I having a conversation on trans issues shows much the sides have squared off as either pro-trans (support everything the trans activists want) or anti-trans (trans-woman are impersonating women).
JK Rowling as far as I can tell is the only one that seems to be able to hold both a woman is XX chromosomes and a trans-person needs empathy at the same time.
"Because one of the most telling aspects of this debate is that trans activists have never shown any interest in placing any boundaries on the men who opt into the trans identity. They shared none of the concerns that sane men and women felt about rapists and perverts in women’s spaces."
If you lack the reading comprehension to understand who the "they" is referring to in the above paragraph, it's no wonder that you are so consistently, belligerently wrong.
You and I having a conversation is only ever frustrating because of your habit of using this kind of dishonest, motivated reasoning. I've had several very productive and pleasant conversations with people who disagree with me on this topic.
I'm having one right now on a different article, in fact.
You keep trying to fool yourself into believing that the friction in our conversations comes from the difficulty of the issues. No. It comes from your apparent inability to think coherently, learn, and absorb new information.
You fail to understand the difference between "opinion" (or worse, “feeling”) and "truth" and so you don't ever engage in the kind of critical thinking and self-examination that might make conversations valuable, whether or not we agreed. If I only ever wanted to speak with people who agree with me, I wouldn't bother engaging in the comments at all.
And no, Rowling is far from the only person who is capable of compassion for both groups.
In fact, after enduring years of abuse and threats, I'd say Rowling is noticeably LESS compassionate towards trans women than she once was. I'm sad to see it, but I can't blame her one bit.
Rowling and many of us are experiencing "compassion fatigue" (similar to "empathy fatigue") because of the increasingly vitriolic attacks on women who speak up for the sex-based rights of girls and women. She receives many threats that she will be raped and/or tortured and/or murdered if she keeps advocating for girls' and women's rights to single-sex spaces and pursuits like women's sports competitions. Of little to no concern to her, considering the continuing popularity of her books and movies based on them, are the threats to boycott those movies and books.
She now has to have 24/7 security guards wherever she goes, which was not the case prior to 2020, when she first started speaking up for girls' and women's sex-based rights. Members of her family have also received such threats and there have been attempts to assault Rowling that would have succeeded if she did not have security guards and police protection.
It's amusing to me how you need to resort to denigration of my intellectual abilities to somehow prove a position on what I write.
You have a very confronted style. I believe I have recommended this to you before but you might want to study the concept of epistemic humility. Its a philosophical concept about holding a strong opinion but still believing you might be wrong.
It is not denigration, it's the truth! After several of these conversations, I am admittedly more blunt about it than I otherwise would be, but only because my more gentle approaches over years have fallen on deaf ears.
Even here, on this article, I pointed to a clear example of you contradicting yourself within the space of a couple of paragraphs, demonstrated right here that you've failed to read a paragraph correctly, and you're repeating arguments that you've already used and had debunked in other conversations.
I don't know how else to say it. The only reason I've spent years and years talking to readers and engaging with disagreement is that I'm aware I might be wrong. If anything, it appears to be you who can't admit he's wrong. In fact, in your world, being wrong doesn't even seem possible. After all, you think we each have our own "truths."
The truth, for the purposes of this conversation, is an accurate representation of the facts based on evidence.
We do not have our own versions. Even this, you’ve repeated this nonsensical claim about us both having our own truths several times, but never engaged with the criticism of it.
Now you may be right. Maybe I’m wrong and everybody has their own pocket of reality. But I disagree, and I’ve explained why I disagree. But you don’t defend the claim, you just keep on mindlessly repeating it.
“Cultural concepts like trans issues have no absolutes”
You are describing feelings and opinions here. Not truths.
For example, the chief claim among trans women is that they “feel like women.” But it is not TRUE that they are women.
And when you ask them to define what they mean by feeling like women, they fall back on cultural stereotypes like liking wearing dresses and makeup. Which many women don’t do.
So in this case, being a woman is not their “truth,” it is at best a delusion and at worst a lie. And it is impossible to build a legal framework or a civil rights movement on that.
Good god man, I literally quoted the paragraph, IN FULL, at the top of one of my earlier replies. It’s the only paragraph we’ve talked about your interpretation of.
This is why I say it’s a waste of my time and energy engaging with you. It’s like talking to a particularly argumentative and belligerent goldfish.
These last comments have been helpful to break down assumed interpretations. I had a different interpretation than previously expressed ones to, "They(i.e. the trans community) shared none of the concerns that sane men and women felt about rapists and perverts in women’s spaces." My interpretation isn't about potential malicious trans.
My interpretation is that trans activists are making demands while denying/avoiding the obvious inherent risks of male bodies in female spaces. You, Rogue4Gay, seem to capture this by pointing out that, it isn't trans that are putting females at risk, but that it would be any male body. I hope I did not misunderstand you, but I agree.
The truth of ". . . shared none of the concerns. . . " suggests how severely limited and powerless requests by trans activists have been without acknowledging the impact to others.
More plainly, activists could gain tremendous credibility by simply stating, "Yes, transmen bring into any space risks that male bodies do, but that is okay, or that can be mitigated because <reasons>". Instead, activists completely deny it.
Trans activists cannot credibly expect empathy for their request when, almost universally, their method is to deny empathy for female bodies. People sense that empathy is being requested in only one direction, and it puts the trans activist on a moral low road, literally on the wrong side right from the start. Want empathy? Give empathy.
Activists would be wise to not make false equivalencies of male trans:females as slaves:slave owners, because that would imply that females are inherently in power and unrighteous over trans male bodies, and that idea is absurd.
Again, want empathy? Give empathy.
Acknowledging risks and making suggestions for handling fake/malicious/opportunistic trans (not real trans) would really help move the conversation forward. The activist drum beat of "transwomen are women" is interpreted by many/(most?) as a refusal by activists to embrace reality.
Reality? Male bodies are much more violent and, on average, capable of imposing harm on female bodies. Nobody has time for anybody that denies these facts, yet, "transwomen are women"?
I bet we can get closer to discussing real trans freedom while including protections from malicious trans and also male bodies. Honesty is a necessary in order to advance on this journey.
You are talking past (versus at) Peaceful Dave. No one on this substack is saying sincere (versus malicious) trans people do not exist, yet you keep asking for that acknowledgement.
People are making valid points that also are statistically valid about trans people, yet somehow you are suggesting that "no true trans person" (no true scotsman argument) would do them. You also seek constant validation that true transpeople exist, despite no one on this substack claiming that sincere transpeople do exist. THEY EXIST! Let that soak in. Was that satisfying?
People are making points that, even where every trans person involved is assumed to be sincere, that infringements on the rights of others is being requested. This is one of the few places where they can openly discuss that without ad hominem attacks.
Yes, sincere trans people are real, and apparently no one is opposing you on that. I suggest you move on to related topics:
1 How distinguishing sincere trans from malicious trans is possible/practical in the real world,
2 How to address the righteous/reasonable demands of trans that are not being met today, while balancing everyone's rights (not removing some for others).
There are men who sincerely believe that they are God's gift to women and that women will realize that if those women would just "cuddle" (euphemism) with them. Does that mean that women should be compelled to "cuddle" with those sincere men, because then they will experience the wonders of God's gift? I don't think so!
Same with men who sincerely believe that they are women. That does not mean that girls and women should be compelled to share female single-sex spaces with those men, or that those men should be allowed to compete in athletics as if they were in fact female. It does not matter that some women may not mind having males in female spaces. No woman can give consent on behalf of other women. Women who have no problem being with men in restrooms should go use the men's restrooms. (I am not actually approving of women accessing men's spaces. Just making a point about no woman can waive other women's rights to privacy and safety.)
Don't try to put words in my mouth. I have not denied that there are legitimate gender dysphoric and abnormal chromosome people. But gender fluid, non-binary and phony for bad reasons is not gender-dysphoria where someone ALWAYS feels that they are the sex opposite their plumbing. As you wrote easy to distinguish with those tells. Words have meaning.
I have no idea how to balance rights that infringe upon the rights of others. That's why we are having this discussion.
All "abnormal chromosome people" are either male or female. "Aneuploidy" is an abnormality in the number of chromosomes in a cell due to loss or duplication. In humans, aneuploidy would be any number of chromosomes other than the usual 46. Any individual with the SRY gene, which enables the formation of testes, is male. The SRY gene is almost always found on the Y chromosome, so the shorthand way of saying how a male can be identified is to say that any individual with a Y chromosome is male. In very rare cases, the SRY gene will have migrated to and be found on the X chromosome which every male has. This is a great resource for understanding what sex is, how it is determined, and what Disorders of Sexual Development are: https://theparadoxinstitute.com
Thanks. I mentioned "abnormal chromosome people" with regard to whataboutism with respect to sports where it is not a case of "I identify as".
How do we balance the rights of men who "feel" they want to have sex with a woman with the rights of women who do not want to have sex with those men? We have criminal and civil laws and penalties against non-consensual sex.
That's the answer to how to treat individuals who "ALWAYS feel that they are the sex opposite their plumbing." They are objectively, materially, NOT female, no matter how they feel, and should not be treated as if they were female, no matter how they feel.
"No one on this substack is saying sincere (versus malicious trans people do not exist"????????
Steve made this explicit statement in his original post: "They(i.e. the trans community) shared none of the concerns that sane men and women felt about rapists and perverts in women’s spaces."
I guess I did some interpretation but it suspiciously seems to align with my statement implying that all trans-woman are malicious men.
Even Steve replying to the state above with
"Not necessarily, of course not. I've never said it does. But it *does*, 100% of the time, equal man"
Seems to imply that assume a trans-woman is a malicious man until proven otherwise.
That makes life extremely difficult for a trans-woman.
Yes its a complicated discussion now that the trans issue is out in the open.
I read an article by a trans-woman. They made an interesting statement.
"They feel more comfortable using a woman's bathroom in a rural Iowa town than they do in San Francisco". Why? Because in the rural Iowa town, very few people have trans on their mind. They just view the person as a woman. Because, like Sarah McBride, they look like a woman. Why would other woman even question it.
"Seems to imply that assume a trans-woman is a malicious man until proven otherwise."
This is absolutely ridiculous. Even for you.
And I clearly state, just above the paragraph that you disingenuously quoted, that I'm talking about trans activists, not the trans community in general.
Geeze, you two! Stop, wouldja?
We stopped a week ago😅
Have you read Sufeitzy's brilliant essays on mimesexuality, here on Substack?
Link?
https://substack.com/@sufeitzy/p-159144960
He has 11 essays in all, on this subject.
Danger in using the pronoun "They". I took it as the trans-community. I doubt the trans-activist community is aligned with rapists and perverts in woman's spaces.
Just you and I having a conversation on trans issues shows much the sides have squared off as either pro-trans (support everything the trans activists want) or anti-trans (trans-woman are impersonating women).
JK Rowling as far as I can tell is the only one that seems to be able to hold both a woman is XX chromosomes and a trans-person needs empathy at the same time.
"Because one of the most telling aspects of this debate is that trans activists have never shown any interest in placing any boundaries on the men who opt into the trans identity. They shared none of the concerns that sane men and women felt about rapists and perverts in women’s spaces."
If you lack the reading comprehension to understand who the "they" is referring to in the above paragraph, it's no wonder that you are so consistently, belligerently wrong.
You and I having a conversation is only ever frustrating because of your habit of using this kind of dishonest, motivated reasoning. I've had several very productive and pleasant conversations with people who disagree with me on this topic.
I'm having one right now on a different article, in fact.
You keep trying to fool yourself into believing that the friction in our conversations comes from the difficulty of the issues. No. It comes from your apparent inability to think coherently, learn, and absorb new information.
You fail to understand the difference between "opinion" (or worse, “feeling”) and "truth" and so you don't ever engage in the kind of critical thinking and self-examination that might make conversations valuable, whether or not we agreed. If I only ever wanted to speak with people who agree with me, I wouldn't bother engaging in the comments at all.
And no, Rowling is far from the only person who is capable of compassion for both groups.
In fact, after enduring years of abuse and threats, I'd say Rowling is noticeably LESS compassionate towards trans women than she once was. I'm sad to see it, but I can't blame her one bit.
Rowling and many of us are experiencing "compassion fatigue" (similar to "empathy fatigue") because of the increasingly vitriolic attacks on women who speak up for the sex-based rights of girls and women. She receives many threats that she will be raped and/or tortured and/or murdered if she keeps advocating for girls' and women's rights to single-sex spaces and pursuits like women's sports competitions. Of little to no concern to her, considering the continuing popularity of her books and movies based on them, are the threats to boycott those movies and books.
She now has to have 24/7 security guards wherever she goes, which was not the case prior to 2020, when she first started speaking up for girls' and women's sex-based rights. Members of her family have also received such threats and there have been attempts to assault Rowling that would have succeeded if she did not have security guards and police protection.
It's amusing to me how you need to resort to denigration of my intellectual abilities to somehow prove a position on what I write.
You have a very confronted style. I believe I have recommended this to you before but you might want to study the concept of epistemic humility. Its a philosophical concept about holding a strong opinion but still believing you might be wrong.
It is not denigration, it's the truth! After several of these conversations, I am admittedly more blunt about it than I otherwise would be, but only because my more gentle approaches over years have fallen on deaf ears.
Even here, on this article, I pointed to a clear example of you contradicting yourself within the space of a couple of paragraphs, demonstrated right here that you've failed to read a paragraph correctly, and you're repeating arguments that you've already used and had debunked in other conversations.
I don't know how else to say it. The only reason I've spent years and years talking to readers and engaging with disagreement is that I'm aware I might be wrong. If anything, it appears to be you who can't admit he's wrong. In fact, in your world, being wrong doesn't even seem possible. After all, you think we each have our own "truths."
But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?
Really suggest you look up epistemic humility.
Or as I have suggested in the past also, do a mankind warrior weekend.
“But what is truth?”
The truth, for the purposes of this conversation, is an accurate representation of the facts based on evidence.
We do not have our own versions. Even this, you’ve repeated this nonsensical claim about us both having our own truths several times, but never engaged with the criticism of it.
Now you may be right. Maybe I’m wrong and everybody has their own pocket of reality. But I disagree, and I’ve explained why I disagree. But you don’t defend the claim, you just keep on mindlessly repeating it.
Name a truth you believe is absolute?
Gravity maybe…
Cultural concepts like trans issues have no absolutes. They are shades of gray where the idea of what is “truth” is very tied your cultural identity.
You state that I failed to read a paragraph “correctly”. Which paragraph are you referring to?
“Cultural concepts like trans issues have no absolutes”
You are describing feelings and opinions here. Not truths.
For example, the chief claim among trans women is that they “feel like women.” But it is not TRUE that they are women.
And when you ask them to define what they mean by feeling like women, they fall back on cultural stereotypes like liking wearing dresses and makeup. Which many women don’t do.
So in this case, being a woman is not their “truth,” it is at best a delusion and at worst a lie. And it is impossible to build a legal framework or a civil rights movement on that.
Good god man, I literally quoted the paragraph, IN FULL, at the top of one of my earlier replies. It’s the only paragraph we’ve talked about your interpretation of.
This is why I say it’s a waste of my time and energy engaging with you. It’s like talking to a particularly argumentative and belligerent goldfish.
These last comments have been helpful to break down assumed interpretations. I had a different interpretation than previously expressed ones to, "They(i.e. the trans community) shared none of the concerns that sane men and women felt about rapists and perverts in women’s spaces." My interpretation isn't about potential malicious trans.
My interpretation is that trans activists are making demands while denying/avoiding the obvious inherent risks of male bodies in female spaces. You, Rogue4Gay, seem to capture this by pointing out that, it isn't trans that are putting females at risk, but that it would be any male body. I hope I did not misunderstand you, but I agree.
The truth of ". . . shared none of the concerns. . . " suggests how severely limited and powerless requests by trans activists have been without acknowledging the impact to others.
More plainly, activists could gain tremendous credibility by simply stating, "Yes, transmen bring into any space risks that male bodies do, but that is okay, or that can be mitigated because <reasons>". Instead, activists completely deny it.
Trans activists cannot credibly expect empathy for their request when, almost universally, their method is to deny empathy for female bodies. People sense that empathy is being requested in only one direction, and it puts the trans activist on a moral low road, literally on the wrong side right from the start. Want empathy? Give empathy.
Activists would be wise to not make false equivalencies of male trans:females as slaves:slave owners, because that would imply that females are inherently in power and unrighteous over trans male bodies, and that idea is absurd.
Again, want empathy? Give empathy.
Acknowledging risks and making suggestions for handling fake/malicious/opportunistic trans (not real trans) would really help move the conversation forward. The activist drum beat of "transwomen are women" is interpreted by many/(most?) as a refusal by activists to embrace reality.
Reality? Male bodies are much more violent and, on average, capable of imposing harm on female bodies. Nobody has time for anybody that denies these facts, yet, "transwomen are women"?
I bet we can get closer to discussing real trans freedom while including protections from malicious trans and also male bodies. Honesty is a necessary in order to advance on this journey.