Transgender issues: Why blurring the line between men and women is not the problem

[icehorse]

You've been the one using slurs and here it is again. That's how you've describe and dismiss everyone who has disagreed with you.

Traditionally debates are structured so that one side is the apologist side and the other side is the critic side. The word apologist is NOT a slur, it indicates which side of the debate a person is on.

 

[icehorse]

Again, consider how easy it has been for bigoted groups to stigmatise and sow mistrust of people using very similar tactics and talking points currently being used against the trans community. How easy it was for conservative groups backed by wealthy donors (in both our countries) to paint gay men as child rapists. Or Black men as rapists and criminals.

Perhaps a better focus of liberals would be to argue publicly against demonisation of vulnerable groups, rather than parrot the tactics of their enemies?

Yup, it's easy for the bigots.

But now we move over to how to solve the problem. I think we can all agree we want the LBGs and the Ts and the women and people of color and so on to be treated fairly. I know I do.

What I've been arguing is that SOME of the solutions the (far?) left have come up with aren't very good. So, good intentions, weak or bad solutions. I do NOT put much stock in intersectionality theory or the usefulness of "lived experience" as a way to construct good solutions for a better society. So that opinion in and of itself might be a good debate topic. As I said, I believe that some posters here - without acknowledging that their arguments are based on intersectionality or lived experiences - are actually using those ideas in these debates.

So, to me, the nut of these trans-related debates boils down to disagreements about the solutions the left has put forward.

With the cancelling. It all sounds very much like the nazis complaining that they can't be nazis in public. And it's not like the media in both of our countries isn't generously stocked with women "speaking out" freely about trans issues. The silenced are deafening, to speak. Perhaps you have good examples of this?

There is a relatively new thread concerning the canceling of JK Rowling. I have asked if anyone here can point out SPECIFICALLY what JKR said that's transphobic. So far no takers with any specifics.

Do you see my point here?

On the question of equating immigrants to men vs. women, I think @BlueIslandGirl is stating this quite well. It is simply a false comparison, IMO.

 

[icehorse]

sorry for the temporary duplicate posts...

 

[ADigitalArtist]

I've been avoiding this thread since I didn't want to be drawn into the same circular debates that always come up. But suffice it to say I agree with you. I will never regard trans men, trans women, and nonbinary as a bigger threat to me or society at large than rigid gender roles.

 

[icehorse]

I understand that 'getting through to people' is not easy, and I appreciate your efforts. I also want to remind you that sometimes people who disagree on the public forum may still respect each other privately (at least some of them).

I don't have the power to change the total quality of debate on the forum, but I'm doing what I think is helpful: starting threads that encourage more thoughtful and formal debates. I'm happy to see that it seems to have some positive effects. In the past few weeks, there are many new members joining, and many of them are showing interest in debate and philosophy. I feel that I've seen a slight rise in quality in the Debate boards, too. And not all because of my threads. People are coming here and starting to take an interest in civil debate and philosophy, and starting their own threads. I feel we are starting to set new standards I haven't even seen in my 4 years here, in terms of debate quality. But all this is just in my opinion. And I realize it can be hard to look past a thread like this, where comments are prone to run a little "hot", and see the bigger picture.

I think you might be on to something here. I have a rough proposal - sometimes known as a "strawman proposal" (which is entirely different than a strawman argument). The strawman proposal is put forward acknowledging that's it's imperfect, but as a starting point to arrive at an agreement of some sort.

Debating Strawman Proposal: I propose that we could label some OPs as "ideas only" or some such designation. The idea being that responders (in good faith), must restrict themselves to debating ONLY ideas. When in doubt, the debaters should ask for clarification or perhaps steelman the other posters. In addition, it would be understood that no one in the debate is an "authority". So this would preclude:

- ad hominems
- strawmen
- intersectionality or lived experience arguments
- arguments based on identity politics
- appeals to authority
- shifting the goal posts

We would agree to gently police each other. So again - in good faith - even if a poster is on "your side" of a debate, if you spot a post that strays from the above rules, you would point that out. It would probably be good to agree to some minimally-confrontational approach, e.g., "that post seemed to me to be an appeal to authority, can you clarify that?"

fire away!

 

[metis]

sorry for the temporary duplicate posts...

I ran across that same problem as my posts weren't showing up until later.

 

[Yerda]

Yup, it's easy for the bigots.

But now we move over to how to solve the problem. I think we can all agree we want the LBGs and the Ts and the women and people of color and so on to be treated fairly. I know I do.

What I've been arguing is that SOME of the solutions the (far?) left have come up with aren't very good. So, good intentions, weak or bad solutions. I do NOT put much stock in intersectionality theory or the usefulness of "lived experience" as a way to construct good solutions for a better society. So that opinion in and of itself might be a good debate topic. As I said, I believe that some posters here - without acknowledging that their arguments are based on intersectionality or lived experiences - are actually using those ideas in these debates.

So, to me, the nut of these trans-related debates boils down to disagreements about the solutions the left has put forward.

I can't comment on intersectionality because I don't know much of anything about it.

I'm sure there are plenty proposals coming from the left that are not helpful. I don't really know of any that seem wild to me but as I've said there are loonballs in every group. The solution that appeals to me is that we should accept trans people for who they are and stop feeding fears around them. Like we did with gay people when they were being stigmatised in a remarkably similar fashion.

There is a relatively new thread concerning the canceling of JK Rowling. I have asked if anyone here can point out SPECIFICALLY what JKR said that's transphobic. So far no takers with any specifics.

I don't know much about JK Rowling. She strikes me as a twitter-addict who can't admit being wrong about anything. Not sure that makes her a transphobe or any other phobe. I do see screenshots of her liking mental tweets from truly horrible people now and then, if that means anything to you.

On the question of equating immigrants to men vs. women, I think @BlueIslandGirl is stating this quite well. It is simply a false comparison, IMO.

I brought it up because I see very obvious similarity in the way the groups of people are treated in the media and the outcomes of that treatment. The prevalence of fear and mistrust is being stirred up against trans people much the same way it is against immigrants, imo. By pretty much the same sources and for pretty much the same reasons. And in both cases the correct response is to reject and combat the fearmongering and to stand up for the target, imo.

If that doesn't seem like a reasonable comparison to you then I don't suppose there's much more to be said.

Also, @BlueIslandGirl appeared to reduce the trans experience to men pretending to be women and suggests women should be afraid of them, which seems to be exactly the same point the far right are making.

 

[Yerda]

There is only one place transgenders will be accepted in society. The asylum.

I get the impression that trans people are much more welcome than bigots almost everywhere.

 

[Ella S.]

I know it can be done, getting through to people, as I do this in my work with men in trouble with the law. It is NOT easy, but I always loved a challenge. I hope you will accept my challenge to remain committed to sharing your thinking on these and other important matters.

Deal?

No deal.

To be extremely clear, I find arguing with pseudo-skeptical anti-intellectualism to be a waste of my time. Anyone who thinks they can coherently argue against the expert consensus in a field of study that they are not formally educated in, no matter how unsatisfying or difficult to comprehend that consensus appears to them, has an impaired sense of self. They have already demonstrated that they are not reasonable. Logicians are skilled at getting through to reasonable people who know how to recognize great points when they see them, but unreasonable people require psychologists and salespeople to persuade them. That's why Jordan Peterson is able to use his background in psychology to keep his career going when academia recognizes that he's a hack.

I intentionally chose to avoid a career where I had to work with people on their own personal issues, because I have no interest in the topic. In fact, I dislike interacting with people in general and spent several years of my life in voluntary social isolation to avoid them, even ordering my groceries online to be dropped off for me. I am not interested in being anyone's therapist. I am particularly uninterested in trying to sell the truth to people that are more interested in being unreasonable than in learning.

My talents are better put to larger issues, such as finding bugs in software that 45% of servers containing personally identifying information use so that it can be patched and prevent masses of people from having their data stolen. Or helping to secure Tor relays so that people in China that actually do care about educating themselves have the means to read up on scientific literature that would be otherwise banned in their country. It is a more efficient method to maximize my contribution to the greater good.

So, for both pragmatic and preferential reasons, I am not interested in that deal at all. Nor can you convince me by trying to tug on feelings that I do not have. Your emotional appeals are clearly well honed, but I am dispassionate. They do not work on me.

 

[Shaul]

And nature is imperfect. It's why we sometimes get a child born with both a penis and ovaries. Are they male or female? Looking at just the chromosome makeup without considering both the genitalia AND the brain chemistry would seem an intellectually lazy course.

That all depends on how you are defining "imperfect". Nature is what it is. Our perceptions and descriptions of nature can certainly be imperfect. That is precisely why we should use the best possible, unambiguous definitions we can. In the case of gender the best definition is based on chromosomes which are the most reliable, repeatable and accurate standard available. Using chromosome eliminates as much ambiguity as possible and is the best currently available basis for defining gender.

 

[Shaul]

That's a highly myopic and frankly, intellectually lazy point of view. Sexuality is not as simple as you appear to wish it was.

It is neither myopic nor intellectually lazy. It is precise and unambiguous which are characteristics of a sound definition. This is a definition for gender not sexuality. Those are different things. I never, ever said that sexuality was simple.

 

[icehorse]

To be extremely clear, I find arguing with pseudo-skeptical anti-intellectualism to be a waste of my time. Anyone who thinks they can coherently argue against the expert consensus in a field of study that they are not formally educated in, no matter how unsatisfying or difficult to comprehend that consensus appears to them, has an impaired sense of self.

At the risk of being a bit reductionist, there are fields of study for which I completely agree with, and other for which I do not. E.g., I think "X studies" as fields, tend to be extremely subjective, volatile, and political in nature, so I question whether ANYONE can really claim much expertise. At the opposite end of the spectrum would be hard sciences, and of course I would agree that unless that's your field, you oughtn't argue with experts.

But let me ask you, are there fields of study for which you're an expert that we debate here?

Next we come to your idea of "expert consensus". Sounds good on the surface, but I believe some posters argue that such consensus exists when in fact it does not. Another error I see here is to assume that "expert consensus" is always unbiased, non-political, and objective. The reality is that while that might be true in some fields, in other fields politics, subjectivity and bias are rife.

In a nutshell, sometimes we ought to question authority, and sometimes that's a fool's errand. So I think that any sort of blanket assumption that we should always acquiesce to authority is dubious.

My talents are better put to larger issues, such as finding bugs in software that 45% of servers containing personally identifying information use so that it can be patched and prevent masses of people from having their data stolen. Or helping to secure Tor relays so that people in China that actually do care about educating themselves have the means to read up on scientific literature that would be otherwise banned in their country. It is a more efficient method to maximize my contribution to the greater good.

FWIW, you're not the only experienced software developer at RF

 

[icehorse]

The solution that appeals to me is that we should accept trans people for who they are and stop feeding fears around them

Agreed. My concerns come up when TAs proposal's put others at risk.

I don't know much about JK Rowling. She strikes me as a twitter-addict who can't admit being wrong about anything. Not sure that makes her a transphobe or any other phobe. I do see screenshots of her liking mental tweets from truly horrible people now and then, if that means anything to you.

In the other thread that I mentioned there are (I believe), links to three different articles concerning the controversy. These articles quote her comments. I'm genuinely interested to know if any of these JKR comments are considered by RFers to be "transphobic".

I brought it up because I see very obvious similarity in the way the groups of people are treated in the media and the outcomes of that treatment. The prevalence of fear and mistrust is being stirred up against trans people much the same way it is against immigrants, imo.

I'm sure that such unfounded fear and mistrust exists. What's interesting in these recent trans discussions is that I'm arguing just a few points that have nothing to do with fear or mistrust of trans people, but the pushback against my opinions has been fierce, and I have repeatedly been labeled a transphobe. It seems to me that ANY contrary opinion about ANY trans topic will get you such labels.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

We would agree to gently police each other. So again - in good faith - even if a poster is on "your side" of a debate, if you spot a post that strays from the above rules, you would point that out. It would probably be good to agree to some minimally-confrontational approach, e.g., "that post seemed to me to be an appeal to authority, can you clarify that?"

We already have rules and this isn't a formal debate forum. Your proposition would require several people here at least to take some English and philosophy classes to fall within the norms of a formal debate.
Amd I'm not sure how well that would go over. There's lots of students and professionals and teachers here, and it would be upping the standards and practices of a leizure activity.

Traditionally debates are structured so that one side is the apologist side and the other side is the critic side. The word apologist is NOT a slur, it indicates which side of the debate a person is on.

So we know you too would have to be educated on how formal debate works, because one side being "apologists" and the other side the "critic" is not how it works. At all. You've just been throwing out activist amd apologist as though your usage of those words have any real meaning or substance. You're just trying to dismiss those who don't agree with you.

 

[YmirGF]

No deal.

To be extremely clear, I find arguing with pseudo-skeptical anti-intellectualism to be a waste of my time. Anyone who thinks they can coherently argue against the expert consensus in a field of study that they are not formally educated in, no matter how unsatisfying or difficult to comprehend that consensus appears to them, has an impaired sense of self. They have already demonstrated that they are not reasonable. Logicians are skilled at getting through to reasonable people who know how to recognize great points when they see them, but unreasonable people require psychologists and salespeople to persuade them. That's why Jordan Peterson is able to use his background in psychology to keep his career going when academia recognizes that he's a hack.

I intentionally chose to avoid a career where I had to work with people on their own personal issues, because I have no interest in the topic. In fact, I dislike interacting with people in general and spent several years of my life in voluntary social isolation to avoid them, even ordering my groceries online to be dropped off for me. I am not interested in being anyone's therapist. I am particularly uninterested in trying to sell the truth to people that are more interested in being unreasonable than in learning.

My talents are better put to larger issues, such as finding bugs in software that 45% of servers containing personally identifying information use so that it can be patched and prevent masses of people from having their data stolen. Or helping to secure Tor relays so that people in China that actually do care about educating themselves have the means to read up on scientific literature that would be otherwise banned in their country. It is a more efficient method to maximize my contribution to the greater good.

So, for both pragmatic and preferential reasons, I am not interested in that deal at all. Nor can you convince me by trying to tug on feelings that I do not have. Your emotional appeals are clearly well honed, but I am dispassionate. They do not work on me.

Jeez. Here I thought I was the one with ice water in my veins. Sorry to trouble you.

 

[icehorse]

So we know you too would have to be educated on how formal debate works, because one side being "apologists" and the other side the "critic" is not how it works.

Ok, what words would you use? I bet your words and mine will be fairly close synonyms.

You're just trying to dismiss those who don't agree with you.

Which is pretty much the opposite of what I just proposed...

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Ok, what words would you use? I bet your words and mine will be fairly close synonyms.

No. They wouldn't even be remotely close because I'm not assigning lopsided roles to the participants. What youndescribed really wouldn't even be a debate if it's just skeptics and apologists.
And we've already been over you doing this thing of claiming people agree with you even though they clearly do not.

Which is pretty much the opposite of what I just proposed...

It's clearly not because early on you started accusing people of apologizing for the activists.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Kids -- in spite of what a lot of people seem to think -- are interested in and curious about their bodies, and the bodies of others. It is not that unusual for boys to touch other boys, or girls other girls (or boys touching girls and vice-versa, for that matter), when opportunity presents itself. None of that makes them either gay or straight -- it's play, part of how we learn as children.

Sexual Behaviors in Young Children: What’s Normal, What’s Not?

Here's some information and tips to help parents tell the difference between "normal" sexual behaviors and behaviors that may signal a problem.

www.healthychildren.org

Fine with all that, but it wasn't what I meant.
Sorry, I don't think explained it particularly well.

My comments weren't related to play, experimentation or boundaries. Moreso they were things I thought about as I got older (early adulthood really) where I was expanding my worldview. At the risk of doing this in a clumsy fashion, I'll try and give some examples of where my thinking changed and developed.

For background, as a teenager, I went to a rough school. It was co-ed, but about 65% male, with a large proportion of the students from blue collar backgrounds, and with no tertiary aspirations. I suspect the same issues existed at 'nicer' schools, but there might have been more veneer over them. Also, for me, tertiary studies was an important step in being exposed on a daily basis for 4 years to people with a vastly different background to me, including particularly religious and sexual variances.

Through high school, I'd had no problems with homosexuals. People are people, and as long as they treated me with respect, why wouldn't I do the same? Besides which, there didn't appear to be any obviously around (naieve, I know). And casual slurs used against friends who weren't being 'tough enough' weren't really homophobic, right? They were just jokes! I'd certainly not say them to an actual gay person, but calling out a teammate who shirked a tough contest was not the same, right? Meh...stupid, I know. Ignorant really. And somewhat a product of my environment. This is 15/16 year old me, and if I compare my 15 year old daughters thoughts/experiences/expectations, it's night and day.

If I had advocated against casual locker room humour, or otherwise tried to improve the standard of conversation on homosexuality, I would have simply been tagged as...well...gay, although not in those terms. The fact that I wasn't really didn't have much to do with it. I remember my dad openly worrying if I was gay with my uncle (within earshot) because I hadn't brought a girl home. Which was a whole lot more about wanting to keep the various pieces of my life discrete than any lack of interest in girls. Incidentally I was a pretty smart kid, by the modest standards of my environment. That made me worthy of some mild suspicion anyway. I played a lot of sport (which I genuinely loved) and dumbed down my vocab by 10%. That wasn't about sexuality, just about fitting in generally, but as I'm sure you're aware, those two things were quite connected historically. If I had have said 'wow, that girl is attractive, she's so smart' it would have got the same reaction, to some degree. Safer to talk about her physical appearance. Not defending 15/16 year old me, he was just kinda sheltered and ignorant in ways modern kids can't be.

Anyway...move ahead to uni, and I got to an environment that was more diverse in every sense, and was female dominated...about 80% female, and the ratio increased as I went through uni. Primary teaching is like that. I had multiple classes where I was the only male.

Not overly important, except that I had the chance to sort through and throw out a lot of childish crap in my head. Change does that. And I moved from a 'live and let live' attitude to homosexuality, to a 'shared life' view. Basically stopped seeing homosexuality as 'the other team' at all. Initially that didn't discard ideas of binary sexuality. I still put people in buckets (I was hetero, he was homo, that girl was bi, etc), I just saw that we are all members of lots of buckets, and the sexuality one was weirdly uninteresting for almost all of the time.

From there, though, I was both exposed and being aware of much more variation in life expressions. Some was age, some environment, some (I suspect) that I was seen as 'safe' by people with non-'standard' lifestyles.

And my ideas further developed. I basically reached a point where I figured sexuality was somewhat fluid. Certainly I knew plenty who appeared to have moved, but even they couldn't always explain why or how, and the likely reasons were varied. And I started to believe sexuality wasn't in neat 'buckets' of homosexuality, hetero, bi, etc. It just was what it was, and the best we could do as a society is remove things that caused unhealthy repression, guilt or consequence.

And so eventually you re-examine yourself. I've never been attracted to a man, but I'd known enough people who'd been in somewhat repressive environments and then decided later they were gay to know that's not conclusive. And anyway, I'd decided that sexuality was somewhat fluid...albeit not dynamically...and everyone was on a spectrum, so...who knows, right?

Ultimately, that's basically where I stopped. I've still never been attracted to a male. And I'd assume I'm as close to the hetero end of the spectrum as it's possible to get without trying too hard. But really, it's more the fact that now I really don't care that makes me think I'm probably assessing myself 'correctly'.

If 15/16 year old me had tried processing all this, back in my 1980s environment, I totally would have suppressed it, or rationalised against it. We should develop as people and as a society.

All this was probably more important for me to ramble about than you to read, so sorry!!
But that's kinda why I could see elements of truth in what was mentioned. Old school males in some environments did repress thoughts, actions or discussions. Thankfully it seems much less prevalent now, although 'now' has plenty of it's own issues...lol

It's also part of why I dislike un-nuanced conversations generally, or people taking positions of moral authority. We are all just flawed humans, hopefully but not always learning from our experiences. 15 year old me was pretty dumb, but that comes with the territory. I've got less excuses these days.

(That's why I value your posts, incidentally. I enjoy that you articulate your perspective clearly, as it helps me get the benefit of it. Ultimately, I'm all about 'whats in it for me.... hehehe)

 

[BlueIslandGirl]

Also, @BlueIslandGirl appeared to reduce the trans experience to men pretending to be women and suggests women should be afraid of them, which seems to be exactly the same point the far right are making.

Not quite.
I'm saying men who are pretending to be something other than men (e.g. women, non-binary, etc.) are still men. I'm not reducing anyone's experience by saying that; I'm just stating the facts.

Women have very good reasons to be wary of men, no matter if they are pretending to be something else or not.
Especially if those men are attempting to access single sex spaces we created for women specifically to help keep them safe from men; as I keep repeating: "Good men stay out so bad men stand out." Good men have no interest in violating women's single sex spaces because they know perfectly well it will make women feel extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable. We created women's restrooms, changing rooms, prisons, safe houses, rape shelters, domestic violence shelters, and child safeguarding rules, etc. for a very good reason: to keep us safe(r) from bad men.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

agreed.

Agreeing with your opponent?

That's -1 for you, buddy.