The fear that cis-women have of rape is real. The fear that transgender women have of rape in a men's jail is real. I think the fairest thing to do is take both of these fears seriously and house intact trans-women in a space where they neither feel threatened with rape, nor impose that threat on cis-women.
I think referring to this fear as a "TERF talking point" is as disrespectful as it would be to minimize the fear that trans-women experience in men's prisons.
Here's the problem I have with this line of defense: it doesn't accommodate the reality of self-id and the likely downstream effects if it becomes the accepted norm. If all it takes for a male to be housed in a female prison is a checkmark on a form, we should expect that many cis-men will take advantage of the situation, thus creating a very real threat of abuse for women in women prisons. If I were being locked up for an extended period of time and all it took was a declaration to be housed in a female prison, I would do it. I would go from one of the smaller and weaker inmates to one of the biggest and strongest. It is a no-brainer in terms of my personal safety. And I have no interest in abusing anyone or taking advantage of forced-proximity. Imagine how many abusers would take advantage of that circumstance? An argument in defense of gender-affirmation in prison assignments that doesn't accommodate this likely reality isn't substantive.
That's not at all what it takes.
>Imagine how many abusers would take advantage of that circumstance?
Imagine how many abusers already take advantage of the power they already have over women in women's prisons. That the real problem of sexual violence is focused and framed wholly and entirely on trans women is exactly the point made by the parent: this is an entirely disingenuous effort by people wholly uninterested in actually preventing the real, existing, non-imagined abuses in women's prisons and more interested in enforcing a strict gender binary that harms both cis and trans women.
In fact, it is all it takes in some jurisdictions[1]
>Imagine how many abusers already take advantage of the power they already have over women in women's prisons.
This is a disingenuous reply. The issue of abuse is colored by the difficulty in mitigation, i.e. available funds to significantly alter prisons, increase guards, etc. The fact that existing abuse has no easy, cost-effective solutions is not an argument against preventing the likely increase in abuse due to policy changes which are comparatively low-cost.
[1]: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-05/californ...
>Thornton said that “a person’s gender identity is self-reported and CDCR will evaluate any request submitted by an incarcerated person for gender-based housing.”
This CDCR review process is a hurdle, and staffers are hypervigilant (to the point of manufacturing anxiety) of the transfers that have already happened.
>But Moore, 43, said that she has also heard staffers question inmates housed with Calvin, asking whether she has exposed herself, explained her sexual behavior to them or said things that made them uncomfortable. She said the questioning has fomented anxiety and false rumors that Calvin is in a relationship.
>...when groundbreaking legislation gave transgender, intersex and nonbinary inmates the right, regardless of anatomy, to choose whether to be housed in a male or female prison... When asked whether inmates in the men’s prisons trying to manipulate the transfer system has been a significant issue, Thornton said that “a person’s gender identity is self-reported and CDCR will evaluate any request submitted by an incarcerated person for gender-based housing.”... Inmates can request transfers to their correctional counselor, which are then considered by a committee that includes the warden, custody, medical and mental health staffers, and a PREA compliance manager. Staffers review the inmate’s criminal record, health needs, custody level, sentence and safety concerns.
There's certainly room for interpretation here, but it seems like the evaluation is based on specific personal requirements and any explicit safety concerns, not a medical or psychological exam to determine whether the request is due to one's genuine identity.
You keep combining impregnation and sexual assault as if they're the same thing. Cis women are already sexually assaulted by other cis women in prisons! This is not a problem created anew by housing trans women in women's prisons. I venture that the problem is not trans women, the problem is the assumption that prisons cannot stop inmates from sexually assaulting each other.
To completely stop sexual assault in prisons, people would have to be housed in separate cells. Housing cis-women and trans-women in the same cell does not stop the sexual assault problem.
In that case you're hard pressed to argue why housing trans women in women's prisons exacerbates this issue, unless you think trans women are more likely to be rapists. Excluding an entire population on the basis that some of them might rape people is not just if rape is already a problem.
> To completely stop sexual assault in prisons, people would have to be housed in separate cells.
I mostly agree, but it's very easy to construct a solution to these problems while ignoring the present reality. Almost no trans people are currently housed in prisons that accord with their gender identity, and 35% of trans people in prisons themselves report having been sexually assaulted in the past year as of 2015 [1]. The status quo is pretty dire for them too, and their safety should be weighed against the safety of the cis people they might otherwise be housed with.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/transgender-women-ar...
I think both of these concerns can be addressed. None of the options address everyone's needs and preferences, but are certainly better than leaving trans-women completely vulnerable in men's prisons.
1) House trans-women in a separate part of men's prisons so that they are not at high risk of sexual assault. Some people do not like this because it doesn't affirm their gender identity.
2) House trans-women in prisons for trans people. This is likely unrealistic because the number of people is small and for most inmates it would mean spending prison time far away from their community, making it harder for friends and family to visit.
3) House trans-women in women's prisons, but not force cis-women to share a cell with intact trans-women. This scenario would remove the threat that trans-women face, affirm their gender identity, but not impose an unfair burden on cis-women who fear being sexually assaulted and impregnated by intact trans-women.
I think scenario (3) goes most of the way in protecting trans-women from sexual assault, allows them to serve their sentences (hopefully not too far away from family), yet still acknowledges that many cis-women in prison have been sexually assaulted or fear sexual assault by people with penises because it can result in pregnancy which creates an entire new set of physical, psychological, and moral challenges for that cis-woman.
Sexual assault by correctional officers is a problem that also needs to be better addressed. But that's true regardless of the question on how to house incarcerated trans-women.
With regards to the danger of trans people being sexually assaulted in prisons: yes, it is absolutely a problem. MyHypatia literally made the same point you're making in their original comment.
> Without any stats for transwomen in particular, human males are more likely to be rapists, and an intact transwoman is closer to a man than a ciswoman is, no?
This argument is rather tangential. Is there any empirical evidence that trans women are more likely to sexually assault people than cis women? Is the median trans woman more likely to sexually assault people than cis women who have been convicted of sexual assault, or who have already committed sexual assault in the prison?
> MyHypatia literally made the same point you're making in their original comment.
Specifically, they said that putting trans women in women's prisons would be imposing the threat of rape on cis women. After I pointed out that cis women already rape other cis women in women's prisons, they clarified that it was actually impregnation they were really worried about introducing, not rape as such. I don't think my criticism of this concern has been addressed.
I don't think there are enough transwomen in prisons to make any reasonable statistical statement about transwomen in particular being more or less likely to be rapists. And I don't really think the argument is tangential. People with penises are more likely to be rapists than people without them, this is a clear statistical reality. If a large population of people are being held together, historically because they did not possess penises, and are worried about the introduction of someone with a penis (who statistically is much more likely to be a rapist by nature of having a penis), I think the burden is on you to demonstrate that gender identity is a confounding factor in those statistics. And if there isn't a difference between having a penis and not having one in this circumstance, why do we even need to have gendered prisons?
With regards to MyHypatia, I was referring to the fact that, in the second half of your comment to which I initially replied, it seemed like you felt MyHypatia did not recognize the direness of the trans situation in prisons. But they clearly do, as evidenced by this from their first comment:
> The fear that transgender women have of rape in a men's jail is real
It may be used to describe their foreskin, but I've never heard or seen it used to describe them as whole people. It sounds very odd. What is the negation of intact? You can't really use a word to describe a category exclusively without implying the opposite of the other category.
> People with penises are more likely to be rapists than people without them, this is a clear statistical reality.
I don't think you can argue this is a clear statistical reality without data about trans women. As far as I know contemporary research suggests sexual assault by women has been historically undercounted. I don't know if the numbers come out similar in the end, but it seems like the kind of thing that is easily colored by social bias.
> If a large population of people are being held together, historically because they did not possess penises
Is it because they didn't have penises? Or because they weren't men? I don't know of any specific information, but this is an important distinction, because the general perception for a long time has been that men are more violent than women, and I think it's more because of male secondary sexual characteristics (muscle tone and height, mainly) than primary. Would a burly intersex person with high testosterone and ambiguous genitalia who sexually assaulted somebody have been put in a women's prison? Should they be today?
> And if there isn't a difference between having a penis and not having one in this circumstance, why do we even need to have gendered prisons?
I don't know, but I do think it's worth asking the question! Do we segregate people by gender because it's fundamentally necessary, or because our prison system is so brutal that we can't imagine inmates of different genders living together peacefully? There could very well be science on this subject that I'm not aware of, but on its face the sexual segregation of American prisons seems hard to separate from their brutality and corruption.
Sexual assault by women being undercounted does not account for the fact that most estimates put male perpetrators at around 90% of sexual assault cases. It would have to be severe undercounting (in anonymous surveys to boot) to get anywhere close to make up for that divide. Also, unless I am misinformed, I was under the impression that the majority of transwomen share male secondary sex characteristics – I have certainly not seen any indication that transwomen are shorter than the average male and would not expect that to be the case, given that the majority of trans people alive today were not on puberty blockers + hormone therapy before any such primary sex characteristics could do their thing in puberty.
Historically, being a man was having a penis. At the end of the day, humanity is a sexually reproducing species and there are two fundamental sexes required for procreation (intersex individuals notwithstanding). For better or for worse, human societies have divided themselves along this line (as best they could judge) since time immemorial. Given this universality, it seems incredibly unlikely that the various discrepancies between men and women (whether with rape or anything else) can be explained away by society / sociological conditioning (and therefore fixed by a change in the same).
I fully agree that the solution is to look at the problem holistically and question whether a system which allows for any sex/gender to be raped by any other sex/gender is a system that should be maintained. But as it stands, that system is still around, so we can't just pretend the decisions we've made going into that system are totally irrelevant and now that we're "more enlightened individuals" we can just switch things up without that fundamental revisiting. Said another way, this strikes me as a bit of a Chesterton's fence situation: I don't know exactly why we decided to make men's and women's prisons, but until we've firmly established that "why", I don't think it is sensible to use our 21st century definition of "men" and "women" and apply it to systems that were not made with those definitions in mind.
1. "Intact" is straight-up offensive. I was trying to explain why without saying so (because people on here always seem to object that something isn't offensive when I say it is) but you didn't get it, or I did a poor job of explaining. The term implies that trans women with vaginas merely have damaged penises, and made a choice to ruin their bodies, and consequently that cisgender bodies are better, because they are always intact. That is where it originates from.
2. Many human societies throughout history up to today have recognized at least three genders, most famously for the US, indigenous Americans with two-spirit people. It is incidental, not inherent, that Western culture does not have a category like this outside of scientific classification.
3. Feminists ostensibly believe in equality between men and women. This idea that men are uncontrollable rapists, and that women are defenseless and purely innocent, seems blatantly sexist to me. Sure, men are especially violent in our society. It's plainly true. They also happen to hold most of the power in our society. The concept of rape culture goes a long way to explaining why men rape people and are generally more violent: it is condoned by the people who hold most of the power. Justice for trans people is inseparable from justice for all women, and the destruction of patriarchy. That's what I was trying to get at in talking about the obvious violence in the US prison system. The state treating people with violence legitimizes people treating each other with violence, and that's only the start. Humans are highly intelligent and by all accounts we have, through great effort, managed to become much less violent in our dealings with each other over time, for the most part. At some point you can't blame animal instinct for choices that humans make.
2. Two-spirit was a term invented in 1990, so that seems like a bad example of a concept that has existed throughout history. Even the concept of a "special third gender" necessitates that you have two primary ones. I am not arguing that every society throughout history has had two distinct gender roles and that is all. The point I am making is that the reason gender exists as a concept at all is because there are distinct human sexes. The reason there are distinct sexes is because that is what we are: a sexually reproducing species with binary sex characteristics. One sex that produces the large gamete and one sex that produces the small, which come together to form zygote, which is incubated by the aforementioned large gamete provider. If it worked in any other way, if there was any variation on this theme, you and I would not exist. Your progeny involves one male having sex with one female and the female carrying the result of that in her womb for at least 20+ weeks (usually 40) in an unbroken line back to the first human, and then much, much further.
3. I never claimed men were uncontrollable rapists, just that the statistics (to the best of our ability to measure them) indicate that rapists are far more prevalent among males than among females. Clearly the vast majority of men are capable of not raping people. Furthermore, "rape culture" is a strange way of describing a culture which has harsh punishments for rapists and frequently makes people unemployable after the mere accusation of rape, with little proof needed (name another crime we do that for as readily). In fact if I was going to invent a "rape culture" from scratch those things would definitely be the opposite of what I'd include as norms.
Look, if you want to dismantle the prison system because it normalizes and perpetuates horrible violence, then by all means say that. But this is not at all the same thing as saying "we can just stick people in whichever prison best matches their gender identity regardless of what reasons we had for making men's and women's prisons in the first place because clearly the people who made that decision were poorly reasoning morons/bigots who had no reason to make such a distinction". Just as saying "we should develop more gender-neutral bathrooms" is different from saying "men and women's bathrooms are functionally identical just with different signs on the doors", even though men's bathrooms were clearly designed around the assumption that users of said bathroom are likely to have a functioning penis.
I personally think that we as a society should move away from gendering everything in general. Bathrooms, clothes, toys, prisons, makeup, etc. could all be much more gender neutral than they are and I think that would be a good thing. Until then, when talking about interim solutions, "are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater" is a valid question.
Justice for everyone is inseparable from justice for anyone.
With that said, the focus on genitalia strikes me as odd and really unfounded in the first place for a productive conversation.
In this context, if a trans-woman doesn't have a penis then this fear is unfounded and they should be housed with cis-women. If a trans-woman does have a penis, then I think this fear is reasonable (after all, that is what trans-women are escaping when they leave men's prisons). Basically, this is one of the few cases where discussing genitalia is relevant.
People who run prisons are often sadists.
In double bunked men's prisons rapists get to ply their trade. Get double bunked along with the rest.
The prevalence and sexual assault in prisons is an example of a normalization of deviance that should be opposed, instead of tolerated.
If you are referring to the statistic that "trans inmates are 1% of the population and commit 5.6% of the assaults", you will find that the trans inmates in question are actually trans men being incorrectly housed in women's prisons.
“there were 125 trans prisoners in 2017, 60 of whom were serving sentences for sexual offences. Of those 60, 27 were serving a prison sentence for rape.” which is more shocking than your 5x statistic. Note the 5x statistic appears weak to me because “Between 2016 and 2020, there were seven sexual assaults [reported] against females in women's prisons by trans women.”.
Also because rape in prison is very much about power, and exerting power over people you dislike for one reason or another (in this case trans people because they are trans) especially.
Basically, I think that sexual assault in prisons should be taken far more seriously for everyone. That may mean every prisoner should get their own cell regardless of sex or gender. I don't think housing cis-women and intact trans-women in the same cell alleviates this.
The trans men in jail abusing cis women is real thing. They are housed together now. The trans women being raped or abused is incredibly frequent thing - includig by guards. (Male on male rape is a joke, basically. Transwomen in prison are assumed to enjoy sexual abuse basically.)
But despite the former being literally about cis women safety too, it just dont interest people. There are many ways to make prisons safer and making it so trans women or gender non conforming men are a bit safer is topic only for radical trans activists and no one else.
If there is heated discussion about issue that dont currently exist which ignores issues that do cureently exist, it is ok to call it talking point.
It's the exact same argument that was used as justification to try and criminalise homosexuality, that they would all be assaulting people in bathrooms, changing rooms, and prisons.
Men are housed with men in jails. Yes, sometimes they commit violence against each other, including rape. But we don't put all men in solitary confinement.
There is no justification for accepting any prison rape—or, for that matter, sexual assault, which cis women are entirely capable of.
(And, to be clear, sexual assault is not inherently a lesser crime than rape, rape is just a specific form of sexual assault, and depending on jurisdiction, may be defined in such a way as a cis woman can be a rapist).
I want to be very clear: I do not want this to happen. I don't want any woman to be raped, especially not impregnated as well. But my point still stands: this does not happen on any sort of regular basis. I do not think you're arguing in bad faith here, and I hope you see that I'm not either. Segregating trans women from cis women does nothing to protect cis women. Implementing this segregation across the prison system would not impact the occurrence of prison rape by half a percent. But by insisting that trans women are a threat to cis women, you are hurting trans women. You are playing into and amplifying a very popular narrative in our society that trans women are deceptive, dangerous predators. And this leads to legislation that harms the whole trans community.
plank_time wrote: In the UK prisons, transgender women sexually assault women 5x more than cis women sexually assault women. https://archive.is/iYD5T
Haven't dug into it to see how strong that evidence is, but to say none seems incorrect.
If you read the article you linked, you will find that is not true. From the article: "between 2016 and 2020, there were seven sexual assaults against females in women's prisons by trans women." 7 assaults in 4 years is not 5x more.
If you are referring to the statistic that "trans inmates are 1% of the population and commit 5.6% of the assaults", you will find that the trans inmates in question are actually trans men being incorrectly housed in women's prisons.
You have thoroughly proved the original poster's point: TERF talking points are damaging. You bought one up, defending it as "reasonable", but when pressed you accept that there is a preferable solution that doesn't involve throwing trans people under the bus.
The talking point is there to push a narrative that trans people are dangerous, just as was done with gay people before. It is designed to imply that we must choose between women's rights and trans people's rights, which is a false dichotomy.
Why would a rapist stop wanting to rape regardless of the state of their genitals? Is sexual violation with a penis so much more horrific than other violations it deserves special consideration?
Testosterone is correlated with sexual aggression. Chemical castration is a treatment for rapists after all.
Just personalize the idea, your sister or female significant other was thrown in jail, and then housed with a male who is a trans woman who has sex with her with or without her consent and creates an ongoing consequence that is impossible if trans women were not there
That would be the expectation you would start with to form a conclusion
Sex in male prisons does not result in pregnancy
Sexual assault does not hit some magic breaking point where it becomes an unacceptable risk at the chance of impregnation. If there is a significant risk of sexual assault, then the prison has fundamentally failed and that is the thing that needs fixing.
It simply doesn't matter if someone is trans or not, cis people are just as capable of sexual assault, and prisons must be protecting all inmates, not only cis-women, from assault.
its not nearly as gendered as you are making it out to be, this a condition statement satisfied by some gendered combinations
What circumstance made you think of that?
Other things that are exploitable: driving vans/cars in cities as they can be driven into crowds.
I agree that it is thinkable that some people might want to exploit these rules. However I haven't seen anything that suggest abuse will be rampant enough and not be able to be dealt using existing laws and shaming exploiters. So I think we should give trans people their rights and deal with perverts and abuser separately.
A cost on switching can be imposed but it shouldn't make it more stigmatising or harder on trans people ideally.
There have already been people I would describe as attempting to abuse[1] the nascent systems that do exist.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/23/canadian-transge...
When you talk about "this Goldilocks zone of womanhood," I think you've rediscovering one of the oldest philosophical discoveries: mental concepts and ideas (in this case "woman") do not apply perfectly to the world of appearences. But this does not mean we can jettison concepts and ideas altogether. In fact they seem necessary. So the fact that we cannot seem to come up with a perfect criterion for defining "biological woman" does not mean that we can dispense with that category.
And that's what's being asked of us. We are told "trans women are women". What does that mean? It if means "there is a category, women, and in that category there are trans women and biological women," that's fine with me. If it means "there is no distinction between biological women and trans women," that seems wrong to me and to the vast majority of people.
The supposed fear that people believe there is some magic change to your chromosomes the second you chose to identify with a gender is patently absurd. There is obviously no real support for such an idea—it is a straw-man that no one reading the phrase "trans women are women" in good faith and taking even a second to look into what trans people are saying would assume was the intent.
There is no category of women that is entirely identical, where you couldn't distinguish between them.
Some AFAB women can't give birth. Some of them have more androgynous bodies. Some of them are black. Some of them have different levels of estrogen, or grow up in different social circles that impose different expectations about how they should act, or provide different opportunities.
Nobody is saying that AFAB women don't have different experiences than trans women, any more than anyone is saying that Black women don't have different experiences than white women. Womanhood has always been a broad category, and there has never been a point where you could accurately say that there are no distinctions between the subcategories within womanhood.
If TERFs believe there is a fundamental quality that makes them indistinguishable from every other woman, then they are being absurd. Even if you ignore trans women, that world doesn't exist.
To quote myself:
> When you talk about "this Goldilocks zone of womanhood," I think you've rediscovering one of the oldest philosophical discoveries: mental concepts and ideas (in this case "woman") do not apply perfectly to the world of appearences. But this does not mean we can jettison concepts and ideas altogether. In fact they seem necessary. So the fact that we cannot seem to come up with a perfect criterion for defining "biological woman" does not mean that we can dispense with that category.
So, regardless of whether we can specify criteria by which we can decide whether or not someone is a biological woman, the essential concept of "biological woman" seems to me (and to gender critical feminists) to be indispensible. To me, because it allows us to provide a good (though not perfect) answer to the question "where do babies come from?" and to gender critical feminists because they view the concept as central to their political/philosophical project.
In fact, we can use your method of argument to demolish any category or concept. Take death for instance. How do we define death? By what criteria can we say anything is dead? Take life. By what criteria can we say something is alive? In fact we can't answer these questions perfectly and this is well known. But I don't see any use in getting rid of concepts like life and death which seem central to how we all understand the world. Along the same lines, I don't think we can dispense with "biological woman".
And while all of this may seem "absurd" to you, terms like "AFAB" seems "absurd" to me.
Right. But nobody is asking you to dispense of the category of women, what we're doing is we're agreeing with you that the category is fuzzy and we're saying that genitalia and sex assignment at birth do not clearly designate identity.
Nor are we getting rid of the category of cisgender and/or AFAB women. Trans women are not (and have never claimed to be) biologically identical to AFAB women. If trans women were claiming that they were biologically identical to women, then many of them wouldn't be taking estrogen. They are very aware about their biology :)
But acknowledging the fuzziness of women as a category overall means regularly reassessing our social norms about how women are expected to act and what their bodies are expected to look like. This is especially true in instances where we see people who are sharing a lot of experiences with other women.
Many trans women know what it's like to be catcalled. They know what it's like to be discriminated against at their jobs. Their experiences are not identical to everyone else's, in the same way that women's experiences in these areas are not all identical depending on their backgrounds/bodies/environments. But there is enough overlap that it is useful to group them together under the banner of womanhood. Because there isn't a perfect criterion for "woman", and part of feminism is critically examining biases about what hoops people need to jump through to be considered an "acceptable" woman -- regardless of whether those hoops are set up by men, or by other women.
> To me, because it allows us to provide a fairly good answer to the question "where do babies come from?"
Well, except for infertile women, who are fully woman and fully valid regardless of their ability to have children.
> and to gender critical feminists because they view the concept as cental to their political/philosophical project.
I disagree that trans women mean that these political/philosophical goals can't be achieved. To me, this is just gatekeeping, I don't see a real motivating need for this kind of exclusion. Trans women do not have an agenda to take away women's rights, many of these people are feminists themselves.
> And while this may seem "absurd" to you, terms like "AFAB" seems "absurd" to me.
The absurdity is not that you have different opinions about the definition of a woman, the absurdity is your implication that acknowledging the womanhood of trans women is tantamount to saying that their experiences are completely identical to cisgender, AFAB women, or that it's destroying some kind of sacred bond. That position is absurd because cisgender, AFAB women do not have identical experiences with each other.
You wrote:
> If it means "there is no distinction between biological women and trans women," that seems wrong to me and to the vast majority of people.
That would be an absurd thing for anyone to claim about any attribute of womanhood, and nobody is doing so.
In fact we are being asked this. Which is why trans women are competing with biological women in sports. How is that not dispensing with the category of "biological women"?
You don't seem to realize it but your entire argument is based on undermining the category of "biological women" by showing that it isn't "real". You've typed a lot of words attempting to do that.
> I disagree that trans women mean that these political/philosophical goals can't be achieved. To me, this is just gatekeeping, I don't see a real motivating need for this kind of exclusion. Trans women do not have an agenda to take away women's rights, many of these people are feminists themselves.
All categories are "gatekeeping". To say X is X and not Y is "gatekeeping". This is why "gatekeeping" is such a dumb term.
> The absurdity is not that you have different opinions about the definition of a woman, the absurdity is your implication that acknowledging the womanhood of trans women is tantamount to saying that their experiences are completely identical to cisgender, AFAB women, or that it's destroying some kind of sacred bond. That position is absurd because cisgender, AFAB women do not have identical experiences with each other.
I don't define everything by "experiences" so this is all gibberish to me. But, again, we are being asked to deny the distinction between biological women and trans women. This is very explicit. You're choosing to ignore it because it's inconvenient to your argument.
No one, literally no one, is saying that AFAB and cisgender women do not exist.
> your entire argument is based on undermining the category of "biological women" by showing that it isn't "real".
If your criteria for the category of "biological women" is dependent on having a strict bright line distinction between AFAB/cisgender women and everyone else, then yeah, I am trying to get rid of that bright line, because the bright line doesn't exist and has never existed at any point in history, and it's silly and unscientific to say it exists.
However, if your criteria for "biological women" is not dependent on some kind of mythological bright line, then no, I am not trying to undermine anyone or anything. I'll say it again, no one is claiming that AFAB/cisgender women do not exist as a category, and no one is claiming that they do not have unique experiences within that category. No one wants to get rid of the category of cisgender women.
> In fact we are being asked this. Which is why trans women are competing with biological women in sports. How is that not dispensing with the category of "biological women"?
This is too large of a topic to get into right here and would be too long of an aside, but I do not see strong evidence that trans women are destroying the competitiveness of women's sports, I do see strong evidence that the blowback against trans women risks harming AFAB/cisgender women who naturally have unconventional levels of testosterone or unconventional body types. I'm also a little bit thrown by the idea that forcing trans men to play in women's sports is going to somehow be an improvement over what you're worried about.
This harm to non-conforming cisgender women is not only isolated to sports, by the way. A side-effect of transgender bathroom bills is often an increase in harassment towards masculine cisgender women who face harassment when they use bathrooms that match their birth sex. A general increase in acceptance of gender fluidity and gender expression has been (as far as I can tell) largely beneficial to cisgender non-conforming women.
> I don't define everything by "experiences" so this is all gibberish to me. But, again, we are being asked to deny the distinction between biological women and trans women.
Arbitrary distinctions between women are less important than distinctions that affect their experiences and their fight for their rights. So if your position is that women should abandon shared experiences and solidarity over gender rights in favor of arbitrary biological distinctions, then guilty as charged, I am undermining that effort. Because it's an unhelpful effort that ought to be undermined.
However, outside of the TERF world, I do think that most women consider shared experiences and solidarity with other women to be important, and to be a part of their gender identity.
I don't think anyone is asserting that, at least not the way you say. You're sort of responding to a perceived strawman with another strawman.
What gender critical folks are saying is that the more radical arm of trans-activism (particularly the powerful Self-ID movement) looks at biological sex as superfluous and arbitrary, and thus any spaces, programs, or resources that have been reserved for women up to this point must be made available to men if they so much as declare themselves to be female. Any requirements to "commit" to a transition, in terms of time or physical/hormonal adjustment are attacked as transphobic.
And then there's the language policing that the self-ID'ers want to enact, wherein, for example, biological women would be referred to as "menstruators", and transphobic phrases such as "breastfeeding" would be prohibited.
And in fact, breastfeeding itself is under attack in some TRA circles as an inherently anti-trans behavior, because obviously it cannot be part of the "shared experience" of women and transwomen.
I know there's a lot of space in between the extremes for people who truly were "born in the wrong body" as Mermaids says, but I think it's understandable that many honest and well-intentioned folks perceive the more radical TRA stuff as a misogynistic male colonisation of femininity.
> biological women would be referred to as "menstruators"
> transphobic phrases such as "breastfeeding" would be prohibited.
> breastfeeding itself is under attack in some TRA circles
If you say there's a group of people out there who think this way I can't technically prove to you that group doesn't exist, but I have never personally met a trans person who would agree with those statements. At most, I have seen "menstruators" used as a shorthand for "women who menstruate" specifically in conversations about menstruation, which does not seem to me to be a particularly problematic use of the word.
I'll take you at your word that these people exist and are bothering you, and for whatever it's worth you have my permission/support if you ignore them. But I don't think it's accurate or fair to extrapolate from those people to make statements about what trans activists and trans people themselves believe overall. I am not trying to say that the experiences of cisgender woman are superfluous, and including trans women in feminine spaces or being conscientious of their experiences is not an attempt to erase anyone, it's an attempt to be inclusive.
I'm reminded of Hark, A Vagrant's Straw Feminists comic[0]. There's a pretty big difference between what the majority of trans community members are saying -- "Not all women breastfeed" (which is trivially true, even among cisgender groups of women) -- and "Breastfeeding is transphobic", which is nonsensical. While I totally understand why someone might look at straw trans-rights arguments and worry that this means trans people are "erasing" them, it is still important to understand that trans people by and large are not saying those things, it is a mischaracterization of the overall group.
If you let radicals define how you approach every social movements and how you characterize the people involved in that movement, then there are very few social movements that you won't begin to see as problematic, feminism included.
How on earth did being black make it on that list?! Wtf
I think it's important in feminist circles to understand that the Black community can be affected by sexism in ways that white women might not experience.
You can say the same about things like income. The sexism that a professional in an office job experiences can occasionally differ in subtle ways from the sexism that a blue-collar worker experiences. Not to say one is better or worse, just the way that inequality manifests is often contextually dependent.
No, but I do understand that the way society treats Black women is often different than the way society treats white women, and I understand that being a white woman does not automatically give someone complete insight into the struggles that Black women face.
I am not sure it is true, and utterly sure it does not matter
Kinda like "Black Lives Matter" - obviously they do, but the fact that you have to say it out loud and directly highlights the disparity and systemic injustices faced by people of color.
At least, that's what I think those things mean, someone with a more sophisticated understanding will probably correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't know enough to conclude, but trying to understand and ask more questions is a first step.
When I see people say things like "biology is what is real", I think about the harm done to every adopted child who is being told that their parent isn't really their parent, that their relationship should not be respected as much as someone who is biologically related to their parents.
Many prisons already separate by ethnic group simply to keep the peace. Yes, it's segregation, but the alternative is more prison riots.
Thus, if separation happens for practical reasons, then don't limit the separation practices to one group; otherwise, you will be accused of discrimination, perhaps justifiably. Use statistics, not stereotypes, to find the split points.
Or get better security so mixing doesn't result in problems. Lowest-bidder security has down-sides.
The word you're looking for is "cis".
The only people using the term “cis” are trans-activists.
You can say that and still be sympathetic to the plight of trans people.
Say you're right. What stops them sneaking in right now? It's not like there are mandatory ID checks at the entrance.
Gendered bathrooms are a concrete expression of the fact that it is gender that is the major fault line through our society. The fact we need them is a damming indictment on our society (on men probably)
How about predatory men pretending to be trans-women?
You've just created a world where predatory men pretend to be trans men, who are now legally required to use women's bathrooms.
At least most trans women are trying to express in a feminine way (disregarding the issues with women—cis and trans—being discriminated against for not being “feminine enough” by someone's standard), with this "solution", you've just normalised people actively trying to be as masculine as possible going into women's bathrooms. Congrats.
(Of course, predation in bathrooms is illegal, why on earth would someone who is willing to break that law be stopped by another one saying they aren't meant to be there? It's literally the same nonsense argument used by homophobes to argue we shouldn't allow gay people into those spaces.)
Are predatory men pretending to be transwomen a problem on any statistically noticeable level?
Without proof to the contrary the assumption should be that the trans population has a similar proportion of rapists as any other does.
Since its been well established that essentially all rape no matter who is raping who goes under reported it is completely rational for women to be just as fearful as they would with any other stranger.
The question is whether bathroom bills forcing transpeople who wish to not break the law (potential rapists are obviously not part of this set...) into men's bathrooms, and a surrounding climate of generalised hostility towards anyone with any remotely masculine element of their physique or style in women's bathrooms actually meaningfully reduces the risk of rape, or just makes the environment more intimidating for everyone.
Cis women can perpetuate rape. Should we ban them from changing rooms too? How far through the looking glass does this have to go?!
It is a dessicated vegetative hominoid surely?
I cannot help but have some empathy for women -- who might have very good reason to be fearful of men -- who are uncomfortable having this person in female-safe spaces. That is 100% independent of the intentions or actual danger posed by this trans woman I know, which is as close to zero as I can imagine.
Even to the extent that there is a debate to be had about trans identity and how gender/sex works, it's really hard to have that debate when one side is terrified that their rights are being taken away. For trans people, this debate has immediate consequences.
It's kind of frustrating to me that people don't see this. People are mad about not being able to have academic debates about trans identity as if it's unreasonable for the trans community to be prioritizing their own rights instead of the intellectual curiosity of university professors.
2020-2021 has seen one of the largest jumps in anti-trans legislation since... I don't even know when, since before I was born. So yeah, everyone who cares about this issue is on edge about TERFs, because TERFs don't want to have a friendly academic debate, they want to pass legislation blocking affirmative care, policing bathrooms and sports, and generally erasing trans people from society. I'm annoyed when I see people online acting like the trans community is the reason that these topics are politically fraught. They're politically fraught because TERFs and anti-trans politicians are using them as a front to take people's rights away.
If that problem got fixed, if trans people weren't under attack, if a lot of the questioning wasn't tied up in bigotry, then conversations online about gender wouldn't be so tense. It's wild to try and blame the trans community for prioritizing self-preservation.
With that being said, defying cultural norms is a good thing but you can't force me to accept your reality. I have to option to have a difference in opinion than you. If i accidentally say sir, instead of mrs you can't cancel me because of it.
I don't claim to be a moral precept but what i do offer you A peace treaty. You can live your life in a way that is pleasing to you but you cannot force other people to accept your beliefs no matter how much scientific or cultural backing it may have. if the local womens book club doesn't want a dude who 'Claims' to be a women in their book club but can obviously still see he's a man, that's okay. It's not discrimination, it's difference in opinion and that is okay.
edit: Deleted a paragraph discussing sports. I think it mainly took away from my argument rather than helped it.
If you were responsible for compiling a dictionary, what is the accurate definition of "woman" that you would provide?
“Woman” describes a collection of chromosomal and phenological traits observed within an ongoing and temporal culture lens. A human is often perceived as a woman when she simultaneously embodies a variety of these traits, especially so when those traits contrast that which is considered male.
Much like the concept of feminism, consensus on what is and isn’t in these categories continues to evolve as it’s observed and informed by the experienced of both genders.
I can understand why a definition like this wouldn’t be as satisfying as something more concrete and well, definitive.
If gender is a complete social construct and 'man' and 'woman' are something that is traits observed within an ongoing and temporal culture lens, then why not create another of your own?
Most problems that I see in this debate are due to one group wanting to widen the scope of a existing understanding, the other wanting to preserve it.
Wouldn't creating a 3rd gender and legislating it as a valid legal entity with compelled equal facilities solve the problem for both groups?
This doesn’t come up often but I think cis folks aren’t aware that many trans folk “graduate” out of the community once they feel sufficiently transitioned. After a few years of hormones and surgery, many would just prefer to go on with their life — skipping the debates and games of political football.
Personally speaking, the concept of a third space wouldn’t be so bad, but making gendered spaces less necessary to begin with seems like a more realistic target. Historically, women were chained to their homes because of a lack of public restrooms. Why we didn’t opt for single-stalls and shared facilities is probably more to do with existing building codes and social norms, rather than a natural order of things.
This reply is getting a little too long, but I’d like to pass on the much wiser words of Kate Bornstein:
Then there's gender attribution, whereby we look at somehody and say, "that's a man," or "that's a woman." And this is important because the way we perceive another's gender affects the way we relate to that person. Gender attribution is the sneaky one. It's the one we do all the time without thinking about it; kinda like driving a sixteen-wheeler down a crowded highway...without thinking about it.
In this culture, gender attribution, like gender assignment, is phallo centric. That is, one is male until perceived otherwise. According to a study done by Kessler and McKenna, one can extrapolate that it would take the presence of roughly four female cues to outweigh the presence ofone male cue: one is assumed male until proven otherwise. That's one reason why many women today get "sirred" whereas very few men get called "ma'am."If you can't keep in mind that you're talking to other human beings who may have deep and good reasons to feel differently than you do on a topic, then please don't post here. This is a difficult enough topic without poisoning it with swipes and snark.
... Except when they aren't. Even biology doesn't paint such a simple picture. Chromosomes are important, but not as important as hormones -- and how the body responds to those hormones.
If you're not aware of CAIS, it is probably the clearest way for you to re-evaluate your view that chromosomes are prescriptive.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitiv...
Edit - puzzled by the downvotes here. Do you know what chromosomes you have? Have you checked? If you do, there's a nonzero chance that they aren't the chromosomes you're expecting to find.
If you were to test your chromosomes and found they didn't match your expectations, you would either have to change your belief about the prescriptiveness of chromosomes, or your belief about your gender. Which belief would you change? Which belief do you hold more strongly?
In my experience this is the center of every “debate.” It’s less about the merits of the cause and more about convincing this point against the hypothetical risk of a male who’s taken advantage of self identified gender. TERFs are generally not interested in dynamics of trans men, who seem to be more like “gender traitors” than their deceptive counterparts.
Personally I find this whole movement a farce. Every talking point not only misaligns with trans women, it causes more harm to cis women at scale. “Real women” give birth — except hundreds of thousands who cannot. “Real women” look like the contemporary feminine ideal, yet 1 in 10 women suffer from PCOS enduring testosterone levels higher than any trans woman has to contend with. And the cake topper of them all, “trans women fuel negative stereotypes of femininity,” while simultaneously not appearing feminine enough, often barred from HRT until after puberty. This Goldilocks zone of womanhood is always out of reach, and therefore transness is never acceptable.
- a trans woman