One note: Nobody self-identifies as a TERF. Or at least not originally (I'm sure in Internet ire people do it ironically by now.) It's mostly a label used to crush nuanced conversation.
I've heard it was the other way around, i.e. it started off as a self identification for a niche group which people started to reject once it begun to be used pejoratively.
One of the interesting things about spending the last few years studying Western European post-Roman history has been the discovery that, in the West, there has historically been relatively little resistance to AFAB folks "presenting" (speaking of the interpretation at the time--the dichotomy between "presenting" and "being" is one I am thoroughly not qualified to negotiate) as male unless tied into homophobia. There are historical examples of folks who outwardly identify as women taking on male roles in monastic life, and it's often portrayed as a good and pious thing.
The reverse, it seems, is generally not true, though not exclusively so. I've read of, but don't have offhand, accounts of Church investigation into "male nuns" that ruled that the erstwhile offender, a male who had suffered prepubescent genital damage, had committed no crime being raised by a particular convent as a woman. But cases going the other way round are much more common.
In terms of today's relations, however, my intuition is that the fear regarding transwomen is that it's largely a performative flavor of misogyny and the fear of those of the "superior" set somehow damaging all men, much as the performative flavor of homophobia does the same with regards to gay men but shockingly much rarely with regards to bisexual or homosexual women. But, of course, that is just an intuition.
I'd wager that most people believe this. Not just feminists.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/11/08/transgender...
There's a name for the phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance
For details on that distinction and attempts at consensus-building for the terminology, see https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...
In software development terms, this topic has no ubiquitous language.
In relation to your comment, their belief is not based in a shared reality.
It is one thing to ask people should be able can use a bathroom, and another to ask questions about personal sexlife and behavior. i.e. if you asked people if you consider transwomen equally with women at birth as sexual partners, I bet the numbers fall through the floor.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026540751877913...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog...
There are a lot of women I would not want to sleep with. Does not mean I question their gender.
Most heterosexual men identify as being attracted to women, and don't hold trans women in that category.
You could ask whether there is a study to assert parent poster's assertion, too. All I could say is that the burden of proof seems to fall on you with your statement, but most would take parent's at face value.
While it's true there's little animosity directed at them, there is a lot of stuff Shrier's view that "gender ideology" is seducing lesbian women into thinking they're not actually women. Which, honestly, as someone who lived through lots of the dumb gay panic in the 80s and 90s sounds exactly like what people thought about homosexuals (eg: gay people can seduce/recruit straight people and turn them gay). So trans men get treated like dupes or victims of some social phenomena, rather than treated like actual human beings with agency of their own.
In fact, pretty much every anti-trans viewpoint I see, even from otherwise highbrow publicans like the Economist, are really just rehashes of what we heard about gays in the 80s and 90s, before we realized they were, in fact, not a threat to society.
This is such a bizarre leap of logic. Trans women are the pariahs of contemporary Western society. Yet the same people who uphold this subhuman status also assume that rapists are nefariously claiming trans female identity.
That’s not how rapists operate! They seek positions of power. Trans women are downtrodden and powerless — the least attractive position for a sexual predator.
This frames rape as some thing people plot out and rationalize over a long time.
Rape is like any other crime. Some people think about it critically and finds ways to commit it for their own amusement. Oftentimes it's just people taking an opportunity. Sometimes it's people finding ways to make opportunities and not thinking about freshman psychology power dynamics. A lot of rape involves hormones and alcohol flowing freely without consideration of the consequences or harm.
There are also people who actively enjoy feeling weak or inferior as part of a sexual fetish.
Trying to rationalize it into one group or mindset doesn't work.
"2. Feminists (TERFs) who believe being a"
... you mean the groups they represent i.e. 'a lot of women' frankly many of them who are not 'radical feminist' or even 'feminist'.
Huge numbers of women are uncomfortable with at least some parts of 'trans women' from 'changerooms' to 'sports' etc..
I don't think the very notion of 'trans' really upsets very many people at all, and that's the funny paradox.
But as soon as it crosses paths with others, then it's an entirely different issue and there's a lot of dust raised by pluralities.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints doesn't appear to feel threatened by transgender rights. At least, not according to official stances here: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/topics/transgender
"Love the sinner, hate the sin" is the typical line. The problem is our actions and identity are often intrinsically linked.
They have the same stance for gay people. "It's ok to be gay, god still loves you! The only catch is you can't ever have a romantic relationship with the person you love. If you do you'll be excommunicated and ostracized from your family. No biggy! God bless!"
Nobody wants this sort of faux compassion.
> Gender is an essential characteristic of Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness. The intended meaning of gender in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” is biological sex at birth.
> Church leaders counsel against elective medical or surgical intervention for the purpose of attempting to transition to the opposite gender of a person’s birth sex (“sex reassignment”). Leaders advise that taking these actions will be cause for Church membership restrictions.
> Leaders also counsel against social transitioning. A social transition includes changing dress or grooming, or changing a name or pronouns, to present oneself as other than his or her birth sex. Leaders advise that those who socially transition will experience some Church membership restrictions for the duration of this transition.
Their advice on what treatments they support for transgender people is kind of vague and circumspect, but the gist seems to be "A therapist should at least be open to conversion therapy," which is generally considered harmful.
Given the LDS Church's open campaign against gay rights based on the "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" (the same document referenced above), it seems reasonable to interpret this as stating opposition to transgender rights. Though as the parent noted, they are much less vocal on this topic.
I worry that this can be read as "all feminists are terfs", which is not accurate.
For trans exclusionary feminists one is the patriarchy coming to female protective places and females claiming their place and undermining the patriarchy. As for parents males being less susceptible to forceful sexual exploitation is true but there is also a huge societal double standard when it comes women forcing themselves on men or abusing their male partner which is also reflected in parents being less worried about something happening to their children. Possibly also because of pregnancies onesidedness.
The bathroom bills, the panic over sports, the violence trans and gender-nonconforming people encounter (especially on racialized lines) -- it's all part of a larger political narrative. As you can see from the comments on this HN thread, you get a daddy all worked up about his daughter's virtue/place in life and you can move political mountains because it is an Existential Threat that Must Be Removed. That's weaponizable in a way that talking about military spending or tax law or gerrymandering is not.
I think that might be why it’s more common than transitioning in the other direction?
From what I’ve seen reported, cis women are on average more relaxed than cis men about trans women.
The criticisms of transgenderism by TERFs have being a Feminist (in this case 2nd wave) at its very core. Removing it loses a lot of nuance of their specific criticisms.
If we can't call a spade a spade, what shall we call it?
But if we want to be accommodating to those who take offense with the term, we can use the term Gender Critical.
All you have to do is look at how the term is used in the wild to determine if its a slur. Anyone who can claim it isn't is being disingenuous.
By that logic, is "white supremacist" (or racist) a slur? I see it used in just about the same way.
I'm wondering to what extent statements like "racist is a slur" is equivalent to "people frequently express distaste for racists"
It is a real branch inside feminism, which lots of women identify with, and it doesn't mean what most people think it does.
Men were all inherently bad, penis-in-vagina sex was inherently rape, lesbians were good, trans-women were infiltrators and trans-men deserters.
It's only pejorative in the sense that it attempts to accurately describe the motives of a set of individuals who aren't comfortable with the way those motives are widely regarded. In that sense it's about as pejorative as "racist".
It might be loaded with denotation outside of the scientific community, but the word “radical” has some various scientific meanings, as other commenters have noted.
Feminism covers a range of thoughts or beliefs, to promote advocacy.
I second this. Maybe it's some echo chamber effect or a minority stirring shit up, but I've hardly heard anything over the years about transmen-as-men vs men-as-men. It seems like most of the focus is on transwomen-as-women vs women-as-women. Maybe we're not as vocal? Maybe we care less? I don't think we have much of a dog in this race so I'm often confused as to why this topic comes up on HN considering most of us here are men. Boring day at work?
I do feel bad for the women's Olympics, but I'd like to ask the Olympics committee what the hell were they thinking long before I start any kind of anti-trans crusade. This is one discussion that doesn't seem to be happening much. The diatribe is as always directed among the proles and the decisionmakers get a free pass. Someone must have said, "Yes, lets allow a 35 year-old recently transitioned man to compete with early 20 year-old women," and some approval process must have happened. Those are the people you want to start asking the hard questions, not look at LH and blame her for participating in the Olympics that she's allowed to participate in.
Or as someone else put it: "A female POC just lost her spot to a white, middle-aged, male-born son of a billionaire. This is supposed to be progressive?"
Even their current testosterone-levels theory is imperfect, since some people have obviously female bodies but inordinately high testosterone levels.
So they seem to be muddling along about as well as they can. If they want to have a separate women's category, it's a question they're going to have to answer.
The Olympics will eventually become a contest of the best humans, regardless of sex / gender. This is already how it is more or less today: people born with the right body types, into the right families, etc, will make it to the top.
Thank for you attending my TED talk.
I feel like women's sports is extremely cursed - a sporting competition with a handicap, except the handicap is not specified in the rules but is instead a randomly distributed quirk of biology, meaning that people have to judge who does or does not have it, except that the handicap is also an integral part of a person's identity...
(no I don't mean to say being female is a disability, the context is sports)
Yeah it definitely destroys my little thought :D.
If you want to know the very best a human can do, you will destroy them. It's just not a question we can safely know the answer to.
So it's never really going to be fair, and we need to ask a different question. Exactly what that question is remains to be seen.
Take a look around, I think you'll find transmen comprise a much larger proportion of this community (and tech communities in general) than the general population.
There's also a lot of desire on HN to comment on political topics while pretending not to comment on political topics. Things like gender identity, women in tech, genetic differences, etc are all wonderful smokescreens to allow us to post politically but maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest.
Some of us have an academic interest in biology, genetics, neuroscience, psychology, etc. while still aligning with the overall origin of this site as a place to discuss the latest in news as relates to technology startups.
It is unfortunate that this politically charged topic is so misunderstood and that ignorance of the basic science behind it is so prevalent, but here we are.
Especially when it comes to these topics, I imagine it's very easy for people who aren't affected by these issues to "debate" them *because* they aren't the ones directly affected by it.
That's a good point.
My guess is that practically everyone knows what side they are on as things get more sporty. The rest is just weaving arguments for the fun of it.
Interesting discussion is the HN way!
Some enterprising scientists may have some cutting edge insights reviewing HN comments on technology topics, no reason to suspect otherwise for social sciences.
Not well versed in feminist theory, but I’m curious whether anyone has formally documented in the scientific literature these sorts of psychological attitudes.
Probably a cross-disciplinary masters thesis worthy topic if no one has done that research yet.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lesbians-more-accept...
Do you have an academic citation to back up your assertions?
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C50&q=att...
The scientific community may not yet have crafted any research on the specific question of attitudes towards transgender athletes, but it shouldn’t be hard to find the research if it exists.
fairness is an issue when considering MtF, but not FtM? why exactly?
This is a factor in why there are regulations requiring testosterone levels below a certain amount in order to qualify in the women’s section of certain sporting programs.
It's really not that hard to understand. It's the same sort of thinking that motivates the slogan "don't punch down". Males aren't threatened by females identifying as men. But females are threatened by males identifying as women for many obvious reasons. For example, with self-id as the only criteria keeping men out of women's prisons, it undermines the protection women have against abuse from men while in forced proximity. A female in a male prison or male changeroom is a novelty, not a threat.
Those currents run deep, and run through to today. And that's not to say that "but a guy might go in the girls' bathroom!" is not what bigots say, because as a prima facie claim that's certainly common--but I very much doubt, were we to see some unvarnished honesty, that bathroom fears are actually a primary motivator rather than a convenient battleground.
Can you substantiate this? It doesn't match my understanding of the situation either from a cultural or an interpersonal perspective.
Transwomen, on the other hand, are much more defined, in the eyes of a patriarchal society, by their rejection of masculinity in favor of femininity. To some cis-men, they appear as aberrations or duplicitous (hence the nickname "trap"), to some cis-women they appear as potential unfalsifiable unknowns, and a potential thing to be feared for sexual violence. Transwomen are thus caught in the crossfires of fear from both genders.
It's probably more that in the grand scheme of things trans-men don't pose any sort of threat to other males. I don't recall ever discussing trans-men with my peers.
Trans women are seen as seeking female privileges (like the ability to compete against women in sports, which is easier than competing against men). Which enrages some people.
Trans men are seen as giving up their female privileges, to which everyone shrugs and says "you want less privilege? Fine by me!"
I can think of at least one -- working in tech.
Of course men have privileges too, but I think many of men's privileges come from confounding variables. Like men are on average taller, and people are biased to view taller people as having more authority, so taller people are more likely to become CEOs etc.
Whereas women's privileges come from society compensating for men's privileges. So society sees women on average are smaller and physically weaker, and thus decides they need privileges like separate sports to compensate.
Trans women who went through male puberty often have the size advantage of men, so them also have the social privileges of women is seen as double dipping.
While for trans men it's the opposite, they're often small like women, but not afforded social protection for it.
Anyway that's just my theory why some people hate trans women more than trans men. I myself have sympathy for both cases, dysphoria sounds pretty awful.
Perhaps it's simply a way to more firmly define the progressive stack.
We need an ISO standard in this area.
I'd say that's a vast overreach. It isn't like the Trans Army is going to come burn down your house.
If anything, it's a general notion that transsexuals are mentally ill and that there is something odd about normalizing it. In a sense, that it's not different than people who want their limbs amputated or wear animal costumes at all times.
That seems like a defensible position to take. At least as plausible as the common alternative -- that it is a physical illness (thus we 'fix' the body to match the mind).
1. Parents and sexual violence victims concerned about the non-falsifiability of trans-identification and the related concerns of sexual predators claiming an identity they don't actually have to gain access to private spaces of women and girls.
2. Feminists (TERFs) who believe being a woman is a fundamental, biological identity and cannot be coopted by males.
Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. These groups exclusively concern themselves with trans-women.
Mormons are probably another group due to the reliance of their theology on binary gender, but I don't see them as being particularly vocal on this topic.