You don't actually believe this is what defines men and women do you? If so, wow. That is incredibly, regressively sexist.
> And again, if a trans person has severely changed their sex hormones, the concept of "sex never changes" is shaky anyway.
A male taking medication to increase his estrogen and reduce his testosterone level, for example, is just a male taking medication. He hasn't converted himself to female. There is no change of sex, this is nonsense.
> So stop trying to tell trans women they're really men. Such a statement completely misses all the subtle realities of such a statement, serves no productive purpose, and is rude as hell.
Of course they're men: transwomen are by definition men who want to be women. The purpose of keeping this in mind is when they try to demand access to female-only spaces, instead of pretending they are women, we can tell them NO.
> A male taking medication to increase his estrogen and reduce his testosterone level, for example, is just a male taking medication. He hasn't converted himself to female. There is no change of sex, this is nonsense.
The complete lack of self-awareness here is comical.
> > So stop trying to tell trans women they're really men. Such a statement completely misses all the subtle realities of such a statement, serves no productive purpose, and is rude as hell.
> Of course they're men: transwomen are by definition men who want to be women. The purpose of keeping this in mind is when they try to demand access to female-only spaces, instead of pretending they are women, we can tell them NO.
I think you'll find it's a little bit more complicated than that.
How? A man doesn't become a woman by wearing dresses and skirts and using a purse, and he doesn't become female by messing around with his hormone levels.
He's still a man, still male, whatever his desires to the contrary. Anything else is simply a fiction that the rest of us are being told to participate in.
Come on! You can do better! I believe in you!
Look, if a man wants to wear dresses or take estrogen or call himself a woman, that's fine, he can do what he likes. But whatever he does, he's not and will never be a woman, because he is male. Women are female, not some idea in a man's head.
Let's not ignore millions of years of evolutionary history just to spare the feelings of a few cross-dressers.
But you're not even trying to argue this or convince anyone of anything. You're just saying "nuh huh. What I believe in true and applies to everyone whether they like it or not".
I'm guessing there's nothing out there that'll change your mind. You've taken a fundamentalist position, which begs the question why are you here?
> You're just saying "nuh huh. What I believe in true and applies to everyone whether they like it or not".
Kind of ironic considering that's what the trans activists are insisting women must submit to, regarding all the men invading their spaces.
Replace "men" and "women" with "black" and "white" and read your stuff again.
Why is that different?
What clothes you wear are part of a performance where the entirety of the performance represents your gender. But not your sex! Changing one thing doesn’t change your gender. But if you change the whole performance, that’s changing your gender. And I don’t really like these concepts of gender, but it’s more of a description of how society views a person. I never got called “ma'am” or “miss” until I started wearing dresses. I’m not really saying that wearing a dress makes you a woman, but I’m saying that wearing a dress and doing the other things makes other people read you as a woman.
Until you’re able to separate the two concepts of sex and gender in your mind you’re going to continue to run in to this issue.
When someone says “trans women are women, not men” they’re talking about gender, not sex. And gender as theorized by Judith Butler is something that we can easily change. Whether we can change sex is a different question and one I’m less qualified to discuss, but it’s irrelevant to the question of changing gender.
Also I'm not convinced that a man being called "ma'am" or "miss" necessarily means that the speaker thinks he's a woman, especially these days. They might be saying it because that's how you're expected to politely address men in dresses these days. Or perhaps, they are being quietly sarcastic about the whole thing.
In summary, I don't accept this Butlerian redefinition of woman, as it's incoherent with reality and relies on guessing what's going on in people's minds. The existing definition of adult human female is fine and there's no need to change it.
This is the same stance that I have on various religions. If this is bigoted, so be it.
All you're saying is, you don't want non-passing people allowed in the wrong restrooms. Which, is... it's just a strange thing to want, really.
I doubt that is the main reason. Society has been pretty clear for a long time that certain people found trans people too strange to accept them. Gay people have been treated the same way. I think most people that don’t like trans people are probably also uncomfortable with gay people even if they are more likely to say it’s okay to be gay.
> If someone points out that a man who really wants to be a women is in principle still a man then they get instantly labelled a bigot.
You can avoid being called a bigot by understanding the following basic concepts.
Sex and gender are two distinct ideas. Gender as described by Judith Butler is a kind of performance that you do. It starts in childhood where we give boys the color blue and toy trucks and we give girls the color pink and dolls. Men wear pants and never wear dresses and women wear dresses and skits and use a purse. A man never wears a purse and if he has anything close it’s called a bag, definitely not a purse.
The above are made up concepts. Clothes and bags and pink and blue are not biological reality, they’re just made up by society. They’re part of a performance of gender. You can change your gender just by changing your performance.
Sex is a biological concept that relates to what secondary sex characteristics your body presents. Hormone levels, genitals, etc. this is still don’t a binary concept as intersex people exist and are something like 1% of the population. It’s also unclear if someone completely changes their hormones and has surgery to change their genitals, what is the point of saying “you’re still a man”? Such a statement is likely to bring up feelings of pain and misery the person has had from people who have been intolerant towards them. It also is unclear if you’re referring to biological sex or gender, and trans people are often terrified that they’re not performing their gender properly.
It’s like going up to a fat person and saying “wow you’re fat” and then walking around saying “fat people are intolerant because they get upset when I call them fat”. Maybe on some level you’re right, but you’re being an asshole if you insist on saying that. And again, if a trans person has severely changed their sex hormones, the concept of “sex never changes” is shaky anyway.
So stop trying to tell trans women they’re really men. Such a statement completely misses all the subtle realities of such a statement, serves no productive purpose, and is rude as hell.