https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj4V-Nme86U
Should he be allowed to whip his dick out in women's bathrooms?
If actual women complained about his presence in, say, a support group for mothers, what would you say to them?
Should he be allowed to join a women's boxing club and punch women in the face?
And so on. I'm sure you get the idea.
She is a trans woman. She is a woman. Within the context of medical access, from what I can gather she has a penis, she has testes, and she doesn't take hormones currently (she might but a comment she made suggests she doesn't). That gender-non-conformance doesn't make her any less of a woman.
I'm not sure what your hangup is with respect to her? She very clearly present herself as a woman. And women with beards, sharper facial features, or deep voices aren't terribly uncommon nor do those aspects make them any less of a woman. Women like Harnaam Kaur exist and they are just as woman as any other woman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB85apiZgFg
> Should he be allowed to whip his dick out in women's bathrooms?
Should she.
Should she be allowed to use a woman's bathroom as intended? Yes. No questions asked.
Now if someone was doing something problematic in the bathroom (flashing/exposing genitalia or breasts) and/or harassing other women in the women's bathroom then they'd need to be removed. Not because of their gender or because of their features but for the behavior. It's a very simple and straightforward concept.
> If actual women complained about his presence in, say, a support group for mothers, what would you say to them?
Her presence.
If she is a mother she should be permitted. If she isn't a mother/doesn't have children then there is an argument to be made for denying her presence there. If she has children but it was a support group exclusive to birthing parents then again there may be an argument. But more often than not those support groups aren't exclusive to birthing parents and they aren't even exclusive to women.
> Should he be allowed to join a women's boxing club and punch women in the face?
Should she.
And the answer is that it depends.
If it's at a competitive or professional level then she is subject to the rules of the club and if they require certain hormone levels to participate then that's the nature of the beast. I personally don't see it as necessary but if it's the requirements for participation then that's what they are and the best you can do is fight to change them.
Now if the club is a hobbyist or non-varsity/school club then absolutely they should be permitted to participate.
Either way whether they are technically permitted, I think they should be allowed to participate regardless of testosterone levels or anything else. Boxing is divided into weight class anyways so there's little flexibility for testosterone influencing being "bigger".
> And so on. I'm sure you get the idea.
I understand what you are saying but I just outright disagree. Trans women are women. Intersex women are women. Non-gender-conforming women (regardless of whether they are cis or not) are women.
No, he's a man who calls himself a woman. Anyone with eyes can see that, he is very clearly male.
> She very clearly present herself as a woman.
What do you mean? Is your view of women really so shallow and sexist that you when you see a man wearing a skirt, you truly believe that he's a woman?
> If she is a mother she should be permitted.
Well he can't possibly be a mother, due to being a man, and if you said that to women who complained about his presence they'd assume you were taking the piss.
That's just not true. What even makes you think that? Facial hair is not uncommon in women, deep voices are not uncommon in women, and sharper facial features are not uncommon in women. I'm not sure what you think is so "clearly male" about her but those were the only traditionally masculine features I could think of.
> What do you mean? Is your view of women really so shallow and sexist that you when you see a man wearing a skirt, you truly believe that he's a woman?
There's no reason to be impolite. Wearing feminine clothing is not a requirement to be a woman. Nothing about being a woman requires wearing feminine clothing. Even if she was wearing purely masculine clothing she'd still be a woman.
> Well he can't possibly be a mother, due to being a man
She could absolutely be a mother, she just may not be the birthing parent. In the exact same way a cis woman can be a mother to a child even if they weren't the one to give birth to them. And likewise a father can be the birthing parent. You see this commonly with trans men for example.
> and if you said that to women who complained about his presence they'd assume you were taking the piss.
People can complain about a person's presence all they want. It doesn't make them any less of a mother and it doesn't make it any less acceptable for them to be present. If they have a valid complaint then there can be a discussion but "they look wrong" or "I don't believe they are who they say they are" aren't valid complaints.
And I'm not sure how you think these types of discriminatory complaints are acceptable? Discrimination being acceptable against trans women doesn't just hurt them, it hurts cis women as well. Especially gender non-conforming women.
How do you think a new mother feels when people try to falsely accuse her of being a man when she's just trying to discuss her experiences and learn how to be a new parent? Who does that benefit?
My stance here is not complicated. You treat people with respect, you limit your assumptions, and if something isn't clear you politely ask. And for the love of god you don't needlessly exclude people. If the fear is that a group or minority will commit some crime or transgression, then you punish people for committing the crime or transgression. You don't punish people for being suspected of being part of a group/minority you are afraid might commit a transgression.
Well, apart from the fact that he very obviously has a male body, the video title itself indicates this.
> There's no reason to be impolite. Wearing feminine clothing is not a requirement to be a woman.
Then why did you say that he "very clearly presents" himself "as a woman"? What exactly were you basing that on?
It's very clear that he presents himself as a man who calls himself a woman.
> And for the love of god you don't needlessly exclude people.
Agreed. Excluding men like this from women's and girls' spaces is absolutely needed to ensure that they still remain women's and girls' spaces.
The problem is that far too many of these men have no respect for boundaries, and will turn up to venues like support groups for mothers and demand entry.
And my point isn't to try and claim that just because intersex people exist that the terms are useless. My point is that the definitions people try to ascribe to those terms are statistically more likely to exclude other groups of people (who the definitions are not intended to exclude) than they are to exclude trans people.
Definitions that don't work:
- Defined by "passing"/looking like what society expects a given sex to look iike: Refuted extremely commonly by queer people of all kinds. Also just wildly subjective and impractical.
- Defined by chromosomes/karyotype: Rule broken by prevalence of intersex people. Additionally from a biological perspective so much more goes into sex determination during gestation and afterwards than just the karyotype.
- Defined by presence of breasts: Indistinguishable at birth and defined by hormone levels. Rule broken by numerous medical conditions. A woman is not less of a woman for getting a masectomy or double masectomy. A man is not less of a man because medication or hormone levels cause them to grow breasts.
- Defined by the presence of primary sex organs (testes/ovaries): Rule broken by numerous medical conditions. A woman is not less of a woman for getting an oophorectomy and a man is not less of a man for getting an orchirectomy. Likewise a woman who has lived her entire life as a woman who finds out that her ovaries differentiated as testes is not any less of a woman nor the reverse for a man. And both of the aforementioned surgeries are very common.
- Defined by presence of secondary sex organs: Rule broken by numerous medical conditions. Bottom surgeries for trans people arguably make up less of the share of genitoplasties performed than the numerous other reasons (recovery from trauma or disfigurement, recovery from cancer, etc). And surgeries like hysterectomies occur in up to 20% of women depending on the region. Having or not having one or more secondary sex organs isn't a reliable differentiating factor and unless you are storing photographs of genitalia from birth and sharing them with every person or organisation that want's to know your sex then this isn't a reliable method either. It's unnecessarily complex and/or it's unnecessary exclusive.
- Defined by hormone levels: Rule broken commonly by intersex people. Commonly broken by people with various medical conditions and/or medical interventions. A woman with low estrogen levels isn't less of a woman. A woman with high testosterone (such as due to PCOS which occurs in as high as 20% of women) doesn't make a woman any less of a woman. The reverse goes for men (such as men taking testosterone suppressors or blockers for diseases like prostate cancer which occurs in around 12% of men).
----
At the end of the day you only really have one appraoch and that's to just be more precise, use better terminology, and use the necessary information where it's needed.
- Government and social documents (drivers licenses, passports, ID cards, etc) should just use gender. There's no reason to use anything else and it doesn't actually benefit anyone otherwise.
- Medical records should indicate known presence/absence of organs and hormone levels. Awareness of which organs are or aren't present is only important due to care relevant to those organs and their interaction with the rest of the body. And hormone levels should be documented because the majority of medical distinctions for healthcare purposes (risks, dosage changes, interactions, effects on the body, etc) are tied to hormone levels. If someone is manually controlling or augmenting/manipulating their hormone levels that's relevant for care and it serves the patient better to be explicit about these types of things than to attempt to tie them to a single binary differentiator and make assumptions.
- Access to bathrooms, changing rooms, etc: Just let people use the bathrooms they feel most comfortable with? It's not hard, it's not complicated. If a lady or a lad is being a creep then someone can do something about it but that has nothing to do with any indicators other than "they are being a creep".
- Sports, etc: Either just divide it by gender or drop gender/sex based division entirely and divide it by skill. This is such an exceptionally small non-issue and protections against this perceived incursion have only contributed to discrimination. There is no reason why women's sports restricts competitors on their natural and/or nominal testosterone levels but men's sports do not. In competitive women's sports abnormally high natural testosterone is disqualifying but in men's sports it's a permitted competitive advantage. Additionally with regards to sports records, gendered performance differences have been rapidly closing in on a pace where they may disappear entirely within a century or less. And in particular, with non-professional sports there is absolutely zero reason for exclusionary restrictions. In those environments this is a complete and total non-issue.