The gazelle card
https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1053334095114182657
Not a good analogy. Nobody is saying trans people shouldn’t compete in sport at all, some people are saying male-bodied people shouldn’t compete against women. Nobody is saying trans people are non-human animals. Nobody is saying trans people should be rounded up and sent to camps. Feminist women are not comparable to Nazis.
This impasse is one reason I can’t see most trans activism as genuinely progressive: it’s so resolutely blind and indifferent to the vulnerabilities and disadvantages of anyone else. Another way of putting it would be that it’s so unintersectional. A progressive trans activism would give a shit about any physical advantages trans women might have over women. It wouldn’t callously wave that off and carry on regardless. It wouldn’t be so grossly narcissistic.
Updating to add: Of course there’s another aspect, which I overlooked.
Oh. My. God.
People pointing out that being biologically male means having an athletic advantage over biological females, isn't equivalent to you being a victim of racism or the Nazis.
You have absolutely no shame whatsoever. This is excruciating. https://t.co/3MY3jEllGh
— Harvey Jeni (@GappyTales) October 20, 2018
Oh yes, that. Rachel McKinnon is not comparable to victims of Nazism. Rachel McKinnon being told that male bodies have an advantage over female bodies in cycle racing is not comparable to being a victim of genocide.
It’s all about the narcissism.
Hmm, trying to make a point about unfair advantages by quoting (is it a quote or just made up?) a Nazi? Wasn’t it the Nazis who used a glaringly huge size advantage to crush Poland and lay waste to much of Western Europe?
It’s hard to see trans activism as progressive because there’s so much misogyny in it.
That too. There are quite a few reasons – a superfluity in fact.
Male is to female as human being is to:
A) mushroom
B) gazelle
C) salt marsh harvest mouse
D) footstool
E) none of the above
And racism. This analogy is really appallingly racism.
No, McKinnon, noticing you are male is NOTHING like comparing an African-American to non-human animals.
A number of black people are pointing that out to him on Twitter.
Yeah, AoS, I thought the same thing. Who exactly is being quoted? Seems to imply Goebbels, but the quote marks encompass too much.
Apparently it’s…Guy Walters:
Not sure if Walters is attempting to quote Goebbels, paraphrasing, or just characterizing.
I guess it doesn’t matter too much, since no doubt the Nazis held putrid beliefs like that, but sloppy attribution annoys me.
Getting back on point, yeah, super ridiculous alleged analogy. I do wonder how realistic a separate transgender division would be though. At some levels it would be workable, but it’s on the high school level you’re probably not going to have a critical mass of people to make it work logistically.
Well that’s not so much sloppy attribution as no attribution at all. Hey, Maw, put quotation marks on it and it will look Important.
God McKinnon is a jackass.
I didn’t say anything about a separate transgender division. McKinnon could compete against men, or not; what McKinnon should not be doing is making it women’s problem.
How can McKinnon be a jackass when they’re a super special philosopher? Oh, right…
I guess I mistakenly inferred a separate division was being proposed because it’s unlikely transgender women would be competitive in men’s divisions. Not to mention they don’t consider themselves men, so they’re unlikely to accept that proposal.
And, no, it shouldn’t be women’s problem.
I’m fine with accepting transgender women as women in almost all aspects of life, but obviously the unfair advantage in athletics shouldn’t be ignored, so that would be an exception. I’m almost tempted to note they also don’t get to decide who wants to have sex with them, since that keeps coming up, but that should already be a rule for everybody.
Young trans women, especially low-income and minorities, suffer catastrophic rejection from their families and communities. Often left homeless and surviving on sex work. Repeat every horror-story you can collect, close your eyes and raise your blood pressure to bursting point.
Then pretend that the problem is those pesky Lesbians.
What does that mean, though?
We’re under heavy pressure to say things like that, but what do they mean?
More on that: a helpful passage from a piece by Kathleen Stock (a philosopher) last June:
Oh, ffs. In light of learning that Trump and co. intend to wipe out the existence of trans people by fiat of law and definition, PZ Myers decides, at the end of what I thought was a decent post, to throw you under the bus again, saying, “I do wonder if any TERFs will stop and think and realize that siding with Trump and the religious right is a sign that they might be wrong.” What fucking simplistic thinking – either/or, with us or against us, gah.
Well, PZ is siding with Iran and Argentina–might he stop and think and realize that he might be wrong? Or might he shrug and realize that guilt by association is an informal inductive fallacy–aka, a stupid argument.
A response:
https://twitter.com/MarguretCutting/status/1053630636311932928?s=20
https://twitter.com/MarguretCutting/status/1053631284701028352?s=20
Lady M, that twitter feed was brilliant. It made my morning. Thanks.
Re that NYT article on Trump transgender policy changes, has anyone seen a decent substantive response? The article is a mess, but most of the responses are of the “he’s erasing the existence of trans people” or “he’s redefining sex” varieties. I’ve seen a couple of brief comments on Twitter, that’s about it.
In many senses, nothing more than what it seems. When a waitress took our family’s order about a week ago and said, “and what you your two boys like to drink?” (nodding toward my 12 and 9 y.o. sons – the younger of whom is transgender) there was no need to correct her. She had not misspoken in any way, shape or form – all parties were 100% content with her usage of the word ‘boy’ in that sentence. Linguistically, she conveyed exactly the meaning that she intended using the words she chose to use.
Saying “accepting transgender women as women” means accepting that, even had the waitress been aware that she was referring to transgender boy, there would have been no more-accurate wording for her to use.
In pure, linguistic, dictionary-mode terms, if “boys” was the correct word to use in that context, what is the definition of “boy”?
@Sackbut,
Adoption of this policy will entail no actual changes to the day-to-day lives of the privileged majority. It will have the same impact on the lives of non-transgender people as an official policy of “marriage is the union of a man and woman” would have on the daily lives of heterosexual couples, or a policy of “personhood starts at conception” would have on those who cannot get pregnant.
It *WOULD* give certain ideologues a gleeful satisfaction at having their dogmatic views backed by the power of the government (and a refreshed motivation to get out to re-elect those officials who made it happen). In that sense, tangible benefit will be afforded to Trump and his ilk.
In exchange of that “benefit”, it will introduce a new layer of unprecedented hardship and suffering into the lives of virtually every transgender man, woman, and child in the US.
I suppose it’s up to each of us to decide whether or not that is “substantive”.
#14
I tried to probe that exact thought, but it was quickly lost in the noise – if agreeing with Trump is to be avoided, does that mean PZ supports the TPP on the basis that Trump opposes it? If that had been answered at all, I suspect he or his ardent acolytes would have given a ‘stopped clock’ argument for why Trump is actually right on that one and hence why they are free to agree with him on that one issue, with no trace of self-awareness for their special pleading.
@KK:
First off, it’s not at all clear what “this policy” is, because the descriptions of what’s being considered are all a mess. There’s much conflation of sex and gender, among other problems. But most of the response I’ve seen centers on the definition issue and claims that it will remove protections for LGBTQ people and define trans people out of existence. I’m looking for something more thoughtful, in which the assertion of human sexual dimorphism is a simple fact rather than a horror.
Second, I disagree that policies regarding sex classification on birth certificates and licenses have no effects on anyone other than trans individuals. This post here, about male participation in women’s sports, is a clear example, but there are many others. There is much good writing about it in this blog and elsewhere.
Non-adult male. Sometimes disparagingly used against men (adult males) for some perceived lack of maturity or ‘manliness’, or against girls who are insufficiently docile and demure.
#18 #20
I have only seen the wording as presented in PZ’s post:
“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the department [of Health and Human Services] proposed in the memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”
Which is something I agreed with at first, until a second pass gave me some reservations. Sex (i.e. not gender) is indeed entirely concerned with physical traits “identifiable by or before birth”, my only reservation is that it then says that a sex change can only arise if confirmed with “genetic evidence”. Meaning the earlier verbiage may as well be reduced to “Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable genetics”.
Is sex physical characteristics and genetics, or just genetics? Reducing it to genetics alone nullifies any changes made via surgery. Legally speaking anyway; if the surgery was for medical reasons – removing / changing distressing anatomy – the immediate goal of the surgery would still be achieved, in that quality of life will improve with a non-distressing (or perhaps merely less distressing) bodyshape. And there is already nothing stopping a person from wearing the ‘wrong’ clothing and hairstyles other than cultural expectation. Would it improve further if that person could entirely switch their sex on forms and such? An open question to me, I’m interested in hearing further.
But going back to the wording presented in the article, the passage “the Obama administration’s expansion of sex to include gender identity” puzzles me. Why should a definition of sex be expanded to include a related but separate concept? Sex and gender are not the same thing, and the transgender movement knows this, because it is founded on the idea that sex does not necessarily determine gender. This only makes sense if they are not the same thing!
Not being trans doesn’t make people part of “the privileged majority.” Not being trans is not a form of privilege. Framing it that way is all too similar to the adolescent tendency to carve up the world into the conformist timid others and special rebellious open-eyed Me. It’s not that simple. It’s simplistic and inaccurate to assume that everyone who is not explicitly trans is therefore “cis” and 100% at home with everything about their sex and gender. Some people appear to be comfortable with their sex and gender, but appearances can be deceiving; plenty of people appear to disobey various rules about their sex and gender without calling themselves trans. Not being trans is not a form of privilege.
That’s a pretty hyperbolic claim, Kevin.
At the risk of further guilt-by-association, I offer herewith another viewpoint–this one from the National Review:
Emphasis added.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/trump-administration-isnt-dehumanizing-transgender-americans/
Lady Mondegreen, thank you. That National Review article is exactly the kind of response I have been trying to find.
Re guilt by association: it really is distressing that pretty much only conservative outlets have been writing about these kinds of views. I came across a Catholic article that, if you remove the religious trappings, was supportive and informed, gently encouraging kids to love their bodies and not to feel they need fixing, saying it’s fine to like whatever clothes or activities you like regardless of sex. I thought this was pretty good, but I got mocked (in an FB group) for agreeing with Catholics.
And yet, the people that admonish against siding with Trump / conservatives on this issue will also say that criticise those same for being reactionary. Do they not know what the word means, or (more likely) are they blind to it when they enact it?
Re Holns #23, 27
My reaction was similar to yours, but I’ve not been able to write up my thoughts as coherently as you did. Danke.
“Reactionary.” Like a vampire, invisible in a mirror.