Low blow
There was this tweet.
I wondered if I could find the source, and behold, I could. The first-named author is, of course, Chase Strangio, their star purveyor of fairy tales.
The title is Four Myths About Trans Athletes, Debunked.
Upholding trans athletes’ rights requires rooting out the inaccurate beliefs underlying harmful policies sweeping through state legislatures.
They’re not inaccurate though. The nonsense Strangio talks is inaccurate.
The item in the tweet is “FACT” number 3.
FACT: Trans girls are girls.
MYTH: Sex is binary, apparent at birth, and identifiable through singular biological characteristics.
Girls who are trans are told repeatedly that they are not “real” girls and boys who are trans are told they are not “real” boys. Non-binary people are told that their gender is not real and that they must be either boys or girls. None of these statements are true. Trans people are exactly who we say we are.
There is no one way for women’s bodies to be. Women, including women who are transgender, intersex, or disabled, have a range of different physical characteristics.
Note the sly “or disabled” there – as if anyone anywhere claimed disabled women are not women. What we say is that men are not women. That’s a different thing. Saying a cat with only a stump for a tail is not a cat is quite different from saying a turtle is not a cat.
Trying to force other people to echo lies is not a civil liberty. The ACLU is drunk.
I guess we’re supposed to be thankful they didn’t use Black women, right?
There. Fixed it so it’s true. Funnily enough, it really highlights the lie in the original, doesn’t it?
There actually are biological characteristics that can tell you who is male and who is female; the fact that a small percentage of people have ambiguous characteristics does not change that. For those individuals, there needs to be more than just looking to see whether they have penis/vulva. That doesn’t mean we reject women with ambiguous sexual characteristics, and certainly we do not reject disabled women. i have no problem sharing a bathroom with a disabled woman, and the fact that most public bathrooms these days have disabled stalls shows that no one is equating them with not being women (and I presume men’s bathrooms are the same, though I have no first hand experience).
As a biologist, I am quite astonished to hear there are no biological characteristics that determine whether someone is male or female.
In a related note, I went to my doctor today, and the preliminary information included the question “Sex assigned at birth”. I was disturbed (but this is a sort of canned program they signed up for, so they may not be the ones who included it), but I was glad to see they were asking for a patient’s correct sex, even if somewhat insultingly. the medical community is well aware that the medical issues can be quite different for women and for men. For instance, my doctor and I discussed menopause today; would that have made sense if I were born male? Would he have wanted to know if I was on estrogen if I were male? (He’s a newish doctor for me, since my former doctor retired, so he was not sure if someone had prescribed that.) So at least they might get appropriate care, at least if they don’t split a gut screaming the office down about being forced to admit they are actually the sex they are, or put on a form that they are “male” when they identify as ‘female”.
That’s right — sex isn’t a binary! According to the esteemed Jane Clare Jones:
“A binary is a conceptual hierarchy which is formed by taking a term with a dominant positive value and creating a subordinate value by negating the privileged qualities of the dominant term. Masculine/Feminine is a binary. In fact, it is the ur-binary, to the extent that ALL of the binary pairs which structure Western thought (mind/body, reason/emotion, thought/sensation, universal/particular, one/many etc.) are gendered, and without exception, the ‘positive’ pole of the binary is masculine. Male and female is not a binary, it is a natural difference.”
So let’s remove “gender,” and recognize the natural differences of a sexually dimorphic species.
Now where are the males with functioning ovaries, and the females with functioning testes?
Even if someone 100% supports TWAW, I’m not sure how they can characterize it as a “fact.” It’s an opinion, or at most it is an assertion that derives from an opinion, i.e. that the definition of “woman” should be based on self-identification rather than physical characteristics.
There is putrefaction in the ACLU, and this misogynist cause is not a just one. As soon as people get wise to this postmodern bullshit of anything-goes pronoun politics, the ACLU will be nothing but a sick joke. Too bad really, it was, at some points in it’s history, a worthwhile (group of) cause(s) deserving of support. One bad apple may not spoil the whole bunch, but one worm can sure enough spoil the whole apple. Looking at you Chase Strangio, and those like you who forward this decadent agenda.
1) Sex is a binary. There are only two of them.
2) True, sex is not ALWAYS apparent at birth. Just 98% – 99.98% of the time.
But this is irrelevant, as the sex of transgender people is not ambiguous.
3) This is basically a restatement of assertion #2. True but irrelevant. Most of the time a “singular biological characteristic” like genital configuration accurately predicts an individual’s sex.
You’re female, Chase. Deal with it.
Amongst the many issues I object to here a significant one is that Cartesian dualism is dead as a philosophy. Mind and body are one and the same with physical reality being the determinator. Saying you are who you say you are is meaningless because I cannot know what it’s like to be you; all I’ve got to go on is evidence and empathy.
Couldn’t let this one pass.
Trans athletes vary in athletic ability just like cisgender athletes. “One high jumper could be taller and have longer legs than another, but the other could have perfect form, and then do better,” explains Andraya Yearwood, a student track athlete and ACLU client. “One sprinter could have parents who spend so much money on personal training for their child, which in turn, would cause that child to run faster,” she adds. In Connecticut, where cisgender girl runners have tried to block Andraya from participating in the sport she loves, the very same cis girls who have claimed that trans athletes have an “unfair” advantage have consistently performed as well as or better than transgender competitors.
High jumpers are generally taller and longer limbed. It is what helps their jump. Not too many short high jumpers around. Body type selects.
Sprinters are generally large-bodied with muscles that permit the explosive power required. No matter how much coaching a person is given, without the right body to start with, they will never be a champion. Andray excels against girls because he has the benefits of a male body. Ever seen a Ben Johnson or a Usain Bolt win a marathon? Body selects.
No mention of swimmers where not only the body type but social class selects. Where are all the champion African American swimmers? Locked out of public pools.
Although the British introduced both cricket and soccer to India, Indians excel at the former but not the latter. Why? Because kids can play cricket in the streets with a bare minimum of equipment, often fashioning bats, stumps, and balls from whatever is at hand. The economy selects.
Screechy Monkey, I agree with your analysis:
I’m developing an analogy. I’m an atheist who is always happy to learn more about the Abrahamic religions. For example, my understanding of Catholic papal infallibility is that the Pope is always correct when setting doctrine for the church. My atheist disagreement with Papal infallibility is not the opposite (that the Pope is fallible in setting Catholic doctrine) but that Catholicism is not my ideology, and I leave it for Catholics to agree or disagree with papal infallibility (in their ideology).
In my analogy, if someone says “TWAW” (or “cis”), they mean whatever it means in gender identitarianism. But I am not a gender identitarian. I don’t need to claim the opposite (TWAM), I only need to point to gender identitarianism, and say it is not my ideology.
@ Roj Blake #10 – Interesting points. Re cricket and soccer in India – it was exactly the other way round in Britain’s West African colonies, where cricket failed to put down roots, while football did. On the other hand, in the Caribbean cricket has been the dominant game. I’m not sure if the economy did the selection, or other cultural factors were in play.
Dave, I wish the transgenderists could leave it at ‘you practice your religion and I’ll practice mine.’ But they can’t. They must force us to follow their religion, or dye (usually pink) trying. They want our legal system, and our school system, to adhere to, and promote, their religion. They want every boy who doesn’t want to fight taught that means he’s secretly a girl, and every girl who would rather climb trees than play with dolls taught that she’s secretly a boy. It’s clear that the transgenderists’ belief, kept among themselves, is not enough for them.
The transgenderists are not unique in wanting their religion to determine how the rest of us live. When I was a kid, some of my public schools required prayer in the morning, and all of them thought they could require the Pledge of Allegiance (I should have had a loyalty card for the principal’s office). Catholics and Evangelicals would mostly like to have laws against abortions (making the abortions that are performed illegal and unsafe – it’s the fetus that’s important, not the mother). They’ll even vote for a transparently ungodly man like Trump if that’s what it takes to get those laws. It’s taken ages to roll back my state’s “blue laws” so I could stock up on booze while the god-botherers are at church of a Sunday morning. Insurance companies are allowed not to pay for birth control (yes, while continuing to pay for boner pills).
I do think the only accommodation that is possible, in the long run, is one along the lines you describe: creeps like Chase Strangio get to practice their religion, with whatever self-mutilation and self-deception it entails, as long as they keep it mostly to themselves, and don’t try to use their dogma to determine how the rest of us live. But we are a long, long way from that, and I’m not sure that we can ever get there.
@Papito #13;
No, I wouldn’t say they go this far. They’re not completely irrational or dogmatic; I’ve seen plenty of references to gender-nonconforming children who aren’t transgender in their discourses. But some of these children are transgender. So we need to watch them, and be prepared, and let all the children know that they might be trans, so they can watch themselves, and be prepared. If a child is transgender, then they will need extra love, acceptance, and support because so much of the world is ignorant, cruel, or both.
And this vigilance and mindset will in no way allow a kid who’s only GNC to mistakenly identify as trans.
I think the TRAs seriously underestimate how coercive they’re being, on this issue and in general.
The reason religion can be set aside as “your belief/ my belief” is because of the way the supernatural works. Natural reality is available to all, but it takes something special to discern the supernatural truths behind it. This duality allows people to think of religious explanations as special explanations, exceptions to the general rule that what’s true is true for all. If you don’t have faith, you’re not expected to be able to play that particular game.
A secular ideology can’t work like that. Its claims are all in the natural world and we’re all responsible for following rules which lead us to the same conclusion.
Screechy @ 5
Well, they can’t, but they do. That’s where the wheel squeaks loudest, I think. They treat all of it as fact – that the definition of “woman” should be based on self-identification rather than physical characteristics AND that trans women are women trans men are men non-binary people are non-binary.
It’s “transphobic” to say it’s not a fact. It’s transphobic to say it’s an opinion. It’s horrifically transphobic to say it’s mistaken opinion. No no no how dare you, it’s an absolute fact.
None of that would matter much if it were just the fantasy of some people that the rest of us don’t share, but like the Vatican, like god-botherers in the US, like Hindu nationalists (e.g. Modi), like Islamists, like Mormon missionaries, etc etc, they don’t treat it as just their fantasy, they treat it as absolute truth that they need to impose on all of us, via real world punishments and banishments, and via doctrine issued to schools and the police and organizations like the ACLU and the Olympics.
Sastra, I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic here or not:
I disagree with what’s stated, whether it’s your idea or an idea you’re parodying. The little kits they send out to elementary schools with ‘genderbread men’ or whatever are both confusing and harmful to children. There are hundreds of thousands of kids now who are confusing their discomfort with puberty with being transgendered. It would be much, much better for little kids if nobody at school promoted the idea of the secret gender/soul thing, just as it would be better for little kids of nobody at school talked to them about sexual lubricants, anal sex, boob jobs, pole dancing, etc. Sexual fetishes are concerns for adults.
There are no transgender children. There are just children, boys and girls, whose discomfort with the social roles demanded of boys and girls has been misinterpreted. The adults around them have insisted that the only way forward for them is physical and chemical mutilation in order to fit in with conservative gender roles. Transgenderism is fundamentally right-wing and reactionary in this manner: it is a repudiation of the liberation from fixed gender roles brought forward by feminism.
Children afflicted early with this delusion require, as you say, extra love, acceptance, and support. Much of the world is indeed ignorant, cruel, or both. Much of the world also is deluded into believing that things that are profoundly damaging to children are the kindest things we can do for children. Beating them for lying, say, or telling them they will burn forever in hell for masturbating, or giving them Lupron to delay their puberty. Children who experience difficulty with society’s gender roles need extra support, and part of this support is keeping the child-transers the hell away from them, along with the trans ideology of mutilation.
You are right that people feel more comfortable setting aside religion into “your belief / my belief” because of the idea of non-overlapping magisteria. That is why it is important that we recognize that transgenderism is not a secular ideology. Its claims are not all in the natural world. Its claims are transcendent; it’s right there in the name. Transgenderism is fundamentally a new religion (or cult) with all the trappings of other religions: denial of physical reality, belief in a transcendent, invisible essence, primacy of the spiritual over the physical, a whole raft of dogma that must be learned and repeated.
I don’t want my kids’ schools teaching them to follow the transgenderist religion any more than I want them teaching them to follow the Catholic religion.
I don’t know where you live, but in my world, this is so totally not correct. Few of the Christians I know would think their religion is not true for all; they believe it is true, truly true, and that some people are just too stubborn, ignorant, or evil to see it. They refuse what is plainly evident. As a result, the Christians must put prayer in the schools, preferably Bible readings (devotionals) if possible, and have the government support their brand of religion. They cannot think “It’s true for me, but not for everyone”. I do have some liberal religious friends who at least give lip service to believing you have a right to “your own truth”, but are plainly uncomfortable with the idea of atheists, believing we are lacking something so important that we lead joyless lives; the main difference is that they don’t want the government to tell us we have to do otherwise, and they will fit your description.
As for not telling gender non-conforming kids they are trans, that is what the activists will say – they aren’t doing this! It’s just kids who are legitimately trans! But we have seen several examples of young girls persuaded they are young boys, and at least one doctor bragging about how she convinced this young girl (a tomboy) who said she wasn’t a boy that she really was a boy…using Pop-Tarts, of all things. And I have seen videos of adults, professionals in some field of medicine or psychology, who will say such things as if a girl toddler doesn’t want to wear barrettes or skirts, she is likely pre-literate trans. Huh? What about pre-literate feminist? What about someone who recognizes these things are not as comfortable and easy to play in as other clothes? So, yeah, there is a lot of “if you don’t conform to this set of stereotypes, you are probably trans – or maybe non-binary”. Well, duh. We are all non-binary if you define that as not fitting a defined set of sexual stereotypes imposed on humans from birth.
@Papito #15;
I need to write more clearly, since yes, the passage you cite was supposed to encapsulate the extremist trans ideology. And I agree with pretty much everything you just said. I’ve looked at that “genderbread “ program and been appalled.
But I think it’s important to always make the distinction between “they’re teaching GNC kids that they’re trans” and “they’re teaching GNC kids that they MIGHT be trans — and then making that identification appealing.” The second is more accurate, and avoids the TRAs pouncing on a slight inaccuracy as if it proves the complete ignorance and malice of those evil “terfs.”
The only other thing I’d argue with is how to classify the populist form of transgenderism. At least one version — the one I’m most familiar with from running into it on atheist blogs — makes natural world claims, trying to locate “gender identity” in the human brain and attempting to explain its development in the womb. They then prioritize the mind over the body. Not in a Cartesian dualist sense, but as a matter of personal discrimination. Our “sense of self” is grounded in the brain, not in particular organs, and this then is where the emphasis ought to lie when we decide who and what we are, or what someone else really is. The analogy of course is to being gay. It’s not to being a furry.
I’d call this version a pseudoscience. Dicey science, dicey extrapolations from legitimate science, poor reasoning, and jumping a concern for social justice the wrong way. People who adhere to pseudoscientific beliefs often display cult-like behavior, so I think it fits.
@iknklast #16:
Yes, a lot of people impose supernatural “facts” on others. I enthusiastically agree. Facts, they argue, are facts.
But I was addressing Dave Rick’s analogy, which came at religion using the NOMA assumption. Liberal religionists are capable of giving at least lip service to the “true for you; true for me” dichotomy because it’s not difficult to separate the supernatural from the natural, and then substitute “opinion” or “preference” for “faith is a choice.”
And I’ve read or seen some of that transactivist child coercion When I first started investigating the gender critical position I read through 4th Wave Now. All of it. So I don’t underestimate it. My concern is that, because TRAs constantly insist not ALL GNC kids are trans, they see their role as more nuanced and discriminating than it is. And the general public picks up on their sincerity. If we don’t at least credit them with the intention, we open ourselves up to fair criticism.
I can top that. There is no one way for women’s minds to be. No distinct and identifiable way of thinking or feeling, or personality type, or temperament, or “inner sense of self” that’s common to all women while being different from the way of thinking or feeling, or personality type, or temperament, or “inner sense of self” common to all men. Hence if physical traits don’t make someone a woman, then nothing does.
Sastra, just wait until they come up with a foolproof device to detect transgender phlogiston. Then all us doubters will be eating crow.
It won’t matter a whit that the transgender phlogiston detector will not be falsifiable. Falsifiability is for transphobes and, and, it’s phallocentric, and it’s colonialist, and also it’s so bourgeois to even talk about it while LGBTQBIPOC are suffering more than ever!
As far as the language on kids, I see your point. They let some get away, and that proves they’re not trying to get all of them. It doesn’t prove that their best arguments, grooming, and social pressure, supported by the most important institutions in children’s lives, can’t convince all children of arrant preposterous nonsense.
I continue to argue that there is nothing remotely scientific about transgenderism, neither in process nor in purpose. It’s about as scientific as Scientology, maybe even less so (until they get that transgender phlogiston detector, of course).
To seize on this point and go a little off-thread – yes. I have a colleague and valued friend with whom I have had exactly one conversation about religion. He was clearly more uncomfortable about it than me (the discomfort set in when I said I was an atheist. When I asked why he believed, he said he did not know, and could not comprehend, how everything came into being. For him, he had to ascribe this to God. He felt that the denial of God was hubris as it equated to claiming a level of knowledge and understanding that was untrue and arrogant.
I said I was an atheist because I followed the evidence, not because I claimed knowledge. I would believe in God when he/she/it stood in front of me. For me, there is no shame and no contradiction in saying “I do not believe in God, but I see no evidence they exist and I have little idea of how everything came to be, but we can see the sketched outline of it.”