Guest post: Bona fide occupational qualifications
Originally a comment by maddog on Lesbians with penises.
it’s denying the reality of the existence of trans-women, in fact all trans-people
Wait, what? Recognizing that women don’t have penises, and that woman/woman sexual orientation is penis-exclusive is “denying reality” now? WHAT f”ing “reality of the existence of trans women” makes them at all relevant to a group that is exclusively women/women related, and has no connection to, interest in, or reason to consider penis-people at all?
Trans-women are women. Full stop.
That’s just flatly not true. By definition, only men can be “trans women.” Trans women are men. The penis is sort of a giveaway about that.
It’s baffling that (LGB Alliance) don’t accept that …
It’s not a bit “baffling.” What’s truly baffling is how these buffoons can say with a straight face — and not be immediately laughed out of the room — that men, mostly fully intact bepenised men, can be any kind of woman at all. It’s a charade, an unbelievable one at that, to pretend that a man is a woman if he says so.
Trans and gender-diverse people … have long been an integral part of the broader community.
I don’t believe that’s true, but even if it is, so what? See that little phrase at the end? “…part of the broader community”? That part right there? The “lesbian” group is a smaller portion of the whole. It is a narrower part of the community. You may be part of the “broader community,” but that doesn’t mean that you are in every narrower subgroup. If there were an event intended for gay men, lesbians would necessarily be excluded, for example. Ever heard of BFOQs, in the labor context? That stands for “bona fide occupational qualifications,” and is a recognized exception to the general rule of equal opportunity in employment without regard to color, creed, sex, race, national origin, religion, and so on. There are some jobs in which, for instance, only a person of the same religion can perform the proper duties of the job. Some jobs may be sex-specific, if there is a genuine reason for that exclusion. The social and political events at issue here are not jobs, but the situation is analogous. There is a bona fide reason the event is sex-specific to women. Being part of a “broader community” is not an entry ticket to every subgroup that makes up the broader community.
To echo Katie Herzog: There is no fucking community… Communities maybe, but “community” as a single thing does not exist. So yay lying!
“It’s a charade, an unbelievable one at that, to pretend that a man is a woman if he says so.”
It’s a charade, and a performance, for the trans person and the ally/sympathiser/co-actor alike. The identity/pronoun tags are the script cues which enable the sympathiser to play along. If the people involved were permitted to act without such a cue, they might say the ‘wrong’ thing, e.g. a pronoun which runs counter to the fantasy.
And of course, talking about BFOQs, you can identify as a Ph.D. all you like, but if you don’t actually have a Ph.D., you aren’t going to be hired to teach at Harvard (or many other colleges). There are many activities that are exclusive for a reason.
Yes. I was going to reply “what maddog said” in the other post, until I realised it had been rightly promoted.
So I’ll say it here: what maddog said.
I understand how this sort of thinking (saying men aren’t lesbians is denying reality) can come about. It seems counter-intuitive but there are several vectors. I think the main culprit is unrealistic expectations run amok, spun into a self-reenforcing whirlpool by social media, fuelled by traditional media until people really do feel entitled to make demands that seem massively unrealistic by anyone outside – because they are – but seem absolutely rational, reasonable and mainstream to anyone inside. And by then, not complying with those demands really does seem like literal violence from inside the spiral.
We know that’s the kind of thing that’s happening and we know that the obvious way to stop it is to cut off the fuel. I think it’s likely that the traditional media could end this fairly quickly if it took a principled stance instead of convulsively reacting to short-term trends.
But anyway, we know that or something like it is what’s happening here. It can lead otherwise sensible, intelligent. scientifically literate people to say some of the stupidest things anyone has ever said in the history of humanity. I mean it: talking snakes and magic underpants seem almost rational in comparison.
I know this. But what will always stagger me is that it happened so fast.