Non-gendered kids

[maize]

29 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

 

Many animals which reproduce sexually - including many mammals! - have little to no sexual dimorphism. You simply can't tell males and females apart at a glance. Humans have some sexual dimorphism, but, frankly, not very much once you strip away culture. (And I must say, this is a very odd argument to hear from somebody who isn't heterosexual... or am I confusing you with somebody else?)

We humans may not be able to tell male/female of many species apart at a glance but I bet the animals themselves have ways of knowing--at a glance or a sniff!

Edited November 4, 2018 by maize

[maize]

So I've been down a bit of a research bunny trail; there seems to be a consensus that humans in general are very good at differentiating between adult male and female faces, and even macaque monkeys can differentiate between male and female human faces.

I found this bit of research personally interesting as someone who struggles with face blindness (prosopagnosia) but not with male/female discrimination. Apparently I'm normal in the face blind world and the two abilities aren't linked.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://visionlab.harvard.edu/members/ken/Papers/172DeGutisGender2012.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiIk-2b6LveAhUKw4MKHenYAQ44FBAWMAB6BAgBEAE&usg=AOvVaw2A1aar6t_LpGzqM3SmxZ6x

[maize]

26 minutes ago, StellaM said:

It's annoying that linked paper conflates gender and sex...

Gender seems to be the usual term in the studies I have seen of male/female face recognition, while biological sex is clearly intended.

We've got a serious definition of terms problem on our hands in general....

[Guest]

2 hours ago, StellaM said:

We can't think our way out of the fact we are mammals, who reproduce sexually. Of course it's going to be useful to us to categorise by sex! That's how the species survives.

(I suppose we can think ourselves out of the sexual reproduction part, but oh, brave new world, we're not there yet).

 

Right, and we even use cultural symbols to signal other things about our appropriateness for mating. Wedding bands, for example = this person is not available for sex. 

[maize]

I'm still wandering down the bunny trail--on my phone, so hard to link lots of stuff. Some interesting bits: folks with autism spectrum disorders can mostly recognize individual faces but may struggle with recognizing facial expressions. People with developmental prosopagnisia struggle with identifying individual faces but not with recognition of facial expressions.

Suggesting to me that facial processing is complex and different types of processing are involved for different tasks. So perhaps facial sex processing could be impaired while other types of processing remain intact.

Edited November 4, 2018 by maize

[Tanaqui]

2 hours ago, maize said:

We humans may not be able to tell male/female of many species apart at a glance but I bet the animals themselves have ways of knowing--at a glance or a sniff!

 

Surprisingly, not always. We think this is one reason for the large amount of homosexual activity among penguins - even the birds themselves aren't clear on who's male and who's female!

At any rate, my guess is species with very little sexual dimorphism can only tell when it matters, that is, when it's time to mate. Certainly I doubt they care most of the time.

[Tanaqui]

Quote

Why are you asking about my sexuality ?! What's that got to do with anything ?

 

Stella, the BS evopsych argument "It has to be this way, because sexual reproduction/evolution" is, in my experience, 99.9% of the time used by homophobes to explain why gays are eeeeeeeevil. "If we were all gay, there'd be no baybeez!"

When the people most likely to use your argument hate gays, it may be time to choose a new argument.

[maize]

32 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

It's not just faces that help us sex others, though. Although I can see impairments in facial sex processing would make the job tougher. Cool bunny trail.

 

Right. Though the research suggests faces alone are sufficient most of the time.

Body shape is another good tell; going back to my martial arts tournament I did notice that female competitors' belts were around their waists while male competitors' belts were usually a bit lower on their hips. Because, as my daughter has noted, if she puts her belt around her hips it soon rides up to her waist anyway because of her female shape. 

Edited November 5, 2018 by maize

[maize]

 

28 minutes ago, StellaM said:

So, penguins are sometimes 'gay' because they can't tell the difference between male penguins and female penguins, and this relates to humans how ?

 

The synapsid and sauropsid lineages separated at least 315 million years ago so...probably not much in common.

Now if we were T-Rexes the behavior of penguins might be more relevant. I have at least one child who wants to be a T-Rex.

Edited November 5, 2018 by maize

[EmseB]

1 hour ago, Tanaqui said:

 

Stella, the BS evopsych argument "It has to be this way, because sexual reproduction/evolution" is, in my experience, 99.9% of the time used by homophobes to explain why gays are eeeeeeeevil. "If we were all gay, there'd be no baybeez!"

When the people most likely to use your argument hate gays, it may be time to choose a new argument.

3

No, you can't evaluate arguments based on other views people might hold. People can be wrong about some things and right about others. Further, people can draw incorrect conclusions or have abhorrent opinions based on facts that happen to be true.

Secondly, the bolded isn't what anyone has said thus far.

[laundrycrisis]

I would just call her “she” or always use her first name, no pronoun. The rest is baggage.  It’s ridiculous language pretzel twisting and people looking for offense.  People are gendered, and there are two.  Pick one for the day and we’ll go with it.  Change it tomorrow if you want.  But no they, it, zhe, zhim or other silly made up words that get a 1000 pounds PC weight attached to them.  Just no. 

For the record, I am not anti gay or anti trans.  But I am opposed to having language about this dictated, especially since what is dictated defies all reason.  Anyone who opposes this kind of thing is usually labeled with many mean terms.  It’s a runaway train. I’m not getting on. 

Edited November 5, 2018 by laundrycrisis

[Tanaqui]

Can and will, Esme! Watch me do it!

Listen, this isn't like you saying "Ayn Rand was a cat-loving atheist, and you're an atheist cat lover, therefore, Tanaqui, you must secretly be an objectivist!!!" This is Stella using a anti-trans argument that is extremely similar to one used by homophobes all the time. And Stella absolutely DID say that the species survives because we can tell one sex from another. This is an utterly nonsensical argument, exactly as garbage as "The species survives because we're all straight, and anybody who isn't is really just confused and needs help".

When your natural allies are the homophobes and the far right, you need to seriously reconsider your argument.

[Scarlett]

3 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

Can and will, Esme! Watch me do it!

Listen, this isn't like you saying "Ayn Rand was a cat-loving atheist, and you're an atheist cat lover, therefore, Tanaqui, you must secretly be an objectivist!!!" This is Stella using a anti-trans argument that is extremely similar to one used by homophobes all the time. And Stella absolutely DID say that the species survives because we can tell one sex from another. This is an utterly nonsensical argument, exactly as garbage as "The species survives because we're all straight, and anybody who isn't is really just confused and needs help".

When your natural allies are the homophobes and the far right, you need to seriously reconsider your argument.

I am confused which is normal for me on these type topics....but are you saying Stella is homophobic? I thought she has a gay dd? 

[Bluegoat]

1 hour ago, StellaM said:

 

Humans are binary when it comes to sex. We reproduce sexually. Most of us are opposite sex attracted. That is how we continue the human line. That's a fact, not an opinion, nor an socially constructed ideology. 

Some of us aren't opposite sex attracted.

I'm betting my bottom dollar there's some evolutionary advantage to having a minority of people be non-reproducing, due to same sex attraction, whether that's in terms of having a non competing younger male, or a female who can help care for her sibling's children (we know allo-moms increase positive outcomes for children). It's all a little obscured in terms of today's use of reproductive technology, but it is not difficult to think of adaptive evolutionary reasons for same sex attracted people to exist.

That isn't the argument homophobes use. They use the 'unnatural' or 'immoral' argument. 

In any case, sexual orientation has very little to do with gender.

 

 

I think what gets overlooked is that even if it is true that there are same sex attracted people in all human populations, and that is for some purpose, and those people don't themselves procreate - a lot of ifs -  sexual attraction in itself still exists for the purposes of procreation.  If we didn't procreate sexually, we'd not have same sex attracted people either.  All that equipment is there for them to reproduce, whether they do in the end or not.  

As far as the ifs, I think there are a few assumptions there - it may be that same sex attraction is more of a possibility that is a corollary to some other facet of human biology.  But I wonder if we aren't wrong to take it for granted that sexual reproduction is unusual in those who are largely or even entirely same sex attracted.  I know it seems kind of logical it would be, but if I think about it historically, this hasn't really been something that seems to have affected whether or not people marry, and even now plenty of gay people have biological kids through the normal channels.  

[Bluegoat]

15 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

Can and will, Esme! Watch me do it!

Listen, this isn't like you saying "Ayn Rand was a cat-loving atheist, and you're an atheist cat lover, therefore, Tanaqui, you must secretly be an objectivist!!!" This is Stella using a anti-trans argument that is extremely similar to one used by homophobes all the time. And Stella absolutely DID say that the species survives because we can tell one sex from another. This is an utterly nonsensical argument, exactly as garbage as "The species survives because we're all straight, and anybody who isn't is really just confused and needs help".

When your natural allies are the homophobes and the far right, you need to seriously reconsider your argument.

 

What?  Those arguments aren't very similar at all.  

[Bluegoat]

Penguins notwithstanding, most mammals can tell the sex of other species members, often it seems through smell.  Dogs can even do this for people which makes me wonder if we o this ourselves without realising it.

[maize]

7 minutes ago, Bluegoat said:

Penguins notwithstanding, most mammals can tell the sex of other species members, often it seems through smell.  Dogs can even do this for people which makes me wonder if we o this ourselves without realising it.

I think that pheromones play a role in many animals.

It is believed that they do not in humans, something about the part of the brain that handles pheromones not being very developed (more vestigial) in humans. I don't think this is an entirely settled question though. It's been awhile since I read up on the matter so I may be mis-remembering

Edited November 5, 2018 by maize

[Bluegoat]

41 minutes ago, maize said:

I think that pheromones play a role in many animals.

It is believed that they do not in humans, something about the part of the brain that handles pheromones not being very developed (more vestigial) in humans. I don't think this is an entirely settled question though. It's been awhile since I read up on the matter so I may be mis-remembering

 

So, maybe we used to, so we have them, but we don't respond to them now and the ability to sense them has atrophied?  That certainly seems plausible.

[EmseB]

2 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

Can and will, Esme! Watch me do it!

Listen, this isn't like you saying "Ayn Rand was a cat-loving atheist, and you're an atheist cat lover, therefore, Tanaqui, you must secretly be an objectivist!!!" This is Stella using a anti-trans argument that is extremely similar to one used by homophobes all the time. And Stella absolutely DID say that the species survives because we can tell one sex from another. This is an utterly nonsensical argument, exactly as garbage as "The species survives because we're all straight, and anybody who isn't is really just confused and needs help".

When your natural allies are the homophobes and the far right, you need to seriously reconsider your argument.

A) I don't think those arguments that you are conflating are similar at all.

B) If the only way you can discredit an argument is by saying, "Well, Hitler thought that too," then you're not using logic or reason. Using your example, it would be like saying that atheism is wrong because objectivists like Ayn Rand are atheists. When your natural allies are objectivists, you need to seriously reconsider your argument. Obviously, that makes no sense if you're having a discussion about the merits of atheism itself. You can't prove someone is wrong by saying that so-and-so agrees with them on x issue regardless of what the issue is. If you can prove someone wrong that way, then all we have is non-thinking tribes of people moving in lockstep and groupthink and anyone that disagrees with you on an issue can be deemed as a veritable Nazi. But it is convenient because then you can label anyone who disagrees with your position on the issue, regardless of what other views they hold, as a veritable Nazi. Yay for begging the question?

C) Since we know Stella is not a homophobe, then maybe what she's saying has nothing to do with homophobia or the views of others that you are projecting on to her argument? Why not discuss what she's actually saying instead of the politics of some other people who might agree on one or two points of basic human biology as it pertains to reproduction?

[LMD]

I actually find the assertion that it's hard to tell the difference between the sexes quite upsetting. Like gaslighting. Absolutely we can tell someone's sex accurately most of the time - especially post puberty, and not because of their hair style/clothes (gender presentation) but because of their voice, gait, build, smell, hairline... sometimes in brief interactions with strangers who are deliberately masking their sex characteristics it can take a bit longer (and then, the subconscious dissonance often makes us look closer to try to resolve it), but otherwise it's instant.

People could tell the difference when they murdered baby girls in Pakistan and threw them in the garbage. People could tell the difference when they chose selective abortion/infanticide leading to 63 million missing women in India. Those baby females didn't have a chance to wear any cultural accoutrements of gender or develop secondary sex characteristics.

Our species survives through mamalian reproduction. One small motile gamete fertilises one large gamete (ova) and the zygote implants and grows inside a female reproductive organ. Every single person arrived the same way. There is no 3rd gamete. There is no ideological insult in stating this, it just is.

[brehon]

10 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

Can and will, Esme! Watch me do it!

Listen, this isn't like you saying "Ayn Rand was a cat-loving atheist, and you're an atheist cat lover, therefore, Tanaqui, you must secretly be an objectivist!!!" This is Stella using a anti-trans argument that is extremely similar to one used by homophobes all the time. And Stella absolutely DID say that the species survives because we can tell one sex from another. This is an utterly nonsensical argument, exactly as garbage as "The species survives because we're all straight, and anybody who isn't is really just confused and needs help".

When your natural allies are the homophobes and the far right, you need to seriously reconsider your argument.

Wait. If the bolded is incorrect or nonsensical, then how does the human species survive? I mean, aside from the minority of babies conceived via IVF or IUI? 

I must be missing something you’re saying because basic human biology says human (and all mammalian ?) babies are conceived with a male gamete and a female gamete. 

[katilac]

19 hours ago, StellaM said:

It's like handing black and brown people the bleach, and handing whites the tanning lotion, and saying 'let's all be milky latte colored in order to cure racism!' 

 

Have you read any of Ursula LeGuin's novels? Having all humans turn the same color is a key element in The Lathe of Heaven. Gender issues, including a society that is non-gendered most of the time, are raised in The Left Hand of Darkness. 

I've read the first one but not for a long time, I might have to give it another go. These books were published in 1971 and 1969, so comparing and contrasting these books from half a century ago to current times and issues would be interesting indeed. She was a popular writer and I think at least these novels have been steadily in print (they definitely are in print now). 

[Bluegoat]

7 minutes ago, katilac said:

 

Have you read any of Ursula LeGuin's novels? Having all humans turn the same color is a key element in The Lathe of Heaven. Gender issues, including a society that is non-gendered most of the time, are raised in The Left Hand of Darkness. 

I've read the first one but not for a long time, I might have to give it another go. These books were published in 1971 and 1969, so comparing and contrasting these books from half a century ago to current times and issues would be interesting indeed. She was a popular writer and I think at least these novels have been steadily in print (they definitely are in print now). 

 

I read a really interesting novel many years ago where the Earth was in a serious environmental crises, and so the governments had had to become quite authoritarian, and also almost worldwide rather than national in their coverage, in order to deal with it.  These governments had also, in an effort to combat racism and other types of nationalism and conflict, really encouraged people to marry outside their race or ethnicity.  THis had been going on for a about two to three generations by the time the novel was set, and most people as a result were very mixed ancestry.  

The main character of the book, however, was a black African man, who encountered a fair bit of prejudice for not being of mixed ethnicity.

It's an interesting kind of idea, and I think the author was playing with this question of whether something was lost in this kind of approach, or whether it was perhaps the only way to overcome the human tendency to classify.  It is I think interesting that one of the criticisms of identity politics is it cements the sense of race as an important and significant category of classification, rather than overcoming it.

[katilac]

18 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

Le Guin is a fab novelist, but we don't base our laws on fiction.

 

 

Dude, I was just asking you if you had read it ?

 

[Tanaqui]

Quote

Wait. If the bolded is incorrect or nonsensical, then how does the human species survive? I mean, aside from the minority of babies conceived via IVF or IUI? 

 

It's nonsensical in the context of transgender rights and whether or not we should gender our prepubescent kids. (And presumably if it was all that important, we could do like the dwarves in Discworld and just ask.)

I mean, the part about Ayn Rand being a cat lover is true too, but if Stella's argument was "Ayn Rand loved cats, therefore atheism is bad" you'd rightly say that this made no sense as an argument.

[LMD]

It's not Stella bringing sexual dimorphism into trans rights. It's not us saying that sex is a social construct and that we can hardly tell the difference between the sexes anyway and intersex! so therefore gender identity (some indefinable essence) takes preeminence over everything else...

[Tanaqui]

None of that is relevant to the subject of transgender rights. How are your rights infringed by calling somebody by this pronoun instead of that one? How is society harmed? They aren't, and it's not - and all this froth and lather about "oh, well, we can see sex so clearly" is nonsense. It's just as much nonsense as "It takes a man and a woman to make a baby, so gays can't marry or join the military".

There are only two things that matter - what does the least amount of harm to transgender individuals, and whether or not that harms society. What does the least amount of harm is deciding to live and let live and that you'll use good manners - which means the right name and pronoun, and no making faces to show how silly you think it all is. No, this doesn't harm society.

[maize]

10 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

None of that is relevant to the subject of transgender rights. How are your rights infringed by calling somebody by this pronoun instead of that one? How is society harmed? They aren't, and it's not - and all this froth and lather about "oh, well, we can see sex so clearly" is nonsense. It's just as much nonsense as "It takes a man and a woman to make a baby, so gays can't marry or join the military".

There are only two things that matter - what does the least amount of harm to transgender individuals, and whether or not that harms society. What does the least amount of harm is deciding to live and let live and that you'll use good manners - which means the right name and pronoun, and no making faces to show how silly you think it all is. No, this doesn't harm society.

You see no possible impacts to society of having a variable and shifting definition of male and female?

No impacts to telling folks they have to lie about whether someone is male or female if that is what the person wants them to do?

Just as you see no impact to disassociating marriage from the basic reproductive unit of society.

The fact that impacts may be subtle at first does not make them less real or less worth considering. Live and let live I think neglects the extremely social nature of humans and the fact that impacts of many things, including the ways language is used, ripple out far beyond the sphere of the individual.

[LMD]

What rights are being infringed by using correct for sex pronouns? What rights do trans people not have? 

Froth and lather? Nice. 

Again, it's not us who is constantly bringing up the apparently baffling and indefinableness of the human sexes.

[Bluegoat]

1 hour ago, StellaM said:

 

Even mixed race kids will tell you colorism  exists, with darker skin being seen as 'lesser' and paler skin seen as 'better'. Although my kids truly did come out as though someone had put me and dh in a mixer and blended - ie a shade in between him (dark) and me (pale), it also doesn't always work that way, with babies sometimes being very pale, and some very dark skinned.

So even as a thought experiment, it's not really grounded in the way things work with humans.

I'd love to see the 'change the outside' argument for dealing with (that thing Americans don't have) classism! Or do we deal with homophobia by getting everyone to say they are bisexual ? It's such a - surface level analysis of power, and the practice of it.

I'm not entirely sure that the human tendency to classify is THE problem. And in fact, were we to suddenly find ourselves unable to do so, good luck getting out of bed in the morning and making a cuppa, because classification is partly how we develop the schemas that let us live withot reinventing the wheel  every time we open our eyes.

 

 

IIRC, the idea wasn't so much colour, but that everyone would have very mixed ethnicity - it was as much about nationality as colour in a way.  IN any case, it didn't seem to work out all that well in the story!

I don't think we can stop people classifying - that's a fact we have to work with.  What we can maybe influence is what people consider important enough to use as a classification criteria.  The difficulty is that is largely unconscious, so influencing it has to happen on a deeper cultural level.  If we don't want people to "see" race, maybe in the same way that we don't "see" eye-colour, we can't use it as a category it in other contexts.  I think an error that some people make is thinking that we can stop classification altogether, or render it visible only when it is positive.

[Bluegoat]

1 hour ago, StellaM said:

 

Apparently now that is an irrelevant social contruct only mentioned by homophobes, lol

 

Somehow I read this as "mentioned by homophones."

[Bluegoat]

41 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

None of that is relevant to the subject of transgender rights. How are your rights infringed by calling somebody by this pronoun instead of that one? How is society harmed? They aren't, and it's not - and all this froth and lather about "oh, well, we can see sex so clearly" is nonsense. It's just as much nonsense as "It takes a man and a woman to make a baby, so gays can't marry or join the military".

There are only two things that matter - what does the least amount of harm to transgender individuals, and whether or not that harms society. What does the least amount of harm is deciding to live and let live and that you'll use good manners - which means the right name and pronoun, and no making faces to show how silly you think it all is. No, this doesn't harm society.

 

I tend to think what is true is actually important.  Saying that humans aren't really sexually dimorphic, people have a hard time identifying the sexes, and men can turn into women with an operation - there is a truth value to those statements.  Even with no other perceivable effect.  

The idea that changing language in a way that affects expression of rights, my ability to speak about reality (see above), and how we conceptualise serious medical treatments, is irrelevant, seems difficult to maintain.

As far as your comparison with the question of same-sex marriage, that's not really the argument people make.  But even if it were, it's not what people are saying here.

[maize]

If anything it seems that the number of classifications that must be attached to every individual are increasing. People must be identified by race and ethnicity and sex and gender and sexual orientation and political affiliation and...

I remember when one millenial generation relative posted on Facebook "coming out" as bisexual (this person was happily married to a person of the opposite sex and that wasn't changing, this was all about announcing identity) and another millenial relative sent an email to a bunch of us who hadn't posted any response chastising us for not jumping in with supportive acknowledgments. I was like...um...I think I'm too old to understand the need to announce one's sexual orientation to all and sundry and wasn't aware that some sort of congratulations was in order. 

[Bluegoat]

11 minutes ago, maize said:

If anything it seems that the number of classifications that must be attached to every individual are increasing. People must be identified by race and ethnicity and sex and gender and sexual orientation and political affiliation and...

I remember when one millenial generation relative posted on Facebook "coming out" as bisexual (this person was happily married to a person of the opposite sex and that wasn't changing, this was all about announcing identity) and another millenial relative sent an email to a bunch of us who hadn't posted any response chastising us for not jumping in with supportive acknowledgments. I was like...um...I think I'm too old to understand the need to announce one's sexual orientation to all and sundry and wasn't aware that some sort of congratulations was in order. 

 

I've see this kind of thing in my dd13's peer group.  It's all about authenticity for them.  In their world, you need people to acknowledge your sexual identity, whether that means a FB announcement that you are bi-sexual (I suspect 90% of 13 year old girls are) or whether it means you pole dance in a leather get-up and ball gag at the Pride parade.

[Ravin]

2 hours ago, StellaM said:

 

Surely it will any day have to be amended to 'white-cis privilege' ? Because a woman in India this week was burned alive with her two daughters because she had not given birth to a boy. Surely there is, at least - at the very least - some ability on behalf of genderists to recognise that so called 'cis' privilege occurs in very, very uneven distributions ? I mean, you'd think that the fact that 22 women were murdered by their partners or ex partners in one month in my country this year might give them pause - but hey! maybe the blokes only knew to rage and kill the ladies because the ladies wore dresses ? Dungarees and a buzzcut as a solution to misogyny ?! 

 

India is a heavily patriarchal society. It is also one with a long tradition of recognition of a third gender, most commonly called hijras, but which in the modern context also encompasses other transgender identities. In modern India, some hijras also identify as transgender, though not all transgender women in India are hijras. Hijras have been severely marginalized at least since the British colonial period, and are commonly thrown out of their homes, and prevented from any employment outside the occupations traditional to them: dancing, begging, giving blessings, and sex work. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/style/india-third-gender-hijras-transgender.html Thus, transgender women and third-sex people in India are marginalized by the patriarchal society in which they live.

At the same time, it is certainly arguable that sex discrimination in India operates more strongly in some ways than discrimination based on gender. This can be seen, for instance, in that while some transgender and third gender people, such as hijras, are recognized in ways imbedded in the culture since long before the colonial period, transgender men get little to no recognition. The root cause there is probably more attributable to sex discrimination against those who are biologically female and assigned so at birth, than to gender discrimination, as trans men face more difficulties accessing transition services than trans women do, and have little to no visibility or recognition of their existence. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/transgender-men-continue-to-struggle-for-visibility-in-social-change-778252. 

This conversation, however, has been focused on Western society, particularly the U.S., so what's going on in India is not necessarily relevant.

 

[Ravin]

19 hours ago, Bluegoat said:

Penguins notwithstanding, most mammals can tell the sex of other species members, often it seems through smell.  Dogs can even do this for people which makes me wonder if we o this ourselves without realising it.

 

Hormones alter how people smell. Transgender people on hormone replacement therapy smell different than they did pre-transition, in my experience.

[Ravin]

19 hours ago, Bluegoat said:

 

I think what gets overlooked is that even if it is true that there are same sex attracted people in all human populations, and that is for some purpose, and those people don't themselves procreate - a lot of ifs -  sexual attraction in itself still exists for the purposes of procreation.  If we didn't procreate sexually, we'd not have same sex attracted people either.  All that equipment is there for them to reproduce, whether they do in the end or not.  

As far as the ifs, I think there are a few assumptions there - it may be that same sex attraction is more of a possibility that is a corollary to some other facet of human biology.  But I wonder if we aren't wrong to take it for granted that sexual reproduction is unusual in those who are largely or even entirely same sex attracted.  I know it seems kind of logical it would be, but if I think about it historically, this hasn't really been something that seems to have affected whether or not people marry, and even now plenty of gay people have biological kids through the normal channels.  

 

There is more to the evolution of sexuality in social species like humans than simple binary sexual selection. There have been many societies in which some subset of individuals who do not marry, or who are gender nonconforming in various ways, including some that can be viewed as equivalent to modern Western LGBTQ identities, contribute to the well being of their families and communities. There are numerous examples of this, including Samoan fa'afafine, Navajo nádleeh, Zapotec muxes, Albanin burrnesha (sworn virgins), Afghani bacha posh girls, etc. (though for that last example, they do often go on to marry). Our modern concepts and categories of sexual orientation and gender identity are not going to change a thing about how most people choose partners and identify themselves. That will go on even as we make a non-marginalized place in society for people who are different. 

Honestly IF the reasons for labeling a person with an "M" or an "F" were entirely related to their biological sex, that would give some weight to the stance that those labels (and only those labels), should strictly be used based on biological sex. But in modern Western society, they aren't. The marker on my driver's license, for example, is used primarily for identification purposes, and such identification is more rational and useful when it reflects the presented gender identity of the person and does not require a strip search or medical exam to confirm. 

[LMD]

5 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

Hijira and other third genders were a way for societies to cope with mostly homosexual males - by viewing them as a sort of female. If it's proof of anything, it's proof that societies world wide find it very hard to deal with homosexual or effeminate males.

You are yet to make a case for sexism (discrimination on the basis of sex) being abolished in the West. 

Funny that, 'heavily patriarchal' and 'long tradition of recognition of a third gender' in the same sentence... 

Also how India and Pakistan are irrelevant but Samoan, Navajo and Afghani are on point.

Edited November 5, 2018 by LMD

[Ravin]

3 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

Hijira and other third genders were a way for societies to cope with mostly homosexual males - by viewing them as a sort of female. If it's proof of anything, it's proof that societies world wide find it very hard to deal with homosexual or effeminate males.

You are yet to make a case for sexism (discrimination on the basis of sex) being abolished in the West. 

 

Previously in the thread, I laid out a host of examples of issues attributed to sexism, and pointed out that most of them were predicated on discrimination based on gender roles, not on biological difference between men and women. The extent to which gender roles are dictated by biology is a point of argument here. I argued that in modern Western society, biology dictates very little when it comes to gender roles, compared to the reality in societies (including our own past) where there was not access to birth control. Yes, control over one's own reproductive destiny is impacted based on sex. But a lot of the issues that get labeled "women's issues" aren't just about reproductive rights. 

I never said sexism was abolished. What I have said is that the same system that upholds sexism also reinforces transphobia. If transgender people cannot seek redress for discrimination under sex discrimination laws, then we have no means to seek redress whatsoever. It is not a betrayal of women or a negation of the need for protections for cisgender women from sex discrimination to ask that transgender identity and gender nonconforming people also be protected under that umbrella because our sex does not match our gender identity. Extending the protection of rights to others does not take away from yours. It isn't pie. 

[Ravin]

13 minutes ago, LMD said:

Funny that, 'heavily patriarchal' and 'long tradition of recognition of a third gender' in the same sentence... 

Also how India and Pakistan are irrelevant but Samoan, Navajo and Afghani are on point.

 

I was speaking to different points. One, on the biological/evolutionary role of LGBT and gender nonconforming people, the other on how sex discrimination operates in India vs. our own society respectively. 

[Ravin]

Just now, StellaM said:

 

It's so strange to me that people are blind to the reality that burning women in India comes from the exact same root  - misogyny - that has resulted in structural inequalities for women in the West. 

 

It's so strange to me that some people are blind to the reality that the same root of misogyny is also why gender nonconforming and transgender and gay people have historically been and are presently marginalized. Somehow, you seem to think asking for recognition of this is itself an act of misogyny.

[Ravin]

4 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

The root is patriarchy. The tool is gender. You don't 'dismantle the master's house with the master's tools'. 

 

 

And there is where we disagree, based largely upon differences in choice of vocabulary and the respective meanings we give words in critical gender theory vs. critical feminist theory. I would argue that the tools of patriarchy are gender discrimination and the rigid gender binary, forcing people into particular gender identities and gender roles based upon biological sex. You in turn insist that gender has no meaning except as the cultural baggage of the patriarchy, or whatever. And round and round we go, while those who think the patriarchy is just the way the world is supposed to be are probably rolling their eyes at us, at best.

[LMD]

Ravin: "But a lot of the issues that get labeled "women's issues" aren't just about reproductive rights."

No, they're not all reproductive rights issues, but all women's rights issues are about the treatment of female sexed people. Female being one of the dimorphic options in mammalian reproduction.

I would further purport that a belief in a gender identity that says there is a female brain/essence/soul/something we haven't found yet which is more entitled to protections than the actual sexed female body is categorically anti-feminist. I mean, nobody has to be a feminist, why say you're a feminist if you don't even think females are 1. A discrete category and 2. A category that needs liberation?

Demanding that females have no distinct class or language to discuss their sexed female experiences because it upsets some male people is exactly misogyny.

[LMD]

12 minutes ago, Ravin said:

 

And there is where we disagree, based largely upon differences in choice of vocabulary and the respective meanings we give words in critical gender theory vs. critical feminist theory. I would argue that the tools of patriarchy are gender discrimination and the rigid gender binary, forcing people into particular gender identities and gender roles based upon biological sex. You in turn insist that gender has no meaning except as the cultural baggage of the patriarchy, or whatever. And round and round we go, while those who think the patriarchy is just the way the world is supposed to be are probably rolling their eyes at us, at best.

 

Ok, so define your terms. Please. I really want to be able to have this conversation.  Under your gender theory worldview, what is the definition of gender? How does that inform your understanding of gender binary and gender identity.

Because you say 'gender identity' and I hear 'individual personality that may/may not conform to stereotypes associated with a person's sex'

You say 'gender binary' and I hear 'feminine/masculine rules imposed on people because of their sexed bodies'

 

[Ravin]

28 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

Look Ravin, this is about as much good as you trying to make me believe in Paganism.

When you have a good answer to the question of how female prisoners ( most of them abuse victims, a huge % with TBI's - a more vulnerable population I can't imagine) being assualted by ' a woman with a female penis' is pro woman, or taking sporting opportunities from females is pro woman, or attacking limited same sex provisions is pro woman, get back to me.

When you have an answer to the question of how telling lesbians and gays to 'get over their genital preferences' is pro homosexual, get back to me. 

When you can answer the question of how pro child it is to transition the 70% for the sake of the 30%, get back to me. When you have answers about the long term health effects of puberty blockers on children, get back to me.

In fact, whenever you want to actually listen to women who take a different political position which still encompasses the same human rights as everyone else for transexual people, get back to me.

 

Recommendations under the Prison Rape Elimination act, from Transequality.org :

Quote

WHAT DO THE PRISON RAPE ELIMINATION ACT STANDARDS DO?

 

The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Standards are a comprehensive set of federal rules that address all aspects of a facility’s operations as they relate to preventing, detecting, and responding to abuse. Among the most important protections are the following:

Screening and classification

• Facilities must screen all individuals at admission and upon transfer to assess their risk of experiencing or perpetrating abuse, including identifying those who may be at risk because of their transgender status, gender nonconformity, sexual orientation, or intersex condition. The individual’s own perception of their vulnerability must also be considered.
• Individuals may not be disciplined for any refusal or nondisclosure during screening regarding gender identity, sexual orientation, intersex condition, disability status, or prior sexual victimization.
• Facilities must use this information to make appropriate, individualized decisions about an individual’s security classification and housing placement.

 

It doesn't take a rocket scientist or a critical feminist to figure out that it's a bad idea to put a transgender woman who has a history of violence against women, especially sexual violence, in the general population of a women's prison, especially if she's had neither surgery nor a long time on HRT. Cases like that of Karen White in the U.K. (where they are supposed to use similar guidelines) are simply unacceptable, and that's got nothing to do with being pro- or anti- woman. But to say that such a bad decision means ALL transgender women should be placed in men's prisons where they are at higher risk of sexual assault is just as wrong as to say that ALL transgender women should be placed in women's prisons without individualized consideration of what is appropriate.

Obviously, there is more research to be done when it comes to transgender and gender nonconforming children. When it comes to the desistance statistics, we don't have any that are scientifically rigorous enough to quote with the certainty you seem to give them. There are some important criticisms out there of how those numbers were derived, most notably in my opinion that the definition for gender dysphoria in children under the DSM-V is different from the definition for Gender Identity Disorder in Children under the DSM-IV, and that in one of the studies, children who couldn't be found to ask for the follow-up were assumed to have desisted. 

Given that for a long time transgender people who would, after transition, then be situated in non-hetero relationships based on their sexual orientation (i.e., if you were 'straight' you weren't allowed to transition), there was at that time some legitimacy to the critique that the binary transition model served to erase gay and lesbian identity. Under that older model, I probably wouldn't have been allowed to transition, because I am married to a man. It is only more recent changes removing some of the gate-keeping and revising definitions to make room for transgender people to be allowed to own our sexual orientations and our gender identities both that have removed that barrier. 

Your insistence that gay and lesbian people are still erased by transgender identity is, to me, nothing more than a way of trying to erase transgender identities. It is not necessary to extend some people's personal preference in sex partners into wholesale erasure of the identities of other people. A lesbian or heterosexual man saying, "I would not be comfortable dating or being intimate with someone with a penis" or a straight woman or gay man saying "I wouldn't see the point in a sexual relationship with someone without a penis" is not the same thing as them saying "I would not be comfortable dating or being intimate with a transgender person." 

Again back to the pie: When it comes to sports, a medically transitioned transgender woman is not going to be on a level playing field with cisgender men any more than a cisgender woman is. Hormones make a most significant difference there. So if you insist that she can't play with women,  a transgender woman athlete is being shut out of any opportunity to play, and that is just as unfair. Setting reasonable standards for whether someone has undergone age-appropriate medical transition that evens the playing field isn't unfair, however. The solution if there is a sense that there aren't enough opportunities for women to play is to work to expand those opportunities, which are still far from reaching parity with men's sport, not to shut some women out of them. If it's really a pie, let's bake a bigger one instead of denying someone a piece. Likewise, a transgender man who has undergone medical transition (HRT in particular) is going to have unfair advantage over cisgender women, so he should be allowed to compete against other men.

As long as you insist that erasing our identities is part of your political stance, you cannot credibly claim to support human rights for some of us (transsexual being a term that defines only a subset of those who fall under the transgender umbrella). People with nonbinary identities, and people who are transgender but choose not to transition, or who cannot transition medically even though they want to for economic or health reasons, are also deserving of human rights and dignity. 

[LMD]

1. How to house vulnerable males in male prisons is not women's or feminist's responsibility to solve. What about young/elderly/disabled/gay prisoners? Just shoving them all in the women's is not acceptable.

2. Cases like Karen White have already happened. This isn't theory. This is real life rapists and women being locked in with them. We are allowed to critique the ideology that put Karen White (and others) there. We are allowed to point out that the prison service warned the government during the enquiry and were ignored.

3....

I'll be back. 

[Ravin]

36 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

 

Oh for goodness sake. I have zero interest in 'erasing trans identities'. That's misdirected hyperbole. 

Tranwomen exist. They are transwomen. They have experiences and needs that differ, in the main, from women. They have a right not to be discriminated against in employment, or housing, or in accessing medical care. They have a right to a free trial and a jury of their peers. They have a right to practice a religion and to be free of intersecting discrimination on the basis of race.

Whether or not they have the right to the limited same SEX provisions that exist is an open question. You want to deny there is any cost to giving all trans people that right, whether transexual or not. Good for you. I understand your deep investment in this world view. Disagreement with this world view - that changing gender presentation is the equivalent of changing sex - is not 'trans erasure'.

What you want - for people to agree with gender ideology, to agree that gender is more important than sex, to agree with abolishing same sex provision - is fine for you to want. It's fine for you to agitate for those things. But by golly, I am equally free to oppose them and to point out the harms, unintented or intended, that accrue from your desires. 

Re human rights: if wanting transexual people to be free from discrimination in housing, employment, medical care and justice, and free from violence based on their gender presentation isn't enough for you, then it isn't enough. That's your problem, not mine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You want to redefine transgender people on your own terms, and thereby relegate us to third class (at best) status in relation to other (cisgender) men and women. The very language you use demands this. We might fit some third category, but transgender women don't get to belong to the category you label "women" without qualifiers. You want them to be a subset of the social category "men" based upon biological sex, and would support protecting their rights only through separate protections using different words than those protecting other women from sex-based discrimination.

Except those separate protections don't exist. Not in my state. Not at the Federal level in the U.S.. So your position leaves us out in the cold. You have yet to demonstrate that there is some steep cost to what we are asking for. Society has a long way to go before we are free from all forms of sexism. I'm not denying that. No one is asking you to abandoning advocacy for women's issues that you consider most important. There is a balancing act that needs to be done to ensure fairness and safety for all women without prioritizing safety of transgender women over cisgender women (or safety of cisgender women over transgender women).

You know full well the power of language in this debate, which is why you insist on the language of critical feminism while claiming ignorance of the language of critical gender theory (which has been discussed, and definitions linked to, in other threads in which we both have participated).

When you base your advocacy for this "separate but equal" categorization and separate treatment, on the same footing as those who seek to marginalize and dehumanize us and deny us  any consideration whatsoever, all you're doing is helping the patriarchy erase us.

This thread started with a discussion about raising children without gender. I think it would be great if we could do that. If we could somehow parse out all the trappings of culture that we unnecessarily tie to biological sex, and just let kids be kids, so they can figure out for themselves who they are and what they like and who they love without burdening them with any unnecessary assumptions. Children growing up in such a world would be free of sexism, and would be able to answer the questions we aren't going to settle with our clashing language. 

Trying to do that as a single family in isolation is unlikely to be a successful experiment. We are all too steeped in gendered expectations around everything we do. But it's kind of sweet that the OP's cousin at least wants to try. 

[Scarlett]

It is always at this point that I have no real idea of what any of this means.  

What I think is that trans women want everyone to see them as women even if they still have a mans body.  But I could be wrong.  This is so far outside my experience it isn’t even funny.  

As far as ungendering children......no.  I can’t see the point or any sense in that.  

[Ravin]

10 hours ago, LMD said:

1. How to house vulnerable males in male prisons is not women's or feminist's responsibility to solve. What about young/elderly/disabled/gay prisoners? Just shoving them all in the women's is not acceptable.

2. Cases like Karen White have already happened. This isn't theory. This is real life rapists and women being locked in with them. We are allowed to critique the ideology that put Karen White (and others) there. We are allowed to point out that the prison service warned the government during the enquiry and were ignored.

3....

I'll be back. 

As I already said, the guidelines which have been developed (and which I cited) call for housing transgender people appropriately based on individualized factors, not a blanket rule based on ideology. Which means someone like Karen White who was a convicted rapist should OF COURSE not have been put in a women's prison general population. But there are other transgender women who are not there for reasons of violence towards other women, who are at greater risk of sexual assault in male prisons and would appropriately be placed in a women's prison. It's not ideology that put Karen White in the wrong setting for the safety of all concerned. 

 

46 minutes ago, OKBud said:

 

Besides disagreeing that human beings can literally change their actual sex (not just gender presentation), I think that this is where we disagree, and it is the most pertinent issue to the OP. 

I absolutely do not agree that ambivalence about biological sex will rid the world of sexism. 

I think we also disagree about what constitutes "unnecessary assumptions" about what we tie to biological sex, but that's a bit of an aside. 

We all, for sure, though agree that children should be allowed to just be kids. Accepted as they are, and encouraged to accept themselves as they are. 

 

I didn't say anything about ambivalence about biological sex. I said it would be great to be able to raise kids without the burdens of gender expectations which we assume for them based on their biological sex. And other than Stella (who has been insisting on using the term "transsexual"), no one on this thread has been making any categorization or using language that implies that gender change involves changing actual biological sex. What we can change are some of the physical manifestations of biological sex, as well as the social perceptions of a person's gender.  

[Bluegoat]

14 hours ago, Ravin said:

 

Hormones alter how people smell. Transgender people on hormone replacement therapy smell different than they did pre-transition, in my experience.

 

That's not surprising, though I'm not sure that it really suggests that sex differences are insignificant.