WSPUS and Transgender
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aj, most trans people i’ve interacted with want to be treated as the opposite sex in every aspect (but what they call the opposite gender, even tho bathrooms, etc. have never been based on gender, only sex).
maybe there is a campaign to identify as X for “non-binary” ttansgender people, but most trans women want to identify as F in every context from what i’ve seen.
as i suspected, the first article is about a nonbinary person.
they say that intersex people make up 1.7% of the population. this is a misleading statistic first used by anne fausto-sterling. as i said earlier, 1.5% of this is CAH, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which only affects women. in the same paper, she suggested there are 5 sexes, even though the extra 3 produced no new gametes.
they bring up “sex assigned at birth.” again, it’s not assigned at birth, it’s unequivocally observed at birth in 99.982% of cases. even in the 0.018% of cases where they take a best guess, their sex isn’t assigned. they already have a sex at birth, it just might be marked wrong due to a wrong guess.
they imply intersex is a sex, but it’s not. it’s a group of 40 conditions, most of which are sex-specific. all intersex people are still either one of two sexes.
i’m not even gonna lie to you, AJ, i’m hella tired so i just skimmed through the rest of that first article and the entire second.
anyway: i also don’t believe brains have a “gender,” as they imply in the second article. evidence of differences between male and female brains is still very hotly debated. i’ve read that trans brains don’t moreso resemble those of the opposite sex, but i’ve read that other studies disagree and i’m no expert on that issue, so i’m honestly not prepared to debate the results of those studies.
they bring up third-genders that’ve existed in other cultures, but those cultures didn’t literally consider them the opposite “gender,” hence the third category. to be a hijra, for example, you have to be a male. there are no female hijras.
they mention principle 31 of the yogyakarta principles, which says: “Everyone has the right to change gendered information in such documents [JL: like birth certificates] while gendered information is included in them.” but birth certificates don’t deal with “gender,” they only deal with sex.
i’m not exclusive of trans people. i don’t want to alienate them. as you said, their status as trans is irrelevant. that’s none of my business. my issue is the redefinition of important terms and passing legislation regarding gender identity without even providing a falsifiable definition in that legislation. it just doesn’t make sense to me. i just want there to be an open discussion on this in the public sphere without feminists being deplatformed.
Jordan – thanks for taking the time to read my links. I think there is something in the arguments you mention. There’s a few things I disagree with though..
money’s definitely a social construct. it’s not real. it didn’t exist before humanity.
So capitalism is not real either? Phew there’s a relief!
“Real” doesn’t mean existing before humanity, or “physical”. Money, capitalism, The World Socialist Party of America, patriarchy; all of these things are real they just exist, as Grace-Chappell says a few lines on, “as the reality of historical and social formations. They don’t have the reality of the natural kinds that science is concerned with, like Panthera Tigris Tigris and H2O and tungsten. But whoever said that the only real kinds of things were the natural kinds?”
Also, I don’t think language works how you seem to think it does, it doesn’t work like geometry. A definition is not an argument, it’s not the kind of thing that has a truth value or is falsifiable. Circularly in definitions is not uncommon, or really a problem, look in a dictionary. But now we’re talking about philosophy of language..
The thing with the transgender debate is it *is* a struggle of the meaning of words and concepts, and struggles over the meaning of words and concepts of this kind are political struggles.
it’s no problem, i at least skim almost everything thrown at me cuz i genuinely want to find out i’m wrong about things cuz i want so bad to be rigt lol
i guess you could say capitalism, money, political parties are real in a broad sense, but — if anything — i’d consider those things social constructs. not sex, as some transgender people argue. i think they’re confusing social acknowledgement with social construction.
i’d say adequate definitions can be hard to give sometimes, but you’ll never see “a banana is a banana” or “a socialist is someone who identifies as a socialist” in a dictionary. i’ve seen transgender people offer 4 broad definitions of what a man or a woman are, but none of them stand up to scrutiny to me. but that’s why i prefer people to give me their definitions themselves rather than assume which one they’ll give.
i just don’t like the idea of womanhood being equated with femininity, then everyone i would call a woman instead being referred to as a “breeder.”
Coincidentally this article was published today
https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-on-trans-rights-journalists-must-stand-with-the-facts/a-56709873
Also by coincidence this article appeared on the sex industry
https://inthesetimes.com/article/sex-workers-equality-model-new-york
Alan, thousands of articles about these topics are on the internet. What in particular do you think is special about the two you posted?
One can’t resolve one’s misery under capitalism by blaming or picking at gender any more than one can erase past wrongs by expurgating or banning historical creations of literature and art one finds offensive.
Socialism will not be threatened by the past; nor will people feel victimised by their gender.
I consider “political correctness” and current obsessions with gender and sex to be signs of confusion and blindness to capitalism being the source of widespread unhappiness, frenzy and despair. It is so much simpler to blame oneself or another than to perceive the problem within the basis of society.
my bad for the late reply again, i went to sleep, ran some errands after i woke up, then had to read those articles and type up my impressions.
aj, regarding the dw article.
in the introduction they say “cis gender” means their gender identity matches their sex, but they also don’t define gender identity. i don’t think anybody will ever understand how frustrating it is to me for this group to speak of something so matter of factly without ever actually defining what it is.
right away, he associates RadFems with reactionaries for RadFems not believing in gender. this is such a lazy tactic. they literally can’t tell you what gender is. again, once you point out that “femininity” and “masculinity” are sexist stereotypes, they pull a motte-and-bailey and say that those are actually “gender expression.” so the only things you can see is “gender expression” or gender roles. you literally can’t see gender or gender identity. they never define it in any falsifiable way, just somebody’s “inner sense of gender.” you can see a Victoria, Australia bill that does exactly this here:
The Victorian Government is introducing a bill which criminalises the act of "suppressing" a person's gender identity https://t.co/JWJYsgtUKk
— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) December 14, 2020
they define gender identity as ‘someone’s gender-related identity.’ sorry to cuss, but this kinda shit literally makes me wanna fuckin cry lmao like they speak about it like it’s just common sense that this shit exists, but they can’t give you a falsifiable definition of it. i’ve been tryna find a sound definition for probably more than 4 years at this point and it seems to me like the emporer has no clothes.
he claims no one has numbers to back up claims that Trans-Identifying Males (TIMs) endanger women in prisons. as i’ve already shown, they retain male patterns of violence. the issue is also that there’s significant evidence, as i’ve also already shown, that rapists are lieing about being trans cuz they’ll be safer in women’s prisons.
he uses the term TERF, which is a slur. i’ve yet to come across a RadFem who could be considered trans-exclusionary by any reasonable definition.
they use the intersex scapegoat lmaooo i hate having to repeat this, but intersex conditions don’t disprove the sex binary, they’re all males or females with atypical development. exceptions literally prove the rule. i think most of you know i have one arm. this is like arguing i disprove that humans have 2 arms lmaooo this talking point is so mf trash 😂
he says feminist fears haven’t materialized in europe. i only keep up with english-speaking social media accounts and sites that track crimes from people who at least allege to be transgender, so i honestly don’t have a rebuttal to this right now, but my guess is that there’s groups in those countries that’d disagree. but i acknowledge i could be wrong.
final comment on that article: i was hoping he’d cite some statistics, but he didn’t lmao
regarding the sex industry article: i can already tell where this going from the byline. feminists don’t want to criminalize sex workers, they want to decriminalize sex workers, but criminalize sex buyers, what’s called the Nordic Model. one time a guy sent me an article pointing out that some countries that claim to implement the Nordic Model don’t actually do this in practice, but the obvious rebuttal is that it’s not the Nordic Model then, so they should implement it properly.
the sex industry shouldn’t exist. 90%+ of the employees develop PTSD. they experience violence at mind-bogglingly higher rates than the general population. it shouldn’t exist.
there is no consensual sex work. there’s no consensual employment in general, but especially not sex work.
“…many carceral feminists operate under the misguided ideas that all sex work is inherently exploitative; that any sex in exchange for money or goods is rape;…”
all sex work is inherently exploitative. all work is, but especially all sex work.
kajsa ekis ekman did a great job of explaining this at a conference: 2 people who wanna have sex (or exchange nudes) don’t pay each other. if both don’t want to, then sex doesn’t happen. money only comes into the picture when only one person wants to have sex, but the other doesn’t. what do you call sex in which one of those involved doesn’t want to be?
“People have always sold and traded sex to survive — and to thrive — and they will continue to do it long after we are all gone.”
there’s this girl merrick who went viral on twitter for a similar take where she basically said sex workers would still exist under the higher phase of communism to provide “sexual mutual aid” lmao over 90% of sex workers want to exit the industry. it’s extremely dangerous. nobody would do this w/o being coerced into doing so by poverty, but poverty obviously wouldn’t exist in the higher phase of communism.
she then gets into the Nordic Model and cites a couple papers, but i’m not gonna bother reading them tbh. what i do know is that kajsa mentioned in her book ‘being and being bought’ that the sex industry astroturfs sex worker unions. the girl who wrote this article cites a study by Fuckförbundet, which is a sex worker union. kajsa follows me on instagram, so i’m gonna hit her up and see if she knows anything about this union. but at first glance it seems sus.
also, i’m not gonna put any names out there, but i’ve gotten a couple messages from members who said they generally agree with me on the trans issue, but are too afraid to say it cuz of how vitriolic the pushback always is. but i will say this thread has been mostly ok.
Apparently, we’re not allowed to use the name Mr. Potato Head any more when describing the Potato Head toy. He (!) isn’t allowed to be “gendered” any more.
Alan, thousands of articles about these topics are on the internet. What in particular do you think is special about the two you posted?
Merely because — as i said — they appeared moreorless while we were engaged in exchanges. I posted as info.
For many, this topic is an information gathering process as i don’t think most members have taken any fixed position upon it that can be interpreted as a Party view, other than all wage slavery should be condemned and all discrimination opposed.
I am surprised by the comment that some members are reluctant to express their views because they expect “vitriol”.
Jordan’s experience is very different from my own, in both encounters with trans and the sex industry and the outcome is that we hold differing attitudes.
I happened to live for some time in a city which has been described as the biggest brothel in the world and also the home of many hundreds of trans. Selling sex is seen as a route out of poverty, with the pimp being the global tourist industry.
So far, we have not mentioned the topic of the violence of Incel (involuntary celibates) and there i have to admit my own ignorance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel
The discussion about sex has certainly got difficult for socialists since the days when it was simply about if women should be granted the vote.
Are other animals supposed to have more than two genders, or is it only humans?
Why can’t a male have interests and inclinations mostly associated with females without having his sex changed, and vice versa?
Obsession with body image as the definition of personality is itself a characteristic of slavery and a symptom of capitalist (alienated) culture. The same goes for the obsession with “the individual” – which is a reaction to commodity culture. In short, all of this pertains alone to humans under this system, where we are alienated from nature (which other animals are not, unless forcibly alienated by humans).
thomas, that’s so ridiculous lmao i refuse to not gender mr. potatohead 😂
aj, agreed, all wage slavery should be condemned and all discrimination should be opposed. but saying a dysphoric man isn’t a woman isn’t discrimination, especially if the other side can’t even offer a sound definition of what a woman is.
also, maybe you haven’t seen how nasty this group can get when they smell the slightest dissent, aj. there’s so many people on radtwitter that were exiled from the trans community for being “transmedicalists” or “truscum” or for simply asking questions or for detransitioning. they’ve gotten so many different subreddits and social media accounts deplatformed just for women, lesbians, detransitioners, etc. congregating there or just countering any bs they see online with facts. i literally never saw any hate on r/GenderCritical or r/GCdebatesQT, but those got shut down. but all these misogynistic porn subreddits are still up. transgender people openly talk about wanting to kill or harm “TERFs” every day and they never get deplatformed. it’s fuckin insane.
thomas again, AND THIS IS WHERE I GET SO PISSED! like ok, if your argument is that sex is a “social construct,” then do animals not have a sex either!? and is “gender” — w/e tf it is — something only humans experience!? if so, WHY!? i get so mf angry about this cuz there’s like MULTIPLE layers of dogma to this whole shit, but it’s passed off as tho it’s common sense lmao
and exactly, a man can be “feminine” without being a woman. but again, that’d bring us back to the “gender expression” motte-and-bailey they use, then back to the fact they can’t falsifiably define gender again.
yeah, too much focus on body image and individual agency, even tho definitions and social standards are a collective effort.
kajsa got back to me. i asked what she knew about Fuckförbundet and she said:
“Oh that is a lobby group for pro-prostitution people”
“Very small, how have they even heard about it?”
“It is insignificant”
so i explained why i asked, to which she said:
“Yes, that group is not a union or even only for people in prostitution, it’s like a small lobby group. The biggest group for women in prostitution here is Inte Din Hora, which is pro-Nordic model”
she’s from Stockholm, Sweden, by the way.
Hi Jordan. You may have misread me. Gender is a biological fact, and I was asking how do all these “woke” (?) people explain that, according to them, humans, who are animals, have 27+ (?) genders, whereas other animals, and indeed all of life since the invention of sex, have two?
You also correctly point out that the myth of individual free agency is again uppermost, despite the materialists of yore having long ago trounced it.
It is refreshing to have you here.
🙂
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