Topic: queer/trans comrades thread

[jamiefairlie]

Whether it's sex or gender they change, or if sex is immutable or not, is an argument for whoever writes definitions in the dictionary. If we agree that trans women should be treated as women to all extents and purposes, then whether woman is a sex or gender category, or if female means biological sex, or any other terf talking point, is of so little relevance as to be pointless.

That's true if you think there zero circumstances that female sex people should be kept separate from male sex people. If you believe that then what you say is correct. If there are any circumstances where the above is not true then you would need tight definitions. It's certainly a bone of contention right now eg sport, prison, etc.

[Zetetic]

The above post is a useful remind of how "the problem of trans people" serves as a useful distraction across a wide range of issues.

you would need tight definitions

This is almost certainly the opposite of what you need.

[Johnny Yesno]

In terms of how you treat someone else, they're frequently indistinguishable unless you're fiddling about with certain bits of their physiology.

Sad to say, I don't get much opportunity to do that these days.

[canadagoose]

Sad to say, I don't get much opportunity to do that these days.

I bet you don't, you clean young ovaries.

[Johnny Yesno]

I bet you don't, you clean young ovaries.

:-D

[Johnny Yesno]

That's true if you think there zero circumstances that female sex people should be kept separate from male sex people. If you believe that then what you say is correct. If there are any circumstances where the above is not true then you would need tight definitions. It's certainly a bone of contention right now eg sport, prison, etc.

If you haven't seen it, you really should watch that Contrapoints video I posted on the previous page. It covers a lot of these 'concerns'.

[Sebastian Cobb]

you clean young ovaries.

LOL

[Jumblegraws]

Agreed but do you not think we have a more winnable argument to say that that trans people should be fully treated the same as people of that sex, rather than insisting that they literally are that sex? I fully support the former but can’t the latter as it’s akin to believing in the transubstantiation of my catholic youth.

That's true if you think there zero circumstances that female sex people should be kept separate from male sex people. If you believe that then what you say is correct. If there are any circumstances where the above is not true then you would need tight definitions. It's certainly a bone of contention right now eg sport, prison, etc.

Assuming the second quote reflects how you feel (to some extent at least), then how do you reconcile these two statements?

[JaDanketies]

That's true if you think there zero circumstances that female sex people should be kept separate from male sex people. If you believe that then what you say is correct. If there are any circumstances where the above is not true then you would need tight definitions. It's certainly a bone of contention right now eg sport, prison, etc.

If you have tight definitions, then wouldn't that mean you have to ban all trans women from every woman's bathroom and changing facility because you don't think Anthony Joshua should be able to change his gender today and go toe-to-toe for the women's heavyweight championship tomorrow.

For niche interests like sport, I would be happy to defer to sports scientists. Who might think that there are some situations when it's appropriate to discriminate and some situations when it isn't. I mean, they probably wouldn't let me go toe-to-toe with Anthony Joshua for 12 rounds either.

Jumblegraws, I ducked out of that Suzanne Moore thread as I felt I was annoying everyone, but I did see your apology and I am grateful. <3 one love, don't worry about it, water under the bridge etc

[jamiefairlie]

Assuming the second quote reflects how you feel (to some extent at least), then how do you reconcile these two statements?

I'm actually not sure. I think there's at least an element of doubt about the safety of mixing male sex people and female sex people in sport and prisons. I'd like to see a reasoned investigation into it and decisions based on dispassionate analysis of real data. So as of today, I don't think gender = sex is a 100% proven slam dunk whilst these unresolved questions still exist. There may need to be legal definitions of both if that is true.

[Zetetic]

There's no way to provide meaningful legal definitions that won't prove intolerable in edge cases and do untold damage to effective risk assessment in many others. You cannot draw a line through the fuzziness.

[jamiefairlie]

If you have tight definitions, then wouldn't that mean you have to ban all trans women from every woman's bathroom and changing facility because you don't think Anthony Joshua should be able to change his gender today and go toe-to-toe for the women's heavyweight championship tomorrow.

I get what you mean but if you have laws using these terms they need to be defined, kind of goes with the territory. If it was just custom and behaviour then yeah I agree but you get into dodgy territory of you try to regulate something without clearly defining it.

[Zetetic]

No, that's not how laws and the languages that they're written in work.

[jamiefairlie]

There's no way to provide meaningful legal definitions that won't prove intolerable in edge cases and do untold damage to effective risk assessment in many others. You cannot draw a line through the fuzziness.

so what's the alternative, unmeaningful definitions? How can you make laws without being clear about what you're talking about? Should we just accept that there should be no laws around  fuzzy issues then?

[JaDanketies]

so what's the alternative, unmeaningful definitions? How can you make laws without being clear about what you're talking about? Should we just accept that there should be no laws around  fuzzy issues then?

For prisons: safeguarding teams in the criminal justice system working on a per-case basis (pretty sure this is standard for all prisoners and has been for decades anyway)
For sports: sports scientists

no 'laws' needed. Like there's no 'law' saying don't put nonces in with armed robbers. But doing so with wanton disregard to the safety of the nonce would be a safeguarding breach.

[Zetetic]

so what's the alternative, unmeaningful definitions? How can you make laws without being clear about what you're talking about? Should we just accept that there should be no laws around  fuzzy issues then?

You use examples to map out the fuzziness, you attempt to describe the aims of regulation and the processes it imposes as clearly as possible, and you try to ensure that the people enacting those processes are in a position to gather the relevant information to enact those processes (and learn from each others decisions[1]).

(And then you probably realise that the biggest threat to women in Scottish prisons is not well described by the presence of a Y-chromosomes of other prisons or any associated appendages, or indeed the ghosts of those appendages, and that actually paying undue attention to these things rapidly damages your risk assessment process.)

1.	This is extremely explicit in common law jurisdictions, but not peculiar to them.

[Jumblegraws]

For prisons: safeguarding teams in the criminal justice system working on a per-case basis (pretty sure this is standard for all prisoners and has been for decades anyway)
For sports: sports scientists

no 'laws' needed.

Yeah, what he said. Clarity in law is not the same as lawmakers legislating in areas to the extent of fettering administrative bodies better equipped to deal with “fuzzy” situations on a case-by-case basis. ETA and also what Z said ahead of me and more elegantly. Thanks for accepting the apology re: the Suzanne Moore thread, JD.

[TrenterPercenter]

so what's the alternative, unmeaningful definitions? How can you make laws without being clear about what you're talking about? Should we just accept that there should be no laws around  fuzzy issues then?

I think what Z is saying is that any attempt to draw the line would inevitably need to give comprimises and concessions in certain aspects, making any line drawn through it wavy at best.

[Zetetic]

(Assessing the risk that individuals pose to themselves or others by checklist is infamously dangerous, to the point - for example - where NCISH seems to be constantly going on about. Which is not to pretend that we can't identify relevant factors, sure, but that it's very easy to put too much emphasis on them rather than trying to actually understand the situation. And I say this as someone who fucking loves checklists and categories.)

[jamiefairlie]

maybe we've gotten too abstract. Let's take the sport example, if you think it's ok for everyone to play sport against everyone then you don't need a law but as soon as you start to introduce restrictions, say age, weight, sex, etc then you do need to define those things to ensure the segregation is being applied as per the law.

Am I missing something? How else would you do it?

[Jumblegraws]

maybe we've gotten too abstract. Let's take the sport example, if you think it's ok for everyone to play sport against everyone then you don't need a law but as soon as you start to introduce restrictions, say age, weight, sex, etc then you do need to define those things to ensure the segregation is being applied as per the law.

Am I missing something? How else would you do it?

You let the administrative bodies of the sports create their own charters, codes, whatever and sue them on the basis of delictual liability (in Scots law anyway) if they breach their own terms.

[TrenterPercenter]

maybe we've gotten too abstract. Let's take the sport example, if you think it's ok for everyone to play sport against everyone then you don't need a law but as soon as you start to introduce restrictions, say age, weight, sex, etc then you do need to define those things to ensure the segregation is being applied as per the law.

Am I missing something? How else would you do it?

I think you might be talking about rules here, specifically sporting rules.  Not laws.


And there are solutions as you have just pointed out, which when you think about it sex is a really poor one for keeping sport "fair".

[Zetetic]

If you want to introduce competition classes, then it probably makes sense to do so explicitly on things that are directly mechanically relevant to the sport in question.

Clearly some things attempt to use weight and assigned birth sex as proxies for these things and this works tolerable well, until it doesn't and so you start drawing some more lines. And then you end up deciding something undeniably stupid like this person with inny-genitals, XX-chromosomes and who has identified and been identified as a woman throughout her life literally isn't a woman in this arena because you've picked some or other random biomarker out of hat and decided that 100% in this book means "woman".

[Sebastian Cobb]

Hasn't women's sports occasionally ended up barring cis women for having too high levels of naturally occuring testosterone (under the assumption they were juicing)? It doesn't seem like their processes are ideal.

And aside from a 'gotcha' for people to point at, I don't see how sport has much relevance in the wider-coexistence of transpeople and cis-people, other than high-profile trans sportspersons will probably push apathetic/ambivalent sports supporters towards being more accepting, which is of course a good thing.

[TrenterPercenter]

If you want to introduce competition classes, then it probably makes sense to do so explicitly on things that are directly mechanically relevant to the sport in question.

It is quite interesting how i've seen the boxing one thrown about the place when boxing with its weight divisions is already much better equip than lots of other sports to handle this.

[Sin Agog]

Something tells me goblin here won't have her anxiety cleared up any by this thread devolving into the same desultory prodding of hypothetical MMA fighters/bladder-emptiers.  Which brings up the more important question: if your brain immediately focuses on this trifling shite, rather than the feelings of actually affected and vulnerable people and how easy it is to facilitate them...why is that?  Transphobia.

[jamiefairlie]

I get the underlying sense that there's some unease in defining things because if we do there's some inevitable consequences we don't want to deal with as they're so controversial right now, so best to leave it fuzzy. I think it's that fuzziness that's leading to so much anger as both sides are interpreting the same fuzziness their favour. We might not like the state which clarity leaves us in but at least we know where we stand.

[Johnny Yesno]

It is quite interesting how i've seen the boxing one thrown about the place when boxing with its weight divisions is already much better equip than lots of other sports to handle this.

I'd say 'bizarre' is a better description than 'interesting'.

[JaDanketies]

I don't want to sound like Graham Linehan here, but I think this "when auditioning actors to play the part of a trans woman character, you should only hire a trans woman" is wrong-headed. Instead:

• Hire the best person for the part
• Consider trans women to play the roles of cis women

[imitationleather]

Something tells me goblin here won't have her anxiety cleared up any by this thread devolving into the same desultory prodding of hypothetical MMA fighters/bladder-emptiers.  Which brings up the more important question: if your brain immediately focuses on this trifling shite, rather than the feelings of actually affected and vulnerable people and how easy it is to facilitate them...why is that?  Transphobia.

+1

I reckon this time tomorrow we'll be well on our way to 100 pages in this thread.