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> The trans topic is a wedge issue that has absolutely no impact on 99% of people. The idea of "gender identity" as based on a subjective inner sense of self,
by unitol 2y ago
> The trans topic is a wedge issue that has absolutely no impact on 99% of people.
The idea of "gender identity" as based on a subjective inner sense of self, and that "gender identity" must supersede sex, fundamentally reframes a core characteristic of the entire human population.
When implemented in law and policy, this affects everyone.
The impact is mostly on women and girls, for whom female-only spaces are essential for their safety and dignity. Allowing any man who says he's a women into such spaces undermines the very reason they exist in the first place, and effectively destroys them.
This isn't progress; it harms women and girls. It shouldn't be a surprise why so many people are against such changes being imposed.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago"The impact is mostly on women and girls, for whom female-only spaces are essential for their safety and dignity." This is an inherently self-contradictory position, because it implies that trans men must be forced into women's spaces.
- unitol 2y agoI don't see how this is a self-contradictory position. Women who've decided to call themselves men are in fact still women.
- InsideOutSanta 2y agoYour position is that this is about protecting women's spaces and making them feel safe and dignified. Your position is also that somebody like Buck Angel must use the women's bathroom, because he is "in fact still a woman." My assertion is that this is contradictory, because forcing somebody like Buck Angel to use the womens' bathroom will make women and girls feel less safe, not more.
- unitol 2y agoThis is about every female-only space, not just bathrooms. Consider prisons, for example. There have been many cases recently of male criminals being transferred to the female prison estate, on the basis of their self-declared so-called "female gender identity", who have then raped and in some cases impregnated women incarcerated with them. It should be obvious that the same risk is not present from other female prisoners. Even if they happen to look very butch and/or hirsute. So keeping prisons single-sex is clearly a much better policy for incarcerated women. Even for bathroom spaces, the prospect of laws that penalize males who decide to use female bathrooms is good news. This is because the threat of negative consequences for such behavior makes it much less likely that any such males will even bother trying, which means that women in general will not only be safer, but also can feel safer, because they know that any individuals encountered in these spaces are almost certainly female. Even if, like Buck Angel, they don't conform to feminine stereotypes.
- foldr 2y agoYou’re assuming that most women would rather share bathrooms with trans men than with trans women. I suspect that were these mad ideas ever to be fully implemented in practice, we’d find that that was not in fact their revealed preference. The truth is that most of the people currently stirring up a moral panic around gender are barely even aware of the existence of trans men and simply haven’t thought this through properly. Which isn’t surprising, as they don’t care about the issue itself, but only its potential as a political wedge.
- unitol 2y agoIt's a reasonable assumption that most women prefer to share female spaces with other women, regardless of how they look, and not with male intruders who have decided to disregard women's boundaries for their own pleasure while falsely identifying themselves as women.
- foldr 2y agoIf trans men have to go to women’s bathrooms then that actually makes it easier for cis men to go into women’s bathrooms too (as in general they are indistinguishable with clothes on). So there isn’t even any internal logic to this idea. The only way to have bathrooms segregated by genitals is to have genital inspectors outside bathrooms, which is neither practical nor desirable (not to mention that bottom surgery is a thing).
- TheOtherHobbes 2y agoBut dying because a fatally unhealthy pregnancy can't be terminated, or being forced to carry a rape pregnancy to term, or being denied contraception, or being shot in a classroom doesn't harm women and girls? Your priorities might be considered a little slanted. Gender identity is used by the right because - like most sex-related issues - it's emotive and triggering. It's a single issue dog whistle. Given the evidence, there is no reason to believe that anyone who uses it for political gain actually cares about women or girls.
- unitol 2y agoYou are making incorrect assumptions about my priorities. I don't support the political right either, for the reasons you mentioned and more.