WSPUS and Transgender

[Jordan Levi]

Thomas again, i’ve had hella family who knew they were gay very young, i actually prefer that being explained so kids don’t get confused and think it’s bad. maybe even being transgender should be talked about alongside it, but that chart just isn’t the way to go about it to be honest.

[Jordan Levi]

yeah rob, trump started attacking biden over his bill allowing “trans women” to participate in women’s sports. dems are gonna lose so much mf credibility over this, cuz it’s so mf easy to see that they merely want the definition of key terms to be changed to fit their worldview without having any alternative, falsifiable definitions to offer.

USA's top high school boys🟦of 2016 vs the Olympic Women's🟥Finalists of 2016

100 Meters (Track & Field)

Is it fair for males to compete in the girls' or women's categories?

More & Sources 👉 https://t.co/sRTcBmLmyV pic.twitter.com/YDSStFBumd

— boysvswomen.com (@boysvswomen) February 24, 2020

[robbo203]

Hi Jordan

Some very interesting stuff you present. Relevant to some of the links you gave concerning the unfair advantage trans women have over cis women in such areas as competitive sports there is this link I came across

https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-016-1035-8?fbclid=IwAR3YB3jcK6IOWbr72onivfP-1_kkyautiliBbu13I3_ltHNzbhJ5fCvCDJk

Its actually quite a minefield walking through this whole topic of transgenderism. While the biological basis of transgenderism on which you have been focussing is fundamentally questionable – a man cannot literally become a woman in a biological sense or vice versa – there is this question of gender identity we have to grapple with

While you and I may use the term gender in its original sense as against the rather sloppy contemporary usage, referring to what sex one subjectively prefers to identify with, there is the question of how to address what is essentially the social phenomenon that is transgenderism

While trans folk may not be able to present a definition of gender identity that is falsifiable, as you say, I think it is important to separate this issue from the question of transphobia which is a prejudice against these folk. The word phobia means “an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something”

Like you, I have been accused of harbouring transphobic views on the Ultra vs Tankies FB group simply for questioning the biological basis of transgenderism. I actually think the charge of transphobia is quite outrageous and insulting since I made it absolutely clear that I have nothing whatsoever against people wanting to identify as trans people and I strongly oppose any victimisation of or discrimination against these people whatsoever.

However, it seems that merely to question the biological basis of transgenderism is tantamount to transphobia in the eyes of the Idpol Stalinists that administer the above FB group. I just don’t get it. Until a trans-women, born a man, is able to give birth to a child, there is no way she can be considered a woman in a biological sense, only in a social sense.

Ironically there was a transwoman on that forum who freely acknowledged this point and yet still accused me of harbouring transphobic views for making this very point! I think if anything is going to bring transgenderism into disrepute it is people like this who want to suppress scientific facts lest it it undermines their narrative. They are their own worst enemies. They actually make it easy for transphobes to attack them

For myself, I see nothing wrong with acknowledging and celebrating transgenderism as a social construction rather than a biological construction. If people want to identify as trans why not? Its up to them surely?

There are admittedly some problems arising from this and you point to the case of trans woman competing against cis women in sports which I refer to above (there is the notable example of that South African athlete in the news at the moment). Broadly based phenotypical differences linked to differences in biological sex, would clearly seem to afford such individuals an unfair advantage. Can it really be the case that preventing such individuals competing in these events amounts to victimisation? To use an analogy, would it be acceptable for an athlete to use a performance enhancing drug in competition with other athletes who refrain using this drug? The parallels are obvious

Really, to be consistent supporters of trans woman participating in women-only sport events should call for the removal of any and all sex discrimination in any and all sporting events including, say, boxing or rugby. I am not aware of any who do and I am not surprised that they don’t appear to either…

[DJP]

if you want to communicate with a word, it needs to have a definition which isn’t curcular, and it has to be falsifiable.

None of those are criteria for successful communication. Falsifiability has nothing to do with definitions, it’s to do with the validity of scientific theories according to Popperian philosophy of science, and the avoidance of circularity is to do with the validity of arguments.

To successfully communicate people have to have access to a bunch of shared meanings, and these meanings of these words is determined by the group of people that are using them. Or that is what Wittgenstein says…

[DJP]

Jordan I agree with you on your comments in #214983 and #214986

this idea of there being some “inner you” is completely incompatible with marxism at the moment.

I’m not sure I know precisely what you mean here. You think that because Marx talked about historical materialism that means that we can’t talk about mental states, intentions, agency etc?

When people say they feel extreme discomfort in their own body and “feel like” a member of the opposite sex they are trying to communicate something. You think we should just tell them they’re talking nonsense?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by DJP.

[alanjjohnstone]

JL – most transgender people never have cosmetic surgery
Robbo – there is no way she can be considered a woman in a biological sense

Once again i have to refer to the large populations around the world of what should be considered as Third Gender. These people are being neglected in these exchanges.

I find this debate focusing on what is the American/EuroCentric issues is doing a disservice to tens of thousands of TS/TG who despite increasing social acceptance in their own countries still face legal obstacles.(JL at least you did acknowledge the status of the hijaris as a separate category)

Most Ladyboys/Katoeys (very crudely described as ‘chicks with dicks’) do undertake hormone treatment and frequently engage in the sex trade for the means to have sexual assignment surgery. They seek to accentuate their femininity, to look more ‘woman’ than many women. They work most often in the female service industries, fashion, hair salons, make-up.

From casual conversations, their only rivalry with ‘real’ women is not on the sports field but their own ‘battle of the sexes’ – to compete for male attention.

i have said this on the thread – they behave and are treated as different from ‘real’ women but viewed as sisters. But not as feminised gays.

And i see the fuss about ‘fake’ women engaged in female sports gaining an ‘unfair’ advantage rather distracting when TS/TG are being sent to male prisons to be abused and raped. (and yes there has been cases of TS/TG committing crimes when placed in women’s prisons, just as members of the straight and the LGBTQ community have when incarcerated)

When it comes to sex/gender i always felt an affinity with Marge Pierce’s book, ‘Woman on the Edge of Time’ where differences are so blurred that sexual identity became an irrelevance.

Isn’t socialism ultimately about unisex?

[robbo203]

When it comes to sex/gender i always felt an affinity with Marge Pierce’s book, ‘Woman on the Edge of Time’ where differences are so blurred that sexual identity became an irrelevance. Isn’t socialism ultimately about unisex?

Alan

I am not quite sure what you have in mind by this last comment. I cant honestly see sexual identity ever becoming an irrelevance. It is so closely bound up with our own sense of ourselves. We are biological beings as well as social beings and, as such, are subject to biological urges that push us in some directions rather than others albeit mediated as ever by social context. For the majority of us, we do tend to discriminate as to whom we find sexually attractive which then shapes our own sense of sexual identity in particular ways

For me transgenderism is a social construct – which doesn’t make it any the less valid. It is only in the very basic biological sense that transwomen cannot be considered women because they lack the reproductive organs that define a woman and enable her to bear children. This is hardly controversial and no trans-woman would disagree with this statement. Controversy only arises in the context of particular situations such as the examples we have already referred to like sporting events , the use of public toilets, prisons and the behaviour of prison inmates etc etc, It is in these particular situations that I think there is some reason to be concerned as the links Jordan has supplied demonstrate

In general though I think this whole issue has been blown way out of proportion and is a fuss about nothing really – or, at any rate, is just fuss over the meaning of words. Like I said the word “gender”, a few decades ago meant something quite different to what it means today and if you are going to define gender as a social construct as tends to be the case today then there is little argument that the “gender£ of a transwoman is a woman. On the other hand if you define gender as it used to be defined as a biological construct – so only females can bear children, males cant – then a transwoman clearly is not a woman

Pick your own definition and run with it

There is quite a useful explanation here which puts the matter in context and addresses the question of what might be called exceptions to the rule

https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/Chap1.pdf

But while we think of sex as biological and
gender as social, this distinction is not clear-cut. People tend to think of gender as the result of nurture – as social and hence fluid – while sex is the result of nature, simply given by biology. However, nature and nurture intertwine, and there is no obvious point at which sex leaves off and gender begins. But the sharp demarcation fails because there is no single objective biological criterion for male or female sex. Sex is based in a combination of anatomical, endocrinal and chromosomal features, and the selection among these criteria for sex assignment is based very much on cultural beliefs about what actually makes someone male or female. Thus the very definition of the biological categories male and female, and people’s understanding of themselves and others as male or female, is ultimately social. Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000) sums
up the situation as follows:labeling someone a man or a woman is a social decision. We may use scientific knowledge to help us make the decision, but only our beliefs about gender – not science – can define our sex.
Furthermore, our beliefs about gender affect what kinds of knowledge scientists produce about sex in the first place. (p. 3)

Biology offers up dichotomous male and female prototypes, but it also offers us many individuals who do not fit those prototypes in a variety of ways. Blackless et al. (2000) estimate that 1 in 100 babies are born with bodies that differ in some way from standard male or female.
These bodies may have such conditions as unusual chromosomal makeup (e.g., 1 in 1,000 male babies are born with two X chromosomes as well as a Y, hormonal differences such as insensitivity to androgens (1 in 13,000 births), or a range of configurations and combinations of genitals and reproductive organs. The attribution of intersex does not end at birth – for example, 1 in 66 girls experience growth of the clitoris in childhood or adolescence (known as late onset adrenal hyperplasia)

[robbo203]

For some balance this is quite an interesting article too. It argues against the notion that sex (or what used to be called gender) is binary on grounds of genetics, neurobiology and endocrinology.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/stop-using-phony-science-to-justify-transphobia/?fbclid=IwAR10Vwl9C4KXZyZ5Cugi3QSh1kwpMyeX7xdYicRsERjlPMDeztzuaj9U_GE

I am no expert on the subject but I am puzzled by the line of argument presented. Surely what above all or most completely defines a female is possession of reproductive sexual organs that enable her to bear children (irrespective of whether these organs malfunction or at not used for this purpose in the case of say a celibate nun)

The article points out that XX individuals (chromosomally female) could present with male gonads while XY individuals (chromosomally male) can have ovaries. But these are very rare exceptions to the rule that surely prove the rule. Assertions about the binary nature of sex are generalisations but you dont say a generalisation is invalid because exceptions can be found to contradict the generalisation. That’s not a reasonable argument. Its like saying we don’t live in a class divided society because some own enough capital that makes it difficult to determine whether they are workers or capitalists

The article also makes this point:

Especially alarming is that these “intellectual” assertions are used by nonscientists to claim a scientific basis for the dehumanization of trans people. The real world consequences are stacking up: the trans military ban, bathroom bills, and removal of workplace and medical discrimination protections, a 41-51 percent suicide attempt rate and targeted fatal violence . It’s not just internet trolling anymore.

I frankly fail to see how describing biological sex differentiation in broadly binary terms leads to the “dehumanisation of trans people”. This is the sort of woolly minded PC nonsense we have had to put with over at the Ultras v Tankies FB group. Human beings are not defined by their sexuality. Their sexuality is but one component part of their self identity, not the whole of it. And nobody is denying transpeople – or at least I am not – their right to express their sexuality as trans people

It is totally possible to see transgenderism as an essentially social construct while at the same time being vigorously opposed to the expression of transphobic prejudices directed against such people. Human beings are social animals and the emergence of a social construct like transgenderism in no way diminishes our humanity

[ALB]

The UK government is carrying out a census on 21 March. According to Trevor Phillips writing in today’s Times of London:

“A noisy campaign to persuade the ONS [Office for National Statistics] to abandon the compulsory question on sex almost succeeded, despite the blindingly obvious need to know the likely numbers of people stricken by ovarian or prostate cancer”

adding

“Contrary to the claims of trans-fantasists it really is not possible to suffer from both these conditions.”

(I think that means that he’s going to be no-platformed from giving talks to university students.)

I suppose they could satisfy these people by including another question similar to the one on “race” which, unscientifically, offers over 18 choices plus a write-in box (which we socialists have a policy of filling in “member of the human race”). Or they could go as far as Russia and China which offer a choice of 192 and 56 as these state’s respectively do for “ethnic” (in reality cultural) groups.

Perhaps the whole issue could be settled by not asking a question about which sex or gender you are but simply which type of cancer could you get — ovarian or prostate. That should separate the sheep from the goats.

[KAZ]

I believe the census question is titled “ethnicity” rather than “race”. I thought Ethnicity was a town in America until I drank deep of the waters of tranquility.

Will there be censuses (censi?) under scrotcialism?

[ALB]

Why not? I know the anarchist Proudhon objected to filling in forms as he regarded them as hindering petty free enterprise. I don’t know about Bakunin — he liked burning public records. But Marx loved them, citing the censuses of 1841, 1851 and 1861 in Das Kapital.

I don’t suppose there’d be questions on “religion” or “race” (just what was your main language perhaps). As to sex, gender or whatever, this could be useful for the sort of reason Trevor Phillips mentioned.

Incidentally, have you found out if Marx and Engels were registered voters in England? We know Engels voted but did Marx?

[ALB]

Forgot to add that the plural of census will be censi in Latin as its gender is masculine.

[KAZ]

Marx was never naturalised was he? I think that would disbar him on the nationals. Locals were based on property so maybe for them. Women could vote in locals back in Marx’s time. Don’t tell the wimmin that though. Spoil their stuffragette party.

The thing about censuses (or censi) is that they are linked to nationalism and capitalism. They appear with the centralised state and become increasingly detailed with the rise of capitalism. Is it unreasonable to assume that on the demise of the state and capitalism, the census will vanish?

Proudhon was a knobend.

[Anonymous]

How would the new multi-gender folks take this?

[ALB]

TM, I thought Pierre Abelard got castrated. Not that that made him a woman.

[Author]

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