FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
User ID: 1175
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1hr ago
I would be very surprised if @Celestial-body-NOS is an enthusiastic advocate for capital punishment, but I've been wrong before.
I will quote myself:
Of course, post-Singularity, all of these petty squabbles about sex, gender, crime, safeguarding etc. will be completely irrelevant.
But, you know, the Singularity hasn't actually happened yet, if you haven't noticed. I find it deeply strange that you're trying to enact policies which would make the world better in a post-Singularity world, while fully cognizant of the fact that they make our pre-Singularity world demonstrably worse, and that the Singularity is unlikely to happen in your lifetime. It's like someone spending all their money on frivolities today because they're certain that they'll win the lottery tomorrow. Actually, it's worse than that - it's like someone spending all their money on frivolities today because they're certain that their great-great-grandson will win the lottery long after they're dead. Even if you knew for a fact that your great-great-grandson would win the lottery long after you're dead, shouldn't you plan your finances a bit more sensibly while you're still alive?
Why do debates with trans activists invariably devolve into nonsensical circular reasoning ("a woman is a person who identifies as a woman", "a woman is a person who experiences misogynistic sexism"), bizarre outré navel-gazing about our transhumanist future, or both? "In the future we'll be able to implant uteri in trans women's bellies and they'll be functionally indistinguishable from female people in every way that counts - therefore we should treat trans women as women now." (paraphrased) And if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bike! What on earth could this far-off hypothetical scenario possibly have to do with the world in which we currently live, in which nothing resembling a Singularity seems likely to happen and in which no trans woman will ever bear a child in either of our lifetimes?
What constitutes a sensible course of action varies depending on a society's current tech level. You are correct that we can treat medical conditions now that we once could not. But don't you agree it would be phenomenally irresponsible to go back in time before the invention of the telegraph and urge a small child to play with a dog that was visibly foaming at the mouth?
If and when it becomes possible to transplant ovaries and uteri from female donors into male recipients such that trans-identified males can actually get pregnant and bear children, that technological development will surely have dramatic ramifications for our society. But that day hasn't arrived yet, it seems profoundly unlikely to arrive in either of our lifetimes, and I can't rule out the possibility that it never will.
I think it makes sense to promote policies that will produce the best outcomes for our current tech level, not the hypothetical future tech level a few decades away. If you went back in time to the pre-telegraph era, urged a small child to play with a visibly rabid dog, and the child contracted rabies and died – I can't imagine the child's parents would be mollified by your assertion that a reliable treatment for rabies is just around the corner, even if that's true. By the same token, perhaps in the future medical technology will advance to the point that people born male can literally become female (and vice versa) – but they can't now, and it's foolish to act as if they can and design policies on that basis.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4hr ago
You can't always tell what gamete-producing organs someone had at birth.
No, I can't always tell. I have never denied the existence of androgynous people. But hard cases make bad law, and I maintain that >95% of the time one can accurately tell from a cursory glance what gamete-producing organs a given person was born with. It therefore follows that, 95% of the time, a person demanding that people respect their privacy and not make inferences about their gamete-producing organs is making an unreasonable and quixotic request.
And, obvious point, but the fact that Nicole Maines looks passably female in a closely framed still image with a full face of makeup and flattering lighting does not remotely imply that I wouldn't clock them in person.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4hr ago
Then why, when directly asked to define "sin", did you cite a work in which sin is explicitly defined as "treating people as things"? You could have just as easily said "sin is when we don't do what we ought to because it's inconvenient or too expensive".
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
5hr ago
My response hardly seems any less charitable than your contention that, without being ruinously expensive, his proposal could only come about by decriminalising most of the crimes currently on the books.
I agree with your contention: that's why I don't think his proposal is realistic.
I found a list of core exercises online. Last night I went to the gym and began working my way through them, looking for ones I particularly enjoyed. These included:
- Dragon flag
- Russian twist
- Medicine ball slam (tremendous fun, that)
- Kneeling landmine rotation
among some others that I didn't enjoy as much/seemed too easy.
Though the discomfort hasn't entirely subsided, my lower back felt a bit better today, although it might be coincidence. I think I'll need to ask one of the trainers in the gym to inspect my deadlift form and tell me what I'm doing wrong.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
22hr ago
I can live in a country that has laws that I consider reasonable (and it does seem that most western countries consider bottom surgery sufficient for most of the above - even the Reform Party justice minister spoke in favour of not automatically housing trans women in male wings)
If the UK is making housing trans-identified males in the female estate conditional on their having undergone bottom surgery, that's news to me.
So I do feel sad that in your worldview, I don’t deserve the full extent of protection from rape and violence some other people do, because I wasn’t born the right kind of human.
Yes, but as I pointed out, in your worldview, some people deserve greater protection from rape and violence than others, because they weren't born the right kind of human.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
You do deserve to be protected from rape, just as everyone does. But even though protecting trans-identified male inmates from rape and assault is a valid and noble goal, I think housing male inmates in the female estate is a bridge too far, and would be unlikely to pass a cost-benefit analysis. In the hypothetical scenario in which you were sent to prison for a non-violent offense, I would hope that you would be housed in a minimum security prison along with other non-violent offenders. I would also hope that the prison warden/governor would recognise that, owing to your appearance and anatomy, you are especially vulnerable to being violently victimised, and take proactive measures to prevent that outcome (such as placing you on protection if necessary).
I don't think it's really fair for you to equivocate between "if sent to prison, I don't think you should be housed in the female estate" with "you don't deserve to be protected from rape". I'm sure you don't think a slim, petite cis gay man (that is, a twink) who gets sent to prison ought to be housed in the female estate, but I doubt you'd appreciate it if I summarised that opinion as "twinks don't deserve to be protected from rape in prison".
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
'Trans-woman murdered' isn't the only bad outcome we are trying to avoid; there is also 'trans-woman beaten up by low-life with extremely retrograde Views on gender roles as a warning to anyone else assigned-male-at-birth who might be thinking about getting in touch with their feminine side'.
I'm curious if you have any statistics on how many times this has happened in British prisons, and hence if your proposed dedicated prison for trans-identified men is a solution in search of a problem.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
Thanks, I've replaced it with an archive link.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
I am curious how you arrived at the conclusion that sex-segregation is the best way to protect female inmates from harm amounts to "treating people as things". I legitimately do not see how the one follows from the other.
Your tic of defending your worldview in an indirect way by linking to other authors (and not even including the relevant passage in the body of your comment), many of whom were writing fiction and not discussing the object-level topic under discussion, is very telling. It makes me think you lack confidence in your own arguments to persuade people, and that your goal is not to persuade but to distract and frustrate.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
It certainly seems to be the case with the person you also, perhaps confusingly, called "Bob" in your other reply.
Noted, I've amended.
The fact that male people are so much stronger and more aggressive than female people, even after undergoing bottom surgery.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
ב, Do I need to tap the sign?
I don't know what this is supposed to mean.
I have even heard of men who were born with all the visible male parts, never considered that they were anything other than men, fathered children, and then went to hospital for some procedure and found out that they had been carrying around uteruses for seventy years!
Some concrete examples or citations would be appreciated. The sex-is-a-spectrum people routinely claim such edge cases exist and then are unable to dredge up even a Weekly World News article.
I didn't set the terms of the thought experiment. @Celestial-body-NOS did: take it up with him them because their sex is a private matter between them and the Almighty, and no one is entitled to know it without their explicit say-so!
I reiterate that I think my preferred proposal is vastly superior for any metric you care to mention:
- Segregate violent offenders from non-violent offenders, by putting the former in maximum security prisons and the latter in minimum security prisons. The really dangerous ones go to supermax prisons.
- Place prisoners who might be especially at risk of being violently victimised on protection, on a case-by-case basis. Examples of the kinds of prisoners who might be especially vulnerable include: unusually young prisoners, prisoners with physical disabilities, prisoners who have testified against other prisoners, gay prisoners, and trans-identified males who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and begun medically transitioning.
You might recognise this system as the system which most Western countries already use. Every proposed alternative (transferring trans-identified males to the female estate, or constructing a special facility just for trans-identified males regardless of whether they have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria or not) just seem obviously worse to me than the above: the former because it needlessly endangers female prisoners, the latter because it needlessly endangers non-violent offenders by speciously lumping them in with violent offenders on the basis of an unfalsifiable identity characteristic they purportedly share.
I will admit that, in many cases, placing a prisoner "on protection" entails keeping them in their cell for almost the entire day. On the one hand, this does generally accomplish the stated goal of preventing them from being assaulted or murdered by their fellow inmates; on the other hand, it's functionally equivalent to solitary confinement. What we'd ideally want is some kind of special facility or wing within a prison in which all protection prisoners could be sequestered, but still be able to move about and interact with each other with a comparable degree of freedom as they would expect in general population, but with a reasonable expectation that they would not be violently victimised. Of course, such a facility or wing would immediately become the place that every prisoner would want to serve the entirety of their sentence in, and we'd end up right back where we started. For this solution to be effective, there would have to be some gatekeeping and discretion on the part of the prison governor to distinguish the legitimately endangered from the malingerers. Simply admitting everyone who claims to identify as a woman (or gay, or suffer from a physical disability etc.) is not a workable solution. It is not just ripe for abuse: it is practically designed to be abused. It makes a mockery of the prison system.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
You know, I have a very hard time believing that a heterosexual male (that is, a member of the sex responsible for a good >90% of indecent exposure arrests and unsolicited photos of their genitals sent to people they barely know) has wholly innocent reasons for inviting a female person to inspect his genitals within an hour of meeting her, even if he has maimed said genitals beyond recognition. I think you would interpret Charlie's behaviour much less charitably if he did not purport to identify as a woman, and I don't think this is at all warranted. "I identify as a woman" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card to act like a creep and a sex pest.
to conclude that they're sneakily getting off all the time just from being perceived as female.
Yes, it would be wrong to conclude that they're doing it sneakily. Plenty of them make no secret of it.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
Skill issue.
Sincerely – what on earth are you talking about?
If some wants to know the PIN for your bank card, not out of an intention to use it for fraud, but because they think it relevant whether it is a prime/square/triangular number, does the fact that they are not technically a thief mean that they are justified in prying it out of you?
If the PIN for my bank card was tattooed on my forehead in 60pt characters and I didn't wear a beanie or a burqa, it would be meaningless to demand that people respect my privacy.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
Maybe try going to a physio before going to a doctor? Doctor will probably just tell you to go to a physio anyway.
but I think the MTFs themselves, if asked, would rather take that chance than the much higher probability of such rapes if they all had to go to men's prisons; don't you?
Not necessarily. As I argued the other day, supposing you have a trans-identified male who's been convicted of a non-violent offense and is housed in a minimum-security prison with other non-violent offenders. One morning, the warden announces that all trans-identifying inmates are to be transferred to a special facility just for them. This facility, per the terms of your and @Celestial-body-NOS's thought experiment, will not distinguish between the legitimately dysphoric and the opportunists, nor will it distinguish violent from non-violent offenders. Among others, it will include the aforementioned Sophie (née Daniel) Eastwood, already convicted for murdering a fellow inmate; and assorted inmates convicted for raping men. I imagine a legitimately dysphoric non-violent offender might react to the announcement that he is to be transferred to this facility with more than a little alarm.
By lumping all trans-identifying inmates together (regardless of how long they have identified as trans or what they were convicted for), I find it entirely credible that this proposed policy might result in an increase in the rate at which trans-identifying inmates are assaulted, raped or murdered. Especially the legitimately dysphoric inmates we are particularly committed to protecting.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
Does this mean that you would consider someone born with a penis and two viable-egg-producing ovaries to be female, and someone born with a vulva and two viable-sperm-producing testicules to be male? What about someone born with one testicule and one ovary, each producing viable gametes of its associated size?
Why is that trans activists' attempts at "gotchas" always reside solely in the realm of the hypothetical?
I disagree with your claim that either of them is something which you are entitled to be told by someone who would prefer to keep to themself.
I continue to insist that asserting that one's sex ought to be kept "private" is a meaningless demand when, in 99% of cases, it can be reliably inferred at a glance. It makes about as much sense as demanding that one's height, eye colour or need to use a wheelchair be kept "private". It's a doubly meaningless demand in this debate given how many trans people will openly announce "I am a trans [woman]/[man]", and the terms "trans woman" and "trans man" are literally defined in terms which are derivative of sex: by disclosing that you are a trans woman, you have therefore disclosed that you are a person of the male sex (and vice versa for trans men). A "trans woman" is "a person of the male sex who identifies as a woman"; let's see what happens when we taboo our words:
Alice: I am a person of the male sex who identifies as a woman.
Bob: What sex are you?
Alice: That's none of your business.
Do you see how absurd this is, and how contrived it sounds post-tabooing?
One inmate per cell, all interactions between inmates supervised by guards sufficiently numerous to intervene in the event of violence of harassment having the potential thereof.
Oh, I see: you're doing that thing certain people do where, when asked what your preferred policy solution would be, you describe some impossible utopia that will never and can never exist – then when people point this out to you, you accuse them of being moral mutants.
As always, this is a tremendously useful contribution to the discussion and not a complete and utter waste of everyone's time. That's the hallmark of a truly ethical person: someone who spends all their time daydreaming about hypothetical solutions that will never come to pass, while rubbishing the pragmatic alternatives offered by the more grounded and down-to-earth.
Seriously, dude: this is about as productive a contribution to the discussion as announcing "when I'm in charge we won't need prisons, because everyone will get along with each other!"
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
we should afford MTF convicts special protection in prison because they are especially likely to be raped.
Well, that's the question isn't it – are they?
And as I've argued repeatedly over the last few days, how do you propose to distinguish between the legitimately dysphoric who've been cross-dressing for as long as they've been able to dress themselves (whom, naïvely, I would expect to have a particularly tough time in prison), and the opportunists who only "discovered" they were trans post-conviction? Because, to be frank, I don't think "Isla" Bryson would face an elevated risk of sexual assault in prison compared to the modal prisoner. (I do think he would be unusually likely to commit a sexual assault on another prisoner, whether male or female, but that's neither here nor there.)
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
Fine, no détente. If you continue to insist that my opposition to gender ideology is rooted in some kind of voyeuristic desire to know the genital configuration of everyone in my vicinity (despite how strenuously I've made it clear that I think it's tremendously inappropriate for trans-identified males to volunteer this information unprompted) – I will continue to insist that, if you really mean what you say, you are painfully naïve.
The solution for male people who want to be female people is talk therapy until they understand that they will never be female people no matter what they do. No other solution seems remotely as effective.
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