Folamh3
User ID: 1175
And besides, the object level question in this case is "should congresswoman Sarah McBride be allowed to use the women's restroom?", and I think it is reasonable to answer, "She should have the same right that an XY androgen-insensitve cis woman should have to use the restroom, based on the government's tracking of her as a woman." Certainly, I don't think anyone's fears that Sarah McBride would sexually assault someone in the bathroom are super justified.
That's not how rules or heuristics work. If a person is volunteering at an event and there's a possibility that they may have to supervise children, the person is generally required to undergo police vetting to ensure that they can be trusted to supervise children. It's irrelevant if the person truthfull says "I shouldn't need to go through the police vetting, I'm not a child molester" - an actual child molester would say the same thing. That's what the police vetting is for: to determine who is a bad actor and who isn't.
Likewise if a woman is walking home alone at night and notices a lone male person walking some distance behind her, and begins to form a suspicion that said person may be following her. I doubt very much that she would be consoled if said male person yelled out "don't worry, I'm not a rapist!" And even if the male person yelled out "don't worry, I'm a trans woman!", I don't think she should be consoled by this either - trans women commit violent crimes at the same rates as cis men, so this male person revealing how he "identifies" has provided the woman with zero additional actionable information.
And you might scoff "maybe some trans people are creepy perverts, but surely a high-ranking politician would know better". Think again.
Folamh3
2hr ago
I'm also not convinced that the fig leaf of "(bio)sex seggregating" bathrooms makes much of a difference here. A quick Google search was able to show there are some cases of cis men sexually assaulting women in bathrooms without the need of cross dressing.
To quote myself:
While Freddie is correct that, under a policy of sex-segregated bathrooms, there is nothing stopping a male rapist from simply walking into a women’s bathroom, a trans-inclusive bathroom policy makes it dramatically easier for such people to get away with committing an opportunistic rape, as bystanders will be less likely to intervene if they see a male person entering a women’s bathroom for fear of being accused of being transphobic. The reasoning is similar to regulations in which adults are not permitted to enter public playgrounds unless they are the parent or guardian of a child: obviously a child molester can simply ignore the regulation, but the regulation is designed to make bad actors more obvious to bystanders.
If a woman is in a public bathroom and an obviously male person walks in, there is no reliable way for her to tell if that person is a harmless trans woman just minding her own business, or a rapist exploiting well-meaning inclusive policies for malicious ends. The fact that the person has a penis is not dispositive in one direction or the other (as Freddie acknowledges not all trans people may wish to medically transition); nor that they are bearded and wearing jeans and a T-shirt (because “trans women don’t owe you femininity", and a trans woman presenting as male does not in any way undermine her trans identity).
You'll never get sexual assaults in bathrooms down to zero, but as argued in my other comment, there's some evidence suggesting that they're more common in gender-neutral bathrooms compared to sex-segregated bathrooms. A common understanding that male people are not supposed to be in a particular space (and hence that any male person who violates that rule is up to no good) seems to go a long way towards preventing sexual misconduct.
I also just don't take the bathroom argument too seriously. The best case I've seen people come up with is that one high school bathroom assault, and that involved a couple who had met up for consensual trysts several times in the same bathroom.
When I wrote my post criticising Freddie deBoer's stance on trans issues, I admitted that, of all the demands made by trans activists, "using our preferred bathrooms" is the one I find least objectionable, even though I understand why it makes some women uncomfortable.
Many feminists appeared in the comments of the Substack article providing sources which suggested that my agnosticism on this issue was misplaced, and in fact women are at far greater risk of sexual assault in gender-neutral bathrooms than in single-sex bathrooms:
Unisex changing rooms put women at danger of sexual assault, data reveals:
The vast majority of reported sexual assaults at public swimming pools in the UK take place in unisex changing rooms, new statistics reveal.
The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the Sunday Times, suggests that unisex changing rooms are more dangerous for women and girls than single-sex facilities.
Just under 90 per cent of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities.
What’s more, two thirds of all sexual attacks at leisure centres and public swimming pools take place in unisex changing rooms.
Of 134 complaints over 2017-2018, 120 reported incidents took place in gender-neutral changing rooms and just 14 were in single-sex changing areas.
Unisex facilities account for less than half the changing areas across the UK, but the number is on the rise - doing away with separate male and female changing rooms and toilets is seen as a way to cut staff costs and better cater for transgender people.
As I also pointed out in the post, it's no good saying "we're not advocating for gender-neutral bathrooms - we just want trans women to be able to use the ladies' room". There is zero practical difference between the two. After all, trans women don't owe you femininity, so if you're a female person in the ladies' room and an obviously male person walks in, you're not allowed to kick up a fuss about it even if said "trans woman" is making zero effort to pass and has fully intact male genitalia.
"How dare you say that trans women are rapists?!" trans activists will howl. No - a policy of gender-neutral or trans-inclusive bathrooms poses obvious risks for female safeguarding even if literally every trans woman in the world is just a delicate little flower who wants to use the stalls in peace. (At least some demonstrably are not.) If you're taking the stance that
- women are permitted to use the ladies' room
- every person who says they're a woman is a woman; no criteria must be met (medical transition, dressing in a conventionally feminine manner) to meet that standard.
an inevitable byproduct of that is that perverts will exploit trans-inclusive policies for their own nefarious ends. It is literally unavoidable under this rubric.
Hell, trans activists even acknowledge that "genderfluidity" is a thing, and one can "identify as" a man at some times and identify as a woman at other times, perhaps hopping back and forth multiple times a day. What's to stop a pre-transition male person from "identifying as" a woman just long enough to go into the ladies' and sexually assault someone, then walk out and immediately resume "identifying as" a man? (I say "what's to stop" like it's some far-out hypothetical; obviously I'm sure this has already happened somewhere.)
Folamh3
4hr ago
Have you had anything published? Or do you just mean sharing things among your friend group?
Folamh3
1d ago
How many people who were complaining about the "kids in cages" at the southern border are ardent Zionists and don't see any inconsistency in their beliefs about the morality of border enforcement?
I don't see any inconsistency between "when policing a border, a certain level of stringency and invasiveness is required when the people trying to enter the country include underage terrorists who have been groomed into committing suicide bombings; but that level of stringency and invasiveness is inappropriate when policing a border to prevent economic migrants from gaining illegitimate access to a country".
Folamh3
1d ago
Day 19 of NaNoWriMo. I crossed the 30k mark last night. This has been a very bipolar experience, I find myself wildly vacillating between "this book fuckin slaps" and long dark nights of the soul. I swear I'm hitting every point on this graph several times a week. I'm on an upswing now: between the amount I wrote on the train this morning and the amount I wrote on my lunch break, I've completed nearly half of my daily quota today already. Can't wait to get home and finish today's quota.
Funnily enough, I'm actually feeling pretty good about the style of the book, on a sentence-to-sentence, paragraph-to-paragraph level. It's only the story, pacing etc. I'm unsure about. But I feel emotionally invested enough in my characters that I'm legitimately feeling guilty about the fate that's soon to befall one of them, which must be a promising sign. No turning back now, just a week and a half left. The only thing I'm disappointed about is that I was looking forward to having a first draft by November 30th, but realistically at 50k words I'll probably only have between 60-66% of a first draft. Planning to take December 1st off, then resume writing on the 2nd, maintaining the pace of 1,667 words/day until I have a complete draft. Hopefully that means I'll be done a week before Christmas.
Folamh3
2d ago
I wonder what your therapist would have made of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Doublethink promotes wellness?
Folamh3
2d ago
Weirdly enough, in the parody series Barry Trotter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gerber_(parodist)), Barry and Ermine get married and have a son who's a Squib. Because their son has grown up around magical people, he experiences a "grass-is-greener" effect in which Muggle culture seems impossibly exciting and exotic to him. His childhood ambition is to become an actuary in an insurance firm.
Folamh3
2d ago
Finished Final Cut last night, loved it. Started My Brilliant Friend on the train this morning, having heard from everyone and their mother that it's fantastic. Only got about fifteen pages into it, don't know where it's going yet.
Folamh3
2d ago
All I can say is that it's a numbers game: throw enough shit at the wall and eventually some of it will stick. Most of what I've written in my life I can no longer bear to look at, but there's the odd story here and there that I'm still proud of.
I've only told a couple of people about the book so far and am deliberately not going into a huge amount of detail. The basic premise is that it's set in eastern Europe. There's a woman working for a pharma/medtech company who's working on an invention which has the potential to completely revolutionise diagnosing fertility disorders, but she's concerned that the invention will be stolen from her and used for purposes she doesn't intend.
Folamh3
3d ago
People hurt themselves with cars, knives, and guns all the time but we allow people to buy those in part because cars, knives, and guns are useful.
Virtually all jurisdictions require a license to operate a car. Many jurisdictions either require a license to own a firearm, or forbid it entirely. Many jurisdictions place strict limitations on who may purchase knives (e.g. minors).
Race: The stereotype that African Americans are less educated is not true.
It bothers me that I have no problem imagining a woke person asserting that this stereotype is false, and then in the next breath asserting that lower rates of educational attainment among African-Americans is one of many metrics demonstrating the extent to which the US is still a systemically racist country. It should not be possible for a mentally sane person to simultaneously believe "owing to systemic racism, African-Americans have lower rates of educational attainment than white Americans" and "the notion that African-Americans are less educated than white Americans is a false and harmful stereotype".
Like, if you believe that African-Americans are less likely to get an education because of racist policies or teachers or how assessment procedures, that directly implies that African-Americans are less educated than white Americans! The latter "stereotype" cannot be false without completely invalidating the former assertion.
Related: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/if-you-believe-in-structural-racism-16c
Folamh3
3d ago
That all people with geeky interests (video games, anime, D&D etc.) are unusually intelligent.
Nerds are intelligent, and a lot of nerds have geeky interests, but there are plenty of people with geeky interests who are utterly lacking in intelligence or even common sense.
Folamh3
3d ago
That people who play sports, exercise a lot etc. are just "dumb muscle"
All things being equal, the guy going to the gym four times a week is probably smarter, more accomplished and more disciplined than the nerdy Reddit moderator who blows all his disposable income on Funko Pops.
Folamh3
4d ago
Larry David directed a movie with a similar premise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sour_Grapes_(1998_film)
I haven't seen it but everyone says it's terrible, including David.
Folamh3
5d ago
none of that is mutilation, just regular surgery.
There is nothing "regular" about surgery to remove healthy organs and tissue with the ultimate goal of ameliorating psychic distress. You're welcome to defend this practice, but don't pretend it isn't a major departure from the common practice of surgery as generally understood.
Folamh3
5d ago
Do you object to roads, because they put criminals on the path towards bank robbery?
I'm sorry, but analogies are really not your strong suit.
That public roads can be used by bank robbers to escape from robberies is an unintended, unfortunate but unavoidable side effect of the existence of said roads.
Small children receiving "gender-affirming" surgeries is not an unintended consequence of Levine calling for the age limits on minor transition to be removed. That outcome is the sole purpose of Levine having done so. It is exactly the outcome Levine is trying to bring about.
Folamh3
5d ago
Relatedly, I couldn't find a single Onion article against the Left
I sometimes joke that there's one based guy writing for the Onion and they let him off the leash a few times a year.
https://theonion.com/negative-review-of-a-wrinkle-in-time-peppered-with-cr-1823656342/
Folamh3
5d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_government_response_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic is pretty much the only response that makes sense in a country with land borders.
Folamh3
5d ago
I bet the word mutilation isn't in there even once.
What on earth is this meant to prove? "In their official communications, the IDF have never referred to their military operation in Gaza as a 'genocide': ergo, it can't possibly be one". Would you expect anyone in the world to be persuaded by such a facile argument?
Folamh3
6d ago
Really? "Fail to support" transition, or "try to block their kid from accessing the relevant medical treatments"?
In the state of California there was a bill governing custody disputes between divorced parents, which would make a parent's decision to affirm the child's stated gender identity (or not) a factor to take into consideration in said disputes. Essentially, if a married couple gets divorced and their child has announced that they are trans, if one parent affirms the child's stated gender identity uncritically and the other parent is more sceptical and prefers a watchful waiting approach - all things being equal, the judge is meant to rule in favour of the former parent.
What do they mean by "affirmation"? "Affirmation includes a range of actions and will be unique for each child, but in every case must promote the child’s overall health and well-being." - so this isn't as simple as providing a child with medical treatment which has been recommended by a qualified professional.
This bill was voted on and passed in both houses, before being vetoed by Governor Newsom. Elected representatives in the state of California believe that if a child announces that they are trans, the correct position for the child's parents to adopt is to uncritically affirm the child's gender identity without question.
That's just kicking the can down the road. No bathroom has a bouncer stationed outside checking people's IDs to ensure that their legal sex matches that of the bathroom they wish to use (and if such a policy was proposed, you and I both know that trans activists would be the most fervently opposed to it). Once you've established that at least some obviously male people are permitted to use the ladies' room (because they've legally transitioned), inevitably perverts will take advantage of this by trying to pass themselves off as people who've legally transitioned when they haven't.
Addendum to my "genderfluidity" hypothetical: an obviously male person walks into the ladies' room, gets some funny looks, and falsely asserts "don't worry, I've got a gender recognition certificate". The women in the bathroom aren't entirely satisfied by this, but what can they do? It's not like they can demand that he produce his gender recognition certificate on the spot. Shortly afterwards, the obviously male person sexually assaults someone/spies on someone without their knowledge etc., then walks out of the ladies' room and goes about his day.
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