TokenTransGirl
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User ID: 3226
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
Alright, fair enough, too advanced.
Let's try a simple definition as a thought exercise: women have vaginas, men have penises, and non-binary for everyone else. What's the flaw with that?
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
I'm extremely confident that this is a "mistake" you make all the time when you're out and about.
I'd consider it pretty weird to spend any amount of time thinking about whether a stranger has a uterus or not. I've gone this entire conversation without once wondering whether you have a uterus or not. Whether or not you have a uterus is entirely irrelevant to my life.
Whether I have a uterus has zero impact on your life, too - so why are you spending so much time thinking about it?
And, given how often I meet people who look female and don't, in fact, have a uterus, I maintain some basic epistemological grace and acknowledge the uncertainty - especially since in my social circle, it's definitely less than 99%.
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
Alright, so I guess: what does it matter? People treat me like a woman, and I'm happy with that. There's clearly a category of "people who pass as female" and I'm in it. The vast majority of society finds it easiest to just call that category "women". It turns out that language is flexible and words have multiple definitions.
Do you go around insisting that people who dye their hair don't "really" have green hair, they're just disguising themselves? Would you find it easier to locate someone, knowing they currently have green hair, or knowing that they were born blonde?
Note that I've not made any claims about my anatomy. All I've said is that I get grouped in as a woman, and if you want to pick me out of a crowd you'd be wasting a lot of time looking through all the male-presenting people.
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
If someone loses their legs, you don't call them bipedal, though. So why are you calling someone who loses their gametes a "woman"?
Does it really make sense to say "well, but you USED to be able to walk, so I'm still going to call you able-bodied"?
For basically everything else, we care about what a person's current condition is: we don't draw a huge distinction between people who were born needing a wheelchair -vs- people who were in an accident. Why does reality "cleave at the joints" differently for gametes vs legs?
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
not many people just independently "discover" us
I've hung around the Slate Star Codex space for a while, if it helps. I lurked in /r/TheMotte for a while, but that's been dead for a while.
and announcing yourself with a username guaranteed to set off a lot of folks here is a little suspicious
I figured if I was going to poke the bear, I might as well be open about my identity; I've got skin in the game.
I hope you are prepared for that and have a thick skin
It is indeed a thick skin. I'll admit I'm mostly disappointed with the response; I was hoping for more light and less heat. Your response is a lot more interesting than most :)
most people don't really believe you're a woman
I think a lot of people are more open-minded than you think. I think the vast majority of people I interact with either genuinely think I'm a cis-woman, or don't care. I've encountered people that DO care, and they tend to react much differently. Obviously there are many areas of the world where that would be different, but I've done a fair bit of business travel and I feel confident in saying most people just don't notice.
and you shouldn't expect them to feel obligated to update their mental model on demand, nor should you try to sniff out signs of heresy
At the end of the day, if you're trying to treat me with respect, I think that's what really matters. When I first changed, it was clear some people struggled to update my pronouns even though they clearly respected me. I'd have been offended if anyone tried to sic HR on them.
Then came trans women who used to be mediocre middle aged male athletes suddenly joining a woman's sports league and crushing lifetime competitors.
Oh boy, that's a complex one...
First off, I don't think anyone is going to transition just to cheat at sports - you're making life long changes to your body, and also we have tons of known cheaters who chose much easier routes.
Second, the evidence I've personally seen (and I'm hardly an expert), suggests that when people do this, they're usually placing middle of the pack, which suggests that transition and hormones and all of that really does have a negative impact on performance.
Conditional on "this person has completed hormonal transition, and performs in the cis-female athletic range", I don't see a strong argument for excluding them from the league - they're going to get trounced in the male league, and aren't exactly setting records in the women's league, so... that seems like a fair competition?
Look at the other direction of transition: If someone is taking testosterone, and performs in the male athletic range, do you really want to keep them in the women's league just because they were born with a uterus?
But to bite the bullet, yeah, IF trans women DO have a clear advantage over cis women, then that defeats the whole point of gendered sports leagues. I just don't think this is nearly as decisively established
(and it does follow that any law made before we've actually established the science is probably premature, although I also can't think of a better way to collect data - run this experiment for a few years and if trans people keep ending up at the top, we made a mistake. If trans people generally end up in the middle, well, what's the problem?)
Trans women who really want to show off their erections in women's locker rooms
I think the USA has a really weird culture around nudity. There's plenty of cultures where seeing grandma and grandpa naked at the hot springs is just a normal part of life, and everyone grows up well adjusted. Seeing a penis in the locker room shouldn't be so traumatic. But then US culture acts like any nudity OUTSIDE of a locker room is horrific, which just doesn't make sense to me. If you think seeing genitalia is so bad, we should clearly have single-person gender-neutral locker rooms.
You've got a row of men showing off their penises at the urinal in the men's room. If seeing a penis is so horrible, why are you so comfortable making people endure that?
And, I mean, do you really feel more comfortable in a bathroom full of bearded trans guys? What if they've had surgery and have penises?
But the whole problem is because the US can't decide whether nudity is a normal part of life or some horrifying thing. If nudity is a normal part of life, then seeing a penis in the locker room is nothing. If nudity is some horrifying thing, then get rid of communal locker rooms and urinals and all these other disgusting locations where guys feel free to show off their dick.
I simply don't get the idea that women are UNIQUELY scandalized by penises, but guys should all be totally okay with it.
(and as a trans person, the answer is "I change in a bathroom stall because no matter which choice I make, people seeing me naked are going to get upset", which sucks)
dress like minimal-effort clowns while representing the US government.
Aww c'mon, that's heat, not light.
Trans women who want you to be fired if you won't put pronouns in your email signature.
Amusingly, pronouns in email is actually something a lot of trans people hate too. Making it mandatory means everyone in the closet has to actively submit the wrong pronouns, and it's usually done in a way that just calls attention to the most androgynous / badly-passing trans people in the group.
compete against women in the Olympics
So, going the other way: I think one could reasonably say a lot of anti-trans voices are also acting in bad faith. For instance, JK Rowling recently called out an Argentinian boxer as "trans" with... basically zero evidence? And on the "not actually trans" evidence, we've got the fact that she's from a country where transition is illegal, we've got childhood pictures of her, we've got the IOC tests that every other athlete does, and we've got said boxer suing JK Rowling (not exactly a clever move if it really is all a fraud!)
Do you have ANY examples of an openly trans person winning the gold metal in a Women's Olympic event?
should be able to show off their female penis in front of teenage girls
I'm still not sure why penises are uniquely traumatizing to teenage girls, but have no harmful effect on teenage boys. I'm still not sure why only penises have this uniquely traumatizing effect, but men can handle vaginas just fine. Again, there's plenty of cultures where nudity is common, and everyone seems to do just fine seeing a penis there. But if you think seeing a penis is this horrifying traumatizing event, why do you keep inflicting it on little boys?
And I would treat you as a very dangerous person to interact with, socially and professionally, on the assumption that a slip on my part would result in you trying to bring down sanctions upon me.
I think this really depends on where we are in the world. There's plenty of countries that make my existence illegal, so I think overall trans people are in a lot more danger than you are. If you meet me on my home turf, I've probably got some ability to make things awkward for you, but I really doubt I could get you fired or cancelled or anything.
need to be housed in women's prisons
"Rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization in the previous 6 months were highest for female inmates (212 per 1,000), more than four times higher than male rates (43 per 1,000)." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2438589/
If someone wants to be put in with the more dangerous group, I'm not really clear what the controversy is?
There's clearly a huge sexual violence problem to solve here. I'd think solving that would take priority, and then in a few decades we can discuss the 1% of the population that's trans?
Similar to bathrooms, either nudity is a normal and OK part of life and you need to stop being scared of penises, or else you need to stop forcing people to get naked together.
Do you think people should be required to actually think of you as a woman (to the degree that you can police someone's thoughts)?
I'm pretty firmly anti-thought-police and anti-censorship.
That said, I'd again assert that most people that meet me don't give it that much thought, and really do just think of me as a woman.
Thanks, it was nice getting a juicy reply that was more than just "no, you're not a woman" :)
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
So when you meet someone new, do you treat them as some sort of third gender until you've had a chance to confirm whether they have a uterus or not? Like, in practice, how does this function socially? How many people's uteruses have you actually confirmed?
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
people mistakenly assume that you have a set of reproductive organs which you do not in fact possess
That seems like a pretty dumb mistake to make, though? You know trans people exist. There's plenty of people in the "female gender, but no uterus" category. So why would you keep assuming that just because I have a female presentation, I have a uterus?
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
You're not a ma'am.
It's simply a matter of fact that when people greet me, they use "ma'am" instead of "sir". I'm not sure what's unclear about that sentence.
please define ma'am.
"ma'am" is the word other people use to greet me. I'm surprised you haven't run into it before? You'd have to ask them what they mean by it, I'm not the one using it.
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
So, wait, you think people who lost their legs should still be considered bipedal? Like, you think they don't need a wheelchair, and we should laugh at them when they insist they've "transitioned" to needing a wheelchair?
How in the world is this cleaving reality in a coherent way, but "people who get treated as women" and "people who experience misogynistic sexism" are somehow radical ideas?
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
You really think people are going around a trans-positive space, full of trans people, and thinking "gosh, that person looks like a woman, they must have a uterus"?
You're only "making a mistake" if you are, for some reason, thinking about whether I have a uterus in the first place. Plenty of people avoid this mistake :)
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
"gender roles", which can be defined as the manners and expectations society has for the male/female biological sex.
Then why do people keep expecting me to act like a woman? I didn't grow a uterus, but everyone is calling me "ma'am" and they get upset if I go topless and show off my breasts.
It seems pretty clear to me that "gender roles" aren't based on my biological sex at all, but my gender presentation.
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
but what if someone says, "err, but you're not a ma'am"?
That would seem like a weird thing to say, since "ma'am" is how most people refer to me, and it'll confuse other people if you refer to me as "sir".
an arbitrary desire to be called a certain word.
I mean, isn't that how names work? What's wrong with wanting to be called a certain word? I'm not forcing anyone to use it
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
People routinely get surgeries to try and look younger. There's a rather huge industry around catering to people's "age identity" and trying to "pass" as a younger age than they really are. It is in fact considered rude to go around pointing out that people are older than they look.
No one is going around calling women in heels "deceptive" even if it does make them seem taller.
Given all that, why should I feel bad about taking advantage of your classification errors to get myself called "ma'am"?
like sending her out an automated email urging her to get checked for breast cancer
I really don't get how this analogy is anti-trans. Presumably if someone has transitioned and grown breasts, we should acknowledge that reality and send them emails suggesting they get checked for breast cancer now that they're at risk? And equally, I don't think a trans guy who has had a double mastectomy is at huge risk, here.
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
I get called "ma'am" and don't see any particular difference in how I'm treated. Plenty of trans people "pass"; it's not exactly an obscure topic. It shouldn't be surprising that trans people who fail at passing complain more - the ones who succeed are already getting treated how they want, so there's no really much to complain about personally.
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
If you're measuring by gametes, then post-menopausal women are a third gender, and the same gender as a eunuch. Does that really seem like it cleaves reality at the joints?
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
Why does it make sense to include menopausal women, people with birth defects, etc. in that category? "People who menstruate and can be impgregnated" seems like a perfectly natural category, but you're adding all sorts of exceptions in. If we're going to add a whole bunch of exceptions, why not also "Trans Women who have undergone SRS"? If we can create an artificial uterus in the future, does that make transition valid?
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
If you remove the uterus, does someone stop being a woman? Are you really excluding anyone who, via birth defect, didn't develop a uterus? If we figure out how to grow artificial organs, does that mean trans people become acceptable?
TokenTransGirl
20d ago
No it does not. The ma'am cluster
You're really claiming that not a single trans woman has ever been referred to as "ma'am"? 😂 That's a pretty amazing claim, so I'm assuming you have some pretty amazing evidence for it?
But, you know, people have called me personally "ma'am", totally unprompted! They do it all the time, in fact. If I try to explain that I'm a guy, they get confused. So... I mean, I know for a fact you're wrong. I'm pretty sure you can find other trans people with similar experiences.
TokenTransGirl
21d ago
Exactly :)
TokenTransGirl
21d ago
So are you saying all subjective categories are self-referential? "Republicans are people who vote for other Republicans" and such?
To me, I'm looking out at the world and seeing "Objectively, society classifies people into two clusters, which it calls male and female."
For historical reasons, these clusters tend to correlate with biological sex, but are clearly independent of it - even cis people get misgendered. I think we can both agree that gender does exist as something independent of sex? In the classic case, gender seems to be something like "best guess as to your genitalia", but people can still guess wrong. In trans-positive spaces it's more like "my best guess which pronouns would make you comfortable", which removes the legacy connection to genitalia entirely
TokenTransGirl
21d ago
words don't really mean anything.
We can obviously agree, empirically, that there are two major clusters in how people get treated, male and female. "Ma'am" refers to one of those two clusters. The "ma'am" cluster includes both people with penises, and people with vaginas. This all seems like a basic objective observation of reality to me.
Given that, I don't get how this is any more circular than any other subjective category, like "nerd" or "tall" or "centrist"?
TokenTransGirl
21d ago
Sure, but what does ‘female’ and ‘male’ mean?
They're clusters that were originally based around sex, yes, but plenty of cultures use the categories without referring back to sex these days. It's like how "2024 AD" means "two thousand and twenty four years after Jesus died"; you're making a fairly simple error if you think our calendar system relies on the existence of an actual biological Jesus.
The actual definition of a trans woman
I mean, every word has multiple definitions, especially a controversial phrase like that. But also: that wasn't the question that was being asked.
TokenTransGirl
21d ago
(Hello! I'm new here and this is my first post, so apologies if I'm messing up any social norms here. Please feel free to call me out! :))
That seems like a pretty easy challenge. Here's my definitions:
External Gender: When people greet me, they say "ma'am" instead of "sir". There's a wealth of subtler behaviors, but the basic idea here is that people perceived as "female" get treated differently than people perceived as "male".
Internal Gender: I prefer being called "ma'am", and am happier when my external gender is "female". In a lot of magical stories, a character has their sex transformed by some magic. "Internal Gender" is when a character wants to transform back, which is fairly common. "Internal Gender" is the idea that if you body-swapped with your mom, you'd still want to be called "him" despite the uterus.
Sex: the biological reality. A messy mix of chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy.
On trans athletes: honestly, I think we largely agree here. I think a few high profile cases don't provide as much evidence about the average result, but I'm certainly open to the idea that it's unfair.
I'm not sure what about this reply made you think I would want to get you fired/cancelled. Could you elaborate? I already said I was against siccing HR on people who used the wrong pronouns for me at work, so that seems like a pretty big disconnect
Presumably we should treat that person like a criminal? Sure, it's a hard problem, but so are the bad actors who want to show their penis to little boys. We still let gay people use the bathroom, though.
Oh, I found that super weird when I was growing up. Quite a few guys discovered I was not comfortable with that, and would go out of their way to make me uncomfortable. But no one seems to want to do anything about that. So... again, why is it okay to expect little boys to handle this, but grown women can't?
It really depends - those big trough-style urinals at stadiums don't leave much to the imagination. Certainly, I've seen penises while using the bathroom numerous times, while I have seen a stranger's vulva exactly zero times. And your whole concern was exactly the sort of guy who is "waving it around."
... okay? What's your point? People feel uncomfortable when I use the men's room, for exactly that reason. If my trans-masc friends show up in the women's room, it makes people SUPER uncomfortable. If it makes you uncomfortable, why do you want more of it?
I mean, presumably we have methods for handling violent rapists in prison? I'm sure there's at least one lesbian violent rapist out there.
The prison thing has a lot to unpack. If you can show some strong evidence that trans women are reasonably safe in male prison AND are a threat to cis women in female prison, I'll have to seriously reconsider my world view. So far I've not seen much evidence of either.
See, the goalposts for everyone else is "uterus". If we change the standard to "vaginoplasty" I definitely feel better. The idea of throwing someone into male prison, despite them having a vagina and breasts, just seems insane on the surface.
If you're willing to bite the bullet and say "anyone with a vagina is female"... I mean, I could still quibble and debate, but I'd honestly consider you more of an ally than an enemy in today's political climate.
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