nope, the differences in brain development associated with gender are present even when it's misaligned with assigned sex and with genetic profile. believing that one can guess someone else's gender by just looking at the person is about as silly as believing that one can guess someone's sexual orientation by just looking at the person. or guessing the person's underwear color, for that matter. some of these are somewhat correlated, but nature is more diverse than our narrow minds can guess. we need better measurement instruments and willingness to use them to be able to perceive more detailed realities.
IIRC I had the link handy last time we talked about this. or maybe I'd only just read it. it didn't seem to make a difference to you then, so it's not like it would now
as for the ability to infer a person's assigned sex by the looks, I challenge you to a game
do you want to play it?
I'll show you five pictures of brazilian models, all female
you're to tell me your guess as to their assigned sex and genotype, along with your rationale, without looking them up
all of these are actual people; nearly all of them were multiple times on TV. you said it was easy, so I figured pictures wouldn't make it mission: impossible and cause you to chicken out. I'm afraid I can't arrange face-to-face meetings, there are famous people, not people I've met personally, or that I could get ahold of.
I'm honest enough to admit I'd probably have got some of them wrong. I don't delude myself with a belief that it's easy for me, not that I care much about that. but maybe I just suck at it, and you, caring so much about it, have learned about features that I'm not even aware of. here's your chance to show off, and reaffirm your belief. or not. are you having doubts already? 🙂
@lxo > IIRC I had the link handy last time we talked about this. or maybe I'd only just read it. it didn't seem to make a difference to you then, so it's not like it would now
That's pretty convenient
> I'll show you five pictures of brazilian models, all female
> you're to tell me your guess as to their assigned sex and genotype, along with your rationale, without looking them up
Are you telling me these are not edge cases, but rather people you are likely to meet in daily lives in Brazil?
Are you telling me that looking at a picture (possibly with filters) is equivalent to looking at the person in proximity in real life?
you seem to take that as a pastime, but it's dead serious
both cis and trans women are suffering physical violence because people misguidedly believe to be able to tell cis from trans by looks, and feel entitled to hurt women they identify or misidentify as trans in women's restrooms. that's not acceptable, and it follows from two layers of ignorance and intolerance.
what I find most interesting in these overlaps you highlighted, and the dispersal, is that they remove any credibility from the notion that gender is a binary thing. I find it beautiful that there are probably plenty of women whose brains are more masculine than mine and that there probably many men whose brains are more feminine than mine. it makes it absurd to deny the subjective experience some people report of not feeling like their assigned sex. there's so much overlap that about half of the people (rough estimate) could be a decent fit in either gender, it's really up to them to decide where they feel better, and who's to say they aren't meant to feel that way when they're "in range", probably more so than others whose gender expression some bigoted people wouldn't even think of challenging.
From what I can tell, this is not a study that's been submitted to peer review, and from a little web search I wasn't able to find any more details than on the linked page. For example, did they publish raw data, their exact methods, etc.?
Without more details, I feel compelled to disregard publications like this, because I think there's too much confirmation bias in the field.
As an example, the following linked study, which found the brains of transwomen to be broadly in the male range according to a machine learning model which they developed, have misleadingly titled their study:
> Brain Sex in Transgender Women Is Shifted towards Gender Identity
They made this claim (in the title no less) simply because the average value for transwomen was ever so slightly shifted towards the female average on the scale of their model. But the values were still in total overlap with the male range! You can see a plot of the actual data in the attached screenshot, or by following the link.
The title is extremely misleading, and was quickly picked up by the media to claim once again that "transwomen are found to have female brains."
To my knowledge, various academics have been scrambling to identify a "female brain" and a "male brain" for decades now, many of them hoping to then find a "female brain" in transwomen and vice versa. But nothing convincing ever comes out of it.
I expect that, in a few decades, this trend of trying to find gendered brains will be looked back at in a similar light as phrenology, or other pseudo-scientific pursuits that academics fell for in the past. Another analogy I would use is Intelligent Design aka Creationism, which some people pursue as a pseudo-science for purely ideological reasons. In this case, the ideology in question would be the Church of Gender Identity, so to speak, because a lot of people are hyper-fixated on the idea that transwomen are "really" women and transmen are "really" men. Thankfully, proving this is not actually necessary to convince people to treat trans individuals with the same dignity as any other human being.
I guess you just couldn't read the reports in which cis women got physically assaulted for being misidentified as trans by self-entitled and violent bigots? I posted those, in Portuguese, because I know such violence has been an ongoing problem in Brazil, but I'd be surprised if it weren't so elsewhere.
It's incorrect to say that women, and men who identify as women, suffer physical violence because of people's belief that they can tell female from male (which is generally true) and ask males to not use women's spaces. To the contrary, this sentiment generally helps to protect women from predatory men, like in the following example:
If a male person makes women feel uneasy in a female-only space, and is asked to leave, it logically follows that the women were able to correctly identify him as male. Had the women not been able to tell that he's male, then they wouldn't have noticed him anyway, and nothing would have happened.
The claim that actual women are being erroneously identified as male and kicked out of female-only spaces is a myth. It could happen, of course, under extremely unusual circumstances. But no such general problem exists.
The logical conclusion is that women are perfectly justified in asking anyone they can identify as male to leave female-only spaces. To claim that this leads to too much mis-identification is simply a myth invented to normalize the phenomenon of obviously male people entering female-only spaces because they disregard women's comfort.
@lxo@taylan@oddtail@light@quasi@Gnomeshatecheese What's a masculine brain? I know that both sexes have brains, but how would you define a masculine or feminine one? As for overlap; there are plenty of ways in which attributes of men and women overlap eg height, weight, strength, speed etc, but a physically strong woman isn't a man any more than a slow-running man is a woman; nor do they get to choose based on these outcomes or their feelings. People can feel whatever they like, but this has no bearing on reality.
It's possible that there are natural feminine or masculine leanings, in various personality traits, based on genetic predisposition.
But surely you don't think that feminine men are women, or that masculine women are men? Just like a short man isn't a woman, and a tall woman isn't a man. Height has a correlate with sex, but doesn't determine it.
Further, who gets to decide which men are sufficiently feminine to be "allowed" to identify as a woman? If a man says he feels feminine and identifies as a woman, and enters a female only space, and a large number of women using that space say "we feel threatened by him, because he's very large and loud, and even walks around naked with his penis out in the locker room" then do you side with the women, or do you side with him? I certainly side with the women.
Is there even any evidence that men with various feminine personality leanings, or who identify as women, are statistically less likely to be a threat to women? So far, both the few studies on this that exist, and a broad look at the news landscape, makes me think that men who identify as women are about equally likely to come out to be physically or sexually violent as other males. This isn't bigotry, it's basic risk assessment and it's the reason why female-only spaces exist in the first place.
The only logical approach is to say that women's spaces are for women only, and then the women are free to decide whether they make exceptions for some men which they collectively deem to be sufficiently non threatening.
The opposite stance, which you seem to favour (correct me if I'm wrong) is to bully women into accepting *any* man into their spaces, if he says that he identifies as a woman. I'm sorry to say I consider this misogynistic, because it privileges a man's feelings over that of women.
I was going by what taylan highlighted from the article. I probably wouldn't have come to such definitions myself, because I don't even reason about it in such binary terms. in neurodivergence we talk about spectrum, in which various distinct features may be present, each in a continuum of different intensities. that fits in with my personal notions of gender expressions as well, in that it's more aligned with the virtually infinite diversity in nature and, more specifically, in human experience. I don't feel this need to force-fit people into categories that aren't even well defined; accepting it as a spectrum of continua is not only less demanding and more relaxing to me, but more in line with my more general perception of macroscopic reality
I can't speak for others as to how they'd define "moral violence", but if I were to try to define it, I'd probably include harassment, humiliation, and verbal abuse
@lxo What does "moral violence" refer to? I saw it both in the English translation of one of the Portuguese articles you shared and one of the English articles Taylan shared.
I can't read Portuguese but maybe I'll use a translator later when I'm at my desktop PC.
What I know about Brazil is that the trans rights movement has been an utter catastrophe for women's rights. Women get physically threatened, have their spaces vandalized, and face potential imprisonment if they speak out and openly identify males as males.
Following are some links. Attached are some photos of men involved in such cases, who have threatened and sued women.
As such, I suspect that cases of women being misidentified as men, and asked to leave women's spaces, are most likely a recent phenomenon that's caused not by bigotry, but by the fear that Brazilian women are now constantly subjected to. If men were not routinely allowed into female only spaces, women would presumably be less on edge, and less likely to question the presence of a woman who looks a bit like she might be a man.
@lxo@taylan@light@quasi@Gnomeshatecheese Not everything in nature is a spectrum. Even things that are in a spectrum remain within parameters eg height in humans. To claim that because some things are a spectrum then everything must be a spectrum is logically absurd. What you call gender expression may be a spectrum (is it how much lipstick applied or what shade of lilac hair is dyed?) and may be of interest to some, but it has nothing to do with binary sex. There is a huge range of biological diversity in nature, plants and animals, but that doesn't mean that there are more than two sexes in humans. And it may be true that in some parts of the world there are specific cultural and social impositions applied to sex (the burqa springs to mind), but this is not universal. I remain a woman whether I wear eyeshadow or not and have never felt social pressure to perform femininity, so I don't understand this idea of being forced into a category. I'm a woman because I meet the criteria for the definition. It doesn't depend on my feeling or the judgement of others. .
part of the problem is the very existence of such exclusive spaces that force an artificial categorization. most people are not harassers, even among so-called men. I'd like to believe that most people would stand for the most vulnerable. I pose that their presence in spaces where the most vulnerable exist makes the most vulnerable safer, not at higher risk. whereas the artificial attempt to force a separation makes it so that attempts to bypass it are more likely to be carried out by abusers for ill intent.
I still recall a scene from Asimov's Robots of Dawn in which the earthling protagonist is surprised upon finding out that on Aurora (another planet long-before colonized by humans) restrooms were unisex. that stayed with me. years later, I was surprised myself in public restrooms in another country, that were separated, but a cleaning lady often got into men's restrooms to do her work. in Brazil, either a cleaning gentleman is hired to do that job, or the restroom is closed for the cleaning. so this is all up to culture, and it varies across different cultures, so there's little reason to take any such cultural artifacts for granted or for "that's how it has to be". a lot of our current problems follow from past mistakes.
you seem to be conflating spectra and continua. height is a continuum. a spectrum would involve various different qualities. think different frequencies of light appearing each in different intensities. (it doesn't help that the frequencies of light are themselves another continuum, which I believe contributes to this frequent conflation)
you're right that not everything in nature is a spectrum, but most macroscopic things are a continuum. digitizing features takes significant effort for no advantage, so it's rare. you might contend that gender is such a feature, or that sex is such a feature, but even there you'd be mistaken because nature finds a way, and so taking a binary for granted is an oversimplification. there are species not too different from ours that transition naturally when nature calls for it, and others in which sexual bodily features depend not on a chromosome but on e.g. temperature at a certain stage of fetal development. it's unlikely that these complex phenomena have evolved exclusively in those branches of the tree of line, so odds are that our own genetic programming carries traces of that, and they might even be expressed in ways that we haven't quite figured out.
how about you enjoy (or not) your subjective experience but allow others to enjoy (or not) their own, acknowledging that they may be different and that that's ok?
@lxo@taylan@light@quasi@Gnomeshatecheese I have no problem with people holding other opinions. And you are correct about the difference between a spectrum and a continuum, so thank you.
I can't really argue with a piece of propaganda that probably doesn't even realize the biases in the cited statistics, but I can talk to you about it.
it would be informative to contrast with statistics about sexual assault in other spaces in which nudity is present, also without a sexual connotation, and potential victims are not prevented from asking for help, such as nudist communities, and other human societies that don't make clothing mandatory, or that don't segregate naked people into hiding their bodies. it would also be interesting to contrast with statistics about sexual assaults in male-only spaces, where victims could be cis men, trans women, or trans men, depending on regulations.
I suppose you'd then conclude that what makes potential victims vulnerable in such spaces is the walls that enable aggressors to hide and make it more difficult for victims to ask for help. it's the mandated separation of the potential victims from others who could help protect them, separation by rules that won't stop someone who's out to break rules. it's the culture of body shaming, of misassigning sexual connotations to nudity, that drives people away from e.g. changing in public spaces where they could be actually safer, and forces them to enter and use the unsafe traps that attract aggressors and offers them safe hiding space. it's almost as if aggressors designed this social structure to benefit themselves, if you really think about it. safety arises from numbers, from transparency, from solidarity, not from shaming and segregation and walls.
also allow me to point out the category error in your statistics. while violence is often associated with individuals with higher levels of testosterone, a large number of such individuals don't really fit your description: at least some 10% are attracted to other men, some 20% are too young to be a threat, some aren't heavier or stronger, most are far more likely to defend a potential victim from an aggressor than to be an aggressor, and some 5% you'd mistake for women and force them to share the female-only spaces. you're basically bundling up the wrong category, segregating some threats and allies alike, while forcing some threats into the safe spaces and forcing some potential victims to share space with potential aggressors.
should trans women and small, weak and young men not be deserving of the safety from the risks of locker room violence due to the presence of strong, violent men just as much as cis women? even more so, because they're on average more vulnerable minorities?
As much as I love fantasizing about science fiction and a post-patriarchal utopia, this is not the reality we're living in. There is no country on the planet in which the problem of male violence against women and girls is a solved issue, such that it would be acceptable to abolish single-sex spaces.
The categorization is not artificial, and not arbitrary: Statistics routinely show that physical and especially sexual violence is predominantly committed by men. Most men are sexually attracted to women, as well as being heavier and stronger on average -- usually enough to make a big difference in case of a physical altercation. This is why female-only spaces can be a simple and effective measure to increase public safety. There are statistics to confirm this:
because it shows no interest in pursuing truth, only in pushing a point of view
I didn't dismiss it altogether, I said can't argue with. that's because (i) it doesn't come from a rational, scientific stance, but from a dogmatic one, so it's useless arguing with; and (ii) it's not present to be argued with
it's not that I dispute the statistics it brings. they might as well be accurate as far as I'm concerned. but they're forced to fit a narrative that the numbers do not support. it's pseudoscience, it's fallacious.
@lxo What made you dismiss the fair play for women post as propaganda? Because it has a different opinion or conclusion from yours? @taylan@light@Gnomeshatecheese
@KeepTakingTheSoma >I remain a woman whether I wear eyeshadow or not and have never felt social pressure to perform femininity, so I don't understand this idea of being forced into a category. Exactly. I am a man because I have male anatomy, whether or not I "perform masculinity". I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I have been considered something else, and funnily enough they have all come from "trans" people. Odd that. @taylan@quasi@lxo@Gnomeshatecheese
Really the primary issue right now is that it has literally been normalized for male people to expose themselves to women looks like the statistics about violence are just a distraction, then. even more of a dishonest propaganda tool than I could have imagined.
anyhow, why is that a problem? why shouldn't that be even more normalized?
or should people be encouraged to wear fig leaves when otherwise naked?
I hit my post size limit on the last one so I excluded that bit, especially since I think it's a bit of a distraction. (Whataboutism basically.) But I'll gladly address it:
Say we found out that, after ensuring the existence of women's locker rooms, assaults on women using locker rooms are cut by 90% relative to when only unisex locker rooms are available. (This is what the little data we have seems to suggest.)
Let's say that assaults on men using locker rooms, however, stays the same.
This would mean assaults on women are cut by 90%, and assaults on men unaffected. That's a starting point, and one could then tackle the issue of men assaulting each other, if this is a widespread issue. (I don't know about it being a widespread issue, but maybe it's just not on my radar.)
Could assaults on men *increase* due to sex segregation? It's possible to imagine, theoretically, because perhaps the occasional presence of a woman in the unisex space acts as a deterrent. (Less chance of assailant and victim being alone.) It's an interesting thought, but seems like a stretch to me. Absent any data to suggest that there is such an issue, it can't possibly justify abolishing sex segregated locker rooms.
IMO the best solution, in general, is two sex segregated regions/rooms, and then within each there should be cubicles for people who prefer not to be seen nude one way or another. There could also be a smaller set of individual cubicles in a more open unisex room or area, as a third choice.
This kind of arrangement would massively decrease issues no matter what choice society makes w.r.t. trans people's use of locker rooms: A transwoman could use one of the cubicles in the men's region, and be relatively safe, or they could use a cubicle in the women's region, becoming much less likely to cause distress to women there who don't want to be exposed to a male stranger's naked body.
Really the primary issue right now is that it has literally been normalized for male people to expose themselves to women, saying "I'm a transwoman so even if I have a penis I get to use this locker room." That's just not OK. (See YMCA issue linked earlier where exactly this happened. A few years ago I would have never believed that things could get this bad.)
@taylan You didn't address this point: >it would also be interesting to contrast with statistics about sexual assaults in male-only spaces, where victims could be cis men, trans women, or trans men, depending on regulations. @quasi@lxo@Gnomeshatecheese
I have to redirect your claim of "no interest in pursuing the truth, only in pursuing a point of view" right back at you, because I think your entire reasoning is based on abstract ideas that are unproven and misaligned with reality. Let me address the key points.
> it would be informative to contrast with statistics about sexual assault in other spaces in which nudity is present, also without a sexual connotation, and potential victims are not prevented from asking for help, such as nudist communities, and other human societies that don't make clothing mandatory, or that don't segregate naked people into hiding their bodies
Why? This is not the society we live in. Are you more interested in preventing harm and improving women's lives right here and now, or are you interested in chasing some theoretical utopian ideal, putting women under risk of physical and sexual assault in the pursuit of that ideal, which may or may not be reached one day? Do you intend to force nudist culture on women who feel uncomfortable with it? What do you intend to do if a woman says "I simply don't consent to male strangers seeing my naked body, period"?
> I suppose you'd then conclude that what makes potential victims vulnerable in such spaces is the walls that enable aggressors to hide and make it more difficult for victims to ask for help.
No, men also sexually harass women in broad daylight. There have even been cases where a woman cries for help while assaulted by multiple men, only for more men passing by to join in on the assault.
> it's the mandated separation of the potential victims from others who could help protect them
This sounds like you're asking for women to be chaperoned by "good men" to keep the "bad men" at bay. Women want to be able to go out and about independently. The availability of female-only locker rooms etc. is of great importance to enable this. What you're suggesting would set women's rights back by a century in actual effect, because it's based on naive ideals and not reality.
> rules that won't stop someone who's out to break rules
The rules work, as proven by the statistics. Predatory men are often opportunistic. They don't go out of the house thinking "today I will enter a women's locker room to assault women." They enter a unisex locker room, see a woman that makes them feel lustful, and then they act on base instincts because they're immoral.
By the way, this line of yours is such a common talking point ("men who want to assault women won't obey the rules anyway") that it feels like someone sat down with you and coached you on what to think and say about this topic. I urge you to apply some skepticism to these "pro-trans" talking points that completely disregard women's well being.
> it's the culture of body shaming, of misassigning sexual connotations to nudity, that drives people away from e.g. changing in public spaces where they could be actually safer, and forces them to enter and use the unsafe traps that attract aggressors and offers them safe hiding space.
Again, it sounds like you want to force women into nudism. And again, as the statistics show, it's the unisex changing rooms in which around 90% of changing room related assaults happen. Sex segregation *evidently* makes women more safe, not less.
> while violence is often associated with individuals with higher levels of testosterone, a large number of such individuals don't really fit your description:
(I'll address each separately)
> at least some 10% are attracted to other men
Women have no way of easily assessing whether a man is gay or not. Expecting them to detect gay men and allow them to use women's locker rooms is not practical.
> some 20% are too young to be a threat
Mothers often take young boys into women's locker rooms, bathrooms, etc. and that is of course not a problem. This isn't really relevant.
> some aren't heavier or stronger
The difference in the *ranges* of strength and size means that for any male you pick, there will almost certainly be some females who are smaller than him. A man could be merely 160cm and 60kg, yet he might be encountered by a woman who's merely 150cm and 50kg, so he could still be an intimidating presence to her.
> most are far more likely to defend a potential victim from an aggressor than to be an aggressor
Again, do you expect women to be chaperoned by men? Or should they hope for some "good man" to be around coincidentally, and protect them while they're using a locker room? We want to enable women to be independent, not needing constant chaperoning like it's the middle ages.
> and some 5% you'd mistake for women and force them to share the female-only spaces
Probably under 1%, and no, I didn't say female-looking individuals should be forced into female-only spaces. The question is who is *allowed* to enter female-only spaces, which are reserved for women.
wow, what you describe is a very sick culture! why do you do this to men and to women, what do you teach them, that they feel this way at the mere view of a naked body, even in a non-sexual context; that they feel it's so offensive to show certain body parts in public that mothers can't nurse their babies in public, and end up poisoning their milk with bad feelings; that women have to hide some body parts while men can show them in public, that women feel they must face danger instead of staying in safe company? it would be mentally-healthy for you all to come spend some time among indigenous people for whom having visible body parts is just a regular day.
here's an idea: how about requiring preop trans women to cover up their "threatening" (sinful?) body parts with burqa-like condoms in women's spaces? is that fundamentalist enough? still offensive?
A male person exposing himself to a woman, who doesn't consent to this, is typically considered a sexual offense, because it's often perceived as threatening, and done as a power move by the man to make the woman feel humiliated. Telling women "just don't feel bad about it" doesn't work. That's a form of victim shaming.
I understand that you're neurodivergent, but I would have really hoped that you would already have an understand of this. You are essentially campaigning to normalize sexual offenses. Even if unknowingly so, that's very troubling.
I feel for that woman, assuming she's not a made-up propaganda tool. the bystander effect is a thing, but joining in is horrifying. people shouldn't have to endure that sort of violence, or even harassment. not cis women, not trans women, not any men.
I'm not arguing that women should depend on chaperones any more than on walls and signs; I'm arguing nobody should be forced to face danger to change clothes. I'm fine with offering choices, from individual private spaces to tolerance for changing in safe public spaces. what I do know is that requiring women to go make themselves more vulnerable in spaces where they're separated from their safe company where aggressors could be hiding is too similar to the way predators separate their targets from the group. it's absurd to make that mandatory. a choice, perhaps, but mandating it is favoring the predators.
now let's think of a trans woman who is small and not particularly strong. does such a woman deserve a safe space? or is she not worthy of it? is she under a lower risk of violence in a men's space, in a women's space, or in a shared space?
how about a trans man? does such a man deserve a safe space? where would he be safer?
people have no easy way of assessing one's sexual orientation, just like they have no easy way of assessing one's assigned sex. what can be more evidently noticed is the gender expression, which would be fine for telling men and women apart. but that's not the categorization you're arguing for, is it?
maybe there's a reason why the thoughts I came to all by myself keep coming up as "talking points". maybe they make sense, and other people arrive at them independently, out of a sense of empathy and solidarity, instead of one of picking some innocent victims to hurt while using others' vulnerability to pretend to care about them in order to further a prejudiced discriminatory agenda. not cool.
question: are male people in a locker room supposed to ask around whether anyone else in there is a trans person or a cis woman, and to get any such person's consent before exposing themselves?
that is a violent misrepresentation of reasons people have to transition. yet, even after a better-reasoned transition, she would probably still get violence for using that space, just like cis women mistaken for trans do. why/how does your conclusion follow?
@lxo > now let's think of a trans woman who is small and not particularly strong. does such a woman deserve a safe space? or is she not worthy of it? is she under a lower risk of violence in a men's space, in a women's space, or in a shared space?
Following this logic, if a man is small and not particularly strong, the only way for him to feel safe is to identify as a woman (become a transwoman) and use women's space @taylan@light@Gnomeshatecheese
I doubt that this is "the only solution", when it's not even a solution. Nevermind that we haven't even agreed on what the problem is that calls for a solution. That person wouldn't be safe whether with or without transitioning. My question was only about which of 3 spaces would be safer for two different people, assuming they deserve some safety, which is unfortunately not a given for some people.
@lxo The only difference between a normal man and a transwoman is self identification. If the only solution for a small and not particularly strong trans identifying male to feel safe is to use women's space, then it is also the only solution for a small and not particularly strong non-trans identifying male to feel safe. Self identification has no material bearing in this scenario @taylan@light@Gnomeshatecheese
I doubt you'll find human societies anywhere that are free of violence, alas
my point is that they don't suffer from this neurosis that associates the view of certain body parts with sexual threats. imposing this neurosis is another kind of violence, and it brings about opportunities for predators to exert further violence, because it removes reasonable safety choices from potential victims, and, for the predators, it turns views and situations that could and should be absolutely unremarkable into ones that feel exciting and could bring about sexual arousal.
so you see my solution is far from shared locker rooms, which you appear to be fixated on for some good and some misguided reasons, but about untangling nudity from sexual activity, to make everywhere and everyone safer and healthier. that's not the society I live in either, alas.
I still recall a traumatic episode in which I took my then ~4yo daughter to a shopping mall to buy a mothers' day surprise to her mother = my wife. she needed to go to the restroom. what was I to do? get her into the men's restroom was thought to be unacceptable, she had to go into the women's restroom, but I couldn't go there with her. she ended up getting help from another kind lady who found her all by herself in there and offered help, but what if it was an unkind lady? all this followed from these stupid notions that seeing certain body parts can be traumatic (it doesn't have to be this way, it's learned misbehavior) and that therefore there must be segregation. there are strong notes of patriarchy in this sick structure, both in separation of potential victims from the flock, and in the assumption that the mother will always be available to take care of the children. nowadays, shopping malls often offer so-called family restroom facilities, and I feel very favorable to them, and I resent the psychological violence that was forced on me and on my daughter in that episode.
If so, I'm not aware of that being a real problem either. His whole argument of "sex segregation causes potential victims to be separated from the flock, so they become more vulnerable" frankly sounds like BS to me.
By the way, I'm almost certain that this isn't a solved issue, or non-issue, in most indigenous populations either. Which indigenous population are we talking about anyway? There are many on the planet and they are all different. Some are horribly sexist and violent.
Some indigenous cultures used to be idolized as bastions of sexual enlightenment by sex liberal activists, like Peter Thatchell, who in 1997 wrote favorably of the work of an anthropologist (Prof. Gilbert Herdt) who portrayed the Sambia tribe of Papua New Guinea as a positive example. Upon closer examination, it comes out that older men ("warriors") in this tribe practice a sadistic abuse ritual to initiate boys (into "manhood") who often cry and beg to their mothers to be spared of the abuse.
It's a similar deal with ancient Greek pederasty. In recent years it's become a trend to speak of ancient Greece as if they had some kind of enlightened gay accepting culture. In actual fact, they had an extremely patriarchal social hierarchy in which older men could abuse boys without consequence.
If there's really some indigenous tribes out there which are so free of violence that nudism is the norm and doesn't bother women to the least, then I wish the whole planet could be like that. But that's not going to happen by passing laws that effectively abolish female-only spaces, without addressing the social violence that made women campaign for these spaces in the first place.
@taylan@quasi@lxo@Gnomeshatecheese >There is no such thing as men secretly sneaking into female-only spaces to wait for an individual woman to enter alone so he can pounce on her, which would be thwarted if only men were allowed into there as well. I think he meant female predators
No, victims of male violence are not "made up propaganda tools." This is an awful thing to say.
> I'm arguing nobody should be forced to face danger to change clothes
As confirmed by statistics from the UK, the changes you propose do as a matter of fact force women to face higher risk of sexual assault.
> requiring women to go make themselves more vulnerable in spaces where they're separated from their safe company where aggressors could be hiding
This is a nonsensical fantasy situation.
There is no such thing as men secretly sneaking into female-only spaces to wait for an individual woman to enter alone so he can pounce on her, which would be thwarted if only men were allowed into there as well.
Maybe such a thing has happened before in extremely rare cases, but even then, how would unisex rooms even solve this? Even such a psychopathic plan would be easier to commit with unisex rooms: The man can walk in freely and doesn't have to sneak around. Then he just needs to wait for a moment where a woman enters and nobody else is around. And the woman won't even be immediately alerted by his presence because it's a unisex space.
Had it been a female only space, then not only would the man need to sneak in unnoticed to begin with; women entering would also be immediately on alert as they see or hear him, since it's a female only space.
I think you're tying yourself into knots trying to come up with a reason why unisex spaces are safer, when it is simply not so.
> now let's think of a trans woman who is small and not particularly strong. does such a woman deserve a safe space? or is she not worthy of it? is she under a lower risk of violence in a men's space, in a women's space, or in a shared space?
Small and feminine men (some of whom might "identify as a woman") deserve safety as well, yes. Is their safety improved by abolishing female-only spaces? How?
> how about a trans man? does such a man deserve a safe space? where would he be safer?
Women who identify as men deserve safety as well, yes. Is their safety improved by abolishing female-only spaces?
> people have no easy way of assessing one's sexual orientation, just like they have no easy way of assessing one's assigned sex.
We can easily assess the sex of around 99% of everyone, by looks and voice.
And as I've already explained before: If a man genuinely passes as a woman, then no women would be bothered by him using the women's room anyway. The problem solves itself. What you're campaigning for is that men who look obviously like men should be allowed into women's spaces and that women should have no right to complain.
> what can be more evidently noticed is the gender expression, which would be fine for telling men and women apart. but that's not the categorization you're arguing for, is it?
No, a man putting on a dress and makeup is still easy to tell apart from a woman with the same style. Look at the photos I sent earlier.
A woman wearing trousers, having a buzz cut, and not using makeup doesn't make her look like a man.
The "gender expression" of a person has no relevance to this topic at all, really.
a shared locker room is also a place in which anyone can undress. therefore, no one should have to ask for consent or feel threatened by the mere exposure of certain body parts in there, right? primary problem solved?
> question: are male people in a locker room supposed to ask around whether anyone else in there is a trans person or a cis woman, and to get any such person's consent before exposing themselves?
A men's locker room is a place in which men undress. Any person entering hopefully knows that.
How great that these spaces exist, so people who don't want to be exposed to naked male strangers can simply avoid them, and so I as a male don't have to worry about accidentally making some poor woman uncomfortable.
I didn't, but the existence of female predators, and female-presenting predators, reinforces taylan's category error I point out, that appears motivated by taylan's primary issue that is not at all about violence, but about exposure to body parts, and the artificial (neurotic?) conflation of these two issues
violence has to do with causing injury or aggression, often by forceful and sudden means. tangent: in my mind, I tend to conceive of violence as associated with willful actions, but I've seen the term used to refer to destruction caused by storms and injuries from car accidents, and it feels odd to me but I've learned to deal with it.
back to the topic, violence doesn't have to be physical, it can be moral, psychological, and that's what the use of a disparaging term can amount to.
contrast my argument about offering more choices and avoiding neuroses with your misrepresentation thereof of forcing anyone to anything. I don't really care to find out how you got to this false notion about my stance, but you're probably overreacting to something. have a safe and free life.
If only shared locker rooms are available, then women have two options:
1. Accept that she might have to share a locker room with random men. A random male stranger may walk in while she's naked, or she may walk in on a whole group of naked men upon entering a locker room.
2. She avoids ever using public locker rooms, thus not being able to fully participate in society.
Why would you want to force women into this predicament? It's bizarre.
I can agree with: I don't think arguments should be considered to be violence one cay say that it's not the argument per se that amounts to violence. but if the argument encompasses an injurious attitude of dehumanization, of disrespect, that is violence. it's the attitude, not the argument.
it doesn't matter if it hurts one person or everyone. murder doesn't cease to be violence just because it's not genocide.
cutting violence off at the physical boundary is too limiting. there are various other kinds of harms and injuries that are not physical, but that are even more hurtful and damaging.
@lxo@quasi@taylan@Gnomeshatecheese I don't think arguments should be considered to be violence. If a particular argument or viewpoint causes psychological injury to one person, it doesn't follow that it will hurt everyone's feelings. Therefore IMO it doesn't make sense to morally condemn certain views that don't directly promote (physical) violence. Relevant: https://isought.info.
I'd be extremely surprised if anyone were to disagree with a claim that our contemporary societies make people neurotic 🙂
taboos often make people neurotic. it's a lot easier to find taboos nonsensical and easy to escape from if you haven't developed a neurotic response to them. it doesn't follow that it's easy for those who have. some social changes take generations to achieve because overcoming taboos is so hard. it's hard even to debate them.
Accusing women of "neurosis" for not wanting to be exposed to random male strangers, while they themselves may be naked, is quite blatant misogyny. I'm not sure that's how you meant it to come across, but there's hardly a different way to interpret what you said. I urge you to talk to some women about this and listen to them empathically instead of projecting "neurosis" onto them.
Indeed, based on the story you just told, I have to say the whole thing comes across like a case of projection. If a father is out with a daughter who's so young that she can't use a restroom alone, then there's no problem taking her into the men's restroom. The father is with her after all, which ensures the safety of the child, so there's no problem. Maybe you thought there was some hard set-in-stone rule saying no female human being (even a 4 year-old) is ever allowed to set foot into the men's room, unless the entire concept of single-sex restrooms is abolished? Some flexibility in thinking is warranted here. This isn't "psychological violence" but rather just your own confusion, sorry.
encompasses an injurious attitude of dehumanization, of disrespect, that is violence. it's the attitude, not the argument.
Pardon me for inserting myself here, but are you arguing that words aren't violence, but attitudes, i.e. thoughts, are?
Because frankly, that would be even more absurd.
As for the "other kinds of harms and injuries" being "even more hurtful and damaging", I'm going to do as the Aussies and go yeah, nah. To a great extent because I've never managed to kill anyone or put them into hospital by saying bad things, or having injurious or disrespecting attitudes towards them. And that's not for the lack of trying.
no, that's not what I'm arguing. I'm just being autistic and distinguishing between the argument per se and the implications thereof.
you might be surprised by how many people ended up dead as a direct consequence of the spread of nazifascistic thoughts, then words, then attitudes, then actions
how many people ended up dead as a direct consequence of the spread of nazifascistic thoughts, then words, then attitudes, then actions
In that case you're not arguing that attitudes, or words, are violence, you're arguing that actions are violence. Attitudes are not the same thing as words, and neither attitudes nor words are the same as actions. And the two former ones do not automatically lead to the latter, or even reliably so. And even if A did lead to B, which led to C, that would still not mean that A=C.
Words mean things and separation of concepts is important. Suggesting that because some thoughts might be aired as words, and someone might take damaging action based on those words, it follows that the thoughts themselves "are violence" or "constitute violence", damages that separation.
they're not the same thing, yes, but I pose that all of them are violent
psychological harm is violent. certain forms of torture are psychological, and they're violent. verbal abuse, harassment, even isolation can be violent without any physical contact. words that induce someone to engage in self harm are themselves violent; inciting violence in already a form of violence.