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Social media app just for 'females' intentionally excludes trans women
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Minor49er 5y agoKind of strange that this is news. Women should be allowed to have spaces for themselves.
- bushbaba 5y ago
- nyolfen 5y agodoes replacing it with ‘queer poc’ trigger your spidey-sense?
- anonnyj 5y agoYikes, chill with the whitephobia.
- dang 5y agoWe've banned this account for posting large amounts of flamebait. Not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Kim_Bruning 5y agoChurches?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- plorg 5y agoYeah, the implication being that white Christians making white-only churches in the name of Christianity would be pretty offensive, and by analogy cis women making their own women's spaces that specifically exclude trans women in the name of ~feminism is offensive.
- xupybd 5y agoMost of the churches in my city are more racially diverse than the general population.
- erulabs 5y agoWhy doesn't that sound great? Why shouldn't everyone be able to have places for themselves? This is more or less the entire premise of private property. This argument goes right to its ultimate logical conclusions so fast its unbelievable: From the question I just asked it can be presumed I'm 100% fine with discrimination at scale in society. I am not. And yet, should the federal government be allowed to create women's shelters? Or men's bathrooms? Or urinals which are explicitly discriminatory based on your biology? Of course. Some nuance has to come back to the conversation around discrimination. Honestly, it seems rather simple to me, although I always hold my breath and wait for someone to call me a horrible person: discrimination should be legal, and we should also lampoon and publicly mock bad and stupid discrimination. If we aren't allowed to mock anything, if we all need to respect each other, then we _need_ anti-discrimination laws. I'd fight for anyone's right to deny anyone else access to their home. I'd still think they're a huge jerk for not being nice to their neighbors.
- 5ESS 5y ago
- the_only_law 5y agoSounds like the most insufferable place on earth. But I love your username.
- smt88 5y ago> A place only for white Christians sounds heavenly. What would be better about it than where you currently live? How do non-White Christians harm your quality of life?
- tasogare 5y agoWtf is this? As a White Christian (living as both a racial and religious minority in my country of residence btw) this is extremely offensive. I have the right to assemble with other people on the identity feature I want, especially on the internet. I bet wouldn't dare to say the same kind of things about Judaism because you know exactly how racist and discriminatory it is.
- Minor49er 5y agoWhat's wrong with women wanting to have a space for themselves?
- ksaj 5y agoIs that really a good example? I used to live really close to a church that was clearly for Black Pentecostal Christians (White attendees would be accused of appropriation by nearly everyone), and there's a Korean Baptist church that doesn't even do their sermons in English! Nobody has an issue with either of these churches that have such specific audiences, so focusing on White Christians to demonstrate your point probably falls a little flat. Are there White specific churches? Mennonite churches probably could be classified this way, but it's not because of racial segregation. Comparing any of this to gender just doesn't make sense.
- jmrm 5y agoCould be easier to ensure that any space is safe to any human being instead of creating new ones to women? I'm not asking rhetorically. I genuinely don't know what kind of spaces are not safe only for women and what could make those space safer for them.
- klyrs 5y agoNo worries about it excluding women of color, either?
- Supermancho 5y ago> No worries about it excluding women of color, either? Racism and transphobia are just political opinions, right? Human rights are so last millenium. Free association is about being able to decide (which is to say, make a choice by discrimination) about who to associate with. Conflating the legal concept of discrimination and the right to discriminate via the biological function of the senses, does not help things.
- Minor49er 5y agoIt seems clear to me that this platform would have no problem letting on women of color. They unfortunately chose an imperfect solution to validate new members which they had to resort to due to the women on their site being threatened.
- klyrs 5y agoRight. Women of color are merely an overlooked, but totally acceptable casualty. Business as usual.
- floatingatoll 5y agoIt’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose facial bone structures are unacceptable to the app. It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose skin color is unacceptable to the app. It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose biological sex at birth is unacceptable to the app. None of these criteria have any bearing whatsoever on gender. They’re saying “women” out loud, but what they’re trying to filter for in practice is “people who were sexed female-only at birth and meet a restrictive set of facial characteristics”. Women have a variety of biological sexes at birth (male, female, both, neither). Women have a variety of facial characteristics (feminine, masculine, androgynous, mixed). So it’s news that they’re trying to discriminate by redefining “women” to exclude some women.
- Minor49er 5y agoNo, that's not the story. The story is that there is a social network for women who have excluded non-women. They have done this because on many occasions, biological males have joined their platform and have threatened their users. They have chosen an imperfect solution to validate that their users are who they say they are, sure, but they have resorted to this measure to try to keep this space as their own.
- floatingatoll 5y agoWe’ll see. The imperfection of their solution is certainly the surface story, but I suspect it’s meant to be a haven for TERF hate speech (not just a haven for all women) and won’t survive.
- xupybd 5y agoTo flip in on its head. Would it be okay to have. A space for trans women only?
- floatingatoll 5y agoIf that space defined “trans women” as only those who have completed both facial feminization surgery (with AI evaluation of their face bones) and required that they have completed vaginoplasty or vulvoplasty so that their genitals are sexed female, then no, it would be just as discriminatory to trans women as the app under discussion here is being to all women. If this imaginary trans women space accepted all serious forms of presurgical or partial-surgical proof, such as a doctor’s letter or a hormone prescription or an orchiectomy or etc, then that would not be discriminatory and would be fine. The core issue here is that this app is trying to enforce gender as purely a function of physical characteristics, denying altogether that gender is more complicated than that and is not guaranteed to be linked to any physical characteristics whatsoever. Their ”women only” definitions fail the transgender women test, the intersex test, and the “born female-sex athletes with high testosterone and masculine facial features” test. Either they are blithely unaware of these complications, or they are unconcerned with them. That is, itself, newsworthy.
- clove 5y agoFor-profit ventures aren't allowed to deny service based on immutable characteristics in any country with these anti-discrimination laws, except for very narrow exceptions. This is doubly so for a service that provides networking opportunities to find contacts for businesses and jobs.
- furgooswft13 5y agoSaying you can't discriminate against trans women because of their "immutable characteristics" is the height of irony.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't start flamewars on HN. "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Minor49er 5y agoIf I knew that people were going to have such a negative reaction, I wouldn't have posted. Edit: Seeing the state of the comment section for this submission, why not remove the article?
- dang 5y agoYou co-created the state of the comment section. The solution is not to remove articles, it's to raise the level of discussion.
- friendlydog 5y agoJust use this until you get in: https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/
- bart_spoon 5y agoIts interesting to see the parallels between this and the subreddit r/blackpeopletwitter, which began requiring users to verify with mods that they pass the "paper bag test" in order to participate on the forum. Even the rationality for doing so sounds exactly like this quote from the article regarding Giggle, simply replacing "black people" with "women": > "We wanted a place where women could go to help each other," she said in an email. "A female space, in the palm of their hand. Where women could find support, connection and a refuge amongst other women no matter where they were or what they were doing." And yet the reaction to the two seems to be divergent. We've clearly stopped caring for eliminating discrimination and now are hellbent on fostering discrimination, so long as its discriminating against the "right" groups. Hard to keep up with what groups are "right" to discriminate against on any particular day, though. Seems like a race to the bottom to me.
- justinpowers 5y ago“Once we’re all at the bottom, then we’re all on equal footing. And effectively, relatively, socially, there no longer is a bottom or top.” - A Smirking Philosopher
- jfengel 5y agoEnding discrimination is great, but that's not happening today. And today, people need to cope with discrimination. Which sometimes means singling out people who are discriminated against, using the same criteria that the discriminators use. Trans women face discrimination in many of the same ways that cis women do, and in most circumstances it's best to simply treat them as women. There are a somewhat-nebulous set of cases that should be restricted to cis women, but much of the time those cases are more about anti-trans-discrimination than actually protecting cis women in particular. Any case of discrimination for the benefit of marginalized groups is going to invite scrutiny, and sometimes legitimate disagreement. It sounds to me like this case is reasonable to exclude men, but not to exclude trans women. The fact that they don't menstruate, for example, doesn't mark them as non-women: lots of women don't menstruate (young, old, ill, athletes, anorexics, etc.) It's true that many lacked girlhoods, but increasingly many have transitioned at a young age. That's my cursory opinion. It could change if I were exposed to more details. But I don't consider it helpful to say "to end discrimination we should stop letting people self-segregate". That attitude fosters abuse by people who discriminate, and forbids people from protecting themselves against it. Maybe in the future it will be helpful, but today it harms a lot of people.
- coolso 5y ago
- nynx 5y agoUh, yes. Trans women are women. You’re just transphobic.
- labrador 5y agoI know saying the transphobic word is meant to shut down the conversation, but it really doesn't because people like me don't own it. Seeing a difference between trans women and women is a nod to reality, not hate
- nynx 5y agoNo, I’m not trying to shut down the ‘conversation’. I’m just saying, you should try to figure out if you actually have a good reason for feeling that way.
- coolso 5y ago
- labrador 5y agoI have checked in with myself and don't hate transwomen and am not transphobic. I just don't think a transwoman should be flashing their penis in a changing room when women without penises object
- floatingatoll 5y agoThe simple presence of a penis attached to a woman in a women’s changing room does not imply in any way that a person is behaving inappropriately, any more than it does when attached to a man in a men’s changing room, or an androgynous person in either. Taking offense at someone’s unaroused body in a changing room, when they’re keeping to themselves and changing, however, is a severe violation of social protocol in many cultures. Some intersex people have two sets of genitalia, one for each changing room; they must use one or the other, as only the two options are offered in the vast majority of cases. If they are intersex women, then those around them may be made uncomfortable by their body’s physical features. It is everyone else’s responsibility to deal with that discomfort and let them finish changing without comment, same as they would expect to be left alone about their own physical features while changing. If a person is behaving inappropriately in a changing room, such as staring at the sexual features of many others, or making rude gestures towards or uninvited comments about physical features, then they should be asked to stop or leave and may be subject to punishment by the business and/or local authorities for their behavior — no matter what their own genitalia are, whether they’re a match for the gender label (if any) on the door of the changing room or not.
- labrador 5y agoWhile I'm sympathetic to transwomen in general, cases like this really bother me. It just feels like this person is not mentally well. I am sympathetic to the concerns of women as well, as we all should be. EXCLUSIVE: 'We're uncomfortable in our own locker room.' Lia Thomas' UPenn teammate tells how the trans swimmer doesn't always cover up her male genitals when changing and their concerns go ignored by their coach https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10445679/Lia-Thomas-UPenn-teammate-says-trans-swimmer-doesnt-cover-genitals-locker-room.html?ito=amp_twitter_share-top https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10445679/Lia-Thomas...
- leephillips 5y ago
- diag 5y agoHow exactly do you determine who is a woman though? Because appearances alone don't cut it, and the more you pick things apart, the less you can make any hard lines. Simply put, trans women are women.
- leephillips 5y agoIf the people running the app were determined to screen reliably they would have to require documentation, because anyone can submit any real or synthetic photograph. You’re mistaken about the lack of “hard lines” distinguishing the sexes, though. The difference between male and female is unambiguous in biology. “Trans women” are, by definition, not women.
- torstenvl 5y ago> The difference between male and female is unambiguous in biology. “Trans women” are, by definition, not women. That is emphatically false. There are innumerable biological differences between men as a whole and women as a whole, and while these different factors largely correlate, they do not necessarily fit neatly into one box or the other. Is an XXY individual with a penis but undescended testes and low levels of blood testosterone and few androgen receptors "biologically" male or female? What about an XX individual with ambiguous external genitalia, high circulating testosterone, and a high number of androgen receptors? What do you make of the fact that females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia are far more likely to identify as LGBT? You are oversimplifying the biology. That said, the right to create an exclusive space is a fundamental constitutional right. En plus, for socially marginalized groups, it is a societal benefit for them to have a space exclusive to them. I support the creators of this social media app.
- braingravy 5y agoThose cases are worth considering, socially. But generally speaking, biology isn't defined by edge cases. There is a clear biological definition of sex, which a small percentage of examples do not fit into. That doesn't negate the existence of biological sex.
- floatingatoll 5y agoThis app has several dog-whistles for TERF hate groups, that are designed to fall just below the threshold of deniability until considered as a whole by someone familiar with TERF hate speech markers: - Dedication to the color "pink" representing women (classical pre-birth gender roles) - Defining the gender "women" as exclusively people who were sexed female-only at birth (assumption-by-framing discrimination vs. transgender, intersex) - Implying that gender is permanently affixed through bone structures to each human body at birth (classical definition that gender == sex) - Declaring that only binary genders "male" and "female" exist (inflexible binary gender roles) So I expect that this app will end up banned for promoting hate speech as a result — not because they're attempting to create a women-only space, but because they're attempting to create a social space where TERF hate speech is welcomed and encouraged.