4 ms·
> Try this at a bar in rural (red) Ohio I don't think anyone should be asking bars in Ohio, or anywhere, about this. No more than I would ask a bar in Ohio wha
by bscphil 4y ago
> Try this at a bar in rural (red) Ohio
I don't think anyone should be asking bars in Ohio, or anywhere, about this. No more than I would ask a bar in Ohio what they think of climate change. Or a group of theologians in the 16th century about how they felt about astronomy. Or computer science majors about the ethics of vegetarianism. This is just a crass appeal to common sense, where common sense is defined by what mostly white low-education blue collar workers supposedly think.
> you'll finally understand that women have penises and men have vaginas
No, you misunderstood. (First of all, that's not even the correct claim, you should have said some of them do.) But even with that, you misunderstood. The point isn't that you have to accept that transgender people exist. It's that inserting concepts like "adult biological woman" does not show that transgender people do not exist. Nothing interesting whatever can be shown with this distinction. The "biological" part of it doesn't hang together in the way you want it to. More generally, the problem is that critiques of concepts around transgenderism tend not to be well thought out at all (that includes both sides); if you want a proper critique you need to be reading people who have been trained to think consistently about difficult topics around gender, sex, social behavior, etc.
But my interest here is more that we're now up to 634 comments on an article that makes no real argument whatsoever. The author is just here to complain that transgender people have stolen her vocabulary word. Is there really any plausible explanation for why so many people have gathered here other than that a bunch of anti-trans people smelled blood in the water?
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago> Is there really any plausible explanation for why so many people have gathered here Is it gathering if we were already here? We're concerned that sex-based rights can't exist if sex-related words are redefined. We're doubly concerned that this seems intentional. > bunch of anti-trans people smelled blood in the water? Are you anti-trans if you see someone's sex as the primary factor in who you let shower with your young children? Are you anti-trans if you feel that female rape-relief shelters should be allowed to exclude males? The problem is that anyone talking about any sex-based rights, no matter how important or how much they're willing to concede, is immediately called transphobic or anti-trans.
- remarkEon 4y agoMy point is that activists generally are not content with merely seeking acknowledgement that gender dysphoria exists, they have to force people to redefine basic biology and change their language. You can call it "crass" all you want, and derisively referring to anyone that doesn't agree with the new ideology "white low-education blue collar" is exactly the kind of elitist navel gazing that I'm talking about. "These people who don't agree with my new religion are stupid" is, while rude, an extremely effective tactic so I expect this to continue.
- cedilla 4y ago"Humans are either male or female" is not "basic biology", it's kindergarten biology. It's strictly false, even if we ignore transgender or transsexual topics completely. It is sometimes an abstraction that is good enough. It's a bit like Newtonian physics in that way.