Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - Printable Version
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RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - BobK - 02-17-2022
That’s the fact. Hundreds of us each large attendance game
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - teejers1 - 02-18-2022
(02-17-2022, 09:04 PM)BostonCard Wrote: I’m with Spike. Go to the bathroom, do your business, and don’t obsess over the gender (or for that matter sexual orientation) of anyone else who is there.
BC
Using that reasoning - which has merit - means no need to change anything about traditional bathroom designations, right? (Or is it only the non-trans population that needs to "do your business, and don't obsess over the gender . . . of anyone else who is in there.")
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - BostonCard - 02-18-2022
I’m not sure I follow. Have you had experiences where you entered into a bathroom and a trans male (I’m assuming you are male) has freaked out? My experience is pretty limited, but I’ve never observed a trans male in a bathroom not just doing their business. Maybe they were quietly obsessing over gender, but they didn’t say anything to me that would indicate anything other than that they were there to do their business, but maybe your experience has been different.
BC
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - Genuine Realist - 02-18-2022
Late to the party.
(1) It is interesting that this discussion has been conducted almost entirely by men. Not that that's not inevitable, given the demographic of a sports chat board, but . . . interesting.
(2) My own views are formed by the opinions of two women I know, my daughter-in-law who was a first class distance runner at Princeton, and the tennis player Martina Navratilova. Both have general world views that are considerably left of center. Both want nothing to do with biological males, however hormonally altered, in women's sports. They are keen competitors. They run (or play) to win. They don't think it's fair. I believe their views are representative of most women athletes. The times are such that these views can't be expressed easily.
(3) One of the seminal works of modern feminism is Virginia Woolf's extended essay 'A Room of One's Own', published in 1921, on the importance of personal and private space for a woman. The intrusiveness of male social norms in all areas of life is felt keenly by many women, frankly not something I understand, but often spoken of. It is interesting to me that modern feminism now seems to have come full circle, obliterating that women's room, be it the traditional rest room or reserved athletic space. Where does a woman escape male influence? It seems that feminist theory has devoured itself.
(4) For years, I suggested 'open' and 'women's' events. I notice a number of posters suggested the same thing. If sports were organized that way, I believe a surprising number of women would try it out, like marathons. But it probably would not do for transgenders, who insist they are women for all purposes. I don't want to see anyone jeered at, scorned, or deprecated in any way. But as a matter of common sense reality, I don't think transgenders are the same as biological women. There is a difference.
(5) Like abortion, I believe this is a women's only issue. Unlike abortion, I don't think the vote on the issue would be at all close. Let the women vote in secret ballot, where there are no political consequences, and I think they will vote overwhelmingly to exclude biological males. They want a room of their own. They compete to win, not simply participate. That leaves the sports authorities to find a place for transgenders to compete, which isn't that tough.
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - teejers1 - 02-18-2022
(02-18-2022, 12:57 AM)BostonCard Wrote: I’m not sure I follow. Have you had experiences where you entered into a bathroom and a trans male (I’m assuming you are male) has freaked out? My experience is pretty limited, but I’ve never observed a trans male in a bathroom not just doing their business. Maybe they were quietly obsessing over gender, but they didn’t say anything to me that would indicate anything other than that they were there to do their business, but maybe your experience has been different.
BC
If the point is "it doesn't matter where" just do your business, then trans shouldn't mind doing said business in the biologically designated bathroom.
But I see your point, if it's "do your business wherever you want and don't mind others," then no one should care who is where.
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - TheWildJacko - 02-18-2022
Maybe dont say say "transgenders" when referring to transgender women (or men). It's considered a derogatory term. Transgender women are women. Also, saying "biologically male" or "biological males" repeatedly is not great either.
https://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender
PROBLEMATIC
"transgenders," "a transgender"
Transgender should be used as an adjective, not as a noun. Do not say, "Tony is a transgender," or "The parade included many transgenders."
PREFERRED
"transgender people","a transgender person"
For example, "Tony is a transgender man," or "The parade included many transgender people."
...
PROBLEMATIC
"biologically male," "biologically female," "genetically male," "genetically female," "born a man," "born a woman"
Problematic phrases like those above are reductive and overly-simplify a very complex subject. As mentioned above, a person's sex is determined by a number of factors - not simply genetics - and a person's biology does not "trump" a person's gender identity. Finally, people are born babies: they are not "born a man" or "born a woman."
PREFERRED
"assigned male at birth," "assigned female at birth" or "designated male at birth," "designated female at birth"
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - cardcrimson - 02-18-2022
(02-18-2022, 10:23 AM)Genuine Realist Wrote: Late to the party.
(1) It is interesting that this discussion has been conducted almost entirely by men. Not that that's not inevitable, given the demographic of a sports chat board, but . . . interesting.
(2) My own views are formed by the opinions of two women I know, my daughter-in-law who was a first class distance runner at Princeton, and the tennis player Martina Navratilova. Both have general world views that are considerably left of center. Both want nothing to do with biological males, however hormonally altered, in women's sports. They are keen competitors. They run (or play) to win. They don't think it's fair. I believe their views are representative of most women athletes. The times are such that these views can't be expressed easily.
(3) One of the seminal works of modern feminism is Virginia Woolf's extended essay 'A Room of One's Own', published in 1921, on the importance of personal and private space for a woman. The intrusiveness of male social norms in all areas of life is felt keenly by many women, frankly not something I understand, but often spoken of. It is interesting to me that modern feminism now seems to have come full circle, obliterating that women's room, be it the traditional rest room or reserved athletic space. Where does a woman escape male influence? It seems that feminist theory has devoured itself.
(4) For years, I suggested 'open' and 'women's' events. I notice a number of posters suggested the same thing. If sports were organized that way, I believe a surprising number of women would try it out, like marathons. But it probably would not do for transgenders, who insist they are women for all purposes. I don't want to see anyone jeered at, scorned, or deprecated in any way. But as a matter of common sense reality, I don't think transgenders are the same as biological women. There is a difference.
(5) Like abortion, I believe this is a women's only issue. Unlike abortion, I don't think the vote on the issue would be at all close. Let the women vote in secret ballot, where there are no political consequences, and I think they will vote overwhelmingly to exclude biological males. They want a room of their own. They compete to win, not simply participate. That leaves the sports authorities to find a place for transgenders to compete, which isn't that tough.
Great post. Pretty much agreed with everything you said, until number 5. My views have morphed over the years, especially when I heard my daughters heart beat at around three months. Hoping to keep this sports related, I was moved by Ralph Barbieri's, who was very left of center, take on abortion when he dealt with it up close and personally and talked about it on KNBR with Tom. A recap is about midway:
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/sfgate/name/ralph-barbieri-obituary?id=2062402
No political intent here, just an interesting observation.
As for the bathroom debate. Why on earth would women want to share a bathroom with men? We have a tendency to pee, or at least drip, all over the seat. Love the sign: "If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie." or is it "lift the seatie"
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - BostonCard - 02-18-2022
While I am sympathetic with the desire to use inclusive language, and generally try to think of how my words might be received, in a forum such as this where most people have tried to be respectful despite widely varying views, I think it is better to focus on the substance of individual’s posts rather than whether they use “Problematic” or “preferred” language. Most people here have tried to be respectful while articulating their sincerely held beliefs and we should presume good faith. A debate about whether transgender is used as a noun or an adjective may wind up counterproductive, and I think would have people more worried about stepping on language land mines than sharing and reading each others’ views.
BC
TheWildJacko - TheWildJacko - 02-18-2022
That’s fair—point well taken. But I would also say that these aren’t exactly language land mines. They’re not hidden terms, and if we were talking about race it wouldn’t be OK to refer to black people as “blacks.” I am not asserting bad faith. I just think it’s important to not use terms that are legitimately offensive.
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - BostonCard - 02-19-2022
GR, good to hear from you, and I thought of you several times in this thread, as I remembered you had made the “open” versus “Restricted” events many years earlier. I thought your post was good, but I noticed that in your desire to make this a women’s issue, you ignore transgender men. In fact, much of this thread ignores the fact that a substantial proportion of transgender people identify as male (the literature I’ve seen states that transgender women outnumber transgender men 2 to 1, in addition to those who identify as some other category, so we are leaving out a substantial minority of the transgender population). I’m not going to presume what other men here believe, but the focus on transgender women makes me think that the concern about a transgender male coming into a bathroom as a poster on this board is using a urinal is not high on the list of concerns. So the focus on transgender women is doubly puzzling. Since there are women on this board, maybe we should hear what they have to say. But the one quote from a female athlete that was brought out on this thread (Stanford’s Brooke Forde) was basically “let them compete”. Unfortunately, it is only one data point.
BC
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - TheWildJacko - 02-19-2022
I will also say that I could have been more respectful and less combative in my requesting different terms, and for that I apologize.
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - 2006alum - 02-19-2022
(02-18-2022, 09:19 PM)TheWildJacko Wrote: PROBLEMATIC
"biologically male," "biologically female," "genetically male," "genetically female," "born a man," "born a woman"
Problematic phrases like those above are reductive and overly-simplify a very complex subject. As mentioned above, a person's sex is determined by a number of factors - not simply genetics - and a person's biology does not "trump" a person's gender identity. Finally, people are born babies: they are not "born a man" or "born a woman."
PREFERRED
"assigned male at birth," "assigned female at birth" or "designated male at birth," "designated female at birth"
FWIW, while I am all for inclusivity, this guidance kind of makes my point for me. I guess I resist the idea that we have all collectively agreed that "biologically male" necessary connotes gender identity, not sexual biology. But that assumption is necessary to say that the term "biologically male" is "problematic" and we should use "assigned male at birth" instead.
For those of us who are referring to someone's sexual biology at birth, if I am referring to someone with an XY chromosome, a phallus, and no ovaries, I am not sure why "biologically male" is "problematic." It is simply accurate based on how we have, for quite a long time, associated the sexual biology of nearly all individuals with an XY chromosome as male.
Now the whole point of the existence of transgender individuals is that someone with male biology may not necessarily have a male gender construction and identity. And conceding to the claim that "I felt like I was in the wrong body" essentially requires conceding that an individual's female gender construction should triumph over their physically male sexual biology. All well and good so far.
But I guess I don't think "assigned male at birth" is synonymous with "biologically male," because I'm not ready to concede that sexual biology is purely a matter of social construction or something that society "assigns", per se. And I don't think most people who have raised children from ages 0-6 think they're merely "assigning" gender to their children. For most children, their sexual biology is determinative of a lot of other aspects of their personality and gender construction. I have two friends who have young twins; both have one "boy" and one "girl" - in both instances, they have been quite surprised by just how much the sexual biological differences between the twins is the driver of their personality, preferences, temperament, etc. These are not parents who just default to giving the boys trucks and the girls princess dolls. Nevertheless, the differences seem innate and essentially linked to their sexual biology.
And of course, that isn't true for everyone! Nor should we assume, automatically, that it will be. But in sum, I guess I feel like we need to be more open and honest about how what is true for some is not true for all. And I think in some of these contests over linguistic terrain, we are closing the window a little too rapidly on terminology that I think retains useful and important distinctions.
And to cash that distinction out with the title of this thread, I don't think anyone cares about whether Thomas was "assigned male at birth." I think they care that she was biologically male at birth and until post-puberty, and thus her two records yesterday are a result of having been "biologically male" during the period when (then his, now) her adult physiognomy took form. And I think everyone, including Thomas, agrees that she shouldn't be able to compete without the hormones that are necessary for her to converge towards what we associate with being "biologically female." Given all this, I'm open to the discussion that that shouldn't preclude her from competing in women's events. But I really don't think the issue anyone has is that society was merely "assigning" maleness to Thomas prior to last year.
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - Genuine Realist - 02-19-2022
(02-19-2022, 12:11 AM)BostonCard Wrote: GR, good to hear from you, and I thought of you several times in this thread, as I remembered you had made the “open” versus “Restricted” events many years earlier. I thought your post was good, but I noticed that in your desire to make this a women’s issue, you ignore transgender men. In fact, much of this thread ignores the fact that a substantial proportion of transgender people identify as male (the literature I’ve seen states that transgender women outnumber transgender men 2 to 1, in addition to those who identify as some other category, so we are leaving out a substantial minority of the transgender population). I’m not going to presume what other men here believe, but the focus on transgender women makes me think that the concern about a transgender male coming into a bathroom as a poster on this board is using a urinal is not high on the list of concerns. So the focus on transgender women is doubly puzzling. Since there are women on this board, maybe we should hear what they have to say. But the one quote from a female athlete that was brought out on this thread (Stanford’s Brooke Forde) was basically “let them compete”. Unfortunately, it is only one data point.
BC
Hi BC, thanks for the kind words. One of my pleasures with the old CEB was the opportunity to express myself with a stridency I would never used in flesh-and-blood life. This site has been deliberately organized to minimize that sort of thing, and so I mostly lurk so as not to become inadvertently controversial.
To the point:
(a) The problem with Jacko's language is that it is so decorous that it becomes impossible to express the point that Martina Navratilova and my daughter-in-law would like to make. It may be offensive to biological males transgendered to women that they are NOT female for all purposes, that they retain a significant athletic advantage. But there is certainly evidence of that point - the position is hardly irrational (in fact, a bit too rational for many) - and you have to have some vocabulary left to make the argument.
(b) To me, the issues are completely practical. I have no interest in any philosophical or theological aspects of this particular subject. Thus, biological females transgendering to male cause no practical issue whatsoever with athletics. They are welcome to try out for all the male teams they want. There is no issue about any athletic advantage. We are definitely in foolish consistency territory here in suggesting common issues and a unisexual rule.
© The same applies to bathroom use. I don't know whether anyone recalls the initial disputes about the issue, but they weren't about etiquette. They were about security. The authoress J.K. Rowling became controversial on the issue in large part because she has been sexually assaulted in a restroom as a young woman, this when they were gender specific, and was gravely concerned about a much larger safety issue if women's rooms were open to men. Likewise, I don't recall any of the opposition dwelling on social niceties. They asked the obvious question of how you prevent predatory males from masking themselves as transgender (no one's going to require a doctor's certificate to use a restroom) for their own purposes - to which there is no good answer.
The obvious, easy answer is to require restroom use by assigned gender, because, as others have remarked, it isn't that big a deal. You can set up a third class of gender neutral restrooms if you like, but as a practical matter they're going to become second men's rooms, because no woman in her right mind would use them. (BTW, I have educated the women in my life never, EVER to get into an elevator alone with a strange man. Incidents are rare, but they do happen, and you can take the next car easily enough. The principle's the same with gender neutral restrooms.)
The reason for the controversy is the strident, insistent assertion of transgender women that they are women for all purposes, so that consigning them to the men's room is insulting, no matter how inconsequential or trivial. Here's where I am back in CEB mode. At the minimum, transgendered individuals are extremely unhappy individuals, so much so that they will undertake surgical mutilation (sic), sterilization, and acceptance of an ongoing hormone regimen to which their phenotype may be completely resistant, just to escape a bodily prison. I'm not going to quarrel, deprecate, argue, or anything else, with their right to identify themselves anyway they like. I'm also aware of the colossal variation in hormonal types in both genders.
But at the end of the day, in practical spheres in which the identification collides with the rights of others - athletics, safety concerns in restrooms - no, I don't think they are women for all purposes. The need for that gender reidentification has to yield to that practicality. Ultimately, I don't think you can change gender as fully, completely, and absolutely as many would like to.
TheWildJacko - TheWildJacko - 02-19-2022
(02-19-2022, 07:40 AM)2006alum Wrote:(02-18-2022, 09:19 PM)TheWildJacko Wrote: PROBLEMATIC
"biologically male," "biologically female," "genetically male," "genetically female," "born a man," "born a woman"
Problematic phrases like those above are reductive and overly-simplify a very complex subject. As mentioned above, a person's sex is determined by a number of factors - not simply genetics - and a person's biology does not "trump" a person's gender identity. Finally, people are born babies: they are not "born a man" or "born a woman."
PREFERRED
"assigned male at birth," "assigned female at birth" or "designated male at birth," "designated female at birth"
FWIW, while I am all for inclusivity, this guidance kind of makes my point for me. I guess I resist the idea that we have all collectively agreed that "biologically male" necessary connotes gender identity, not sexual biology. But that assumption is necessary to say that the term "biologically male" is "problematic" and we should use "assigned male at birth" instead.
For those of us who are referring to someone's sexual biology at birth, if I am referring to someone with an XY chromosome, a phallus, and no ovaries, I am not sure why "biologically male" is "problematic." It is simply accurate based on how we have, for quite a long time, associated the sexual biology of nearly all individuals with an XY chromosome as male.
Now the whole point of the existence of transgender individuals is that someone with male biology may not necessarily have a male gender construction and identity. And conceding to the claim that "I felt like I was in the wrong body" essentially requires conceding that an individual's female gender construction should triumph over their physically male sexual biology. All well and good so far.
But I guess I don't think "assigned male at birth" is synonymous with "biologically male," because I'm not ready to concede that sexual biology is purely a matter of social construction or something that society "assigns", per se. And I don't think most people who have raised children from ages 0-6 think they're merely "assigning" gender to their children. For most children, their sexual biology is determinative of a lot of other aspects of their personality and gender construction. I have two friends who have young twins; both have one "boy" and one "girl" - in both instances, they have been quite surprised by just how much the sexual biological differences between the twins is the driver of their personality, preferences, temperament, etc. These are not parents who just default to giving the boys trucks and the girls princess dolls. Nevertheless, the differences seem innate and essentially linked to their sexual biology.
And of course, that isn't true for everyone! Nor should we assume, automatically, that it will be. But in sum, I guess I feel like we need to be more open and honest about how what is true for some is not true for all. And I think in some of these contests over linguistic terrain, we are closing the window a little too rapidly on terminology that I think retains useful and important distinctions.
And to cash that distinction out with the title of this thread, I don't think anyone cares about whether Thomas was "assigned male at birth." I think they care that she was biologically male at birth and until post-puberty, and thus her two records yesterday are a result of having been "biologically male" during the period when (then his, now) her adult physiognomy took form. And I think everyone, including Thomas, agrees that she shouldn't be able to compete without the hormones that are necessary for her to converge towards what we associate with being "biologically female." Given all this, I'm open to the discussion that that shouldn't preclude her from competing in women's events. But I really don't think the issue anyone has is that society was merely "assigning" maleness to Thomas prior to last year.
So, I think we mostly agree about what the discussion/main issue on this thread is. I am not sure we have the same takeaway from the source that I cited, however. I don’t think it said anywhere that “biologically male” should refer to gender identity, not sexual biology. I think the point is to take “biology” out of the equation altogether, because, 1) The mind is part of biology (which means that a person’s perception of themselves matters, and in fact may be the most important thing), and 2) Sexual biology is really complicated, and a lot broader than just XY chromosomes and a phallus vs. ovaries.
I found these threads on the subject really interesting and illuminating (there is some overlap between the 3 linked sources but also some different perspectives/new information):
https://twitter.com/rebeccarhelm/status/1207834357639139328?lang=en
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1035246030500061184.html
https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1271561835800457216?lang=en
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - spike5882 - 02-19-2022
(02-19-2022, 11:10 AM)Genuine Realist Wrote:(02-19-2022, 12:11 AM)BostonCard Wrote: GR, good to hear from you, and I thought of you several times in this thread, as I remembered you had made the “open” versus “Restricted” events many years earlier. I thought your post was good, but I noticed that in your desire to make this a women’s issue, you ignore transgender men. In fact, much of this thread ignores the fact that a substantial proportion of transgender people identify as male (the literature I’ve seen states that transgender women outnumber transgender men 2 to 1, in addition to those who identify as some other category, so we are leaving out a substantial minority of the transgender population). I’m not going to presume what other men here believe, but the focus on transgender women makes me think that the concern about a transgender male coming into a bathroom as a poster on this board is using a urinal is not high on the list of concerns. So the focus on transgender women is doubly puzzling. Since there are women on this board, maybe we should hear what they have to say. But the one quote from a female athlete that was brought out on this thread (Stanford’s Brooke Forde) was basically “let them compete”. Unfortunately, it is only one data point.
BC
Hi BC, thanks for the kind words. One of my pleasures with the old CEB was the opportunity to express myself with a stridency I would never used in flesh-and-blood life. This site has been deliberately organized to minimize that sort of thing, and so I mostly lurk so as not to become inadvertently controversial.
To the point:
(a) The problem with Jacko's language is that it is so decorous that it becomes impossible to express the point that Martina Navratilova and my daughter-in-law would like to make. It may be offensive to biological males transgendered to women that they are NOT female for all purposes, that they retain a significant athletic advantage. But there is certainly evidence of that point - the position is hardly irrational (in fact, a bit too rational for many) - and you have to have some vocabulary left to make the argument.
(b) To me, the issues are completely practical. I have no interest in any philosophical or theological aspects of this particular subject. Thus, biological females transgendering to male cause no practical issue whatsoever with athletics. They are welcome to try out for all the male teams they want. There is no issue about any athletic advantage. We are definitely in foolish consistency territory here in suggesting common issues and a unisexual rule.
© The same applies to bathroom use. I don't know whether anyone recalls the initial disputes about the issue, but they weren't about etiquette. They were about security. The authoress J.K. Rowling became controversial on the issue in large part because she has been sexually assaulted in a restroom as a young woman, this when they were gender specific, and was gravely concerned about a much larger safety issue if women's rooms were open to men. Likewise, I don't recall any of the opposition dwelling on social niceties. They asked the obvious question of how you prevent predatory males from masking themselves as transgender (no one's going to require a doctor's certificate to use a restroom) for their own purposes - to which there is no good answer.
The obvious, easy answer is to require restroom use by assigned gender, because, as others have remarked, it isn't that big a deal. You can set up a third class of gender neutral restrooms if you like, but as a practical matter they're going to become second men's rooms, because no woman in her right mind would use them. (BTW, I have educated the women in my life never, EVER to get into an elevator alone with a strange man. Incidents are rare, but they do happen, and you can take the next car easily enough. The principle's the same with gender neutral restrooms.)
The reason for the controversy is the strident, insistent assertion of transgender women that they are women for all purposes, so that consigning them to the men's room is insulting, no matter how inconsequential or trivial. Here's where I am back in CEB mode. At the minimum, transgendered individuals are extremely unhappy individuals, so much so that they will undertake surgical mutilation (sic), sterilization, and acceptance of an ongoing hormone regimen to which their phenotype may be completely resistant, just to escape a bodily prison. I'm not going to quarrel, deprecate, argue, or anything else, with their right to identify themselves anyway they like. I'm also aware of the colossal variation in hormonal types in both genders.
But at the end of the day, in practical spheres in which the identification collides with the rights of others - athletics, safety concerns in restrooms - no, I don't think they are women for all purposes. The need for that gender reidentification has to yield to that practicality. Ultimately, I don't think you can change gender as fully, completely, and absolutely as many would like to.
While I think that there may be some transgender females that want to use the female restroom bc they want to fully identify as a female, the ones I personally know want to use it for the same reason that some people oppose it — safety.
I do think there is the possibility a male predator could disguise themselves as a transgendered female to gain access to the bathroom. However, if so motivated, I think they are going to dress as a female regardless of the laws in place — they obviously don’t respect laws to begin with. So, I do respect women wanting to protect their safety, as there is always that possibility of predation like you stated.
However, I think the last ten years have shown that transgendered females are probably more likely to be assaulted using a male restroom. It is not uncommon; in fact, assault in transgendered females has been rising very rapidly. So, I find the transgendered females that I know want to use the women’s restroom mostly for their own safety.
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - BostonCard - 02-19-2022
The irony here is that the terms “cis” and “trans” mean “on the same side” and “across from” respectively. In order to be across from something, there has to be a something to be across from. You can try to state that this is gender at birth, but hormone treatment and gender affirming surgery is not there to wash out the legacy of being assigned a gender at birth; they exist because absent such interventions there is a disconnect between the someone’s gender and an appearance that was shaped by hormones.
I am very sympathetic to the issue of intersex individuals brought up in the threads. My older daughter, who is 46 XX, met one of the mild conditions described: what at first seemed to just be a case of being a “late bloomer”, endocrinologically wound up being a case of her ovaries never turning on, a condition called primary ovarian failure; absent exogenous estrogen therapy, she would have never developed secondary female sexual characteristics, and, unfortunately, is incapable of ovulating, and thus becoming pregnant without reproductive assistance. That would put her on the intersex spectrum, although pretty close on the axis to what we label as female.
However, mental models are useful and necessary for understanding the world around us. There may be cases, such as in the researcher’s lab, where doing away with dichotomous labels to understand the effect of hormone disrupters on rats is necessary. Likewise, when thinking about intersex persons, it may be more useful to view sex as a continuum. But even the prefix “Inter-“ starts with the presupposition that there are two anchors to be “between”. Again, let us not get so caught up in making sure that we are inclusive that we throw out useful descriptors of the world around us even if they are imperfect.
Getting back to my daughter, if we didn’t have a conception of normal female development to anchor our expectations of where she should be developmentally, we would have never known that she wasn’t just a “late bloomer” and wouldn’t have taken her to an endocrinologist, who measured her estrogen and FSH levels, which most closely matched those of a post-menopausal woman (again, without the idea of sex, we wouldn’t know what “normal” levels of these hormones are for what was then a 12-year-old girl). Because some potential serious conditions can lead to primary ovarian failure, including chromosomal abnormalities and autoimmune conditions, she was worked up for them, which is why I know her karyotype. Thankfully, there doesn’t appear to be anything else wrong, and treatment is as simple as putting on an estrogen patch every few days and occasional progesterone pills. This has allowed her to resume the development of secondary sexual characteristics, and made her appearance more closely match her gender. It has also allowed her to put on bone mineral density and other necessary changes in puberty that otherwise wouldn’t occur normally but are necessary for adult health. But, because her own ovaries don’t work, she won’t be able to conceive her own children under current reproductive technology, though if she wanted to, she should be able to become pregnant with an implanted embryo, should she choose.
BC
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - TheWildJacko - 02-19-2022
(02-19-2022, 01:15 PM)spike5882 Wrote:(02-19-2022, 11:10 AM)Genuine Realist Wrote:(02-19-2022, 12:11 AM)BostonCard Wrote: GR, good to hear from you, and I thought of you several times in this thread, as I remembered you had made the “open” versus “Restricted” events many years earlier. I thought your post was good, but I noticed that in your desire to make this a women’s issue, you ignore transgender men. In fact, much of this thread ignores the fact that a substantial proportion of transgender people identify as male (the literature I’ve seen states that transgender women outnumber transgender men 2 to 1, in addition to those who identify as some other category, so we are leaving out a substantial minority of the transgender population). I’m not going to presume what other men here believe, but the focus on transgender women makes me think that the concern about a transgender male coming into a bathroom as a poster on this board is using a urinal is not high on the list of concerns. So the focus on transgender women is doubly puzzling. Since there are women on this board, maybe we should hear what they have to say. But the one quote from a female athlete that was brought out on this thread (Stanford’s Brooke Forde) was basically “let them compete”. Unfortunately, it is only one data point.
BC
Hi BC, thanks for the kind words. One of my pleasures with the old CEB was the opportunity to express myself with a stridency I would never used in flesh-and-blood life. This site has been deliberately organized to minimize that sort of thing, and so I mostly lurk so as not to become inadvertently controversial.
To the point:
(a) The problem with Jacko's language is that it is so decorous that it becomes impossible to express the point that Martina Navratilova and my daughter-in-law would like to make. It may be offensive to biological males transgendered to women that they are NOT female for all purposes, that they retain a significant athletic advantage. But there is certainly evidence of that point - the position is hardly irrational (in fact, a bit too rational for many) - and you have to have some vocabulary left to make the argument.
(b) To me, the issues are completely practical. I have no interest in any philosophical or theological aspects of this particular subject. Thus, biological females transgendering to male cause no practical issue whatsoever with athletics. They are welcome to try out for all the male teams they want. There is no issue about any athletic advantage. We are definitely in foolish consistency territory here in suggesting common issues and a unisexual rule.
© The same applies to bathroom use. I don't know whether anyone recalls the initial disputes about the issue, but they weren't about etiquette. They were about security. The authoress J.K. Rowling became controversial on the issue in large part because she has been sexually assaulted in a restroom as a young woman, this when they were gender specific, and was gravely concerned about a much larger safety issue if women's rooms were open to men. Likewise, I don't recall any of the opposition dwelling on social niceties. They asked the obvious question of how you prevent predatory males from masking themselves as transgender (no one's going to require a doctor's certificate to use a restroom) for their own purposes - to which there is no good answer.
The obvious, easy answer is to require restroom use by assigned gender, because, as others have remarked, it isn't that big a deal. You can set up a third class of gender neutral restrooms if you like, but as a practical matter they're going to become second men's rooms, because no woman in her right mind would use them. (BTW, I have educated the women in my life never, EVER to get into an elevator alone with a strange man. Incidents are rare, but they do happen, and you can take the next car easily enough. The principle's the same with gender neutral restrooms.)
The reason for the controversy is the strident, insistent assertion of transgender women that they are women for all purposes, so that consigning them to the men's room is insulting, no matter how inconsequential or trivial. Here's where I am back in CEB mode. At the minimum, transgendered individuals are extremely unhappy individuals, so much so that they will undertake surgical mutilation (sic), sterilization, and acceptance of an ongoing hormone regimen to which their phenotype may be completely resistant, just to escape a bodily prison. I'm not going to quarrel, deprecate, argue, or anything else, with their right to identify themselves anyway they like. I'm also aware of the colossal variation in hormonal types in both genders.
But at the end of the day, in practical spheres in which the identification collides with the rights of others - athletics, safety concerns in restrooms - no, I don't think they are women for all purposes. The need for that gender reidentification has to yield to that practicality. Ultimately, I don't think you can change gender as fully, completely, and absolutely as many would like to.
While I think that there may be some transgender females that want to use the female restroom bc they want to fully identify as a female, the ones I personally know want to use it for the same reason that some people oppose it — safety.
I do think there is the possibility a male predator could disguise themselves as a transgendered female to gain access to the bathroom. How we, if so motivated, I think they are going to dress as a female regardless of the laws in place — they obviously don’t respect laws to begin with. So, I do respect women wanting to protect their safety, as there is always that possibility of predation like you stated.
However, I think the last ten years have shown that transgendered females are probably more likely to be assaulted using a male restroom. It is not uncommon; in fact, assault in transgendered females has been rising very rapidly. So, I find the transgendered females that I know want to use the women’s restroom mostly for their own safety.
Right. And there's little to no evidence that predators dressing up in disguise to assault women in bathrooms actually occurs. Like you said, it's certainly possible, but it's not something that has been an actual widespread (or even minor) problem up until now.
And I don't think my language is decorous. My point is pretty clear: transgender women are women. If you want to say that some women should be excluded based on certain physical characteristics, that's an argument you can make (though I don't agree). But saying transgender women "are not female" for certain purposes is not the way to go. Transgender women are women. They are not asserting they are women; they are women.
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - Genuine Realist - 02-19-2022
(02-19-2022, 01:17 PM)BostonCard Wrote: The irony here is that the terms “cis” and “trans” mean “on the same side” and “across from” respectively. In order to be across from something, there has to be a something to be across from. You can try to state that this is gender at birth, but hormone treatment and gender affirming surgery is not there to wash out the legacy of being assigned a gender at birth; they exist because absent such interventions there is a disconnect between the someone’s gender and an appearance that was shaped by hormones.That's an interesting story.
I am very sympathetic to the issue of intersex individuals brought up in the threads. My older daughter, who is 46 XX, met one of the mild conditions described: what at first seemed to just be a case of being a “late bloomer”, endocrinologically wound up being a case of her ovaries never turning on, a condition called primary ovarian failure; absent exogenous estrogen therapy, she would have never developed secondary female sexual characteristics, and, unfortunately, is incapable of ovulating, and thus becoming pregnant without reproductive assistance. That would put her on the intersex spectrum, although pretty close on the axis to what we label as female.
However, mental models are useful and necessary for understanding the world around us. There may be cases, such as in the researcher’s lab, where doing away with dichotomous labels to understand the effect of hormone disrupters on rats is necessary. Likewise, when thinking about intersex persons, it may be more useful to view sex as a continuum. But even the prefix “Inter-“ starts with the presupposition that there are two anchors to be “between”. Again, let us not get so caught up in making sure that we are inclusive that we throw out useful descriptors of the world around us even if they are imperfect.
Getting back to my daughter, if we didn’t have a conception of normal female development to anchor our expectations of where she should be developmentally, we would have never known that she wasn’t just a “late bloomer” and wouldn’t have taken her to an endocrinologist, who measured her estrogen and FSH levels, which most closely matched those of a post-menopausal woman (again, without the idea of sex, we wouldn’t know what “normal” levels of these hormones are for what was then a 12-year-old girl). Because some potential serious conditions can lead to primary ovarian failure, including chromosomal abnormalities and autoimmune conditions, she was worked up for them, which is why I know her karyotype. Thankfully, there doesn’t appear to be anything else wrong, and treatment is as simple as putting on an estrogen patch every few days and occasional progesterone pills. This has allowed her to resume the development of secondary sexual characteristics, and made her appearance more closely match her gender. It has also allowed her to put on bone mineral density and other necessary changes in puberty that otherwise wouldn’t occur normally but are necessary for adult health. But, because her own ovaries don’t work, she won’t be able to conceive her own children under current reproductive technology, though if she wanted to, she should be able to become pregnant with an implanted embryo, should she choose.
BC
I am curious whether you sought psychological counseling for her at that time. Girls of that age are extraordinarily worried about their bodies and the onset of purity. So I imagine this was a situation in which counseling might have been useful.
Also, did she ever wonder about her gender?
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - Genuine Realist - 02-19-2022
(02-19-2022, 01:33 PM)TheWildJacko Wrote:(02-19-2022, 01:15 PM)spike5882 Wrote:(02-19-2022, 11:10 AM)Genuine Realist Wrote:(02-19-2022, 12:11 AM)BostonCard Wrote: GR, good to hear from you, and I thought of you several times in this thread, as I remembered you had made the “open” versus “Restricted” events many years earlier. I thought your post was good, but I noticed that in your desire to make this a women’s issue, you ignore transgender men. In fact, much of this thread ignores the fact that a substantial proportion of transgender people identify as male (the literature I’ve seen states that transgender women outnumber transgender men 2 to 1, in addition to those who identify as some other category, so we are leaving out a substantial minority of the transgender population). I’m not going to presume what other men here believe, but the focus on transgender women makes me think that the concern about a transgender male coming into a bathroom as a poster on this board is using a urinal is not high on the list of concerns. So the focus on transgender women is doubly puzzling. Since there are women on this board, maybe we should hear what they have to say. But the one quote from a female athlete that was brought out on this thread (Stanford’s Brooke Forde) was basically “let them compete”. Unfortunately, it is only one data point.
BC
Hi BC, thanks for the kind words. One of my pleasures with the old CEB was the opportunity to express myself with a stridency I would never used in flesh-and-blood life. This site has been deliberately organized to minimize that sort of thing, and so I mostly lurk so as not to become inadvertently controversial.
To the point:
(a) The problem with Jacko's language is that it is so decorous that it becomes impossible to express the point that Martina Navratilova and my daughter-in-law would like to make. It may be offensive to biological males transgendered to women that they are NOT female for all purposes, that they retain a significant athletic advantage. But there is certainly evidence of that point - the position is hardly irrational (in fact, a bit too rational for many) - and you have to have some vocabulary left to make the argument.
(b) To me, the issues are completely practical. I have no interest in any philosophical or theological aspects of this particular subject. Thus, biological females transgendering to male cause no practical issue whatsoever with athletics. They are welcome to try out for all the male teams they want. There is no issue about any athletic advantage. We are definitely in foolish consistency territory here in suggesting common issues and a unisexual rule.
© The same applies to bathroom use. I don't know whether anyone recalls the initial disputes about the issue, but they weren't about etiquette. They were about security. The authoress J.K. Rowling became controversial on the issue in large part because she has been sexually assaulted in a restroom as a young woman, this when they were gender specific, and was gravely concerned about a much larger safety issue if women's rooms were open to men. Likewise, I don't recall any of the opposition dwelling on social niceties. They asked the obvious question of how you prevent predatory males from masking themselves as transgender (no one's going to require a doctor's certificate to use a restroom) for their own purposes - to which there is no good answer.
The obvious, easy answer is to require restroom use by assigned gender, because, as others have remarked, it isn't that big a deal. You can set up a third class of gender neutral restrooms if you like, but as a practical matter they're going to become second men's rooms, because no woman in her right mind would use them. (BTW, I have educated the women in my life never, EVER to get into an elevator alone with a strange man. Incidents are rare, but they do happen, and you can take the next car easily enough. The principle's the same with gender neutral restrooms.)
The reason for the controversy is the strident, insistent assertion of transgender women that they are women for all purposes, so that consigning them to the men's room is insulting, no matter how inconsequential or trivial. Here's where I am back in CEB mode. At the minimum, transgendered individuals are extremely unhappy individuals, so much so that they will undertake surgical mutilation (sic), sterilization, and acceptance of an ongoing hormone regimen to which their phenotype may be completely resistant, just to escape a bodily prison. I'm not going to quarrel, deprecate, argue, or anything else, with their right to identify themselves anyway they like. I'm also aware of the colossal variation in hormonal types in both genders.
But at the end of the day, in practical spheres in which the identification collides with the rights of others - athletics, safety concerns in restrooms - no, I don't think they are women for all purposes. The need for that gender reidentification has to yield to that practicality. Ultimately, I don't think you can change gender as fully, completely, and absolutely as many would like to.
While I think that there may be some transgender females that want to use the female restroom bc they want to fully identify as a female, the ones I personally know want to use it for the same reason that some people oppose it — safety.
I do think there is the possibility a male predator could disguise themselves as a transgendered female to gain access to the bathroom. How we, if so motivated, I think they are going to dress as a female regardless of the laws in place — they obviously don’t respect laws to begin with. So, I do respect women wanting to protect their safety, as there is always that possibility of predation like you stated.
However, I think the last ten years have shown that transgendered females are probably more likely to be assaulted using a male restroom. It is not uncommon; in fact, assault in transgendered females has been rising very rapidly. So, I find the transgendered females that I know want to use the women’s restroom mostly for their own safety.
Right. And there's little to no evidence that predators dressing up in disguise to assault women in bathrooms actually occurs. Like you said, it's certainly possible, but it's not something that has been an actual widespread (or even minor) problem up until now.
And I don't think my language is decorous. My point is pretty clear: transgender women are women. If you want to say that some women should be excluded based on certain physical characteristics, that's an argument you can make (though I don't agree). But saying transgender women "are not female" for certain purposes is not the way to go. Transgender women are women. They are not asserting they are women; they are women.
There's no need for disguise in this day and age. Fewer and fewer women wear skirts, more's the pity. (God, do I miss the miniskirt.) Eliminate the social inhibitors, and no one's going to bother.
But this misses the larger point. If even a small minority of women are bothered by the possibility - and my sense is that it's a much larger number than a small minority, don't their concerns matter? Don't they have the right to be safe from assault, but even worry about the possibility? When did that cease to matter?
(And no, I don't think men's restrooms are dangerous for transgenders. I'm aware of no case in which a sexual assault against a transgender occurred in such a place. Correct me if you find one.)
RE: Ledecky's NCAA record at risk. Should it be? Too Controversial of a Topic? (merged) - TheWildJacko - 02-19-2022
(02-19-2022, 02:22 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote: There's no need for disguise in this day and age. Fewer and fewer women wear skirts, more's the pity. (God, do I miss the miniskirt.) Eliminate the social inhibitors, and no one's going to bother.
But this misses the larger point. If even a small minority of women are bothered by the possibility - and my sense is that it's a much larger number than a small minority, don't their concerns matter? Don't they have the right to be safe from assault, but even worry about the possibility? When did that cease to matter?
(And no, I don't think men's restrooms are dangerous for transgenders. I'm aware of no case in which a sexual assault against a transgender occurred in such a place. Correct me if you find one.)
Absolutely, their concerns matter—but where's the evidence that there is anything to be concerned about? Meanwhile, there is plenty of evidence of transgender people being assaulted in men's restrooms—fair warning, the 2nd link includes some pretty disturbing accounts:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-survey/u-s-transgender-people-harassed-in-public-restrooms-landmark-survey-idUSKBN13X0BK
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/what-its-like-to-use-a-public-bathroom-while-trans-65793/