cis male is a slur

[Lexi Darling]

I strongly suspect a link between your absolute certainty on this issue and your rushing to affirm my identity as a Soviet-born Foucauldian catholic.

I don't honestly feel that bad about being roasted like that, I admit I'm pretty sheltered. I don't know who Foucault is and I have little knowledge of what religions were commonly practiced in the Soviet Union. You're not hurting my feelings by calling me dumb for that, haha.

But my "certainty" on gender dysphoria comes from... you know, having had it.

[jadis]

See, in less PC times, meaning like five minutes ago, your medicalization would've taken a completely different path. 

Also I like how you think the gays and lesbians I know in Montreal and NYC are not "discerning" enough to know the difference between trans and cis. The idea that they don't reify labels and are instead attuned to socially determined movement and shifts between categories is so outside the realm of present day identity politics that it's literally unthinkable from within that realm.

[Lexi Darling]

See, in less PC times, meaning like five minutes ago, your medicalization would've taken a completely different path. 

Also I like how you think the gays and lesbians I know in Montreal and NYC are not "discerning" enough to know the difference between trans and cis. The idea that they don't reify labels and are instead attuned to socially determined movement and shifts between categories is so outside the realm of present day identity politics that it's literally unthinkable from within that realm.

You do realize I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria nearly 20 years ago, right? You also realize that people have been medically transitioning since the 50s, right?

I don't know what your point is by linking that article. If you're trying to say that I would have been seen as "r-slur" in the 70s, not only is that wrong considering that there were plenty of trans people in the 70s, but even if that weren't the case, I don't think "people in the 70s didn't understand shit about trans people" is quite the gotcha you think it is. 

And by "not discerning" I meant moreso that the communities you're talking about who are "pressuring people to be trans" or whatever are not right to try to speak for others' gender identity. I'm literally agreeing with you, I think dysphoria should be diagnosed by a professional and if these queer communities are telling people they are trans at the slightest hint of gender nonconformity, I don't think that's right. But given all the other misinterpretations of trans people's experiences you've posted, I'm not sure I can trust that what you're saying about those communities is the whole story.

[jadis]

Nah it's a cheap gag about how someone as dense as you would've been put in this category back in the day. Not linking it to transness.

The larger point, that medical knowledge is subject to social pressures and shifting moral imperatives, I have no hope of communicating. But I'll try, once again: just because thousands of women in the 1990s got diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder doesn't mean that's a thing. With that vast array of conditions whose symptoms are only accessible linguistically, i.e. through stuff the patient says, the medical paradigm changes all the time, based on things like social pressures and shifting moral imperatives.

[Lexi Darling]

I understand exactly what you're saying, which is that you don't think being trans is legitimate. We've been through this.

You can question this stuff all you want, but none of it will change the fact that transitioning has been a massive improvement to my life in so many ways. I'm living my best life as a woman; I have no time for people who think my happiness is wrong.

[jadis]

I didn't say that and I don't think that. I don't apply any standard of "legitimacy" to people's identities. Everyone should be free to do whatever they want to their own bodies and to conceive of themselves in whatever manner they prefer. 

What I do say is that there are sharp limits to how far a liberal democracy could bend to accommodate this or that identitarian claim without infringing on hard-won rights based not on identity but on biological reality. The categories that inform our laws should be based on sex rather than self-ID. I think that Jessica Yaniv should define herself however she wants to. I also know that the moment we accept the absurdly circular mantra of "trans women are women" as the basis for a legal definition, that's when Jessica Yaniv has a legal basis to coerce femal beauticians into giving her dick and balls a Brazilian wax. That's all I'm saying. 

[Lexi Darling]

Good to know, though you could have fooled me with all your talk earlier in the thread about how trans women are actually misogynistic predatory men.

[jadis]

Some of them clearly are, as are some cis men. The point is to keep both out of single-sex women's spaces.

But that whole unpleasantness only needs to arise once political claims are made.

[Marie Monday]

Not sure about that. One thing you hear all the time in places with huge queer communities like NYC and Montreal is "where have all the butch dykes disappeared?"

There is no equivalence between "pressure to be cis" and the other thing. "Learning to accept yourself as nature made you" is not the same as "you're gay so we'll cut your dick off."

that's a wildly unfair way of exaggerating and phrasing, in the first place because being trans doesn't necessarily mean getting surgery. In which case, identifying as trans can just be a matter of learning to accept yourself as nature made you.

[Marie Monday]

Adding to this, as I said before, when it comes to impactful things like surgery and laws, of course care needs to be taken. But these are practical matters and I believe in most cases there are pragmatic solutions that retain everyone's dignity. What is very telling is that generally, people who voice their worries about these things don't focus on the such solutions, but on the identity aspect, which indicates what they're really concerned with. And that's a fair discussion to be had too, if done respectfully, but not when the two are dishonestly mingled.

When it comes to the identity matter, more good than harm will be done. That's what I was trying to say before. Ultimately, someone's gender should carry as little weight as possible and making gender identity flexible is the most natural way to achieve that imo

[jadis]

There should be absolute clarity regarding the law, that would make "practical solutions" easier to put forward and would disengage them from the political realm. Disengaging from the political realm is an impossibility when discussing say the Canadian penitentiary system, where a self-ID based categorization resulted in women being locked up with male sex offenders. There are things that are nonnegotiable, where no half-way compromise is feasible. Legal definitions cannot be drawn on the basis of self-ID.

I never focus on anyone's identity. I have focused on Lia Thomas's penis being unleashed in the female locker room and on Jessica Yaniv's cock and balls vis-à-vis the whole vaxing situation. That's not identity. You're born with this shit. I have it too, just like Lia Thomas and Jessica Yaniv, and I don't even know or care what my fucking identity is.

[Lexi Darling]

I thought the issue with Lia was that her AMAB body gave her an unfair advantage in swimming, not that she made cis women uncomfortable in the locker room.

[Marie Monday]

@jadis I'm not talking about half-way compromises. I'm talking exactly about not focusing on gender when you don't have to make things about gender, and yet people always do that; the question of whether someone with a penis who identifies as a woman is a 'real' woman does not have to enter into these solutions, but you were talking about that too. I'll admit to not having read the discussion very thoroughly though, so I could be misjudging things

[jadis]

There can be more than one issue, as the case of Lia Thomas attests.

"We were not forewarned beforehand that we would be sharing a locker room with Lia. We did not give our consent, they did not ask for our consent, but in that locker room we turned around, and there's a 6'4" biological man dropping his pants and watching us undress, and we were exposed to male genitalia," Gaines said.

nother important aspect of this is the concerns of the female swimmers allegedly being ignored by UPenn officials. The letter speaks of incidents in which team members allegedly "have raised their concerns with the coach, trying to get Thomas ousted from the female locker room, but got nowhere."

"'Multiple swimmers have raised it, multiple different times,' a UPenn swimmer stated. 'But we were basically told that we could not ostracize Lia by not having her in the locker room and that there's nothing we can do about it, that we basically have to roll over and accept it, or we cannot use our own locker room.'"

Imagine that, if you will, for a second — female swimmers must either accept a male walking around naked, exposing male genitalia, or else be forced not to use the female locker room.

"'It's really upsetting because Lia doesn't seem to care how it makes anyone else feel. ... The 35 of us are just supposed to accept being uncomfortable in our own space and locker room, for like, the feelings of one.'"

[jadis]

@jadis I'm not talking about half-way compromises. I'm talking exactly about not focusing on gender when you don't have to make things about gender, and yet people always do that; the question of whether someone with a penis who identifies as a woman is a 'real' woman does not have to enter into these solutions, but you were talking about that too. I'll admit to not having read the discussion very thoroughly though, so I could be misjudging things

Fair enough. I usually refer to "biological women" cause that's what I mean but there was one slip: the one time I got annoyed in this thread, it was when Tore spoke about "mental gymnastics" re something that's to me as straightforward as it comes, i.e. keeping biological men out of same-sex female spaces. 

Beyond insisting on the biological basis for legal definitions, I'm no more invested in any idea of a "real woman" (what would this even mean) than in the idea of a "real man" or whatever. These are outdated and violent gender ideologies (and btw I happy to have occasion to use the word "gender" in its original sense, as it was used by 1970s feminists).