I have to wonder: if sex is in a spectrum, how can one “identify as a woman” (or a man)? What is a woman if there is no bright line here? Isn’t the point of sex being on a spectrum to say that almost nobody is a “woman” or a “man” because we’re all someplace on a sliding scale and have aspects of both? Sure, there would be a few Barbies or Ken’s who have only characteristics of a “man” or a “woman,” but most of us would not be either.
In that case, why are so many heretofore “girls” like my daughter suddenly deciding they are “boys?” Shouldn’t they just be realizing they are not really “girls” or “boys?” And isn’t that already true of most of us?
And why are some “male” convicts insisting that they are “female?” Wouldn’t we simply have a single prison for all people? Same for sports, changing rooms and bathrooms?
In other words, if sex is a spectrum, most of our arguments about women’s rights end with the idea that there are almost no women in the world - so only the few Barbies might get women’s rights and the rest of us are basically in the same boat.
And there would be no reason for medical transition from one sex to the other since we all fall on this spectrum. Sure, one could have cosmetic surgery to move further down the scale in a given direction, but not based on a “gender identity” since the lack of “male” and “female” (again, except the Barbie’s and Ken’s, but anyone seeking these interventions would already prove they are not Barbie or Ken because they have a conflict between their body parts and mind which indicates they must be a mixed bag or somewhere on the spectrum) means there is nothing to transition into.
In sum, the whole notion of sex being on a spectrum destroys both women’s rights and any notion of a gender identity (the latter of which I. could do without because it makes no sense to me for other reasons).
If sex is on a spectrum, we need to forget about dividing anything by “male” and “female” since very few people are those things.
Lastly, I agree they some dsd’s slightly complicate the ability to neatly divide male from female - but more than 99% of all people can be easily divided in this manner. I would suggest that we do allow the very few with a medical disorder that makes their sex actually unclear choose which sex to identify as - or opt out of such classifications - and we accept that these people exist and have every right to participate fully in society. For the rest of us, we need to use biology to divide unless we truly believe we don’t ever need safe women’s spaces or sports - which I think would be a terrible mistake for obvious reasons of safety and fairness.
As for medical transition, these cosmetic choices to appear as the opposite sex are dangerous and experimental. We need to stop pretending this is life-saving medicine, and treat it as what it is. We need to stop glorifying it.
Sorry to go on and on, but this whole thing drives me crazy!
It's such an exercise in futility to argue about the absurd premise that the existence of women and men is a cultural fiction. All I need to know is that men commit 97 % of all violent crimes and women and little boys and girls are the least able to defend themselves from male violence.
you are far too reasonable to make sense in "trans world".
they are into fantasy. or, collective delusion. also: they love gas-lighting the rest of the world and the idea that we are re-writing all our policies to "accommodate" this nonsense should only be a lame joke on late-night t.v.
Instead, our daughters will lose fellowships to boy-competing-as-grils. Our daughters will have boys in their showers in gyms and locker-rooms. Our daughters will be schooled to NEVER challenge a man's right to be in her private and intimate spaces.
This makes me burn. Democrats need to wake the F up.
It's true people don't know about or understand the Biden Admin re-writing of Title IX. When I bring it up people think I'm making up stories ... like, just for the fun of it? just to stir up trouble? ... they don't know, don't understand and don't want to be enlightened about it either.
I guess when their daughters come home talking about boys in the shower room or a school trip when they shared a hotel room with a boy ... maybe then they'll start to wake up, but maybe not because school policy will strictly forbid actually stating that Joanie is really Johnny.
I'd assume the Biden Title IX policy will face court-room challenges but I haven't heard of any lawsuits yet.
This new academic initiative is very welcome and significant and widens the pool of "expert" statements that lawyers can use in lawsuits.
Yeah, this is already happening in a lot of schools & universities. My daughter was permitted to have a (trans-identified) male roommate in a women’s dorm! When I called the school to point out that they had just non-consensually made a women’s dorm a co-ed dorm, the school said. “We let students identify themselves blah blah because kind.” Kids on 8th grade field trips are being housed in hotel rooms with opposite-sex BED MATES!
Aaron Kimberly brings a wonderfully subtle understanding to these issues, which I appreciate. For example, as reported by Lisa, “Kimberly saw many young lesbians longing to change their sex characteristics because they felt they couldn’t change the culture. If they gained a deeper understanding of the interplay between culture and biology, sometimes they’d decide not to change their bodies. Sometimes their embodied gender identity would shift.” I was speaking with a friend the other day who was “intellectually” intrigued by the notion that butch lesbians might be happier if they transitioned. I asked her if she understood what transitioning entailed, which she greeted with a blank stare. Though I can’t know what was in her mind, from the context I believe she had no idea. Among other things, it led me to wonder, again, why it is so hard for people to see that it would be far better for all of us to push for acceptance of all human variation, just as it comes, rather than advocating medicalization as the only option.
Glad to see the topic finally discussed in the open in a major university setting. Dreger's contribution was disappointing. Alex Byrne never fails to impress.
We in the choir already understand the policy implications of promoting self-ID ideology over biological reality (prisons, sports, schools, etc). I'm not sure the "debate" moved the needle for others.
Dreger did the really irritating thing that some scholars do, which is to focus on edge cases & insist that we must now center the world around them (intersex cases) rather than the very vast majority. “My tiny number of exceptions require massive revisions in what you think you know.” No, thanks—please piss off.
Since Nadine Strossen has been a ACLU leading lawyer for decades to protect and promote pornography as free speech we know where her political sympathies lie - and it's not with women. It's with the men who are consumers of porn and buyers of prostituted women. There is also some indication that heterosexual and gay men like Andrew Long Chew are/ have been influenced by transgender and Sissy porn. Women like Strossen have long been committed to upholding the interests of male supremacy under the guise of freedom of choice and they choose spend their careers supporting misogynistic cultural practices like pornography and prostitution.
The government of Holly Lawford-Smith's home state of Victoria, like the Australian Federal Government, is controlled by well-meaning social democrats whose desire to avoid potentially "harmful" wording in questions put to medical program participants trumps the need for scientifically relevant information about causal relationships between differences in objective biological characteristics (i.e. sex) and e.g. differences in responses to vaccines, or differences in the incidence of certain cancers. I am still waiting for our Federal Health Minister to reply to my question about why the participant questionnaire for our national bowel cancer testing program asks "Which gender do you identify as?" but doesn't ask about our biological sex.
"But does that mean there aren’t rules, I wondered?"
Yes, Virginia, there ARE rules. And if the man-made ones are so warped by sectarians that they no longer support a free and just civilization, the laws of brute reality will take over soon enough. (Am trying to riff off of that famous editorial; but more and more often no one gets my jokes 'cause they've never read whatever I'm referencing .
I have to wonder: if sex is in a spectrum, how can one “identify as a woman” (or a man)? What is a woman if there is no bright line here? Isn’t the point of sex being on a spectrum to say that almost nobody is a “woman” or a “man” because we’re all someplace on a sliding scale and have aspects of both? Sure, there would be a few Barbies or Ken’s who have only characteristics of a “man” or a “woman,” but most of us would not be either.
In that case, why are so many heretofore “girls” like my daughter suddenly deciding they are “boys?” Shouldn’t they just be realizing they are not really “girls” or “boys?” And isn’t that already true of most of us?
And why are some “male” convicts insisting that they are “female?” Wouldn’t we simply have a single prison for all people? Same for sports, changing rooms and bathrooms?
In other words, if sex is a spectrum, most of our arguments about women’s rights end with the idea that there are almost no women in the world - so only the few Barbies might get women’s rights and the rest of us are basically in the same boat.
And there would be no reason for medical transition from one sex to the other since we all fall on this spectrum. Sure, one could have cosmetic surgery to move further down the scale in a given direction, but not based on a “gender identity” since the lack of “male” and “female” (again, except the Barbie’s and Ken’s, but anyone seeking these interventions would already prove they are not Barbie or Ken because they have a conflict between their body parts and mind which indicates they must be a mixed bag or somewhere on the spectrum) means there is nothing to transition into.
In sum, the whole notion of sex being on a spectrum destroys both women’s rights and any notion of a gender identity (the latter of which I. could do without because it makes no sense to me for other reasons).
If sex is on a spectrum, we need to forget about dividing anything by “male” and “female” since very few people are those things.
Lastly, I agree they some dsd’s slightly complicate the ability to neatly divide male from female - but more than 99% of all people can be easily divided in this manner. I would suggest that we do allow the very few with a medical disorder that makes their sex actually unclear choose which sex to identify as - or opt out of such classifications - and we accept that these people exist and have every right to participate fully in society. For the rest of us, we need to use biology to divide unless we truly believe we don’t ever need safe women’s spaces or sports - which I think would be a terrible mistake for obvious reasons of safety and fairness.
As for medical transition, these cosmetic choices to appear as the opposite sex are dangerous and experimental. We need to stop pretending this is life-saving medicine, and treat it as what it is. We need to stop glorifying it.
Sorry to go on and on, but this whole thing drives me crazy!
It's such an exercise in futility to argue about the absurd premise that the existence of women and men is a cultural fiction. All I need to know is that men commit 97 % of all violent crimes and women and little boys and girls are the least able to defend themselves from male violence.
And that "men" includes men who call themselves women!
Thank you! That goes without saying.
you are far too reasonable to make sense in "trans world".
they are into fantasy. or, collective delusion. also: they love gas-lighting the rest of the world and the idea that we are re-writing all our policies to "accommodate" this nonsense should only be a lame joke on late-night t.v.
Instead, our daughters will lose fellowships to boy-competing-as-grils. Our daughters will have boys in their showers in gyms and locker-rooms. Our daughters will be schooled to NEVER challenge a man's right to be in her private and intimate spaces.
This makes me burn. Democrats need to wake the F up.
Well said!
It's true people don't know about or understand the Biden Admin re-writing of Title IX. When I bring it up people think I'm making up stories ... like, just for the fun of it? just to stir up trouble? ... they don't know, don't understand and don't want to be enlightened about it either.
I guess when their daughters come home talking about boys in the shower room or a school trip when they shared a hotel room with a boy ... maybe then they'll start to wake up, but maybe not because school policy will strictly forbid actually stating that Joanie is really Johnny.
I'd assume the Biden Title IX policy will face court-room challenges but I haven't heard of any lawsuits yet.
This new academic initiative is very welcome and significant and widens the pool of "expert" statements that lawyers can use in lawsuits.
The lawsuits have begun: https://www.iwf.org/2024/04/29/female-athletes-college-students-parents-state-attorneys-general-join-independent-womens-forum-lawsuit-bidens-title-ix-rewrite/
Yeah, this is already happening in a lot of schools & universities. My daughter was permitted to have a (trans-identified) male roommate in a women’s dorm! When I called the school to point out that they had just non-consensually made a women’s dorm a co-ed dorm, the school said. “We let students identify themselves blah blah because kind.” Kids on 8th grade field trips are being housed in hotel rooms with opposite-sex BED MATES!
Aaron Kimberly brings a wonderfully subtle understanding to these issues, which I appreciate. For example, as reported by Lisa, “Kimberly saw many young lesbians longing to change their sex characteristics because they felt they couldn’t change the culture. If they gained a deeper understanding of the interplay between culture and biology, sometimes they’d decide not to change their bodies. Sometimes their embodied gender identity would shift.” I was speaking with a friend the other day who was “intellectually” intrigued by the notion that butch lesbians might be happier if they transitioned. I asked her if she understood what transitioning entailed, which she greeted with a blank stare. Though I can’t know what was in her mind, from the context I believe she had no idea. Among other things, it led me to wonder, again, why it is so hard for people to see that it would be far better for all of us to push for acceptance of all human variation, just as it comes, rather than advocating medicalization as the only option.
Glad to see the topic finally discussed in the open in a major university setting. Dreger's contribution was disappointing. Alex Byrne never fails to impress.
We in the choir already understand the policy implications of promoting self-ID ideology over biological reality (prisons, sports, schools, etc). I'm not sure the "debate" moved the needle for others.
Dreger did the really irritating thing that some scholars do, which is to focus on edge cases & insist that we must now center the world around them (intersex cases) rather than the very vast majority. “My tiny number of exceptions require massive revisions in what you think you know.” No, thanks—please piss off.
To be honest, Dreger's comments were surprising. She knows better (I think, or always thought). But I appreciated her intellectual integrity.
" I wonder how many times it needs to happen for such people to care?" Indeed!
Since Nadine Strossen has been a ACLU leading lawyer for decades to protect and promote pornography as free speech we know where her political sympathies lie - and it's not with women. It's with the men who are consumers of porn and buyers of prostituted women. There is also some indication that heterosexual and gay men like Andrew Long Chew are/ have been influenced by transgender and Sissy porn. Women like Strossen have long been committed to upholding the interests of male supremacy under the guise of freedom of choice and they choose spend their careers supporting misogynistic cultural practices like pornography and prostitution.
The government of Holly Lawford-Smith's home state of Victoria, like the Australian Federal Government, is controlled by well-meaning social democrats whose desire to avoid potentially "harmful" wording in questions put to medical program participants trumps the need for scientifically relevant information about causal relationships between differences in objective biological characteristics (i.e. sex) and e.g. differences in responses to vaccines, or differences in the incidence of certain cancers. I am still waiting for our Federal Health Minister to reply to my question about why the participant questionnaire for our national bowel cancer testing program asks "Which gender do you identify as?" but doesn't ask about our biological sex.
Thank you, nice and lively summary.
"But does that mean there aren’t rules, I wondered?"
Yes, Virginia, there ARE rules. And if the man-made ones are so warped by sectarians that they no longer support a free and just civilization, the laws of brute reality will take over soon enough. (Am trying to riff off of that famous editorial; but more and more often no one gets my jokes 'cause they've never read whatever I'm referencing .
. sigh (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus) Anyway, was watching the recording, and recognized your voice during the Q&A straight off! Thanks for being there!