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One of the axis the transgender debate swirls around is access to washrooms and change-rooms. The argument from the TRA’s is simply this: A person should use the washroom of the gender (sex) they identify as. Please note I put the word sex in parenthesis there as it is one of huge linguistic obstacles in the argumentative form of the the debate, more on this aspect later (as in different post later).
The problems with this argument are multitudinous, but I hope to cover the main points of contention. Firstly the immutability of sex in the human species, secondly the effect of socialization on males and females, and thirdly the sex classes and how they interact in society.
It should go without saying, but yet it must be said – One cannot change their natal sex. Therefore it does not matter how many gendered stereotypical practices and mannerisms a man adopts, his quest to be a woman will never come to fruition. He shall always be male, despite whatever feelings of gender he happens to possess. Now certainly, given enough money and time under the plastic surgeon’s knife, a man can be made to look like a women, but looking like and being a woman reside in two completely different categories. Plus, there are no standards defining what a transwoman actually is and with proposed self-id laws all it takes is a simple declaration by man to say he is a woman. The potential for abusive males to use self-id to gain access to female only spaces is a clear and present danger to females in society.
Secondly from birth, males and females are treated differently by their parents, peers, and people in society. The patriarchal gender norms in which we are inculcated with do not magically get programed on day, but are a result of a constant exposure to a set of normative values, that by default, channel men into dominant positions and roles in society and women into submissive ones.
The life long exposure to this unequal gendered treatment is not forgotten with a simple declaration of gender. Thus, it is fairly common to see TRA’s being quite vocal and aggressive in their activism because as males they are used to their voices being heard the first time and their opinion actually mattering in social situations. So if the male socialization remains intact even after the nebulous transition process – whatever it may be – then the corrosive patriarchal attitudes toward women also remain intact, along with all the male behaviours (objectification, predation, et al). that necessitate female only spaces in the first place.
Thirdly, since we cannot change our sex class the assumptions of females regarding men identifying as women remain the same. Males are responsible for the vast majority of violence perpetrated against women in society, how they ‘identify’ with their gender is irrelevant to the safety of females. This reason alone is enough to preserve single sex spaces in society.
The twitter snip is just one facet of what men will say to justify the invasion of female spaces. The assertion Owen Jones make is risible from the start, because in most cases we can successfully identify members of the opposite sex. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years as it is part of the necessary task of keeping the species going. So no, no Genital Inspection Unit is necessary, men just need to keep out of female spaces.
Our second installment here at DWR of what those wacky transactivists have to argue with when confronted with people who will not take the knee and accept the tenets of their misogynistic gender religion.
I have yet to see any feminist (gender critical or not) state that trans people do not deserve human rights. It would be very nice to see a list of rights that trans individuals do not already possess under the law. One must keep in mind though, that forcing others to accept and play along with your personal identity (gender or otherwise) is *NOT* a right.
You may indeed feel like you are 100% the opposite sex, but no provision in a free society, forces people to share that view with you.
So, like many of the TRA statements, they are arguing against ideas and statements that have not been made by their opponents. The straw is heavy in most cases, as here is what Rowling actually has said –
So. remember folks to argue cogently, please try and address what the other side is saying, not your (often emotive) ‘hot take’ on what you think they are saying.
The profession can change, the venue can change, but the gender-woo methodology remains the same. Personally attack the person who dares to speak about biological reality, libel and defame their character while poisoning the well as to prevent discussion of an import issue facing women.
The bullshit doesn’t change. It is especially disheartening to see professionals whose business is to be thoughtful and charitable completely abandon those principles in order to defend normative patriarchal values.
“A debate has arisen among philosophers concerning a couple of papers published recently in the prestigious journal Philosophical Studies. The first paper, “Are women adult human females?” by Alex Byrne (January, 2020) attempts to refute what Byrne identifies as “the orthodox view among philosophers,” that “the category woman is a social category, like the categories, wife, firefighter, and shoplifter,” rather than “a biological category, like the categories vertebrate, mammal, or adult human female.” Byrne argues woman is a biological category, that to be a woman is to be an adult adult human female. The second paper, “Escaping the Natural Attitude About Gender,” by Robin Dembroff (forthcoming, but available already online), attempts to discredit Byrne’s argument.
The controversy surrounding the two articles does not concern the arguments themselves but the fact that Dembroff’s article includes an ad hominem against Byrne in which Dembroff effectively accuses Byrne of bigotry against transsexuals despite the fact that there is nothing in Byrne’s paper to support such a charge. The editor of the journal, Stewart Cohen, resigned in protest because he wanted to publish an apology for printing an article that included defamatory rhetoric, rhetoric which should never have made it past the journal’s referees, but the publisher of the journal, Springer, refused to allow him to do that.
Philosophers are not generally known for being warm and fuzzy. But Dembroff’s paper represents a new low in levels of civility. Usually, philosophers aim their barbs at an opponent’s cognitive abilities. Even then they aspire to some subtlety. They’ll intimate that an opponent is feebleminded, but they rarely say so directly. It’s not simply that it’s rude. It’s unprofessional. It’s rare, for the same reason, for a philosopher to directly accuse another of being a “shoddy scholar.” It’s rarer still, again, for the same reason, for a philosopher to accuse another of being immoral. Yet Robin Dembroff has advanced both charges against Byrne.
The debate amongst philosophers surrounding what Byrne has dubbed GenderGate, focuses on a brief passage at the end of Dembroff’s article. The line is:
Byrne’s paper fundamentally is an unscholarly attempt to vindicate a political slogan [“women are adult human females”] that is currently being used to undermine civic rights and respect for trans persons. And it is here that I return to Byrne’s advice to question the motivations behind this debate.”If someone is personally heavily invested in the truth of [some proposition] p,” Byrne writes, “it is prudent to treat [their] claim that p is true with some initial caution.” I agree. So we may ask: What are the motivations of someone who would so confidently insert themself into this high-stakes discourse while so ill-informed?
That is, Dembroff is insinuating here that Byrne has an anti-trans agenda that he is trying to advance in an scholarly paper published in an academic journal even though, again, there is nothing in Byrne’s paper to support such a charge.”
The Gender-woo really needs to stop. :/
Catch the rest of the essay on Counterpunch.
This is Patriarchy 2.0 in action.
The concerns of females in society are put in last place because a tiny minority of oppressed males are more important. :/
How not to run an academic institution. My Alma mater is demonstrating some worrisome (read batshit fucking stupid) decisions regarding firing female staff for having the absolute gall of teaching the ‘unorthodox’ view that biological sex is important to women and their struggle against patriarchy.
Her feminist views are apparently causing a small segment of students to feel unsafe and thus because if we are not walking on eggshells around entitled gender deluded males one must be doing the whole academic thing wrong.
“Something very wrong has happened at the University of Alberta. A professor has been fired from part of her academic job for views on sex and gender that break with current orthodoxy.
In late March, Kathleen Lowrey, an associate professor at the University of Alberta, was asked to resign from her role as the Department of Anthropology’s associate chair, undergraduate programs, on the basis that one or more students had gone to the University’s Office of Safe Disclosure and Human Rights and the Dean of Students, André Costopolous, to complain about her without filing formal complaints. All Professor Lowrey has been told is that she is somehow making the learning environment “unsafe” for these students because she is a feminist who holds “gender critical” views.
Apparently, Lowrey’s very openness about her views is a problem. Should a course have gender or sex as a central theme, on day 1 she offers a summary of her views along with the declaration that no student need agree with her about any of it, as she did this year with her course “Anthropology of Women.” As she cleaves to a feminism that asserts the continuing importance of biological sex and feminist projects of resisting patriarchal oppression, her views put her out of step with much current thinking about the nature of gender, which from the seminal work of Judith Butler forward takes sex to be a social construct. Lowrey also posts statements related to her views on her office door — something she is entitled to do. She contends that in asking her to resign from her service role the University is endorsing ideological conformity.
Lowrey refused to resign from her service role and insisted that if the University wished to dismiss her from it, it would need to put its reasons for doing so in writing. She subsequently received a letter from the Dean of Arts Lesley Cormack dismissing her from her service role without offering any specifics as to why. The letter simply declares that the Dean believes that “it is not in the best interests of the students or the University” for Lowrey to continue in it.”
This is unbelievable. Exactly what part of a healthy part of academic debate does this help?
“The University of Alberta takes the position that Lowrey had to be dismissed from her service role “for the good of the department” because at least one student claims that for the University to let her continue in the role would be for it to run the risk of the department losing students to another field of study. The argument, in effect, is that Lowrey could not be allowed to let the Department suffer a financial penalty for her views. (In the University of Alberta’s budget model, government funding “follows” students to the departments in which they take their courses.) With its worry that Lowrey’s views will have financial consequences for the Department of Anthropology, the University of Alberta lets an unfortunate development of the academy over the last few decades, in which students have become tuition-paying “customers” upon whom universities rely for more and more of their revenues, come into direct conflict with academic freedom principles. This is a very serious problem. No department at any university in Canada should be taking the position that it has to concern itself with how a professor’s intellectual views may affect a department’s bottom-line.
Finally, the University of Alberta takes the position that it had to dismiss Lowrey from her service role because if it did not do so students would feel that the University “cared more” about “supporting” the professor than it did about them. This is a terrible line of reasoning, which pits students against a professor when what ought to be of paramount concern to all is the commitment to intellectual engagement and critical scrutiny of ideas as fundamental to the University’s flourishing. Quite simply, at a university, unorthodox or controversial views must be actively debated, and never suppressed, if the university is to meet its societal obligations.
The University of Alberta needs to restore Professor Lowrey to her role as associate chair, undergraduate programs, in the Department of Anthropology, and university administrators elsewhere need to make sure that they do not fall into the University of Alberta’s mistake. It is essential that our universities never become homes for orthodoxy of any kind. “Dogma is bad for people,” writes UBC professor emeritus William Bruneau elsewhere on this blog. But for universities dogma is much, much worse. It is anathema to the academic mission.”
Kathleen Lowrey needs to reinstated yesterday. This sort of totalitarian anti-academic thinking has to stop.
Oh and email the Dean about this travesty – artsdean@ualberta.ca
The amount of pandering going to male delusions of gender remains quite firmly out of control.
A segment of the left has really lost the plot and gone of the rails. The idea that feelings are more important that material reality, that one should expect others to validate your personal choice and that sex is changeable have all originated from the political wing I used to call my home. It was bullshite like this that made me distance myself from the so called ‘progressives’ because much of their ideology is a regressive, male-centric circus shit shitshow of tragically absurd assertions and baseless presuppositions. Meghan Murphy writes on the Feminism Current about the superciliousness of the woke left:
“Last year, Sessi Kuwabara Blanchard published an article at Vice complaining that his heterosexual male friends didn’t want to sleep with him, writing:
“I’m single this Valentine’s Day, and I feel like shit. I feel undesirable, and I feel powerless to change that. Most of all, I want to know why the guys I crush on, namely cis, straight, male 20-somethings, won’t fuck me.”
When Blanchard discussed this problem with his friends, they tried to ease him into the truth, letting Blanchard know that pestering his male friends about this would only make him feel bad: “They said the guys I like won’t fuck me because they’re straight.” Blanchard wrote this off as “transphobia” — his friends were *gasp* “implying that heterosexuality is male attraction to women,” meaning he didn’t “make the cut.”
Despite Blanchard’s insistence that “desire is fluid,” the categories of “gay” and “straight” exist for a reason: this describes the vast majority of people’s sexual preferences. And there is very little politicizing can do about this.
A hard-to-hear reality I’ve made clear many times is that the crux of transgenderism, for many who identify as trans, is delusion. And that trans identity rests on others — the “woke,” as it were — playing along. When we use preferred pronouns, we participate in this, as we do when we refer to trans-identified males as women, and trans-identified females as male. Many claim this is simply an issue of being kind, respectful, and polite, but, in the end, these lies hurt trans-identified people, as well as the rest of us. The result is a group of males left wondering why, despite being told they are literally women, are not viewed as or treated as literal women. And women are left without rights, boundaries, or the ability to speak the truth.
The woke, I’m sorry to tell you, are liars. This is not a coincidence; it is the basis of their politics.
The answers to the questions asked by the woke are easy. But they pretend there is some long, deep discussion to be had about, as Blanchard puts it, “what it would take for someone to want to fuck me.”
The question is wrong, of course, and intentionally so. And the answer is obvious. If we were to engage with the truth, Blanchard and Violet would be less hurt by the answers. Instead, we’ve decided the lie is what is “nice.”
The time for ‘nice’ is fucking over. Entitled males need to step back and get themselves waaaaay back to their own lane.
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