Terry Gilliam, shut your festering gob, you tit

@Surplus to Requirements, Observer of the Vast Blight-Wing Enstupidation

You can judge Brexit by the company it keeps: troglodytes like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. If it’s strongly the preferred position of racists and cypro-fascists that alone justifies extreme skepticism of it.

In fairness that’s a fairly weak argument. There is a strong anti-EU streak on the traditional left within Britain (well specifically England) including Jeremy Corbyn, Bob Crow and Tony Benn (a brief Google search will reveal articles in left-leaning publications such as The Guardian and New Statesman detailing the reason for that. The very opposite of “racist and crypto-fascists”. And on the flip side we have seen when the British racists have taken a stance on things (such as the Iraq war) which many progressives shared (even if for different reasons.)

As for Terry – he’s joining the ranks of trying to be an Edgelord in his later years.

His comments on the Black Panther movie were equally foolish.

Part of what many trans* activists and feminists are trying to do is reduce forced definitions of what it means to be a man or a woman. That is, you don’t need to have had one specific set of experiences to be a man or woman or any other gender.

I know that is the intention, which is why I have concerns that an *unintentional* consequence could happen. I’ve explained why I feel sometimes have felt othered because I do not fit in the stereotypes, with the sort of attitude that if I don’t wish to respond as a stereotypical woman, then I should call myself something other than a woman.

You’re not some poor misunderstood soul who just can’t communicate clearly. Let me assure you that you’re communicating very clearly. You’re getting pushback because you’re wrong. You’ve been wrong repeatedly in this thread, as many have already demonstrated.

I disagree. Some of the issues are matter of opinion that harm none so do not involve being right or wrong per se. I was wrong to use ciswoman and transwoman and have been consciously not using that term anymore.

What I’m saying is that the things (like murder victims) you are assuming I give a shit at all about the work of police and coroners. I don’t. I only care there is a delay getting justice for victims or for families to know what happened to their loved one. It’s not about the amount of work someone has to do, it’s that families have to wait longer because of the work. But if you assume I don’t care about the victims, as you have, then you could view that comment to think I am caring about the police or coroners. If you assume I care very much about the victims of violence, you would see that comments about the difficulties of identification are about the harm it causes the victims and potentially protects perpetrators.

If I said “I think assisted suicide should be legal” and you think I believe in eugenics, you might assume that I think those who are ill or a “burden” should kill themselves. That is assuming the worst possible intention. Assuming the best intention would be to think (correctly) that I think people have a right to self-determination and should not be forced to undergo unimaginable pain if they don’t want to.

Before you launch another sixteen paragraph comment full of gaslighting, bad-faith accusations, and transparent emotional manipulation, please be aware that we know what you’re doing.

I am not trying to gaslight, emotionally manipulate or anything. I am trying to be as clear as possible, stated up front that I am discussing in good faith and asking that the same come from others. If this is another group that is unable to do that, that’s the way it is. This is what I mean when I previously mentioned the difficulty in discussing this topic with people because of accusations.

If you assume I want to harm trans people, then anything I say will be colored by that. If you assume I want everyone to live happy and full lives in a way that makes them feel good, it changes the tone. Tone is difficult to perceive on the internet, so explicitly stating tone is an attempt to compensate for that. That’s what the endless disclaimers and explanations are, an attempt to demonstrate the tone and place I am coming from.

I’m not assuming anything. I specifically asked you if that was what you meant, because that was the way your comments were coming across to me and I wanted clarification.

You asked, but you went off on it for a while first, with the assumption that I meant the worst way to see it.

Also, now you’re saying that we should treat people differently when they’re acting in good or bad faith? That wasn’t your position when it came to people who identity as black women in bad faith.

Technically, I was advocating for treating everyone as though they were behaving in good faith, no matter whether they were or not.

Or is your position that we should just be nice and civilized towards everyone regardless of their intentions?

Nice if possible, always civilized, if they are behaving in a civil way in return. Even with vehement disagreement, more exchange of ideas happen when you behave in a civilized fashion. I subscribe to the philosophy of attack institutions, be kind to people. (typically in the context of racism, but I think it works here too). I know that it is not a popular philosophy because many people think there are people who are not worthy of civility because of their beliefs that can be downright horrific. But if they are willing to have a civil discussion about it, I think there is benefit to it, because the exposure will help that person in the long one (the person with terrible beliefs).

There was a documentary recently made by an Islamic young woman who was following anti-muslim and white supremacists. She was incredibly brave in what she did and how she interacted with them, and at the end, nearly every man she profiled had left the movement. That is success and progress, IMO. It’s not fair that she should have to do that, but by doing it, she made the world a better place and had a positive impact on those people.

If you don’t wish to come across as one of these folks, I would recommend specifically saying why you’re bringing up a particular point, instead of just going “hey I’ve got this concern” (and, no, slapping disclaimers on everything isn’t good enough. See: J.K. Rowling’s tweet about “identify however you want, wear what you like, but [transphobic bullshit]”. Folks acting in bad faith like disclaimers too!)

I don’t know how to express that always until someone brings up the negative point of view to me, because I can’t see that way of viewing the concern, it literally doesn’t occur to me, so I use the disclaimers as a way to try and explain that I am not coming from a position of trying to oppress them more or make their lives more difficult, I’m thinking of issues I can see that even if they can’t be solved now, or aren’t fully realized now, they could go that way, depending on how things happen in the future. But if people think about those pitfalls, then they can avoid them or correct them better. Telling someone there is a patch of black ice on a street isn’t telling them to not go to their location, it’s a telling them there’s a patch of black ice on the street and even if they weren’t able to see it, someone else has and to be aware of it. The person might even be able to say “Oh, I live nearby and I could put gravel on it to make it less dangerous”. (which I might never have thought of myself since I didn’t live near the patch of black ice)

Hopefully that makes sense as an analogy.

I mean, if your definition of race consists of only skin color and physical features and none of the associated cultural and historical baggage associated with it, then I’m not going to be able to convince you of my point. Do as you like.

It’s more that I see it as being similar to sex, that there is cultural and historical baggage for that as well, so I think it is less dissimilar than you.

is not a compelling argument and is frankly a bit tone deaf.

I definitely can see that. I was trying to make an analogy to explain why I viewed sex and race with similar baggage and that both can be altered by change in circumstance, which gives them *different* baggage. The only reason I switched it, is because there are additional difficulties and problems with the history of CPS and other agencies removing children of color and so it wouldn’t be able to be a “clean” example – and sometimes the issue that I was trying to isolate are able to be viewed when they aren’t surrounded by all the other problems.

I’m not sold on how people being able to more freely identify as a variety of genders would lead to that in any way, and nothing of what you’ve said so far has convinced me.

I’ve said I’ve felt it before, but it’s fair if you don’t believe me and so don’t think that it happens.

Given the high rate that trans women are murdered by cis men, I think a lot of trans women feel just as much, if not more fear of men than cis women do.

Which is why I was careful to specify that the fear is not the same, not that it doesn’t exist. There is a deep cultural/societal fear of rape in cis women. Of course trans women are also dealing with violence and rape, but it is a different fear (which doesn’t mean it’s not valid)

You’ve got some safety, here. It’s not the same as comfort (something I’ll address more later) but it is safety: you get to leave whenever you want and people won’t follow you.

I understand that, I did that purposefully to make it difficult. And emotional safety is different than physical safety or fear of being harassed. If I were to say something overtly negative about trans people, I would assume that many trans people would feel unsafe, even if I had no other contact with them or weren’t following them to other sites or trying to find where they live or work. (and that’s not incorrect)

If people just started with tearing into me, I wouldn’t have learned that the preferred nomenclature is trans women and cis women, not written as one word. Being attacked, even verbally, doesn’t make a person feel safe, and it also doesn’t typically put someone in a position where they are open to learning.

If it gets too much, you can walk away, temporarily or forever. None of us here will think worse of you because we don’t actually know you. Even if we think badly of some internet name, Sapphire, were we to ever randomly meet each other in real life, you’d still start out with a fresh chance to make a good impression.

But I doubt that I am the only person in the world that doesn’t want people thinking poorly of me, unless that is my intention, which it rarely is.

You’ve put various statements like these in your reply. I want to explain how they put me in a bind. I can’t know what’s in your brain. I’m not telepathic. I can only respond to words you write in your comments. If it becomes wrong to criticize your words, then we can’t really have a conversation at all.

So we have a differing point of view on that – I put all those extra words and disclaimers to try and show you what is in my brain. I’m trying to communicate an idea, and discuss the idea behind the words. The words can be mentioned, especially to let me know how it can be perceived in an unintentional way, because I can try and rephrase it. But when the words are focused on excessively and given more attention than the idea, it’s frustrating. Especially because some amount of hyperbole is common in regular conversation, where using more absolute words is more a figure of speech than a literal translation. “I always cry when I watch the end of that movie”. Now, I might not actually literally cry every single time I’ve seen the end, but more times than not, I do. That’s what I mean by hyperbole as a figure of speech.

I can act as if you’re a good person, but you being a good person has nothing to do with whether or not your words are good words, your sentences are good sentences, your arguments are good arguments, or your statements are accurate statements.

I don’t love this way of looking at it, because I do think being a good person matters, and words and sentences can have problems, but the ideas behind them are more important because if it is a inherent disagreement of the idea, it doesn’t matter the words, because someone who disagrees will not change words or attempt to rephrase, while someone who as an overarching point agrees, they are going to update the wording, phrasing or try to make it less offensive or point out that it wasn’t intended .While some people do feel intention is not important in insults and offensive material, I do think it is important. Intention can be good, bad, neutral and thoughtless. Once you bring something to the attention of the neutral and thoughtless, you can clarify their intention as good and bad. I have people call be by the wrong work title, because there isn’t a great, established way to say my work title in their language (that I also speak). So when they give me a “lesser” title, I know it isn’t their intention to diminish the work I do, and I sometimes will give the correct title at first. But eventually I will give up because it’s not that important and their intention is good so it’s not worth stressing them out about it.

This sentence is grammatically a bit weird.

Sorry, sometimes I use too many pronouns.

“No, but I am willing to bet that the reporter speaking with gilliam or any other member of the crew were using female pronouns, and saying someone is an asshole to self-identify means you will not allow people to self identify without judgement.”

You since clarified that you don’t care if people judge others for self-identification, only their actions on that judgment.

I can agree with that a little, that the actions are very important, but constant judgment can end up as harassment to those who are being judged. So judging is not without consequence either. Many trans people feel the constant judgement, even without direct harassment or discrimination, is still a negative part of their life, makes them feel harassed and unwelcome.

And yet the government has decided it will list a marker of so-called “legal sex”, and the type of marker you receive makes it legal or illegal to enter certain rooms.

I think we’re looking at those spaces differently – I don’t know if it is cultural or something else. The reason those rooms are segregated (when it was started) was more that women needed protection from men. Many cis women I know have snuck into a men’s bathroom when the lines were super long for women’s and there was not the same concern with a woman going into a men’s room as vice versa. Like there used to just be “bathrooms”, then women’s were created as a protection for women, and instead of calling bathrooms and women’s bathrooms, they switched the term to men’s room and women’s rooms, because women didn’t like that the “default” was assumed to be men.

But I understand what you are saying now from the purpose of legal sex marker. I think it disproportionately would affect men, because women are typically not viewed as a threat. They could be, but culturally, that’s where we are as a society.

Again, I wasn’t thinking about bathrooms because I think that argument is stupid, and I don’t think someone, trans or not, should be arrested for using a bathroom who is not doing anything else wrong. If you are a man who has crohn’s disease and suddenly need to use a bathroom and the women’s is nearest, please, use it in good health, because it’s stupid to cause him pain and distress to find another bathroom further away. Have a room with urinals and a room with stalls. Some cis women can use urinals and have no problem doing using them (or use one of the funnels). No need to segregate it. If you aren’t comfortable using a urinal, no matter gender or sex, stalls are available. It would be far more equitable. Some cis men aren’t comfortable with urinals and they have to wait much longer than women do because our bathrooms have more stalls than theirs. No one should be forced to use a urinal if they don’t want to.

And I mean that literally: please acknowledge that you’ve heard and agree that trans* advocacy movements as they currently exist in relation to transsexual, transgender, non-binary, agender and other gender atypical folks is dramatically different than any hypothetical movement advocating transracial rights to self-identification.

I have heard and agree that they are currently different. And I understand with the bathroom example why it would make a difference, which is not something I was thinking about, because I am not in favor of strictly policed gendered bathrooms or spaces for generic public usage (bathrooms/locker rooms). There should be spaces for more or less privacy.

My thoughts were not about the current legal and official advocacy movements, that are working to change societal laws, but the concept (if those laws didn’t exist).

Like if we just stopped putting gender on driver’s licenses, and that if there were places that were specifically intended to protect people born without a Y chromosome without a penis, we identify that by some other sort of marker. (thinking rape crisis etc. Not that trans women don’t get raped, but that it needs to be possible to treat victims with as much protection as possible) That would take the legal aspect away.

But there’s a vehemence against self identification of other traits, even if the legal aspects aren’t part of it, and that’s what seems contradictory. That if there was no legal significance to your gender for being in locations, then it would still be opposed.

There are people that can pass for other ethnicities, of all racial heritage, and there are people that in order to do so, they would need heavy makeup and still wouldn’t be mistaken for being that color. Like super light and super dark people will have difficulties passing as another color, because they are at the far extremes, while the difference in color and traits between light-skinned black people and olive-skinned white people could be more easily passed as something they were not.

That seems to have some comparison for passing in the gendered communities – it can be very challenging for some and they might always be recognized as different, while others can be perceived as they want more easily.

That sentence makes sense to me, but I also worry it is oddly worded. But I don’t know how to word it better, so I am going to let it go and maybe someone else can come up with better wording or ask a question that will help me communicate it better.

Yeah, who do you think identifies them, if not the coroners and the detectives – exactly the people that I said? If you’re worried about the difficulty identifying missing people, you’re worried about the work of coroners and detectives.

No, I don’t. I care about the family members who wanted their loved ones identified. If it is difficult to ID a body, they might not be identified or take longer, which results in the pain and continued torture of their family members because they don’t know what happened to their loved one. I care about the end result of the difficulty, the pain and suffering of the people who have been harmed and the families that love them, not the process to getting them closure. Making the process harder only causes more pain to the end result, the families. It is not about the people doing the work. The only reason I could ever care about whether they are successful or not is because of the impact it has on the end result, the families and justice for the victim.

Like, if a pilot had to do extra steps to be able to land safely, I don’t care about those steps, I care that the plane gets on the ground safely with all its passengers alive. If I realized that something on my plane was making it harder to do all those steps, I would mention it. Not because I want the pilot to have less work to do, but because it affects the valued end result: plane on ground, intact, passengers alive.

So I’m not assuming anything. I’m just reading the words you put on the internet and ignoring the words that you kept inside your head. I have to do that. Your words on the internet are all I have.

Moreover, don’t forget that I led off with,

You should know this comes across pretty badly.

And about the coming across badly – especially with the extensive paragraphs beyond it enumerating how I didn’t care about trans victims of violent crime, that doesn’t come across as a “hey, heads up, this is worded poorly”. It seems more like “Hey, you’re a terrible person who doesn’t care about victims of violent crime”. So by your definition, your words came across badly as well. I wouldn’t normally say it like that, my typical response is: It seemed to my reading, because you continue to persist in the assertion that I care at all about the workload of coroners or police officers, that you were judging me harshly and assigning views to me that I consider absolutely abhorrent, and not that you were sincerely trying to help me with my word choice.

You want us to read you generously. It’s easier to do that when you read us generously. I’m not attacking you, I’m saying your words sounded bad. Can you understand that? Can you please understand how a trans person who has been the victim of more than one anti-trans hate crime and has been threatened with death many, many times might feel negatively about a paragraph that speaks clinically of trans* murder victims, with no sympathy in sight, with the only words of concern about some identification process that is going to be performed by people who are still alive?

“It was phrased poorly, and I’m sure you weren’t trying to say that you care about the workload of coroners, but that’s how it could be interpreted.”

That presumes the best of intention, with poor phrasing. That is less likely to be perceived as an attack on their person, but just they botched the phrasing, and if there’s a better way to phrase it that you are already aware of, you can share it.

“The better way to phrase it could be that you worry that victims and their families might face longer uncertainty about loved ones if they are trans and that trans murder victims might have less justice available to them if they aren’t able to be identified.”

I feel like sometimes you are focusing on the wording of the idea, not the idea itself.

What’s “civilized”?

…with gender protected space, where the goal isn’t to exclude trans women, but to not traumatize cis women, … I can understand why that feels (and is) exclusionary, but I also understand as well that there is a physical vulnerability and cultural internalization of male violence that necessitate women to still be able to be protected.

…and much later, but a continuation of the same general line of thought:

I’m more referring to rape crisis, domestic violence etc. It is not that the trans women are a threat in reality, but it is a deep-seated cultural fear that many cis women internalize thanks to the patriarchy. I don’t think cis women *should* consider all men as threatening, but unfortunately, in many ways, some women have been conditioned to feel that way. It’s simply the current reality.

As it so happens, I was one of the first three out trans* persons to work in a shelter for homeless survivors of rape, sexual violence, and domestic violence (it’s honestly hard to say which of us was hired first, but I think it wasn’t me) and I was the VERY FIRST to work on this issue at a national level in the USA, traveling and educating different anti-violence programs on the issue of trans* inclusion. I was the VERY FIRST to do the same in Canada – which I did even before I moved here. There are a lot of small countries out there, so maybe someone else bounced back and forth over a different world border somewhere, but as pitiful as crossing from the US to Canada might seem, it probably makes me the very first or at least one of the very first to travel internationally to work on this issue. When I say I know a lot about this topic, I know a LOT about this topic. I was hired as a consultant by the US Department of Justice because of my expertise on this topic. When i had my mid-life career switch and went to law school, I was easily in the top 25 most knowledgeable people on the topic in the world, easily in the top 5 in the english speaking world, and even a decade later I’m probably still in the top 10 or at most 20 in the English speaking world. I know this shit.

So lucky you, you stumbled into contact with an expert!

And the first thing I have to point out is that … as sucky as it is, there is no right to comfort. There is a right to safety, but not comfort. If your anti-trans* prejudice makes you freak out around trans* people, that doesn’t constitute a reason to throw a trans* person out of shelter or deny that trans* person shelter in the first place.

Like places that are trying to help victims of racial violence might feel unsafe if white people are around, no matter what the intention, safety of those white people, or amount they could help potentially.

Yes, but feeling safe and being safe are two different things. And if someone of mixed race but pretty light skin or mixed race and raised by a white parent is the victim of racist violence and wants to access a shelter for people subject to racist violence, you’re doing a pretty shitty job of fighting racism if you tell them that they can’t be sheltered because someone else is prejudiced against them.

Now, if the mixed race person wanders the halls of the shelter talking shit about how much better they are then the other people in shelter because their skin is light or they were raised by a white parent, then you kick the mixed race person out because their behavior violates your anti-racist values and actually decreases safety … but not because their skin or the parent they haven’t even seen in the last 10 weeks makes people stereotype that mixed race person as unsafe.

Feeling safe. Actually safe. Two different things and being able to separate them is absolutely key to figuring out the answers to the questions you raise. If a trans* person in a shelter starts a fight or calls names or is otherwise emotionally abusive, they should be kicked out of that shelter even if it is a shelter specifically for trans* people with no cis folks allowed. Because it’s about actual safety. Not stereotypes of safety.

that traumatized person needs to be able to have a space to go where they can feel protected.

No. That person needs to be able to have a space where they are actually protected. Feeling protected doesn’t do shit if you’re not actually protected. And if you’re actually protected but you don’t feel safe, that’s not the fault of the people around you. That’s something going on in your head caused by the violence and oppression that have victimized you. Being actually protected gives you space to deal with that, but if you make other people responsible for whether or not you feel safe or feel protected, that ends up being abusive. You can’t make someone else, anyone else, responsible for your feelings and shelter professionals aren’t doing anyone any good if they tell a resident that making any other person responsible for your feelings is okay.

I know that is a hard thing to accept for trans women, because even though they are women, they may carry the societal baggage that comes with having a penis and that’s not fair.

It’s a hard thing for trans* women to accept if you say your shelter is for women and you don’t let in women because you’re lying about your shelter.

It’s a hard thing for cis* women to accept, but if you’re honest about your shelter and what you’re doing, you’ll get a better reception from trans* people. Seriously. If you set up a shelter and name it The Sapphire Shelter for Cis Women Only Forever, you’ll get protests, but you’ll get a lot fewer protests than if you name your shelter Everywoman Safehouse and then deny trans* women access. Both are discriminatory. One is discriminatory and also dishonest.

The problem comes because there are a lot of cis women who genuinely are cissexist. They generally don’t like trans* women as a group and want to exclude them from their spaces. At the same time, they don’t want to admit that they’re being discriminatory and if they named their organization The Shelter for Cis Women Only Forever, then they would have to be uncomfortably honest with themselves. So they name themselves something else. They say that they are “for women” and then they turn away trans* women. The result is that they send the message to trans* women that they are not women – what other message can you take away from the interaction when the “Everywoman” shelter says that their shelter isn’t for you?

I have worked with shelters that weren’t ready to admit trans* women but wanted to admit FtM trans folks as long as they hadn’t had surgery. And then they changed their mind about that, because they hadn’t really thought that trans* men were men. They didn’t really believe it. And then they started interacting with trans* men and all of their unresolved fears and issues cropped up.

I have worked with shelters that were just beginning to admit trans* people and wanted to do better about welcoming trans* women, but didn’t want to serve trans* men.

I have worked with shelters that served people of all genders and sexes except cis men, recognizing that all people who are not cis men are targeted by gender violence and have a stake in ending gender oppression.

In every case what made a shelter’s policy succeed or fail was whether or not the organization and its staff were truly behind it. Fully trans* inclusive shelters worked just fine as long as staff modeled good, inclusive behavior and acted like the trans* residents had the same right to be there as anyone else. FtM, MtF, it was all about whether the staff cared about the issues, educated themselves, and set the right tone. This included kicking out trans* residents exactly as fast – no faster, no slower – than non-trans* residents for any behavior which threatened actual safety.

Because of this, my job was never advocating for what a particular organization’s policy should be. My job was asking questions and listening, trying to learn the organization’s fears and concerns and hopes and talents better than they knew those things themselves so that I could help them find their own policy, one they could believe in and support. Usually that ended up being a more inclusive policy than they thought they wanted at first. Sometimes it was even a more inclusive policy than I thought they would settle on in the end. But it was never that way because I pushed. This is about what an organization can do. What it believes in. What it’s willing to fight for.

If you’re not willing to fight for trans* inclusion and trans* rights, people will criticize you, but it would be worse if you tried to adopt a policy you don’t believe in, that you don’t take seriously, that you don’t want to succeed.

But if you’re not willing to fight for trans* inclusion, don’t blame it on your residents or program participants, because they take their lead from you.

I think this is a situation of two protected classes whose rights can come in conflict and that makes it an incredibly difficult issue to solve, moreso than it seems on the surface.

Because I have done this work for literally decades, it’s hard for me to remember back to what I thought “the surface” was. But I think you’re probably not someone who has ever worked in a shelter if you think this is difficult.

The problem seems difficult to you because the first instinct that cis people have when thinking about trans* folks is to assume that nothing we’ve ever done before applies, that we have to approach this situation like new born babes, because trans* people are just too weird, too different to have any reasonable parallels in real life.

But actually the parallels are there, and they are easy to find.

AMAB tans* women are a subset of women who face manifestations of oppression that uniquely target them (us) and who are also stereotyped as more threatening to other people than AFAB cis women.

Black women are a subset of women who face manifestations of oppression that uniquely target them and who are also stereotyped as more threatening to other people than white women.

So, ask yourself: if there’s a white supremacist in the shelter who has bought into horrible racist stereotypes about black women being violent and crack-addicted and is legitimately terrified of black women, is that a reason to exclude black women from the shelter?

Of course not.

But racism is everywhere, and inevitably a ton of white women are going to internalize and express a lot of toxic white privilege. Does that mean that if we decide to accept Black women in our shelter that we can no longer house white women?

Of course not.

You let in everyone. For good reasons of actual safety, you ban violence, crack, and racism. When people break your policies, you take corrective action, sometimes even kicking someone out. If a black woman gets kicked out for actually smoking crack – not just because we fear she might smoke crack because of the color of her skin – that’s not racist. That’s fair and appropriate. If a white woman gets kicked out for saying racist things out loud – not just because we assume she might say racist things because she’s white – that’s not unfairly making white women walk on eggshells, that’s fair and appropriate.

And guess what? Shelters have been doing just exactly that for decades. Racism happens in shelters. Violence happens in shelters. But the shelters continue. Is the work always easy and pleasant? Of course not, but the policies are actually quite simple and consistent.

Likewise, when considering whether trans* people should be allowed in a shelter, even though I don’t recommend that a staff that isn’t ready for them doesn’t implement a policy that they won’t and don’t want to uphold, it’s cissexist to exclude trans* people merely because they are trans. It’s also fucked up to assume that this constitutes some horrible barrier to cis clients. White clients have had to hold in their racist shit, able-bodied clients have had to hold in their ableism, and Christian clients have had to hold in their religious bigotry for decades now.

If a cis person – let’s say woman and assume this is a women-specific, gender-segregated shelter – is horribly anti-trans and assumes all trans* people are only trying to get access to shelter to rape cis women when they are at their most vulnerable, is that a reason to deny a trans* applicant?

Of course not.

If a trans* woman is afraid of cis women policing her gender and getting violent, does that mean we can’t let cis women into the shelter anymore?

Of course not.

You let in everyone, and you ban sexual aggression and cissexism. When people break your policies, you take corrective action, sometimes even kicking someone out. That’s fair and appropriate.

And really, it’s not that complicated. If you’re competent to work in a women’s shelter already, you’ll already understand how to apply such rules when oppression or violence comes between women staying with you.

Is that “an incredibly difficult issue to solve, moreso than it seems on the surface”? Yes and no. It’s neither harder nor easier than solving the issue of racism or heterosexism in shelters. If you think those are incredibly difficult, then sure. Call this one incredibly difficult. But it’s no different from the work we’ve been doing in shelters since before a lot of the people commenting on this website were even born.

BTW and just FYI: my long-ass series of posts is done now.

Again, it could just be that you’re feeling nervous and confused and have to have some place to talk about this stuff and happened to show up here. But maybe you’ve heard the statement that it’s not the job of women to end sexism, it’s the job of men?

It’s not the job of trans* people to end cissexism. It’s the job of cis people to do that.

Yes to the first sentence. That’s it to a T!

So, I find it is interesting for you to bring up that thought from feminism, because I actually disagree with it. If the men were going to do it on their own, they would have done it far before they did. If men were going to do it on their own, we wouldn’t have people like weinstein or trump or epstein.

I think it is an uncomfortable truth that it is unfortunately our job. It shouldn’t be our job, but if we want to see the change happen, we are the ones who have to do it. I can’t say that for any other group that I don’t belong to, but I feel any group that I am part of, that despite the fact it shouldn’t be our burden, it still is and we can do it. I think that is the most effective and fastest way to get it done.

Imagine, just for a second, that a man walks into a feminist space where you’re participating and says, “I have concerns about where all this feminism is going. I’m TOTALLY pro-woman, but I just want you to talk to me about these real concerns that I have that feminism is going to damage people and make them make bad choices. You know, accidentally. Not because feminists are bad people. It’s just that if we do the things feminists say we should do, society might make that turn out bad. So I have concerns.”

Would this feel comfortable to you? Think about that when you read comments responding to you. It might help you understand where trans* people and people who love a trans* person are coming from when they are speaking.

And that’s where some of my weirdness comes into play. I would absolutely love that. I would love to talk about their concerns and things they see from a different POV. If they are agreeing with the basic assumption, discussing their concerns can make them an even stronger ally. And if they were lying about the agreement, then yes, it will be wasted breath, but I try to assume they are like me and if they came up like that, I would be over there in a heartbeat to hear it. I know many women wouldn’t, and would hate that I wanted to give him that voice, but discussing concerns (even if they do end up being in bad faith) just sharpens my abilities to deal with bad faith people in the future when I know they are bad faith, and to help me identify bad faith actors potentially more rapidly, but they might really bring up ideas that never occurred to me because I am limited to my own life experiences.

You remember incorrectly. What you just described is gender fluidity. “Non-binary” refers to anyone who, for any reason, doesn’t fit the standard male/female model.

Ok, squares are all rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. Thanks for the clarification.

If you were to ask, “Hey, does anyone know how to handle the fucked up situation in Iran where you can be executed for being gay, but if a trans* person who is rich and know the right doctors you can actually get trans*-related medical care and change certain aspects of your ID? Because obviously going through sex transition when you’re not trans* is going to be hell, but for some people it’s going to feel worse than death and so the Iranian government is setting up an incredibly coercive and destructive environment.”

Yes, essentially this but in rural and southern america with evangelicism, essentially. Even if just hormones can have negative effects. I had to go on a Gonadotropin releasing hormone for 6 months when I was in my twenties for a medical condition and I have some permanent negative side effects from that, and it can do permanent damage to your bones. estrogen increases blood clots and can stimulate breast cancer (which even cis men get, I have a HS friend who was a cis man who had breast cancer!) And they can increase depression and have their own side effects. I don’t want to say someone shouldn’t have them, or they are too dangerous to use in general, but for someone who feels they would be more accepted as trans than gay, consciously or subconsciously, it’s a risk that could be prevented. I don’t want extra people to unconsciously or inadvertently feel they need to assume that risk when they might be able to live happily and comfortable without that risk.

Do you see how that question is different from a generally expressed concern? When the concern is general, as yours was at first, there’s nothing in it to say, “I’m not concerned about you.” The very fact that you’re bringing it up here and not somewhere else creates a tendency for people reading you to think this is about us. And maybe it’s not, but you’re going to have to include something specific in your comments to overcome that bias.

I am not concerned about you. I am not concerned about who uses which bathrooms. I am not concerned about people who are trans being protected by laws. (they need to be)

When discussing difficult topics, I tend to find it easier to start from a more clinical type analysis, because then the issues feel like they are less about me as a person, and more about the idea and agreement or disagreement within. As I trust more, I am more willing to get more casual, because I trust that someone is not trying to trap me in a poorly worded phrase to declare me a bad, canceled person.

So if your concern really is about Iran (or wherever), you don’t have to throw in 16 levels of apology (though here in Canada we’re used to it and it’s no big deal).

I am a quarter canadian 😉 And it wasn’t about iran, more about evangelicals. But those layers of apology are attempting to provide that reassurance that you requested about that it wasn’t about you (or anyone here) It just seemed to be a semi-friendly corner of the internet.

But more importantly for this conversation when we move from the general (about choice at all) to the specific (choice in the specific context of having your self-description of your gender be tolerated by society even when it falls into neither the category “man” nor the category “woman”), the people who would tell a child that they have to be non-binary or have to transition in a binary manner are not the people who are here on this website. They aren’t the trans* advocates. And currently those same people are already either telling people that they have to transition binary-to-binary and/or that they have to stop violating stereotypes.

I don’t think anyone is telling people overtly or directly. I think it’s more a risk with well-meaning parents or advocates to not directly say that, but rather for others to feel it without any intention by anyone in the group, like I have sometimes felt.

Instead of being “concerned” about NB folks, it really seems to me that you should be thanking them. They’ve been addressing your concerns since before you knew you had them. Now might be a good time to tell them how awesome they are

Except they are providing the example that people who are behaving outside the stereotypes don’t belong to the groups. I prefer the stretching what it means to be a woman rather than creating a different classification. Now, that is definitely my opinion and I’m in the minority and I won’t enforce that opinion on anyone, it’s just I wish we weren’t getting to a positive endpoint in a way that made me feel less like I belong. I don’t want to be NB. I want to be a woman and accepted as a woman and not looked at as a NB woman. I think that’s just a way to other people with masculine traits and to make us feel less like women.

I think the issue with Dolzeal is I find something very unedifying and, to be frank, inherently racist in stating you can “live as a black woman”. What does that mean? How is that justification made without resorting to racial stereotypes of what it means to be a black person?

This is the argument that I’m used to seeing, and why I feel there is such a contradiction – how does someone know what it is like to be a woman unless they are using gender stereotypes, because to talk about gender with it, you are inherently using gender stereotypes. And even if someone uses those stereotypes as a first step, if they are truly living as a person of whatever designation, they will determine what it means for them. Just like you can’t presume what being a black person means to each individual. It all means something different, just like being a woman or man is different to every person.

Try to find a single trans* person saying that women shouldn’t have (or fight for) abortion rights.

To be more specific, it’s not about abortion rights, but maternity rights and uterus care in general. I know those people aren’t *here*, but I want reassurance that other people recognize that it could be a problem on a larger scale, because it can be a problem on a small scale too.

Trans* people? There are a lot of us. And in any large group, some of the people that fit in that group are going to be terrible, terrible people. Some are going to be racist as fuck. Some are going to be sexist as hell. Some are going to be ableist as shit.

I agree, and my concern has been that in my experience, I do not typically see people recognizing that, and putting people (not just trans people, but people of other minority groups, including women) on a pedestal that can make it easier for those people who are bad, just like in every group, because of of that pedestal. I see it happen in feminism, with women talking all sorts of bullshit and claims that if women were in power the world would be perfect. Except I don’t believe that is true, because women can be bad people just like men can. And anyone who has power is prone to abusing that power. Men just happened to have had power for a long time, so the problems are so much more visible. But women are far from perfect creatures and we need to have our ideas questioned, just like we question other peoples’ ideas. Like some men will complain about the draft excluding women, and there are some feminists who are ok with women being excluded from the draft, but I feel very strongly that it is unfair that women would not be included. (Of course, I’m against the draft in general, because I’m a pacifist, but the theory is still that if there is going to be a draft, it should be a health/age factor, not a genital factor)

And about the rest of the post, again, my intention was not clear enough. I have no concerns with trans women and abortion rights.

Ah. I feel like I should clarify. When I said this bit:

I’m not sure what you’re doing on this blog, then.

I didn’t mean to imply that you are unwelcome on this blog. We’ve had regulars here with rockier introductions than yours.

I’m only saying that the environment here may not be the kind you’re looking for if you’re wanting everyone to convert bigots with kindness.

I’m so sorry you’re in this situation. I hope very much that things get better. Who knows, you may end up liking some people here, but even if you don’t we’ll all still hope you find your right people.

You and me both. I’ve thought I’ve found my people before, but things always seem to happen. I could look at it like I have terrible luck, or that I have amazing luck (because I’m still alive LOL) and I try to view it as at least decent luck. I am still alive, so things always have the potential to get better.

I hope that as I continue to address things you’ve written you can continue to hold in mind that I said I’m critiquing your words, not your person. Even if you come across wrong, that doesn’t mean that YOU are wrong.

I am not tearing up at all. But for someone like me, I feel I *am* my ideas. That doesn’t mean they are static, but I am not good at going along with the crowd just because someone else told me I should and that my questions don’t matter. In general life, I feel people like to have me around because I am a bottomless well of useful and useless knowledge (yes, I rock at trivia games) but also get frustrated because I question things a lot. Except that’s how I end up knowing all those things, because I question things and try and really understand them, which means it gets stuck in my head forever (along with the useless information. Did you know there is one county in Ireland that does not touch the ocean nor does it have a border with a county that touches the ocean? In other words there is a single county that counts as the most land-locked. Loais if you’re playing at home. Or that Catherine Zeta Jones had a tracheostomy when she was a toddler? Fun facts.)

If begging helps your anxiety, you do it for you. But we don’t need it from you.

Of course we’re going to be nervous about a newcomer expressing some of the things you did using language that hasn’t had the benefit of education, but more and more I believe you’re exactly what you seemed to be at first: someone nervous as fuck who wants to do the right thing and not only doesn’t know how, but doesn’t even always know what the right thing is yet.

The begging is me trying to explain that I am not trying to be one of “those people”.

I’m not sure what you’re doing on this blog, then. Did you read the tagline? The New Misogyny, Tracked and Mocked. We aren’t about making nice with people with shitty beliefs here. We mock them.

I am oddly ok with some mocking, but I do tend to advocate for the person being mocked, especially if it is going to a level where I wouldn’t be comfortable with participating in. I honestly hadn’t noted the title of the blog, just the topic of the post – I had found a link directly to the article and the comments seemed to be reasonable and educated and perhaps able to have this discussion without cancelling first.

Focusing on your own discomfort when it comes to a discussion about the real and often grim reality of other people’s rights isn’t a great look?

I’ll accept that it is a bad look, and true. I think more people do that than will admit it though, honestly. We always look out for our own safety. Even if we are seeking something new, we want to not worry that this will harm us seriously in the process. There are people who are very selfless, and some people can be more selfless on certain topics than others (it’s sometimes the benefit of having emotional distance from the issue) but the vast majority of people are not looking to be harmed, rejected and pounded on.

And then someone comes along and goes “wow look at all that black ice! That sure is dangerous and inconvenient! It sure would be better if there weren’t all this black ice around!”

And other people go: “what, so you don’t like the fire department? Or you’d rather that the house would have entirely burned down?”

“Oh no I’m not saying that! But still. This ice is a real problem. It’s even affecting people who didn’t live in the house that caught fire. I just don’t think that’s very fair, do you?”

And in my brain, I see that it is still a true statement and they weren’t saying that it should have burned down, but it is still a problem.

Like the other people are saying the black ice doesn’t matter, because to say it matters means you are saying the house should have burned down, while the original person is trying to figure out how to get rid of the black ice because they know it could cause a fatal accident and having a fatal accident on top of someone’s house burning down is even worse. You aren’t making things any better for anyone on the street by not fixing the black ice and then if there is an accident, the original person might feel culpability because they saw the danger and didn’t get it fixed, and also get really frustrated when then the other group (after the accident) says “OMG, no one could have seen this coming, we have to fix the black ice now that we know!”

Does that make sense? That’s why I love people questioning logically in most situations, and why I will contradict my own “side” when they are factually incorrect about things, even if it makes the argument weaker, because I would rather have truth be known than an easy lie. As an example, I work with premature babies. We know they feel pain. We can have babies survive who are only 22 weeks gestation, who clearly feel pain. So when an abortion rights supporters says fetuses prior to 24 weeks cannot feel pain, they don’t have the brain development, I know that is not true and will contradict them. I don’t think it changes the fact that a woman should have control over their own bodies, and I know that people who are getting abortions past 20 weeks are not doing it for funsies and usually desperately wanted that baby, but there are horrific complications that are causing the need for termination, but that doesn’t mean we should be less than truthful about things like them feeling pain. It’s uncomfortable to admit, but it is true.

People are a certain race because their biological parents were that race, but gender is not directly passed down from parents in the same way.

Well, in many ways it is. We tend to model the gender roles we grew up with as a primary role model. Our chromosomes come from our parents. And if you took a child at birth away from their parents and put them in a very different situation, it will affect their definitions, ideas and behaviors regarding that characteristic. Like if I grew up in a home where mothers don’t work, are expected to wait on the men, are submissive to men, my view on what it means to be woman, wife and mother are likely to be modeled on that and I am likely to share many of those traits.

So your way of trying to illustrate how sex and race are similar is by removing the background of racism from your example? I don’t follow.

Exactly, because I was trying to make it as a demonstration about race, not about racism. So racism confounds the situation if you want to simply talk about race.

Just like many of these topics could have much further information/complications if you throw in misogyny and sexism, but if you just wanted to simply talk about someone feeling they were a different gender, you might not want to get distracted in the conversation by those other issues.

I tend to prefer breaking concepts down to smaller parts, where it is the easiest to understand and agree with, and then add all the different complications that can happen and make sure that everything is still in agreement, logical and how it should be.

I can’t even conceive of how to build a strong opinion on something without that. I know some people don’t like it when it’s broken down into component parts, because they are worried it is being done for bad reasons. But someone can be wanting to break it all down and find all the flaws not to say “aha, that’s why you’re wrong and this doesn’t work” but rather to say “ok, so this one is a little wonky, let’s fix this so it works perfectly.” It’s done with the intention of making it stronger in my mind, not destroying it. The point is always to put the pieces back together in the end to get a nice finished project that is beyond reproach!

I do promise to read everything you post in this thread, even if I ultimately decide not to respond to it.

No worries, you absolutely are not beholden to my walls of text 🙂

I am perfectly well aware of pretty much everything in this. I’ve taught gender studies university classes and used several of the authors quoted there in my syllabus.

Specifically, the section on history and gender:

History

Gender in the sense of social and behavioral distinctions, according to archaeological evidence, arose “at least by some 30,000 years ago”.[30] More evidence was found as of “26,000 years ago”,[31] at least at the archeological site Dolní Věstonice I and others, in what is now the Czech Republic.[32] This is during the Upper Paleolithic time period.[33]

The historic meaning of gender, ultimately derived from Latin genus, was of “kind” or “variety”. By the 20th century, this meaning was obsolete, and the only formal use of gender was in grammar.[3] This changed in the early 1970s when the work of John Money, particularly the popular college textbook Man & Woman, Boy & Girl, was embraced by feminist theory. This meaning of gender is now prevalent in the social sciences, although in many other contexts, gender includes sex or replaces it.[4] Gender was first only used in languages to describe the feminine and masculine words, up until around the 1960s.[34]

So, it was around, then it wasn’t, then in modern American society, in the 70s, people started making the distinction academically and in normal conversation. So the concept of splitting gender from sex for the vast majority of people is a fairly recent phenomenon.

No. It will cause you to use a gendered pronoun, but not necessarily the appropriate one.

What you’re talking about is using stereotypes to get things right as often as you can. And that works most times. But when it doesn’t work, we have an important choice to make: are we going to listen to what a person says about themselves? Or are we going to assume we know better because we’ve compared their appearance to our stereotypes?

this is a response to my response to a question, and I just want to repeat some of that for context first.

And as a separate note, I notice that you did not admit that you use words to describe people using gendered pronouns without checking genitals and/or chromosomes. But I’m confident that you do this. So what do you use? You use social cues and stereotypes. This is a separation of gender from biology. It would be nice if you could admit that this is something that you do.

That was the original question I was responding to – that I tend to look more for secondary sexual characteristics than social cues and stereotypes.

And I did misspeak, when I said “appropriate” pronoun, I meant selected the one that seemed to work best for the secondary sex characteristics displayed.

So try to remember your stereotypes don’t lead you to the appropriate pronoun. They lead you to a good guess.

This is another part that I have no intellectual issue with it. I do my best to use whatever pronoun or name someone asks me to use. I don’t nickname without asking either. (I hate some of the nicknames for my real name) I do my best to remember and use the requested pronouns, with the understanding that I have a hard time remembering names and recognizing faces sometimes, so I am sure I’ve screwed up before, at which point if they let me know, I correct myself and try to not do it again, just like I would expect if someone uses a nickname on me that I pretty passionately despise because of reasons(tm) My former mother in law would often slip and use that hated name, but I always tried to remember that it was less about me and more about her age and the fact that one of her closest relatives went by my hated nickname and it’s hard to remove those things from one’s head, especially the older you get.

That’s what I’m trying to say that I have no arguments/concerns/contradictory thoughts with the generalities and big issues of trans people and their rights – there’s nothing to disagree with, I am 100% comfortable not only doing them myself but passionately arguing in their favor, and I feel I can make a good argument to anyone who would disagree. I feel very confident that they will not be able to come up with a situation that I cannot address (probably because I’ve thought about it before). Because of that level of comfort, it’s easier I think for me to be able to translate some of the other worries and concerns about those things because when I broke it down into little bits, I saw where their concerns came from and I can sometimes address the concern in a better way than maybe someone else.

For example, with bathrooms: “But we wouldn’t be safe in bathrooms if trans people were allowed to self-identify”. The concern they have (usually, especially if female) is not actually about the person who is “legitimately” trans. They are scared of men using that leniency as a way to harm women.

I can come back with the fact that women’s bathrooms have private stalls, so there is no change in privacy and what is “viewable”, even if one of those men manipulated their way to being allowed entrance, and bathrooms are easy enough to enter that not allowing trans women to go to the bathroom where they belong does not provide true protection to women, so therefore there is no loss of safety or increased risk to allowing people to use whichever bathroom feels appropriate. (and again, I think there should be rooms for urinals and rooms for stalls, that are gender and sex independent because it is more important the comfort in showing part of your body while eliminating to *anyone* (many women couldn’t pee if there were other women able to see them) and so gender doesn’t even have to enter into it)

Your explanation with the shelters was very thorough and I appreciate that, and I feel more comfortable saying that there shouldn’t be limitations in shelters and the reasons why they aren’t needed, though out of respect for cis women who have still the irrational fear, to help them come in from the cold. I would equally support shelters for trans women who are scared of judgment from cis women and want to be in a safer place than the general population that they don’t have to risk running into someone who might not be supportive. I can see benefits to both groups if someone wanted to make those types of specialty sub shelters, as long as normal shelters were available for all women. I wouldn’t want to see either side denigrated because they wanted to create a safer subspace. I personally don’t see why it would be needed, but I haven’t experienced the kind of things some others might have. My most serious sexual abuse came at the hands of a woman, abetted by men, so my views on men when it comes to that tend to view it from a different place, so I don’t feel the same level of threat from a penis as another person might. I just want to be careful to not discard women who might have more fear (that is really of cis men, but they are in too panicked a state to be able to recognize that a penis isn’t inherently harmful) I think it, in truth, is unlikely to come up much, unless there are shared shower facilities where everyone will have their clothes off. And knowing the other things makes it easier to argue gently against that fear point from women.

I know a lot of useless trivia as well and am really good at trivia too.?
I didn’t know about the doubly landlocked county of Ireland, but I do know that the the countries of Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein are similarly doubly landlocked. And the state of Nebraska is triply landlocked—none of the states it touches border on states that touch the ocean.

Someone after my own heart.

I remember when the dude won the grand prize on who wants to be a millionaire and a friend talking about it to me, because I didn’t watch it.

Friend: It had to have been fixed because the final question was so insane, like no one would know it. “How far is the sun from the earth?” (he said in a dubious fashion)

Me: (absently, because I’m doing something else) 93 million miles away.

Friend: How in the world could you know that?

Me: There’s a children’s song that was covered by my favorite alternative band and in the spoken word between the lyrics, there are various facts about the sun, including the distance from the earth. (mimicking the singer’s enthusiasm) 93 million miles away, and that’s why it looks so small! Also, if the sun were hollow, more than a million earths could fit inside it.

Friend: ……Ok. So. I guessed not fixed.

Was the band They Might Be Giants?

They might be rain, the might be sleet, they might be frying up a stalk of wheat.

Uh. So Yes. 🙂 Been a fan since the 80s Dr. Demento’s top twenty demented video countdown on MTV 🙂

And I was surprised too, because I also saw it as an easy question.

https://millionaire.fandom.com/wiki/Dan_Blonsky

To expound upon the black ice metaphor a bit, the problem isn’t pointing out the existence of black ice.

Going “yikes it’s really slippery here!” once isn’t a problem.

Maybe you go “yikes it’s really slippery here!” in a community where they’ve had other people talking nonstop about black ice and how the fire department was wrong for putting out the fire and how there should actually be more fire because that might melt all this troublesome black ice. Maybe they’ve had arsonists in the community before. And the people in the community react badly to your comment about black ice, because of that history.

After learning about the background that caused the negative reaction, the appropriate response is not “what the hell, I’m not anything like those arsonists, and you should have known that! I’m a good person! I’m just trying to help! All this arguing isn’t solving the problem of the black ice! You’re being irrational!”

The better response is “damn, I’m sorry that you’re dealing with that shit, I didn’t realize. I didn’t mean it like that, and I’ll try not to do things that the arsonists did. I was bringing up the black ice because I wanted to help fix it, not to attack the fire department or homeowners. I think that putting down sand might help. Maybe we can have barrels of sand around in case this happens again? Do you need any help installing the barrels?”

Even if the intentions of both of the responders up above are the same, the way they come across is significantly different. Does that make sense? Wording matters, because words and actions are the only parts of you that others can see. We cannot see your thoughts and cannot know your intentions.