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Can You Help? I’m Confused About Transgender and Women’s Rights
As a lawyer, I try to understand the arguments for the “other side” regardless of whether I might agree with them. Being able to argue my opponent’s position sometimes reveals opportunities for agreement or settlement, and highlights weaknesses in my own position that I may need to shore up.
But I’m having trouble with recent developments in the “transgender” rights, specifically the court in Canada that is considering whether to require female employees of a grooming salon to view and to handle the private parts of a man who apparently wants to pretend he is a woman, and the US “Equality” Act that has been passed by the House of Representatives that would require women and girls to be exposed to men in women’s spaces such as restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, and showers.
In 2017 (just two years ago), the “Me Too” movement insisted that it is wrong for women and girls to be involuntarily exposed to men’s “private parts” or to require women and girls to expose their own “private parts” to men. The participants of the “Me Too” movement told us that such actions constituted morally wrong (and in some cases criminal) sexual harassment.
Now, the Canadian court and the US Congress are considering laws that would require women and girls to subject themselves to viewing men’s “private parts” if the man chooses to expose them in personal grooming businesses, in locker rooms, in bathrooms, and perhaps other places. In some cases (locker room, changing room, shower), the women and girls would be forced to expose their own “private parts” to this person who looks to them to be a man.
The women and girls see the same result whether it’s Harvey Weinstein or some guy who for some reason thinks he’s a woman. The women and girls do not know what is going through the man’s mind. Also, note that most demands for “transgender rights” insist that no one can question an individual’s “transgender” status or require that the person make any affirmative assertion or offer any proof about a “transgender” status.
I can’t see any interpretation other than that these transgender rights laws would require women and girls to submit to actions that have been deemed wrongful sexual harassment.
But I do not hear the “Me Too” proponents screaming “no” about the current “transgender rights” demands. That lack of outrage causes me to suspect that I’m missing some logical consistency between the demands of women to be free from exposure to men’s privates and the “transgender rights” demands that women must submit to exposure to men’s privates.
What logical thread am I missing that allows these two systems of rights to coexist? And if there is an inherent conflict, why am I not hearing more objections from the “Me Too” movement?
Published in Culture
I find myself agreeing with your thoughts on this. An interview with someone who undertook the hormone and surgery route demonstrated that perhaps the person would have been helped by psychotherapy. After all, in the interview, they insisted that now that they were female, they could express their feelings. And now they could dress in pretty colors. Hormones and surgery seem to be rather extreme measures for someone who lets the label of male identity deny them of a wardrobe with pretty colors. (I mean, hello… Had they never watched Miami Vice?) And perhaps given how strange our society is, it may be tough for men to express feelings, but it’s possible. Hormones and surgery have risks, as you explain.
Perhaps the interviewee was simply bad at explaining what their situation was like. But the huge number of trans gendered people who undergo the hormone and surgery route but then end up taking their lives indicates that there is more going on than needing to be in the other sex’s body.
I’m not sure what evidence you’re referring to. To rule out the environmental explanation you sort of need to test the hypothesis in an environment that isn’t toxic, and I’m not sure that’s ever existed -at least not in our culture. I said earlier I don’t claim to fully know why mental health issues are so common for trans people, and I don’t. But the way they’ve been treated has got to be at least part of the problem. If you don’t acknowledge that, I don’t know what to say to you. Nothing could be more obvious.
I was referring to adults. Children are an entirely different, and much more difficult, problem. I am deeply skeptical that a 6 year old has the first clue whether they’re trans or not (or gay or not for that matter). I’d be fine simply banning medical interventions at that age completely and without exception. In fact I think we should. I think the questions get harder at 12-13-14 and beyond and at 18 I’d defer to the adult in question. Maybe even 16 or 17, I don’t know. But not six.
Such as, um, being a social pariah perhaps?
Of course it is. Bullying obviously isn’t going to help the mental state of a person who is depressed and delusional. But the extreme frequency of severe mental health issues, depression, and suicide seen in trans persons, far greater than other people who have been through extreme experiences, indicates an underlying and preexisting mental health issue. The very concept of gender dysphoria suggests it.
Yes, it does, doesn’t it. I made that point a few comments ago in suggesting that “gender dysphoria” wasn’t the greatest term.
Beyond that, it’s hardly worth arguing but I don’t see on what basis you evaluate whether the incidence of mental health issues is appropriately correlated with the mistreatment trans people suffer. You show no sign of having the hard data on the former and the latter isn’t even quantifiable. So you’re really just expressing a relatively uninformed opinion. My opinion differs but as I’ve said repeatedly on this thread, I really don’t know. There are too many unknowns.
The long term impact of bullying can be significant.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324089.php
Interesting, but the significance of the changes noted is unknown. Nobody knows what it means that these two brain structures are enlarged as a result of stress. But 30 percent of the young people in the study experienced the stress of bullying. Trans people attempt suicide at 8 times the rate of everybody else. Whatever bullying they might have experienced doesn’t explain that.
How do we know that?
The beginning of your own statement argues that we can’t.
It’s not the words “gender dysphoria” that suggest mental illness. It’s the fact of it. Here’s what I mean: trans people report that they felt like a person of the opposite sex. You said in an earlier comment that trans people experience their gender differently than other people do. Honestly, I don’t know what either of those statements really mean. First, I don’t experience “gender.” Gender is not a thing like biological sex is a thing. Gender is a scheme of conceptual categories invented by a psychologist to help explain how hermaphrodites choose which sex they will appear to be. He later expanded it to help understand and explain the fact that some people don’t appear or behave in conformity to the stereotypes associated with their biological sex. It’s a classification scheme that helps us understand reality. It is not itself reality. What a person experiences is their sex….
It’s not a penis; it’s an abnormally large … never mind.
Second, no one knows what it “feels like” to be a person of a certain sex. You know what it feels like to be you. A person’s sole point of reference is his or her self. A person experiencing his or her self can’t know what the other sex feels like. If a person decides what they feel feels like someone of the other sex, that person is experiencing a delusion. Therapy to help them deal with that feeling would probably be far more helpful than chemical or physical mutilation of their bodies.
The irony in this comment is hard to miss.
I personally think nothing permanent ( surgery, hormones, etc) should be done before age 25– let the brain and personality stabilize. 18-25 they have the right to do what they want, and pay for what they want — but I think it is ill advised. I would recommend dressing and pronouning appropriate to the chromosomes at least until after high school. — avoid being a target, and the mindset may not be permanent anyway. Personality is very fluid before 18.
I don’t see the irony. While we can never enter the subjective experience of another person, we can tell when their subjective experience does not correspond to objective reality.
Suppose a man says he’s the Emperor Napoleon. Perhaps he is lying, or joking, but perhaps he truly and sincerely believes himself to be Napoleon Bonaparte. We can’t know for sure how he feels, but we do know for a fact that his stated belief does not correspond to reality.
For me the final straw was when the LGBT rallied their allies against the Boy Scouts and demanded a “them or us” position.
This was a stark no-brainer for me and I was astonished to find people actually pulling support from this (then) venerable organization in deference to convenience of sexual choices (that argument is moot so don’t go there unless you address the main point).
Cato, the New Left is really ratcheting it up. Teaching material is now a necessity, in their view, so that even 6 yr olds can weigh in on how they feel gender-wise. Teachers who object are probably fired!