Back to Oz

frankoz.jpg



I really do hesitate to even write this post, as the topic is a rehash of one of the ugliest times for GLBT unity I’ve ever seen. Recently Matt Foreman said the following on the Michelangelo Signorile Show concerning the ENDA debacle:

I think what really happened is the Speaker’s people said ‘look, Congress has a terrible reputation right now, they’re not delivering for any progressive causes, what do we do to deliver for our progressive allies?’ That means labor, health, and environment, and gays. And so, I mean… I don’t know this for a fact, but I’d bet my life this is what happened. They went to Barney frank, they said, ‘what do we need to do to pass ENDA?’ Representative Frank, who’s always been pretty squeamish on the trans issue, … and I guess I can say these things because I’m leaving my job, ya know, said ‘look the best way to pass ENDA and the easiest way is to take out gender identity.’ And I don’t think the Speaker’s people thought this through, didn’t think it through and said ‘lets do it. ‘

Yesterday, Barney Frank came on Signorile’s show to respond to Foreman’s statement and said:

He just made that up, that’s not remotely how it happened. He also has no basis for talking about my attitude on transgender people because I’ve had one set of conversations with Matt Foreman about transgender people. In 2002, when he was the head of Empire State Pride Agenda, he lobbied hard to get through the New York legislature a bill that did exactly what our bill did last year, it covered discrimination based on sexual orientation, but excluded people that were transgender. Some people didn’t like that. Tom Duane said at the time that Matt Foreman excluded him from meetings on the subject. Matt Foreman not only helped get that bill through, frankly, and this I disagreed with, as part of the deal to get it though, that year the Empire State Pride Agenda endorsed the Republican George Pataki for reelection over an outstanding African American Democrat, Carl McCall. So you had Matt Foreman guiding to passage an ENDA bill that didn’t cover transgender, it was called SONDA for the State of New York, and in return, denying an endorsement that I think he should have gotten on [unintelligible] to Carl McCall. The reason I talked about it with him was because called me around that time, this is late 2002, and said ‘I’m being criticized for doing this, would you come to a meeting that we’re having in New York to celebrate it and give an award for Gov Pataki to show that uh people shouldn’t be attacking me for it.’ And even though I did disagree with decision to make make the deal with Pataki, I do believe that you work together with each other, and you try to be supportive, and I went up there.

Since Foreman has said in the past that he regrets that choice and thinks it was a mistake, I’m not sure why Congressman Frank is bringing this up, except to smear him. Amazingly, Frank is admitting that he helped Foreman in his attempt to exclude gender identity from SONDA. Yet when asked about Foreman’s statement about his squeamishness, he said:

“I don’t usually talk like this, but no one in the history of the United States Congress has advocated explicitly for including transgender poeople in legislation as much as I have. In 1999 when we were doing hate crimes, I brought up the transgender issue, and said that it was very important to include people with transgender, both in committee and on the floor. I testified this past fall about the importance of including people with transgender. Here’s what troubles me. When they say I’m squeamish, what they’re pointing out, is what I’ve said from the beginning, to various advocates including people within the transgender community, we have a political problem here. We’ve have been working the issues of gays and lesbians longer than transgender. Some of the intial reaction you get when you first bring up an issue is problematic. And so transgender people are victims of the same kind of virulent prejudice that we who are gay and lesbian were, 35 years ago, and we haven’t had as much progress in dealing with it. This is a case of complain about the messenger. I told them that we had this problem, and they didn’t listen.”

I’m not sure how you can claim the title of great advocate for transgender people, when you’ve helped to exclude them in two different pieces of legislation.

During the interview Signorile pointed out to Frank that Foreman had said that he was squeamish about transgender people. Signorile then told Frank about his own history of squeamishness about transgender people. Still Frank insisted that he’s never been “squeamish” about transgender people.

I don’t know why you’d impute that to me. I have never had that view. There was a time when people weren’t paying much attention to people with transgender. But I’ve always believed when you ban discrimination, you ban it against everybody.

But the experiences of transgender women through the years, paint a very different picture of Congressman Frank. In 2001 , Karen Ann Taylor asked Frank why transgender people weren’t being included in ENDA. Of that experience she said:

As I approached him I cordially introduced myself, shook his hand, and cut right to the chase. I wanted to know why the transgendered were not represented in ENDA. The answer was such a surprise, I was dumbfounded at first. The whole crux of purposely and intentionally disallowing the transgendered from ENDA was something of the effect ‘it would cause it not to pass… it would fail due to penises and vaginas showering together in the workplace.’

Huh? You gotta be kidding! This was the most asinine thing I’d heard! When I asked what about gay and straight men in the same shower, the reply was essentially ‘that’s not a problem, not even in the military. Even the bathroom is not the issue. But penises and vaginas in the same shower will cause it to fail. But we can take care of that with an amendment.’

But that’s the VERY argument that was used by the creator of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. From Wikipedia:

In 2000, Northwestern University Professor Charles Moskos, the principal author of DADT (which, as originally coined by Moskos, was “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell; Don’t Seek Don’t Flaunt”), told ‘Lingua Franca’ that he felt that policy will be gone within five to ten years. Moskos also dismissed the unit cohesion argument, instead arguing that gay people should be banned due to ‘modesty rights’, saying ‘Fuck unit cohesion. I don’t care about that…I should not be forced to shower with a woman. I should not be forced to shower with a gay [man].’

Another incident was described by Miranda Stevens-Miller:

A little while later, I found Barney without a group of people around him, so I once again engaged him in conversation. ‘So,’ I said, ‘does your support of transgender inclusion in the VAWA mean that you might be changing your mind about inclusion of gender-variant people in ENDA?’ An innocent enough question, but you would have thought that I was threatening him with a loaded weapon. He got red in the face and started shouting, ‘Never.’ His problem was that until we could answer the question of ‘people with penises in [women’s] showers,’ there is no way that he would support it. The conversation got rather heated to say the least. And with Barney speaking very loudly and repeatedly about ‘penises in showers,’ we attracted a lot of attention in the restaurant.

But the reality of penises being in showers with vagina’s is small. First of all, how many employers have communal showers? Of those, how many of those have open shower areas? I’ve spoken to quite a few of my natal women friends that tell me that many shower areas in women’s locker rooms have shower stalls in them. That they aren’t “communal” in the same sort of way mens’ showers are. So what are the odds that an employer has to have showers, then has to have communal shower areas, then add to that, what employer can’t make accommodations for their transgender workers (showering before or after everyone else, showering in another location). All in all, you’re talking about a hand full of jobs. Out of those handful of jobs, how many would have a transgender woman that is preoperative that would want to flash their genitals around in a communal shower in the workplace? I think the odds of Jesus coming back and fishing with Marilyn Manson on the Potomac is more likely. But that seems to be the standard reasoning Frank has given since 2000, as to why we shouldn’t be included.

Then Frank blamed transgender people and their advocates for the lack lobbying.

Part of the problem, frankly, is with the transgender community and some of those who put that in the forefront, because they didn’t lobby. The only time they started lobbying is when we said ‘You know what, we don’t have the votes for this, we gotta to do it partially.’ Then they began lobbying the Democrats that were supportive. I’ve never seen a worse job of lobbying. For years, literally years, I have been begging them to start talking to people about this, and have said you, look, have political problems here, I wish we didn’t but we do, and you have to deal with them.

In reality, GenderPAC started lobbying Congress in 1995, the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition in 1999, and the National Center for Transgender Equality in 2005. Until recently, those lobbying efforts were done as by unpaid citizens, and were done without the help of gay and lesbian organizations. Transgender activists have been asking for help with access for years, but had been largely ignored.

I find it puzzling as well that such a stanch advocate of transgender people like Frank who aren’t “squeamish”, would continue to use disease phraseology when referring to transgender people (as “people with transgender”). If he’s trying to advocate for us, a simple first step would be to stop saying that.

While the rhetoric Congressman Frank is spinning is nothing new (see also: October-November 2007), the timing now seems odd. As I mentioned in a previous post, both Democratic candidates for president have publicly stated their support for an ENDA that includes gender identity (with Clinton going even further and stating support for gender expression as well). The Democratic tsunami on the horizon bodes well for a GI inclusive ENDA. Everything is trending towards inclusion of transgender inclusion in the 2009 ENDA. Why isn’t Frank?

Marti Abernathey is the founder of the Transadvocate and the previous managing editor. Abernathey has worn many different hats, including that of podcaster, activist, and radiologic technologist. She's been a part of various internet radio ventures such as TSR Live!, The T-Party, and The Radical Trannies, TransFM, and Sodium Pentathol Sunday. As an advocate she's previously been involved with the Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance, Rock Indiana Campaign for Equality, and the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition. She's taken vital roles as a grass roots community organizer in The Indianapolis Tax Day Protest (2003), The Indy Pride HRC Protest (2004), Transgender Day of Remembrance (2004), Indiana's Witch Hunt (2005), and the Rally At The Statehouse (the largest ever GLBT protest in Indiana - 3/2005). In 2008 she was a delegate from Indiana to the Democratic National Convention and a member of Barack Obama's LGBT Steering and Policy Committee. Abernathey currently hosts the Youtube Channel "The T-Party with Marti Abernathey."

270 Comments

  1. im a pre-op mtf and i want to know if a transsexual has no balls will that make her/him be less human . i guess that only makes me half a person and i can not use the womens or mens showers-on a personal note i only shower in womens showers that have stalls with doors and i have no wish for anyone to see me undressed

  2. im a pre-op mtf and i want to know if a transsexual has no balls will that make her/him be less human . i guess that only makes me half a person and i can not use the womens or mens showers-on a personal note i only shower in womens showers that have stalls with doors and i have no wish for anyone to see me undressed

  3. “Sandy, and others who share her views, may be genuinely concerned about women’s safety in public places – fair enough, so am I.”

    I also care about women’s safety in public places.

    But Sandy doesn’t care, or not so much that she is willing to work with me to get anywhere on the issue. she is condemned by her own words:

    Me: “So Sandy, why don’t you join me in calling for safe toilets and showers without private communal space protected by cctv cameras and really protect women and children?”

    Sandy’s response: “I’ll NEVER join you in anything. I promise.”

    So Sandy is saying that her problem with me is more important than the women and children being abused. She then has the gall to bring up safety in her arguments knowing full well that the system I call for is far safer than the one she says should remain. She wants to keep the communal sex segregated spaces within which a teenage girl was gang-raped in Sydney and within which children have been molested and murdered.

    By the evidence of her own words she is condemned. She clearly does not care much about women’s safety. She just wants an excuse to keep sex-non-conformists traped away in the closet or in hiding because she doesn’t want them to be able to go outside and pee in peace. And she wants to come over here and tell us that, repeatedly, without entering into anything faintly resembling honest dialogue. I guess she must get a kick out of it or something.

    I mean just look at where she said she would call the police on me! That was hilarious. I’d have felt bad about posting the laughter but it could never have been as mocking of her as the quote regarding the law where I live was. If she tried such a stunt here she might be the one arrested.

    Why would she make such a statement though? It smacks of the childish schoolyard arguments where someone caught out on the back foot and desperate to remain on top in an argument and trying to save some face makes an appeal to power and authority. Pity it turned right round and bit her though huh.

    She will never win her arguments untill she can back them up. She needs evidence for claims, she needs logical statements, to drop all the logical fallacies and to have answers and adequate defences to counter points raised against her views rather than just pointing a finger and shouting ‘male’.

    Those aren’t ‘male’ tactics. They do not discriminate against females in any way. Women are just as capable in that as men.

    Every question she doesn’t answer lends it’s empty void as a mark against her. Her views and arguments look like swiss cheese. If her views cannot be defended they can’t be valid. It does not matter who points out the apparent flaw. It is the criticism itself that is valid or invalid no matter the gonads of the entity that communicates the criticism.

  4. “Sandy, and others who share her views, may be genuinely concerned about women’s safety in public places – fair enough, so am I.”

    I also care about women’s safety in public places.

    But Sandy doesn’t care, or not so much that she is willing to work with me to get anywhere on the issue. she is condemned by her own words:

    Me: “So Sandy, why don’t you join me in calling for safe toilets and showers without private communal space protected by cctv cameras and really protect women and children?”

    Sandy’s response: “I’ll NEVER join you in anything. I promise.”

    So Sandy is saying that her problem with me is more important than the women and children being abused. She then has the gall to bring up safety in her arguments knowing full well that the system I call for is far safer than the one she says should remain. She wants to keep the communal sex segregated spaces within which a teenage girl was gang-raped in Sydney and within which children have been molested and murdered.

    By the evidence of her own words she is condemned. She clearly does not care much about women’s safety. She just wants an excuse to keep sex-non-conformists traped away in the closet or in hiding because she doesn’t want them to be able to go outside and pee in peace. And she wants to come over here and tell us that, repeatedly, without entering into anything faintly resembling honest dialogue. I guess she must get a kick out of it or something.

    I mean just look at where she said she would call the police on me! That was hilarious. I’d have felt bad about posting the laughter but it could never have been as mocking of her as the quote regarding the law where I live was. If she tried such a stunt here she might be the one arrested.

    Why would she make such a statement though? It smacks of the childish schoolyard arguments where someone caught out on the back foot and desperate to remain on top in an argument and trying to save some face makes an appeal to power and authority. Pity it turned right round and bit her though huh.

    She will never win her arguments untill she can back them up. She needs evidence for claims, she needs logical statements, to drop all the logical fallacies and to have answers and adequate defences to counter points raised against her views rather than just pointing a finger and shouting ‘male’.

    Those aren’t ‘male’ tactics. They do not discriminate against females in any way. Women are just as capable in that as men.

    Every question she doesn’t answer lends it’s empty void as a mark against her. Her views and arguments look like swiss cheese. If her views cannot be defended they can’t be valid. It does not matter who points out the apparent flaw. It is the criticism itself that is valid or invalid no matter the gonads of the entity that communicates the criticism.

  5. I’m still exhausted after submitting my MA thesis so I might ramble a bit . . . 🙂
    Sandy, and others who share her views, may be genuinely concerned about women’s safety in public places – fair enough, so am I.
    What they are NOT concerned with is the safety of transgender persons. I am.
    Now, the reason for the latter stance (they claim)is that trans people do not really exist; there are only Men and Women and only the former has a penis, no matter how they identify or present. Now, I have to assume from Sandy’s statement that she is a woman-born-woman that a) she is a natal woman, or intersex person assigned and raised as female from birth and who identifies as female who does not care about transpeople but feels compelled to visit a site run by them to talk about men in bathrooms. *shrug*
    Or b)(what I feel is more likely) She was assigned male at birth, had a penis for quite some time and then transitioned to female with the aid of hormones and surgery and no longer has a penis. Now, as such surgery is never performed on someone under the age of 18, such a person will have had quite a few years of this “male privelege” Sandy harps on about. Maybe they were a sissy boy and bullied for it, but you can bet your life they were still read as male and allowed all that comes with that status. If they transitioned at, say, 35, then they will have enjoyed a damn sight more privelege for longer. I’d like to know Sandy’s age. If she is over 40 she will recall a time when women needed their husband’s permission to buy something on hire purchase, take the contraceptive pill, or have surgery. She will remember a time when men legally earned more than women for doing the identical job. She will remember a time when women were barred from certain professions. She will certainly remember a time when the idea of a female President would have seemed ludicrous. EVERY transwoman, no matter how effeminate as a child, how introverted as a teenager, how desperate and uncomfortable as a husband, has lived some time in the eyes of the world as a MALE. This will be a source of distress for many, but it is a fact. Just as I have lived most of my life as a nominal female. But, wait! Hey, I AM one of the people who worked for less than a man in the same job; I AM one of the people who was touched up in the street by strange men as a teen; I AM one of the people abused for standing up for women’s rights. I HAVE HAD all the woman-born-woman’s experience of oppression because, technically speaking, I AM one.
    Now I come in here and say I am a transperson and proud to identify as such. I describe as FTM but I am not a natal male and do not regret not being socialized as one one bit. I look androgynous; I sign my name “Mr”(legally); I don’t have a penis; I menstruate from time to time. I say I am a transperson, then someone whom I’ve never met and who has probably lived years as a male has the nerve to tell me I don’t exist! WTF is that about?? I’ll be the one to say if I’m a man, a woman or something else entirely, thank you, Sandy. And I don’t need to look in my pants to establish that identity, either.

  6. I’m still exhausted after submitting my MA thesis so I might ramble a bit . . . 🙂
    Sandy, and others who share her views, may be genuinely concerned about women’s safety in public places – fair enough, so am I.
    What they are NOT concerned with is the safety of transgender persons. I am.
    Now, the reason for the latter stance (they claim)is that trans people do not really exist; there are only Men and Women and only the former has a penis, no matter how they identify or present. Now, I have to assume from Sandy’s statement that she is a woman-born-woman that a) she is a natal woman, or intersex person assigned and raised as female from birth and who identifies as female who does not care about transpeople but feels compelled to visit a site run by them to talk about men in bathrooms. *shrug*
    Or b)(what I feel is more likely) She was assigned male at birth, had a penis for quite some time and then transitioned to female with the aid of hormones and surgery and no longer has a penis. Now, as such surgery is never performed on someone under the age of 18, such a person will have had quite a few years of this “male privelege” Sandy harps on about. Maybe they were a sissy boy and bullied for it, but you can bet your life they were still read as male and allowed all that comes with that status. If they transitioned at, say, 35, then they will have enjoyed a damn sight more privelege for longer. I’d like to know Sandy’s age. If she is over 40 she will recall a time when women needed their husband’s permission to buy something on hire purchase, take the contraceptive pill, or have surgery. She will remember a time when men legally earned more than women for doing the identical job. She will remember a time when women were barred from certain professions. She will certainly remember a time when the idea of a female President would have seemed ludicrous. EVERY transwoman, no matter how effeminate as a child, how introverted as a teenager, how desperate and uncomfortable as a husband, has lived some time in the eyes of the world as a MALE. This will be a source of distress for many, but it is a fact. Just as I have lived most of my life as a nominal female. But, wait! Hey, I AM one of the people who worked for less than a man in the same job; I AM one of the people who was touched up in the street by strange men as a teen; I AM one of the people abused for standing up for women’s rights. I HAVE HAD all the woman-born-woman’s experience of oppression because, technically speaking, I AM one.
    Now I come in here and say I am a transperson and proud to identify as such. I describe as FTM but I am not a natal male and do not regret not being socialized as one one bit. I look androgynous; I sign my name “Mr”(legally); I don’t have a penis; I menstruate from time to time. I say I am a transperson, then someone whom I’ve never met and who has probably lived years as a male has the nerve to tell me I don’t exist! WTF is that about?? I’ll be the one to say if I’m a man, a woman or something else entirely, thank you, Sandy. And I don’t need to look in my pants to establish that identity, either.

  7. “But please rise above the level of discussion I could get from my ex girlfriends parrot.”

    Maybe I should train one of my Amazons to say
    “I’m Sandy and I hate penises”. It would sure get a rise out of some family members. Of course, they’re evil, hegemonous, misogynistic, men’s rights’ activist male Amazons, anyway.

    Sandy/Rainsong/Bob/whomevertheheck has never
    mentioned just how they intend to ban the penis from ladies rooms, or how they wish to enforce said law. Or how they would ensure that the sickos they’re most scared of wouldn’t become bathroom cops.

    This has nothing to do with feminism; it has everything to do with the only “ism” that matters: pragmatism.

  8. “But please rise above the level of discussion I could get from my ex girlfriends parrot.”

    Maybe I should train one of my Amazons to say
    “I’m Sandy and I hate penises”. It would sure get a rise out of some family members. Of course, they’re evil, hegemonous, misogynistic, men’s rights’ activist male Amazons, anyway.

    Sandy/Rainsong/Bob/whomevertheheck has never
    mentioned just how they intend to ban the penis from ladies rooms, or how they wish to enforce said law. Or how they would ensure that the sickos they’re most scared of wouldn’t become bathroom cops.

    This has nothing to do with feminism; it has everything to do with the only “ism” that matters: pragmatism.

  9. “The questions are questions male entitlement to spaces that are reserved for women.”

    I take it you accidentally failed to type a word there. Happens to us all. It might help if you clarify which one/s and where for us.

    Of course there is an interesting question in why there should be male-only or women-only spaces at all… remember this:

    ” “I just don’t want penises in women’s rooms. People with penises aren’t women. They don’t belong there.
    You are man, you live as a man. I don’t want to share a bathroom with you.”

    We know what you want, but that doesn’t mean that it would be right for you to get what you want.
    Some people didn’t want black people in white’s rooms. People with black skin aren’t white. Some people said they didn’t belong there.
    The blacks were black, they lived as blacks, some whites didn’t want to share a bathroom with them.

    See the problem is that the argument is precisely the same.”

    I’d like your views on what makes skin colour or racial segregation bad but genital/sex based segregation good. Both have involved toilets and showers and changerooms. Both have involved the fear of rape and assault and murder etc. So where, exactly where, is the difference that makes you right but the KKK wrong? I don’t see one. I seee lots of reasons both would be wrong but not a lot for either to be right.

    “It doesn’t make any more difference in terms of your needs for self expression are than it does say for a pedophiles needs for self expression.”

    Well this may well shock you, but there is a distinct difference between someone violating someone else not mature enough to be able to consent to an act and someone who dresses and acts differently to many others.

    You see self expression requires no consent so long as people are able to look away, change the chanel or choose not to listen. If there is a ‘captive audience’ it is the captivity and not the expression that is the wrong.

    Violating someone is 100% about lack of consent. Rape, it’s wrong cause it doesn’t involve consent, informed consent that is uncoerced in any way. You’ll find much of all wrongdoings of any great meaning involve violating another persons personal soveriegnty.

    If you can’t understand the difference between a child rapist raping children and someone who dresses and acts differently you must be a direct danger to yourself and to others!

    “It’s men who confuse their own needs for “rights” to act upon those needs. Male needs are not the same as license regardless of what has been decided here. If you ask the KKK they will all advocate white supremacy. The principles are manifested on your agreement here. It’s meaningless.”

    No, what is meaningless is not what I am saying but your spurious examples. You see Women too have the rights to act on their own needs. These rights are limited only where they interfere with another persons rights. These form the interpersonal boundary between people. A person owns their own body entirely and may do with it what they wish (where the heck do you think the ‘my body, my right, my choice’ chant came from Sandy! A philosophical principle springing from the acceptance of the premises of equality and freedom!) and a person owns their personal possessions and may do with them whatever they wish also. This is the ‘private sphere’. Anything anyone does that involves what is within another persons ‘private sphere’ or ‘personnal space’ requires their informed consent. Without that informed uncoereced consent it becomes wrong. This is the basic structure from which most modern ethics stems.

    Say someone wants to murder someone else. They may only ethicly do so if the victim in fact desires to die and has given informed consent and is of sound mind. If all these conditions are granted it isn’t murder any more is it, no it’s assisted suicide. Are you starting to understand yet?

    Now say someone wants to have sex with a child. They have to wait untill the child is old enough and mature enough to give consent. At which point they are above the age of consent and no longer a child. Get it yet?

    Now say someone wants to dress in clothing mixing that which is usually sold to each sex, wear heavy dramatic makeup, lots of black, dark red, purple and occasionally touches of pink and silver jewelry with bats and spiders and skulls on them. This is called ‘goth’. Note that even when done in public it does not interfere with anybody elses ‘personal space’ or ‘private sphere’. People who do not share that style or taste or who do not find momento mori comfortable to witness may look away just like anyone else who dislikes anothers taste in clothing, jewelry, hairstyles etc.

    Now say that someone wants to dress entirely as someone of a different sex, feels inside all their life that they are physicly the wrong sex and embarks on a slow progression of treatments and surgeries to get their physical body to conform as much as possible to that sex until they reach a point they are comfortable with. They will dress as that sex, act as that sex, interact as that sex and use the public facilities provided for the public that by tradition are segregated by sex as that sex. Again note that they are not in any way interfering with anything inside anybody elses ‘personal space’ or ‘private sphere’.

    A robber invades that space. A rapist invades that space, a murderer invades that space, a child molester invades that space. Each of these involves one person taking control or possession of something from inside another persons ‘personal sphere’ their ‘private space’.

    This is why there is a universe of difference between things you are unable to notice the difference between. This is why your comment is ignorant, offensive and stupid. Read some philosophy, learn enough so as to not sound and look really foolish and maybe you’ll have more than buckley’s chance in this or any similar discussion.

    It’s not about male anything. It’s about cogent and time-tested philosophy versus a pile of nonsense where vastly different things are arbitrarily compared without the faintest understanding of their relative differences and distinctions.

    As I said before post-modernism might have it’s uses when discussing literature but it’s rubbish as metaphysics or when involved in moral and ethical reasoning.

    Clearly the very framework you must use to determine right from wrong must be utterly in shambles. I can’t bring in sophisticated ideas like social contracts and the writings of Hobbes, of the ethics of ideal versus the ethics of duty or any of the important sophisticated philosophy discussions that have been deeply influential on various feminist and civil rights struggles because you aren’t ready for it yet, you are still stuck on the basics.

    You seem to still have trouble discerning the moral and ethical differences between someone who is different in their personal appearance and behaviour while harming no-one and someone who opperates under the notion that the amount of ultraviolet light shielding chemicals in the upper dermis should define who is smarter and stronger than others and that people should be murdered for disagreeing with them let alone the moral and ethical difference between someone who dresses and behaves differently while harming no-one and someone who rapes children!

    See there is a difference between personal expression and baby-raping. The first one is governed by somatic sovereignty. It’s in the ‘personal space’ the ‘private sphere’ where the owner is the sole and undisputed tyrant no matter their sex. The second involves violating the personal space of a child.

    Get it now?

    And don’t give me any bulldust about a group having the same rights as the individual. That is the nonsense that some moron in a court once bought into that gave us the corporation, one of the greatest evils and oppressors of human history.

    No, a group of people is a group of people with individual rights. The group is not a valid entity in itself. To accept that is to invalidate free equal individual rights and to validate the abusive power structure of corporate colonialism. The structure of the group (and yes I realise that this may be moving far too fast for you if you still haven’t figured that personal space thing out yet) exists for the mutual benefit of it’s constituents. the constituents do not exist for the groups benefit. They are not a gestalt. They are only a group of individuals gathered together under an arbitrary definition involving a high statistical corrolation amongst the constituents that the individuals within the group find of benefit to cooperate or associate together within.

    ‘Women’ ‘men’ ‘goth’ ‘rockabilly’ ‘mensa’ all are just groups of perhaps similar yet individually distinct people. The group may have it’s own internal systems and structures, most of which will be arbitrary and filled with exceptions. There will be people on the fringe, people who almost but don’t quite fit the definition. People who belong to more than one group. For example I know a self-identified Trans-man who was born with some degree of intersex condition who alternates between the goth and rockabilly communities and will mix both styles in music and clothing and who once belonged to Mensa but quit.

    Now when you are ready we can start discussing societies (and cultural and sub-cultural groups) responsibilities to the individuals within it, social contracts between the person and the state, Whether individuals have obligations in order to get those benefits and a whole host of other important considerations that directly involve whether a public utility can and/or should be sex-segregated at all and what that might imply to the social obligation of providing safety and security while providing universal utilities for all equally. But there isn’t much point if you can only think simplisticly and reiterate the same thing over and over like a poor caged sulpher-crested cockatoo.

    So please do some homwork. Care to debate the validity and conflicts of the various schools of ethics? Want to argue the trolley dillema and it’s use as an analogy to this? What about the one where the head of a genius is grafted onto your shoulder to save their life but without your permission while you are in hospital for a minor operation? That’s a good one with lots of ramifications directly pertinent to this discussion. Have an alternative system of defining right and wrong that no-one else has explored yet? Got the worlds greatest excuse to get you out of the deep pit you’ve dug for yourself? Fine. Try me. But please stop making yourself look bad by just reiterating the same stuff ad neuseum.

    Let’s discuss the finer points, lets dig deep into the arguments on this issue. Lets examine the foundations of all the viewpoints, let’s test the predictions.

    But please rise above the level of discussion I could get from my ex girlfriends parrot.

  10. “The questions are questions male entitlement to spaces that are reserved for women.”

    I take it you accidentally failed to type a word there. Happens to us all. It might help if you clarify which one/s and where for us.

    Of course there is an interesting question in why there should be male-only or women-only spaces at all… remember this:

    ” “I just don’t want penises in women’s rooms. People with penises aren’t women. They don’t belong there.
    You are man, you live as a man. I don’t want to share a bathroom with you.”

    We know what you want, but that doesn’t mean that it would be right for you to get what you want.
    Some people didn’t want black people in white’s rooms. People with black skin aren’t white. Some people said they didn’t belong there.
    The blacks were black, they lived as blacks, some whites didn’t want to share a bathroom with them.

    See the problem is that the argument is precisely the same.”

    I’d like your views on what makes skin colour or racial segregation bad but genital/sex based segregation good. Both have involved toilets and showers and changerooms. Both have involved the fear of rape and assault and murder etc. So where, exactly where, is the difference that makes you right but the KKK wrong? I don’t see one. I seee lots of reasons both would be wrong but not a lot for either to be right.

    “It doesn’t make any more difference in terms of your needs for self expression are than it does say for a pedophiles needs for self expression.”

    Well this may well shock you, but there is a distinct difference between someone violating someone else not mature enough to be able to consent to an act and someone who dresses and acts differently to many others.

    You see self expression requires no consent so long as people are able to look away, change the chanel or choose not to listen. If there is a ‘captive audience’ it is the captivity and not the expression that is the wrong.

    Violating someone is 100% about lack of consent. Rape, it’s wrong cause it doesn’t involve consent, informed consent that is uncoerced in any way. You’ll find much of all wrongdoings of any great meaning involve violating another persons personal soveriegnty.

    If you can’t understand the difference between a child rapist raping children and someone who dresses and acts differently you must be a direct danger to yourself and to others!

    “It’s men who confuse their own needs for “rights” to act upon those needs. Male needs are not the same as license regardless of what has been decided here. If you ask the KKK they will all advocate white supremacy. The principles are manifested on your agreement here. It’s meaningless.”

    No, what is meaningless is not what I am saying but your spurious examples. You see Women too have the rights to act on their own needs. These rights are limited only where they interfere with another persons rights. These form the interpersonal boundary between people. A person owns their own body entirely and may do with it what they wish (where the heck do you think the ‘my body, my right, my choice’ chant came from Sandy! A philosophical principle springing from the acceptance of the premises of equality and freedom!) and a person owns their personal possessions and may do with them whatever they wish also. This is the ‘private sphere’. Anything anyone does that involves what is within another persons ‘private sphere’ or ‘personnal space’ requires their informed consent. Without that informed uncoereced consent it becomes wrong. This is the basic structure from which most modern ethics stems.

    Say someone wants to murder someone else. They may only ethicly do so if the victim in fact desires to die and has given informed consent and is of sound mind. If all these conditions are granted it isn’t murder any more is it, no it’s assisted suicide. Are you starting to understand yet?

    Now say someone wants to have sex with a child. They have to wait untill the child is old enough and mature enough to give consent. At which point they are above the age of consent and no longer a child. Get it yet?

    Now say someone wants to dress in clothing mixing that which is usually sold to each sex, wear heavy dramatic makeup, lots of black, dark red, purple and occasionally touches of pink and silver jewelry with bats and spiders and skulls on them. This is called ‘goth’. Note that even when done in public it does not interfere with anybody elses ‘personal space’ or ‘private sphere’. People who do not share that style or taste or who do not find momento mori comfortable to witness may look away just like anyone else who dislikes anothers taste in clothing, jewelry, hairstyles etc.

    Now say that someone wants to dress entirely as someone of a different sex, feels inside all their life that they are physicly the wrong sex and embarks on a slow progression of treatments and surgeries to get their physical body to conform as much as possible to that sex until they reach a point they are comfortable with. They will dress as that sex, act as that sex, interact as that sex and use the public facilities provided for the public that by tradition are segregated by sex as that sex. Again note that they are not in any way interfering with anything inside anybody elses ‘personal space’ or ‘private sphere’.

    A robber invades that space. A rapist invades that space, a murderer invades that space, a child molester invades that space. Each of these involves one person taking control or possession of something from inside another persons ‘personal sphere’ their ‘private space’.

    This is why there is a universe of difference between things you are unable to notice the difference between. This is why your comment is ignorant, offensive and stupid. Read some philosophy, learn enough so as to not sound and look really foolish and maybe you’ll have more than buckley’s chance in this or any similar discussion.

    It’s not about male anything. It’s about cogent and time-tested philosophy versus a pile of nonsense where vastly different things are arbitrarily compared without the faintest understanding of their relative differences and distinctions.

    As I said before post-modernism might have it’s uses when discussing literature but it’s rubbish as metaphysics or when involved in moral and ethical reasoning.

    Clearly the very framework you must use to determine right from wrong must be utterly in shambles. I can’t bring in sophisticated ideas like social contracts and the writings of Hobbes, of the ethics of ideal versus the ethics of duty or any of the important sophisticated philosophy discussions that have been deeply influential on various feminist and civil rights struggles because you aren’t ready for it yet, you are still stuck on the basics.

    You seem to still have trouble discerning the moral and ethical differences between someone who is different in their personal appearance and behaviour while harming no-one and someone who opperates under the notion that the amount of ultraviolet light shielding chemicals in the upper dermis should define who is smarter and stronger than others and that people should be murdered for disagreeing with them let alone the moral and ethical difference between someone who dresses and behaves differently while harming no-one and someone who rapes children!

    See there is a difference between personal expression and baby-raping. The first one is governed by somatic sovereignty. It’s in the ‘personal space’ the ‘private sphere’ where the owner is the sole and undisputed tyrant no matter their sex. The second involves violating the personal space of a child.

    Get it now?

    And don’t give me any bulldust about a group having the same rights as the individual. That is the nonsense that some moron in a court once bought into that gave us the corporation, one of the greatest evils and oppressors of human history.

    No, a group of people is a group of people with individual rights. The group is not a valid entity in itself. To accept that is to invalidate free equal individual rights and to validate the abusive power structure of corporate colonialism. The structure of the group (and yes I realise that this may be moving far too fast for you if you still haven’t figured that personal space thing out yet) exists for the mutual benefit of it’s constituents. the constituents do not exist for the groups benefit. They are not a gestalt. They are only a group of individuals gathered together under an arbitrary definition involving a high statistical corrolation amongst the constituents that the individuals within the group find of benefit to cooperate or associate together within.

    ‘Women’ ‘men’ ‘goth’ ‘rockabilly’ ‘mensa’ all are just groups of perhaps similar yet individually distinct people. The group may have it’s own internal systems and structures, most of which will be arbitrary and filled with exceptions. There will be people on the fringe, people who almost but don’t quite fit the definition. People who belong to more than one group. For example I know a self-identified Trans-man who was born with some degree of intersex condition who alternates between the goth and rockabilly communities and will mix both styles in music and clothing and who once belonged to Mensa but quit.

    Now when you are ready we can start discussing societies (and cultural and sub-cultural groups) responsibilities to the individuals within it, social contracts between the person and the state, Whether individuals have obligations in order to get those benefits and a whole host of other important considerations that directly involve whether a public utility can and/or should be sex-segregated at all and what that might imply to the social obligation of providing safety and security while providing universal utilities for all equally. But there isn’t much point if you can only think simplisticly and reiterate the same thing over and over like a poor caged sulpher-crested cockatoo.

    So please do some homwork. Care to debate the validity and conflicts of the various schools of ethics? Want to argue the trolley dillema and it’s use as an analogy to this? What about the one where the head of a genius is grafted onto your shoulder to save their life but without your permission while you are in hospital for a minor operation? That’s a good one with lots of ramifications directly pertinent to this discussion. Have an alternative system of defining right and wrong that no-one else has explored yet? Got the worlds greatest excuse to get you out of the deep pit you’ve dug for yourself? Fine. Try me. But please stop making yourself look bad by just reiterating the same stuff ad neuseum.

    Let’s discuss the finer points, lets dig deep into the arguments on this issue. Lets examine the foundations of all the viewpoints, let’s test the predictions.

    But please rise above the level of discussion I could get from my ex girlfriends parrot.

  11. These are not questions of entitlement or detection. Those are deflections.

    The questions are questions male entitlement to spaces that are reserved for women.

    It doesn’t make any more difference in terms of your needs for self expression are than it does say for a pedophiles needs for self expression.

    It’s men who confuse their own needs for “rights” to act upon those needs. Male needs are not the same as license regardless of what has been decided here. If you ask the KKK they will all advocate white supremacy. The principles are manifested on your agreement here. It’s meaningless.

  12. These are not questions of entitlement or detection. Those are deflections.

    The questions are questions male entitlement to spaces that are reserved for women.

    It doesn’t make any more difference in terms of your needs for self expression are than it does say for a pedophiles needs for self expression.

    It’s men who confuse their own needs for “rights” to act upon those needs. Male needs are not the same as license regardless of what has been decided here. If you ask the KKK they will all advocate white supremacy. The principles are manifested on your agreement here. It’s meaningless.

  13. Btw I would like to apologise if my pestering Rainsong to admit herself and her transness sounds like a personal veneta, it is, but it’s not with Renee only, but with her “kind” of transgendered women who lie about their transness in general and I don’t like the second waive feminists very much.

  14. Btw I would like to apologise if my pestering Rainsong to admit herself and her transness sounds like a personal veneta, it is, but it’s not with Renee only, but with her “kind” of transgendered women who lie about their transness in general and I don’t like the second waive feminists very much.

  15. That, dear Polar Bear is because Sandy is actually a transgendered woman on a personal cruisaid to devalueate every single other transgendered woman’s claim’s to womanhood, starting from the “delusion” that a person with a penis can ever be a woman and ending with the delusion that a person who ever had a penis can be a woman at all.

    Sandy (Rainsong as she is better known) is a well known identity kamikaze out to delete herself and every other transgenderd woman from existance. When she manages to convince herself that no transgendered woman is a woman, then she will blow her brains out and lie in peace. For the time being she just lies through her teeth.

    Sandy, answer my question, where you ever known as Rainsong or Renee in the blogosphere? If not where can one find a repository of your online wisdom? Do you even have a blog or any sort of internet presence other than just trolling around transgendered sites?

  16. That, dear Polar Bear is because Sandy is actually a transgendered woman on a personal cruisaid to devalueate every single other transgendered woman’s claim’s to womanhood, starting from the “delusion” that a person with a penis can ever be a woman and ending with the delusion that a person who ever had a penis can be a woman at all.

    Sandy (Rainsong as she is better known) is a well known identity kamikaze out to delete herself and every other transgenderd woman from existance. When she manages to convince herself that no transgendered woman is a woman, then she will blow her brains out and lie in peace. For the time being she just lies through her teeth.

    Sandy, answer my question, where you ever known as Rainsong or Renee in the blogosphere? If not where can one find a repository of your online wisdom? Do you even have a blog or any sort of internet presence other than just trolling around transgendered sites?

  17. Oh, yeah, Sandy, what the hell is a cradle woman who doesn’t think anything about the transgender community is valid, doing writing comments on a blog for transgender activists?
    I don’t care to bother to read the fecal matter that is written about T people on Religious Reich and Janice Raymond-ite blogs, so why are you here?

  18. Oh, yeah, Sandy, what the hell is a cradle woman who doesn’t think anything about the transgender community is valid, doing writing comments on a blog for transgender activists?
    I don’t care to bother to read the fecal matter that is written about T people on Religious Reich and Janice Raymond-ite blogs, so why are you here?

  19. Sandy wrote:
    “If there is a penis under the skirt, the skirt belongs to a him, not a her.
    I want anatomical males out of the women’s room.”

    People in hell want ice water. Ralph Nader wants to be President. I want a 12-karat diamond ring for my wonderful wife (with matching earrings), and a black Lamborghini Murcielago for myself. Each of these is equally unlikely to occur.

    You might be surprised to learn that, in most places, there are no laws in place regarding who may use what restroom. In fact, if the people of Monty County MD are stupid and bigoted enough to repeal the law in question, it would remain legal for a T person, with or without penis, to use the ladies room. Outlawing penises in the restroom would be another law altogether, and would probably be challenged in court, since there are conflicting court rulings defining what a man and woman are, exactly.

    You also never mentioned how you’d ascertain whether the person in the stall next to you, or the person applying lipstick at the next mirror, has or doesn’t have a penis. Neither my wife, nor myself, are willing to lift our skirts to prove to some creep with a badge that we have the right to relieve ourselves behind a closed stall door. You planning to peek in the stalls to see how people are equipped? Maybe you can hire the cop that busted Larry Craig to do that. Personally, I’d be more scared of the sick individuals who’d consent to being bathroom cops, than of the occasional T person.

    Just as you don’t buy “transgender” as a valid descriptive term, I don’t buy any of the dogma of feminist theory, beyond the thought that all people are created equal and should enjoy equal rights. Just as you don’t want peni in restrooms, I don’t want Janice Raymond and Germaine Greer books in my sight.
    I suppose each of us may fire up our respective grills and barbecue, now.

    Before you say “there oughta be a law that no penises may be in the ladies room”, you ought to think of how that could be enforced in the real world. For instance, ya gonna bust a mom with preschool kids who takes all of them – especially the little boys – in the ladies with them, so that she can rediaper them safely? Or you see a 6′ tall, heavy-set woman that might be a T – you gonna make her lift her skirt and prove herself? Most such women I know would slap you upside the head at the very suggestion.

    As stated before, you don’t want peni in the restroom. Jerry Falwell and Mao Zedong want ice water. Ralph Nader wants to write an inaugural address. I want to put that ring on my wife’s finger, and I crave the feel of driving that Lamborghini. We have equal chances of getting what we want – zilch.

  20. Sandy wrote:
    “If there is a penis under the skirt, the skirt belongs to a him, not a her.
    I want anatomical males out of the women’s room.”

    People in hell want ice water. Ralph Nader wants to be President. I want a 12-karat diamond ring for my wonderful wife (with matching earrings), and a black Lamborghini Murcielago for myself. Each of these is equally unlikely to occur.

    You might be surprised to learn that, in most places, there are no laws in place regarding who may use what restroom. In fact, if the people of Monty County MD are stupid and bigoted enough to repeal the law in question, it would remain legal for a T person, with or without penis, to use the ladies room. Outlawing penises in the restroom would be another law altogether, and would probably be challenged in court, since there are conflicting court rulings defining what a man and woman are, exactly.

    You also never mentioned how you’d ascertain whether the person in the stall next to you, or the person applying lipstick at the next mirror, has or doesn’t have a penis. Neither my wife, nor myself, are willing to lift our skirts to prove to some creep with a badge that we have the right to relieve ourselves behind a closed stall door. You planning to peek in the stalls to see how people are equipped? Maybe you can hire the cop that busted Larry Craig to do that. Personally, I’d be more scared of the sick individuals who’d consent to being bathroom cops, than of the occasional T person.

    Just as you don’t buy “transgender” as a valid descriptive term, I don’t buy any of the dogma of feminist theory, beyond the thought that all people are created equal and should enjoy equal rights. Just as you don’t want peni in restrooms, I don’t want Janice Raymond and Germaine Greer books in my sight.
    I suppose each of us may fire up our respective grills and barbecue, now.

    Before you say “there oughta be a law that no penises may be in the ladies room”, you ought to think of how that could be enforced in the real world. For instance, ya gonna bust a mom with preschool kids who takes all of them – especially the little boys – in the ladies with them, so that she can rediaper them safely? Or you see a 6′ tall, heavy-set woman that might be a T – you gonna make her lift her skirt and prove herself? Most such women I know would slap you upside the head at the very suggestion.

    As stated before, you don’t want peni in the restroom. Jerry Falwell and Mao Zedong want ice water. Ralph Nader wants to write an inaugural address. I want to put that ring on my wife’s finger, and I crave the feel of driving that Lamborghini. We have equal chances of getting what we want – zilch.

  21. “It’s only taken several thousand words to impart that.”

    No Sandy, we all got it the first time. We all just disagree with you and think your reasons and reasoning on the subject are totally wrong.

    “This is a problem that men have to sort out.”

    No it is a problem for everyone. No one gets an out on this.

    “WDIT – MRA argument warning.”

    I don’t know what those initials stand for at this moment, please elucidate.

    Well according to the women on the psychology radio program All In The Mind on australias state owned national broadcaster ABC Radio National who did a program recently on women who kill their children and women who are sex offenders it is, despite the taboo and much smaller proportion of assaults still an important and concerning issue. Apparently many of the treatment options used successfully with male sex offenders do not owrk with female sex offenders. A comment was also made, and it is one I have to look into, along the lines that some male offenders were abused sexually by women as children. That would seem to coincide with the fact that many abusers of children were themselves abused as children, functioning in effect as a comunicable pyschological illness.

    “Total non-sequitor there.”

    Maybe you better explain that cause it doesn’t seem to me to be a non-sequitor. A non sequiter is where an associated but not causal premise in a statement is taken to be a causal premise by incorrect association http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29

    My premise is that the bathroom type that I call for is the safest one for everyone including women. The one you call for, the current type, has been proven to be unsafe and would appear to be vastly less safe than the one that I propose. Now if you could prove that the bathroom type I call for is not safer I would be wrong, but it still wouldn’t be a non-sequiter! Just a statement based on an incorrect premise.

    “I just don’t want penises in women’s rooms. People with penises aren’t women. They don’t belong there.
    You are man, you live as a man. I don’t want to share a bathroom with you.”

    We know what you want, but that doesn’t mean that it would be right for you to get what you want.
    Some people didn’t want black people in white’s rooms. People with black skin aren’t white. Some people said they didn’t belong there.
    The blacks were black, they lived as blacks, some whites didn’t want to share a bathroom with them.

    See the problem is that the argument is precisely the same.

    “I’ll NEVER join you in anything. I promise.”

    Wow so what will happen if I agree’d with everything you said? Would you have to oppose all your own values, beliefs and arguments just because you need to oppose me? WoW! Talk about handing me your power! In that case I could totally define you because you could only be what opposes me! That doesn’t sound very smart or stable to me.

    “I will happily call the police on your if I ever see you in the women’s room.”

    Well if you ever travel to my continent, to my state, to my region, to my small rural town and find me in a public womens toilets rather than the unisex disabled toilets in the shopping centre that I normally use (one of only a couple in the town) which I am legally entitled to use on account of my legally recognised disabled status then by all means call the police on me. I won’t be terribly upset.

    “A transgender who has a birth certificate or recognition certificate in their preferred gender must be treated at all times as their new gender. It would be discrimination and against the law to do anything else.

    All other transgenders should be allowed to use the toilets or change rooms of their choice unless this would be “unreasonable in all the circumstances”. In the vast majority of cases this means that transgenders should be allowed to use the toilets and change rooms of their preferred gender. It is not necessary, and in most cases would be insulting and against the anti-discrimination law, to either instal a special set of toilets/change rooms or make transgenders use a different set than people who are not transgender.

    Once again, don’t make assumptions. Some transgenders may wish to use the toilets of their birth gender, while others may wish to use the toilets of their preferred gender.”

    Hahahahahahahahaaaaaaa
    Hahahaahahahahahahaaaaaa

    Sandy go right ahead. This particular battle has already been won here!
    Your side lost.

    “They are not there for your hobbies.”

    And for the record crossdressing is not for me a hobby. I have lots of hobbies so I can tel the difference. It is a deep and neccessary part of my self expression and self identity no matter how ignorant you are about that nor how much your polarised mind fails to understand.

    The toilets are there as receptacles for human metabolic waste products. that is their function. They are provided as an essential service for the community by the community.

    And all women and all children and the disabled and effeminate men and openly gay men and elderly men just less strong than other men will all be vastly safer with single use 0 communal private space disabled access unisex toilets protected at their entrance by quality cctv camera.

  22. “It’s only taken several thousand words to impart that.”

    No Sandy, we all got it the first time. We all just disagree with you and think your reasons and reasoning on the subject are totally wrong.

    “This is a problem that men have to sort out.”

    No it is a problem for everyone. No one gets an out on this.

    “WDIT – MRA argument warning.”

    I don’t know what those initials stand for at this moment, please elucidate.

    Well according to the women on the psychology radio program All In The Mind on australias state owned national broadcaster ABC Radio National who did a program recently on women who kill their children and women who are sex offenders it is, despite the taboo and much smaller proportion of assaults still an important and concerning issue. Apparently many of the treatment options used successfully with male sex offenders do not owrk with female sex offenders. A comment was also made, and it is one I have to look into, along the lines that some male offenders were abused sexually by women as children. That would seem to coincide with the fact that many abusers of children were themselves abused as children, functioning in effect as a comunicable pyschological illness.

    “Total non-sequitor there.”

    Maybe you better explain that cause it doesn’t seem to me to be a non-sequitor. A non sequiter is where an associated but not causal premise in a statement is taken to be a causal premise by incorrect association http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29

    My premise is that the bathroom type that I call for is the safest one for everyone including women. The one you call for, the current type, has been proven to be unsafe and would appear to be vastly less safe than the one that I propose. Now if you could prove that the bathroom type I call for is not safer I would be wrong, but it still wouldn’t be a non-sequiter! Just a statement based on an incorrect premise.

    “I just don’t want penises in women’s rooms. People with penises aren’t women. They don’t belong there.
    You are man, you live as a man. I don’t want to share a bathroom with you.”

    We know what you want, but that doesn’t mean that it would be right for you to get what you want.
    Some people didn’t want black people in white’s rooms. People with black skin aren’t white. Some people said they didn’t belong there.
    The blacks were black, they lived as blacks, some whites didn’t want to share a bathroom with them.

    See the problem is that the argument is precisely the same.

    “I’ll NEVER join you in anything. I promise.”

    Wow so what will happen if I agree’d with everything you said? Would you have to oppose all your own values, beliefs and arguments just because you need to oppose me? WoW! Talk about handing me your power! In that case I could totally define you because you could only be what opposes me! That doesn’t sound very smart or stable to me.

    “I will happily call the police on your if I ever see you in the women’s room.”

    Well if you ever travel to my continent, to my state, to my region, to my small rural town and find me in a public womens toilets rather than the unisex disabled toilets in the shopping centre that I normally use (one of only a couple in the town) which I am legally entitled to use on account of my legally recognised disabled status then by all means call the police on me. I won’t be terribly upset.

    “A transgender who has a birth certificate or recognition certificate in their preferred gender must be treated at all times as their new gender. It would be discrimination and against the law to do anything else.

    All other transgenders should be allowed to use the toilets or change rooms of their choice unless this would be “unreasonable in all the circumstances”. In the vast majority of cases this means that transgenders should be allowed to use the toilets and change rooms of their preferred gender. It is not necessary, and in most cases would be insulting and against the anti-discrimination law, to either instal a special set of toilets/change rooms or make transgenders use a different set than people who are not transgender.

    Once again, don’t make assumptions. Some transgenders may wish to use the toilets of their birth gender, while others may wish to use the toilets of their preferred gender.”

    Hahahahahahahahaaaaaaa
    Hahahaahahahahahahaaaaaa

    Sandy go right ahead. This particular battle has already been won here!
    Your side lost.

    “They are not there for your hobbies.”

    And for the record crossdressing is not for me a hobby. I have lots of hobbies so I can tel the difference. It is a deep and neccessary part of my self expression and self identity no matter how ignorant you are about that nor how much your polarised mind fails to understand.

    The toilets are there as receptacles for human metabolic waste products. that is their function. They are provided as an essential service for the community by the community.

    And all women and all children and the disabled and effeminate men and openly gay men and elderly men just less strong than other men will all be vastly safer with single use 0 communal private space disabled access unisex toilets protected at their entrance by quality cctv camera.

  23. “I know you agre with sex segregated bathrooms. I think you might have mentioned that before. “

    It’s only taken several thousand words to impart that.

    “And males are raped in lower but still significant numbers. 1 in 3 Australian female children have been abused. 1 in 7 males have.”

    This is a problem that men have to sort out.

    “Women also rape women and molest children though less frequently than men.”

    WDIT – MRA argument warning.

    “So the bathroom types I am calling for will protect both sexes esecially for children making them safer than the bathrooms you are calling for.”

    Total non-sequitor there.

    “Is that garbage? No, it’s not garbage. It’s just an empiraical fact of life for women that inconvenient to you.”

    ????

    No I acknowledge the problem of womens safety absolutely! Rape is wrong and needs to be prevented!

    Both natal men and natal women and a transexual woman who are dear friends of mine and my gender non-conformist cousin have been raped. I want that not to be repeated to any more people.
    What is inconvenient for you is that I am calling for a safer space than you are.

    I just don’t want penises in women’s rooms. People with penises aren’t women. They don’t belong there.
    You are man, you live as a man. I don’t want to share a bathroom with you.

    “So Sandy, why don’t you join me in calling for safe toilets and showers without private communal space protected by cctv cameras and really protect women and children?”

    I’ll NEVER join you in anything. I promise.

    Penises out of women’s room.

    I will happily call the police on your if I ever see you in the women’s room. They are not there for your hobbies.

  24. “I know you agre with sex segregated bathrooms. I think you might have mentioned that before. “

    It’s only taken several thousand words to impart that.

    “And males are raped in lower but still significant numbers. 1 in 3 Australian female children have been abused. 1 in 7 males have.”

    This is a problem that men have to sort out.

    “Women also rape women and molest children though less frequently than men.”

    WDIT – MRA argument warning.

    “So the bathroom types I am calling for will protect both sexes esecially for children making them safer than the bathrooms you are calling for.”

    Total non-sequitor there.

    “Is that garbage? No, it’s not garbage. It’s just an empiraical fact of life for women that inconvenient to you.”

    ????

    No I acknowledge the problem of womens safety absolutely! Rape is wrong and needs to be prevented!

    Both natal men and natal women and a transexual woman who are dear friends of mine and my gender non-conformist cousin have been raped. I want that not to be repeated to any more people.
    What is inconvenient for you is that I am calling for a safer space than you are.

    I just don’t want penises in women’s rooms. People with penises aren’t women. They don’t belong there.
    You are man, you live as a man. I don’t want to share a bathroom with you.

    “So Sandy, why don’t you join me in calling for safe toilets and showers without private communal space protected by cctv cameras and really protect women and children?”

    I’ll NEVER join you in anything. I promise.

    Penises out of women’s room.

    I will happily call the police on your if I ever see you in the women’s room. They are not there for your hobbies.

  25. Having enough room for just one wheelchair with one or more cameras right near the door to ensure only one person enters at a time and that anyone breaking this rule will be recorded and identified would have identified and maybe even have prevented the attacks of the rapist/murderers of children in several horrible cases in Australian superkarket and sporting events toilets. The same with the teenage girl gangraped in a toilet in Sydney.

    Sex segregation did not provide one iota of protection for these innocents. What I’m calling for would provide a quality detterant and vastly help in the arrest and prosecution of these people.

    So Sandy, why don’t you join me in calling for safe toilets and showers without private communal space protected by cctv cameras and really protect women and children?

  26. Having enough room for just one wheelchair with one or more cameras right near the door to ensure only one person enters at a time and that anyone breaking this rule will be recorded and identified would have identified and maybe even have prevented the attacks of the rapist/murderers of children in several horrible cases in Australian superkarket and sporting events toilets. The same with the teenage girl gangraped in a toilet in Sydney.

    Sex segregation did not provide one iota of protection for these innocents. What I’m calling for would provide a quality detterant and vastly help in the arrest and prosecution of these people.

    So Sandy, why don’t you join me in calling for safe toilets and showers without private communal space protected by cctv cameras and really protect women and children?

  27. Sandy said:
    I am a woman born woman.

    Not by anyone’s definition but your own. You are Rainsong self hating transexual second wave feminist extraordinaire.

  28. Sandy said:
    I am a woman born woman.

    Not by anyone’s definition but your own. You are Rainsong self hating transexual second wave feminist extraordinaire.

  29. Yes because the magical restroom sign is gonna stop a rapist who is really concerned about the law.

  30. Yes because the magical restroom sign is gonna stop a rapist who is really concerned about the law.

  31. No, when I say ‘reason’ I mean cogent thought consistent with logical principles and devoid of logical inconsistancies and fallacies. A viewpoint I disagree with can still be reason. In fact i can argue plenty of viewpoints I don’t personally agree with because they can still be reason. That’s one of the useful skills that you can pick up from formal debating.

    I am not setting myself up as the standard of reason. i am not perfect and sometimes my arguments too include logical fallacies and I’ll hapilly acknowledge and modify any accordingly.

    I know you agre with sex segregated bathrooms. I think you might have mentioned that before.

    “Is safety a reason? Emprically a female is raped by males every four minutes. Yes, safety is a reason.”

    And males are raped in lower but still significant numbers. 1 in 3 Australian female children have been abused. 1 in 7 males have.

    Women also rape women and molest children though less frequently than men.

    So the bathroom types I am calling for will protect both sexes esecially for children making them safer than the bathrooms you are calling for.

    “Is that garbage? No, it’s not garbage. It’s just an empiraical fact of life for women that inconvenient to you.”

    No I acknowledge the problem of womens safety absolutely! Rape is wrong and needs to be prevented! Both natal men and natal women and a transexual woman who are dear friends of mine and my gender non-conformist cousin have been raped. I want that not to be repeated to any more people.

    What is inconvenient for you is that I am calling for a safer space than you are.

  32. No, when I say ‘reason’ I mean cogent thought consistent with logical principles and devoid of logical inconsistancies and fallacies. A viewpoint I disagree with can still be reason. In fact i can argue plenty of viewpoints I don’t personally agree with because they can still be reason. That’s one of the useful skills that you can pick up from formal debating.

    I am not setting myself up as the standard of reason. i am not perfect and sometimes my arguments too include logical fallacies and I’ll hapilly acknowledge and modify any accordingly.

    I know you agre with sex segregated bathrooms. I think you might have mentioned that before.

    “Is safety a reason? Emprically a female is raped by males every four minutes. Yes, safety is a reason.”

    And males are raped in lower but still significant numbers. 1 in 3 Australian female children have been abused. 1 in 7 males have.

    Women also rape women and molest children though less frequently than men.

    So the bathroom types I am calling for will protect both sexes esecially for children making them safer than the bathrooms you are calling for.

    “Is that garbage? No, it’s not garbage. It’s just an empiraical fact of life for women that inconvenient to you.”

    No I acknowledge the problem of womens safety absolutely! Rape is wrong and needs to be prevented! Both natal men and natal women and a transexual woman who are dear friends of mine and my gender non-conformist cousin have been raped. I want that not to be repeated to any more people.

    What is inconvenient for you is that I am calling for a safer space than you are.

  33. How many of those women that are raped, are raped by a transsexual/transgender person in a bathroom.

    ZERO.

    Empirical my ass.

  34. How many of those women that are raped, are raped by a transsexual/transgender person in a bathroom.

    ZERO.

    Empirical my ass.

  35. When you say “reason”, that means what’s reasonable to you.

    When I oppose you, if I don’t agree with you, then you say, I am not reasonable” setting yourself up as the standard of reason itself.

    You are not the standard of reason. You don’t believe restrooms should be sexually segregated? I do.

    Is safety a reason? Emprically a female is raped by males every four minutes. Yes, safety is a reason.

    Is that garbage? No, it’s not garbage. It’s just an empiraical fact of life for women that inconvenient to you.

  36. When you say “reason”, that means what’s reasonable to you.

    When I oppose you, if I don’t agree with you, then you say, I am not reasonable” setting yourself up as the standard of reason itself.

    You are not the standard of reason. You don’t believe restrooms should be sexually segregated? I do.

    Is safety a reason? Emprically a female is raped by males every four minutes. Yes, safety is a reason.

    Is that garbage? No, it’s not garbage. It’s just an empiraical fact of life for women that inconvenient to you.

  37. Actually Sandy i asked Val the question and most specifically worded so we could discuss opperative principles of philosophy without begining in the specifics of arbitrary factors. allowing the principle to inform the example rather than the other way round. Give it a try sometime. You might learn something.

    “How about spaces which are reserved based on sex – which of course you feel entitled to?”

    And black people should have stayed in the black peoples bathrooms too shouldn’t they Sandy?

    Only I don’t agree with the premise. I don’t agree that public facilities should be reserved based on sex or race or any other arbitrary factor do I, making your argument and your admonition pointless and meaningless. How can you argue that I feel entitled to something I say shouldn’t exist?

    And don’t give me any bull on safety as a reason for sex segregated toilets because you know that I advocate for spaces safer and more secure for children, the disabled and everyone else than the sex segregated communal facilities you argue in protetion of so give me ANOTHER reason why public spaces should be reserved based on sex?

  38. Actually Sandy i asked Val the question and most specifically worded so we could discuss opperative principles of philosophy without begining in the specifics of arbitrary factors. allowing the principle to inform the example rather than the other way round. Give it a try sometime. You might learn something.

    “How about spaces which are reserved based on sex – which of course you feel entitled to?”

    And black people should have stayed in the black peoples bathrooms too shouldn’t they Sandy?

    Only I don’t agree with the premise. I don’t agree that public facilities should be reserved based on sex or race or any other arbitrary factor do I, making your argument and your admonition pointless and meaningless. How can you argue that I feel entitled to something I say shouldn’t exist?

    And don’t give me any bull on safety as a reason for sex segregated toilets because you know that I advocate for spaces safer and more secure for children, the disabled and everyone else than the sex segregated communal facilities you argue in protetion of so give me ANOTHER reason why public spaces should be reserved based on sex?

  39. Sandy I’m not dismissing your statements because you are a woman. I am not dismissing them at all. I am refutting them because they are incorrect and I say why they are incorrect and if I am wrong I can be shown to be wrong.

    All the feminists I’ve personally known, all the minorities I’ve known, have used the same standpoints tools and rationales. this is beause they shared the notions of equality, freedom, rationality and logic. Notions that work.

    I don’t insist you conform to the standards of rational thought because they are male, I do so because they accurately define the difference between the sane and rational and the meaningless arbitrary contradicitons of nonsense.

    “The outcome is the same that it has been for women which is the assertion that women are illogical. We are quite logical only from a set of experiences that no one here has had and which is not in your experience.”

    I agree that women have often been called illogical. Without evidence or cause (beyond the repression of womens education and attempts to keep them from thinking)! Moronic pseudoscience abounded through the ages with the likes of leeching, phrenology, hysteria and the miasmic theories of disease. One by one these have been torn apart by the scientific method. The premises they were based on shown to be false.

    The idea that women are less intelligent and less capable of logic is also one of these now thoroughly falsified ideas. However it is in the interests of those comercial enterprises that make vast sums of money from women to continue to decry science, logic and critical thinking as not appropriate for women and insisting they make all their decisions using unconcious intuitive reflexive and reactive emotionalism, all valid experiences as of course emotions and feelings and intuition are important, but these are the states of thinking that, in men or women, are most manipulable.

    By buying into the notion that such thinking is male you have bought into advocating for being susceptible to the very tool of oppression most successfully used to control and manipulate women, and increasingly also men, in this commerce based society (check out neurolinguistic programming and the interelations between military intel/propaganda and psy-ops with advertising for how this all works).

    These are well explored fields of research.

    By decrying logic and analytic thinking you abandon the most powerful tools for uncovering truth and demonstrating untruth. These aren’t male or female ideas. The notion that they are is part of the oppression of women! You need not abandon other modes of discovery, but intuition and lateral thinking while very useful are less measurable, quantifiable and most importantly less reliable and hence it is important that their results be double-checked by rational analysis!

    “That’s why it is useless to talk to men. They do not question themselves, they question feminist women who do not buy into their framing to begin with.”

    Not every male fits your generalisation you know. In fact many women also do not question themselves but instead rationalise and justify their feelings instead of questioning them. On the other hand many women do question themselves.

    As a writer and an artist I question myself aplenty. It’s part of the essential process.

    As a student of science and philosophy I recognise and acknowledge that everything must be questioned. Every cherished belief and opinion regularly re-analysed and scrutinised to see if it was never true, was partially true or seemed to be true but is better explained by other more accurate truths.

    Try me, we can cut as deep into the founding principles of western or eastern philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Lao Tzu and the various schools of bhuddism as you like. I’ve studied lots, am always willing to learn more and am absolutely ready to reappraise every single principle of any of them.

  40. Sandy I’m not dismissing your statements because you are a woman. I am not dismissing them at all. I am refutting them because they are incorrect and I say why they are incorrect and if I am wrong I can be shown to be wrong.

    All the feminists I’ve personally known, all the minorities I’ve known, have used the same standpoints tools and rationales. this is beause they shared the notions of equality, freedom, rationality and logic. Notions that work.

    I don’t insist you conform to the standards of rational thought because they are male, I do so because they accurately define the difference between the sane and rational and the meaningless arbitrary contradicitons of nonsense.

    “The outcome is the same that it has been for women which is the assertion that women are illogical. We are quite logical only from a set of experiences that no one here has had and which is not in your experience.”

    I agree that women have often been called illogical. Without evidence or cause (beyond the repression of womens education and attempts to keep them from thinking)! Moronic pseudoscience abounded through the ages with the likes of leeching, phrenology, hysteria and the miasmic theories of disease. One by one these have been torn apart by the scientific method. The premises they were based on shown to be false.

    The idea that women are less intelligent and less capable of logic is also one of these now thoroughly falsified ideas. However it is in the interests of those comercial enterprises that make vast sums of money from women to continue to decry science, logic and critical thinking as not appropriate for women and insisting they make all their decisions using unconcious intuitive reflexive and reactive emotionalism, all valid experiences as of course emotions and feelings and intuition are important, but these are the states of thinking that, in men or women, are most manipulable.

    By buying into the notion that such thinking is male you have bought into advocating for being susceptible to the very tool of oppression most successfully used to control and manipulate women, and increasingly also men, in this commerce based society (check out neurolinguistic programming and the interelations between military intel/propaganda and psy-ops with advertising for how this all works).

    These are well explored fields of research.

    By decrying logic and analytic thinking you abandon the most powerful tools for uncovering truth and demonstrating untruth. These aren’t male or female ideas. The notion that they are is part of the oppression of women! You need not abandon other modes of discovery, but intuition and lateral thinking while very useful are less measurable, quantifiable and most importantly less reliable and hence it is important that their results be double-checked by rational analysis!

    “That’s why it is useless to talk to men. They do not question themselves, they question feminist women who do not buy into their framing to begin with.”

    Not every male fits your generalisation you know. In fact many women also do not question themselves but instead rationalise and justify their feelings instead of questioning them. On the other hand many women do question themselves.

    As a writer and an artist I question myself aplenty. It’s part of the essential process.

    As a student of science and philosophy I recognise and acknowledge that everything must be questioned. Every cherished belief and opinion regularly re-analysed and scrutinised to see if it was never true, was partially true or seemed to be true but is better explained by other more accurate truths.

    Try me, we can cut as deep into the founding principles of western or eastern philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Lao Tzu and the various schools of bhuddism as you like. I’ve studied lots, am always willing to learn more and am absolutely ready to reappraise every single principle of any of them.

  41. “Freedom of association does suggest that any group of private individuals should always be able to choose who they do or do not associate with no matter how racist sexist or phobic their motivation yes? So should this extend to public facilities and commercial services or is there a social contract involved that requires that services not be denied comercially and/or publicly for such reasons?”

    How about spaces which are reserved based on sex – which of course you feel entitled to?

    You are a male. Use the bathroom reserved for males. Stay out of bathrooms reserved for females. That’s pretty logical isn’t is?

    Maybe not… what in this society is really reserved for females when men want to take?

    Very little.

  42. “Freedom of association does suggest that any group of private individuals should always be able to choose who they do or do not associate with no matter how racist sexist or phobic their motivation yes? So should this extend to public facilities and commercial services or is there a social contract involved that requires that services not be denied comercially and/or publicly for such reasons?”

    How about spaces which are reserved based on sex – which of course you feel entitled to?

    You are a male. Use the bathroom reserved for males. Stay out of bathrooms reserved for females. That’s pretty logical isn’t is?

    Maybe not… what in this society is really reserved for females when men want to take?

    Very little.

  43. Sandy, logic isn’t white.
    The Muslim philosophers whose copies of the greek philosophers are the reason we have many of their writings still today were mostly brown and black and only rarely white.

    Logic isn’t male. Many women philosophers have found logic served their thinking quite satisfactorily. I was taught logic by women philosophers.

    Now if there is something wrong with the foundation points of each of my lines of logic you can demonstrate that logicly and show them to be wrong neatly and I’ll definatly concede any point that does so. The logic itself, like mathematics, is not social or white or male. The prseumptions precepts etc of a line of logic can be and that line of logic can be shown to be false on account of that.

    No matter who makes a logical statement that does not have one iota of bearing on the truth and untruth of that statement unless it relates directly and specifically to the state of that speaker.

    The same logical sentence from anyone of any sex ethnicity age or other arbitrary factor has no bearing on the thought, the words, the truth or untruth.

    So therefore Sandy your response is invalid. My dismissals are based on logical principles that have passed through Greece, Egypt, Rome, Persia, China.. I could go on for ages with the list. They are not white nor male nor hegemonic.

    They are simply true or untrue and if you can disprove any of the classical logical fallacies and show them to be true rather than false or add new arguments in favour or agaisnt any of them you will become famous. Your name will be reknowned in the annals of philosophical history! So be my guest.

    If on the other hand you can show that any one of my statements or more is logicaly invalid or based on a demonstrably false premise then please do. I will accept it if I cannot defend or refute it, adjust my opinions arguments and discussion accordingly like anyone should and we can continue on.

    The laws of physics are not male, gravity is not male, chemistry is not male, biology is not male, science is not male, mathematics is not male, logic is not male. Men have dominated each of these fields and have indeed made mysogynisitic statements or ignored womens issues, some have even deliberatly tried to keep women out of these fields. That invalidates their sexist views not the fields they worked in nor discoveries made by those people that were independant of their sexism. That does not make these things male. Madame Curie was not male. Hypatia of Alexandria might have been a crossdresser but she was born a woman. There have been women who had to fight for their right to knowledge and the power it brings and yet you simply disregard logic as male? The logic that informed and defined all of these sciences and all of the great victories of these women who broke through patriarchal oppression to make their marks on these fields and discover demonstrable evidential truths whose ramifications are stil being felt today!

    Post modernisim and all it’s ilk might be trendy and somewhat useful when considering art, writing and culture (including academic culture) but it’s rather shoddy as metaphysics.

    Sandy, perhaps metaphysics is a subject you might find really interesting. Maybe existentialism while you are at it. These could be really useful subjects for you in your arguments.

    I think it important for us to understand your argument that you define why you say some of the things you refer to as male are male because I do not see how many can be, just that they have been dominated by males which is not the same thing at all.

  44. Sandy, logic isn’t white.
    The Muslim philosophers whose copies of the greek philosophers are the reason we have many of their writings still today were mostly brown and black and only rarely white.

    Logic isn’t male. Many women philosophers have found logic served their thinking quite satisfactorily. I was taught logic by women philosophers.

    Now if there is something wrong with the foundation points of each of my lines of logic you can demonstrate that logicly and show them to be wrong neatly and I’ll definatly concede any point that does so. The logic itself, like mathematics, is not social or white or male. The prseumptions precepts etc of a line of logic can be and that line of logic can be shown to be false on account of that.

    No matter who makes a logical statement that does not have one iota of bearing on the truth and untruth of that statement unless it relates directly and specifically to the state of that speaker.

    The same logical sentence from anyone of any sex ethnicity age or other arbitrary factor has no bearing on the thought, the words, the truth or untruth.

    So therefore Sandy your response is invalid. My dismissals are based on logical principles that have passed through Greece, Egypt, Rome, Persia, China.. I could go on for ages with the list. They are not white nor male nor hegemonic.

    They are simply true or untrue and if you can disprove any of the classical logical fallacies and show them to be true rather than false or add new arguments in favour or agaisnt any of them you will become famous. Your name will be reknowned in the annals of philosophical history! So be my guest.

    If on the other hand you can show that any one of my statements or more is logicaly invalid or based on a demonstrably false premise then please do. I will accept it if I cannot defend or refute it, adjust my opinions arguments and discussion accordingly like anyone should and we can continue on.

    The laws of physics are not male, gravity is not male, chemistry is not male, biology is not male, science is not male, mathematics is not male, logic is not male. Men have dominated each of these fields and have indeed made mysogynisitic statements or ignored womens issues, some have even deliberatly tried to keep women out of these fields. That invalidates their sexist views not the fields they worked in nor discoveries made by those people that were independant of their sexism. That does not make these things male. Madame Curie was not male. Hypatia of Alexandria might have been a crossdresser but she was born a woman. There have been women who had to fight for their right to knowledge and the power it brings and yet you simply disregard logic as male? The logic that informed and defined all of these sciences and all of the great victories of these women who broke through patriarchal oppression to make their marks on these fields and discover demonstrable evidential truths whose ramifications are stil being felt today!

    Post modernisim and all it’s ilk might be trendy and somewhat useful when considering art, writing and culture (including academic culture) but it’s rather shoddy as metaphysics.

    Sandy, perhaps metaphysics is a subject you might find really interesting. Maybe existentialism while you are at it. These could be really useful subjects for you in your arguments.

    I think it important for us to understand your argument that you define why you say some of the things you refer to as male are male because I do not see how many can be, just that they have been dominated by males which is not the same thing at all.

  45. “Your every post remains here as a guide to the flaws and holes in your reasoning and others you may talk to in the future here or elsewhere may, regardless of their antomy be able to use that to tear down and destroy your points to the detriment of your main cause and alas possibly to those other causes you claim to support but insist on using arguments that run counter to or logically challenge them.”

    This happens in patriarchy. Women are dismissed. We are told we aren’t logical. If we don’t hold to white male logic, we are told we are supercilious. You want to talk about dynamics? I’ve said that the trans movement is a men’s movement. The standpoints, tools and rationales are identical.

    I have adopted white male logic because it’s true, I cannot dismantle the master’s house with his tools. The absolute unswerving insistence has been that I conform to his hegemonies in order to interact with him which I have refused to do.

    The outcome is the same that it has been for women which is the assertion that women are illogical. We are quite logical only from a set of experiences that no one here has had and which is not in your experience.

    That’s why it is useless to talk to men. They do not question themselves, they question feminist women who do not buy into their framing to begin with.

  46. “Your every post remains here as a guide to the flaws and holes in your reasoning and others you may talk to in the future here or elsewhere may, regardless of their antomy be able to use that to tear down and destroy your points to the detriment of your main cause and alas possibly to those other causes you claim to support but insist on using arguments that run counter to or logically challenge them.”

    This happens in patriarchy. Women are dismissed. We are told we aren’t logical. If we don’t hold to white male logic, we are told we are supercilious. You want to talk about dynamics? I’ve said that the trans movement is a men’s movement. The standpoints, tools and rationales are identical.

    I have adopted white male logic because it’s true, I cannot dismantle the master’s house with his tools. The absolute unswerving insistence has been that I conform to his hegemonies in order to interact with him which I have refused to do.

    The outcome is the same that it has been for women which is the assertion that women are illogical. We are quite logical only from a set of experiences that no one here has had and which is not in your experience.

    That’s why it is useless to talk to men. They do not question themselves, they question feminist women who do not buy into their framing to begin with.

  47. Val. You make a good deal of sense with what you say, and much more succinctly than I manage with my writers excess verbiage.

    I’d like to hear what you might have to say about the various issues that have come up in this thread. If arguing Sandy’s sometimes pointless irrational and warped (in the context of the use of the term in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) thinking is too tiresome for you (and I quite understand that, I only manage so easilly because of my repeated experiences with carrying on protracted arguments with some people with bad borderline personality disorder) then just post around her posts and perhaps you and I could have a sensible, constructive and intelligent discussion. Some of the things Sandy has said could make a good subject for discussion if only it weren’t chained down with the rest of her statements and behaviour.

    If you would indulge me Val, we could first take on the notion of denial of services/control of space.

    Freedom of association does suggest that any group of private individuals should always be able to choose who they do or do not associate with no matter how racist sexist or phobic their motivation yes? So should this extend to public facilities and commercial services or is there a social contract involved that requires that services not be denied comercially and/or publicly for such reasons?

    If yes or no please state the why’s of your reasoning.

  48. Val. You make a good deal of sense with what you say, and much more succinctly than I manage with my writers excess verbiage.

    I’d like to hear what you might have to say about the various issues that have come up in this thread. If arguing Sandy’s sometimes pointless irrational and warped (in the context of the use of the term in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) thinking is too tiresome for you (and I quite understand that, I only manage so easilly because of my repeated experiences with carrying on protracted arguments with some people with bad borderline personality disorder) then just post around her posts and perhaps you and I could have a sensible, constructive and intelligent discussion. Some of the things Sandy has said could make a good subject for discussion if only it weren’t chained down with the rest of her statements and behaviour.

    If you would indulge me Val, we could first take on the notion of denial of services/control of space.

    Freedom of association does suggest that any group of private individuals should always be able to choose who they do or do not associate with no matter how racist sexist or phobic their motivation yes? So should this extend to public facilities and commercial services or is there a social contract involved that requires that services not be denied comercially and/or publicly for such reasons?

    If yes or no please state the why’s of your reasoning.

  49. “Sandy: assertion.
    Batty: counterpoint.
    Sandy: I don’t need to listen to you because you’re a man.”

    It’s largely useless to talk to men because of their hegemony. He has not made counterpoints, he has simply dismissed with white male hegemonies. Men insist on thier logic from their social standpoint.

    Why must one employ white male logic to counter white males? That system has been made for them for their benefit. It shaves off and removes all feeling which are also quite valid. So where is what the interaction looks like to me:

    Sandy: assertion.
    Batty: Dismissal. Counterpoint based in white male hegemony.
    Sandy: I don’t need to listen to you because you’re a man.

    I think my response is quite valid.

  50. “Sandy: assertion.
    Batty: counterpoint.
    Sandy: I don’t need to listen to you because you’re a man.”

    It’s largely useless to talk to men because of their hegemony. He has not made counterpoints, he has simply dismissed with white male hegemonies. Men insist on thier logic from their social standpoint.

    Why must one employ white male logic to counter white males? That system has been made for them for their benefit. It shaves off and removes all feeling which are also quite valid. So where is what the interaction looks like to me:

    Sandy: assertion.
    Batty: Dismissal. Counterpoint based in white male hegemony.
    Sandy: I don’t need to listen to you because you’re a man.

    I think my response is quite valid.

  51. I think that at this point I’ll join Abernathey on the back bench.

    This is how I see the exchange between Sandy and Batty:

    Sandy: assertion.
    Batty: counterpoint.
    Sandy: I don’t need to listen to you because you’re a man.

    It’s not so much a weak position as surreal… and ultimately self-defeating since the method has currency only in a separatist epistemology which, by definition, is entirely self-referential. One gets the impression that, if she felt she could get away with it, Sandy would reject the entire progress of reason, simply because so much of it is associated with male figures.

    I think a couple of my own interactions with her have been marginally more productive, and I sincerely thank her for those exchanges, but the circularity of her own arguments quickly limits my own responses and prompts me toward a repetition I’d just as soon not bother with.

    Sandy emits many variations on a single position which, if it were reversed, would rightly be considered misogynistic. Prejudice of that quality really can’t be persuaded or even reasonably addressed… and the subsequent lack of investment on my part in such an effort is compounded by my earlier observation of her own ideological insularity.

    And thank you, Marti, for keeping this thread open. It really has been very useful and interesting… not in the sense of advancing any particular arguments (though I am glad of the opportunity to read so much of Batty’s thinking on these topics) but from the standpoint of engaged observation of a certain kind of dynamic.

  52. I think that at this point I’ll join Abernathey on the back bench.

    This is how I see the exchange between Sandy and Batty:

    Sandy: assertion.
    Batty: counterpoint.
    Sandy: I don’t need to listen to you because you’re a man.

    It’s not so much a weak position as surreal… and ultimately self-defeating since the method has currency only in a separatist epistemology which, by definition, is entirely self-referential. One gets the impression that, if she felt she could get away with it, Sandy would reject the entire progress of reason, simply because so much of it is associated with male figures.

    I think a couple of my own interactions with her have been marginally more productive, and I sincerely thank her for those exchanges, but the circularity of her own arguments quickly limits my own responses and prompts me toward a repetition I’d just as soon not bother with.

    Sandy emits many variations on a single position which, if it were reversed, would rightly be considered misogynistic. Prejudice of that quality really can’t be persuaded or even reasonably addressed… and the subsequent lack of investment on my part in such an effort is compounded by my earlier observation of her own ideological insularity.

    And thank you, Marti, for keeping this thread open. It really has been very useful and interesting… not in the sense of advancing any particular arguments (though I am glad of the opportunity to read so much of Batty’s thinking on these topics) but from the standpoint of engaged observation of a certain kind of dynamic.

  53. Yes Sandy, why?
    You aren’t structuring your arguments in an attempt to convince us either by intellectual argument or by empathic rhetoric.
    You aren’t here to learn, your closed minded attitudes, feeble rationalisations and crude justifications and use of words like ‘never’ make that clear.
    You aren’t even here for a good honest debate or to test the strength of your own arguments as your cop-out dismissals and refusal to answer to the weaknesses of your arguments demonstartes elegantly.
    You aren’t here to just express your opinion either as you could have commented and left long ago yet you keep coming back to make the same points while ducking and weaving, dismissing and ignoring the problems with your arguments or points raised aginst them.

    So what exactly are you getting out of this?

    Could you be someone who can’t step away from an argument? I’ve known many of those. Occassionally I’m like that myself, not for antagonisms sake in my case but the chance to get deep down into the depths of a conundrum, learn about it, understand it and take wisdom from it and where possible find solutions to it. But that’s not what your doing as your dismissals and dodging makes plain. Are you the kind of person who needs to win, who will keep at an argument no matter how tenuous, no matter how dishonest the tactics might be required to keep the argument going until they can step away with some sort of victory even if it’s just that they’ve argued until they chase everyone else away and claim victory by default? I’ve seen whole forums destroyed by people like that.

    That one seems possible I suppose.

    So why Sandy, what do you get out of it?
    Perhaps I’m giving you too much credit and you are trying to convince, in which case you are failing so badly as to actually be strengthening the cases of those you argue against while displaying the flaws in your own.
    Certainly I’d expect a better understanding of moral and ethical reasoning and quality of argument from 1st year philosophy students, nay actually from high school students seeing as Australia has started teaching philosophy in some high school at last.

    I expect of course you’ll spout another ‘I don’t have to answer to you, your just a crossdresser, a male crossdresser!’ in response to this. Unfortunatly your every such comment displays intellectual dishonesty, cowardice, anti-male anti-crossdresser bias and the utter vacuity and defenselessness of your arguments.

    Your every post remains here as a guide to the flaws and holes in your reasoning and others you may talk to in the future here or elsewhere may, regardless of their antomy be able to use that to tear down and destroy your points to the detriment of your main cause and alas possibly to those other causes you claim to support but insist on using arguments that run counter to or logically challenge them.

    You do yourself incalculable damage in that.
    It is good for blowing out the cobwebs between my ears though, being a physically, and more embarrassingly for you, intellectually disabled person who didn’t even finish high school running on 40 IQ points down from what it was before I was disabled I am enjoying pointing out the inconsistencies, dischordancies, logical fallacies and total disasters in moral and ethical reasoning in your arguments.

    Still I personally find that the toilet argument is fatally flawed on both sides. After hearing about the many abuses of children in communal public toilets it seems clear to me that all people have to be willing to give up the ideological battle and accept substantial changes to all public facilities to make them safer for everyone. You lose in defending womens space, those transexual and/or transgender people who consider getting into womens spaces an important recognition of their womanhood lose and those in need of safe toilet space no matter who they are win.

    I challenge anyone on each side of the debate to justify letting children remain at risk in toilets where a parent of the opposite sex/gender may not enter. I don’t care what the ideology is, it’s not as important as protecting everyone your personal victory would exclude no matter who or what they are!

  54. Yes Sandy, why?
    You aren’t structuring your arguments in an attempt to convince us either by intellectual argument or by empathic rhetoric.
    You aren’t here to learn, your closed minded attitudes, feeble rationalisations and crude justifications and use of words like ‘never’ make that clear.
    You aren’t even here for a good honest debate or to test the strength of your own arguments as your cop-out dismissals and refusal to answer to the weaknesses of your arguments demonstartes elegantly.
    You aren’t here to just express your opinion either as you could have commented and left long ago yet you keep coming back to make the same points while ducking and weaving, dismissing and ignoring the problems with your arguments or points raised aginst them.

    So what exactly are you getting out of this?

    Could you be someone who can’t step away from an argument? I’ve known many of those. Occassionally I’m like that myself, not for antagonisms sake in my case but the chance to get deep down into the depths of a conundrum, learn about it, understand it and take wisdom from it and where possible find solutions to it. But that’s not what your doing as your dismissals and dodging makes plain. Are you the kind of person who needs to win, who will keep at an argument no matter how tenuous, no matter how dishonest the tactics might be required to keep the argument going until they can step away with some sort of victory even if it’s just that they’ve argued until they chase everyone else away and claim victory by default? I’ve seen whole forums destroyed by people like that.

    That one seems possible I suppose.

    So why Sandy, what do you get out of it?
    Perhaps I’m giving you too much credit and you are trying to convince, in which case you are failing so badly as to actually be strengthening the cases of those you argue against while displaying the flaws in your own.
    Certainly I’d expect a better understanding of moral and ethical reasoning and quality of argument from 1st year philosophy students, nay actually from high school students seeing as Australia has started teaching philosophy in some high school at last.

    I expect of course you’ll spout another ‘I don’t have to answer to you, your just a crossdresser, a male crossdresser!’ in response to this. Unfortunatly your every such comment displays intellectual dishonesty, cowardice, anti-male anti-crossdresser bias and the utter vacuity and defenselessness of your arguments.

    Your every post remains here as a guide to the flaws and holes in your reasoning and others you may talk to in the future here or elsewhere may, regardless of their antomy be able to use that to tear down and destroy your points to the detriment of your main cause and alas possibly to those other causes you claim to support but insist on using arguments that run counter to or logically challenge them.

    You do yourself incalculable damage in that.
    It is good for blowing out the cobwebs between my ears though, being a physically, and more embarrassingly for you, intellectually disabled person who didn’t even finish high school running on 40 IQ points down from what it was before I was disabled I am enjoying pointing out the inconsistencies, dischordancies, logical fallacies and total disasters in moral and ethical reasoning in your arguments.

    Still I personally find that the toilet argument is fatally flawed on both sides. After hearing about the many abuses of children in communal public toilets it seems clear to me that all people have to be willing to give up the ideological battle and accept substantial changes to all public facilities to make them safer for everyone. You lose in defending womens space, those transexual and/or transgender people who consider getting into womens spaces an important recognition of their womanhood lose and those in need of safe toilet space no matter who they are win.

    I challenge anyone on each side of the debate to justify letting children remain at risk in toilets where a parent of the opposite sex/gender may not enter. I don’t care what the ideology is, it’s not as important as protecting everyone your personal victory would exclude no matter who or what they are!

  55. Good to hear from you about it, and yes I pretty much came to the same conclusion myself.

    It’s just very frustrating to see majority of the posts get derailed by some devout follower of some ideology or another time after time. Which is why I asked if Sandy is not interested in dialogue why is she posting here… doesn’t seem like theres many directions for this conversation to go does it? 🙂

  56. Good to hear from you about it, and yes I pretty much came to the same conclusion myself.

    It’s just very frustrating to see majority of the posts get derailed by some devout follower of some ideology or another time after time. Which is why I asked if Sandy is not interested in dialogue why is she posting here… doesn’t seem like theres many directions for this conversation to go does it? 🙂

  57. I created this site for dialogue, how funny is it that I don’t want to participate in it? Reason being, that Sandy isn’t engaged in a search for the truth, but on crusade. There is no amount of discussion that will turn the tide. No amount of logic, statistics, or data. Radical feminism is a religion. It is based on belief, not empirical data, or any kind of statistical data. Sandy is obviously a devout follower.

    I’m tired of arguments that lead to nothing but more arguments. So, I just kinda sit back, watch, and make sure it doesn’t get too out of hand (ie. personal attacks). I’m not making any judgment about those that are in the discussion, I’m just sayin’. 😉

  58. I created this site for dialogue, how funny is it that I don’t want to participate in it? Reason being, that Sandy isn’t engaged in a search for the truth, but on crusade. There is no amount of discussion that will turn the tide. No amount of logic, statistics, or data. Radical feminism is a religion. It is based on belief, not empirical data, or any kind of statistical data. Sandy is obviously a devout follower.

    I’m tired of arguments that lead to nothing but more arguments. So, I just kinda sit back, watch, and make sure it doesn’t get too out of hand (ie. personal attacks). I’m not making any judgment about those that are in the discussion, I’m just sayin’. 😉

  59. “I guess I need to repeat what I’ve said before. I don’t believe in gender, therefore I do not support the idea of transgendered people. If I don’t support that concept, I not responding to claims of “needs” of a people whose framework I don’t believe. I’ll go further with that. There is a conflict between the the people you call trangendered and my needs. In places they are mutually exclusive and that’s what I am confronting. I have no intention of ever supporting “rights” for people with penises.””

    Firstly, this goes to what I had said before, I don’t understand why you’re posting here if you’re not interested in transgender issues.

    Secondly majority of your posts seem filled with misandry.

  60. “I guess I need to repeat what I’ve said before. I don’t believe in gender, therefore I do not support the idea of transgendered people. If I don’t support that concept, I not responding to claims of “needs” of a people whose framework I don’t believe. I’ll go further with that. There is a conflict between the the people you call trangendered and my needs. In places they are mutually exclusive and that’s what I am confronting. I have no intention of ever supporting “rights” for people with penises.””

    Firstly, this goes to what I had said before, I don’t understand why you’re posting here if you’re not interested in transgender issues.

    Secondly majority of your posts seem filled with misandry.

  61. Ooops forgot a point.

    “Um.. hello? FtM? Those people aren’t illusions you know. They are people too, they actually exist. I have met a good number of them and am friends with a few. How can the movement be a ‘male’ movement when it includes people from both sexes with equal arguments and equal needs?

    That’s the whole point. The ideology is being generated by people with penises not FTMs.”

    The vast majority of arguments are identical between MtF and FtM communities I’ve been near. They both have the same need for access to surgeries if they require them. They both have the same need to not be discriminated against for what they wear or how they act. They both need to be safe. They both need somewhere safe to pee legally. The same basic needs dictate the similarities and arguments. The ideas of gender that are used as theoretical explanations for the phenomenon are not essential to the needs and the rights required from philosophical obligation and justification and from practical reality where proportionatly transgender people are even more victimised than women born women by our currently conformist and hierachical society.

    Whether MtF Crossdresser or FtM Crossdresser, Drag Queen or Drag King, MtF Transexual or FtM Transexual, Gender Queer right in the middle and any other catagory.

    All deserve the same basic human rights, priveleges, responsibilites, opportunities and all the rest as every other man woman or child in existance.

    There is no remotely valid argument I have ever heard that counters that simple statement.

  62. Ooops forgot a point.

    “Um.. hello? FtM? Those people aren’t illusions you know. They are people too, they actually exist. I have met a good number of them and am friends with a few. How can the movement be a ‘male’ movement when it includes people from both sexes with equal arguments and equal needs?

    That’s the whole point. The ideology is being generated by people with penises not FTMs.”

    The vast majority of arguments are identical between MtF and FtM communities I’ve been near. They both have the same need for access to surgeries if they require them. They both have the same need to not be discriminated against for what they wear or how they act. They both need to be safe. They both need somewhere safe to pee legally. The same basic needs dictate the similarities and arguments. The ideas of gender that are used as theoretical explanations for the phenomenon are not essential to the needs and the rights required from philosophical obligation and justification and from practical reality where proportionatly transgender people are even more victimised than women born women by our currently conformist and hierachical society.

    Whether MtF Crossdresser or FtM Crossdresser, Drag Queen or Drag King, MtF Transexual or FtM Transexual, Gender Queer right in the middle and any other catagory.

    All deserve the same basic human rights, priveleges, responsibilites, opportunities and all the rest as every other man woman or child in existance.

    There is no remotely valid argument I have ever heard that counters that simple statement.

  63. “I guess I need to repeat what I’ve said before. I don’t believe in gender, therefore I do not support the idea of transgendered people. If I don’t support that concept, I not responding to claims of “needs” of a people whose framework I don’t believe.”

    Actually sorry but you do.
    Reciprocal rights demands that you treat them as equal even if you don’t agree. That is the philosophical notion that makes it wrong for a person of one faith to impose their faith on another no matter how much they believe they are right and the other wrong. By needing to reciprocally recognise the free choice of the other even if they disagree with it they are forced to sit back and allow others use of their free will to make a choice even when the first believer feels the other will burn in hell for eternity for that choice.

    Without that philosophy being accepted then it becomes acceptable for the one to impose on the other and we all know what that means. Again a little bit of understanding of the philosophical arguments involved and their consequential implications would help you in this discussion.

    Other people didn’t/don’t support egalitarianism, racists, sexists, Religious fanatics etc. They didn’t/don’t want certain groups of people near them either.
    Their need was/is philosophically invalid though. What makes yours different?

    “I’ll go further with that. There is a conflict between the the people you call trangendered and my needs. In places they are mutually exclusive and that’s what I am confronting. I have no intention of ever supporting “rights” for people with penises.”

    No, their is a conflict between their needs and rights and your wants that you call needs. There is a philosophical distinction between the two that informs the moral and ethical dimesnions of the dilemma. That is the fatal problem currently with your arguments and despite my questions whose answers if valid would have enabled you to define your position ethically you keeep sticking your foot in it and making a bigoted argument. Please do read a bit about the philosophy so you can improve your arguments.

    “Oh… male proof gambits? Pardon me but I am not leveraged by them. You may conclude whatever you wish.”

    No, logical proof not male proof. No argument nor idea is sex or gender exclusive. Not even in Eastern Metaphysics. Even in the heavily genderised systems of Taoism is anything always exclusively Yin or Yang. Logic is not ‘male’. The argument that it is is a sexist one.

    “I have no intension of stepping into your paradigm.”

    You are already in it by one standard definition and it doesn’t apply in the other. Example or pattern? Yes, you already are inside that. Prevailing assumptions in science? No, what I used was an apt analogy. Maybe you misunderstood what paradigm means?

    “It makes no difference how you recognize me. You may call me a watermelon if you like. I am not calling anatomical males women – ever.”

    Your free to hold whatever opinion you like. That won’t make your opinion right though. Nor will it be moral or ethical.

    “No. They don’t. I’ve been trying to tell you I don’t care how you respond to me. I am telling you how I respond.”

    You don’t have to tell me, I can read it quite well. The problem is you are arguing in favour of s system of oppression that invalidates the causes you are fighting for. You are shooting yourself in the foot and doing a disservice to your cause.

    “I care very much about the poor and women having access to the rewards of this society. I do not care at all about “transgender rights”.”

    but by fighting for some rights/rewards etc and not universal rights/rewards/equality etc you are invalidating the philosophical foundation for all of those and justifying the arguments of the oppressors of women and the poor etc. Harming your own causes!

    “I’ve been very clear that eagalitarian is a trap for women. It allows men to ignore what they do in the here and now.”

    Please explain that as the argument seems to be contrary. If egalitarianism says all people should be treated as equal and men are not treating women as equal in the here and now Egalitarianism says they should. Are you perhaps referring to the meritocracy arguments related to egalitarianism? That go against affirmative action? Because those are easily rejected by the simplist egalitarian arguments which is why most philosophers support affirmative action to ‘level the playing field’ as a meritocracy cannot exist untill such a situation has occured and been entrenched. Egalitarianism supports immediate action to redress imbalance and disparity not ignoring the here and now.

    “I’ve also been clear that egalitarianism is not a feminist goal because we do not aspire to be equal to men where they have set the standards. That isn’t equality.”

    It depends on what standards you are talking about. If you are talking about the proper phillosophical standards of the rights of the individual, freedom of expression, freedom of opportunity, self determination including total somatic sovereinty.. all those have been feminist ideals and are not ‘male’ at all. If you mean however being equal to an offensive stereotype of masculinity to which society pressures all men to conform then of course I agree with you. But enlightenment philosophy opposes such limited notions of equality(ok we could go into a long discussion about ‘positivist liberty’ Vs total liberty but maybe you should just look that stuff up directly).

    Freedom with equality defines freedom limited only by reciprocating the freedom of others. One can be a murderer only with the victims uncoerced and informed consent, at which point it ceases to be murder hence one cannot be a murderer etc. it provides an ethical framework that insists upon womens rights, individual rights etc.

    “That’s fine. The message is that if women do not adopt men’s paradigm then we are dismissed. There’s nothing new here. This is exactly the way it’s always been for women.”

    It is not a ‘mens paradigm’ as it precludes anyone having an advantage over anyone else and therfore invalidates mens privilege. Think about it and you’ll see what I mean. Those who argue against it generally do so to justify their bigotry. Racists didn’t like it because they didn’t want blacks to have the same rights and freedoms (or to be in their bathrooms). Mysogynists didn’t like it because they didn’t want women to have the same rights like the vote.

    If you want to tear down the one philosophical argument that has argued in favour of women, the poor, that all the oppressed should have the same rights and freedoms and liberties including from the state then maybe you should have a replacement for it! Otherwise you give validation to the arguments of the alternative philosophies that certain people should have less rights than others and then you have to provide a reason for your set of arbitrary groups to be raised up and rewarded and others lowered and denied.

    Please actually learn something about the pro and con arguments of the various philosophies of the last several centuries! You might find powerful arguments in favour of women and the poor which will help you in your causes. Using the same arguments as racists and mysogynists and elitists does you no crdit and weakens your cause!

    “I will never support what you call transgender rights.”
    Never? So you refuse the possibility that your opinion could ever change? Are you saying that you are a closed minded willfully ignorant dogmatist? Surely you aren’t so stupid? Now you needn’t ever actually agree wit me but so long as you rule out the possibility you are being intellectually dishonest. Drawing conclusions before analysing the data and disregarding contrary evidence and argument without proper anlyses. Talk about a real paradigm problem! Those are the most powerful tools in the Masters House! Maintaining the world-view at all costs! Irrespective of the facts that the world is round, not at the centre of the universe etc etc.

    “I don’t see you are an ally at all. You can’t hear what I’m saying.”

    I am an ally of equal and universal rights. Hence of fairness, ethics and goodness.

    “I don’t want a cross dresser as an ally.”

    Why not? Are you some sort of bigot?

    “I can discuss it in far greater depth than you would ever dream. However, I do reject male biology as being the seat of patriarchy. No data, and science has ever demonstrated transgenderism because it’s never demonstrated gender period.”

    As my argument before showed the biological existence of gender is not neccessary to justify the existance of transgenderism.

    That said what do you say to the neurological evidence showing sex based differences in average male and female brains? And what then to the studies that show that these differences are not sex specific but merely more common in certain sexes? There are several interpretations rather than just those supporting transgenderism and/or transexualism so we could actually have a reasonable discussion on this I’m sure.

    But what then disproves such interpretations?

    “That’s the whole point. The ideology is being generated by people with penises not FTMs.” What ideology? All the arguments in favour of transgender rights I’ve heard differ not one iota from the notion of universal rights! Explanatory theories abound in great variety with no single one being proferred as absolute. They don’t all require the seperate cerbral/neurological intersexuality or spectrum of biologically determined gender identity spectrum that the most common use. Just the fact that they are ethical and that people should be free to perform any ethical act is enough to validate all the arguments I’ve seen actually presented!

    “Textual space is not physical space.”

    You are right. It’s somatically more distant and mentally and emotionally so much closer!

    Look, I am really feeling sorry for you in this discussion and it doesn’t seem fair so I’ll give you a helping hand.

    Your arguments against egalitarianism is painting yourself into a corner, it really is going to get you into an ugly mess if you keep going in that direction. Sure there are good arguments against misuses of the idea and lots of examples where people have been left out of the equality they deserve (just look at how long it took to get rid of slavery in america for starters let alone getting women the vote) but that doesn’t invalidate egalitarianism itself though.

    What will really help you out is a different area of argument. If we accept egalitarianism and personal freedom then there is a point where each person has complete command. then beyond this is an area of ‘shared and/or public space’ where thre is a big blurred area between interpersonal boundaries. Now it is generally considered that freedom of choice/association Vs Freedom of expression and the social obligation to provide public facilities means that so long as someone doesn’t have to listen or look at something a person doesn’t like then that person is not harmed. Now if you made an argument that centred around the notion of mutual consent for mutual activities within interpersonal space or that the necessity of public utilities counted as not being free to ignore but rather forced to participate in/be exposed to then you could actually start to get somewhere.

    It will be an argument you must make carefuly as you risk putting forard arguments with consequences against general speech, in favour of racial segregation etc or even against abortion (I kid you not, this is dicey moral/ethical territory) but if you are careful you could get a point across that is philosophically quite valid and still meets your desires/needs as much as they morally and ethically ever could be met.

    I’ll be most interested to see if you come up with an alternative to the single-use unisex disability accesable facilities I personally argue for that nonetheless ensures safe ad accesible facilities for transgender people, crossdressers, transexuals etc, the disabled, children, all racial and ethinic groups and women who don’t want the proximity of people with penises. And yes I know you don’t care about most of these people personally but that doesn’t make you right beyond your ow subjective opinion, to ensure your argument is philosophically valid you need to find a solution that allows their individual rights along with societies obligation to providing toilet facilities at the very least and meets the needs of all humans as equals to be ethical.

    This isn’t just a political or ideological discussion. this is a philosophical one at it’s foundation requiring discussions of ethics.

    So lets tuck into the ethics of this. Get right down to the foundations of right or wrong action, of social and personal obligation Vs individual freedom. There’s been a number of important women philosophers over the thousands of years of the subject and a number of males who it has been argued had their opinions influenced by women. Heck Voltaires most famous quote on freedom of speech is a missattributation that was really written much later by a woman! Some even have argued that Madame De Pompadour had a profound influence on Voltaire’s philosophies!

  64. “I guess I need to repeat what I’ve said before. I don’t believe in gender, therefore I do not support the idea of transgendered people. If I don’t support that concept, I not responding to claims of “needs” of a people whose framework I don’t believe.”

    Actually sorry but you do.
    Reciprocal rights demands that you treat them as equal even if you don’t agree. That is the philosophical notion that makes it wrong for a person of one faith to impose their faith on another no matter how much they believe they are right and the other wrong. By needing to reciprocally recognise the free choice of the other even if they disagree with it they are forced to sit back and allow others use of their free will to make a choice even when the first believer feels the other will burn in hell for eternity for that choice.

    Without that philosophy being accepted then it becomes acceptable for the one to impose on the other and we all know what that means. Again a little bit of understanding of the philosophical arguments involved and their consequential implications would help you in this discussion.

    Other people didn’t/don’t support egalitarianism, racists, sexists, Religious fanatics etc. They didn’t/don’t want certain groups of people near them either.
    Their need was/is philosophically invalid though. What makes yours different?

    “I’ll go further with that. There is a conflict between the the people you call trangendered and my needs. In places they are mutually exclusive and that’s what I am confronting. I have no intention of ever supporting “rights” for people with penises.”

    No, their is a conflict between their needs and rights and your wants that you call needs. There is a philosophical distinction between the two that informs the moral and ethical dimesnions of the dilemma. That is the fatal problem currently with your arguments and despite my questions whose answers if valid would have enabled you to define your position ethically you keeep sticking your foot in it and making a bigoted argument. Please do read a bit about the philosophy so you can improve your arguments.

    “Oh… male proof gambits? Pardon me but I am not leveraged by them. You may conclude whatever you wish.”

    No, logical proof not male proof. No argument nor idea is sex or gender exclusive. Not even in Eastern Metaphysics. Even in the heavily genderised systems of Taoism is anything always exclusively Yin or Yang. Logic is not ‘male’. The argument that it is is a sexist one.

    “I have no intension of stepping into your paradigm.”

    You are already in it by one standard definition and it doesn’t apply in the other. Example or pattern? Yes, you already are inside that. Prevailing assumptions in science? No, what I used was an apt analogy. Maybe you misunderstood what paradigm means?

    “It makes no difference how you recognize me. You may call me a watermelon if you like. I am not calling anatomical males women – ever.”

    Your free to hold whatever opinion you like. That won’t make your opinion right though. Nor will it be moral or ethical.

    “No. They don’t. I’ve been trying to tell you I don’t care how you respond to me. I am telling you how I respond.”

    You don’t have to tell me, I can read it quite well. The problem is you are arguing in favour of s system of oppression that invalidates the causes you are fighting for. You are shooting yourself in the foot and doing a disservice to your cause.

    “I care very much about the poor and women having access to the rewards of this society. I do not care at all about “transgender rights”.”

    but by fighting for some rights/rewards etc and not universal rights/rewards/equality etc you are invalidating the philosophical foundation for all of those and justifying the arguments of the oppressors of women and the poor etc. Harming your own causes!

    “I’ve been very clear that eagalitarian is a trap for women. It allows men to ignore what they do in the here and now.”

    Please explain that as the argument seems to be contrary. If egalitarianism says all people should be treated as equal and men are not treating women as equal in the here and now Egalitarianism says they should. Are you perhaps referring to the meritocracy arguments related to egalitarianism? That go against affirmative action? Because those are easily rejected by the simplist egalitarian arguments which is why most philosophers support affirmative action to ‘level the playing field’ as a meritocracy cannot exist untill such a situation has occured and been entrenched. Egalitarianism supports immediate action to redress imbalance and disparity not ignoring the here and now.

    “I’ve also been clear that egalitarianism is not a feminist goal because we do not aspire to be equal to men where they have set the standards. That isn’t equality.”

    It depends on what standards you are talking about. If you are talking about the proper phillosophical standards of the rights of the individual, freedom of expression, freedom of opportunity, self determination including total somatic sovereinty.. all those have been feminist ideals and are not ‘male’ at all. If you mean however being equal to an offensive stereotype of masculinity to which society pressures all men to conform then of course I agree with you. But enlightenment philosophy opposes such limited notions of equality(ok we could go into a long discussion about ‘positivist liberty’ Vs total liberty but maybe you should just look that stuff up directly).

    Freedom with equality defines freedom limited only by reciprocating the freedom of others. One can be a murderer only with the victims uncoerced and informed consent, at which point it ceases to be murder hence one cannot be a murderer etc. it provides an ethical framework that insists upon womens rights, individual rights etc.

    “That’s fine. The message is that if women do not adopt men’s paradigm then we are dismissed. There’s nothing new here. This is exactly the way it’s always been for women.”

    It is not a ‘mens paradigm’ as it precludes anyone having an advantage over anyone else and therfore invalidates mens privilege. Think about it and you’ll see what I mean. Those who argue against it generally do so to justify their bigotry. Racists didn’t like it because they didn’t want blacks to have the same rights and freedoms (or to be in their bathrooms). Mysogynists didn’t like it because they didn’t want women to have the same rights like the vote.

    If you want to tear down the one philosophical argument that has argued in favour of women, the poor, that all the oppressed should have the same rights and freedoms and liberties including from the state then maybe you should have a replacement for it! Otherwise you give validation to the arguments of the alternative philosophies that certain people should have less rights than others and then you have to provide a reason for your set of arbitrary groups to be raised up and rewarded and others lowered and denied.

    Please actually learn something about the pro and con arguments of the various philosophies of the last several centuries! You might find powerful arguments in favour of women and the poor which will help you in your causes. Using the same arguments as racists and mysogynists and elitists does you no crdit and weakens your cause!

    “I will never support what you call transgender rights.”
    Never? So you refuse the possibility that your opinion could ever change? Are you saying that you are a closed minded willfully ignorant dogmatist? Surely you aren’t so stupid? Now you needn’t ever actually agree wit me but so long as you rule out the possibility you are being intellectually dishonest. Drawing conclusions before analysing the data and disregarding contrary evidence and argument without proper anlyses. Talk about a real paradigm problem! Those are the most powerful tools in the Masters House! Maintaining the world-view at all costs! Irrespective of the facts that the world is round, not at the centre of the universe etc etc.

    “I don’t see you are an ally at all. You can’t hear what I’m saying.”

    I am an ally of equal and universal rights. Hence of fairness, ethics and goodness.

    “I don’t want a cross dresser as an ally.”

    Why not? Are you some sort of bigot?

    “I can discuss it in far greater depth than you would ever dream. However, I do reject male biology as being the seat of patriarchy. No data, and science has ever demonstrated transgenderism because it’s never demonstrated gender period.”

    As my argument before showed the biological existence of gender is not neccessary to justify the existance of transgenderism.

    That said what do you say to the neurological evidence showing sex based differences in average male and female brains? And what then to the studies that show that these differences are not sex specific but merely more common in certain sexes? There are several interpretations rather than just those supporting transgenderism and/or transexualism so we could actually have a reasonable discussion on this I’m sure.

    But what then disproves such interpretations?

    “That’s the whole point. The ideology is being generated by people with penises not FTMs.” What ideology? All the arguments in favour of transgender rights I’ve heard differ not one iota from the notion of universal rights! Explanatory theories abound in great variety with no single one being proferred as absolute. They don’t all require the seperate cerbral/neurological intersexuality or spectrum of biologically determined gender identity spectrum that the most common use. Just the fact that they are ethical and that people should be free to perform any ethical act is enough to validate all the arguments I’ve seen actually presented!

    “Textual space is not physical space.”

    You are right. It’s somatically more distant and mentally and emotionally so much closer!

    Look, I am really feeling sorry for you in this discussion and it doesn’t seem fair so I’ll give you a helping hand.

    Your arguments against egalitarianism is painting yourself into a corner, it really is going to get you into an ugly mess if you keep going in that direction. Sure there are good arguments against misuses of the idea and lots of examples where people have been left out of the equality they deserve (just look at how long it took to get rid of slavery in america for starters let alone getting women the vote) but that doesn’t invalidate egalitarianism itself though.

    What will really help you out is a different area of argument. If we accept egalitarianism and personal freedom then there is a point where each person has complete command. then beyond this is an area of ‘shared and/or public space’ where thre is a big blurred area between interpersonal boundaries. Now it is generally considered that freedom of choice/association Vs Freedom of expression and the social obligation to provide public facilities means that so long as someone doesn’t have to listen or look at something a person doesn’t like then that person is not harmed. Now if you made an argument that centred around the notion of mutual consent for mutual activities within interpersonal space or that the necessity of public utilities counted as not being free to ignore but rather forced to participate in/be exposed to then you could actually start to get somewhere.

    It will be an argument you must make carefuly as you risk putting forard arguments with consequences against general speech, in favour of racial segregation etc or even against abortion (I kid you not, this is dicey moral/ethical territory) but if you are careful you could get a point across that is philosophically quite valid and still meets your desires/needs as much as they morally and ethically ever could be met.

    I’ll be most interested to see if you come up with an alternative to the single-use unisex disability accesable facilities I personally argue for that nonetheless ensures safe ad accesible facilities for transgender people, crossdressers, transexuals etc, the disabled, children, all racial and ethinic groups and women who don’t want the proximity of people with penises. And yes I know you don’t care about most of these people personally but that doesn’t make you right beyond your ow subjective opinion, to ensure your argument is philosophically valid you need to find a solution that allows their individual rights along with societies obligation to providing toilet facilities at the very least and meets the needs of all humans as equals to be ethical.

    This isn’t just a political or ideological discussion. this is a philosophical one at it’s foundation requiring discussions of ethics.

    So lets tuck into the ethics of this. Get right down to the foundations of right or wrong action, of social and personal obligation Vs individual freedom. There’s been a number of important women philosophers over the thousands of years of the subject and a number of males who it has been argued had their opinions influenced by women. Heck Voltaires most famous quote on freedom of speech is a missattributation that was really written much later by a woman! Some even have argued that Madame De Pompadour had a profound influence on Voltaire’s philosophies!

  65. “I am entitled to those answers, not because of my penis or any male entitlement but because of the requirement of intellectual honesty and reasoned discussion. It’s a natural expectation of dialogue after all. (in the western world of course. I take it your not from an indiginous community? If you were an Australian Aborigine I would be expected t ask all questions only indirectly by ettiquette. Somehow I think that you have no such excuse!)”

    I guess I need to repeat what I’ve said before. I don’t believe in gender, therefore I do not support the idea of transgendered people. If I don’t support that concept, I not responding to claims of “needs” of a people whose framework I don’t believe. I’ll go further with that. There is a conflict between the the people you call trangendered and my needs. In places they are mutually exclusive and that’s what I am confronting. I have no intention of ever supporting “rights” for people with penises.”

    “Any woman asking the same type of questions of a man would be equally entitled to their answers and if a man were to merely dismiss the womans questions because they came from a woman or say that he didn’t have to answer then that man would be exposed for the sexist pig he would clearly be.”

    So you say.

    So are you to be proven sexist by using a sexist argument in a sexist way (talk about using the masters tools!) or will you be intellectually honest and put your views through a process of reasonable intellectual riguer like someone who is not a hypocrit and who has confidance in the capacity of their views to stand up to scrutiny?

    Oh… male proof gambits? Pardon me but I am not leveraged by them. You may conclude whatever you wish.

    “There’s a lot of claims of having won arguments here. Certainly I haven’t been swayed.”
    Nor was the priest who refused to look through Gallileo’s telescope. And the reasons are essentially the same. Many of your arguments are substantially refuted unless they can be bolsterd or defended but you just keep restating your claims over and over without addressing the logical and material evidence placed against them. “

    I have no intension of stepping into your paradigm.

    “This is about expression to you? Fine, express yourself. What is true is that our actions have consequences. I’m not obligated to pretend that I see people with penises as women or men as women. Then your self expression trumps mine. We both have the ability to express ourselves or do we? It sounds like you can express yourself but I have to go along with you when my senses tell me something very different. This is one place where your argument doesn’t seem to hold together.”

    “Guess you never understood that whole reciprocity thing. If you are to be able to define yourself and have your self definition accepted then you are obligated to respect others self definiion, your autonomy requires you to accept others autonomy.”

    It makes no difference how you recognize me. You may call me a watermelon if you like. I am not calling anatomical males women – ever.

    “ The line where freedoms meet is defined by equality. But as you disagree with egalitarianism then no one has to treat you as an equal do they?”

    No. They don’t. I’ve been trying to tell you I don’t care how you respond to me. I am telling you how I respond.

    “Moral and ethical philosophy is a messy topic to play with when you don’t understand it. It has consequences too. Substantial ones. For you see if people aren’t free and equal then men can stomp all over womens rights, the rich can stomp all over the poor, the white can stomp all over everyone else and might makes right.”

    I care very much about the poor and women having access to the rewards of this society. I do not care at all about “transgender rights”.

    “This is why some of my questions to you need answers. Because without an alternative system of ethics so long as you dispute egalitarianism then no one needs to listen to you your opinions don’t actually matter at all and there is no basis for womens self determination at all invalidating your every single point so far!”

    I’ve been very clear that eagalitarian is a trap for women. It allows men to ignore what they do in the here and now. I’ve also been clear that egalitarianism is not a feminist goal because we do not aspire to be equal to men where they have set the standards. That isn’t equality.

    That’s fine. The message is that if women do not adopt men’s paradigm then we are dismissed. There’s nothing new here. This is exactly the way it’s always been for women.

    “If on the other hand you realise the intellectual quagmire such a position puts you in and you change your opinion and agree that egalitarianism is a worthy goal that needs to be realised in actuality but never has been thus far then your arguments can have a basis and we can then work out practical ways to support transgender peoples rights and needs and self determination WHILE ALSO supporting the needs rights and self determination of women born women et al who want to define themselves as distinct from transgender people.”

    I will never support what you call transgender rights.

    “If you actually pay attention you might realise I’m a potential ally and not neccessarily your enemy, once your arguments become cogent logically and philosophically that is.”

    I don’t see you are an ally at all. You can’t hear what I’m saying. I don’t want a cross dresser as an ally.

    I’m not here to meet your expectations nor are you here to meet mine. By the same token I do not intend to respond to your criteria for what is and is not relevant.

    “Val, you know where the difficulty begins for me? I don’t believe in “trans people”.”

    “What about all the scientific and medical evidence? There’s a telescope in front of you there. Maybe you should take a look through it?”

    I can discuss it in far greater depth than you would ever dream. However, I do reject male biology as being the seat of patriarchy. No data, and science has ever demonstrated transgenderism because it’s never demonstrated gender period.

    “Again, I am not trying to be disrespectful I just don’t want to accommodate what I perceive to be a male movement.”

    Um.. hello? FtM? Those people aren’t illusions you know. They are people too, they actually exist. I have met a good number of them and am friends with a few. How can the movement be a ‘male’ movement when it includes people from both sexes with equal arguments and equal needs?

    That’s the whole point. The ideology is being generated by people with penises not FTMs.

    “My choice would be to do what I do with all male bodied people which is to maximize the space between them and me”

    “Um… isn’t it ludicrously hypocritical of you to be here nearly every day talking to us then? You are actually choosing to enter into a constant dialogue with us. Physical space there may be but not textual space. Instead you seem to have made us part of your current daily existance. “

    Textual space is not physical space.

  66. “I am entitled to those answers, not because of my penis or any male entitlement but because of the requirement of intellectual honesty and reasoned discussion. It’s a natural expectation of dialogue after all. (in the western world of course. I take it your not from an indiginous community? If you were an Australian Aborigine I would be expected t ask all questions only indirectly by ettiquette. Somehow I think that you have no such excuse!)”

    I guess I need to repeat what I’ve said before. I don’t believe in gender, therefore I do not support the idea of transgendered people. If I don’t support that concept, I not responding to claims of “needs” of a people whose framework I don’t believe. I’ll go further with that. There is a conflict between the the people you call trangendered and my needs. In places they are mutually exclusive and that’s what I am confronting. I have no intention of ever supporting “rights” for people with penises.”

    “Any woman asking the same type of questions of a man would be equally entitled to their answers and if a man were to merely dismiss the womans questions because they came from a woman or say that he didn’t have to answer then that man would be exposed for the sexist pig he would clearly be.”

    So you say.

    So are you to be proven sexist by using a sexist argument in a sexist way (talk about using the masters tools!) or will you be intellectually honest and put your views through a process of reasonable intellectual riguer like someone who is not a hypocrit and who has confidance in the capacity of their views to stand up to scrutiny?

    Oh… male proof gambits? Pardon me but I am not leveraged by them. You may conclude whatever you wish.

    “There’s a lot of claims of having won arguments here. Certainly I haven’t been swayed.”
    Nor was the priest who refused to look through Gallileo’s telescope. And the reasons are essentially the same. Many of your arguments are substantially refuted unless they can be bolsterd or defended but you just keep restating your claims over and over without addressing the logical and material evidence placed against them. “

    I have no intension of stepping into your paradigm.

    “This is about expression to you? Fine, express yourself. What is true is that our actions have consequences. I’m not obligated to pretend that I see people with penises as women or men as women. Then your self expression trumps mine. We both have the ability to express ourselves or do we? It sounds like you can express yourself but I have to go along with you when my senses tell me something very different. This is one place where your argument doesn’t seem to hold together.”

    “Guess you never understood that whole reciprocity thing. If you are to be able to define yourself and have your self definition accepted then you are obligated to respect others self definiion, your autonomy requires you to accept others autonomy.”

    It makes no difference how you recognize me. You may call me a watermelon if you like. I am not calling anatomical males women – ever.

    “ The line where freedoms meet is defined by equality. But as you disagree with egalitarianism then no one has to treat you as an equal do they?”

    No. They don’t. I’ve been trying to tell you I don’t care how you respond to me. I am telling you how I respond.

    “Moral and ethical philosophy is a messy topic to play with when you don’t understand it. It has consequences too. Substantial ones. For you see if people aren’t free and equal then men can stomp all over womens rights, the rich can stomp all over the poor, the white can stomp all over everyone else and might makes right.”

    I care very much about the poor and women having access to the rewards of this society. I do not care at all about “transgender rights”.

    “This is why some of my questions to you need answers. Because without an alternative system of ethics so long as you dispute egalitarianism then no one needs to listen to you your opinions don’t actually matter at all and there is no basis for womens self determination at all invalidating your every single point so far!”

    I’ve been very clear that eagalitarian is a trap for women. It allows men to ignore what they do in the here and now. I’ve also been clear that egalitarianism is not a feminist goal because we do not aspire to be equal to men where they have set the standards. That isn’t equality.

    That’s fine. The message is that if women do not adopt men’s paradigm then we are dismissed. There’s nothing new here. This is exactly the way it’s always been for women.

    “If on the other hand you realise the intellectual quagmire such a position puts you in and you change your opinion and agree that egalitarianism is a worthy goal that needs to be realised in actuality but never has been thus far then your arguments can have a basis and we can then work out practical ways to support transgender peoples rights and needs and self determination WHILE ALSO supporting the needs rights and self determination of women born women et al who want to define themselves as distinct from transgender people.”

    I will never support what you call transgender rights.

    “If you actually pay attention you might realise I’m a potential ally and not neccessarily your enemy, once your arguments become cogent logically and philosophically that is.”

    I don’t see you are an ally at all. You can’t hear what I’m saying. I don’t want a cross dresser as an ally.

    I’m not here to meet your expectations nor are you here to meet mine. By the same token I do not intend to respond to your criteria for what is and is not relevant.

    “Val, you know where the difficulty begins for me? I don’t believe in “trans people”.”

    “What about all the scientific and medical evidence? There’s a telescope in front of you there. Maybe you should take a look through it?”

    I can discuss it in far greater depth than you would ever dream. However, I do reject male biology as being the seat of patriarchy. No data, and science has ever demonstrated transgenderism because it’s never demonstrated gender period.

    “Again, I am not trying to be disrespectful I just don’t want to accommodate what I perceive to be a male movement.”

    Um.. hello? FtM? Those people aren’t illusions you know. They are people too, they actually exist. I have met a good number of them and am friends with a few. How can the movement be a ‘male’ movement when it includes people from both sexes with equal arguments and equal needs?

    That’s the whole point. The ideology is being generated by people with penises not FTMs.

    “My choice would be to do what I do with all male bodied people which is to maximize the space between them and me”

    “Um… isn’t it ludicrously hypocritical of you to be here nearly every day talking to us then? You are actually choosing to enter into a constant dialogue with us. Physical space there may be but not textual space. Instead you seem to have made us part of your current daily existance. “

    Textual space is not physical space.

  67. “See this is my problem with you, you feel entitled to my answering you. I don’t respond to male entitlement.”

    I am entitled to those answers, not because of my penis or any male entitlement but because of the requirement of intellectual honesty and reasoned discussion. It’s a natural expectation of dialogue after all. (in the western world of course. I take it your not from an indiginous community? If you were an Australian Aborigine I would be expected t ask all questions only indirectly by ettiquette. Somehow I think that you have no such excuse!)

    Any woman asking the same type of questions of a man would be equally entitled to their answers and if a man were to merely dismiss the womans questions because they came from a woman or say that he didn’t have to answer then that man would be exposed for the sexist pig he would clearly be.

    So are you to be proven sexist by using a sexist argument in a sexist way (talk about using the masters tools!) or will you be intellectually honest and put your views through a process of reasonable intellectual riguer like someone who is not a hypocrit and who has confidance in the capacity of their views to stand up to scrutiny?

    “There’s a lot of claims of having won arguments here. Certainly I haven’t been swayed.”

    Nor was the priest who refused to look through Gallileo’s telescope. And the reasons are essentially the same. Many of your arguments are substantially refuted unless they can be bolsterd or defended but you just keep restating your claims over and over without addressing the logical and material evidence placed against them.

    I’ve had experience of people refusing to accept that they are wrong even when irreffutable proof is right before their eyes, a good example was with a flatmate who complained that I was about to place my plate upon the bench rather than rinsing it in the sink. I stepped back and called their attention to the fact that i was about to place my plate on top of their plate to the great amusement of several witnesses but they still refused to acknowledge that they were hypocritical, as guilty as myself. The argument was still lost. Refusing to accept it didn’t mean it wassn’t lost.

    “This is about expression to you? Fine, express yourself. What is true is that our actions have consequences. I’m not obligated to pretend that I see people with penises as women or men as women. Then your self expression trumps mine. We both have the ability to express ourselves or do we? It sounds like you can express yourself but I have to go along with you when my senses tell me something very different. This is one place where your argument doesn’t seem to hold together.”

    Guess you never understood that whole reciprocity thing. If you are to be able to define yourself and have your self definition accepted then you are obligated to respect others self definiion, your autonomy requires you to accept others autonomy. The line where freedoms meet is defined by equality. But as you disagree with egalitarianism then no one has to treat you as an equal do they? Moral and ethical philosophy is a messy topic to play with when you don’t understand it. It has consequences too. Substantial ones. For you see if people aren’t free and equal then men can stomp all over womens rights, the rich can stomp all over the poor, the white can stomp all over everyone else and might makes right.

    This is why some of my questions to you need answers. Because without an alternative system of ethics so long as you dispute egalitarianism then no one needs to listen to you, your opinions don’t actually matter at all and there is no basis for womens self determination at all invalidating your every single point so far! It’s not good for me either nor any other minority. It invalidates individual choice, needs, rights and society’s responsibilities.

    If on the other hand you realise the intellectual quagmire such a position puts you in and you change your opinion and agree that egalitarianism is a worthy goal that needs to be realised in actuality but never has been thus far then your arguments can have a basis and we can then work out practical ways to support transgender peoples rights and needs and self determination WHILE ALSO supporting the needs rights and self determination of women born women et al who want to define themselves as distinct from transgender people.

    If you actually pay attention you might realise I’m a potential ally and not neccessarily your enemy, once your arguments become cogent logically and philosophically that is.

    “Val, you know where the difficulty begins for me? I don’t believe in “trans people”.”

    What about all the scientific and medical evidence? There’s a telescope in front of you there. Maybe you should take a look through it?

    “Again, I am not trying to be disrespectful I just don’t want to accommodate what I perceive to be a male movement.”

    Um.. hello? FtM? Those people aren’t illusions you know. They are people too, they actually exist. I have met a good number of them and am friends with a few. How can the movement be a ‘male’ movement when it includes people from both sexes with equal arguments and equal needs?

    “My choice would be to do what I do with all male bodied people which is to maximize the space between them and me”

    Um… isn’t it ludicrously hypocritical of you to be here nearly every day talking to us then? You are actually choosing to enter into a constant dialogue with us. Physical space there may be but not textual space. Instead you seem to have made us part of your current daily existance.

    “I am a female. The world recognizes me as one unerringly.”

    I on the other hand am recognised as male or female quite erringly. Two women mistook me as female by voice alone yesterday over speakerphone which I found hillarious as I was just using my everyday speaking voice. Even someone I’d met several times over the course of a year who dated my brother for several months went on to mistake me for female after I’d dyed my hair.

    Plenty of people seem quite comfortable with my fairly gender-queer expression. I’ve had 10 compliments to every negative reaction in the last decade, especially from women. My next door neighbour gave me the pick of her unwanted clothes a few days ago. I didn’t ask, she offered of her own volition. I hadn’t even told her I am a crossdresser she simply noticed my transgender/genderqueer expression, complimented me on it and the bravery inherant in it, decrying sex-based conformity as patriarchal oppression (oh and she got her degree in philosophy and women’s studies by the way) and thought some of her old clothes might suit my sense of style.

  68. “See this is my problem with you, you feel entitled to my answering you. I don’t respond to male entitlement.”

    I am entitled to those answers, not because of my penis or any male entitlement but because of the requirement of intellectual honesty and reasoned discussion. It’s a natural expectation of dialogue after all. (in the western world of course. I take it your not from an indiginous community? If you were an Australian Aborigine I would be expected t ask all questions only indirectly by ettiquette. Somehow I think that you have no such excuse!)

    Any woman asking the same type of questions of a man would be equally entitled to their answers and if a man were to merely dismiss the womans questions because they came from a woman or say that he didn’t have to answer then that man would be exposed for the sexist pig he would clearly be.

    So are you to be proven sexist by using a sexist argument in a sexist way (talk about using the masters tools!) or will you be intellectually honest and put your views through a process of reasonable intellectual riguer like someone who is not a hypocrit and who has confidance in the capacity of their views to stand up to scrutiny?

    “There’s a lot of claims of having won arguments here. Certainly I haven’t been swayed.”

    Nor was the priest who refused to look through Gallileo’s telescope. And the reasons are essentially the same. Many of your arguments are substantially refuted unless they can be bolsterd or defended but you just keep restating your claims over and over without addressing the logical and material evidence placed against them.

    I’ve had experience of people refusing to accept that they are wrong even when irreffutable proof is right before their eyes, a good example was with a flatmate who complained that I was about to place my plate upon the bench rather than rinsing it in the sink. I stepped back and called their attention to the fact that i was about to place my plate on top of their plate to the great amusement of several witnesses but they still refused to acknowledge that they were hypocritical, as guilty as myself. The argument was still lost. Refusing to accept it didn’t mean it wassn’t lost.

    “This is about expression to you? Fine, express yourself. What is true is that our actions have consequences. I’m not obligated to pretend that I see people with penises as women or men as women. Then your self expression trumps mine. We both have the ability to express ourselves or do we? It sounds like you can express yourself but I have to go along with you when my senses tell me something very different. This is one place where your argument doesn’t seem to hold together.”

    Guess you never understood that whole reciprocity thing. If you are to be able to define yourself and have your self definition accepted then you are obligated to respect others self definiion, your autonomy requires you to accept others autonomy. The line where freedoms meet is defined by equality. But as you disagree with egalitarianism then no one has to treat you as an equal do they? Moral and ethical philosophy is a messy topic to play with when you don’t understand it. It has consequences too. Substantial ones. For you see if people aren’t free and equal then men can stomp all over womens rights, the rich can stomp all over the poor, the white can stomp all over everyone else and might makes right.

    This is why some of my questions to you need answers. Because without an alternative system of ethics so long as you dispute egalitarianism then no one needs to listen to you, your opinions don’t actually matter at all and there is no basis for womens self determination at all invalidating your every single point so far! It’s not good for me either nor any other minority. It invalidates individual choice, needs, rights and society’s responsibilities.

    If on the other hand you realise the intellectual quagmire such a position puts you in and you change your opinion and agree that egalitarianism is a worthy goal that needs to be realised in actuality but never has been thus far then your arguments can have a basis and we can then work out practical ways to support transgender peoples rights and needs and self determination WHILE ALSO supporting the needs rights and self determination of women born women et al who want to define themselves as distinct from transgender people.

    If you actually pay attention you might realise I’m a potential ally and not neccessarily your enemy, once your arguments become cogent logically and philosophically that is.

    “Val, you know where the difficulty begins for me? I don’t believe in “trans people”.”

    What about all the scientific and medical evidence? There’s a telescope in front of you there. Maybe you should take a look through it?

    “Again, I am not trying to be disrespectful I just don’t want to accommodate what I perceive to be a male movement.”

    Um.. hello? FtM? Those people aren’t illusions you know. They are people too, they actually exist. I have met a good number of them and am friends with a few. How can the movement be a ‘male’ movement when it includes people from both sexes with equal arguments and equal needs?

    “My choice would be to do what I do with all male bodied people which is to maximize the space between them and me”

    Um… isn’t it ludicrously hypocritical of you to be here nearly every day talking to us then? You are actually choosing to enter into a constant dialogue with us. Physical space there may be but not textual space. Instead you seem to have made us part of your current daily existance.

    “I am a female. The world recognizes me as one unerringly.”

    I on the other hand am recognised as male or female quite erringly. Two women mistook me as female by voice alone yesterday over speakerphone which I found hillarious as I was just using my everyday speaking voice. Even someone I’d met several times over the course of a year who dated my brother for several months went on to mistake me for female after I’d dyed my hair.

    Plenty of people seem quite comfortable with my fairly gender-queer expression. I’ve had 10 compliments to every negative reaction in the last decade, especially from women. My next door neighbour gave me the pick of her unwanted clothes a few days ago. I didn’t ask, she offered of her own volition. I hadn’t even told her I am a crossdresser she simply noticed my transgender/genderqueer expression, complimented me on it and the bravery inherant in it, decrying sex-based conformity as patriarchal oppression (oh and she got her degree in philosophy and women’s studies by the way) and thought some of her old clothes might suit my sense of style.

  69. “This is something that I think gets lost in the theoretical fog, and bears emphasis.
    I really don’t care much whether Sandy or anyone else believes that people born with penises are “really” women or not, though of course I have my own opinions on the matter.”

    I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I think a few are.

    “ And I have dispensed several times with the “wangs in the loo” argument as a cheap red herring.”

    There’s a lot of claims of having won arguments here. Certainly I haven’t been swayed.

    “But what Sandy requires is that people behave the way she says they ought to, that they be the kinds of women or men that she is willing to recognize, before she will accord them respect or dignity.”

    And they are defining what respect and dignity is. I respond to people as I see them. I don’t requires that anyone behave in any manner. But I am not going to pretend that I see a fifty year old married man as a woman. I don’t believe that respects women.

    “ She, and people like her, escalate their denial of “authenticity” of one kind of expression or another to a denial of citizenship, of sanity, of personhood.”

    This is what I have been thinking about. This is not to suggest that you are superficial Val but I feel your explanation is. This is about expression to you? Fine, express yourself. What is true is that our actions have consequences. I’m not obligated to pretend that I see people with penises as women or men as women. Then your self expression trumps mine. We both have the ability to express ourselves or do we? It sounds like you can express yourself but I have to go along with you when my senses tell me something very different. This is one place where your argument doesn’t seem to hold together.

    “The fact is that most people are just trying to be… and while I, for one, don’t insist that Sandy or Susan or anyone else concede to my claims about my own sense of myself (though it would be appreciated, if my reciprocity is to be expected), I do object to their categorical prejudice, and as long as I do no actual harm I expect not to be actively hindered.”

    I think your statement requires a lot of thought. I’m much more likely to not resist you when you don’t insist. I don’t pretend to know anything about your views or your history. Chances are, if you are anatomically male, I won’t want to interact with you and I won’t want to be forced into relating to you as if I see you as a woman.

    “I am “authentic” insofar as I am authentically me, and reasonably well socialized. No item of my expression is “fake” or an affectation… it is a legitimate response to my relation to the culture in which I find myself, and results in equilibrium: my behaviors and expressed identity are fed back to me by my interactions with others, and they match up, where they did not before. And that’s all anyone can do. That’s what being real is.”

    This is a little different from the statement you made before. I have no doubt that your behaviors are authentic for you. I will respond to you in a way that is authentic for to respond to someone who is anatomically male. That is, I’d respond to you as if you are male that we can both be authentic. I don’t want this to be taken personally, this is the way I respond to all people that are male.

    “Is it absolutely necessary that trans people be on the vanguard of your own gender war? “

    Val, you know where the difficulty begins for me? I don’t believe in “trans people”. I see the world in terms of men and female women. “trans people” makes no sense to me. Again, I am not trying to be disrespectful I just don’t want to accommodate what I perceive to be a male movement. When I am trying to say is that I don’t support the assumptions of your movement. I don’t want to see anyone hurt another human being. My choice would be to do what I do with all male bodied people which is to maximize the space between them and me.

    “And are you one of those people? Have you rejected gender utterly? Are you genderqueer? “

    I am just me. I’m definitely not genderqueer nor am I particularly traditional. Most of the time, I wear jeans. But again, you and I use “gender” differently. I see gender in poltical terms and as a group hallucination.

    Or are you a woman, self-identified and externally identifiable as one? Do you or do you not yourself express gender – not sexuality – in a fairly conventional framework?

    I don’t know what “self-identified” means. Given the way queer uses that I don’t recognize that as any kind of credential. I am a female. The world recognizes me as one unerringly. Please remember what I’ve said. We all behave. The world genders us. Sometimes I am traditional but not often as I am pretty much a “here and now” woman.

  70. “This is something that I think gets lost in the theoretical fog, and bears emphasis.
    I really don’t care much whether Sandy or anyone else believes that people born with penises are “really” women or not, though of course I have my own opinions on the matter.”

    I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I think a few are.

    “ And I have dispensed several times with the “wangs in the loo” argument as a cheap red herring.”

    There’s a lot of claims of having won arguments here. Certainly I haven’t been swayed.

    “But what Sandy requires is that people behave the way she says they ought to, that they be the kinds of women or men that she is willing to recognize, before she will accord them respect or dignity.”

    And they are defining what respect and dignity is. I respond to people as I see them. I don’t requires that anyone behave in any manner. But I am not going to pretend that I see a fifty year old married man as a woman. I don’t believe that respects women.

    “ She, and people like her, escalate their denial of “authenticity” of one kind of expression or another to a denial of citizenship, of sanity, of personhood.”

    This is what I have been thinking about. This is not to suggest that you are superficial Val but I feel your explanation is. This is about expression to you? Fine, express yourself. What is true is that our actions have consequences. I’m not obligated to pretend that I see people with penises as women or men as women. Then your self expression trumps mine. We both have the ability to express ourselves or do we? It sounds like you can express yourself but I have to go along with you when my senses tell me something very different. This is one place where your argument doesn’t seem to hold together.

    “The fact is that most people are just trying to be… and while I, for one, don’t insist that Sandy or Susan or anyone else concede to my claims about my own sense of myself (though it would be appreciated, if my reciprocity is to be expected), I do object to their categorical prejudice, and as long as I do no actual harm I expect not to be actively hindered.”

    I think your statement requires a lot of thought. I’m much more likely to not resist you when you don’t insist. I don’t pretend to know anything about your views or your history. Chances are, if you are anatomically male, I won’t want to interact with you and I won’t want to be forced into relating to you as if I see you as a woman.

    “I am “authentic” insofar as I am authentically me, and reasonably well socialized. No item of my expression is “fake” or an affectation… it is a legitimate response to my relation to the culture in which I find myself, and results in equilibrium: my behaviors and expressed identity are fed back to me by my interactions with others, and they match up, where they did not before. And that’s all anyone can do. That’s what being real is.”

    This is a little different from the statement you made before. I have no doubt that your behaviors are authentic for you. I will respond to you in a way that is authentic for to respond to someone who is anatomically male. That is, I’d respond to you as if you are male that we can both be authentic. I don’t want this to be taken personally, this is the way I respond to all people that are male.

    “Is it absolutely necessary that trans people be on the vanguard of your own gender war? “

    Val, you know where the difficulty begins for me? I don’t believe in “trans people”. I see the world in terms of men and female women. “trans people” makes no sense to me. Again, I am not trying to be disrespectful I just don’t want to accommodate what I perceive to be a male movement. When I am trying to say is that I don’t support the assumptions of your movement. I don’t want to see anyone hurt another human being. My choice would be to do what I do with all male bodied people which is to maximize the space between them and me.

    “And are you one of those people? Have you rejected gender utterly? Are you genderqueer? “

    I am just me. I’m definitely not genderqueer nor am I particularly traditional. Most of the time, I wear jeans. But again, you and I use “gender” differently. I see gender in poltical terms and as a group hallucination.

    Or are you a woman, self-identified and externally identifiable as one? Do you or do you not yourself express gender – not sexuality – in a fairly conventional framework?

    I don’t know what “self-identified” means. Given the way queer uses that I don’t recognize that as any kind of credential. I am a female. The world recognizes me as one unerringly. Please remember what I’ve said. We all behave. The world genders us. Sometimes I am traditional but not often as I am pretty much a “here and now” woman.

  71. “I’m still waiting on the answers to my questions.”

    See this is my problem with you, you feel entitled to my answering you. I don’t respond to male entitlement.

  72. “I’m still waiting on the answers to my questions.”

    See this is my problem with you, you feel entitled to my answering you. I don’t respond to male entitlement.

  73. I’m still waiting on the answers to my questions.

    I’m rather amused to find out what ‘gender stereotype’ I’m supposed to be.

    What sort of gender stereotype is (or was before my disability progressed too far) both a martial artist and a ballet dancer?

    It should be good for a laugh at the least and maybe even quite insightful into aspects of my own character or at least those aspects that carry in my text-based communications. As a writer I really would like to gain more of those insights.

    So please do tell, what kind of gender stereotype am I?

  74. I’m still waiting on the answers to my questions.

    I’m rather amused to find out what ‘gender stereotype’ I’m supposed to be.

    What sort of gender stereotype is (or was before my disability progressed too far) both a martial artist and a ballet dancer?

    It should be good for a laugh at the least and maybe even quite insightful into aspects of my own character or at least those aspects that carry in my text-based communications. As a writer I really would like to gain more of those insights.

    So please do tell, what kind of gender stereotype am I?

  75. Sandy.

    I have noticed that you “accepted” Felix’s apology for assuming you were not born with a female anatomy, but you never clarified whether you were assigned male or female at birth or have had a vaginoplasty, or even if you have ever needed or demanded or desired an amendment of your birth certificate’s gender, or had any other such experience common to transsexual people.

    I think the reason for that is that you are yourself a transsexual woman, as has been suggested, who has transitioned early-ish and has always considered her anatomy female, and that you realise that saying it in so many words would leave you looking as a self-hating troll, as has also been suggested. And which I think you are. One of the well known ones no less.

    Hello, Rainsong. We meet at last.

    ::shark grin::

  76. Sandy.

    I have noticed that you “accepted” Felix’s apology for assuming you were not born with a female anatomy, but you never clarified whether you were assigned male or female at birth or have had a vaginoplasty, or even if you have ever needed or demanded or desired an amendment of your birth certificate’s gender, or had any other such experience common to transsexual people.

    I think the reason for that is that you are yourself a transsexual woman, as has been suggested, who has transitioned early-ish and has always considered her anatomy female, and that you realise that saying it in so many words would leave you looking as a self-hating troll, as has also been suggested. And which I think you are. One of the well known ones no less.

    Hello, Rainsong. We meet at last.

    ::shark grin::

  77. I was very interested and actually rather moved by Sandy’s last post and Val’s responses. I’d like to talk, too, Sandy 😀 but am in the middle of writing up my thesis – yep, it’s on gender identity amongst Native American people – and will come back to this in a couple of days time SO LONG AS MARTI KEEPS THE THREAD UP (hint, lol). By the way, I appreciate the points raised about gender not being “real” and, believe me, the subject matter with which my thesis deals is constantly thrown into disarray by the problems of trying to translate indigenous people’s terminology around gender into the English language! By the way agin, I am one of the “late transitioners” of whom you speak – I’m over 50 – AND a woman in the physical XX sense, so I hope my later posts will be interesting and informative to you. 🙂

  78. I was very interested and actually rather moved by Sandy’s last post and Val’s responses. I’d like to talk, too, Sandy 😀 but am in the middle of writing up my thesis – yep, it’s on gender identity amongst Native American people – and will come back to this in a couple of days time SO LONG AS MARTI KEEPS THE THREAD UP (hint, lol). By the way, I appreciate the points raised about gender not being “real” and, believe me, the subject matter with which my thesis deals is constantly thrown into disarray by the problems of trying to translate indigenous people’s terminology around gender into the English language! By the way agin, I am one of the “late transitioners” of whom you speak – I’m over 50 – AND a woman in the physical XX sense, so I hope my later posts will be interesting and informative to you. 🙂

  79. Brief addition to prior comments:

    > But is the solution for boxes is for people with penises simply to jump into another box?

    Is it absolutely necessary that trans people be on the vanguard of your own gender war?

    And what is this phallocentrism? People with vaginas challenge systems, too… and some of them do so while remaining in their box, but only pressing the envelope… some of them jump boxes as you put it… and some of them, some very few, go completely outside the system altogether. Given the hostility that such people – both with penises and vaginas – face in the real world, that’s a pretty harsh requirement on your part.

    And are you one of those people? Have you rejected gender utterly? Are you genderqueer?

    Or are you a woman, self-identified and externally identifiable as one? Do you or do you not yourself express gender – not sexuality – in a fairly conventional framework?

  80. Brief addition to prior comments:

    > But is the solution for boxes is for people with penises simply to jump into another box?

    Is it absolutely necessary that trans people be on the vanguard of your own gender war?

    And what is this phallocentrism? People with vaginas challenge systems, too… and some of them do so while remaining in their box, but only pressing the envelope… some of them jump boxes as you put it… and some of them, some very few, go completely outside the system altogether. Given the hostility that such people – both with penises and vaginas – face in the real world, that’s a pretty harsh requirement on your part.

    And are you one of those people? Have you rejected gender utterly? Are you genderqueer?

    Or are you a woman, self-identified and externally identifiable as one? Do you or do you not yourself express gender – not sexuality – in a fairly conventional framework?

  81. > All need freedom of expression, to be actually free… Those people still deserve rights and advocacy etc even if they are being discriminated against for a falsehood than an actuality… They are just people…

    This is something that I think gets lost in the theoretical fog, and bears emphasis.

    I really don’t care much whether Sandy or anyone else believes that people born with penises are “really” women or not, though of course I have my own opinions on the matter. And I have dispensed several times with the “wangs in the loo” argument as a cheap red herring.

    But what Sandy requires is that people behave the way she says they ought to, that they be the kinds of women or men that she is willing to recognize, before she will accord them respect or dignity. She, and people like her, escalate their denial of “authenticity” of one kind of expression or another to a denial of citizenship, of sanity, of personhood.

    The fact is that most people are just trying to be… and while I, for one, don’t insist that Sandy or Susan or anyone else concede to my claims about my own sense of myself (though it would be appreciated, if my reciprocity is to be expected), I do object to their categorical prejudice, and as long as I do no actual harm I expect not to be actively hindered.

    I am “authentic” insofar as I am authentically me, and reasonably well socialized. No item of my expression is “fake” or an affectation… it is a legitimate response to my relation to the culture in which I find myself, and results in equilibrium: my behaviors and expressed identity are fed back to me by my interactions with others, and they match up, where they did not before.

    And that’s all anyone can do. That’s what being real is.

  82. > All need freedom of expression, to be actually free… Those people still deserve rights and advocacy etc even if they are being discriminated against for a falsehood than an actuality… They are just people…

    This is something that I think gets lost in the theoretical fog, and bears emphasis.

    I really don’t care much whether Sandy or anyone else believes that people born with penises are “really” women or not, though of course I have my own opinions on the matter. And I have dispensed several times with the “wangs in the loo” argument as a cheap red herring.

    But what Sandy requires is that people behave the way she says they ought to, that they be the kinds of women or men that she is willing to recognize, before she will accord them respect or dignity. She, and people like her, escalate their denial of “authenticity” of one kind of expression or another to a denial of citizenship, of sanity, of personhood.

    The fact is that most people are just trying to be… and while I, for one, don’t insist that Sandy or Susan or anyone else concede to my claims about my own sense of myself (though it would be appreciated, if my reciprocity is to be expected), I do object to their categorical prejudice, and as long as I do no actual harm I expect not to be actively hindered.

    I am “authentic” insofar as I am authentically me, and reasonably well socialized. No item of my expression is “fake” or an affectation… it is a legitimate response to my relation to the culture in which I find myself, and results in equilibrium: my behaviors and expressed identity are fed back to me by my interactions with others, and they match up, where they did not before.

    And that’s all anyone can do. That’s what being real is.

  83. So what kind of gender stereotype do you take me to be?

    And do you have a problem with me being a crossdresser? I’m also a goth. Even at my most masculine dress and behaviour, so long as I am clean shaven, I have on occassions been mistaken as female. My daily appearance includes long painted fingernails long hair and a mixture of clothes from both the mens and womens sections of stores. I’m also disabled. What’s your point? Lots of catagories apply to me. I’ve been discriminated against for a great number of them. Discrimination, oppression and the denial of rights is wrong. No matter who is doing the wrong and who is being wronged.

    Regarding choice Vs birth. There is little point holding strict positions on subjects still under substantial scientific study. The facts aren’t in yet. There is some evidence of neurological difference not just in transexuals but also in gay men and lesbians too but whether these are cause or effect is in question. Some have argued that there are distinct differences between the average male and average female brains. Others have argued that the difference between these is far less than the variation of each resulting in many males with brains more ‘female’ than the average female brain and many females with brains more ‘male’ than the average male brain. That too could be cause or effect. It’s still early days yet. Brain imaging techniques are under constant advancment, cognition and even consciousness itself is a field of enquiery that is being explored more than ever before. Until we get the answers all we have, and all you have, is conjecture.

    Without that we can’t know if all the various subgroups of transgender are variations of the same biological and/or social phenomena, a few phenomena with variations or simply a large number of things that have little in common beyond the notion (false social construct or not) of gender.

    I have experience of something similar. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. How is it related to Fybromyalgia? Some say they are just variations on the same symptoms others that they have different causes. Arguments were made for decades that it was a mental illness, well when my bloodtests came back showing that my body was cannibalising it’s muscle and bone because it thought it was starving despite the huge amount I was eating it clearly wasn’t psychological in origin. Some researchers even at my own local university have made errors caused by confusing a depression subset where people feel exhausted with actual CFS which has wrecked the results of many studies and has lead to mistaken treatments (such as strict exercise which is very good for depression but which has been shown to be dangerous, possibly fatal to actual CFS) Since then epigenetic changes have been discovered in the blood and cerebro-spinal fluid as well as evidence of neurological changes in CFS sufferers. One of my 1st cousins has a form of mitochondrial myopathy, she has most of the same symptoms too but her muscle and bone problems are so severe she has trouble walking. How are all these illnesses connected? Are they even connected? Clearly one with similar symptoms wasn’t. We don’t know until enough studies are done. However just because cause and even treatment are different it is unimportant when it comes to fighting the discrimination CFS sufferers go through on account of substantial ignorance and misinformation about this proven medical condition.

    It’s the same thing with Transgender.

    As for what the ‘trans movemnt’ is predicated upon, last I checked it was a bunch of people being oppressed for being outside a gender binary system where people were not allowed to deviate from the basic status of birth sex or it’s proscribed behaviours and indicators. As long as people are discriminated as a group or for the same reason then it is appropriate for them to demand equality as a group.

    “Transvestite/crossdresser = drag queen = kid (ala Oprah) = late transitioner. Under trans politics they are all the same.”

    Since when? Last I heard under trans politics and any other remotely philosophically valid politics they were all equal. That doesn’t make them the same. Each may have some needs to another, they may sit at different points on the same spectrum, or not. That academic argument isn’t actually neccessary. What is neccessary is that some need medical assistance to various degrees which they should get and some don’t. All need freedom of expression, to be actually free, to be able to be themselves whatever that may be. That alone justifies their inclusion in all number of catagories for those who want to catagorise. It comes down, at the last, to the same issues as any other oppressed group. Freedom and equality.

    If gender doesn’t exist… interesting concept. But gender does exist at the very least as a social construct, therfore that existance as a social construct is still sufficient for people to be discriminated against for not abiding by that concept. That alone justifies the existence of a transgender movement. So a bunch of people whose natural inclinations of behaviour falls between false extremes of sex-attributed behaviour that is not actually sex determined are consequently oppressed? Those people still deserve rights and advocacy etc even if they are being discriminated against for a falsehood than an actuality. Nope, even if gender is a false social construction a transgender movement is still justified.

    Choice, oh if only it were so easy and simple. But someone who struggles through decades of psychological represssion who one day realises/says ‘I can’t keep denying this any longer’ has made several choices (you do realise people get to change their minds don’t you?) or more accurately found that one choice failed. The purging of clothes, the self hatred, the self denial.. all didn’t work and so eventually they say ‘this is who I am, it’s always been there just I kept it hidden’. They are victims, victims of fear, oppression and ignorance.

    So some people feel the desire/need to step out of the role attributed to their sex one day a week, or they might find they do not fit into the two sex based catagories of society, others might find they want or need to permanantly change some or all of their bodies and behaviour to that catagorised as belonging to those with different circumstances of birth. What’s wrong with that? They are just people. Just looking for what will bring them fulfillment. It’s ethical isn’t it.

    And if sex and gender are both constructs, therfore artificial and false then it doesn’t matter where someone pees or which reproductive organs or combination therof they possess then does it. If sex and gender are utterly false meaningless oppressive impositions then each person should be individually free to express themselves however they wish irrespective of such false artificial arbitrary impositions. And if sex and gender are real, that does not rule that freedom out neccessarily either.

    Also, if a person group or behaviour is ethical why should it be opposed? Is it not unethical to oppose such a group? Whereas the KKK and NAMBLA are clearly unethical groups. That I would suggest is what needed to be determined to justify, or validly choose to support or oppose any group.

  84. So what kind of gender stereotype do you take me to be?

    And do you have a problem with me being a crossdresser? I’m also a goth. Even at my most masculine dress and behaviour, so long as I am clean shaven, I have on occassions been mistaken as female. My daily appearance includes long painted fingernails long hair and a mixture of clothes from both the mens and womens sections of stores. I’m also disabled. What’s your point? Lots of catagories apply to me. I’ve been discriminated against for a great number of them. Discrimination, oppression and the denial of rights is wrong. No matter who is doing the wrong and who is being wronged.

    Regarding choice Vs birth. There is little point holding strict positions on subjects still under substantial scientific study. The facts aren’t in yet. There is some evidence of neurological difference not just in transexuals but also in gay men and lesbians too but whether these are cause or effect is in question. Some have argued that there are distinct differences between the average male and average female brains. Others have argued that the difference between these is far less than the variation of each resulting in many males with brains more ‘female’ than the average female brain and many females with brains more ‘male’ than the average male brain. That too could be cause or effect. It’s still early days yet. Brain imaging techniques are under constant advancment, cognition and even consciousness itself is a field of enquiery that is being explored more than ever before. Until we get the answers all we have, and all you have, is conjecture.

    Without that we can’t know if all the various subgroups of transgender are variations of the same biological and/or social phenomena, a few phenomena with variations or simply a large number of things that have little in common beyond the notion (false social construct or not) of gender.

    I have experience of something similar. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. How is it related to Fybromyalgia? Some say they are just variations on the same symptoms others that they have different causes. Arguments were made for decades that it was a mental illness, well when my bloodtests came back showing that my body was cannibalising it’s muscle and bone because it thought it was starving despite the huge amount I was eating it clearly wasn’t psychological in origin. Some researchers even at my own local university have made errors caused by confusing a depression subset where people feel exhausted with actual CFS which has wrecked the results of many studies and has lead to mistaken treatments (such as strict exercise which is very good for depression but which has been shown to be dangerous, possibly fatal to actual CFS) Since then epigenetic changes have been discovered in the blood and cerebro-spinal fluid as well as evidence of neurological changes in CFS sufferers. One of my 1st cousins has a form of mitochondrial myopathy, she has most of the same symptoms too but her muscle and bone problems are so severe she has trouble walking. How are all these illnesses connected? Are they even connected? Clearly one with similar symptoms wasn’t. We don’t know until enough studies are done. However just because cause and even treatment are different it is unimportant when it comes to fighting the discrimination CFS sufferers go through on account of substantial ignorance and misinformation about this proven medical condition.

    It’s the same thing with Transgender.

    As for what the ‘trans movemnt’ is predicated upon, last I checked it was a bunch of people being oppressed for being outside a gender binary system where people were not allowed to deviate from the basic status of birth sex or it’s proscribed behaviours and indicators. As long as people are discriminated as a group or for the same reason then it is appropriate for them to demand equality as a group.

    “Transvestite/crossdresser = drag queen = kid (ala Oprah) = late transitioner. Under trans politics they are all the same.”

    Since when? Last I heard under trans politics and any other remotely philosophically valid politics they were all equal. That doesn’t make them the same. Each may have some needs to another, they may sit at different points on the same spectrum, or not. That academic argument isn’t actually neccessary. What is neccessary is that some need medical assistance to various degrees which they should get and some don’t. All need freedom of expression, to be actually free, to be able to be themselves whatever that may be. That alone justifies their inclusion in all number of catagories for those who want to catagorise. It comes down, at the last, to the same issues as any other oppressed group. Freedom and equality.

    If gender doesn’t exist… interesting concept. But gender does exist at the very least as a social construct, therfore that existance as a social construct is still sufficient for people to be discriminated against for not abiding by that concept. That alone justifies the existence of a transgender movement. So a bunch of people whose natural inclinations of behaviour falls between false extremes of sex-attributed behaviour that is not actually sex determined are consequently oppressed? Those people still deserve rights and advocacy etc even if they are being discriminated against for a falsehood than an actuality. Nope, even if gender is a false social construction a transgender movement is still justified.

    Choice, oh if only it were so easy and simple. But someone who struggles through decades of psychological represssion who one day realises/says ‘I can’t keep denying this any longer’ has made several choices (you do realise people get to change their minds don’t you?) or more accurately found that one choice failed. The purging of clothes, the self hatred, the self denial.. all didn’t work and so eventually they say ‘this is who I am, it’s always been there just I kept it hidden’. They are victims, victims of fear, oppression and ignorance.

    So some people feel the desire/need to step out of the role attributed to their sex one day a week, or they might find they do not fit into the two sex based catagories of society, others might find they want or need to permanantly change some or all of their bodies and behaviour to that catagorised as belonging to those with different circumstances of birth. What’s wrong with that? They are just people. Just looking for what will bring them fulfillment. It’s ethical isn’t it.

    And if sex and gender are both constructs, therfore artificial and false then it doesn’t matter where someone pees or which reproductive organs or combination therof they possess then does it. If sex and gender are utterly false meaningless oppressive impositions then each person should be individually free to express themselves however they wish irrespective of such false artificial arbitrary impositions. And if sex and gender are real, that does not rule that freedom out neccessarily either.

    Also, if a person group or behaviour is ethical why should it be opposed? Is it not unethical to oppose such a group? Whereas the KKK and NAMBLA are clearly unethical groups. That I would suggest is what needed to be determined to justify, or validly choose to support or oppose any group.

  85. Addendum:

    There is, by the way, a transsexual on this very domain who thoroughly agrees with your central thesis, that gender is wholly a social construct. Her name is Nexy, and as with Susan before, I invite you to take up the more arcane aspects of your perspective with her.

    Personally, I have little use for it, and think that both you and she are as wrong as Susan, who appears to believe the exact opposite. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who who would unequivocally assert that “it is only this” or that “it is only that” is engaging in pure ideology, and not legible anthropology or biology.

  86. Addendum:

    There is, by the way, a transsexual on this very domain who thoroughly agrees with your central thesis, that gender is wholly a social construct. Her name is Nexy, and as with Susan before, I invite you to take up the more arcane aspects of your perspective with her.

    Personally, I have little use for it, and think that both you and she are as wrong as Susan, who appears to believe the exact opposite. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who who would unequivocally assert that “it is only this” or that “it is only that” is engaging in pure ideology, and not legible anthropology or biology.

  87. The reason for transition, in the majority of cases of people I know – is a bodymap issue, not a gender issue. It predates gender-learning. Gender-learning might influence it one way or the other, but it can’t nullify it.

    A bodymap issue: The body, is configured differently than it should be as recognized by bodymap. If you have 6 fingers, and your bodymap says you should have 5, that 6th finger will be distressing. Chances are you’ll know exactly which of the 6, too.

    Transitioning is to reconcile the bodymap with physical reality. And changing the bodymap itself has been tried again and again, and post-natally, does not work.

    As for the argument of surgery, if surgery was paid for for everyone, and not just the rare person in the few jurisdictions where it’s paid for, then maybe it could be made as a point. Until then, not everyone can afford 10,000-25,000$ US as a one shot deal.

    For the record, I make 5600$ a year, rough and net. Think I can easily save for it?

  88. The reason for transition, in the majority of cases of people I know – is a bodymap issue, not a gender issue. It predates gender-learning. Gender-learning might influence it one way or the other, but it can’t nullify it.

    A bodymap issue: The body, is configured differently than it should be as recognized by bodymap. If you have 6 fingers, and your bodymap says you should have 5, that 6th finger will be distressing. Chances are you’ll know exactly which of the 6, too.

    Transitioning is to reconcile the bodymap with physical reality. And changing the bodymap itself has been tried again and again, and post-natally, does not work.

    As for the argument of surgery, if surgery was paid for for everyone, and not just the rare person in the few jurisdictions where it’s paid for, then maybe it could be made as a point. Until then, not everyone can afford 10,000-25,000$ US as a one shot deal.

    For the record, I make 5600$ a year, rough and net. Think I can easily save for it?

  89. Long post, that merits thorough consideration and response.

    1) If both sex and gender are social phenomena, then on what possible grounds can you be so certain as to what a man and a woman are? You are explicitly permitting exactly the subjective experience on which a lot of transpeople base their existence. You appear to be simultaneously rejecting and embracing essentialism (a point Batty has tried to make, at more length).

    2) I know many trans people who do not adhere to the strict doctrine of “having been born this way” but who in fact assert their own agency and will… their choice, if you will. And yet you would seem to reject precisely those people, because such an act of agency is a more adult, than childish approach.

    3) You probably know something of what it means to grow up lesbian, or even gay. You know nothing of what it means to grow up trans – to have that consciousness that something really, really just isn’t right – and then to have to work out the consequcnes, in the face of what appears to be immutable reality. The fact is that many of those who transition as adults were those kids you see on Oprah, but they didn’t have the privilege of the kind attentions of a culture now fascinated with the phenomenon.

    4) I really hope you are not equating trans people with members of NAMBLA or the KKK. In any case, yes… if you are so dedicated to our destruction, it does behoove you to learn more about us. No one seriously committed to the elimination of a class of people should do so from a position of ignorance.

    5) The problems you identify with the infamous transgender “umbrella” are well known, and are the subject of much rancorous debate among ourselves. The points are more well taken than either you or Susan would like to believe, but there are problems of differentiation which are too subtle in many cases to dismiss the entire thing out of hand.

    More later. Must have tea.

  90. Long post, that merits thorough consideration and response.

    1) If both sex and gender are social phenomena, then on what possible grounds can you be so certain as to what a man and a woman are? You are explicitly permitting exactly the subjective experience on which a lot of transpeople base their existence. You appear to be simultaneously rejecting and embracing essentialism (a point Batty has tried to make, at more length).

    2) I know many trans people who do not adhere to the strict doctrine of “having been born this way” but who in fact assert their own agency and will… their choice, if you will. And yet you would seem to reject precisely those people, because such an act of agency is a more adult, than childish approach.

    3) You probably know something of what it means to grow up lesbian, or even gay. You know nothing of what it means to grow up trans – to have that consciousness that something really, really just isn’t right – and then to have to work out the consequcnes, in the face of what appears to be immutable reality. The fact is that many of those who transition as adults were those kids you see on Oprah, but they didn’t have the privilege of the kind attentions of a culture now fascinated with the phenomenon.

    4) I really hope you are not equating trans people with members of NAMBLA or the KKK. In any case, yes… if you are so dedicated to our destruction, it does behoove you to learn more about us. No one seriously committed to the elimination of a class of people should do so from a position of ignorance.

    5) The problems you identify with the infamous transgender “umbrella” are well known, and are the subject of much rancorous debate among ourselves. The points are more well taken than either you or Susan would like to believe, but there are problems of differentiation which are too subtle in many cases to dismiss the entire thing out of hand.

    More later. Must have tea.

  91. “that gender is a system, not a box.”

    I missed this. Gender is a system and systems can be boxes. But is the solution for boxes is for people with penises simply to jump into another box? The box that keeps an oppressed people oppressed?

    What does this mean? That you are fighting a system and people with penises have chosen to confront the box by wearing dresses? Is the assertion that this is being done on behalf of women? What’s the purpose? Btw, if the answer has the word gender in it, I’m not likely to be convinced.

  92. “that gender is a system, not a box.”

    I missed this. Gender is a system and systems can be boxes. But is the solution for boxes is for people with penises simply to jump into another box? The box that keeps an oppressed people oppressed?

    What does this mean? That you are fighting a system and people with penises have chosen to confront the box by wearing dresses? Is the assertion that this is being done on behalf of women? What’s the purpose? Btw, if the answer has the word gender in it, I’m not likely to be convinced.

  93. >“Women are not born”… but we are definitely made, meaning socially constituted which the trans movement does not want to discuss.”

    “Wow, have you got it backwards. There is a particular class of transwomen who I refer to as “transsexual fundamentalists” who love your anti-trans rhetoric, but who insist that gender is very specifically not a social construct, because they perceive that idea to be at the heart of what they think of as they transgender fallacy.”

    I can read too. This is what is called the HBS group and I definitely disagree with them on their attributions of ‘cause’ as they are fundamentally essentialistc. You may say that I agree with their conclusions about the movement but I don’t agree with their foundations. At a fundamental level they are saying the same thing the trans movement is saying only there is a “the devil made me do it” twist. I do not doubt that there are kids. I’ve seen Oprah but the role of learning is being discounted by the HBS group. The whole trans movement is predicated on the mysterious idea of internal gender. I say someone may learn a way of expressing themselves that is gendered in society. So what? That doesn’t mean they are women. There are masculine women. By the way, I don’t support gay men who assert they were born gay or lesbians who say the same. It’s far more powerful to say, “Yes, I choose to love other women because women are worthy of love”, politically than it is to say, “I have a woman-loving gene – or my hormones made me do it.”

    “The “trans movement” however, such as it is, is predicated on that principle. Are you really so primitive that you think of transwomen as nothing but gender stereotypes? That’s exactly the argument we’ve been having among ourselves, with most of the people you’re now taking such a strong position against, arguing in favor of what amounts to your own position: that gender is a system, not a box.”

    I realize that during this discussion that I have taken a position due to the implicit politics of the trans movement and I can’t take a what to me is a cogent position without confronting part of that politic which is the assumption of homogeneity of all of the people under your umbrella. It looks like this:

    Transvestite/crossdresser = drag queen = kid (ala Oprah) = late transitioner.

    Under trans politics they are all the same. They do not look the same to me. Only one in that population will coincide with De Beaviors definition of a woman which are the children on the Oprah show.

    “Are you really so primitive that you think of transwomen as nothing but gender stereotypes?”

    I want to return to this question. I don’t think gender exists. If you remove gender as an explanation could we re-examine the contents of your umbrella. Here your loudest talker is a cross dresser (how appropriate). He is a gender stereotype but not the kind you are speaking about.

    Now then, I don’t know the people here. Felix is rather nice and I could talk to felix. Val, actually when you aren’t putting words in my mouth, you’re OK. But I want to continue with this. I’m not concerned with your poltics. I’m just not. In that respect, it sounds like you are bombarded with rejection. Have you wondered why? You have people with you-know-whats who desire to keep their you-know-whats and they wanted to be responded to as women when women do not have you know whats. Included under your umbrella are drag queens who are often misogynistic. They openly say they are men. You have transgenderists who want to keep their you know whats. You have the hbs types who want nothing to do with you and it’s clear your movement annexes them. You have kids whom I think have are legitimate when they say “I am a boy or girl”. Then you have sixty year old men who have been men all their lives and have no earthly idea how women apprehend the world and they never will. So there is an A to Z that isn’t one boat but perhaps ten.

    These people are all as different as can be. It’s the backdrop of patriarchy that makes them appear the same. But this umbrella has no credibility but seemingly an incredible amount of power.

    At the center of the trans movement is this MAGIC thing called gender. “That football player or paratrooper over there is really a woman.” “That sixty year old man who has been married as man four times is really a woman.” The crossdressing logician here would support such a stement while claiming to be the king of logic. There’s absolutely no logic or foundation to it. It’s simply male declaration. That’s all it is.

    But here is the problem your politics presents. Because of the absurdity of your movement and by absurd I mean, you want that crossdresser in my bathroom because of his hobby. If I said, if the child were in treatment, then is would be OK for her to be in the bathroom. Then the crossdresser jumps up and the sixty year old man jumps up. Remember, felix asked about a “preop” (ever notice how your movement turns people into objects?). Felix said nothing about their social history. If a young person has shown a life long history of an identity that is not consistent with original their original assignment and they are in treatment in preparation to have their body fixed, OK. But not transgenderists. Not someone who has actually lived as a man. No drag queens or crossdresser or transgenderists. Haven’t they made their choice? You will probably scream at this but this is how I feel about it. Your are supporting some boats that really look absurd. When I eliminate “gender” from the picture, most of the boats look absurd. What does the drag queen have in common with the sixty year old man? What does the sixty year old man have in common with the kid? The one assigned as a male will actually have a radically different life than either the drag queen or the sixty year old man.

    “Are you really so primitive that you think of transwomen as nothing but gender stereotypes?”

    I think they are a very heterogeneous group of people. I think some are valid and some because of their own choices, chose to let the cake burn in the oven. You can turn them into victims if you like but what is not arguable is that a constellation of things were more important to them. It may be male status and privilege or family or whatever but they made their choices. By the same token so do transgenderists.

    “I put it to you that you argue out of ignorance of what “transgender” really is, what its language and issues are, and who the people really are that inhabit it. You insist that none of it is your problem, but you have chosen to be hostile to something you really know very little about.”

    I am ignorant and I admit that because “transgender” makes absolutely no sense to me, especially since I see gender as a social construct. I see your movement as being male defined and doesn’t care about women. If you don’t care about women, how can you claim to be one? Do I have to know a lot about the KuKluxKlan or NAMBLA to know I oppose them? The way your movement reifies gender as well as defines it supports the very foundations of the justifications, used by patriarchy, to oppress women. There really is no way that you can avoid saying that politically the trans movement hurts women. “Transfeminism” is not feminism at all because it’s trans-centric and not woman centered.

    So, I haven’t been spiteful or hateful and I haven’t attacked anyone here. If you wish you can explain transgender to me. BUT, keep in mind that I think that both sex and gender are social constructs and as such they are not separable at all because they are social phenomena. So I don’t buy into women with you know whats at all and I do not see someone who would be OK with a you know what as a woman. Do I see them as gender stereotypes? No. I see most them simply as men. You spoke of the transgender fallacy. I have not been able to even hear a cogent statement so I have no idea what it is. It also starts with a pseudo-sophisticated spiel on how sex and gender are not the same. I would say that they are the same. Patriarchy has defined and constructed both of them along lines of power. So yes, I am ignorant but probably not indoctrinatable. Sex and gender point to who has power and who doesn’t.
    “Oh my oh my, I see again that certain questions have again been avoided.”

    They haven’t been ignored. My take on them is that they are hopelessly dense.

  94. >“Women are not born”… but we are definitely made, meaning socially constituted which the trans movement does not want to discuss.”

    “Wow, have you got it backwards. There is a particular class of transwomen who I refer to as “transsexual fundamentalists” who love your anti-trans rhetoric, but who insist that gender is very specifically not a social construct, because they perceive that idea to be at the heart of what they think of as they transgender fallacy.”

    I can read too. This is what is called the HBS group and I definitely disagree with them on their attributions of ‘cause’ as they are fundamentally essentialistc. You may say that I agree with their conclusions about the movement but I don’t agree with their foundations. At a fundamental level they are saying the same thing the trans movement is saying only there is a “the devil made me do it” twist. I do not doubt that there are kids. I’ve seen Oprah but the role of learning is being discounted by the HBS group. The whole trans movement is predicated on the mysterious idea of internal gender. I say someone may learn a way of expressing themselves that is gendered in society. So what? That doesn’t mean they are women. There are masculine women. By the way, I don’t support gay men who assert they were born gay or lesbians who say the same. It’s far more powerful to say, “Yes, I choose to love other women because women are worthy of love”, politically than it is to say, “I have a woman-loving gene – or my hormones made me do it.”

    “The “trans movement” however, such as it is, is predicated on that principle. Are you really so primitive that you think of transwomen as nothing but gender stereotypes? That’s exactly the argument we’ve been having among ourselves, with most of the people you’re now taking such a strong position against, arguing in favor of what amounts to your own position: that gender is a system, not a box.”

    I realize that during this discussion that I have taken a position due to the implicit politics of the trans movement and I can’t take a what to me is a cogent position without confronting part of that politic which is the assumption of homogeneity of all of the people under your umbrella. It looks like this:

    Transvestite/crossdresser = drag queen = kid (ala Oprah) = late transitioner.

    Under trans politics they are all the same. They do not look the same to me. Only one in that population will coincide with De Beaviors definition of a woman which are the children on the Oprah show.

    “Are you really so primitive that you think of transwomen as nothing but gender stereotypes?”

    I want to return to this question. I don’t think gender exists. If you remove gender as an explanation could we re-examine the contents of your umbrella. Here your loudest talker is a cross dresser (how appropriate). He is a gender stereotype but not the kind you are speaking about.

    Now then, I don’t know the people here. Felix is rather nice and I could talk to felix. Val, actually when you aren’t putting words in my mouth, you’re OK. But I want to continue with this. I’m not concerned with your poltics. I’m just not. In that respect, it sounds like you are bombarded with rejection. Have you wondered why? You have people with you-know-whats who desire to keep their you-know-whats and they wanted to be responded to as women when women do not have you know whats. Included under your umbrella are drag queens who are often misogynistic. They openly say they are men. You have transgenderists who want to keep their you know whats. You have the hbs types who want nothing to do with you and it’s clear your movement annexes them. You have kids whom I think have are legitimate when they say “I am a boy or girl”. Then you have sixty year old men who have been men all their lives and have no earthly idea how women apprehend the world and they never will. So there is an A to Z that isn’t one boat but perhaps ten.

    These people are all as different as can be. It’s the backdrop of patriarchy that makes them appear the same. But this umbrella has no credibility but seemingly an incredible amount of power.

    At the center of the trans movement is this MAGIC thing called gender. “That football player or paratrooper over there is really a woman.” “That sixty year old man who has been married as man four times is really a woman.” The crossdressing logician here would support such a stement while claiming to be the king of logic. There’s absolutely no logic or foundation to it. It’s simply male declaration. That’s all it is.

    But here is the problem your politics presents. Because of the absurdity of your movement and by absurd I mean, you want that crossdresser in my bathroom because of his hobby. If I said, if the child were in treatment, then is would be OK for her to be in the bathroom. Then the crossdresser jumps up and the sixty year old man jumps up. Remember, felix asked about a “preop” (ever notice how your movement turns people into objects?). Felix said nothing about their social history. If a young person has shown a life long history of an identity that is not consistent with original their original assignment and they are in treatment in preparation to have their body fixed, OK. But not transgenderists. Not someone who has actually lived as a man. No drag queens or crossdresser or transgenderists. Haven’t they made their choice? You will probably scream at this but this is how I feel about it. Your are supporting some boats that really look absurd. When I eliminate “gender” from the picture, most of the boats look absurd. What does the drag queen have in common with the sixty year old man? What does the sixty year old man have in common with the kid? The one assigned as a male will actually have a radically different life than either the drag queen or the sixty year old man.

    “Are you really so primitive that you think of transwomen as nothing but gender stereotypes?”

    I think they are a very heterogeneous group of people. I think some are valid and some because of their own choices, chose to let the cake burn in the oven. You can turn them into victims if you like but what is not arguable is that a constellation of things were more important to them. It may be male status and privilege or family or whatever but they made their choices. By the same token so do transgenderists.

    “I put it to you that you argue out of ignorance of what “transgender” really is, what its language and issues are, and who the people really are that inhabit it. You insist that none of it is your problem, but you have chosen to be hostile to something you really know very little about.”

    I am ignorant and I admit that because “transgender” makes absolutely no sense to me, especially since I see gender as a social construct. I see your movement as being male defined and doesn’t care about women. If you don’t care about women, how can you claim to be one? Do I have to know a lot about the KuKluxKlan or NAMBLA to know I oppose them? The way your movement reifies gender as well as defines it supports the very foundations of the justifications, used by patriarchy, to oppress women. There really is no way that you can avoid saying that politically the trans movement hurts women. “Transfeminism” is not feminism at all because it’s trans-centric and not woman centered.

    So, I haven’t been spiteful or hateful and I haven’t attacked anyone here. If you wish you can explain transgender to me. BUT, keep in mind that I think that both sex and gender are social constructs and as such they are not separable at all because they are social phenomena. So I don’t buy into women with you know whats at all and I do not see someone who would be OK with a you know what as a woman. Do I see them as gender stereotypes? No. I see most them simply as men. You spoke of the transgender fallacy. I have not been able to even hear a cogent statement so I have no idea what it is. It also starts with a pseudo-sophisticated spiel on how sex and gender are not the same. I would say that they are the same. Patriarchy has defined and constructed both of them along lines of power. So yes, I am ignorant but probably not indoctrinatable. Sex and gender point to who has power and who doesn’t.
    “Oh my oh my, I see again that certain questions have again been avoided.”

    They haven’t been ignored. My take on them is that they are hopelessly dense.

  95. OK, so Sandy is a woman-born-woman. She says she doesn’t want transpeople anywhere near her even if she is at death’s door. Fine, understood. So, going back to Sandy’s original quest to ensure that no-one with a penis uses a Ladies’ room . . . Sandy, how do you know whether or not they already are? And how many transwomen have you actually met and had conversations with? Do you really think transsexual women who are waiting for surgery will go into a Ladies’ room and expose themselves? I mean, really?? Where on earth are you getting these ideas from? I’ve been to countless conferences, press meetings, parties and lord knows what else with a couple of hundred transwomen there and I can honestly say I’ve never encountered anything like this and I often use the Ladies. Honestly, what the hell are you talking about, Sandy??

  96. OK, so Sandy is a woman-born-woman. She says she doesn’t want transpeople anywhere near her even if she is at death’s door. Fine, understood. So, going back to Sandy’s original quest to ensure that no-one with a penis uses a Ladies’ room . . . Sandy, how do you know whether or not they already are? And how many transwomen have you actually met and had conversations with? Do you really think transsexual women who are waiting for surgery will go into a Ladies’ room and expose themselves? I mean, really?? Where on earth are you getting these ideas from? I’ve been to countless conferences, press meetings, parties and lord knows what else with a couple of hundred transwomen there and I can honestly say I’ve never encountered anything like this and I often use the Ladies. Honestly, what the hell are you talking about, Sandy??

  97. Oh my oh my, I see again that certain questions have again been avoided.

    So just because the profound thoughts and contributions of women and black people and plenty of other people have not been recorded means that the ideas of the enlightenment don’t apply? Again you put more weight in the messenger than the message. A classic logical fallacy.

    So you don’t think all people should be equals? Because Egalitarianism never pretended that all people were currently in an equal situation. The whole point was that birthright was invalid! Otherwise they would have happily kept the nobility! The error historically has come from people who only wanted to shift the benchmark and move privilege only to some not all. This is counter to the notion of egalitarianism.
    The philosophical truth comes not from an assumption that everyone is identical, the variability of talent and skill is recognised, however the point is that all people should be treated as equal. Something that has never happened because people using the same arguments as you wanted the power and balence redressed for their own groups while maintaining the inequality for others.
    Suggesting that all people should have equal rights, equal support, equal recognition.. how can that gloss over womens issues when it directly demands they be raised to a level that has not yet happened in the modern world?

    Your arbitrary catagorising of things, ideas as ‘male’ is both sexist and stupid. It disregards womens importent and often suppressed contributions to science, maths, philosophy etc. It limits women to what? Illogic? Some sort of might-makes-right notion of power?

    The combined notions of freedom and equality are the principles behind most modern schools of ethics. If you think that equality is invalid because men thought of it what system of moral/ethical reasoning do you subscribe too? What makes the things that have been done to women against their will wrong if it is not the fact that it is against their will ie that it violates their self determination ie that it is a violation of their freedom and equality?

    You think I’m caucasian because of the people I appeal to as sources of Authority? I haven’t appealed to anyone as a source of authority! I have pointed to the validity of IDEAS not people. Ideas that no-one has yet successfully invalidated over many centuries. Maybe you are unaware of the importance of the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates in the non-western world? They were held in higher regard in the islamic world than the christian for a large part of history! Maybe you aren’t aware of the influence of Aristotelian logic on confucian, taoist and bhuddist philosophy?
    Ideas flowed back and forth along the silk and spice roads. Even religions moved back and forth and mixed together. Maybe you never knew how prevelant Islam has been in China or that Quan Yin the compassionate one is believed to have originated in the appropriation of icons of Mary. Your the one whose arguments appear to be culturally ignorant!

    Lots of people know that the world isn’t egalitarian. Even white males. Plenty of Irish Australians are old enough to know that. Plenty of red haired people with extremely white skin know that in Australia you can actually be too white. Huge groups of people have known that the world isn’t egalitarian only the most sheltered and ignorant would say otherwise. That doesn’t invalidate that they should be treated as equals just because they aren’t!

    So if people shouldn’t be treated as equal? What? What then defines how people should be treated?

    “What feminist is it that argues for people with penises to be in the women’s room based on the atrocities of the Holocaust?”

    What happened to your brain? Or are you deliberately misstating my actual position? This is the second time you have stated I’m advocating something that I am not. Why would you say that again when you know it isn’t true?
    I’ve ACTUALLY argued against the existence of communal space in toilets and other public amenities like changerooms and showers so there won’t be mens rooms, womens rooms or co-ed rooms but unisex one-person-at-a-time rooms! And I didn’t mention the attrocities of the holocaust in relation to that.

    I had relatives die in the gas chambers. Did you? By your own arguments unless you did shouldn’t you just listen to my points on the matter and accept them? Or do you consider the message valid irrespective of the messanger but only when you are the messanger?

    I mentioned the attrocities of the holocaust in direct relation to your ‘not my problem’ argument! I was appropriatly and aptly demonstrating that people who allow abuses and oppressions to occur without speaking out because they do not effect them personally or a specific group they consider themselves belonging too are also guilty of the attrocity. A specific example related directly and specifically to a simple principle argument in basic moral reasoning. A field that it seems you could do yourself and everyone else a substantial service by exploring.

    So stop arguing against things I’ve never said, points I’ve never made. Address my actual agenda, my actual argument. Getting it wrong on account of a mistaken assumption is reasonably understandable the first time but to reiterate the idea when I have directly stated otherwise is falsehood.

    And while your at it, why don’t you go back to explaining your toilet double standard?

  98. Oh my oh my, I see again that certain questions have again been avoided.

    So just because the profound thoughts and contributions of women and black people and plenty of other people have not been recorded means that the ideas of the enlightenment don’t apply? Again you put more weight in the messenger than the message. A classic logical fallacy.

    So you don’t think all people should be equals? Because Egalitarianism never pretended that all people were currently in an equal situation. The whole point was that birthright was invalid! Otherwise they would have happily kept the nobility! The error historically has come from people who only wanted to shift the benchmark and move privilege only to some not all. This is counter to the notion of egalitarianism.
    The philosophical truth comes not from an assumption that everyone is identical, the variability of talent and skill is recognised, however the point is that all people should be treated as equal. Something that has never happened because people using the same arguments as you wanted the power and balence redressed for their own groups while maintaining the inequality for others.
    Suggesting that all people should have equal rights, equal support, equal recognition.. how can that gloss over womens issues when it directly demands they be raised to a level that has not yet happened in the modern world?

    Your arbitrary catagorising of things, ideas as ‘male’ is both sexist and stupid. It disregards womens importent and often suppressed contributions to science, maths, philosophy etc. It limits women to what? Illogic? Some sort of might-makes-right notion of power?

    The combined notions of freedom and equality are the principles behind most modern schools of ethics. If you think that equality is invalid because men thought of it what system of moral/ethical reasoning do you subscribe too? What makes the things that have been done to women against their will wrong if it is not the fact that it is against their will ie that it violates their self determination ie that it is a violation of their freedom and equality?

    You think I’m caucasian because of the people I appeal to as sources of Authority? I haven’t appealed to anyone as a source of authority! I have pointed to the validity of IDEAS not people. Ideas that no-one has yet successfully invalidated over many centuries. Maybe you are unaware of the importance of the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates in the non-western world? They were held in higher regard in the islamic world than the christian for a large part of history! Maybe you aren’t aware of the influence of Aristotelian logic on confucian, taoist and bhuddist philosophy?
    Ideas flowed back and forth along the silk and spice roads. Even religions moved back and forth and mixed together. Maybe you never knew how prevelant Islam has been in China or that Quan Yin the compassionate one is believed to have originated in the appropriation of icons of Mary. Your the one whose arguments appear to be culturally ignorant!

    Lots of people know that the world isn’t egalitarian. Even white males. Plenty of Irish Australians are old enough to know that. Plenty of red haired people with extremely white skin know that in Australia you can actually be too white. Huge groups of people have known that the world isn’t egalitarian only the most sheltered and ignorant would say otherwise. That doesn’t invalidate that they should be treated as equals just because they aren’t!

    So if people shouldn’t be treated as equal? What? What then defines how people should be treated?

    “What feminist is it that argues for people with penises to be in the women’s room based on the atrocities of the Holocaust?”

    What happened to your brain? Or are you deliberately misstating my actual position? This is the second time you have stated I’m advocating something that I am not. Why would you say that again when you know it isn’t true?
    I’ve ACTUALLY argued against the existence of communal space in toilets and other public amenities like changerooms and showers so there won’t be mens rooms, womens rooms or co-ed rooms but unisex one-person-at-a-time rooms! And I didn’t mention the attrocities of the holocaust in relation to that.

    I had relatives die in the gas chambers. Did you? By your own arguments unless you did shouldn’t you just listen to my points on the matter and accept them? Or do you consider the message valid irrespective of the messanger but only when you are the messanger?

    I mentioned the attrocities of the holocaust in direct relation to your ‘not my problem’ argument! I was appropriatly and aptly demonstrating that people who allow abuses and oppressions to occur without speaking out because they do not effect them personally or a specific group they consider themselves belonging too are also guilty of the attrocity. A specific example related directly and specifically to a simple principle argument in basic moral reasoning. A field that it seems you could do yourself and everyone else a substantial service by exploring.

    So stop arguing against things I’ve never said, points I’ve never made. Address my actual agenda, my actual argument. Getting it wrong on account of a mistaken assumption is reasonably understandable the first time but to reiterate the idea when I have directly stated otherwise is falsehood.

    And while your at it, why don’t you go back to explaining your toilet double standard?

  99. No, Val, not a crotch grab of any sort nor abandonment of any kind; but you know that. I don’t precisely align with anyone but I do think that if someone is HBS/transsexual/classically transsexual/true transsexual they have known their entire life there was a mistake at birth, and GRS is a given.

    Why haven’t you had GRS, Val? I would guess you are just content to “identify”?

    Again, I think you are a fake…a troll. You have no history, no perspective, no experiences you call upon. You simply enjoy argument, criticism, and insult. The blogs are crammed with you doing nothing but that. 17 out of the 78 comments in this thread alone are yours, doing NOTHING but arguing and insulting…it’s your way. If anyone else made that many comments with that much diatribe, Marti would accuse them of hijacking her blog. That, in itself, says a lot.

  100. No, Val, not a crotch grab of any sort nor abandonment of any kind; but you know that. I don’t precisely align with anyone but I do think that if someone is HBS/transsexual/classically transsexual/true transsexual they have known their entire life there was a mistake at birth, and GRS is a given.

    Why haven’t you had GRS, Val? I would guess you are just content to “identify”?

    Again, I think you are a fake…a troll. You have no history, no perspective, no experiences you call upon. You simply enjoy argument, criticism, and insult. The blogs are crammed with you doing nothing but that. 17 out of the 78 comments in this thread alone are yours, doing NOTHING but arguing and insulting…it’s your way. If anyone else made that many comments with that much diatribe, Marti would accuse them of hijacking her blog. That, in itself, says a lot.

  101. While re-reading, this caught my attention:

    >“Women are not born”… but we are definitely made, meaning socially constituted which the trans movement does not want to discuss.

    Wow, have you got it backwards. There is a particular class of transwomen who I refer to as “transsexual fundamentalists” who love your anti-trans rhetoric, but who insist that gender is very specifically not a social construct, because they perceive that idea to be at the heart of what they think of as they transgender fallacy.

    The “trans movement” however, such as it is, is predicated on that principle. Are you really so primitive that you think of transwomen as nothing but gender stereotypes? That’s exactly the argument we’ve been having among ourselves, with most of the people you’re now taking such a strong position against, arguing in favor of what amounts to your own position: that gender is a system, not a box.

    I put it to you that you argue out of ignorance of what “transgender” really is, what its language and issues are, and who the people really are that inhabit it. You insist that none of it is your problem, but you have chosen to be hostile to something you really know very little about.

  102. While re-reading, this caught my attention:

    >“Women are not born”… but we are definitely made, meaning socially constituted which the trans movement does not want to discuss.

    Wow, have you got it backwards. There is a particular class of transwomen who I refer to as “transsexual fundamentalists” who love your anti-trans rhetoric, but who insist that gender is very specifically not a social construct, because they perceive that idea to be at the heart of what they think of as they transgender fallacy.

    The “trans movement” however, such as it is, is predicated on that principle. Are you really so primitive that you think of transwomen as nothing but gender stereotypes? That’s exactly the argument we’ve been having among ourselves, with most of the people you’re now taking such a strong position against, arguing in favor of what amounts to your own position: that gender is a system, not a box.

    I put it to you that you argue out of ignorance of what “transgender” really is, what its language and issues are, and who the people really are that inhabit it. You insist that none of it is your problem, but you have chosen to be hostile to something you really know very little about.

  103. By the way, Sandy’s effort to pull the “more schooled than thou” trip is exactly what I was talking about earlier… she believes – possibly even with some justification – that the people she’s arguing with here are easy targets.

    I don’t pretend to be a scholar of feminism, civil rights, or even of trans issues… this makes me and people like me easy to play certain cards against (though I expect that Sandy is also caucasian, so that little trope is purely tactical on her part).

    But it’s a chickenshit game, really… pick off the ones who can most easily be tarred with the “patriarchal” brush, and through them take down the whole “transgender” thing. It’s a strategy that, as I said before, would have no success at all against someone like Monica Roberts… not only because she is a woman of color, but because she is far better educated about the core issues that Sandy is trying to hold over us, and is more than capable of quite a substantial bit of schooling herself.

    So we’re the designated straw figures against which Sandy can exercise her contempt.

    It’s ok… it’s not exactly the first time I’ve been someone else’s whipping girl.

  104. By the way, Sandy’s effort to pull the “more schooled than thou” trip is exactly what I was talking about earlier… she believes – possibly even with some justification – that the people she’s arguing with here are easy targets.

    I don’t pretend to be a scholar of feminism, civil rights, or even of trans issues… this makes me and people like me easy to play certain cards against (though I expect that Sandy is also caucasian, so that little trope is purely tactical on her part).

    But it’s a chickenshit game, really… pick off the ones who can most easily be tarred with the “patriarchal” brush, and through them take down the whole “transgender” thing. It’s a strategy that, as I said before, would have no success at all against someone like Monica Roberts… not only because she is a woman of color, but because she is far better educated about the core issues that Sandy is trying to hold over us, and is more than capable of quite a substantial bit of schooling herself.

    So we’re the designated straw figures against which Sandy can exercise her contempt.

    It’s ok… it’s not exactly the first time I’ve been someone else’s whipping girl.

  105. > Where have you quoted Angela Davis, Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, Martin Luther King or Malcolm X?

    Name dropping, are we? I don’t see that you have made much use of those sources yourself.

    In any case, Audre Lord actually comes up quite a lot in discussions of trans people and feminism… one common observation is that separatism and doesn’t work, which is a legitimate inference to be drawn from the famous statement about the “master’s tools”… tools which you wield quite gladly, seeking to erase entire classes of people whose nature offends you.

    I’m not a huge Emi Koyama fan, but this (http://eminism.org/readings/pdf-rdg/whose-feminism.pdf) is an useful argument. So is the projection of this sentiment onto trans issues:

    “Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression.”

    Of course, you will believe that all trans people are doing is appropriating women’s speech… while missing the broader points made by that speech, especially by people such as bell hooks and Audre Lord, people more compassionate and cogent than yourself, who understood full well that oppression is a culture-wide and mutual problem, not simply the offense of one class of people by another. No one is pure… not trans people, not people of color, not women… certainly not you.

  106. > Where have you quoted Angela Davis, Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, Martin Luther King or Malcolm X?

    Name dropping, are we? I don’t see that you have made much use of those sources yourself.

    In any case, Audre Lord actually comes up quite a lot in discussions of trans people and feminism… one common observation is that separatism and doesn’t work, which is a legitimate inference to be drawn from the famous statement about the “master’s tools”… tools which you wield quite gladly, seeking to erase entire classes of people whose nature offends you.

    I’m not a huge Emi Koyama fan, but this (http://eminism.org/readings/pdf-rdg/whose-feminism.pdf) is an useful argument. So is the projection of this sentiment onto trans issues:

    “Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression.”

    Of course, you will believe that all trans people are doing is appropriating women’s speech… while missing the broader points made by that speech, especially by people such as bell hooks and Audre Lord, people more compassionate and cogent than yourself, who understood full well that oppression is a culture-wide and mutual problem, not simply the offense of one class of people by another. No one is pure… not trans people, not people of color, not women… certainly not you.

  107. Also, many women and black philosophers, in fact pretty much all modern philosophy draws upon the enlightenment and egalitarian ideals.

    Nietzsche is the only philosopher who comes to mind that tried to move past the logic and tabula rasa of the enlightenment, and even then he doesn’t really say what he would have us move past to.

  108. Also, many women and black philosophers, in fact pretty much all modern philosophy draws upon the enlightenment and egalitarian ideals.

    Nietzsche is the only philosopher who comes to mind that tried to move past the logic and tabula rasa of the enlightenment, and even then he doesn’t really say what he would have us move past to.

  109. Ideals. Ideals.

    As in not necessarily reality.

    Are you saying ideally equality is not something worthwhile? It seems to be what you’re saying when you say Egalitarian thinking is bad.

    Silly me I thought feminism was against discrimination based on gender… lemme check…

    feminism

    1. A social theory or political movement supporting the equality of both sexes in all aspects of public and private life; specifically, a theory or movement that argues that legal and social restrictions on females must be removed in order to bring about such equality. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/feminism)

    Side notes to the moderators of this website, it is getting rather tiresome that every post gets taken over by HBS/Radical feminists/Heart fans/etc posters every time, but then I guess thats not unique to this site really :/

    Oh yeah, and the whole priviledge/standpoint theory based radical feminism seems rather outdated, and entrenched in gender essentialism, something feminism is traditionally against.

  110. Ideals. Ideals.

    As in not necessarily reality.

    Are you saying ideally equality is not something worthwhile? It seems to be what you’re saying when you say Egalitarian thinking is bad.

    Silly me I thought feminism was against discrimination based on gender… lemme check…

    feminism

    1. A social theory or political movement supporting the equality of both sexes in all aspects of public and private life; specifically, a theory or movement that argues that legal and social restrictions on females must be removed in order to bring about such equality. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/feminism)

    Side notes to the moderators of this website, it is getting rather tiresome that every post gets taken over by HBS/Radical feminists/Heart fans/etc posters every time, but then I guess thats not unique to this site really :/

    Oh yeah, and the whole priviledge/standpoint theory based radical feminism seems rather outdated, and entrenched in gender essentialism, something feminism is traditionally against.

  111. “If you were born anatomically female, please accept my apologies for my assumption.”

    Accepted.

  112. “If you were born anatomically female, please accept my apologies for my assumption.”

    Accepted.

  113. “It’s permeated by Enlightenment Philosophy”
    And who were the thinkers during this period? How many women Enlightment Philosophers are remembered and have you read? How many Black philosophers have you read from that period? How many woman philosophers have you read?
    “ Egalitarian ideals”

    This is a problem. Egalitarian thinking again comes from a privileged male social perspective. It presupposes a symmetry that does not exist. Egalitarianism ignores and glosses over women’s oppression. Again, this is another social male-ism.
    Why do I say you are Caucasian? It’s by virtue of the people you appeal to as a source of authority. You arguments come from someone whose culture is Caucasian. Black folks know the world isn’t egalitarian. Women know the world isn’t egalitarian. White men like to pretend that it is, in order to maintain their systems of oppression. Men, having privilege in this world resort to cries of “Humanism” when wanting to preserve their privileges and when the goal is to remove protections from minorities. “We are all the same”, cry wolves, in sheep’s clothing.

    I see egalitarianism to be a shill and in an invention of white because there is nothing egalarian about the world we live in. You advocate treatinf everyone the same in a world where everyone is not treated or valued in the same manner. Women do not want penises in our restrooms. We do not go in restrooms reserved for men. There’s no double standard there at all.

    “Civil rights”

    There is no civil rights movement for people with penises to use women’s rooms outside of the trans movement which invokes the arguments of Men’s Rights Activists and why shouldn’t they? They both share the same social perspectives. How many times have I seen MRA’s leverage the trans movement against women? Of course they want to foist trans off on the backs of women. Where have you quoted Angela Davis, Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, Martin Luther King or Malcolm X? You aren’t just the master’s tools, you are the master himself.

    “Feminist thinking”

    How vague. There is all kind of thinking that is labeled feminist, that really isn’t. Perhaps you’d like to say who it is that you read. Suzie Bright, perhaps? “Feminist thinking”? What feminist is it that argues for people with penises to be in the women’s room based on the atrocities of the Holocaust?

    And Val, I didn’t think readers here would know what “womon” meant. Actually, I would agree with both parts of what DeBeauvior said, “Women are not born”… but we are definitely made, meaning socially constituted which the trans movement does not want to discuss. Here your lead spokesman doesn’t even live as a woman and he wants to use the woman’s room.

  114. “It’s permeated by Enlightenment Philosophy”
    And who were the thinkers during this period? How many women Enlightment Philosophers are remembered and have you read? How many Black philosophers have you read from that period? How many woman philosophers have you read?
    “ Egalitarian ideals”

    This is a problem. Egalitarian thinking again comes from a privileged male social perspective. It presupposes a symmetry that does not exist. Egalitarianism ignores and glosses over women’s oppression. Again, this is another social male-ism.
    Why do I say you are Caucasian? It’s by virtue of the people you appeal to as a source of authority. You arguments come from someone whose culture is Caucasian. Black folks know the world isn’t egalitarian. Women know the world isn’t egalitarian. White men like to pretend that it is, in order to maintain their systems of oppression. Men, having privilege in this world resort to cries of “Humanism” when wanting to preserve their privileges and when the goal is to remove protections from minorities. “We are all the same”, cry wolves, in sheep’s clothing.

    I see egalitarianism to be a shill and in an invention of white because there is nothing egalarian about the world we live in. You advocate treatinf everyone the same in a world where everyone is not treated or valued in the same manner. Women do not want penises in our restrooms. We do not go in restrooms reserved for men. There’s no double standard there at all.

    “Civil rights”

    There is no civil rights movement for people with penises to use women’s rooms outside of the trans movement which invokes the arguments of Men’s Rights Activists and why shouldn’t they? They both share the same social perspectives. How many times have I seen MRA’s leverage the trans movement against women? Of course they want to foist trans off on the backs of women. Where have you quoted Angela Davis, Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, Martin Luther King or Malcolm X? You aren’t just the master’s tools, you are the master himself.

    “Feminist thinking”

    How vague. There is all kind of thinking that is labeled feminist, that really isn’t. Perhaps you’d like to say who it is that you read. Suzie Bright, perhaps? “Feminist thinking”? What feminist is it that argues for people with penises to be in the women’s room based on the atrocities of the Holocaust?

    And Val, I didn’t think readers here would know what “womon” meant. Actually, I would agree with both parts of what DeBeauvior said, “Women are not born”… but we are definitely made, meaning socially constituted which the trans movement does not want to discuss. Here your lead spokesman doesn’t even live as a woman and he wants to use the woman’s room.

  115. Sandy, I believe you are a “woman born woman”. But I also strongly suspect you were a baby girl born with a penis. Once again, will you please take the time to explain which public toilets you used when presenting as a woman but prior to vaginoplasty? If you were born anatomically female, please accept my apologies for my assumption.

  116. Sandy, I believe you are a “woman born woman”. But I also strongly suspect you were a baby girl born with a penis. Once again, will you please take the time to explain which public toilets you used when presenting as a woman but prior to vaginoplasty? If you were born anatomically female, please accept my apologies for my assumption.

  117. I’m interested in seeing how you’ll respond to the points made on issues of race and other generalisation, the apparent genital double-standard in your remarks and especially your response to my actual agenda rather than the one you assumed I had.

  118. I’m interested in seeing how you’ll respond to the points made on issues of race and other generalisation, the apparent genital double-standard in your remarks and especially your response to my actual agenda rather than the one you assumed I had.

  119. My thinking isn’t ideologically permeated by gay male thinking.

    It’s permeated by Enlightenment Philosophy, Egalitarian ideals, Civil Rights, Feminist thinking.

    I was raised by my mother and grandmother. My family has had a long line of highly educated strong willed women going back well over a century and a half. My grandmother was a political activist and journalist. Her mother fought to preserve native languages by translating the bible and other works into native languages and collaborating on dictionaries.

    These are the people who raised me and taught me. Strong, intelligent, logical women.

  120. My thinking isn’t ideologically permeated by gay male thinking.

    It’s permeated by Enlightenment Philosophy, Egalitarian ideals, Civil Rights, Feminist thinking.

    I was raised by my mother and grandmother. My family has had a long line of highly educated strong willed women going back well over a century and a half. My grandmother was a political activist and journalist. Her mother fought to preserve native languages by translating the bible and other works into native languages and collaborating on dictionaries.

    These are the people who raised me and taught me. Strong, intelligent, logical women.

  121. “That, and anyone that spouts “men do this, women do that” isn’t any kind of feminist. That’s a component of essentialism, and as far as I know, the only essentialism I know of that is excepted in feminist circles ( albeit, radical feminism) is physiological/anatomical essentialism, and Sandy isn’t included in that crowd.”

    This is a totally bizarre statement, there is something culture and men certainly learn it.

  122. “That, and anyone that spouts “men do this, women do that” isn’t any kind of feminist. That’s a component of essentialism, and as far as I know, the only essentialism I know of that is excepted in feminist circles ( albeit, radical feminism) is physiological/anatomical essentialism, and Sandy isn’t included in that crowd.”

    This is a totally bizarre statement, there is something culture and men certainly learn it.

  123. “She’s said, essentially that she’s stealth in a lesbian community.”

    What? I am a woman born woman.

    You all are so bizarre having been so ideologically permeated by gay male thinking. But then again, why shouldn’t you be?

  124. “She’s said, essentially that she’s stealth in a lesbian community.”

    What? I am a woman born woman.

    You all are so bizarre having been so ideologically permeated by gay male thinking. But then again, why shouldn’t you be?

  125. Mercedes, you’re spot on as usual. I’ve considered closing this post up because it seems everyone is talking past each other, but I haven’t because the discourse has been somewhat civil. I don’t want to hamper discussions, but at times it feels more like a shouting match than a discussion.

    That, and anyone that spouts “men do this, women do that” isn’t any kind of feminist. That’s a component of essentialism, and as far as I know, the only essentialism I know of that is excepted in feminist circles ( albeit, radical feminism) is physiological/anatomical essentialism, and Sandy isn’t included in that crowd. That and I have no time for people that are ashamed of what they are. She’s said, essentially that she’s stealth in a lesbian community. In other words, she’s dishonest. I’m not wasting my time arguing with such a person.

  126. Mercedes, you’re spot on as usual. I’ve considered closing this post up because it seems everyone is talking past each other, but I haven’t because the discourse has been somewhat civil. I don’t want to hamper discussions, but at times it feels more like a shouting match than a discussion.

    That, and anyone that spouts “men do this, women do that” isn’t any kind of feminist. That’s a component of essentialism, and as far as I know, the only essentialism I know of that is excepted in feminist circles ( albeit, radical feminism) is physiological/anatomical essentialism, and Sandy isn’t included in that crowd. That and I have no time for people that are ashamed of what they are. She’s said, essentially that she’s stealth in a lesbian community. In other words, she’s dishonest. I’m not wasting my time arguing with such a person.

  127. Felix wrote: “I don’t understand how Sandy expects a pre-operative transwoman to use a public toilet in safety unless that person uses the Ladies’ room.”

    As far as I see, she’s simply saying that she doesn’t care where they go, as long as it’s not a womens’ room. Pre-ops are of no consequence to her, whether they live or die, or have a kidney rupture — just as long as they don’t enter “her” space. And of course, non-ops will be an anathema. What we have is HBSism laying in wait once again to troll conversations at every opportunity.

    What I want to know is why HBS bigots who insist that anyone with a penis is male and who advocate for complete seperation from the trans movement are doing spending all their time on transgender blogs waiting for opportunities to sideline all the discussions into antagonistic pontification about their brand of gender purity and how their brand of post-op TS should be the only group eligible to call themselves female.

    But then, arguing is a complete waste of time, because they will never consider anything beyond their own bigoted twist of logic.

    And yes, this comment came from an advocate of unity. Because this bloc of folk have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there can be no unity with them.

  128. Felix wrote: “I don’t understand how Sandy expects a pre-operative transwoman to use a public toilet in safety unless that person uses the Ladies’ room.”

    As far as I see, she’s simply saying that she doesn’t care where they go, as long as it’s not a womens’ room. Pre-ops are of no consequence to her, whether they live or die, or have a kidney rupture — just as long as they don’t enter “her” space. And of course, non-ops will be an anathema. What we have is HBSism laying in wait once again to troll conversations at every opportunity.

    What I want to know is why HBS bigots who insist that anyone with a penis is male and who advocate for complete seperation from the trans movement are doing spending all their time on transgender blogs waiting for opportunities to sideline all the discussions into antagonistic pontification about their brand of gender purity and how their brand of post-op TS should be the only group eligible to call themselves female.

    But then, arguing is a complete waste of time, because they will never consider anything beyond their own bigoted twist of logic.

    And yes, this comment came from an advocate of unity. Because this bloc of folk have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there can be no unity with them.

  129. You know, I’m angrier about this than I thought.

    By reducing all transpeople to “white crossdressing men”, Sandy conveniently packages everything into the easiest target of a certain kind of rhetoric. Then, by reducing all trans reality into “penises in the women’s room,” she eliminates all consideration of what really matters.

    Every year our community holds a vigil for people who are murdered because they don’t conform to someone’s idea of what they ought to be… because they refuse to accept that biology is destiny. We have recently been treated to stories of kids killed because they were just too queer… or maybe just too something else, but let’s not call it “transgender” because that’s painting a target on their backs, right, Susan?

    The fact is that these people exist… “transgender” as a movement is just a way to try to speak about them. Fulminating against “the movement” won’t make real people vanish, or stop behaving in the way they do. It simply supports the violence against those people… the attempts at erasure.

    I say screw you, Sandy. You are culpable. You are the kind of person who makes it possible for others to call transpeople “things” and to dehumanize them to the point where they’re easier to kill. You use “white crossdressing men” as a straw figure to represent a wide class of people of all kinds, and turn them all into objects… disposable objects.

    To hell with that, and with you.

  130. You know, I’m angrier about this than I thought.

    By reducing all transpeople to “white crossdressing men”, Sandy conveniently packages everything into the easiest target of a certain kind of rhetoric. Then, by reducing all trans reality into “penises in the women’s room,” she eliminates all consideration of what really matters.

    Every year our community holds a vigil for people who are murdered because they don’t conform to someone’s idea of what they ought to be… because they refuse to accept that biology is destiny. We have recently been treated to stories of kids killed because they were just too queer… or maybe just too something else, but let’s not call it “transgender” because that’s painting a target on their backs, right, Susan?

    The fact is that these people exist… “transgender” as a movement is just a way to try to speak about them. Fulminating against “the movement” won’t make real people vanish, or stop behaving in the way they do. It simply supports the violence against those people… the attempts at erasure.

    I say screw you, Sandy. You are culpable. You are the kind of person who makes it possible for others to call transpeople “things” and to dehumanize them to the point where they’re easier to kill. You use “white crossdressing men” as a straw figure to represent a wide class of people of all kinds, and turn them all into objects… disposable objects.

    To hell with that, and with you.

  131. Also a good point…
    How do you know what race I am?
    How do you know the colour of my skin?
    I have identified myself as being a crossdresser (of course this being the internet I could be lying and be a natal woman in disguise lol). But my race?

    I have given one piece of information as to my genetic heritage.
    “my german gypsy cousins”, you know, the ones Hitler gassed to death because of their race.
    Not a lot of white privilege for the gypsies is there.
    I’ll add some more.
    6 of my close cousins have black skin. Aboriginal. 5 other close cousins, at the exact same degree of closeness, range from brown, to olive to snow white. There is Chinese in my family too.

    Want to guess about my race? Am I a gypsy, an aborigine, chinese or something else I’ve not yet mentioned? Want to guess about my skin colour? Am I black or brown or yellow or white? Want to make assumptions about how much privilege or discrimination I have had on account of my skin or ancestry?

    And how do you know how I live?

  132. Also a good point…
    How do you know what race I am?
    How do you know the colour of my skin?
    I have identified myself as being a crossdresser (of course this being the internet I could be lying and be a natal woman in disguise lol). But my race?

    I have given one piece of information as to my genetic heritage.
    “my german gypsy cousins”, you know, the ones Hitler gassed to death because of their race.
    Not a lot of white privilege for the gypsies is there.
    I’ll add some more.
    6 of my close cousins have black skin. Aboriginal. 5 other close cousins, at the exact same degree of closeness, range from brown, to olive to snow white. There is Chinese in my family too.

    Want to guess about my race? Am I a gypsy, an aborigine, chinese or something else I’ve not yet mentioned? Want to guess about my skin colour? Am I black or brown or yellow or white? Want to make assumptions about how much privilege or discrimination I have had on account of my skin or ancestry?

    And how do you know how I live?

  133. > He speaks of oppression and he is a white male and lives as one.

    This just caught my eye. It occurs to me that the reason Sandy is here pressing this point is that she thinks the locals are easy to box in with a certain set of arguments, and are probably not as well schooled in the rather limited language of her brand of feminism.

    She could never carry this off against Monica Roberts.

  134. > He speaks of oppression and he is a white male and lives as one.

    This just caught my eye. It occurs to me that the reason Sandy is here pressing this point is that she thinks the locals are easy to box in with a certain set of arguments, and are probably not as well schooled in the rather limited language of her brand of feminism.

    She could never carry this off against Monica Roberts.

  135. “Logic is logic. Whether being spoken by a crossdresser or a natal woman or anybody else.” I guess you failed to notice that the second sentence is an intrinsic part of the meaning of the paragraph, so your quoting it seperately is to rob it of significant meaning.

    And it’s not because I say so. Natal women were successfully utilising the truths of logic long before I was ever born. I was taught logic and philosophy by such women. I notice that the vast majority of your arguments against me depend upon that sentence or upon the notion that the source of a view or argument is vital to the point itself. But explain to me how the same thought would be less valid if it came from a child, a natal woman, a man, an intellectually disabled and uneducated person, a highly educated person with a high IQ or a crossdresser? If the words and the meaning are identical are not the insights and meaning of those words identical? Are they not then identical? Does the validity of the words rest then not at all on the source but instead on the accuracy of their relation to reality?

    Wasn’t the dismissal of womens views because they came from women and women were supposedly inferior one of the main forms of the oppression of women? I’m pretty sure it was. So why are you using the same tactic? If it was wrong then surely it is wrong now. If it was wrong for men to use to dismiss the arguments of women rather than weighing them on their own merits then it is wrong of you to do so with me.

    I also notice that you came up with a whole lot of feeble excuses to duck out of answering the logic trap that you are in. Despite your ‘that’s male thinking’ or ‘hegemony’ statements you make it still looks like you are ducking the question because you are unable to answer it.

    You also seem to be in complete denial of the capacity of women for sexual violence. Two of my male friends have in fact been raped by women. Some of the people who walked past my female friend when she was raped were women, they didn’t go for phones to call for help, they just looked the other way and let it happen just like the men that walked on by.

    You seem also to have failed to address, perhaps even comprehend the notion of the moral and ethical culpability and responsibility of people who support a repressive system. For example the women in Australia who campaigned against women gaining the vote. However the majority of men who were entitled to vote were convinced by the women who argued in favour of women gaining the vote and so Australia became the second country in the world to grant women the vote to which logically and ethically, but not legally, they were always entitled.

    Also you have put forward many an obfuscatory response to my statement that a justification of allowing the oppression of groups other than those you yourself belong to justifies all the things I listed. No matter how much you might decry the examples I gave it is still true, validating that argument in one instance validates it in all instances unless there is a non-arbitrary operative difference. And unfortunatly for you all the ones you’ve given are arbitrary rather than operative.

    And your nonsense about my ‘agenda’ is seriously misinformed. My actual agenda is universal rights, universal equality. I personally advocate in favour of the mandatory changing of all public amenities into single-use unisex facilities with no communal space and cctv protection outside said facility. This would protect all people equally from the disabled to children to women to men and anybody else. It happens to solve all the problems in one action and to make the anti penis arguments totally pointless.

  136. “Logic is logic. Whether being spoken by a crossdresser or a natal woman or anybody else.” I guess you failed to notice that the second sentence is an intrinsic part of the meaning of the paragraph, so your quoting it seperately is to rob it of significant meaning.

    And it’s not because I say so. Natal women were successfully utilising the truths of logic long before I was ever born. I was taught logic and philosophy by such women. I notice that the vast majority of your arguments against me depend upon that sentence or upon the notion that the source of a view or argument is vital to the point itself. But explain to me how the same thought would be less valid if it came from a child, a natal woman, a man, an intellectually disabled and uneducated person, a highly educated person with a high IQ or a crossdresser? If the words and the meaning are identical are not the insights and meaning of those words identical? Are they not then identical? Does the validity of the words rest then not at all on the source but instead on the accuracy of their relation to reality?

    Wasn’t the dismissal of womens views because they came from women and women were supposedly inferior one of the main forms of the oppression of women? I’m pretty sure it was. So why are you using the same tactic? If it was wrong then surely it is wrong now. If it was wrong for men to use to dismiss the arguments of women rather than weighing them on their own merits then it is wrong of you to do so with me.

    I also notice that you came up with a whole lot of feeble excuses to duck out of answering the logic trap that you are in. Despite your ‘that’s male thinking’ or ‘hegemony’ statements you make it still looks like you are ducking the question because you are unable to answer it.

    You also seem to be in complete denial of the capacity of women for sexual violence. Two of my male friends have in fact been raped by women. Some of the people who walked past my female friend when she was raped were women, they didn’t go for phones to call for help, they just looked the other way and let it happen just like the men that walked on by.

    You seem also to have failed to address, perhaps even comprehend the notion of the moral and ethical culpability and responsibility of people who support a repressive system. For example the women in Australia who campaigned against women gaining the vote. However the majority of men who were entitled to vote were convinced by the women who argued in favour of women gaining the vote and so Australia became the second country in the world to grant women the vote to which logically and ethically, but not legally, they were always entitled.

    Also you have put forward many an obfuscatory response to my statement that a justification of allowing the oppression of groups other than those you yourself belong to justifies all the things I listed. No matter how much you might decry the examples I gave it is still true, validating that argument in one instance validates it in all instances unless there is a non-arbitrary operative difference. And unfortunatly for you all the ones you’ve given are arbitrary rather than operative.

    And your nonsense about my ‘agenda’ is seriously misinformed. My actual agenda is universal rights, universal equality. I personally advocate in favour of the mandatory changing of all public amenities into single-use unisex facilities with no communal space and cctv protection outside said facility. This would protect all people equally from the disabled to children to women to men and anybody else. It happens to solve all the problems in one action and to make the anti penis arguments totally pointless.

  137. The other reason I really like Sandy’s lengthy post is that, after mindless repetition of a single, irrelevant point, she finally lets the lid off to reveal:

    > It’s not women that lynches people, IT’S MEN.

    … the misandry we knew was there.

    As an aside, it occurs to me that one of the other things that really pisses her off is that she feels ideologically robbed. She hates transpeople because they make use of the idea that “gender is a social construct” – an idea which is actually at the heart of her own struggle, since the social construction of gender is what limits the “allowable” behaviors of women in the patriarchal culture – and puts it to uses that she cannot permit.

    Quite a dilemma, to which the only resolution is the intransigence that we’ve seen here.

  138. The other reason I really like Sandy’s lengthy post is that, after mindless repetition of a single, irrelevant point, she finally lets the lid off to reveal:

    > It’s not women that lynches people, IT’S MEN.

    … the misandry we knew was there.

    As an aside, it occurs to me that one of the other things that really pisses her off is that she feels ideologically robbed. She hates transpeople because they make use of the idea that “gender is a social construct” – an idea which is actually at the heart of her own struggle, since the social construction of gender is what limits the “allowable” behaviors of women in the patriarchal culture – and puts it to uses that she cannot permit.

    Quite a dilemma, to which the only resolution is the intransigence that we’ve seen here.

  139. >Then again, you are one of those with a penis she is talking about…

    Oh look… the tranny version of a crotch-grab.

    >And thanks for the update on Sue and Cathryn, I’m sure you realize that means a lot to me.

    Hehehehe… awww, not the best of friends after all? Have you disowned them, too, just as you had to disown the HBS lunatics you once allied yourself with, but who rejected you for apostasy? Is their fundamentalism not precisely the same as yours?

    Fundamentalism schisms so easily.

  140. >Then again, you are one of those with a penis she is talking about…

    Oh look… the tranny version of a crotch-grab.

    >And thanks for the update on Sue and Cathryn, I’m sure you realize that means a lot to me.

    Hehehehe… awww, not the best of friends after all? Have you disowned them, too, just as you had to disown the HBS lunatics you once allied yourself with, but who rejected you for apostasy? Is their fundamentalism not precisely the same as yours?

    Fundamentalism schisms so easily.

  141. > Your movement has no validity.

    This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in quite a while. Sandy rails against the claims of transpeople (that’s all transpeople, by the way, Susan), and then pretends that she can just make an entire class of person vanish by wishful assertion.

    What a shock it must be for some people to live in the real world.

  142. > Your movement has no validity.

    This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in quite a while. Sandy rails against the claims of transpeople (that’s all transpeople, by the way, Susan), and then pretends that she can just make an entire class of person vanish by wishful assertion.

    What a shock it must be for some people to live in the real world.

  143. I don’t understand how Sandy expects a pre-operative transwoman to use a public toilet in safety unless that person uses the Ladies’ room. If she looks like a woman she will be directed to leave the Gents’ in any case. Or is she just supposed to pee in the street? How can urinating in public be safe or dignified behaviour for a woman? If Sandy is a transitioned woman I would very much like to know which public conveniences she used when passing fully but still possessing a penis, though maybe not testicles. Sorry to be so graphic but I am genuinely puzzled. Did you never leave the house, Sandy?

  144. I don’t understand how Sandy expects a pre-operative transwoman to use a public toilet in safety unless that person uses the Ladies’ room. If she looks like a woman she will be directed to leave the Gents’ in any case. Or is she just supposed to pee in the street? How can urinating in public be safe or dignified behaviour for a woman? If Sandy is a transitioned woman I would very much like to know which public conveniences she used when passing fully but still possessing a penis, though maybe not testicles. Sorry to be so graphic but I am genuinely puzzled. Did you never leave the house, Sandy?

  145. I really wish I could edit, cause I tend to hit submit too fast 🙂

    Also want to point out that you’re making this your issue here, not the other way around. I don’t know many pre-op trans women who declare they have a penis first thing after they enter the restroom.

  146. I really wish I could edit, cause I tend to hit submit too fast 🙂

    Also want to point out that you’re making this your issue here, not the other way around. I don’t know many pre-op trans women who declare they have a penis first thing after they enter the restroom.

  147. Again, to be clear, I don’t think I covered it properly in earlier post…

    The reason I dismiss you as a troll is your arguments have been logically inconsistent and when called on those inconsistencies you abandon the argument and move on to another, or basically do the equivalent of ‘because I said so’.

    That and you’re posting here despite saying several times you have no interest in trans issues.

  148. Again, to be clear, I don’t think I covered it properly in earlier post…

    The reason I dismiss you as a troll is your arguments have been logically inconsistent and when called on those inconsistencies you abandon the argument and move on to another, or basically do the equivalent of ‘because I said so’.

    That and you’re posting here despite saying several times you have no interest in trans issues.

  149. I am perfectly capable of understanding what you say, I however think your argument is incoherent.

    You yourself said you had finite energy, and you’re not interested in trans issues, so why post here? Again basic logic seems to elude you.

    As for having priveledge that would be hard to be the case to make with me.

    If you want to make a point, hurry up and make it, quit making personal attacks (Call me a man all you want, or anything else you fancy as an ‘insult’ it doesn’t really make it the case), and quit wasting everyones time.

  150. I am perfectly capable of understanding what you say, I however think your argument is incoherent.

    You yourself said you had finite energy, and you’re not interested in trans issues, so why post here? Again basic logic seems to elude you.

    As for having priveledge that would be hard to be the case to make with me.

    If you want to make a point, hurry up and make it, quit making personal attacks (Call me a man all you want, or anything else you fancy as an ‘insult’ it doesn’t really make it the case), and quit wasting everyones time.

  151. The definition of empirialism is when a dominant class instructs a class with less social privilges that their privileges are the problems of the lesser privilged class.
    That is the very definition of priviledge. One aspect of privilege is that their problems are always rolled off onto the backs of the class with less priviledge.

    The issues of people with penises do not become the issues of people without them just because they say so.

  152. The definition of empirialism is when a dominant class instructs a class with less social privilges that their privileges are the problems of the lesser privilged class.
    That is the very definition of priviledge. One aspect of privilege is that their problems are always rolled off onto the backs of the class with less priviledge.

    The issues of people with penises do not become the issues of people without them just because they say so.

  153. Well, now, Val, when it comes to vegetables, who am I to argue with you. Then again, you are one of those with a penis she is talking about…no wonder you are a bit testy. Gee…you ARE an authority…for once. And thanks for the update on Sue and Cathryn, I’m sure you realize that means a lot to me.

  154. Well, now, Val, when it comes to vegetables, who am I to argue with you. Then again, you are one of those with a penis she is talking about…no wonder you are a bit testy. Gee…you ARE an authority…for once. And thanks for the update on Sue and Cathryn, I’m sure you realize that means a lot to me.

  155. Because you say so?

    Or you can’t understand what I am saying. That’s generally the case for men.

    The interesting thing was that I said a lot and I am certainly not trolling. The interesting thing is that it mandatorily must be inadmissable no matter how much or how little I said. I said quite a lot and my content is never reponded to rather than to have the imposition of male hegemony omposed by a crossdresser. I don’t confuse posturing with an actual response nor is being called a troll.

    The reason is that trans does not understand the world the way women do. There are two hugely different sets of signficances which also must be deemed “inadmissable”. Interestingly enough, this is the way the men have always dealt with women.

    Here you have a crossdresser who lives as a man talking about rapes, murder and the hollocaust and what is his actual agenda? It’s to use the women’s room.

    He speaks of oppression and he is a white male and lives as one. Now then I ask, who is the oppressor? This is why the trans movement is never going to have any credibility.

  156. Because you say so?

    Or you can’t understand what I am saying. That’s generally the case for men.

    The interesting thing was that I said a lot and I am certainly not trolling. The interesting thing is that it mandatorily must be inadmissable no matter how much or how little I said. I said quite a lot and my content is never reponded to rather than to have the imposition of male hegemony omposed by a crossdresser. I don’t confuse posturing with an actual response nor is being called a troll.

    The reason is that trans does not understand the world the way women do. There are two hugely different sets of signficances which also must be deemed “inadmissable”. Interestingly enough, this is the way the men have always dealt with women.

    Here you have a crossdresser who lives as a man talking about rapes, murder and the hollocaust and what is his actual agenda? It’s to use the women’s room.

    He speaks of oppression and he is a white male and lives as one. Now then I ask, who is the oppressor? This is why the trans movement is never going to have any credibility.

  157. Take your finite energy and post elsewhere then? If you don’t care about trans issues I’m not sure why you are posting/reading here except to troll.

    Posting your point over and over with no logical discourse or debate is nothing more than spam.

  158. Take your finite energy and post elsewhere then? If you don’t care about trans issues I’m not sure why you are posting/reading here except to troll.

    Posting your point over and over with no logical discourse or debate is nothing more than spam.

  159. Let’s look at this….

    “Logic is logic.”

    Tautologies carry little information unless… you are Shapkespeare, but he wrote ona different plane. So let’s examine your syllogisms

    1.) You claim you are logical.
    2.) Logic MUST be answered.
    3.) There for you must be answered.

    The hegemony in item two is noted. It’s also noted that it is a male hegemony and one that is based in self-appointment, declaration and posturing. I gave up arguing with men a long time ago. It useless and I will not conform to men’s hegemonies.

    “ Whether being spoken by a crossdresser or a natal woman or anybody else. Either the argument is cogent or it is false. “

    So you say.

    “Clearly your argument is false unless you have a way out of the dilemma outlined before you and no amount of ‘I don’t have to answer to you’ rubbish will get you off the hook.”

    So you say.

    “ You are stuck fast so either bring your rationalisation to the table or adapt your viewpoint and show you have some intellectual integrity by admiting when you are wrong. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. There is no shame in being wrong but there is a lot in refusing to accept it when you are.”

    Have you noticed the volume of hot air in here?

    “However yes you do have to justify yourself.”

    So you say.

    “ To me. To all of humanity. “

    I don’t care about humanity. I care about women. “Humanity” and its implied neutrality which is not neutral at all, has had its ride. The entire planet is on the brink of global failures with war and conflict, famine and greedy capiltalism.

    “And yes these dillemas are yours! Why?”
    Because you say so?

    Well you see if trans problems aren’t womens problems then womens problems aren’t mens problems and you have invalidated all the gains women and every other oppressed group of humans have made with the help of male/white/straight etc allies.”

    The implication is that women have made our gains with the permission of men. IF that is so, then that illuminates a THE problem. If that’s not so, then you are incorrect. At any rate, it is an argument from a socially male standpoint and I reject it. Isn’t it empirically obvious? Women are NOT men’s problems. You BENEFIT from our oppression. It does not and never has worked for women to ASK men to give up the benefits you get from oppressing women.

    “And if you are part of an oppressive system and you turn a blind eye to it’s oppressions when you aren’t in that specific case one of the group oppressed then you are also culpable.”

    Your movement has no validity. (Why am I even discussing this with a cross dresser?)

    I am culpable. I am saying no to a truly horrid movement and I am shining a light on it.

    “And by using that ‘not my problem’ argument you become culpable for all crimes past present and future where people have used that excuse.”

    Because you say so? Remember I reject this appeal to “humanity” because what t has meant historically is MEN, where women are dismissed and devalued as you are attempting to devalue me here.

    “You morally adopt responsibility for all the rapes where witnesses walk on by, all the murders and lynchings when people stood and watched, and when the jews and gypsies and gays were dragged off to the camps and gas chambers while people just let it happen around them.”

    Wait a minute… It’s not “humanity” that rapes. It’s men. OK. I am arguing against male positions which you are attempting to hide. It’s not women that lynches people, IT’S MEN. This means you. You are here on your high horses talking about rape and murder and what are you really concerned about? The “right” of crossdressers (MEN) to be in the women’s room. Let’s bring the rarefaction back down to this troubled earth.

    “If trans problems aren’t your problem then YOU are the patriarchy!”

    This is just too preceious. 😉

    Because a cross-dresser says so? This is called a partriarchal reversal. Just to remind you, patriarchy means, “The rule of the father.” What are you fighting for? The right of fathers to be the women’s room (while murders and rapes by men …continue.)

    “Because you validate the worst argument of apathy, the worst ever defence.”

    I am not apathetic. I think the trans movement should be ground to a halt. It is based in the assumption of gender which is a social construct. Trangenders say, “there is something wrong with my gender (my natural condition)”, but if gender is a social construct – that can’t be. You can’t be a social construct.

    “If you really think that such an argument is ok, that it was ok for people to walk past while one of my best friends in her teens was raped in a public park in broad daylight because it wasn’t their problem,”

    Every women’s problem is my problem. Every assault on a woman is an assault on me. And it’s MEN who do the assaulting. A woman did not rape your friend, a man did.

    “ that it was ok for people to stand by while millions were sent to death camps including the jewish grandparents of another of my friends, the russian friend of my family and my german gypsy cousins.”

    Oh Goddess, talk about useless hyperbole and rhetoric. Now you’ve invoked the Nazi horrors while you agenda is getting men into the women’s room. Do you see why I say it’s silly to argue to with men? It’s because you cannot see out of your hats.

    “ Well then why should anyone care about your problems!”

    You can bet that when I have a problem… that I’m going to call a transvestite!

    “So which is it? Is it ok for wrongs to be done to others, not others problems?”

    I have finite energy. I will not spend any of my energy on men OR trans and that’s allright because I say so.

    “If so then your problem with penisis in bathrooms is not my or anyone elses problem and no-one needs to listen to you (Ouch! looks like your own argument defeats itself!)”

    Well we’ve already seen several examples of where you have negated your own claim to logic. The sad part is that your drama will not be seem as entertaining.

    “Or is it wrong for people to stand by while wrongs occur to others (which is neccessary for anyone with a penis to give a damn about your issues with penises in womens bathrooms) in which case Trans problems ARE your problem and your problems are trans problems, womens problems are mens problems, gay problems are straight problems etc and we all end up bound to recognise and reciprocate equal rights.”

    Please note that if I were dying in the next five minutes I would not accept assistance from trans.

    “Now as intelligence is not sex specific and logic has been used perfectly well by women down through the ages despite attempts to keep them uneducated I think you can answer now. Intelligently, rationally, cogently.”

    If I anwered intelligently, rationally and cogently here… I would be all alone because you have just out done yourself.

    I will not submit to your hegemony. As you have defined it out of habit and in ways that you can’t even see, the only rational cogent thinking would be to be in alignment with trans.

    And that’s where you depart from cogence and rationality. Not that I have a need for that, I am reminded of this:

    http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Sparta/1019/WhyObjAth/Ode.htm

  160. Let’s look at this….

    “Logic is logic.”

    Tautologies carry little information unless… you are Shapkespeare, but he wrote ona different plane. So let’s examine your syllogisms

    1.) You claim you are logical.
    2.) Logic MUST be answered.
    3.) There for you must be answered.

    The hegemony in item two is noted. It’s also noted that it is a male hegemony and one that is based in self-appointment, declaration and posturing. I gave up arguing with men a long time ago. It useless and I will not conform to men’s hegemonies.

    “ Whether being spoken by a crossdresser or a natal woman or anybody else. Either the argument is cogent or it is false. “

    So you say.

    “Clearly your argument is false unless you have a way out of the dilemma outlined before you and no amount of ‘I don’t have to answer to you’ rubbish will get you off the hook.”

    So you say.

    “ You are stuck fast so either bring your rationalisation to the table or adapt your viewpoint and show you have some intellectual integrity by admiting when you are wrong. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. There is no shame in being wrong but there is a lot in refusing to accept it when you are.”

    Have you noticed the volume of hot air in here?

    “However yes you do have to justify yourself.”

    So you say.

    “ To me. To all of humanity. “

    I don’t care about humanity. I care about women. “Humanity” and its implied neutrality which is not neutral at all, has had its ride. The entire planet is on the brink of global failures with war and conflict, famine and greedy capiltalism.

    “And yes these dillemas are yours! Why?”
    Because you say so?

    Well you see if trans problems aren’t womens problems then womens problems aren’t mens problems and you have invalidated all the gains women and every other oppressed group of humans have made with the help of male/white/straight etc allies.”

    The implication is that women have made our gains with the permission of men. IF that is so, then that illuminates a THE problem. If that’s not so, then you are incorrect. At any rate, it is an argument from a socially male standpoint and I reject it. Isn’t it empirically obvious? Women are NOT men’s problems. You BENEFIT from our oppression. It does not and never has worked for women to ASK men to give up the benefits you get from oppressing women.

    “And if you are part of an oppressive system and you turn a blind eye to it’s oppressions when you aren’t in that specific case one of the group oppressed then you are also culpable.”

    Your movement has no validity. (Why am I even discussing this with a cross dresser?)

    I am culpable. I am saying no to a truly horrid movement and I am shining a light on it.

    “And by using that ‘not my problem’ argument you become culpable for all crimes past present and future where people have used that excuse.”

    Because you say so? Remember I reject this appeal to “humanity” because what t has meant historically is MEN, where women are dismissed and devalued as you are attempting to devalue me here.

    “You morally adopt responsibility for all the rapes where witnesses walk on by, all the murders and lynchings when people stood and watched, and when the jews and gypsies and gays were dragged off to the camps and gas chambers while people just let it happen around them.”

    Wait a minute… It’s not “humanity” that rapes. It’s men. OK. I am arguing against male positions which you are attempting to hide. It’s not women that lynches people, IT’S MEN. This means you. You are here on your high horses talking about rape and murder and what are you really concerned about? The “right” of crossdressers (MEN) to be in the women’s room. Let’s bring the rarefaction back down to this troubled earth.

    “If trans problems aren’t your problem then YOU are the patriarchy!”

    This is just too preceious. 😉

    Because a cross-dresser says so? This is called a partriarchal reversal. Just to remind you, patriarchy means, “The rule of the father.” What are you fighting for? The right of fathers to be the women’s room (while murders and rapes by men …continue.)

    “Because you validate the worst argument of apathy, the worst ever defence.”

    I am not apathetic. I think the trans movement should be ground to a halt. It is based in the assumption of gender which is a social construct. Trangenders say, “there is something wrong with my gender (my natural condition)”, but if gender is a social construct – that can’t be. You can’t be a social construct.

    “If you really think that such an argument is ok, that it was ok for people to walk past while one of my best friends in her teens was raped in a public park in broad daylight because it wasn’t their problem,”

    Every women’s problem is my problem. Every assault on a woman is an assault on me. And it’s MEN who do the assaulting. A woman did not rape your friend, a man did.

    “ that it was ok for people to stand by while millions were sent to death camps including the jewish grandparents of another of my friends, the russian friend of my family and my german gypsy cousins.”

    Oh Goddess, talk about useless hyperbole and rhetoric. Now you’ve invoked the Nazi horrors while you agenda is getting men into the women’s room. Do you see why I say it’s silly to argue to with men? It’s because you cannot see out of your hats.

    “ Well then why should anyone care about your problems!”

    You can bet that when I have a problem… that I’m going to call a transvestite!

    “So which is it? Is it ok for wrongs to be done to others, not others problems?”

    I have finite energy. I will not spend any of my energy on men OR trans and that’s allright because I say so.

    “If so then your problem with penisis in bathrooms is not my or anyone elses problem and no-one needs to listen to you (Ouch! looks like your own argument defeats itself!)”

    Well we’ve already seen several examples of where you have negated your own claim to logic. The sad part is that your drama will not be seem as entertaining.

    “Or is it wrong for people to stand by while wrongs occur to others (which is neccessary for anyone with a penis to give a damn about your issues with penises in womens bathrooms) in which case Trans problems ARE your problem and your problems are trans problems, womens problems are mens problems, gay problems are straight problems etc and we all end up bound to recognise and reciprocate equal rights.”

    Please note that if I were dying in the next five minutes I would not accept assistance from trans.

    “Now as intelligence is not sex specific and logic has been used perfectly well by women down through the ages despite attempts to keep them uneducated I think you can answer now. Intelligently, rationally, cogently.”

    If I anwered intelligently, rationally and cogently here… I would be all alone because you have just out done yourself.

    I will not submit to your hegemony. As you have defined it out of habit and in ways that you can’t even see, the only rational cogent thinking would be to be in alignment with trans.

    And that’s where you depart from cogence and rationality. Not that I have a need for that, I am reminded of this:

    http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Sparta/1019/WhyObjAth/Ode.htm

  161. By the way, Susan, two of your own compatriots – Sue and Cathryn – have affirmed that penises are acceptable in the women’s bathroom as long as their owners observe proper decorum… and can be authenticated as being in transition, of course.

  162. By the way, Susan, two of your own compatriots – Sue and Cathryn – have affirmed that penises are acceptable in the women’s bathroom as long as their owners observe proper decorum… and can be authenticated as being in transition, of course.

  163. > What Sandy has shown is that clear and unwavering doesn’t always equal logical, cogent thought.

    Nor does the equivalent of a bumpersticker qualify as a “train of thought.”

    Of course Susan approves… anything that, in her view, puts the transpeople in their place is alright with her… even though she is herself one of the cabbages that Sandy refers to.

  164. > What Sandy has shown is that clear and unwavering doesn’t always equal logical, cogent thought.

    Nor does the equivalent of a bumpersticker qualify as a “train of thought.”

    Of course Susan approves… anything that, in her view, puts the transpeople in their place is alright with her… even though she is herself one of the cabbages that Sandy refers to.

  165. Thanks Susan for the quick synopsis! What Sandy has shown is that clear and unwavering doesn’t always equal logical, cogent thought.

  166. Thanks Susan for the quick synopsis! What Sandy has shown is that clear and unwavering doesn’t always equal logical, cogent thought.

  167. Shame on you Sandy.

    How dare you present a clear and unwavering train of thought. It makes it most difficult for Val and the others to misconstrue what you are saying much less “destroy” the argument you do NOT have by emphasising what you have NOT said.

    Obviously you suffer from terminal “bigotry” based on an inherent “homophobic” mindset that is only surpassed by your own “internal hatred” exacerbated by a “self loathing” demeanor…typical of your “ilk” and others who are “transphobic”.

    And now, YOU are hijacking this entire thread by defending yourself.

    Shame, shame, shame…

  168. Shame on you Sandy.

    How dare you present a clear and unwavering train of thought. It makes it most difficult for Val and the others to misconstrue what you are saying much less “destroy” the argument you do NOT have by emphasising what you have NOT said.

    Obviously you suffer from terminal “bigotry” based on an inherent “homophobic” mindset that is only surpassed by your own “internal hatred” exacerbated by a “self loathing” demeanor…typical of your “ilk” and others who are “transphobic”.

    And now, YOU are hijacking this entire thread by defending yourself.

    Shame, shame, shame…

  169. Logic is logic. Whether being spoken by a crossdresser or a natal woman or anybody else. Either the argument is cogent or it is false.

    Clearly your argument is false unless you have a way out of the dilemma outlined before you and no amount of ‘I don’t have to answer to you’ rubbish will get you off the hook. You are stuck fast so either bring your rationalisation to the table or adapt your viewpoint and show you have some intellectual integrity by admiting when you are wrong. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. There is no shame in being wrong but there is a lot in refusing to accept it when you are.

    However yes you do have to justify yourself. To me. To all of humanity. And yes these dillemas are yours! Why? Well you see if trans problems aren’t womens problems then womens problems aren’t mens problems and you have invalidated all the gains women and every other oppressed group of humans have made with the help of male/white/straight etc allies.

    And if you are part of an oppressive system and you turn a blind eye to it’s oppressions when you aren’t in that specific case one of the group oppressed then you are also culpable. And by using that ‘not my problem’ argument you become culpable for all crimes past present and future where people have used that excuse. You morally adopt responsibility for all the rapes where witnesses walk on by, all the murders and lynchings when people stood and watched, and when the jews and gypsies and gays were dragged off to the camps and gas chambers while people just let it happen around them.

    If trans problems aren’t your problem then YOU are the patriarchy! Because you validate the worst argument of apathy, the worst ever defence. If you really think that such an argument is ok, that it was ok for people to walk past while one of my best friends in her teens was raped in a public park in broad daylight because it wasn’t their problem, that it was ok for people to stand by while millions were sent to death camps including the jewish grandparents of another of my friends, the russian friend of my family and my german gypsy cousins. Well then why should anyone care about your problems!

    So which is it? Is it ok for wrongs to be done to others, not others problems? If so then your problem with penisis in bathrooms is not my or anyone elses problem and no-one needs to listen to you (Ouch! looks like your own argument defeats itself!) Or is it wrong for people to stand by while wrongs occur to others (which is neccessary for anyone with a penis to give a damn about your issues with penises in womens bathrooms) in which case Trans problems ARE your problem and your problems are trans problems, womens problems are mens problems, gay problems are straight problems etc and we all end up bound to recognise and reciprocate equal rights.

    Now as intelligence is not sex specific and logic has been used perfectly well by women down through the ages despite attempts to keep them uneducated I think you can answer now. Intelligently, rationally, cogently.

  170. Logic is logic. Whether being spoken by a crossdresser or a natal woman or anybody else. Either the argument is cogent or it is false.

    Clearly your argument is false unless you have a way out of the dilemma outlined before you and no amount of ‘I don’t have to answer to you’ rubbish will get you off the hook. You are stuck fast so either bring your rationalisation to the table or adapt your viewpoint and show you have some intellectual integrity by admiting when you are wrong. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. There is no shame in being wrong but there is a lot in refusing to accept it when you are.

    However yes you do have to justify yourself. To me. To all of humanity. And yes these dillemas are yours! Why? Well you see if trans problems aren’t womens problems then womens problems aren’t mens problems and you have invalidated all the gains women and every other oppressed group of humans have made with the help of male/white/straight etc allies.

    And if you are part of an oppressive system and you turn a blind eye to it’s oppressions when you aren’t in that specific case one of the group oppressed then you are also culpable. And by using that ‘not my problem’ argument you become culpable for all crimes past present and future where people have used that excuse. You morally adopt responsibility for all the rapes where witnesses walk on by, all the murders and lynchings when people stood and watched, and when the jews and gypsies and gays were dragged off to the camps and gas chambers while people just let it happen around them.

    If trans problems aren’t your problem then YOU are the patriarchy! Because you validate the worst argument of apathy, the worst ever defence. If you really think that such an argument is ok, that it was ok for people to walk past while one of my best friends in her teens was raped in a public park in broad daylight because it wasn’t their problem, that it was ok for people to stand by while millions were sent to death camps including the jewish grandparents of another of my friends, the russian friend of my family and my german gypsy cousins. Well then why should anyone care about your problems!

    So which is it? Is it ok for wrongs to be done to others, not others problems? If so then your problem with penisis in bathrooms is not my or anyone elses problem and no-one needs to listen to you (Ouch! looks like your own argument defeats itself!) Or is it wrong for people to stand by while wrongs occur to others (which is neccessary for anyone with a penis to give a damn about your issues with penises in womens bathrooms) in which case Trans problems ARE your problem and your problems are trans problems, womens problems are mens problems, gay problems are straight problems etc and we all end up bound to recognise and reciprocate equal rights.

    Now as intelligence is not sex specific and logic has been used perfectly well by women down through the ages despite attempts to keep them uneducated I think you can answer now. Intelligently, rationally, cogently.

  171. > I’ve said clearly that I’m not here to solve any trans dilemmas.

    That much is obvious, since you can’t even resolve the dilemma you set for yourself. What you are here for is a little vague, though, since this thread became absurdly repetitious quite a while ago.

    No penises in women’s bathrooms. Check.
    Trans movement sucks. Check.
    FTMs screw up the argument but who cares, they’re just traitors to womanhood anyway. Check.

    Heard it. Doesn’t matter. Life goes on, and you can call all the referenda you want, and kiss Barney’s ass until he squeals… you’re history and you know it, and ultimately that’s what pisses people like you off.

    Bored now.

  172. > I’ve said clearly that I’m not here to solve any trans dilemmas.

    That much is obvious, since you can’t even resolve the dilemma you set for yourself. What you are here for is a little vague, though, since this thread became absurdly repetitious quite a while ago.

    No penises in women’s bathrooms. Check.
    Trans movement sucks. Check.
    FTMs screw up the argument but who cares, they’re just traitors to womanhood anyway. Check.

    Heard it. Doesn’t matter. Life goes on, and you can call all the referenda you want, and kiss Barney’s ass until he squeals… you’re history and you know it, and ultimately that’s what pisses people like you off.

    Bored now.

  173. Trans problems are not your problem, Sandy? I sincerely hope you don’t have any trans friends or family who hear you say that. Or neighbours, or co-workers or students. Or maybe the people who service your car, cut your hair, serve you in shops, rescue you from a fire? What a very odd and rarefied life you must lead with no transpeople around you worthy of your concern.

  174. Trans problems are not your problem, Sandy? I sincerely hope you don’t have any trans friends or family who hear you say that. Or neighbours, or co-workers or students. Or maybe the people who service your car, cut your hair, serve you in shops, rescue you from a fire? What a very odd and rarefied life you must lead with no transpeople around you worthy of your concern.

  175. “How do you handle the cognitive conflict?”

    I don’t have any.

    “I mean either you have to acknowledge some sort of sexism, give up the point and modify the argument or look really foolish as you fail to justify illogical nonsense.”

    I don’t have to justify anything to people who insist that anyone who identifies as a woman is one. That’s ridiculous. Being a woman is much more than identifying as one. You can identify as a cabbage but that doesn’t make you one.

    “Either there is something special about the presence of penises yet not their lack that causes the bias (which would seem sexist), some other sex based attribute that causes the bias (again would probably have to be sexist) or some point in the argument must change to make sense.”

    I don’t need to make sense to crossdressers.

    “Either transmen without a phallus are women and transwomen without a vagina are men or transmen without a phallus are men and transwomen without a vagina are women.”

    It doesn’t work that way. Women don’t have penises. Women do not have identities as men and live as men. That’s pretty simple. So you may stop insisting that I must adopt your logic. I’m not interested in justifying my positions to you.

  176. “How do you handle the cognitive conflict?”

    I don’t have any.

    “I mean either you have to acknowledge some sort of sexism, give up the point and modify the argument or look really foolish as you fail to justify illogical nonsense.”

    I don’t have to justify anything to people who insist that anyone who identifies as a woman is one. That’s ridiculous. Being a woman is much more than identifying as one. You can identify as a cabbage but that doesn’t make you one.

    “Either there is something special about the presence of penises yet not their lack that causes the bias (which would seem sexist), some other sex based attribute that causes the bias (again would probably have to be sexist) or some point in the argument must change to make sense.”

    I don’t need to make sense to crossdressers.

    “Either transmen without a phallus are women and transwomen without a vagina are men or transmen without a phallus are men and transwomen without a vagina are women.”

    It doesn’t work that way. Women don’t have penises. Women do not have identities as men and live as men. That’s pretty simple. So you may stop insisting that I must adopt your logic. I’m not interested in justifying my positions to you.

  177. I’m not Christian and I don’t practice any religion.

    The presumtptions here are strong. I’ve said clearly that I’m not here to solve any trans dilemmas. They are not my problem. If they are being killed and beaten up by men you need to address that with men.

    “Women are people who pass as women, who possess female genitals and identify as women. Period.”

    This is simple trans silliness. A woman is someone who has been socially constituted as a woman AND who has a critical embrace of womanhood as an identity. Having a trans identity is not critically embracing womanhood – it is embracing trans.

    I dislike the religious right as much as I dislike men in the women’s room and the trans movement.

  178. I’m not Christian and I don’t practice any religion.

    The presumtptions here are strong. I’ve said clearly that I’m not here to solve any trans dilemmas. They are not my problem. If they are being killed and beaten up by men you need to address that with men.

    “Women are people who pass as women, who possess female genitals and identify as women. Period.”

    This is simple trans silliness. A woman is someone who has been socially constituted as a woman AND who has a critical embrace of womanhood as an identity. Having a trans identity is not critically embracing womanhood – it is embracing trans.

    I dislike the religious right as much as I dislike men in the women’s room and the trans movement.

  179. I’m not Christian and I don’t practice any religion.

    The presumtptions here are strong. I’ve said clearly that I’m not here to solve any trans dilemmas. They are not my problem. If they are being killed and beaten up by men you need to address that with men.

    “Women are people who pass as women, who possess female genitals and identify as women. Period.”

    This is simple trans silliness. A woman is someone who has been socially constituted as a woman AND who has a critical embrace of womanhood as an identity. Having a trans identity is not critically embracing womanhood – it is embracing trans.

    I did like the religious right as much as I dislike men in the women’s room.

  180. I’m not Christian and I don’t practice any religion.

    The presumtptions here are strong. I’ve said clearly that I’m not here to solve any trans dilemmas. They are not my problem. If they are being killed and beaten up by men you need to address that with men.

    “Women are people who pass as women, who possess female genitals and identify as women. Period.”

    This is simple trans silliness. A woman is someone who has been socially constituted as a woman AND who has a critical embrace of womanhood as an identity. Having a trans identity is not critically embracing womanhood – it is embracing trans.

    I did like the religious right as much as I dislike men in the women’s room.

  181. Well, since Sandy didn’t answer my question directly, I must assume that she is a religious fundamentalist and that she supports preop and crossdressing T people being beat up for using the men’s room, or being arrested for using the women’s room. I also must assume that Sandy also supports the creation of a bathroom police force to peek in women’s room stalls.

    Leave this list, Sandy, and go back to watching the 700 Scum, er, Club, along with the other sheeple.

  182. Well, since Sandy didn’t answer my question directly, I must assume that she is a religious fundamentalist and that she supports preop and crossdressing T people being beat up for using the men’s room, or being arrested for using the women’s room. I also must assume that Sandy also supports the creation of a bathroom police force to peek in women’s room stalls.

    Leave this list, Sandy, and go back to watching the 700 Scum, er, Club, along with the other sheeple.

  183. By the way, the resolution to what appears to be Sandy’s flagrant contradictions is actually pretty easy, and is simply the counterpart to an accusation she has herself made: misandry.

    Any male reference at all – whether hidden or outwardly implied – is anathema. Passing transwomen with penises? Men. Passing transmen without penises? Men. (Remember that ideologically dedicated lesbians don’t like transmen, and are happy to toss them into the “other” pile).

    Women are people who pass as women, who possess female genitals and identify as women. Period.

    It’s not a binary system at all. It’s entirely gynocentric, with a very narrow bandwidth… the very definition of radical feminism, which is deliberately the ideological opposite of what is perceived to the to be the androcentric dominant culture.

    Personally, I suspect that Sandy is a separatist transwoman… they have a history of strong identification with lesbian separatist feminism, out of a kind of over-compensation for their own histories.

    I could be wrong… but it hardly matters. What counts is ideology, not genitals – whether natal or otherwise – as we’ve seen here quite often.

    And I still insist that it’s a red herring. The whole “penis in the bathroom” thing is a tactic, and Sandy knows it. She has said that she has no interest in trans issues, but really that’s only half the story: she’s actively hostile to them, and like others who share her regressive worldview, she will continue to press the non-issue, in hopes that the real issues get buried for good.

  184. By the way, the resolution to what appears to be Sandy’s flagrant contradictions is actually pretty easy, and is simply the counterpart to an accusation she has herself made: misandry.

    Any male reference at all – whether hidden or outwardly implied – is anathema. Passing transwomen with penises? Men. Passing transmen without penises? Men. (Remember that ideologically dedicated lesbians don’t like transmen, and are happy to toss them into the “other” pile).

    Women are people who pass as women, who possess female genitals and identify as women. Period.

    It’s not a binary system at all. It’s entirely gynocentric, with a very narrow bandwidth… the very definition of radical feminism, which is deliberately the ideological opposite of what is perceived to the to be the androcentric dominant culture.

    Personally, I suspect that Sandy is a separatist transwoman… they have a history of strong identification with lesbian separatist feminism, out of a kind of over-compensation for their own histories.

    I could be wrong… but it hardly matters. What counts is ideology, not genitals – whether natal or otherwise – as we’ve seen here quite often.

    And I still insist that it’s a red herring. The whole “penis in the bathroom” thing is a tactic, and Sandy knows it. She has said that she has no interest in trans issues, but really that’s only half the story: she’s actively hostile to them, and like others who share her regressive worldview, she will continue to press the non-issue, in hopes that the real issues get buried for good.

  185. I’m impressed by Sandy’s ability to keep everyone focused on the non-issue of phalluses, vaginas, and toilets.

    This is, of course, the same kind of redirection by which the bigots she either supports or represents were able to bring the Maryland law to referendum, regardless of the minimal- to non-relevance of this aspect of the law’s purposes and language.

  186. I’m impressed by Sandy’s ability to keep everyone focused on the non-issue of phalluses, vaginas, and toilets.

    This is, of course, the same kind of redirection by which the bigots she either supports or represents were able to bring the Maryland law to referendum, regardless of the minimal- to non-relevance of this aspect of the law’s purposes and language.

  187. Wow!
    How do you handle the cognitive conflict?
    I mean either you have to acknowledge some sort of sexism, give up the point and modify the argument or look really foolish as you fail to justify illogical nonsense.

    Either there is something special about the presence of penises yet not their lack that causes the bias (which would seem sexist), some other sex based attribute that causes the bias (again would probably have to be sexist) or some point in the argument must change to make sense.

    Either transmen without a phallus are women and transwomen without a vagina are men or transmen without a phallus are men and transwomen without a vagina are women.

    Maybe you should consider Cognitive Behavioral therapy? If your mind can comfortably accept what appears neatly to be logically provable as an irational belief then you could have all sorts of similar irrational beliefs possibly leading to depression and other dangerous mental illnesses.

  188. Wow!
    How do you handle the cognitive conflict?
    I mean either you have to acknowledge some sort of sexism, give up the point and modify the argument or look really foolish as you fail to justify illogical nonsense.

    Either there is something special about the presence of penises yet not their lack that causes the bias (which would seem sexist), some other sex based attribute that causes the bias (again would probably have to be sexist) or some point in the argument must change to make sense.

    Either transmen without a phallus are women and transwomen without a vagina are men or transmen without a phallus are men and transwomen without a vagina are women.

    Maybe you should consider Cognitive Behavioral therapy? If your mind can comfortably accept what appears neatly to be logically provable as an irational belief then you could have all sorts of similar irrational beliefs possibly leading to depression and other dangerous mental illnesses.

  189. “Double standard much? So transmen without a phallus are men, but transwomen without a vagina are men too? Please explain how this crazy logic works.”

    They aren’t women.

  190. “Double standard much? So transmen without a phallus are men, but transwomen without a vagina are men too? Please explain how this crazy logic works.”

    They aren’t women.

  191. “Double standard much? So transmen without a phallus are men, but transwomen without a vagina are men too? Please explain how this crazy logic works.”

    They aren’t women.

  192. And just in case thats unclear. Let me use the same wording to express my opinion on the matter.

    I think women, which includes but is not limited to all people with vaginas should be in the women’s room.

  193. And just in case thats unclear. Let me use the same wording to express my opinion on the matter.

    I think women, which includes but is not limited to all people with vaginas should be in the women’s room.

  194. “I think men, which includes but is not limited to all people with penises should be in the men’s room.”

    Double standard much? So transmen without a phallus are men, but transwomen without a vagina are men too? Please explain how this crazy logic works.

  195. “I think men, which includes but is not limited to all people with penises should be in the men’s room.”

    Double standard much? So transmen without a phallus are men, but transwomen without a vagina are men too? Please explain how this crazy logic works.

  196. “Whatever. the self-serving bigotry is so obvious. You don’t care about anyone but completely normative natal women.”

    This isn’t true. I am closest to other lesbians.

    “If a passing transman – that is, a person with a vagina who looks like a man – were to follow your dictum and enter the same bathroom as you, you’d blow a fuse.”

    I think men, which includes but is not limited to all people with penises should be in the men’s room.

    ” but it’s easier to play the broken record than to address the actual issues of transpeople.”

    That’s something you have tried to foist all along. I’m afraid those are your interests – not mine.

  197. “Whatever. the self-serving bigotry is so obvious. You don’t care about anyone but completely normative natal women.”

    This isn’t true. I am closest to other lesbians.

    “If a passing transman – that is, a person with a vagina who looks like a man – were to follow your dictum and enter the same bathroom as you, you’d blow a fuse.”

    I think men, which includes but is not limited to all people with penises should be in the men’s room.

    ” but it’s easier to play the broken record than to address the actual issues of transpeople.”

    That’s something you have tried to foist all along. I’m afraid those are your interests – not mine.

  198. > Whatever. The misogyny is so obvious. You don’t care about women.

    Whatever. the self-serving bigotry is so obvious. You don’t care about anyone but completely normative natal women.

    1) There are already penises in the bathrooms. You lose. And the fact is that the Maryland law wouldn’t make it any more likely, since most trans people, unlike you, are pretty well socialized, are pretty sensitive to realworld context, and are averse to humiliation.

    2) Felix is right, whether you want to admit it or not. If a passing transman – that is, a person with a vagina who looks like a man – were to follow your dictum and enter the same bathroom as you, you’d blow a fuse.

    3) The Maryland law has got fuck all to do with penises in the bathrooms – and you even know it, but it’s easier to play the broken record than to address the actual issues of transpeople – employment, housing – who you would prefer to just disappear altogether. On which point, again: you lose.

  199. > Whatever. The misogyny is so obvious. You don’t care about women.

    Whatever. the self-serving bigotry is so obvious. You don’t care about anyone but completely normative natal women.

    1) There are already penises in the bathrooms. You lose. And the fact is that the Maryland law wouldn’t make it any more likely, since most trans people, unlike you, are pretty well socialized, are pretty sensitive to realworld context, and are averse to humiliation.

    2) Felix is right, whether you want to admit it or not. If a passing transman – that is, a person with a vagina who looks like a man – were to follow your dictum and enter the same bathroom as you, you’d blow a fuse.

    3) The Maryland law has got fuck all to do with penises in the bathrooms – and you even know it, but it’s easier to play the broken record than to address the actual issues of transpeople – employment, housing – who you would prefer to just disappear altogether. On which point, again: you lose.

  200. I do care about women, Sandy – I don’t pass, I don’t have a penis and I use the women’s room. I have no idea what any other users may have between their legs. We use lockable cubicles so would not be looking at each other to find out. The transwomen with whom I socialize also use the Ladies. One has a penis (I only know because she told me, you would never guess she was assigned male at birth in a million years) and the other doesn’t. If the penis’d one tried to use a men’s room she would be politely redirected to the women’s and so would the “post-op” pal. So would I, for that matter. Sometimes we’re all in there *gasp* together. “Regular” women behave as normal around us – in fact, they are more likely to do a double take if I’m wearing a shirt and tie but smile when they hear my voice. the transwomen never get a second glance. Nothing untoward has happened so far and I can safely presume it won’t.

  201. I do care about women, Sandy – I don’t pass, I don’t have a penis and I use the women’s room. I have no idea what any other users may have between their legs. We use lockable cubicles so would not be looking at each other to find out. The transwomen with whom I socialize also use the Ladies. One has a penis (I only know because she told me, you would never guess she was assigned male at birth in a million years) and the other doesn’t. If the penis’d one tried to use a men’s room she would be politely redirected to the women’s and so would the “post-op” pal. So would I, for that matter. Sometimes we’re all in there *gasp* together. “Regular” women behave as normal around us – in fact, they are more likely to do a double take if I’m wearing a shirt and tie but smile when they hear my voice. the transwomen never get a second glance. Nothing untoward has happened so far and I can safely presume it won’t.

  202. “OK, so let’s send in crowds of burly passing transsexual men to use the Ladies’ Room. That should keep you happy.”

    Whatever. The misogyny is so obvious. You don’t care about women.

  203. “OK, so let’s send in crowds of burly passing transsexual men to use the Ladies’ Room. That should keep you happy.”

    Whatever. The misogyny is so obvious. You don’t care about women.

  204. “I repeat my question: how do Sandy or the bigoted churchprudes of Montgomery County Maryland propose knowing what a T person has under her skirt?”

    If there is a penis under the skirt, the skirt belongs to a him, not a her.

    I want anatomical males out of the women’s room.

  205. “I repeat my question: how do Sandy or the bigoted churchprudes of Montgomery County Maryland propose knowing what a T person has under her skirt?”

    If there is a penis under the skirt, the skirt belongs to a him, not a her.

    I want anatomical males out of the women’s room.

  206. I guess Sandy believes that crossdressers and preop M2F TSs should be assaulted, then, because that would be the result of her peniaphobia. As a CD, I shall continue to use the ladies when presenting as a woman, for safety reasons.

    I repeat my question: how do Sandy or the bigoted churchprudes of Montgomery County Maryland propose knowing what a T person has under her skirt? I hope nobody’s proposing foundation of the skirt police.

    Sexual predatory assault is already a crime. I’m all for punishing criminals to the fullest extent of the law. But what you don’t see behind a stall door is not your concern or business. If it is made your business, then it is a crime and you can prosecute.

  207. I guess Sandy believes that crossdressers and preop M2F TSs should be assaulted, then, because that would be the result of her peniaphobia. As a CD, I shall continue to use the ladies when presenting as a woman, for safety reasons.

    I repeat my question: how do Sandy or the bigoted churchprudes of Montgomery County Maryland propose knowing what a T person has under her skirt? I hope nobody’s proposing foundation of the skirt police.

    Sexual predatory assault is already a crime. I’m all for punishing criminals to the fullest extent of the law. But what you don’t see behind a stall door is not your concern or business. If it is made your business, then it is a crime and you can prosecute.

  208. “I have said that the women’s woom is reserved for people with vaginas.” (Sandy)
    OK, so let’s send in crowds of burly passing transsexual men to use the Ladies’ Room. That should keep you happy.

  209. “I have said that the women’s woom is reserved for people with vaginas.” (Sandy)
    OK, so let’s send in crowds of burly passing transsexual men to use the Ladies’ Room. That should keep you happy.

  210. What a crock.

    “The law now reads that the requirements do ‘not apply to accommodations that are distinctly private or personal.’

    Turner says the language addressing access to restrooms or locker rooms is too vague, but Patrick Lacefield, a Leggett spokesman, disagreed. In the county’s view, the bill provides an adequate exemption that would allow businesses or other entities to restrict the use of facilities, he said.”

    This isn’t about “penises in the bathrooms”, this is about housing, employment and other discrimination – and the need for some to marginalize and delegitimize trans people as much as possible, using any available strawtranny.

    What really astonishes me is that anyone is foolish enough to get caught up in this fake argument.

  211. What a crock.

    “The law now reads that the requirements do ‘not apply to accommodations that are distinctly private or personal.’

    Turner says the language addressing access to restrooms or locker rooms is too vague, but Patrick Lacefield, a Leggett spokesman, disagreed. In the county’s view, the bill provides an adequate exemption that would allow businesses or other entities to restrict the use of facilities, he said.”

    This isn’t about “penises in the bathrooms”, this is about housing, employment and other discrimination – and the need for some to marginalize and delegitimize trans people as much as possible, using any available strawtranny.

    What really astonishes me is that anyone is foolish enough to get caught up in this fake argument.

  212. “What I said – Having a penis does not equal sexual predator, it’s independent of anatomy.”

    I haven’t said a word about predation.

    I have said that the women’s woom is reserved for people with vaginas.

  213. “What I said – Having a penis does not equal sexual predator, it’s independent of anatomy.”

    I haven’t said a word about predation.

    I have said that the women’s woom is reserved for people with vaginas.

  214. I don’t respond to things that I didn’t say.

    What I said – Having a penis does not equal sexual predator, it’s independent of anatomy.

    What you are saying – Having a penis makes you a sexual predator it’s only a couple females that doesn’t matter.

    Are you honestly so deluded to not realize how underreported it is? Yes more men are rapists, no that doesn’t mean that everyone of them is, no that doesn’t mean gender variant people are, and even less that they will invade your sacred bathroom which is more important than if it was the other way.

    You’d be wise”er” if you viewed this blog post.
    http://www.transadvocate.com/autumnsandeen/archives/1458

    Laws such as the Montgomery one are important in protecting those who are gender variant for whatever reason. I don’t know what bathrooms you are frequenting where men are waiting outside the door just to get a peek inside but your reasoning is a step below the gay/trans panic defense. You are putting blame on people for things they have not done, perpetuate the idea that gender variant people are all deviantly sexually motivated, and that they are less people because of it.

    The predators you think would jump at the chance to hop into the ladies room would do so regardless of the law. All the repeal of the law did was take away protection from a group of people that is heavily discriminated against.

  215. I don’t respond to things that I didn’t say.

    What I said – Having a penis does not equal sexual predator, it’s independent of anatomy.

    What you are saying – Having a penis makes you a sexual predator it’s only a couple females that doesn’t matter.

    Are you honestly so deluded to not realize how underreported it is? Yes more men are rapists, no that doesn’t mean that everyone of them is, no that doesn’t mean gender variant people are, and even less that they will invade your sacred bathroom which is more important than if it was the other way.

    You’d be wise”er” if you viewed this blog post.
    http://www.transadvocate.com/autumnsandeen/archives/1458

    Laws such as the Montgomery one are important in protecting those who are gender variant for whatever reason. I don’t know what bathrooms you are frequenting where men are waiting outside the door just to get a peek inside but your reasoning is a step below the gay/trans panic defense. You are putting blame on people for things they have not done, perpetuate the idea that gender variant people are all deviantly sexually motivated, and that they are less people because of it.

    The predators you think would jump at the chance to hop into the ladies room would do so regardless of the law. All the repeal of the law did was take away protection from a group of people that is heavily discriminated against.

  216. By the way, do you get to complain to me about not responding to you, when you didn’t respond to your Men’s Rights Activism arguments used against women?

  217. By the way, do you get to complain to me about not responding to you, when you didn’t respond to your Men’s Rights Activism arguments used against women?

  218. “In fact you completely missed the point of what you said. You want to keep anyone with a “penis” out of women’s bathroom, based solely on having it. Meaning that you think that anyone who has one is either tempted or driven to use it and take advantage of such a situation.”

    No. I said nothing about temptation or anything else. I just don’t want males in the women’s room.

    “Would you label a hand as evil since it’s been used by so many people to kill others?
    No, blaming a body part for someone’s action is just asinine and shows how superficial you are to label anyone with a penis as being the same as a sex offender regardless of any action to the contrary.”

    I didn’t answer your question because in your assumptions you put words in my mouth. I don’t owe you an explanation. I just want males out of the women’s room.

    I regret that it was a far right organization that did this but they have been succesful in bringing the Montgomery County law to referendum. I’m glad. There won’t be men in the women’s room.

  219. “In fact you completely missed the point of what you said. You want to keep anyone with a “penis” out of women’s bathroom, based solely on having it. Meaning that you think that anyone who has one is either tempted or driven to use it and take advantage of such a situation.”

    No. I said nothing about temptation or anything else. I just don’t want males in the women’s room.

    “Would you label a hand as evil since it’s been used by so many people to kill others?
    No, blaming a body part for someone’s action is just asinine and shows how superficial you are to label anyone with a penis as being the same as a sex offender regardless of any action to the contrary.”

    I didn’t answer your question because in your assumptions you put words in my mouth. I don’t owe you an explanation. I just want males out of the women’s room.

    I regret that it was a far right organization that did this but they have been succesful in bringing the Montgomery County law to referendum. I’m glad. There won’t be men in the women’s room.

  220. “In fact you completely missed the point of what you said. You want to keep anyone with a “penis” out of women’s bathroom, based solely on having it. Meaning that you think that anyone who has one is either tempted or driven to use it and take advantage of such a situation.”

    No. I said nothing about temptation or anything else. I just don’t want males in the women’s room.

    “Would you label a hand as evil since it’s been used by so many people to kill others?
    No, blaming a body part for someone’s action is just asinine and shows how superficial you are to label anyone with a penis as being the same as a sex offender regardless of any action to the contrary.”

    I didn’t answer your question because in your assumptions you put words in my mouth. I don’t owe you an explanation. I just want males out of the women’s room.

    I regret that it was a far right organization that did this but they have been succesful in bringing the Montgomery County law to referendum. I’m glad. There won’t be men in the women’s room.

  221. I wonder why you like missing the point of what I said.

    In fact you completely missed the point of what you said. You want to keep anyone with a “penis” out of women’s bathroom, based solely on having it. Meaning that you think that anyone who has one is either tempted or driven to use it and take advantage of such a situation.

    Would you label a hand as evil since it’s been used by so many people to kill others? No, blaming a body part for someone’s action is just asinine and shows how superficial you are to label anyone with a penis as being the same as a sex offender regardless of any action to the contrary.

  222. I wonder why you like missing the point of what I said.

    In fact you completely missed the point of what you said. You want to keep anyone with a “penis” out of women’s bathroom, based solely on having it. Meaning that you think that anyone who has one is either tempted or driven to use it and take advantage of such a situation.

    Would you label a hand as evil since it’s been used by so many people to kill others? No, blaming a body part for someone’s action is just asinine and shows how superficial you are to label anyone with a penis as being the same as a sex offender regardless of any action to the contrary.

  223. “So what your equating a penis to is to sexual predation.

    +1 for being offensive to anyone who was born with one or would like to acquire one.

    With that logic what does vagina equal? Especially when it’s owned by someone who has committed sexual assault on someone else? Or do you not know that women can be rapists too?”

    I find it really interesting that transgenders employ exactly the same arguments against women that Men’s Rights Activists employ. It’s called “WDIT” for Women Do it Too. Consider violence. The Men’s Rights claim is that women initiate violence. What they omit is that statistics show that women initiate violence at a four percent rate but the argument is used as if women employed violence at the same rate men do. The claim is made to neutral the offenses that men actually do to women. WDIT arguments are pervasive here. I wonder why transgenders sound like MRAs?

  224. “So what your equating a penis to is to sexual predation.

    +1 for being offensive to anyone who was born with one or would like to acquire one.

    With that logic what does vagina equal? Especially when it’s owned by someone who has committed sexual assault on someone else? Or do you not know that women can be rapists too?”

    I find it really interesting that transgenders employ exactly the same arguments against women that Men’s Rights Activists employ. It’s called “WDIT” for Women Do it Too. Consider violence. The Men’s Rights claim is that women initiate violence. What they omit is that statistics show that women initiate violence at a four percent rate but the argument is used as if women employed violence at the same rate men do. The claim is made to neutral the offenses that men actually do to women. WDIT arguments are pervasive here. I wonder why transgenders sound like MRAs?

  225. How would Sandy know if there was a penis in the women’s room, if it weren’t shown to her?

    What happens behind a stall door, stays behind a stall door.

  226. How would Sandy know if there was a penis in the women’s room, if it weren’t shown to her?

    What happens behind a stall door, stays behind a stall door.

  227. How would Sandy know if there was a penis in the women’s room, if it weren’t shown to her?

    What happens behind a stall door, stays behind a stall door.

  228. And, as I said before, surely women’s rooms have cubicles for privacy? Or do you all stroll around naked in some communal area checking out each other’s genitalia?

  229. And, as I said before, surely women’s rooms have cubicles for privacy? Or do you all stroll around naked in some communal area checking out each other’s genitalia?

  230. So what your equating a penis to is to sexual predation.

    +1 for being offensive to anyone who was born with one or would like to acquire one.

    With that logic what does vagina equal? Especially when it’s owned by someone who has committed sexual assault on someone else? Or do you not know that women can be rapists too?

  231. So what your equating a penis to is to sexual predation.

    +1 for being offensive to anyone who was born with one or would like to acquire one.

    With that logic what does vagina equal? Especially when it’s owned by someone who has committed sexual assault on someone else? Or do you not know that women can be rapists too?

  232. So what your equating a penis to is to sexual predation.

    +1 for being offensive to anyone who was born with one or would like to acquire one.

    With that logic what does vagina equal? Especially when it’s owned by someone who has committed sexual assault on someone else? Or do you not know that women can be rapists too?

  233. The question is not my concern at all. I’m not under any obligation to defend something that is not my concern.

    My concern is that penises not be in the women’s room.

  234. The question is not my concern at all. I’m not under any obligation to defend something that is not my concern.

    My concern is that penises not be in the women’s room.

  235. “My concern is about keeping penises out of women’s rooms and not resolving the issues of the transgender movement.”

    WOW!

    That needs to be chapter one of the next edition of ‘A Politician’s Guide to Life: How Not to Answer Questions’

  236. “My concern is about keeping penises out of women’s rooms and not resolving the issues of the transgender movement.”

    WOW!

    That needs to be chapter one of the next edition of ‘A Politician’s Guide to Life: How Not to Answer Questions’

  237. “My concern is about keeping penises out of women’s rooms and not resolving the issues of the transgender movement.”

    Oh? Why?

  238. “My concern is about keeping penises out of women’s rooms and not resolving the issues of the transgender movement.”

    Oh? Why?

  239. “My concern is about keeping penises out of women’s rooms and not resolving the issues of the transgender movement.”

    Oh? Why?

  240. “What about Transmen, should they use a woman’s shower, since they have vaginas?”

    My concern is about keeping penises out of women’s rooms and not resolving the issues of the transgender movement.

  241. “What about Transmen, should they use a woman’s shower, since they have vaginas?”

    My concern is about keeping penises out of women’s rooms and not resolving the issues of the transgender movement.

  242. This “shower” argument is so, so old. Surely women’s showers have stalls with doors? How many penises may we have missed because of this? 😉

  243. This “shower” argument is so, so old. Surely women’s showers have stalls with doors? How many penises may we have missed because of this? 😉

  244. Notice, nobody seems to mind coochies in the men’s showers, do they? Oh, that’s right – they’d be in mortal danger.

    How many jobs require showering at work? An infintesimally small fraction of a tenth of one percent of jobs, most likely. And in those cases, alt arrangements can probably be made.

    However, we probably need to get the heck over the “ohmigahd, lions and tigers and bears and penises in the women’s showers, oh my! mentality, as does Frank. It is not the penis that is evil, it is what a sexual predator does with it. M2F preop Transsexuals on estrogen are decidedly not sexual predators. Most I know would voluntarily do everything possible to avoid a public shower room when others were using it. Moreover, there is already plenty of law on the books that outlaw sexual assaults in restrooms. Punish the person only after the person is found guilty of the act – or did that go out with the Patriot Act?

    As for Frank, of course he’s full of blarney, if not fecal matter. But it behooves us to listen to him. Yes, T people have lobbied for 10+ years. But our education attempts have not sunk in. Too often, our education has not gotten past the aides – so often they’re HRCites. Also notice that Frank never bothered to try to tell any of us who needed educating – never published the whip count. Only now do we really have a good idea who wasn’t on board – and I share the opinion of many that, if pushed, 2015 would have passed.

    Rep Frank, tell us who we need to educate, and we’ll do it. But don’t blame us for not guessing who was and who wasn’t needing said education. We’re not clairvoyant.

    According to a DC source I have, Frank intended for us to hire a big DC lobbying firm, and drop serious money on campaign funds in key offices. That’s usually how people are educated in DC. He obviously doesn’t know the T community at all, does he?

  245. Notice, nobody seems to mind coochies in the men’s showers, do they? Oh, that’s right – they’d be in mortal danger.

    How many jobs require showering at work? An infintesimally small fraction of a tenth of one percent of jobs, most likely. And in those cases, alt arrangements can probably be made.

    However, we probably need to get the heck over the “ohmigahd, lions and tigers and bears and penises in the women’s showers, oh my! mentality, as does Frank. It is not the penis that is evil, it is what a sexual predator does with it. M2F preop Transsexuals on estrogen are decidedly not sexual predators. Most I know would voluntarily do everything possible to avoid a public shower room when others were using it. Moreover, there is already plenty of law on the books that outlaw sexual assaults in restrooms. Punish the person only after the person is found guilty of the act – or did that go out with the Patriot Act?

    As for Frank, of course he’s full of blarney, if not fecal matter. But it behooves us to listen to him. Yes, T people have lobbied for 10+ years. But our education attempts have not sunk in. Too often, our education has not gotten past the aides – so often they’re HRCites. Also notice that Frank never bothered to try to tell any of us who needed educating – never published the whip count. Only now do we really have a good idea who wasn’t on board – and I share the opinion of many that, if pushed, 2015 would have passed.

    Rep Frank, tell us who we need to educate, and we’ll do it. But don’t blame us for not guessing who was and who wasn’t needing said education. We’re not clairvoyant.

    According to a DC source I have, Frank intended for us to hire a big DC lobbying firm, and drop serious money on campaign funds in key offices. That’s usually how people are educated in DC. He obviously doesn’t know the T community at all, does he?

  246. People with penises in women’s showers?

    Thank you Barney Frank, men should use their own showers.

Comments are closed.