Transsexual Toilet Trouble

[Montmorency]

In the UK we infringe upon the "Right to Bear Arms" enumerated in our Bill of Rights because a few people have used arms for terrible purposes.

I'm still not sure what subject we're currently on, but a couple problems:

1. This assumes that any attempt, or any means, to mitigate "small risk" is equally appropriate or salutary. To some extent deterrence is a component of any criminal justice system - yet we do not condone systematic torture toward deterrence basically because it's evil (and less saliently ineffective). Alternatively, men commit the lion's share (tee hee) of violent crimes. Would it be just to establish matriarchy and heavily subordinate men in the name of public safety?
2. It is historically false to say that gendered bathrooms were introduced as a response to men assaulting women in shared spaces. Perhaps you made this assumption because you were applying your contemporary perspective to historical contexts.

This argument started because Beskar implied that anyone with anxiety over the safety of his teenage daughter in allowing men into female bathrooms to accommodate transgender rights was morally bankrupt. I merely argued that this was not necessarily the case and now apparently I hate transgender people - I don't feel like I'm the one making the logical leap here.

Maybe it's not necessarily the case. But is it not the case? Justification is warranted. An employer may genuinely be worried that Asian candidates are indolent thieves; what's the source of this worry, and is it changeable?

We used to have men who owned guns and knives too - now we arrest them all and send them to prison before they even think of hurting anyone. We do this because we are not a liberal society- which is fine - but its inconsistent to be liberal in some areas and not others.

You arrest on the basis of ownership, not on the basis of intention. And anyway, you neglect consideration of whether a particular law is reasonable or not. I'm confident you don't believe that literally any restriction is legitimate or desirable; thus the necessary recourse is to the facts of the matter.

Sure you are, as you admit in the next clause. But every system has inconsistencies, are you really complaining that we haven't realized some utopian ideal?

Be a spate of that in Costa Coffee shops here - guess what. Those toilets are unisex.

And?

Not wanting transgender people to be in the bathroom of the sex they were not assigned at birth is not about "restricting transgender people" it's about our society being over-liberal and creating opportunities for abuse that do not currently exist.

THe problem here is two-fold, that you assume without evidence there are significant opportunities for abuse created, and that you fail to even notice the "over-liberalization" is advocated for the opportunities for abuse that it eliminates. Again, why do you think there's a problem with transgender people doing what they already do when they can? You are proposing a restriction, like how before the 1970s Britain restricted gay men by pursuing them into bathrooms in the name of public morality. And what do these restrictions do in service of segregating genders. It is difficult to make sense of the logic unless you reject the social status of transgenders and seek to characterize their behavior as injurious to public safety - which would be a prejudicial stance.

However, I accept it's illegal in the UK for reasons of collective safety.

Again, the fact that guns are restricted does not mean that any hypothetical restriction is merited.

AM I talking about transgender people? See, I though I was criticising Beskar for suggesting that anyone who DARED question the current transgender orthodoxy was morally bankrupt.

Correct me if I'm missing something, but here you've argued that it is appropriate to (eliding implementation) prevent transgenders from using bathrooms not aligned with their assigned birth sex, and you have argued that unisex spaces are bad and contribute to sex crimes. I'm not sure whether you are trying to link these two lines of thought. Do you argue the two points above, and if so, do you have any connection to make between them? And why?

My point, however, is that you seem only willing or able to see things from your own perspective - you resist seeing things from the perspective of others, this prevents you from understanding their position - which is why your attacks often miss. This is especially true in my case.

I haven't seen you try to understand our positions very hard.

Per the preceding, go ahead and clarify your position. Be sure to specify how we can tell there is no whiff of prejudice.

My point, however, is that you seem only willing or able to see things from your own perspective - you resist seeing things from the perspective of others, this prevents you from understanding their position - which is why your attacks often miss. This is especially true in my case.

I have no problem with women breastfeeding in public. However, our society frowns on public nudity and for that reason, and to avoid exciting the undue interest of teenage boys, I really think they should use a shawl - but apparently that makes me a monster for expecting women who are breastfeeding to only be as modest as women who aren't.

I would ask why women should adhere to your standard of modesty, and why two different categories of women should adhere to the same standard despite your highlighting that they are different categories, but really the important thing is that what you personally feel is whatever, you're entitled to your opinion - so long as you don't advocate regulation of breastfeeding women by law, business, or civil society. Same by garishly-dressed transpersons or anyone else whose style you disapprove of. We've all been there. (I really hope you are not so traditionalist as to advocate reinstating sumptuary laws...)

We, as a society, now tend to treat all cases of gender dis-morphia as transgenderism rather than as a psychological disorder. This is a very new idea, relatively speaking, and it is perhaps not entirely wise. The majority of children who display gender dis-morphia historically resolved their issues during puberty, but now we put teenagers on puberty-blocking drugs which can have harmful side effects and prevent them going through the process that might cause their condition to naturally resolve itself. Of course, we're now discouraged from even seeing is as a "condition".

Are you making this judgement after diligent reference to modern medical literature and practice? Why do you think there is a willy-nilly approach to gender dysphoria?

An incredibly blokish man doing doing an embarrassing, sexist, drag act - am I really expected to believe this is a "real" woman?

I am not allowed to question this?

Hmm. Do you think they can be "allowed" to question your view of them?

Teenage boys spend all their spare time trying to see tits

Is your social hierarchy centered on (a monolithic image of) teenage boys? Who cares.

No guns, not allowed to say the majority of swear words because they offend someone, tried to censor "Fairy-tale in New York".

Not that I necessarily disagree with banning homophobic or racial slurs, but it IS repression. Saying it isn't is rather like claiming Christianity isn't a cult.

Hmmm, Britain may be your city but you're forgetting the diversity that exists among liberal Western governments. For example, over nearly a century American jurisprudence has increasingly reinforced a free-speech regime that is perhaps the closest a society has ever come to absolutism.

but then children tend to have poorly developed empathy - which is why they are capable of such cruelty.

So teach them. From what I see and hear children are less cruel and chauvinistic than they were a generation ago. There's nothing wrong with looking at girls or boys so long as one isn't an asshole about it, and doesn't develop derogatory or exclusionary mindset.

especially when I made it quite clear what people are worried about is sexual assault and not peeping toms.

Oh yeah, just to shoehorn another instantiation for the upper reaches: I might be worried about black students attending my daughter's school because I'm worried about sexual assault... That would be a shameful worry to maintain. To act on it would be a basic exercise of racism, and ought-need be called out as such.

From my historical reading and observation of contemporary politics I have come to the conclusion that any nation larger than, say, Germany, tends to become coercive because in order to function the central government has to remain below a certain size lest it become unwieldy. From this it follows that elected representatives have unacceptably large constituencies and therefore become unacceptably remote from the people they are meant to represent.

I think that's a reasonable conclusion. Presumably a world-government would have to be structured in a bipolar fashion to maximize subsidiarity, local autonomy plus self-sufficiency, and inter-municipal solidarity and cooperation alongside the global apparatus. The latter would have to have built-in safeguards to shrink or restructure over time while augmenting and safeguarding the horizontal mechanisms of democratic power at the bottom of the dumbbell-form. It would not work well for long without a universally-educated and activated populace. It would be the hardest thing we've ever done. But we can never let perfect be the enemy of good - while juggling the importance of aspiration and high expectations.

Also, there's the whole thing with the specter of species-wide civilizational collapse dogging us...

I have enough reasons to hate myself, so I'm trying not to add to the list.

As long as we're speaking of bygones, you seem much colder this go around. I've been feeling it almost for half a year. Is that a real thing?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I'm still not sure what subject we're currently on, but a couple problems:

Neither am I.

1. This assumes that any attempt, or any means, to mitigate "small risk" is equally appropriate or salutary. To some extent deterrence is a component of any criminal justice system - yet we do not condone systematic torture toward deterrence basically because it's evil (and less saliently ineffective). Alternatively, men commit the lion's share (tee hee) of violent crimes. Would it be just to establish matriarchy and heavily subordinate men in the name of public safety?
2. It is historically false to say that gendered bathrooms were introduced as a response to men assaulting women in shared spaces. Perhaps you made this assumption because you were applying your contemporary perspective to historical contexts.

1. You are correct that not all restrictions are necessary salutatory, but the argument over restrictions in bathroom use (and other breastfeeding in public) take the opposite extreme - any restriction is discrimination. It is this latter position I have a problem with. I use the comparison of gun ownership because, contrary to popular belief, gun ownership is actually historically quite popular in the UK, and also in Australia and New Zealand - but all three countries have ultimately taken the same stance on gun ownership in response to pretty much their first or second mass shooting.

Similar arguments are even being had over the actual process of assigning sex at birth where some queer people see this as an infringement of the child or parents' rights. In my view our society is becoming overly permissive in allowing people to self-define their identity rather than having their identity be at least partially defined by society. Remember, society is the collection of people you live with - it needs to have some rules and structures so that people understand how to get along. Something like assigning sex (as opposed to gender) at birth should not be controversial except in the unlikely event that the child is intersex.

2. Prior to female-only bathrooms there were only male-only bathrooms. Women had to urinate in gutters.

Maybe it's not necessarily the case. But is it not the case? Justification is warranted. An employer may genuinely be worried that Asian candidates are indolent thieves; what's the source of this worry, and is it changeable?

Honestly, I've seen the "man in a dress" on the street. It's something you notice precisely because of the incongruity, it's usually a middle-aged man, walking like a middle-aged man, wearing a very silly dress and a very bad wig. This will be, in some cases, a transgender woman only coming out late in life trying to shake off a mess of learned behaviours where "he" was trying to be as manly as possible to cover up who she was.

I'm not unsympathetic, but the bald truth is that if you saw her walking into the female toilets following your teenage daughter it looks like a middle-aged man wearing a dress as an excuse to walk into the toilets following your teenage daughter.

Now, as a father, what do you do in that circumstance? Risk your daughter being assaulted, or risk being arrested for assaulting a woman who has spent her life pretending to be a man? It's quite easy to see why many fathers would just default to option one on a visceral level, even if they don't follow through.

It's also quite easy to understand why a man who's never had to think hard about his sexuality or gender, and even more so one who has but concluded he's actually a straight man anyway, will be sceptical of the "man in a dress."

You arrest on the basis of ownership, not on the basis of intention. And anyway, you neglect consideration of whether a particular law is reasonable or not. I'm confident you don't believe that literally any restriction is legitimate or desirable; thus the necessary recourse is to the facts of the matter.

That's right - we arrest anyone carrying a penknife in public without a good excuse. I think that's repressive, don't you?

Sure you are, as you admit in the next clause. But every system has inconsistencies, are you really complaining that we haven't realized some utopian ideal?

Britain is simply not a liberal society - America is - my point is that when you are only selectively Liberal about the things YOU think people should be allowed to do you aren't really Liberals. Liberals let people do the things they think they shouldn't be allowed to do.

And?

Pretty obviously it's much easier for a man to deploy a camera in a unisex toilet with a sinlge cubicle - he has a legitimate reason to be there and nobody can see him. So, this is clearly a downside of unisex toilets, especially single cubicle ones - although the same applies to enclosed cubicles.

The only way around that is to either have regular sweeps for bugs or CCTV in the cubicles.

THe problem here is two-fold, that you assume without evidence there are significant opportunities for abuse created, and that you fail to even notice the "over-liberalization" is advocated for the opportunities for abuse that it eliminates. Again, why do you think there's a problem with transgender people doing what they already do when they can? You are proposing a restriction, like how before the 1970s Britain restricted gay men by pursuing them into bathrooms in the name of public morality. And what do these restrictions do in service of segregating genders. It is difficult to make sense of the logic unless you reject the social status of transgenders and seek to characterize their behavior as injurious to public safety - which would be a prejudicial stance.

When did I actually say "transexuals should be barred from the bathroom of the sex they identify with"?

Good God, I posted a picture of Nicole Maines, challenged Beskar to tell her her gender was artificial and said I thought she was cute the last season of Supergirl.

Here's her wikipedia bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Maines

That being said, I can understand why some people WOULD want such a ban

Again, the fact that guns are restricted does not mean that any hypothetical restriction is merited.

Again, whilst this is true the reverse also follows - if we can accept gun restriction then not all restrictions are immoral.

Correct me if I'm missing something, but here you've argued that it is appropriate to (eliding implementation) prevent transgenders from using bathrooms not aligned with their assigned birth sex, and you have argued that unisex spaces are bad and contribute to sex crimes. I'm not sure whether you are trying to link these two lines of thought. Do you argue the two points above, and if so, do you have any connection to make between them? And why?

Yes - you completely missed the part where I didn't argue against transexuals using the appropriate (as in the one corresponding to their identified sex) bathroom. I am, however, against unisex facilities - which is something many Queer people (which is not the same lobby as the transgender lobby, necessarily) are increasingly pushing for.

I'm 100% behind the transgender lobby on this issue. Having said that, I do have reservations about a trend developing where every teenager with gender dis-morphia is diagnosed as transgender or transexual.

I haven't seen you try to understand our positions very hard.

Per the preceding, go ahead and clarify your position. Be sure to specify how we can tell there is no whiff of prejudice.

My position is that I don't think people should be punished for holding view which were mainstream 20 years ago but which now have become unfashionable. I note that you described Furunculus' expression of caution on this topic as "not respectable" which verges on an accusation of prejudice, just for not wholeheartedly agreeing.

That sort of thought pattern is prevalent in religious fundamentalists, it's the sort of think that the Taliban thinks - executing people who aren't Muslim "enough".

A Liberal society should be tolerant of differing views, it should be able to debate them calmly and rationally without resorting to name-calling.

I would ask why women should adhere to your standard of modesty, and why two different categories of women should adhere to the same standard despite your highlighting that they are different categories, but really the important thing is that what you personally feel is whatever, you're entitled to your opinion - so long as you don't advocate regulation of breastfeeding women by law, business, or civil society. Same by garishly-dressed transpersons or anyone else whose style you disapprove of. We've all been there. (I really hope you are not so traditionalist as to advocate reinstating sumptuary laws...)

Why shouldn't breastfeeding be regulated by law? Urination is regulated by law, sleeping is regulated by law.

It's not my standard of modesty, anyway, it's the generally accepted standard in most Anglophone countries - women are expected to not bear their breasts in public. From that it logically follows that it should be fine for women to breastfeed in public, so long as they don't expose their breasts. The women sitting on public benches with a child suckling their dress around their waste and both breasts exposed are making a political statement.

They are using their nudity to force society to acknowledge that they are breastfeeding in public. I get it, but I don't approve of the tactic, and I don't approve of people life that Museum steward being punished for asking them to adhere to the same standards of PUBLIC decency as EVERYONE else.

Asking women to use a shawl is not some terrible patriarchal imposition, it's asking them to have consideration of others, especially other parents with children who may not want them exposed to nude women.

Are you making this judgement after diligent reference to modern medical literature and practice? Why do you think there is a willy-nilly approach to gender dysphoria?

I've read quite a lot of journalism on the topic and also a few papers - look up the Tavistock Centre and the recent controversy there. It's not a "willy-nilly" approach so much as a "one size fits all" approach which includes mastectomy for teenage girls and castration for teenage boys.

I've definitely read of cases where teenage girls have been identified as transgender and undergone hormone treatment and surgery at age 16.

Hmm. Do you think they can be "allowed" to question your view of them?

At the present time I would say that anyone who, on meeting someone who claims to be transgender, questions that person's claim can probably expect to lose their job.

Is your social hierarchy centered on (a monolithic image of) teenage boys? Who cares.

I think the greatest threat the teenage girls is probably teenage boys, from personal experience.

Hmmm, Britain may be your city but you're forgetting the diversity that exists among liberal Western governments. For example, over nearly a century American jurisprudence has increasingly reinforced a free-speech regime that is perhaps the closest a society has ever come to absolutism.

I referenced this above, that doesn't make the supposedly Liberal Britain less repressive.

So teach them. From what I see and hear children are less cruel and chauvinistic than they were a generation ago. There's nothing wrong with looking at girls or boys so long as one isn't an asshole about it, and doesn't develop derogatory or exclusionary mindset.

Who was it said, "Children are little barbarians and the purpose of education is to civilise them before they grow up cause the collapse of society."?

Walking down the street of a Saturday Night I don't think the students are that much more enlightened than they were a decade ago. Certainly, few are the young, intelligent, assertive female academics not relived when I offer to walk them home.

Oh yeah, just to shoehorn another instantiation for the upper reaches: I might be worried about black students attending my daughter's school because I'm worried about sexual assault... That would be a shameful worry to maintain. To act on it would be a basic exercise of racism, and ought-need be called out as such.

What about, say, an influx of young boys from a country like Afghanistan where "woman's rights" are considered optional at best? Is it still shameful to be worried? Or, what about merging of school districts that brings in a group of which boys from a rough neighbourhood with a reputation for drug use and not being safe after dark. Still shameful?

There's a difference between being concerned about people outside your social group not adhering to your standards and racism. If you're just worried because the boy is black then that's obviously racist, it's a little different if he's from a slum because then you need to ask yourself if it's the colour he is or the slum he's from.

I think that's a reasonable conclusion. Presumably a world-government would have to be structured in a bipolar fashion to maximize subsidiarity, local autonomy plus self-sufficiency, and inter-municipal solidarity and cooperation alongside the global apparatus. The latter would have to have built-in safeguards to shrink or restructure over time while augmenting and safeguarding the horizontal mechanisms of democratic power at the bottom of the dumbbell-form. It would not work well for long without a universally-educated and activated populace. It would be the hardest thing we've ever done. But we can never let perfect be the enemy of good - while juggling the importance of aspiration and high expectations.

I don't see world government as necessarily "good", I think world peace is good - but that's just the absence of violence, it's not a political order.

Also, there's the whole thing with the specter of species-wide civilizational collapse dogging us...

Rome is always falling, and always because of natural disasters.

As long as we're speaking of bygones, you seem much colder this go around. I've been feeling it almost for half a year. Is that a real thing?

Colder? I don't know, life's not much fun these days, aside from still being trapped in this PhD I'm in increasing pain as my joints take a beating from my Palsy. I'm probably less playful and more direct than I used to be. I don't really have the time or mental energy to write page-long screeds on one line of the Bible any more just for fits and giggle.

Plus, if I make an offhand comment suggesting maybe, just maybe, a man with a teenage daughter might have some legitimate reservations about allowing non-certified people who claim a transgender identity sharing a washroom with said daughter it becomes a whole thing.

Now I'm having to explain, repeatedly, that I don't personally have a problem with trangender people in certain bathrooms, but I have a problem with people who do just being tarred as prejudiced - as though that sort of view wasn't completely normal less than two decades ago.

I come from a fairly liberal family that generally goes along with trying to strike a balance between tradition, common courtesy and everyone just getting along. Increasingly the world, online and offline, seems to resemble an Early-Modern state where any deviation from the accepted social orthodoxy is severely punished by society, and that orthodoxy is also rapidly changing.

[Montmorency]

1. You are correct that not all restrictions are necessary salutatory, but the argument over restrictions in bathroom use (and other breastfeeding in public) take the opposite extreme - any restriction is discrimination. It is this latter position I have a problem with. I use the comparison of gun ownership because, contrary to popular belief, gun ownership is actually historically quite popular in the UK, and also in Australia and New Zealand - but all three countries have ultimately taken the same stance on gun ownership in response to pretty much their first or second mass shooting.

It is discrimination on its face. It is always up to proponents of discrimination to justify it, not the other way around.

In my view our society is becoming overly permissive in allowing people to self-define their identity rather than having their identity be at least partially defined by society.

I too believe that a significant component of gender construction is external. I am a man not merely because I identify as a man, but because I have been socialized for all my life with the understanding that (presumably almost) all around me view and treat me as a man/boy, set against my observation of the treatment of others as women/girls. So in a sense, I am a man insofar as others perceive me to be a man. But for society this could be a self-correcting problem; if people who reject transpeople in their gender perception diminish in number...

2. Prior to female-only bathrooms there were only male-only bathrooms. Women had to urinate in gutters.

Huh? People used pots and outhouses, AFAIK indiscriminately; I'm not aware of what or when you're referring to.

Honestly, I've seen the "man in a dress" on the street. It's something you notice precisely because of the incongruity, it's usually a middle-aged man, walking like a middle-aged man, wearing a very silly dress and a very bad wig. This will be, in some cases, a transgender woman only coming out late in life trying to shake off a mess of learned behaviours where "he" was trying to be as manly as possible to cover up who she was.

It could very well be a man wearing drag, if that helps. I'm not sure which conservatives revile more, transwomen or men in drag. (Yet another public blow-up in American conservative intellectual circles about this recently.)

Or it could be a trans woman who doesn't want to transition many or any physical features but experiences a sort of social dysphoria in not being perceived as feminine. Don't worry about it too much, unless she wants you to.

I'm not unsympathetic, but the bald truth is that if you saw her walking into the female toilets following your teenage daughter it looks like a middle-aged man wearing a dress as an excuse to walk into the toilets following your teenage daughter

Why? This is exactly prejudice. Where are the men doing this, let alone for nefarious purpose? Does the father in that moment observe any concrete behaviors or traits that suggest this specific person is a security risk?

It's also quite easy to understand why a man who's never had to think hard about his sexuality or gender, and even more so one who has but concluded he's actually a straight man anyway, will be sceptical of the "man in a dress."

Again, this is prejudice, the very essence. When prejudice is defended there is a frequent dissonance and circularity where the object is deemed outside the boundary because then one would be in the position of defending prejudice, and one wouldn't like to think of themselves like that, so what they're discussing can't be prejudice. If the man literally has no concept of what he's looking at, it's forgivable and they deserve an explanation. If they have some familiarity with the transgender concept and persist, condemn away. To you the sentiment you describe "understandable" to a far extent, but why should one give the benefit of the doubt to someone who refuses to give the benefit of the doubt when given the opportunity and will express recalcitrance through violence? Then there is little choice but to fight back through law and norms.

That's right - we arrest anyone carrying a penknife in public without a good excuse. I think that's repressive, don't you?

Sure. But just in case that's where you're heading, 'misery loves company' is also not a good motivation.

Britain is simply not a liberal society - America is - my point is that when you are only selectively Liberal about the things YOU think people should be allowed to do you aren't really Liberals. Liberals let people do the things they think they shouldn't be allowed to do.

That's preposterous. Every single society ever is "selective", or there wouldn't be law in the first place. Or government really. You're complaining about the absence of utopia.

That being said, I can understand why some people WOULD want such a ban

I can as well, I just think it's worthier of challenge than you do.

Yes - you completely missed the part where I didn't argue against transexuals using the appropriate (as in the one corresponding to their identified sex) bathroom. I am, however, against unisex facilities - which is something many Queer people (which is not the same lobby as the transgender lobby, necessarily) are increasingly pushing for.

Cool, I'm glad we could clarify. I think you're empirically wrong about unisex toilets, but I'm not going to challenge you in yet another sub-thread.

I'm 100% behind the transgender lobby on this issue. Having said that, I do have reservations about a trend developing where every teenager with gender dis-morphia is diagnosed as transgender or transexual.

[Not "diagnosed" as transgender, it's no longer treated as a medical condition]

Why do you think there is a trend of gender dysmorphic individuals being mistakenly or improperly treated? Why shouldn't we be comfortable deferring to the judgement of physicians and patients?

My position is that I don't think people should be punished for holding view which were mainstream 20 years ago but which now have become unfashionable. I note that you described Furunculus' expression of caution on this topic as "not respectable" which verges on an accusation of prejudice, just for not wholeheartedly agreeing.

How are people being punished? Anti-trans is very much mainstream today. If the caution is baseless and regularly deployed in the mainstream in prejudicial fashion, it isn't respectable. Don't mischaracterize a criticism of content and form as a reaction to the mere fact of disagreement, it's annoying.

That sort of thought pattern is prevalent in religious fundamentalists, it's the sort of think that the Taliban thinks - executing people who aren't Muslim "enough".

A Liberal society should be tolerant of differing views, it should be able to debate them calmly and rationally without resorting to name-calling.

Tell that to the anti-trans people. Hard to take this sort of harrumphing seriously in light of what the discourse actually looks like and why. Think about who needs to lay down the knife here.

Why shouldn't breastfeeding be regulated by law? Urination is regulated by law, sleeping is regulated by law.

Why should it? What does sleeping or urination have to do with breastfeeding?

It's not my standard of modesty, anyway, it's the generally accepted standard in most Anglophone countries - women are expected to not bear their breasts in public.

This isn't fixed, and the social disapprobation - including legal restrictions - has increasingly degraded over recent years. I'd expect in the UK included, get back to us.

From that it logically follows that it should be fine for women to breastfeed in public, so long as they don't expose their breasts. The women sitting on public benches with a child suckling their dress around their waste and both breasts exposed are making a political statement.

How about we let the breastfeeders figure out what works for them?

They are using their nudity to force society to acknowledge that they are breastfeeding in public.

Or it's just convenient for them. Have you considered many instances of breastfeeding with breast visible may not be political statements, but the outcome of a more permissive climate? That because political statements were made these women no longer have to make them.

Asking women to use a shawl is not some terrible patriarchal imposition, it's asking them to have consideration of others, especially other parents with children who may not want them exposed to nude women.

I prioritize the other consideration.

I've read quite a lot of journalism on the topic and also a few papers - look up the Tavistock Centre and the recent controversy there. It's not a "willy-nilly" approach so much as a "one size fits all" approach which includes mastectomy for teenage girls and castration for teenage boys. I've definitely read of cases where teenage girls have been identified as transgender and undergone hormone treatment and surgery at age 16.

I can't identify the negative trend. I'm charitable with you, but don't be surprised if an encounter with someone working in the field leads to them putting you down; listen carefully in that event.

At the present time I would say that anyone who, on meeting someone who claims to be transgender, questions that person's claim can probably expect to lose their job.

If this were the case, we would see many thousands being fired. On the contrary, it pops into the news rarely and typically in connection with public figures or celebrities who tend to face minimal, if any, repercussions.

I think the greatest threat the teenage girls is probably teenage boys, from personal experience.

Men in general, but this is correct. Hence feminists speak of patriarchy. I myself can attest to the changes in norms among children, from what I have personally seen, read, and heard from others, including the experience of having a much-younger sister still in high school. We're both speaking from our own world-knowledge; I suspect you have a very particular experience of boyhood in yourself and those around you. I sure hope we continue to work on diverting it.

What about, say, an influx of young boys from a country like Afghanistan where "woman's rights" are considered optional at best? Is it still shameful to be worried? Or, what about merging of school districts that brings in a group of which boys from a rough neighbourhood with a reputation for drug use and not being safe after dark. Still shameful?

On the basis in the first clause, certainly. Interesting elaborate second clause. Since you're not American there is plausible deniability as to who it refers to.

There's a difference between being concerned about people outside your social group not adhering to your standards and racism.

In the final sense I doubt it. It could theoretically be purely class-based, but in practice I've always seen it racialized. This may be easier for an American to grasp than a conservative Englishman.

Colder? I don't know, life's not much fun these days, aside from still being trapped in this PhD I'm in increasing pain as my joints take a beating from my Palsy. I'm probably less playful and more direct than I used to be. I don't really have the time or mental energy to write page-long screeds on one line of the Bible any more just for fits and giggle.

That sounds like an opening for me to start drawing these threads down. Most propositions and attitudes in your posts I admittedly find to be wrong or ill-considered. More so than in the old days?

Plus, if I make an offhand comment suggesting maybe, just maybe, a man with a teenage daughter might have some legitimate reservations about allowing non-certified people who claim a transgender identity sharing a washroom with said daughter it becomes a whole thing.

Now I'm having to explain, repeatedly, that I don't personally have a problem with trangender people in certain bathrooms, but I have a problem with people who do just being tarred as prejudiced - as though that sort of view wasn't completely normal less than two decades ago.

It was prejudiced when it was normal. You know prejudice as category isn't a function of prevalence or contestation, right? Also, since you keep pushing this logic I should point out an essay on the very subject.

I come from a fairly liberal family that generally goes along with trying to strike a balance between tradition, common courtesy and everyone just getting along. Increasingly the world, online and offline, seems to resemble an Early-Modern state where any deviation from the accepted social orthodoxy is severely punished by society, and that orthodoxy is also rapidly changing.

What you're seeing is a - yet another - period of heavy contestation in society over what is acceptable, which social groups can petition for what standing, and so forth. Contrary to what you appear to have concluded, there is no Orthodoxy on trans issues ready to strike you down, just specific people who may fall in or fall out with you depending on the intensity of your or their positions. Conservatives are kind of schizophrenic in this, believing they have already been defeated while still wielding a preponderance of authority. In America (I don't know about the UK) there is a strong paleoconservative/neoreactionary movement in the major right-wing party to roll back social norms and legal protections to an 18th-century state, in some regards perhaps to go even further; and these people are losing their minds that they can no longer expect a non-conforming person to be randomly beset and beaten in the street for their effrontery. The loss of hegemony is not in truth equivalent to dissolution. They have not been defeated, and they remain very dangerous. Maybe that offers some perspective on why various agitating groups are not prioritizing displays of patience or deference.

When you tell a Cornishman his identity is "intriguing" you belittle it, it's not intriguing, it's important and if you can't see that it's not worth his time explaining his tin mines to you. It's certainly not worth his time if you think the identity might need "modifying".
[...]
So you're ridiculing me instead of mocking me? I'm sorry Beskar, either way I'm entitled to be offended if I so choose.

Duuuuude. You're getting worked up over what to others seems like trivial cultural markers that no one gives a crap about, but now you know a little of how non-whites/women/LGBT/etc. feel when you tell them you just want to "calmly and rationally" discuss the fundamental matters of their identity and social participation. Think about it.

Guilt is very underrated, if people spent more time feeling guilty they'd spend more time trying not to do bad things and making up for the things they did do.

It's not working out for me that way.

[Strike For The South]

Bathroom bills are the satanic panic of the 2010s. You would never even notice a transgendered person going into the bathroom they choose.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Bathroom bills are the satanic panic of the 2010s. You would never even notice a transgendered person going into the bathroom they choose.

Noticing would require me to be seeking active interaction in a restroom. I am there to excrete, not 'meet-and-greet,' so I am not going to be noticing much about anyone else except whether or not they are leaving the urinal so I can go whiz.

[a completely inoffensive name]

The only people we should ban from public restrooms are the ones who take the urinal next to you when there are other spots available.

[Montmorency]

If women are required to cover their breasts in public is is for nursing mothers to explain why they are the exception. Your argument is affective, not logical.

Assuming there is a legal requirement for women to cover their breasts in general, the argument on behalf of nursing mothers is that they are performing a necessary and routine bodily function and that the harm caused by refusing them accommodation is greater than the harm caused by allowing them accommodation. Meanwhile, what's the argument against - invocation of "public decency?" I don't think this is colorable in terms of "affective vs. logical."

What people do in public spaces is a matter for the general public. In exactly the same way as we do not allow people to run around naked because the general public consider this to be unacceptbale we also do not generally allow women to be topless.

What if they consider it to be acceptable? I mean, you are aware you've lost the legal and social debate by now, right? So unless you feel really strongly about the issue and want to relitigate it to the point of having the inverse of French-style burqa police, it's probably not worth your energy (nb. if the latter is your real aim it would be reprehensible).

It follows logically that no matter how natural breastfeeding may be, and accepting the right that women should be allowed to do it in public it does NOT follow that women should be allowed to do it visibly topless.

The motivation is not the naturalness of breastfeeding but the legal principle of not imposing undue burdens.

The counter argument is literally just "patriarchal repression" but the same people who make this argument do not argue that women should generally be allowed to be topless in public, interestingly enough.

What's wrong with opposing "patriarchal repression?"

I've frequently seen the two arguments paired, idk what you mean. And haven't you heard of all the topless parades and protests in America and throughout Europe (no links)?

Most of the reported cases involve the woman complaining to someone's (usually a man's) employer because he asked her to cover up, not go to a separate room, just cover up.

Here's a short comment on the state of American law on breastfeeding (though it only discusses state, not federal, law).

I hope we can get to the point where no one feels the need to complain about it, or that complaints are ignored.

Perhaps - but then I've never actually seen it in public myself, that is without some sort of shawl or something.

You've never actually seen it in public, but it's such a big deal for you?

I'll reply to the rest of the post later, I just want to post some stuff about breastfeeding.


First, since you're a stuffy old chap and not a breastfeeding woman let's go direct to the source and see what nursing mothers are saying. To that end I turn to Mumsnet, the UK's pre-eminent forum for... mums.

And some photos:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For the piece de resistance:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

It is discrimination on its face. It is always up to proponents of discrimination to justify it, not the other way around.

If women are required to cover their breasts in public is is for nursing mothers to explain why they are the exception. Your argument is affective, not logical.

I too believe that a significant component of gender construction is external. I am a man not merely because I identify as a man, but because I have been socialized for all my life with the understanding that (presumably almost) all around me view and treat me as a man/boy, set against my observation of the treatment of others as women/girls. So in a sense, I am a man insofar as others perceive me to be a man. But for society this could be a self-correcting problem; if people who reject transpeople in their gender perception diminish in number...

You're entitled to opinion but I contend that you, like Beskar, are confusing Gender-Identity with Gender-Role.

I am a man because I am a man - however society helps to define what about me is manly and what is not. Men crying is a great example of this - in pre-Victorian English society crying was not considered itself to be "unmanly" but the restrictive social mores of the Victorian period proscribed crying as a specifically "feminine" activity.

Now go tell Achilleus that it's not manly to cry over Patroculus.

Huh? People used pots and outhouses, AFAIK indiscriminately; I'm not aware of what or when you're referring to.

Public "conveniences" were for men - women had to hold it go in the gutter.

https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureU...ts-in-Britain/

It could very well be a man wearing drag, if that helps. I'm not sure which conservatives revile more, transwomen or men in drag. (Yet another public blow-up in American conservative intellectual circles about this recently.)

Or it could be a trans woman who doesn't want to transition many or any physical features but experiences a sort of social dysphoria in not being perceived as feminine. Don't worry about it too much, unless she wants you to.

Why? This is exactly prejudice. Where are the men doing this, let alone for nefarious purpose? Does the father in that moment observe any concrete behaviors or traits that suggest this specific person is a security risk?

Concrete behaviour indicating risk - man follows my daughter into toilet. Let's lose the wig and the dress - how about now? Men are naturally protective of their daughters and are more likely to err on the side of extreme caution given the potential horror of not doing so. Labelling this thought pattern "prejudice" is highly reductive and, frankly, a bit elitist.

Again, this is prejudice, the very essence. When prejudice is defended there is a frequent dissonance and circularity where the object is deemed outside the boundary because then one would be in the position of defending prejudice, and one wouldn't like to think of themselves like that, so what they're discussing can't be prejudice. If the man literally has no concept of what he's looking at, it's forgivable and they deserve an explanation. If they have some familiarity with the transgender concept and persist, condemn away. To you the sentiment you describe "understandable" to a far extent, but why should one give the benefit of the doubt to someone who refuses to give the benefit of the doubt when given the opportunity and will express recalcitrance through violence? Then there is little choice but to fight back through law and norms.

There's an awful lot of prejudice in the world - I've met gay people (and straight people) who believe all Christian ministers are repressed homosexuals and also abusive. To an extent all stereotypes, all "common knowledge" is ultimately a form of prejudice. The point at which we usually call it out is when we feel the prejudice is no longer useful, i.e. when we feel the prejudice no longer reflects some form of reality.

In this case the assumption is that any man who comes near my daughter is out to do her harm. Therefore, any man who follows my daughter into a public convenience has nefarious motives. Therefore, the wig and the dress are just a cover in case he gets caught.

Sure. But just in case that's where you're heading, 'misery loves company' is also not a good motivation.

I'm not, I'm pointing out that in other cases the State is happy to regulate individual freedom for what it deems the common good.

That's preposterous. Every single society ever is "selective", or there wouldn't be law in the first place. Or government really. You're complaining about the absence of utopia.

We prosecute people for making foul jokes in this country, we almost passed a law criminalising criticism of other people's religions.

I can as well, I just think it's worthier of challenge than you do.

Eh.

Cool, I'm glad we could clarify. I think you're empirically wrong about unisex toilets, but I'm not going to challenge you in yet another sub-thread.

I think I presented empirical evidence there's cause for concern - but let's move on.

[Not "diagnosed" as transgender, it's no longer treated as a medical condition]

Why do you think there is a trend of gender dysmorphic individuals being mistakenly or improperly treated? Why shouldn't we be comfortable deferring to the judgement of physicians and patients?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47359692

"There is pressure from the child who is in a distressed state, there is pressure from the family and the peer group and from the pro-trans lobbies - and all of this puts pressure on the clinician who may want to help the individual to resolve their distressed state by going along with a quick solution."

Also, saying "not diagnosed" is sophistry, people are diagnosed with "gender dismorphia" and this is now often concluded to be the result of them being trans-gender. There are other explanations - such as them just going through puberty.

How are people being punished? Anti-trans is very much mainstream today. If the caution is baseless and regularly deployed in the mainstream in prejudicial fashion, it isn't respectable. Don't mischaracterize a criticism of content and form as a reaction to the mere fact of disagreement, it's annoying.

Right, so you believe the caution to be a symptom of prejudice - in which case it's not caution, is it? It's phobia.

Caution itself is respectable, inherently.

If you do not wish me to pick at you please be more precise, or better yet don't imply another member is prejudiced.

It's probably different in the US but in the UK anti-trans is definitely not part of the mainstream discourse, regardless of opinion "on the street".

Tell that to the anti-trans people. Hard to take this sort of harrumphing seriously in light of what the discourse actually looks like and why. Think about who needs to lay down the knife here.

In the UK I'd say you have a small anti-trans lobby, a collection of people uneasy with the speed of change and concerned about the consequences, the generally apathetic middle, a group generally in favour of more inclusivesness and the pro-trans lobby. The two extremese walk avoid blades out 24/7 and everyone else gets caught in the middle.

If you don't immediately buy into 100% of what the trans-lobby is saying you're trans-phobic, suggests some children are being given a transgender diagnosis for their gender dismorphia incorrectly and your trans-phobic, suggest there are long-term concerns with "puberty blockers"... You get my drift.

I get why the trans lobby is militant, but we're starting to see people coming up saying their wish they hadn't transitioned and then transitioning back - except without their gonads. That's bad, that's the medical profession having really screwed up.

So, great caution.

Why should it? What does sleeping or urination have to do with breastfeeding?

This isn't fixed, and the social disapprobation - including legal restrictions - has increasingly degraded over recent years. I'd expect in the UK included, get back to us.

How about we let the breastfeeders figure out what works for them?

What people do in public spaces is a matter for the general public. In exactly the same way as we do not allow people to run around naked because the general public consider this to be unacceptbale we also do not generally allow women to be topless. It follows logically that no matter how natural breastfeeding may be, and accepting the right that women should be allowed to do it in public it does NOT follow that women should be allowed to do it visibly topless.

The counter argument is literally just "patriarchal repression" but the same people who make this argument do not argue that women should generally be allowed to be topless in public, interestingly enough.

One notes that this is a specifically anglophone problem - in France women regularly walk around topless, for example.

Or it's just convenient for them. Have you considered many instances of breastfeeding with breast visible may not be political statements, but the outcome of a more permissive climate? That because political statements were made these women no longer have to make them.

Perhaps - but then I've never actually seen it in public myself, that is without some sort of shawl or something. Most of the reported cases involve the woman complaining to someone's (usually a man's) employer because he asked her to cover up, not go to a separate room, just cover up.

My suspicion is that most women are more reasonable if you are polite, but sometimes museum staff etc. come up against someone who'd prefer to make everyone else uncomfortable because of a perceived principle.

I prioritize the other consideration.

That prioritises the satisfaction of one person over the majority to little or no practical benefit to that person. You are, therefore, making the stance on the basis of principle. This is not a principle I accept - that asking someone to have consideration for others is repressive.

I can't identify the negative trend. I'm charitable with you, but don't be surprised if an encounter with someone working in the field leads to them putting you down; listen carefully in that event.

See above, the Tavistock Clinic was condemned by the NHS as "not fit for purpose" and one of the Governors resigned.

If this were the case, we would see many thousands being fired. On the contrary, it pops into the news rarely and typically in connection with public figures or celebrities who tend to face minimal, if any, repercussions.

Oh people definitely get fired over anti-trans prejudice - often legitimately.

Men in general, but this is correct. Hence feminists speak of patriarchy. I myself can attest to the changes in norms among children, from what I have personally seen, read, and heard from others, including the experience of having a much-younger sister still in high school. We're both speaking from our own world-knowledge; I suspect you have a very particular experience of boyhood in yourself and those around you. I sure hope we continue to work on diverting it.

I grew up in a rural area, and the area I live in has gone down the tubes (moving next month) so I'm very familiar with male-on female violence, sexual and otherwise. The feminist idea of "the Patriarchy" is interesting here because I would argue some of our current issues with this relate to the narrative of "the Patriarchy" and the way this has eroded certain societal restrictions which were designed to protect women from male predation.

That's a different topic, though, and it revolves around whether it's realistic or not to expect men to stop being sexual predators.

On the basis in the first clause, certainly. Interesting elaborate second clause. Since you're not American there is plausible deniability as to who it refers to.

With regards to my first sentence - I contend that fear is natural and therefore not shameful. With regard to my second sentence I was trying to illustrate that you can remove the racial element entirely and still have the same fear. So, I'm questioning whether it's shameful because it's a race-based fear (or potentially race-based) or because it's just fear of people you don't know.

In the final sense I doubt it. It could theoretically be purely class-based, but in practice I've always seen it racialized. This may be easier for an American to grasp than a conservative Englishman.

In the UK conflict is often more inter-class or inter-regional than inter-racial. We have inter-racial conflict but not to the same extent as in the US.

Of course, this depends on your definition of "race" Skipping ahead to the Devon/Cornish feud - this is considered a "racial" issue by some.

That sounds like an opening for me to start drawing these threads down.

This sentence is poorly constructed too, and deciphering it is somewhat beyond me. You have not defined a specific object here, what are "these threads"? Do you mean the threads we have been arguing over the last several weeks which you are now going to give up on? Or is it the threads of your impressions which you can now draw together?

Regardless, I really need you to be more specific if you're going to give me a post it takes two hours to reply to.

Most propositions and attitudes in your posts I admittedly find to be wrong or ill-considered. More so than in the old days?

Well, if anything I'm more liberal than I used to be, so it's not that.

I suspect it is a combination of three things.

1. We disagree about certain things on a fundamental, ethical, level - making actual agreement impossible. If you don't recognise this you probably think I'm talking out the side of my mouth, but I'm really not.

2. You have an inaccurately favourable view of our past interactions. I'm not sure if this is flattering or not, to be honest.

3. I suspect you are, simultaneously to point 2., conflating your memory of me with other posters you also disagree with - this is causing you to incorrectly attribute certain views to me which I do not hold.

For example, you jumped to the view that I was against transsexuals using certain toilets, following Beskar, and it too a great deal of effort for me to point out I had never actually taken that position.

It was prejudiced when it was normal. You know prejudice as category isn't a function of prevalence or contestation, right? Also, since you keep pushing this logic I should point out an essay on the very subject.

This is a good crossing point to the Hong Kong thread. To begin with, by no means do I have to accept your assertion as fact, it is a matter of perspective. The prejudice to which you refer is the idea that men dressed as women are actually doing so not because they identify as women but to gain privileged access to the fairer sex.

This is, excuse me, historically "a thing". Shakespeare's comedies often included cross-dressing for this reason, as did Gilbert and Sullivan musicals - notably Princess Ida - and all the way back to the Ancient Greeks. The practice reflects the reality that lovers, especially young ones, could not meet openly due to sexually segregated societies.

Therefore, historical prejudice against men dressed as women had some practical justification, modern prejudice has inherited this. It's also worth pointing out that, irrc, some Jihadists were able to escape the UK a few years back by posing as their female relative in Burkhas.

Ultimately, this is heterosexual men mistaking transexual women for heterosexual men.

Whether all this is "bad" or not depends on the moral stance you adopt.

An absolutist moral stance that proposes one objective standard for morality simply lables this prejudice, calls it wrong and be done.

A Utilitarian stance that believes morality must be applicable in fact asks if the prejudice is "useful", i.e. is it not actually prejudice or experience?

A Relativist stance would asks if the majority of a given society consider it to be prejudiced.

All three stances, and they are more than three, have their supporters, and there is no settled answer. Personally, I'm inclined to agree with you that is is prejudiced but it seems to me that even if this is the case that has not been recognised historically and expecting every single person in society to recognise it today is not reasonable.

What you're seeing is a - yet another - period of heavy contestation in society over what is acceptable, which social groups can petition for what standing, and so forth. Contrary to what you appear to have concluded, there is no Orthodoxy on trans issues ready to strike you down, just specific people who may fall in or fall out with you depending on the intensity of your or their positions. Conservatives are kind of schizophrenic in this, believing they have already been defeated while still wielding a preponderance of authority. In America (I don't know about the UK) there is a strong paleoconservative/neoreactionary movement in the major right-wing party to roll back social norms and legal protections to an 18th-century state, in some regards perhaps to go even further; and these people are losing their minds that they can no longer expect a non-conforming person to be randomly beset and beaten in the street for their effrontery. The loss of hegemony is not in truth equivalent to dissolution. They have not been defeated, and they remain very dangerous. Maybe that offers some perspective on why various agitating groups are not prioritizing displays of patience or deference.

You are quite correct, we are in a period of social contest - the like of which our societies have not seen at least since the Reformation. However, you seem to be using language which implies these moral issues are settled. It may be you have settled on them, but settled they are not.

Duuuuude. You're getting worked up over what to others seems like trivial cultural markers that no one gives a crap about, but now you know a little of how non-whites/women/LGBT/etc. feel when you tell them you just want to "calmly and rationally" discuss the fundamental matters of their identity and social participation. Think about it.

You suppose I do not see the parallels? I do - the arguments over scones is ludicrous. I also consider the argument over pronouns to be ludicrous - the yourtube echo chamber has started to argue everyone should introduce themselves as "Hi, my name is... my pronouns are..."

If that happens I'm going to start saying, "Ave, ego sum Philippus Flavius, Filius Iohannus, Homovallumus."

It's not working out for me that way.

I'm sorry.