Transgender athletes back on the agenda

[Wokko]

[David]

I'm talking about the anti-trans arguments and rhetoric offered by TERFs. I actually think they have some interesting ideas, but their approach to this topic reflects pretty badly on them, I'd say – makes one suspect that a large motivator for their politics was always fundamentalism and hatred of men (which, here, is translated into an obsessive fixation with MtF transgender people "colonising" women's spaces). Keep in mind that this is a group that on the one hand holds the core principle of abolishing gender entirely – an argument I'm sympathetic to – but on the other seems to think that unisex toilets, one of society's most visible symbols of the gender binary, are an assault on women's rights. It's just nonsense, and they're embarrassing themselves.

(Also, I don't consider them to be part of the progressive left and I don't think they do either, for the most part. My impression is that, in TERF circles, "progressive" is often used as an insult directed at pro-trans and contemporary queer activism more broadly.)

[Wokko]

Fair enough, I'll defer to you as obviously I don't exactly move in RadFem circles

I have noticed a bit of 'strange bedfellows' type thing going on with RadFems and traditionalist conservatives. A bit Churchill/Stalin enemy of my enemy, but still weird.

[David]

I think you're right to notice that, and it's not a new thing – as far back as the 1980s, radical feminists and Reagan-era Moral Majority conservatives were forming alliances to push pornography underground. While I firmly disagree with their goal, maybe I shouldn't go too hard on them for sleeping with the enemy (I'd be more than happy to work in coalition with libertarians and the isolationist right to oppose a war on Iran, for instance). All the same, I think it does say something about their political priorities. Fundamentalist authoritarians do tend to flock together.

(I like your Churchill/Stalin analogy, by the way! No question which one is Stalin. )

[thesoretoothsayer]

[David]

^ Yep, precisely, and I understand that critique. I do think there's a fundamental disjuncture between the concept of gender transition and the second-wave feminist idea of a post-gender society. But it goes without saying that that utopian goal (one that postmodern and third-wave feminists pretty much dispensed with thirty years ago anyway) is a long way from being realised, and it seems to me to be missing the forest for the trees to attack transgender people (many of whom may not subscribe to the same concept of feminism) for buying into the same gender binary that nearly everyone else does. To quote my favourite YouTuber, ContraPoints:

[think positive]

why on earth would you want to abolish gender? thats $£$%^%%$ stupid. One in all in?? so no woman on earth every gets a chance of winning anything? not even the kitchen olympics these days!

and i for one hate shared toilets, urinals stink! i have a sensitive nose! not to mention i dont need to be walking past naked dicks - or their penises! yuk

[David]

TP, it never fails to amuse me how urinals are characterised in these discussions – you do understand that us men don't go around staring at each other's penises, right? (Unless you're into that sort of thing, in which case play on.) Even if you're standing right next to someone, it's entirely possible (and, some would say, preferable) not to stare at or even catch a glimpse of your neighbour's genitalia, and if you're merely walking past on the way to a cubicle, the chance of that happening is approximately 0%.

I should say that I'm not gung-ho in favour of unisex bathrooms – I find it a bit of a sideshow in the broader scheme of things, and understand why a lot of people don't like the idea. At the same time, I really don't think anyone would be traumatised if it became the norm. You'd get used to it pretty quickly, and might even start to appreciate the shorter queues!

[stui magpie]

^

I worked for years in a building that only had unisex toilets. They were each set up as a small home bathroom with a dunny and handbasin, total privacy, no urinals, no issues.

That principle would work fine for a restaurant or an office area of 50-60 people, after that it gets a bit space hungry

To scale it up isn't hard, it's just planning and how you use space. Urinals take up less space per user than cubicles, so if you were building a sporting arena you just create 1 room for cubicles and one for the urinal and design them so they'll take the same amount of people at any time.

Mind you, I've also seen women go into the mens toilet at Fishermans warf in San Fran when the womens was out of action, they just walked straight to the cubicle without a sideways glance at the urinals and the blokes didn't fuss about them either

Having said all that, I'll repeat the question I asked earlier as I really don't get all this gender stuff, if someone identifies as non binary and wants to play competitive sport, who do they play against? What competition do they join?

[Pies4shaw]

One of the other 439 or so competitions that will be available.

[David]

[stui magpie]

OK, second question. Why do we need all these Genders?

I get basic male/female transgender thing, but why can't people just behave the way they want without having to pin a label on it because they don't behave like a stereotypical male/female or follow a defined role?

[David]

I guess it depends what you’re asking. If it’s "why are there people who don’t identify as either male or female", that’s pretty easy to answer: not everybody feels comfortable with the gender binary and some just don’t feel like they identify in any way as male or female. And some, of course, are born literally neither male nor female (i.e. intersex people). I can’t say that I totally understand the desire to go by a "they" pronoun by choice, and do sometimes wonder if it’s just a trend, but I also don’t think it hurts anyone and am happy to respect such people’s preference.

There’s a good (relatively short) video on this question here:

https://youtu.be/36egVNVBqZU

If your question, on the other hand, is why are there supposedly 42 (or however many) genders, then all I can say is ... forget it Jake, it's Tumblr. I don’t take that stuff ("cloudgender", "demigender", etc.) very seriously, and suspect that, at this point, it’s more of a right-wing meme than anything that anyone much in the non-binary community actually believes in.

[stui magpie]

I don't get the problem with the gender binary.

People who think they're the wrong sex I get, people born with mixed bits I get. i don't get people born clearly biologically one sex or the other identifying as something else. Forget role playing, you can be an effeminate male or a masculine female without it being linked to sexual preference , so why do we need all these different boxes for people to put themselves into?

Sexuality should be irrelevant from gender or sex, you're attracted to what you're attracted to

[think positive]