all 22 comments

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

Sex still exists and can’t be changed.

It’s that simple. That’s the whole answer, it’s not complicated at all.

Looking like something doesn’t mean you are that something.

If most society thinks a man that passes is a woman, they don’t really think that. They just don’t care and will go along out of politesse as long as it doesn’t directly affect them.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

And I didn’t click on all of those links, but Leyna Bloom looks very much like a man lol

Eta- looked through your links. Out of all of those people, I think 3 pass.

[–]BasCaptain[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Could you maybe provide examples for "looking like something doesn’t mean you are that something"? I can understand better with examples. Thank you.

[–]MarkTwainiac 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Could you maybe provide examples for "looking like something doesn’t mean you are that something"?

How about you back up your position with arguments? What are the grounds on which you make the claim that looking like something does mean you are that something?

What makes a Potemkin village the same as a real village? How is a picture or other representation of something, someone or a category the same as the thing, the person or the category itself?

How is Crisco the same as lard, margarine the same as butter, infant formula the same as breastmilk?

How is something ersatz, simulated, faked the same as what's being imitated?

How is pretending to be something you are not the same as being authentically what you pretend to be?

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Last night I made silk and velvet mushrooms. Should I fry them up and eat them? They look like mushrooms.

My nephew dresses up as a kangaroo. The suit looks like a kangaroo. There’s a plush toy joey in the pouch. Is my nephew two kangaroos?

[–]bopomofodojo 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

Hoverflies look like bees. Therefore, they are bees.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex 13 insightful - 7 fun13 insightful - 6 fun14 insightful - 7 fun -  (2 children)

Dolls look like people. Barbie is alive.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 8 insightful - 6 fun8 insightful - 5 fun9 insightful - 6 fun -  (1 child)

She’s lived quite a life

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Busy woman indeed. Dunno where she finds the time

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Looking like a female when you are a male doesn’t make you a female

Looking like a male when you are a female doesn’t make you a male

[–]FlippyKingSadly this sub welcomes rape apologists and victim blaming. Bye! 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Why doesn't lying count? Why are their laws against fraud?

[–]BiologyIsReal 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A man being mistaken for a woman is still not a woman. A woman being mistaken for a man is stil not a man.

And OP, I know it's you, Tea or Coffe, FastandCurious, BigSecret, TheCoolestAlphabetic/etcetera.

[–]kwallio 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You seem to be really tied up on the "appearance = reality" thing. Appearances are not reality. I don't think your examples pass, anyway.

[–]worried19 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I'm not sure why QT is so hell bent on insisting that literal sex changes can take place.

There are people who can pass very well as the opposite sex, but it does not mean their sex has changed. I think it counts in terms of those people being able to live their everyday lives being treated as members of their target sex, for better or worse. But a passing trans man is still female and a passing trans woman is still male.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm not sure why QT is so hell bent on insisting that literal sex changes can take place

Honestly I will never understand why they cling to this when it’s just not true at all. Like proven not capable of being true. It’s so weird. And the leap to “if you don’t pretend this is true you’re a transphobe” just blows my mind

[–]adungitit 7 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I mean, it's also proven that a penis and a clit are different organs just by using your fucking eyes, and yet somehow we're getting medical professionals pretending like they're not. If you can buy that, you can buy anything.

[–]peakingatthemomentTranssexual (natal male), HSTS 9 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

I feel like passing counts for something, just not changing sex. If you pass, you can move through the world being seen and treated as the opposite sex, but your sex hasn’t actually changed.

[–]Omina_SentenziosaSarcastic Ovalord 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If I dressed up as a surgeon, and you needed to go under surgery, would you let me operate you?

[–]adungitit 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Most replies seem to just say "Because it's factually untrue" and while, yes, that is indeed the case, what's much more important is why these ideas are misogynistic and regressive.

First, we don't define a woman as anyone who "passes" as a woman, otherwise we'd just call butch or androgynous women men. We define them as female people. To define them according to how much they pass is to define women according to an artificial harmful patriarchal construct, rather than the reality of being female. Women do not become female through "passing"; they are born female and they remain female always (even skeletons can be sexed). Their female physiology doesn't go anywhere or change regardless of how they feel about it. A man might trick me into thinking he's a woman, but that still doesn't make him a woman any more than me thinking a butch woman is male makes her a man, and it certainly doesn't make him more of a woman than her (which plenty of QT people will actually argue).

Second, gendered socialisation is ingrained into people from their youngest most impressionable years, and this is impossible to avoid. The results of this are very apparent in the majority of trans people, especially since their ideology is not conductive to questioning gender roles on which they rely on for their identity. Transitioning does not erase this socialisation, hence why it's harmful to women to let men speak in the name of women and share their spaces (similar problems like with, say, male feminists). It is also harmful to tell girls who are saddled with very stressful freedom-limiting misogynistic and beauty expectations treating them like sex objects that they're trans if this cruel reality causes them fear and anxiety.

Third, trans people are extremely invested in and euphoric over performing a certain gender role, to the point of suicidal ideation if they can't do it. Plenty of them have fetishistic reasons for this revolving around emasculation and female inferiority. This has nothing in common with women who are women because they're female, nor men who are male because they're male. Women or men did not choose their sex, just as they didn't choose their shoe size or their eye colour. As such, even when male trans people pass and experience patriarchy for themselves, they tend to view it through euphoric "Imma real gurl now!" lens (which is why they often hold sexual harassment in fond memory as validating). Trans people in general tend to promote regressive ideologies for validation (things such as dismantling gendered spaces, gaslighting about gendered issues, brainsex theories, defining gender by gender stereotypes), and women are pushed into accepting this in order to validate them, both because women's rights always have to take second place due to what an integral ever-present facet of society their oppression is, and because women are socialised to be endlessly accommodating.

[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm an American, but I can pass for a Canadian. However, I don't think anyone thinks of me or treats me as a Canadian when they know I am American. I'm able to maybe better avoid tourist traps or more easily converse with actual Canadians, but that's probably the extent of 'counting'. The Canadian government doesn't seem impressed at my abilities enough yet to let me live there or use their public benefits, assumedly since I'm still an American in their eyes.

[–]MarkJefferson 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah, clothing, makeup, and head hair length is used to a great effect by transwomen to allow them to pass because of how gendered society is. Just like head/facial/body hair and bodybuilding is used by transmen for the same reason. It never entirely works, but even if it did, if they were shaved and naked, there is usually no doubt of their true sex.

The point is moot though, because like others here have said, passing as something doesn't mean you are that something. I mean, you can remodel the exterior of a nuclear plant to look like a coal plant and fool the average layperson, but you'd better not operate it like one lest you want a meltdown.

[–]questioningtw 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I do think that Blaire White, Laverine Cox, Natalie Wyn, Lyn Conway; as well as Buck Angel and Kalvin Gararrah live their lives as women and men. Howeever, they are all male and female. It is impossible to change sex; and literally the only reason they are able to live as women and men is medicine.