Two sides of the same coin - Ovarit

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-08-11T22:10:41+00:00

I’m not sure a “fetish” is the same thing to men/teenage boys and women/teenage girls. The overt sexual content may be less important than being able to romanticize or idealize something that is sexual, but safe. Girls often feel threatened or nervous with heavily masculine males — or the idea of rough, overt sex — and tend to look for a soft teenybopper idol they can imagine kissing. I once read that the preteen girl’s popular preoccupation with horses was a kind of mental coping strategy. They’re big and powerful— but gentle.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-07-15T16:29:33+00:00

I wouldn’t be too sure that “small town” Americans who put up signs like this are interpreting the slogans the way we would. Most people aren’t particularly up on Gender Identity ideology. From their point of view, “Feminism is for Everybody” probably doesn’t mean “Women’s Rights Should Take a Back Seat to Other Causes esp Trans Rights To Make Feminism Intersectional” but “Yay Feminism Everybody Be In Favor Of It.” “Love is Love” is likely just support for gay marriage, not subtle reference to transbians or whatever you’re worried about. We could be overthinking it.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-03-20T15:10:21+00:00

Unfortunately, the common TRA habit of dividing sex into multiple categories which include things like “social sex,” “visual sex,” and “mental sex” — in order to show that sex is a complicated, varied thing which simply cannot be captured by the idea that it’s binary — means that just using the common definition no longer communicates a clear idea when dealing with transgender issues. If a word doesn’t mean the same thing to all the people who hear it, then it probably needs some modifiers.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-03-19T03:04:37+00:00

My guess is that “biological” as a modifier was only added in response to the obfuscation around the term “sex” created by conflicts involving transgender rights. If so, that would make Strangio technically correct — but so what? As you point out, the concept wasn’t new, just the need for the awkward wording.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-03-18T21:26:26+00:00

I would love to see a list of all the sexes, and which gametes they were organized to produce.

Aside from being wrong, turning sex into a spectrum introduces the very thing transgender rights proponents claim to hate: judgements regarding who is “more of a woman” or “less of a man.” If a normal XY male who takes estrogen is now somewhere closer to “woman,” then women who fail to produce ordinary levels of hormone are further away from being women. Same for secondary characteristics like large breasts. If they move a male across the spectrum, then on that same spectrum, a woman with small breasts is less of a woman than one with large ones.

And, of course, if what defines a “woman” is the internal sense of being a woman, then gender critical feminists aren’t real women, and transwomen are.

I like to think that people like Dansky are talking about gender instead of sex, because claiming there are many ways to be “masculine” or “feminine” is more reasonable — but that could be wishful thinking on my part.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-03-17T18:02:30+00:00

I post (very lightly) on both, and of course read both. They’re both worthwhile. To me, saidit seems to have a slight advantage in having a bit more diversity, which I value for the sake of different perspectives.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-03-11T12:27:23+00:00

Yes, it sounds more like they’re talking about a “celebrity” than a role model.

As for the strange attitude regarding debate, I recently came across an essay on that very topic called, appropriately, “No, the Woke Won’t Debate You, Here’s Why.” The author, James Lindsay,, gives his take on what he considers to be the extremely illiberal worldview and mindset of Critical Social Justice Theory — which includes Trans ideology. Advocates avoid debate not because they fear they will lose, but because a refusal to engage in any attempt to persuade someone who disagrees is baked right into the basic premises. He narrows these down to 3 main points.

1.) They think the system is rigged against them. “ Debate and conversation, especially when they rely upon reason, rationality, science, evidence, epistemic adequacy, and other Enlightenment-based tools of persuasion are the very thing they think produced injustice in the world in the first place. Those are not their methods and they reject them. Their methods are, instead, storytelling and counter-storytelling, appealing to emotions and subjectively interpreted lived experience, and problematizing arguments morally, on their moral terms.”

2.) A Metaphysics of Discourses: “ they would see conversation with people who uphold the dominant discourses as profoundly dangerous, not just for themselves, lest they be tempted and lose purity, but for others who will hear it and thus maintain the very power structures they think must be fundamentally dismantled.”

3.) No True Disagreement: “If you disagree, you either have false consciousness or the willful intention to oppress, and so your disagreement isn’t genuine.”

You can find it here: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres-why/

It’s a long essay, but worth reading, I think. I’ve heard that Lindsay misunderstands at least some of the postmodern theories and theorists he criticizes, but it could still be a good description of the pop philosophy that’s undergirding the puzzling way obvious problems like ‘men in women’s sports’ — and TWAW — are so often treated like sacrosanct, non debatable truths.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-03-11T01:03:12+00:00

I recently saw an argument for transwomen in women’s sports which claimed that the reason we had women’s sports wasn’t for fair competition, since it was “unfair” that better players beat players who were worse. The reason we had women’s sports was so young girls had role models they could look up to. And since there are trans kids who need role models, transwomen should be allowed in women’s sports.

This bizarre bit of rationalization struck me as the sort of thing a Mommy or Daddy might come up with — that competition is bad because feelings get hurt, but sports stars make nice posters to put on walls to admire. No, little Emily won’t be able to win competitions herself, but she can pretend the same way she might pretend to want to be a rock star. The important thing is that everyone’s self-esteem is supported.

Is this more “Mommy thinking” than “Daddy thinking?” I think so. Women are socialized to eschew competition in favor of learning social skills and “just go out and have fun.” Could be a factor contributing to the statistics.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-03-11T00:36:47+00:00

I’m familiar with Motte &Bailey and don’t quite think that’s what I’m trying to describe. It’s more like Compartmentalization, where the worldview that it’s all Discourses — and science and reason are tools of oppression — is only applied to a few topics. The rest of the time they seem to operate with the same epistemic foundations and moral assumptions as the rest of us, even if we disagree on the conclusions.

That’s not really a “worldview.” It’s limited to an area where it’s not so inconvenient.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-03-10T21:48:11+00:00

Welcome. I’m new, too.

I consider myself liberal, and find it hard to understand how Transgender Ideology is accepted as a liberal idea, similar to accepting gay rights, when it’s so obviously regressive. It entrenches the idea of “natural genders,” instead of promoting the idea that men and women have a range of personalities. It creates a situation where those with privilege can identify into oppressed political classes, and seems to thereby blame the oppressed for not simply identifying out of them. It denies basic biology in favor of individualized, internal, subjective rights of self-identification.

And, of course, there’s all that nonsense about substituting gender-based-attraction for sex- based-attraction.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-03-10T21:32:42+00:00

I’m pointing out that when they support these things they do so with reason and evidence, trying to persuade. You would expect to get into an argument/discussion with them if you disagree — particularly if it’s a lecture open to the public. Ask them to define a term. They usually don’t hesitate, if they’ve studied up at all. This is true regardless of whether they’re right or not, or whatever their end goal.

The point of the essay is that there are areas of social justice where that whole process has changed. “No debate” is different from, and more dangerous than, “You’re wrong, and here’s why.”

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-03-10T18:26:51+00:00

A very good essay on the extremist positions, with a lot of thought-provoking points. It explains a lot.

But I’ll take exception to the claim that the people who adhere to this worldview are unreachable in that it seems to me that the world view isn’t applied universally. When discussing climate science, the pandemic, or virtually any topic outside of the area of social justice which they consider “non debatable,” they know how and — more importantly— why to debate. And they get frustrated when someone shuts them out of a legitimate discussion using similar demonizing tactics.

In other words, they’re inconsistent. And that’s a good thing, because there’s common ground after all. Quite a bit of it, if we consider all the SuperSexuals who used to adhere to the No Debate ideology and changed their mind by reasoning themselves out of it. That wouldn’t have been possible if they were unreachable.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-02-24T03:28:05+00:00

The obvious solution is to make all Men’s Rooms “Open Gender” bathrooms, and keep the Women’s Room a single-sex safe space. All the women who insist they’re happy to share with TIMs should be more than willing to ensure that the Open Gender restroom is validating for them by using that room exclusively.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-02-22T23:33:13+00:00

People can easily change their “gender” if that means adopting some of the stereotypical behavior and attitudes culturally ascribed to the other sex. TRAs equate sex and gender so that they slide together; the Gender Critical separate them, so they don’t.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2021-02-18T17:48:54+00:00

No, sex is not “about reproduction.” That would imply that people who don’t have any children aren’t male or female. Look at your definition of “sex” again:

"either of the two categories (male and female) into which living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions"

“reproductive function” = whether a body has developed along the pathways for having either small gametes (male) or large gametes (female.)

Gay men are male. Lesbians are female.

The rest of it doesn’t effect this. Whether someone is interested in coupling with, playing games with, or going shopping with other members of their own sex classification doesn’t change either their sex classification or what it is they want to do.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2020-12-25T04:49:11+00:00

That’s an impressive amount of information. Thank you.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2020-12-24T21:15:29+00:00

In order to make the point that any group X is subject to violence due to prejudice and hatred, wouldn’t those compiling a list of victims need to make some effort to show that this is why they were specifically targeted? Whether the drag performer identified as transgender or not isn’t really important if they were attacked or murdered because someone believed they were transgender.

The relevant factor isn’t death or trans status, but a critical connection between the two: did the attacker specifically target someone who was transgender because they hate transgender people? Otherwise, the statistic should be used on some other list.

Once the obvious mistakes are weeded out, it seems to me biggest hurdle these “transgender murder victims” lists have to overcome is figuring out how to distinguish between someone killed because they were transgender — and someone killed because they were gay, lesbian, and/or dressed in the “wrong” clothes. Has there ever been any transwoman who was subject to physical violence or the victim of a homicide who would have been left alone if the perpetrator had been fooled into believing they were gay, or a transvesite, instead?

I do not know, but suspect that all the violence against people who identify as transgender is really violence against people who are Gender Non-Conforming. In which case, these lists can’t be used to make any point about a unique prejudice of “transphobia.”

In which case, they can’t be linked to Gender Critical beliefs, or the people who hold them.

Hypothetical_Concept · 2020-10-31T20:43:17+00:00

In your hypothetical world where a penis can be grown from stem cells, then a penis can be grown from stem cells. If you’ve stipulated that the penis is as functional as a liver or kidneys grown in a lab, and that those count as real (fair enough) — then it’s a real penis.

Hypothetical_Concept