Triggering

[Pale Rider]

[cont'd]

I've not really explained myself well here.

You could reach for poetry, like fozy tornip did a few posts before:

Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ’t!

And yet, without some unlikely Steppenwolfian late life re-birth some of us are condemned to be onlookers, like Larkin:

I see a girl dragged by the wrists
Across a dazzling field of snow…

Damn all explanatory rhymes!
To be that girl! - but that's impossible;
For me the task's to learn the many times
When I must stoop, and throw a shovelful:
I must repeat until I live the fat
That everything's remade
With shovel and spade;
That each dull day and each despairing act

Builds up the crag from which the spirit leaps
- The beast most innocent
That is so fabulous it never sleeps;
If I can keep against all argument
Such image of a snow-white unicorn,
That as I pray it may for sanctuary
Descent at last to me,
And put into my hand its golden horn.

If you don't feel you fit into the norms, join the club. I don't say that to disparage. But despite suggestions that biology

is a choice

it is much easier to see everything in life as a binary choice, than to admit there might be shades of grey, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor

it isn't, and pretending otherwise isn't helpful. There's genuinely intersex, and there's… the Pips Bunce/'girl mode' comedian model, neither of which I'm sympathetic to because those blokes aren't respecters of reasonable boundaries. If that makes me an honorary Victorian, so be it.



If some wish to not-especially-seriously call themselves non-binary as a FUCK YOU to the gender ideologists, I might be able to get behind that. Just accept your chromosomes like the rest of us apes.

[Pale Rider]

[still cont'd]

injecting intellectual rigour

I'm happy to see theclaud questioning AuroraSaab's genderless brave new world. However, a moral panic is "a widespread feeling of fear, often an irrational one…" (I haven't written Wikipedia off just because they also say "Trans women have a male sex assignment at birth".) From her earlier postings on the subject, I'm pretty sure tc regards the concern as heavily in the irrational camp. Put me down as a strong disagree. A deep dive into Terf central, aka the Mumsnet naughty corner, will show it to be one of the more rational corners of the internet.

I'm not trying to enlist you in a culture war. Too often this is framed as a trans rights issue when it's a women's rights issue. It only ends up being about toilets and sport because they are things people can relate to. We've all used public loos or watched the Olympics. Not many of us will end up in prison or in domestic violence refuges.

Good reply.

Newfhouse has also been a credit to the discussion, but he lost me with this:

while you are narrowly and technically correct [that the immutability of sex is a matter of scientific fact] - and I have never disputed it - there still needs to be an accommodation of feelings. I accept that doing so will cause conflict and that this needs management and mitigation, but the alternative will cause pain too.

Awaiting FishFright to step in again.

You do write some rubbish sometimes.

You do write some rubbish sometimes.

[Pale Rider]

Being unmoderated – uncensored* – is the most interesting thing about the place.

Odd that I should find myself rooting for anarchy, or so it would seem. Then again I once had a board called Anarchia, where you could edit other people's posts.

The {very dusty} record will show that I like civilisation.


Amos mods

CycleChat is reasonably civilised, and even though the politics board lacks moderators, there are bound to be certain expectations carried over from the mothership.

I actually think this was a good idea, and not just because I'm bored on the forum front. It's smart. (When it comes to the business of running a forum, CC's owner is smarter than I ever was.) It's a shame, too, but as someone who likes to experiment, I can appreciate it. That said, Shaun has never been willing to put in the work of decent moderation for the money he must be making, and this place is further proof.


* I just noticed they have a profanity filter. And like most places, they do their best to censor each other.

[Pale Rider]

We return to the match at centre court. I haven't watched much tennis since Borg v Mac(!) though, and need help with the terminology. Would this be a lob?

We do accommodate beliefs about gender identity though. We accommodate it in law by allowing people to change their passport for example, and gender reassignment is a protected characteristic in the Equality Act.

Most of the time your sex doesn't matter, but there are times when it does. In those situations I think harm is caused to women and girls when gender identity is allowed to trump material sex.

The reason women's right to single sex spaces, and women's rights in general, have to be enshrined in law is because without legal status none of those things would have come to pass in the first place. Those rights were not given freely; they were fought for. And without legal status being maintained today, these rights will be lost.

It does matter how people are treated, but it sounds like it's women who are the only ones being asked to make significant concessions.

And back across the net:

We do accommodate beliefs about gender identity though. We accommodate it in law by allowing people to change their passport for example, and gender reassignment is a protected characteristic in the Equality Act.

Can I ask frankly - would you roll those two protections back?

I'll stop with the tennis references now.

What things in this thread are 'made up'?

Paging FishFright.

Where to even start?

Indeed. That one shouldn't be difficult.





collector's item

[Pale Rider]

Is there any evidence that, in communal female changing rooms, trans women who haven’t had surgery stroll about naked showing their penises to all and sundry?

There's a rather well known recent example,

unless you're in the walled garden of the Guardian. More interesting to me is the constant demand for evidence. Yes, evidence is great, and as a civilised people we should generally want that when formulating guidelines and laws. But is it really so outrageous to wish to maintain as a default some exclusively female and

it's offensive to describe all transwomen as somehow male bodied

male bodied

spaces? Does this pain I read so much about warrant putting so very many of us on permanent edge? (I won't be providing citations for "so very many".)

The only personal example I can offer is, alas, from the toilets. As a fan of Tibits I would occasionally brave the sharks & seahorses {wrong seahorse} and cross the Thames to their South Bank branch, which unlike their restaurant in Mayfair had a single space for voiding.


Did you watch Caligula last night?

It offered solidly sound-proof cubicles, which was doubtless handy for those times the sticky toffee pudding upstairs triggered a shag reflex from the sugar rush. But emerging to share sinks and horror of horrors a mirror

Mirrors can be very triggering

with those whose genitals must increasingly be named was never an entirely comfortable affair, despite relentless pressure by the more-progressive-than-thou.



There's more than one kind of relief, people.

. . .

@theclaud, who is your current avatar?

Mieke Bal, looking like an oil painting.

Not quite, image search.

Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, Preposterous History (1999) investigates how twentieth-century artists set up a dialogue with old-master art.

You had me at Preposterous History.

. . .

FFS

Take a deep breath. I've had to take a number of them, including one over the seating chart with George Bush at the table with the gender critical party. As for staying on topic, just as LGB is having trouble separating from the T, non-binary is stuck with it too. I think we're going to have to accept this and move on.

Just a final comment from me on the "definition of sex" issue….

<sigh> Mostly been there, done that. Is it any wonder AuroraSaab has so many set-pieces queued up?

I could relate to some of what you've written here and in previous posts, but I'm trying to keep my eyes open, rather than dreamily half closed on this.

Isn’t the more important argument about the extent of the reasonable accommodations?

Females accommodating males has always been important. The challenge was to find a new way.

[Pale Rider]

The point is that sex is binary and the existence of people with disorders of sexual development, which are rare, do not prove that sex is a spectrum. Similarly, the fact that children are very occasionally born with only one leg does not mean we are not a race of bi peds.

My perspective is that it's a human trait - I would say weakness - to want to fit everything into neat categories. But the universe ain't like that

The nesting instinct is strong.

Please read more carefully, says swansonj, else I may be forced to repeat myself. We've all been there.

That kingdom phylum class order family genus species thing has always been a pain in the ass, amiright? (I had the taxonomic system drilled into my head in 7th grade. That it's changed since Linnaeus, slightly before my time, could be perceived as a gotcha.) Transgender ideology is resolutely anti-science. This doesn't help the cause.

Also,

I think the world is a material place and things actually fall into meaningful categories pretty easily. The nature of a category is that it includes some things and excludes others. You could argue whether a tomato is a vegetable I suppose, but I think the male/female divide is easier to discern.

You could argue that it's not helpful to put things in categories, but in the case of the sex binary it's very important to acknowledge that the category of female is different to the category of male because women are oppressed on the basis of being in the female category. Changing the meaning of words won't change that. Female oppression won't stop simply because we include men in the female sex category. In fact, including them is just further oppression.

what she said.

Is the average trans woman more or less oppressed than the average female woman (to use an inelegant phrase)?

Even in the oppression olympics men will contrive to win.

Meanwhile, it doesn't seem to cross your mind that most women prisoners, and a substantial proportion of men, shouldn't be inside at all.

There are a lot more men and women who should be in prison but aren't.

Or shot dead in their boots, like the good old days.

[Humbug]

It's diffrent fer rabs.

[Ernestine]

Do you mean in terms of toilet preferences, female dominant tendencies or incarceration, Humbug?

The art of the question...

qigong chimp -
Has the rise (if there is one) in identity politics (if such it is) anything to do with our broader disempowerment under late capitalism?

I disagree with Aurora Saab to the extent that it is probably not 'femaleness' that results in oppression, but rather the necessary actions in and implications of bearing children.

And, how did this happen?

First Known Use of member
14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

History and Etymology for member
Middle English membre, from Anglo-French, from Latin membrum; akin to Goth mimz flesh, Greek mēros thigh

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/member

[Andrew Marvell]

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
       But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
       Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

[Pale Rider]

Looks like I'm not the only one who fell into that link and landed at syllogism. Somebody's going to end up pregnant and it ain't Andrew.