Yes, the entire reason for the debate is that we have (traditional and/or legal) rules like “if X then Y”, and people argue that “Z is/isn’t X” because they want to automatically win the debate about whether “if Z then Y”.
This can make a lot of sense strategically. If there are many different rules for “X”, it is much less work to get excluded from the definition of “X” once, than to try getting an exception from each of those rules individually.
However, a rational/asperger ;) society would probably address the situation of trans women like this:
make a list of all rules that apply differently to men and women
for each such rule, explain the reason why
in case the reason does not make sense (anymore), consider abolishing the rule instead
for each rule that makes sense, figure out whether the reason applies to trans women
rewrite each rule separately, to make it clear how it applies to trans people
Here is a quick attempt to make the list, I probably forgot many important things:
how to be addressed (pronoun, name)
separate bathrooms
separate sports
separate prisons
subject to military conscription?
subject to affirmative action?
My quick attempt to solve these issues, please don’t get mad if you disagree...
With regards to identity, we currently have two kinds of norms. You have a legal name, which is one, and can be changed, but the change is somewhat costly (you need to do some paperwork, and literally pay some money). This is what everyone should use to address you, unless they are a personal friend and can follow the informal norms. You can also have one or more nicknames, which are only used by your friends; no one else cares.
I would apply the same rules for the gender. If you informally want your friends to use a different pronoun, that’s between you and your friends; you have no right to get mad if your teacher uses the pronoun that matches your papers. However, if you make it official and get your papers updated, then the teacher is supposed to use the updated name and pronoun, and you have a right to complain if they don’t. When updating your papers, you get to choose from three possible genders (male, female, neutral/other), and each of them has a standard assigned pronoun (i.e. not everyone making up their own pronouns).
With bathrooms and prisons, to put it bluntly, I think the existing system was designed to minimize sexual assault, especially the kind where people can get pregnant as a consequence. (With high-school bathrooms, also to minimize consensual sex between minors, especially the kind etc.) Here we need to “shut up and multiply”, to figure out which policy would ultimately lead to less harm. (In a sufficiently non-rapist settings, perhaps we could abandon the concept of gendered bathrooms and prisons completely? But before we hurry to do that, consider that there may be high variance in safety, so you should not rely only on your personal experience.)
With sports… it seems that testosterone provides a huge advantage. (Maybe not in all sports?) If we abandoned gendered leagues completely, the championships might end up full of men. It seems fair to give women a chance. (Ignoring the concept of fairness; it seems like a good idea to also encourage girls to do sports.) Unfortunately, from the perspective of testosterone, trans women seem to be a category of their own here; fit neither in the men’s nor in the women’s league. (Even a hypothetical separate league for trans women probably wouldn’t make sense, because it would be like: start taking hormones—ruin your career.)
I do not have a good answer here, and the best attempt is to make the “men’s” leagues officially open for everyone (including, hypothetically, cis women) so that trans people can participate there without making a statement about their gender; and have a separate league for cis women (with possible participation of trans women under strict criteria, something like taking hormones for at least 10 years). Note that, perhaps counter-intuitively to some people, if you do this well, the trans-women champions should be rare (proportionally to their base rate in the population). Otherwise, trans-ness provides an advantage, which is not what the sport (or the women’s league) is supposed to be about.
Conscription? Either abolish completely; or if your army allows women to serve, maybe make a compromise rule that trans women can be conscripted, but are afterwards treated as female soldiers, if male and female soldiers are treated differently.
Affirmative action? Without taking a side here, I just note that the entire concept is politically sensitive, so of course if someone objects to affirmative action in general, they would also object to affirmative action for trans women; obviously. So, one possible outcome is to abolish it. Now, if we assume that affirmative action makes sense for cis women, e.g. because we want to overcome the prejudice that “girls are bad at math” (or, insert your own), the question is whether the same prejudice also applies to trans women.
Honestly, I could argue for both sides here. It depends on how exactly you model the impact of prejudice on career. Is it more important that e.g. girls are culturally discouraged from studying math at school, or that the adult women may have a problem getting hired for a position that requires math skills because their sexist colleagues would assume they are not sufficiently competent? Because, arguably, only the latter is relevant for trans women (and only if they are passing). Also, I assume that many people’s impression would depend on the outcome of such policy… to give an example, imagine that your company has 100 employees, all men, so the HR is told to hire 10 women. If you hire 9 cis women and 1 trans woman, this seems like the policy working as intended. But if you hire 10 trans women and 0 cis women, well, politically savvy people would probably be wary of sounding like TERFs, but intuitively this is not the policy working as intended.
...the specific answers are less important here than the general idea of “let’s answer each question separately” (because different questions may have different answers).
...the specific answers are less important here than the general idea of “let’s answer each question separately” (because different questions may have different answers).
We may disagree on some of the answers but I emphatically concur with your approach.
the specific answers are less important here than the general idea of “let’s answer each question separately” (because different questions may have different answers).
Then your answer is unacceptable in the current political climate.
I’d even suggest that that’s because you’re modelling people incorrectly. They want to be called women because they want to be treated as women in all ways regardless of whether there’s some reason behind why women are treated that way. Your suggestion to look at reasons, therefore, is inherently unacceptable.
Here is a quick attempt to make the list, I probably forgot many important things:
Is it bigoted to not treat one like a cis woman for the purpose of dating.
Then your answer is unacceptable in the current political climate.
I agree. I think it is not even possible to provide a politically acceptable and logically consistent answer. A part of what makes an answer politically acceptable is ignoring all the logical inconsistencies involved. Which is why I called my perspective “rational/asperger”; and it is probably more of the latter.
I do not want to speak for trans women, but yes it seems to me that many of them would like to have the entire package of “woman’s experience”. (At least, I do not remember seeing evidence to the contrary.) Which is by the way one of those inconsistencies—a few years ago, before trans issues appeared on the radar, wasn’t the official dogma that “woman’s experience” is strictly worse than “man’s experience”? Suddenly, there is something desirable about it, and it is a hate crime to deny it to people. Interesting.
However, it makes sense from my perspective, because I think that both “woman’s experience” and “man’s experience” have their advantages and disadvantages, so wanting to trade one for the other is logically coherent, and it’s not my job to police other people’s preferences.
That said, there is a difference between wanting something and actually getting it. Things happen for a reason; in this specific case, “woman’s experience” is shaped by heterosexual men’s desires, women’s intrasexual competition, and cultural norms. You can police the cultural norms, but good luck with the rest.
Is it bigoted to not treat one like a cis woman for the purpose of dating.
What I think will happen to dating: Some people will be okay dating trans women, some people will not. The proper way socially skilled people navigate the situation “I really don’t want to date X, but it is socially unacceptable to say so” is to publicly declare that you are okay with dating anyone, and then reject any X privately for unspecified or made up reasons (or simply ignore them, if you are using an online dating service). The new equilibrium will depend on how many people have which preference, which I am not even trying to predict, because I do not think I have enough reliable data.
(But it may be complicated for people on autistic spectrum who happen to have a preference not to date trans people, and do not realize that they do not have to be publicly honest about their preferences. Social networks will eat them alive.)
Personally, I don’t need anyone to affirmative-action me, and have no interest in participating in any kind of sport[1]. I would appreciate it if people avoid sweeping statements about what “they” want.
When it comes to dating, I think it is perfectly legitimate for everyone to be attracted to whomever they want. And also have preferences about having children which are obviously relevant. I do harbor some doubt as to whether an unbigoted society would contain many heterosexual men that (i) don’t want children and (ii) disprefer dating a transgender woman even if she looks externally indistinguishable from a cisgender woman. I am not confident there, but it seems odd to have such a strong innate preference purely about the history of your lover’s body.
That said, if someone doesn’t want to date me, it is 100% their prerogative regardless of the reason, and I amdefinitively extremely uninterested in dating someone who is kept there by guilt or fear of judgment (or anything else other than genuine attraction).
Thank you; it seems like for all practical purposes we agree.
People who do sports professionally are a small minority… but a very visible one. Their problems will be discussed in newspapers, no matter how unrepresentative they may be.
I do harbor some doubt as to whether an unbigoted society would contain many heterosexual men that (i) don’t want children and (ii) disprefer dating a transgender woman even if she looks externally indistinguishable from a cisgender woman. I am not confident there, but it seems odd to have such a strong innate preference purely about the history of your lover’s body.
I apologize if any of this reply is overly gratuitous but that is difficult to avoid completely given the subject matter. I am a heterosexual male and a central component of my sexual attraction towards females is just the mechanics of penis and vagina sex (I have no interest in anal sex). I am aware that vaginoplasty exists but virtually every description I’ve encountered sounds horrific and the state of the technology is severely missing key features (natural lubrication and “stretch & bounce” for lack of a better term).
While genitals are a necessary and non-negotiable characteristic, there are many other factors that I am attracted to in females, such as voice and smell. But assuming arguendo that medical technology advances so far that physical characteristics for transwomen are absolutely indistinguishable in every way to females — including voice and smell and including every aspect of the vagina — then yes I admit I would have fewer reasons to exclusively prefer females.
There are some other very interesting dynamics to explore in such a hypothetical (e.g. how does puberty development factor in? How do the dynamics in the sexual marketplace around ‘status’ shift? etc.) but that would depend on the assumption contours we’re using.
First, your use of the word “females” in this context is offensive (contrast with e.g. “cisfemales” or “genetic females” or “natural females”). Please refrain from such.
Second, I am not convinced by your arguments (and you are obviously not speaking from experience).
Transvaginas produce some lubrication, but much less than median cisvaginas, yes. On the other hand hand, plenty of ciswomen also have issues with lubrication. Many ciswomen struggle with other problems in that area as well: for example, I personally know several who suffer from intense pain during PIV. If you prioritize vagina “quality” in cis lovers as well, then your preference might be objective, but otherwise the focus on transwomen might be unwarranted.
Voice is readily modifiable by training and/or surgery. It is a fact that transwomen can pass vocally.
Smell is affected by HRT (AFAICT also to the point of passing, but I know of no attempts to objectively test this in particular).
That said, I am not trying to convince you or anything. You do you, and good luck with that. I already have plenty of heterosexual males interested in me.
I appear to have angered and/or offended you and I apologize for that. I don’t believe my post had much of an argument, it was more an attempt to explain a position you expressed curiosity about. I apologize for misinterpreting anything.
I used “females” to minimize meaning ambiguity, and I don’t understand why the word is offensive, especially considering you use “males” in your last sentence. I generally avoid using the prefix “cis” because its definition requires someone to have the same “gender identity” as their sex and what I wrote was much broader than just that group. “Females” in contrast encompasses all members of the female sex, regardless of their gender identity (e.g. pre-op transmen in this context) or whether they even have an identity (e.g. some non-binary, agender, or otherwise). I haven’t encountered the terms “genetic females” or “natural females” before but I would have assumed those would be much more offensive because of what they imply about the converse (e.g. “unnatural”). I’m not clear on the etiquette of language here, but my overall aim was precision and I apologize for inadvertently causing you offense.
And yes, I understand that many “natural vagina-havers” (for lack of a better term, apologies if this is offensive) can have many issues with sexual intercourse, including some of the same factors I mentioned above. Just because vaginas are a necessary requirement for my attraction doesn’t mean it’s a sufficient one, and there are many other factors to consider within that realm to ensure sexual compatibility.
I understand that voice is modifiable with training to an extent. I’ve personally never met a transwoman that passed vocally but either way I assumed arguendo that it’s at least theoretically possible with further advances in technology. Regarding smells, I admit I have limited experience with this and mostly relied on what a bisexual friend of mine who slept with several transwomen told me.
I’m glad you have people interested in you, but I’m not sure how you interpreted anything I said to mean otherwise?
Your usage of the word “females” felt offensive to me because it implied that transwomen are unambiguously not females. It seems that you think that “male/female” should refer strictly to genetics while “man/woman” should refer to gender identity, but I don’t think this a great convention: in everyday use, “woman” and “female” are often used interchangeably.
I grant that “cisfemales” would not be completely accurate in principle, although IMO the meaning would be clear enough in practice.
You are right that in broader society, “natural/artificial” has positive/negative connotations, but I hope that here, where transhumanism is popular, and conflating “natural” with “good” is viewed as a fallacy, this is not the case.
As to “genetic” I’m not sure why you think it would be offensive? You grouped it with “natural” but the connotations are completely different (AFAICT the word doesn’t have much connotation, just denotation).
As an aside, I think that the language in this domain is suffering from overzealous policing by social justice fundamentalists. While everyday words such as “woman/man” or “female/man” should IMO be absolutely trans-inclsuive[1], there should also be room for convenient terminology about bodily sex characteristics.
It seems that you think that “male/female” should refer strictly to genetics while “man/woman” should refer to gender identity, but I don’t think this a great convention: in everyday use, “woman” and “female” are often used interchangeably.
I am aiming to do the best I can in communicating with precision and I apologize for any missteps on my part. It’s certainly true that “woman” and “female” are often used interchangeably but I’ve seen this become the source of significant confusion and ambiguity. You are correct about how I use the two terms (although it’s more about social role than identity); that is the convention I’ve eventually settled upon and so far it has worked well in minimizing ambiguity.
My working assumption about the word “female” is that it is much more heavily grounded within the context of reproductive capacity and the associated secondary characteristics (e.g. a livestock breeder ordering “females” from a supplier is not ambiguous in that context) which is why I used it.
Given your greater familiarity with this space I trust your judgment that “natural females” would not be negatively received here, but I’m doubtful this would be the case outside of LW and it’s difficult to keep a vocabulary index updated across so many places. I also imagine that transmen and non-binary individuals would not appreciate being called “female”, but they’d appreciate “natural female” even less. With regards to “genetic females” my question would be “as opposed to what?” so my (weak) objection is mostly based on its ambiguity to me. I wouldn’t be confident that either terms would carry the meaning I intend.
Either way, I was not privy to either of these alternate phrases before, so I hope it’s established that my use of “females” was not intended to be malicious. Language is imperfect and I’m trying to do the best I can in nevertheless communicating clearly.
My working assumption about the word “female” is that it is much more heavily grounded within the context of reproductive capacity and the associated secondary characteristics (e.g. a livestock breeder ordering “females” from a supplier is not ambiguous in that context) which is why I used it.
Medically transitioning transgender people have both reproductive capacity and secondary characteristics different from cisgender people of the same genetic sex. Ofc transgender women don’t have a functional female reproductive system (yet), but they often also don’t have a functional male reproductive system. Moreover, some cisgender women lack a functional female reproductive system as well. In principle, a reproduction-oriented classification can be useful, but it would require a 3rd category (sterile people), and is in any case largely unrelated to sexual attraction. So neither reproductive capacity nor secondary characteristics unambiguously point at the group you were referring to.
With regards to “genetic females” my question would be “as opposed to what?” so my (weak) objection is mostly based on its ambiguity to me.
As opposed to transwomen obviously (and if you insist that “female” should have a physiological connotation, then medically transitioning transwomen; but personally I don’t endorse this usage).
I concede that “females” is not 100% accurate in the context I was discussing but it felt like the least worst option. “Natural vagina haver” would be the most accurate label for the demographic I had in mind but it sounds distasteful. I’m open to ideas.
Yes, the entire reason for the debate is that we have (traditional and/or legal) rules like “if X then Y”, and people argue that “Z is/isn’t X” because they want to automatically win the debate about whether “if Z then Y”.
This can make a lot of sense strategically. If there are many different rules for “X”, it is much less work to get excluded from the definition of “X” once, than to try getting an exception from each of those rules individually.
However, a rational/asperger ;) society would probably address the situation of trans women like this:
make a list of all rules that apply differently to men and women
for each such rule, explain the reason why
in case the reason does not make sense (anymore), consider abolishing the rule instead
for each rule that makes sense, figure out whether the reason applies to trans women
rewrite each rule separately, to make it clear how it applies to trans people
Here is a quick attempt to make the list, I probably forgot many important things:
how to be addressed (pronoun, name)
separate bathrooms
separate sports
separate prisons
subject to military conscription?
subject to affirmative action?
My quick attempt to solve these issues, please don’t get mad if you disagree...
With regards to identity, we currently have two kinds of norms. You have a legal name, which is one, and can be changed, but the change is somewhat costly (you need to do some paperwork, and literally pay some money). This is what everyone should use to address you, unless they are a personal friend and can follow the informal norms. You can also have one or more nicknames, which are only used by your friends; no one else cares.
I would apply the same rules for the gender. If you informally want your friends to use a different pronoun, that’s between you and your friends; you have no right to get mad if your teacher uses the pronoun that matches your papers. However, if you make it official and get your papers updated, then the teacher is supposed to use the updated name and pronoun, and you have a right to complain if they don’t. When updating your papers, you get to choose from three possible genders (male, female, neutral/other), and each of them has a standard assigned pronoun (i.e. not everyone making up their own pronouns).
With bathrooms and prisons, to put it bluntly, I think the existing system was designed to minimize sexual assault, especially the kind where people can get pregnant as a consequence. (With high-school bathrooms, also to minimize consensual sex between minors, especially the kind etc.) Here we need to “shut up and multiply”, to figure out which policy would ultimately lead to less harm. (In a sufficiently non-rapist settings, perhaps we could abandon the concept of gendered bathrooms and prisons completely? But before we hurry to do that, consider that there may be high variance in safety, so you should not rely only on your personal experience.)
With sports… it seems that testosterone provides a huge advantage. (Maybe not in all sports?) If we abandoned gendered leagues completely, the championships might end up full of men. It seems fair to give women a chance. (Ignoring the concept of fairness; it seems like a good idea to also encourage girls to do sports.) Unfortunately, from the perspective of testosterone, trans women seem to be a category of their own here; fit neither in the men’s nor in the women’s league. (Even a hypothetical separate league for trans women probably wouldn’t make sense, because it would be like: start taking hormones—ruin your career.)
I do not have a good answer here, and the best attempt is to make the “men’s” leagues officially open for everyone (including, hypothetically, cis women) so that trans people can participate there without making a statement about their gender; and have a separate league for cis women (with possible participation of trans women under strict criteria, something like taking hormones for at least 10 years). Note that, perhaps counter-intuitively to some people, if you do this well, the trans-women champions should be rare (proportionally to their base rate in the population). Otherwise, trans-ness provides an advantage, which is not what the sport (or the women’s league) is supposed to be about.
Conscription? Either abolish completely; or if your army allows women to serve, maybe make a compromise rule that trans women can be conscripted, but are afterwards treated as female soldiers, if male and female soldiers are treated differently.
Affirmative action? Without taking a side here, I just note that the entire concept is politically sensitive, so of course if someone objects to affirmative action in general, they would also object to affirmative action for trans women; obviously. So, one possible outcome is to abolish it. Now, if we assume that affirmative action makes sense for cis women, e.g. because we want to overcome the prejudice that “girls are bad at math” (or, insert your own), the question is whether the same prejudice also applies to trans women.
Honestly, I could argue for both sides here. It depends on how exactly you model the impact of prejudice on career. Is it more important that e.g. girls are culturally discouraged from studying math at school, or that the adult women may have a problem getting hired for a position that requires math skills because their sexist colleagues would assume they are not sufficiently competent? Because, arguably, only the latter is relevant for trans women (and only if they are passing). Also, I assume that many people’s impression would depend on the outcome of such policy… to give an example, imagine that your company has 100 employees, all men, so the HR is told to hire 10 women. If you hire 9 cis women and 1 trans woman, this seems like the policy working as intended. But if you hire 10 trans women and 0 cis women, well, politically savvy people would probably be wary of sounding like TERFs, but intuitively this is not the policy working as intended.
...the specific answers are less important here than the general idea of “let’s answer each question separately” (because different questions may have different answers).
We may disagree on some of the answers but I emphatically concur with your approach.
Then your answer is unacceptable in the current political climate.
I’d even suggest that that’s because you’re modelling people incorrectly. They want to be called women because they want to be treated as women in all ways regardless of whether there’s some reason behind why women are treated that way. Your suggestion to look at reasons, therefore, is inherently unacceptable.
Is it bigoted to not treat one like a cis woman for the purpose of dating.
I agree. I think it is not even possible to provide a politically acceptable and logically consistent answer. A part of what makes an answer politically acceptable is ignoring all the logical inconsistencies involved. Which is why I called my perspective “rational/asperger”; and it is probably more of the latter.
I do not want to speak for trans women, but yes it seems to me that many of them would like to have the entire package of “woman’s experience”. (At least, I do not remember seeing evidence to the contrary.) Which is by the way one of those inconsistencies—a few years ago, before trans issues appeared on the radar, wasn’t the official dogma that “woman’s experience” is strictly worse than “man’s experience”? Suddenly, there is something desirable about it, and it is a hate crime to deny it to people. Interesting.
However, it makes sense from my perspective, because I think that both “woman’s experience” and “man’s experience” have their advantages and disadvantages, so wanting to trade one for the other is logically coherent, and it’s not my job to police other people’s preferences.
That said, there is a difference between wanting something and actually getting it. Things happen for a reason; in this specific case, “woman’s experience” is shaped by heterosexual men’s desires, women’s intrasexual competition, and cultural norms. You can police the cultural norms, but good luck with the rest.
What I think will happen to dating: Some people will be okay dating trans women, some people will not. The proper way socially skilled people navigate the situation “I really don’t want to date X, but it is socially unacceptable to say so” is to publicly declare that you are okay with dating anyone, and then reject any X privately for unspecified or made up reasons (or simply ignore them, if you are using an online dating service). The new equilibrium will depend on how many people have which preference, which I am not even trying to predict, because I do not think I have enough reliable data.
(But it may be complicated for people on autistic spectrum who happen to have a preference not to date trans people, and do not realize that they do not have to be publicly honest about their preferences. Social networks will eat them alive.)
Personally, I don’t need anyone to affirmative-action me, and have no interest in participating in any kind of sport[1]. I would appreciate it if people avoid sweeping statements about what “they” want.
When it comes to dating, I think it is perfectly legitimate for everyone to be attracted to whomever they want. And also have preferences about having children which are obviously relevant. I do harbor some doubt as to whether an unbigoted society would contain many heterosexual men that (i) don’t want children and (ii) disprefer dating a transgender woman even if she looks externally indistinguishable from a cisgender woman. I am not confident there, but it seems odd to have such a strong innate preference purely about the history of your lover’s body.
That said, if someone doesn’t want to date me, it is 100% their prerogative regardless of the reason, and I am definitively extremely uninterested in dating someone who is kept there by guilt or fear of judgment (or anything else other than genuine attraction).
I also agree that the sports thing is complicated, and allowing any trans woman to participate in women’s leagues is problematic.
Thank you; it seems like for all practical purposes we agree.
People who do sports professionally are a small minority… but a very visible one. Their problems will be discussed in newspapers, no matter how unrepresentative they may be.
I apologize if any of this reply is overly gratuitous but that is difficult to avoid completely given the subject matter. I am a heterosexual male and a central component of my sexual attraction towards females is just the mechanics of penis and vagina sex (I have no interest in anal sex). I am aware that vaginoplasty exists but virtually every description I’ve encountered sounds horrific and the state of the technology is severely missing key features (natural lubrication and “stretch & bounce” for lack of a better term).
While genitals are a necessary and non-negotiable characteristic, there are many other factors that I am attracted to in females, such as voice and smell. But assuming arguendo that medical technology advances so far that physical characteristics for transwomen are absolutely indistinguishable in every way to females — including voice and smell and including every aspect of the vagina — then yes I admit I would have fewer reasons to exclusively prefer females.
There are some other very interesting dynamics to explore in such a hypothetical (e.g. how does puberty development factor in? How do the dynamics in the sexual marketplace around ‘status’ shift? etc.) but that would depend on the assumption contours we’re using.
First, your use of the word “females” in this context is offensive (contrast with e.g. “cisfemales” or “genetic females” or “natural females”). Please refrain from such.
Second, I am not convinced by your arguments (and you are obviously not speaking from experience).
Transvaginas produce some lubrication, but much less than median cisvaginas, yes. On the other hand hand, plenty of ciswomen also have issues with lubrication. Many ciswomen struggle with other problems in that area as well: for example, I personally know several who suffer from intense pain during PIV. If you prioritize vagina “quality” in cis lovers as well, then your preference might be objective, but otherwise the focus on transwomen might be unwarranted.
Voice is readily modifiable by training and/or surgery. It is a fact that transwomen can pass vocally.
Smell is affected by HRT (AFAICT also to the point of passing, but I know of no attempts to objectively test this in particular).
That said, I am not trying to convince you or anything. You do you, and good luck with that. I already have plenty of heterosexual males interested in me.
I appear to have angered and/or offended you and I apologize for that. I don’t believe my post had much of an argument, it was more an attempt to explain a position you expressed curiosity about. I apologize for misinterpreting anything.
I used “females” to minimize meaning ambiguity, and I don’t understand why the word is offensive, especially considering you use “males” in your last sentence. I generally avoid using the prefix “cis” because its definition requires someone to have the same “gender identity” as their sex and what I wrote was much broader than just that group. “Females” in contrast encompasses all members of the female sex, regardless of their gender identity (e.g. pre-op transmen in this context) or whether they even have an identity (e.g. some non-binary, agender, or otherwise). I haven’t encountered the terms “genetic females” or “natural females” before but I would have assumed those would be much more offensive because of what they imply about the converse (e.g. “unnatural”). I’m not clear on the etiquette of language here, but my overall aim was precision and I apologize for inadvertently causing you offense.
And yes, I understand that many “natural vagina-havers” (for lack of a better term, apologies if this is offensive) can have many issues with sexual intercourse, including some of the same factors I mentioned above. Just because vaginas are a necessary requirement for my attraction doesn’t mean it’s a sufficient one, and there are many other factors to consider within that realm to ensure sexual compatibility.
I understand that voice is modifiable with training to an extent. I’ve personally never met a transwoman that passed vocally but either way I assumed arguendo that it’s at least theoretically possible with further advances in technology. Regarding smells, I admit I have limited experience with this and mostly relied on what a bisexual friend of mine who slept with several transwomen told me.
I’m glad you have people interested in you, but I’m not sure how you interpreted anything I said to mean otherwise?
Your usage of the word “females” felt offensive to me because it implied that transwomen are unambiguously not females. It seems that you think that “male/female” should refer strictly to genetics while “man/woman” should refer to gender identity, but I don’t think this a great convention: in everyday use, “woman” and “female” are often used interchangeably.
I grant that “cisfemales” would not be completely accurate in principle, although IMO the meaning would be clear enough in practice.
You are right that in broader society, “natural/artificial” has positive/negative connotations, but I hope that here, where transhumanism is popular, and conflating “natural” with “good” is viewed as a fallacy, this is not the case.
As to “genetic” I’m not sure why you think it would be offensive? You grouped it with “natural” but the connotations are completely different (AFAICT the word doesn’t have much connotation, just denotation).
As an aside, I think that the language in this domain is suffering from overzealous policing by social justice fundamentalists. While everyday words such as “woman/man” or “female/man” should IMO be absolutely trans-inclsuive[1], there should also be room for convenient terminology about bodily sex characteristics.
And even then, it should be alright to use e.g. “women’s health” in a context where the vast majority of the people involved are ciswomen.
I am aiming to do the best I can in communicating with precision and I apologize for any missteps on my part. It’s certainly true that “woman” and “female” are often used interchangeably but I’ve seen this become the source of significant confusion and ambiguity. You are correct about how I use the two terms (although it’s more about social role than identity); that is the convention I’ve eventually settled upon and so far it has worked well in minimizing ambiguity.
My working assumption about the word “female” is that it is much more heavily grounded within the context of reproductive capacity and the associated secondary characteristics (e.g. a livestock breeder ordering “females” from a supplier is not ambiguous in that context) which is why I used it.
Given your greater familiarity with this space I trust your judgment that “natural females” would not be negatively received here, but I’m doubtful this would be the case outside of LW and it’s difficult to keep a vocabulary index updated across so many places. I also imagine that transmen and non-binary individuals would not appreciate being called “female”, but they’d appreciate “natural female” even less. With regards to “genetic females” my question would be “as opposed to what?” so my (weak) objection is mostly based on its ambiguity to me. I wouldn’t be confident that either terms would carry the meaning I intend.
Either way, I was not privy to either of these alternate phrases before, so I hope it’s established that my use of “females” was not intended to be malicious. Language is imperfect and I’m trying to do the best I can in nevertheless communicating clearly.
Medically transitioning transgender people have both reproductive capacity and secondary characteristics different from cisgender people of the same genetic sex. Ofc transgender women don’t have a functional female reproductive system (yet), but they often also don’t have a functional male reproductive system. Moreover, some cisgender women lack a functional female reproductive system as well. In principle, a reproduction-oriented classification can be useful, but it would require a 3rd category (sterile people), and is in any case largely unrelated to sexual attraction. So neither reproductive capacity nor secondary characteristics unambiguously point at the group you were referring to.
As opposed to transwomen obviously (and if you insist that “female” should have a physiological connotation, then medically transitioning transwomen; but personally I don’t endorse this usage).
I concede that “females” is not 100% accurate in the context I was discussing but it felt like the least worst option. “Natural vagina haver” would be the most accurate label for the demographic I had in mind but it sounds distasteful. I’m open to ideas.
“They” doesn’t mean you. “They” means “the people who have influence on the issue and can get someone deplatformed and fired”.