Back to Oz

I really do hesitate to even write this post, as the topic is a rehash of one of the ugliest times for GLBT unity I’ve ever seen. Recently Matt Foreman said the following on the Michelangelo Signorile Show concerning the ENDA debacle:

I think what really happened is the Speaker’s people said ‘look, Congress has a terrible reputation right now, they’re not delivering for any progressive causes, what do we do to deliver for our progressive allies?’ That means labor, health, and environment, and gays. And so, I mean… I don’t know this for a fact, but I’d bet my life this is what happened. They went to Barney frank, they said, ‘what do we need to do to pass ENDA?’ Representative Frank, who’s always been pretty squeamish on the trans issue, … and I guess I can say these things because I’m leaving my job, ya know, said ‘look the best way to pass ENDA and the easiest way is to take out gender identity.’ And I don’t think the Speaker’s people thought this through, didn’t think it through and said ‘lets do it. ‘

Yesterday, Barney Frank came on Signorile’s show to respond to Foreman’s statement and said:

He just made that up, that’s not remotely how it happened. He also has no basis for talking about my attitude on transgender people because I’ve had one set of conversations with Matt Foreman about transgender people. In 2002, when he was the head of Empire State Pride Agenda, he lobbied hard to get through the New York legislature a bill that did exactly what our bill did last year, it covered discrimination based on sexual orientation, but excluded people that were transgender. Some people didn’t like that. Tom Duane said at the time that Matt Foreman excluded him from meetings on the subject. Matt Foreman not only helped get that bill through, frankly, and this I disagreed with, as part of the deal to get it though, that year the Empire State Pride Agenda endorsed the Republican George Pataki for reelection over an outstanding African American Democrat, Carl McCall. So you had Matt Foreman guiding to passage an ENDA bill that didn’t cover transgender, it was called SONDA for the State of New York, and in return, denying an endorsement that I think he should have gotten on [unintelligible] to Carl McCall. The reason I talked about it with him was because called me around that time, this is late 2002, and said ‘I’m being criticized for doing this, would you come to a meeting that we’re having in New York to celebrate it and give an award for Gov Pataki to show that uh people shouldn’t be attacking me for it.’ And even though I did disagree with decision to make make the deal with Pataki, I do believe that you work together with each other, and you try to be supportive, and I went up there.

Since Foreman has said in the past that he regrets that choice and thinks it was a mistake, I’m not sure why Congressman Frank is bringing this up, except to smear him. Amazingly, Frank is admitting that he helped Foreman in his attempt to exclude gender identity from SONDA. Yet when asked about Foreman’s statement about his squeamishness, he said:

“I don’t usually talk like this, but no one in the history of the United States Congress has advocated explicitly for including transgender poeople in legislation as much as I have. In 1999 when we were doing hate crimes, I brought up the transgender issue, and said that it was very important to include people with transgender, both in committee and on the floor. I testified this past fall about the importance of including people with transgender. Here’s what troubles me. When they say I’m squeamish, what they’re pointing out, is what I’ve said from the beginning, to various advocates including people within the transgender community, we have a political problem here. We’ve have been working the issues of gays and lesbians longer than transgender. Some of the intial reaction you get when you first bring up an issue is problematic. And so transgender people are victims of the same kind of virulent prejudice that we who are gay and lesbian were, 35 years ago, and we haven’t had as much progress in dealing with it. This is a case of complain about the messenger. I told them that we had this problem, and they didn’t listen.”

I’m not sure how you can claim the title of great advocate for transgender people, when you’ve helped to exclude them in two different pieces of legislation.

During the interview Signorile pointed out to Frank that Foreman had said that he was squeamish about transgender people. Signorile then told Frank about his own history of squeamishness about transgender people. Still Frank insisted that he’s never been “squeamish” about transgender people.

I don’t know why you’d impute that to me. I have never had that view. There was a time when people weren’t paying much attention to people with transgender. But I’ve always believed when you ban discrimination, you ban it against everybody.

But the experiences of transgender women through the years, paint a very different picture of Congressman Frank. In 2001 , Karen Ann Taylor asked Frank why transgender people weren’t being included in ENDA. Of that experience she said:

As I approached him I cordially introduced myself, shook his hand, and cut right to the chase. I wanted to know why the transgendered were not represented in ENDA. The answer was such a surprise, I was dumbfounded at first. The whole crux of purposely and intentionally disallowing the transgendered from ENDA was something of the effect ‘it would cause it not to pass… it would fail due to penises and vaginas showering together in the workplace.’

Huh? You gotta be kidding! This was the most asinine thing I’d heard! When I asked what about gay and straight men in the same shower, the reply was essentially ‘that’s not a problem, not even in the military. Even the bathroom is not the issue. But penises and vaginas in the same shower will cause it to fail. But we can take care of that with an amendment.’

But that’s the VERY argument that was used by the creator of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. From Wikipedia:

In 2000, Northwestern University Professor Charles Moskos, the principal author of DADT (which, as originally coined by Moskos, was “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell; Don’t Seek Don’t Flaunt”), told ‘Lingua Franca’ that he felt that policy will be gone within five to ten years. Moskos also dismissed the unit cohesion argument, instead arguing that gay people should be banned due to ‘modesty rights’, saying ‘Fuck unit cohesion. I don’t care about that…I should not be forced to shower with a woman. I should not be forced to shower with a gay [man].’

Another incident was described by Miranda Stevens-Miller:

A little while later, I found Barney without a group of people around him, so I once again engaged him in conversation. ‘So,’ I said, ‘does your support of transgender inclusion in the VAWA mean that you might be changing your mind about inclusion of gender-variant people in ENDA?’ An innocent enough question, but you would have thought that I was threatening him with a loaded weapon. He got red in the face and started shouting, ‘Never.’ His problem was that until we could answer the question of ‘people with penises in [women’s] showers,’ there is no way that he would support it. The conversation got rather heated to say the least. And with Barney speaking very loudly and repeatedly about ‘penises in showers,’ we attracted a lot of attention in the restaurant.

But the reality of penises being in showers with vagina’s is small. First of all, how many employers have communal showers? Of those, how many of those have open shower areas? I’ve spoken to quite a few of my natal women friends that tell me that many shower areas in women’s locker rooms have shower stalls in them. That they aren’t “communal” in the same sort of way mens’ showers are. So what are the odds that an employer has to have showers, then has to have communal shower areas, then add to that, what employer can’t make accommodations for their transgender workers (showering before or after everyone else, showering in another location). All in all, you’re talking about a hand full of jobs. Out of those handful of jobs, how many would have a transgender woman that is preoperative that would want to flash their genitals around in a communal shower in the workplace? I think the odds of Jesus coming back and fishing with Marilyn Manson on the Potomac is more likely. But that seems to be the standard reasoning Frank has given since 2000, as to why we shouldn’t be included.

Then Frank blamed transgender people and their advocates for the lack lobbying.

Part of the problem, frankly, is with the transgender community and some of those who put that in the forefront, because they didn’t lobby. The only time they started lobbying is when we said ‘You know what, we don’t have the votes for this, we gotta to do it partially.’ Then they began lobbying the Democrats that were supportive. I’ve never seen a worse job of lobbying. For years, literally years, I have been begging them to start talking to people about this, and have said you, look, have political problems here, I wish we didn’t but we do, and you have to deal with them.

In reality, GenderPAC started lobbying Congress in 1995, the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition in 1999, and the National Center for Transgender Equality in 2005. Until recently, those lobbying efforts were done as by unpaid citizens, and were done without the help of gay and lesbian organizations. Transgender activists have been asking for help with access for years, but had been largely ignored.

I find it puzzling as well that such a stanch advocate of transgender people like Frank who aren’t “squeamish”, would continue to use disease phraseology when referring to transgender people (as “people with transgender”). If he’s trying to advocate for us, a simple first step would be to stop saying that.

While the rhetoric Congressman Frank is spinning is nothing new (see also: October-November 2007), the timing now seems odd. As I mentioned in a previous post, both Democratic candidates for president have publicly stated their support for an ENDA that includes gender identity (with Clinton going even further and stating support for gender expression as well). The Democratic tsunami on the horizon bodes well for a GI inclusive ENDA. Everything is trending towards inclusion of transgender inclusion in the 2009 ENDA. Why isn’t Frank?

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Transadvocate contributor: Marti Abernathey (1926 Posts)

Marti Abernathey is Transadvocate.com's blog editor. She's also a podcaster, activist, and radiologic technologist in Madison, Wisconsin. She's been a part of various internet radio ventures such as TSR Live!, The T-Party, and The Radical Trannies, to name a few. As an advocate she's previously been involved with the Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance, Rock Indiana Campaign for Equality, and the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition. She's taken vital roles as a grass roots community organizer in The Indianapolis Tax Day Protest (2003), The Indy Pride HRC Protest (2004), Transgender Day of Remembrance (2004), Indiana's Witch Hunt (2005), and the Rally At The Statehouse (the largest ever GLBT protest in Indiana - 3/2005). She was a delegate from Indiana to the Democratic National Convention and a member of Barack Obama's LGBT Steering and Policy Committee.

Battybattybats

“I guess I need to repeat what I’ve said before. I don’t believe in gender, therefore I do not support the idea of transgendered people. If I don’t support that concept, I not responding to claims of “needs” of a people whose framework I don’t believe.”

Actually sorry but you do.
Reciprocal rights demands that you treat them as equal even if you don’t agree. That is the philosophical notion that makes it wrong for a person of one faith to impose their faith on another no matter how much they believe they are right and the other wrong. By needing to reciprocally recognise the free choice of the other even if they disagree with it they are forced to sit back and allow others use of their free will to make a choice even when the first believer feels the other will burn in hell for eternity for that choice.

Without that philosophy being accepted then it becomes acceptable for the one to impose on the other and we all know what that means. Again a little bit of understanding of the philosophical arguments involved and their consequential implications would help you in this discussion.

Other people didn’t/don’t support egalitarianism, racists, sexists, Religious fanatics etc. They didn’t/don’t want certain groups of people near them either.
Their need was/is philosophically invalid though. What makes yours different?

“I’ll go further with that. There is a conflict between the the people you call trangendered and my needs. In places they are mutually exclusive and that’s what I am confronting. I have no intention of ever supporting “rights” for people with penises.”

No, their is a conflict between their needs and rights and your wants that you call needs. There is a philosophical distinction between the two that informs the moral and ethical dimesnions of the dilemma. That is the fatal problem currently with your arguments and despite my questions whose answers if valid would have enabled you to define your position ethically you keeep sticking your foot in it and making a bigoted argument. Please do read a bit about the philosophy so you can improve your arguments.

“Oh… male proof gambits? Pardon me but I am not leveraged by them. You may conclude whatever you wish.”

No, logical proof not male proof. No argument nor idea is sex or gender exclusive. Not even in Eastern Metaphysics. Even in the heavily genderised systems of Taoism is anything always exclusively Yin or Yang. Logic is not ‘male’. The argument that it is is a sexist one.

“I have no intension of stepping into your paradigm.”

You are already in it by one standard definition and it doesn’t apply in the other. Example or pattern? Yes, you already are inside that. Prevailing assumptions in science? No, what I used was an apt analogy. Maybe you misunderstood what paradigm means?

“It makes no difference how you recognize me. You may call me a watermelon if you like. I am not calling anatomical males women – ever.”

Your free to hold whatever opinion you like. That won’t make your opinion right though. Nor will it be moral or ethical.

“No. They don’t. I’ve been trying to tell you I don’t care how you respond to me. I am telling you how I respond.”

You don’t have to tell me, I can read it quite well. The problem is you are arguing in favour of s system of oppression that invalidates the causes you are fighting for. You are shooting yourself in the foot and doing a disservice to your cause.

“I care very much about the poor and women having access to the rewards of this society. I do not care at all about “transgender rights”.”

but by fighting for some rights/rewards etc and not universal rights/rewards/equality etc you are invalidating the philosophical foundation for all of those and justifying the arguments of the oppressors of women and the poor etc. Harming your own causes!

“I’ve been very clear that eagalitarian is a trap for women. It allows men to ignore what they do in the here and now.”

Please explain that as the argument seems to be contrary. If egalitarianism says all people should be treated as equal and men are not treating women as equal in the here and now Egalitarianism says they should. Are you perhaps referring to the meritocracy arguments related to egalitarianism? That go against affirmative action? Because those are easily rejected by the simplist egalitarian arguments which is why most philosophers support affirmative action to ‘level the playing field’ as a meritocracy cannot exist untill such a situation has occured and been entrenched. Egalitarianism supports immediate action to redress imbalance and disparity not ignoring the here and now.

“I’ve also been clear that egalitarianism is not a feminist goal because we do not aspire to be equal to men where they have set the standards. That isn’t equality.”

It depends on what standards you are talking about. If you are talking about the proper phillosophical standards of the rights of the individual, freedom of expression, freedom of opportunity, self determination including total somatic sovereinty.. all those have been feminist ideals and are not ‘male’ at all. If you mean however being equal to an offensive stereotype of masculinity to which society pressures all men to conform then of course I agree with you. But enlightenment philosophy opposes such limited notions of equality(ok we could go into a long discussion about ‘positivist liberty’ Vs total liberty but maybe you should just look that stuff up directly).

Freedom with equality defines freedom limited only by reciprocating the freedom of others. One can be a murderer only with the victims uncoerced and informed consent, at which point it ceases to be murder hence one cannot be a murderer etc. it provides an ethical framework that insists upon womens rights, individual rights etc.

“That’s fine. The message is that if women do not adopt men’s paradigm then we are dismissed. There’s nothing new here. This is exactly the way it’s always been for women.”

It is not a ‘mens paradigm’ as it precludes anyone having an advantage over anyone else and therfore invalidates mens privilege. Think about it and you’ll see what I mean. Those who argue against it generally do so to justify their bigotry. Racists didn’t like it because they didn’t want blacks to have the same rights and freedoms (or to be in their bathrooms). Mysogynists didn’t like it because they didn’t want women to have the same rights like the vote.

If you want to tear down the one philosophical argument that has argued in favour of women, the poor, that all the oppressed should have the same rights and freedoms and liberties including from the state then maybe you should have a replacement for it! Otherwise you give validation to the arguments of the alternative philosophies that certain people should have less rights than others and then you have to provide a reason for your set of arbitrary groups to be raised up and rewarded and others lowered and denied.

Please actually learn something about the pro and con arguments of the various philosophies of the last several centuries! You might find powerful arguments in favour of women and the poor which will help you in your causes. Using the same arguments as racists and mysogynists and elitists does you no crdit and weakens your cause!

“I will never support what you call transgender rights.”
Never? So you refuse the possibility that your opinion could ever change? Are you saying that you are a closed minded willfully ignorant dogmatist? Surely you aren’t so stupid? Now you needn’t ever actually agree wit me but so long as you rule out the possibility you are being intellectually dishonest. Drawing conclusions before analysing the data and disregarding contrary evidence and argument without proper anlyses. Talk about a real paradigm problem! Those are the most powerful tools in the Masters House! Maintaining the world-view at all costs! Irrespective of the facts that the world is round, not at the centre of the universe etc etc.

“I don’t see you are an ally at all. You can’t hear what I’m saying.”

I am an ally of equal and universal rights. Hence of fairness, ethics and goodness.

“I don’t want a cross dresser as an ally.”

Why not? Are you some sort of bigot?

“I can discuss it in far greater depth than you would ever dream. However, I do reject male biology as being the seat of patriarchy. No data, and science has ever demonstrated transgenderism because it’s never demonstrated gender period.”

As my argument before showed the biological existence of gender is not neccessary to justify the existance of transgenderism.

That said what do you say to the neurological evidence showing sex based differences in average male and female brains? And what then to the studies that show that these differences are not sex specific but merely more common in certain sexes? There are several interpretations rather than just those supporting transgenderism and/or transexualism so we could actually have a reasonable discussion on this I’m sure.

But what then disproves such interpretations?

“That’s the whole point. The ideology is being generated by people with penises not FTMs.” What ideology? All the arguments in favour of transgender rights I’ve heard differ not one iota from the notion of universal rights! Explanatory theories abound in great variety with no single one being proferred as absolute. They don’t all require the seperate cerbral/neurological intersexuality or spectrum of biologically determined gender identity spectrum that the most common use. Just the fact that they are ethical and that people should be free to perform any ethical act is enough to validate all the arguments I’ve seen actually presented!

“Textual space is not physical space.”

You are right. It’s somatically more distant and mentally and emotionally so much closer!

Look, I am really feeling sorry for you in this discussion and it doesn’t seem fair so I’ll give you a helping hand.

Your arguments against egalitarianism is painting yourself into a corner, it really is going to get you into an ugly mess if you keep going in that direction. Sure there are good arguments against misuses of the idea and lots of examples where people have been left out of the equality they deserve (just look at how long it took to get rid of slavery in america for starters let alone getting women the vote) but that doesn’t invalidate egalitarianism itself though.

What will really help you out is a different area of argument. If we accept egalitarianism and personal freedom then there is a point where each person has complete command. then beyond this is an area of ‘shared and/or public space’ where thre is a big blurred area between interpersonal boundaries. Now it is generally considered that freedom of choice/association Vs Freedom of expression and the social obligation to provide public facilities means that so long as someone doesn’t have to listen or look at something a person doesn’t like then that person is not harmed. Now if you made an argument that centred around the notion of mutual consent for mutual activities within interpersonal space or that the necessity of public utilities counted as not being free to ignore but rather forced to participate in/be exposed to then you could actually start to get somewhere.

It will be an argument you must make carefuly as you risk putting forard arguments with consequences against general speech, in favour of racial segregation etc or even against abortion (I kid you not, this is dicey moral/ethical territory) but if you are careful you could get a point across that is philosophically quite valid and still meets your desires/needs as much as they morally and ethically ever could be met.

I’ll be most interested to see if you come up with an alternative to the single-use unisex disability accesable facilities I personally argue for that nonetheless ensures safe ad accesible facilities for transgender people, crossdressers, transexuals etc, the disabled, children, all racial and ethinic groups and women who don’t want the proximity of people with penises. And yes I know you don’t care about most of these people personally but that doesn’t make you right beyond your ow subjective opinion, to ensure your argument is philosophically valid you need to find a solution that allows their individual rights along with societies obligation to providing toilet facilities at the very least and meets the needs of all humans as equals to be ethical.

This isn’t just a political or ideological discussion. this is a philosophical one at it’s foundation requiring discussions of ethics.

So lets tuck into the ethics of this. Get right down to the foundations of right or wrong action, of social and personal obligation Vs individual freedom. There’s been a number of important women philosophers over the thousands of years of the subject and a number of males who it has been argued had their opinions influenced by women. Heck Voltaires most famous quote on freedom of speech is a missattributation that was really written much later by a woman! Some even have argued that Madame De Pompadour had a profound influence on Voltaire’s philosophies!
Battybattybats

“I guess I need to repeat what I’ve said before. I don’t believe in gender, therefore I do not support the idea of transgendered people. If I don’t support that concept, I not responding to claims of “needs” of a people whose framework I don’t believe.”

Actually sorry but you do.
Reciprocal rights demands that you treat them as equal even if you don’t agree. That is the philosophical notion that makes it wrong for a person of one faith to impose their faith on another no matter how much they believe they are right and the other wrong. By needing to reciprocally recognise the free choice of the other even if they disagree with it they are forced to sit back and allow others use of their free will to make a choice even when the first believer feels the other will burn in hell for eternity for that choice.

Without that philosophy being accepted then it becomes acceptable for the one to impose on the other and we all know what that means. Again a little bit of understanding of the philosophical arguments involved and their consequential implications would help you in this discussion.

Other people didn’t/don’t support egalitarianism, racists, sexists, Religious fanatics etc. They didn’t/don’t want certain groups of people near them either.
Their need was/is philosophically invalid though. What makes yours different?

“I’ll go further with that. There is a conflict between the the people you call trangendered and my needs. In places they are mutually exclusive and that’s what I am confronting. I have no intention of ever supporting “rights” for people with penises.”

No, their is a conflict between their needs and rights and your wants that you call needs. There is a philosophical distinction between the two that informs the moral and ethical dimesnions of the dilemma. That is the fatal problem currently with your arguments and despite my questions whose answers if valid would have enabled you to define your position ethically you keeep sticking your foot in it and making a bigoted argument. Please do read a bit about the philosophy so you can improve your arguments.

“Oh… male proof gambits? Pardon me but I am not leveraged by them. You may conclude whatever you wish.”

No, logical proof not male proof. No argument nor idea is sex or gender exclusive. Not even in Eastern Metaphysics. Even in the heavily genderised systems of Taoism is anything always exclusively Yin or Yang. Logic is not ‘male’. The argument that it is is a sexist one.

“I have no intension of stepping into your paradigm.”

You are already in it by one standard definition and it doesn’t apply in the other. Example or pattern? Yes, you already are inside that. Prevailing assumptions in science? No, what I used was an apt analogy. Maybe you misunderstood what paradigm means?

“It makes no difference how you recognize me. You may call me a watermelon if you like. I am not calling anatomical males women – ever.”

Your free to hold whatever opinion you like. That won’t make your opinion right though. Nor will it be moral or ethical.

“No. They don’t. I’ve been trying to tell you I don’t care how you respond to me. I am telling you how I respond.”

You don’t have to tell me, I can read it quite well. The problem is you are arguing in favour of s system of oppression that invalidates the causes you are fighting for. You are shooting yourself in the foot and doing a disservice to your cause.

“I care very much about the poor and women having access to the rewards of this society. I do not care at all about “transgender rights”.”

but by fighting for some rights/rewards etc and not universal rights/rewards/equality etc you are invalidating the philosophical foundation for all of those and justifying the arguments of the oppressors of women and the poor etc. Harming your own causes!

“I’ve been very clear that eagalitarian is a trap for women. It allows men to ignore what they do in the here and now.”

Please explain that as the argument seems to be contrary. If egalitarianism says all people should be treated as equal and men are not treating women as equal in the here and now Egalitarianism says they should. Are you perhaps referring to the meritocracy arguments related to egalitarianism? That go against affirmative action? Because those are easily rejected by the simplist egalitarian arguments which is why most philosophers support affirmative action to ‘level the playing field’ as a meritocracy cannot exist untill such a situation has occured and been entrenched. Egalitarianism supports immediate action to redress imbalance and disparity not ignoring the here and now.

“I’ve also been clear that egalitarianism is not a feminist goal because we do not aspire to be equal to men where they have set the standards. That isn’t equality.”

It depends on what standards you are talking about. If you are talking about the proper phillosophical standards of the rights of the individual, freedom of expression, freedom of opportunity, self determination including total somatic sovereinty.. all those have been feminist ideals and are not ‘male’ at all. If you mean however being equal to an offensive stereotype of masculinity to which society pressures all men to conform then of course I agree with you. But enlightenment philosophy opposes such limited notions of equality(ok we could go into a long discussion about ‘positivist liberty’ Vs total liberty but maybe you should just look that stuff up directly).

Freedom with equality defines freedom limited only by reciprocating the freedom of others. One can be a murderer only with the victims uncoerced and informed consent, at which point it ceases to be murder hence one cannot be a murderer etc. it provides an ethical framework that insists upon womens rights, individual rights etc.

“That’s fine. The message is that if women do not adopt men’s paradigm then we are dismissed. There’s nothing new here. This is exactly the way it’s always been for women.”

It is not a ‘mens paradigm’ as it precludes anyone having an advantage over anyone else and therfore invalidates mens privilege. Think about it and you’ll see what I mean. Those who argue against it generally do so to justify their bigotry. Racists didn’t like it because they didn’t want blacks to have the same rights and freedoms (or to be in their bathrooms). Mysogynists didn’t like it because they didn’t want women to have the same rights like the vote.

If you want to tear down the one philosophical argument that has argued in favour of women, the poor, that all the oppressed should have the same rights and freedoms and liberties including from the state then maybe you should have a replacement for it! Otherwise you give validation to the arguments of the alternative philosophies that certain people should have less rights than others and then you have to provide a reason for your set of arbitrary groups to be raised up and rewarded and others lowered and denied.

Please actually learn something about the pro and con arguments of the various philosophies of the last several centuries! You might find powerful arguments in favour of women and the poor which will help you in your causes. Using the same arguments as racists and mysogynists and elitists does you no crdit and weakens your cause!

“I will never support what you call transgender rights.”
Never? So you refuse the possibility that your opinion could ever change? Are you saying that you are a closed minded willfully ignorant dogmatist? Surely you aren’t so stupid? Now you needn’t ever actually agree wit me but so long as you rule out the possibility you are being intellectually dishonest. Drawing conclusions before analysing the data and disregarding contrary evidence and argument without proper anlyses. Talk about a real paradigm problem! Those are the most powerful tools in the Masters House! Maintaining the world-view at all costs! Irrespective of the facts that the world is round, not at the centre of the universe etc etc.

“I don’t see you are an ally at all. You can’t hear what I’m saying.”

I am an ally of equal and universal rights. Hence of fairness, ethics and goodness.

“I don’t want a cross dresser as an ally.”

Why not? Are you some sort of bigot?

“I can discuss it in far greater depth than you would ever dream. However, I do reject male biology as being the seat of patriarchy. No data, and science has ever demonstrated transgenderism because it’s never demonstrated gender period.”

As my argument before showed the biological existence of gender is not neccessary to justify the existance of transgenderism.

That said what do you say to the neurological evidence showing sex based differences in average male and female brains? And what then to the studies that show that these differences are not sex specific but merely more common in certain sexes? There are several interpretations rather than just those supporting transgenderism and/or transexualism so we could actually have a reasonable discussion on this I’m sure.

But what then disproves such interpretations?

“That’s the whole point. The ideology is being generated by people with penises not FTMs.” What ideology? All the arguments in favour of transgender rights I’ve heard differ not one iota from the notion of universal rights! Explanatory theories abound in great variety with no single one being proferred as absolute. They don’t all require the seperate cerbral/neurological intersexuality or spectrum of biologically determined gender identity spectrum that the most common use. Just the fact that they are ethical and that people should be free to perform any ethical act is enough to validate all the arguments I’ve seen actually presented!

“Textual space is not physical space.”

You are right. It’s somatically more distant and mentally and emotionally so much closer!

Look, I am really feeling sorry for you in this discussion and it doesn’t seem fair so I’ll give you a helping hand.

Your arguments against egalitarianism is painting yourself into a corner, it really is going to get you into an ugly mess if you keep going in that direction. Sure there are good arguments against misuses of the idea and lots of examples where people have been left out of the equality they deserve (just look at how long it took to get rid of slavery in america for starters let alone getting women the vote) but that doesn’t invalidate egalitarianism itself though.

What will really help you out is a different area of argument. If we accept egalitarianism and personal freedom then there is a point where each person has complete command. then beyond this is an area of ‘shared and/or public space’ where thre is a big blurred area between interpersonal boundaries. Now it is generally considered that freedom of choice/association Vs Freedom of expression and the social obligation to provide public facilities means that so long as someone doesn’t have to listen or look at something a person doesn’t like then that person is not harmed. Now if you made an argument that centred around the notion of mutual consent for mutual activities within interpersonal space or that the necessity of public utilities counted as not being free to ignore but rather forced to participate in/be exposed to then you could actually start to get somewhere.

It will be an argument you must make carefuly as you risk putting forard arguments with consequences against general speech, in favour of racial segregation etc or even against abortion (I kid you not, this is dicey moral/ethical territory) but if you are careful you could get a point across that is philosophically quite valid and still meets your desires/needs as much as they morally and ethically ever could be met.

I’ll be most interested to see if you come up with an alternative to the single-use unisex disability accesable facilities I personally argue for that nonetheless ensures safe ad accesible facilities for transgender people, crossdressers, transexuals etc, the disabled, children, all racial and ethinic groups and women who don’t want the proximity of people with penises. And yes I know you don’t care about most of these people personally but that doesn’t make you right beyond your ow subjective opinion, to ensure your argument is philosophically valid you need to find a solution that allows their individual rights along with societies obligation to providing toilet facilities at the very least and meets the needs of all humans as equals to be ethical.

This isn’t just a political or ideological discussion. this is a philosophical one at it’s foundation requiring discussions of ethics.

So lets tuck into the ethics of this. Get right down to the foundations of right or wrong action, of social and personal obligation Vs individual freedom. There’s been a number of important women philosophers over the thousands of years of the subject and a number of males who it has been argued had their opinions influenced by women. Heck Voltaires most famous quote on freedom of speech is a missattributation that was really written much later by a woman! Some even have argued that Madame De Pompadour had a profound influence on Voltaire’s philosophies!
Battybattybats

Ooops forgot a point.

“Um.. hello? FtM? Those people aren’t illusions you know. They are people too, they actually exist. I have met a good number of them and am friends with a few. How can the movement be a ‘male’ movement when it includes people from both sexes with equal arguments and equal needs?

That’s the whole point. The ideology is being generated by people with penises not FTMs.”

The vast majority of arguments are identical between MtF and FtM communities I’ve been near. They both have the same need for access to surgeries if they require them. They both have the same need to not be discriminated against for what they wear or how they act. They both need to be safe. They both need somewhere safe to pee legally. The same basic needs dictate the similarities and arguments. The ideas of gender that are used as theoretical explanations for the phenomenon are not essential to the needs and the rights required from philosophical obligation and justification and from practical reality where proportionatly transgender people are even more victimised than women born women by our currently conformist and hierachical society.

Whether MtF Crossdresser or FtM Crossdresser, Drag Queen or Drag King, MtF Transexual or FtM Transexual, Gender Queer right in the middle and any other catagory.

All deserve the same basic human rights, priveleges, responsibilites, opportunities and all the rest as every other man woman or child in existance.

There is no remotely valid argument I have ever heard that counters that simple statement.
Battybattybats

Ooops forgot a point.

“Um.. hello? FtM? Those people aren’t illusions you know. They are people too, they actually exist. I have met a good number of them and am friends with a few. How can the movement be a ‘male’ movement when it includes people from both sexes with equal arguments and equal needs?

That’s the whole point. The ideology is being generated by people with penises not FTMs.”

The vast majority of arguments are identical between MtF and FtM communities I’ve been near. They both have the same need for access to surgeries if they require them. They both have the same need to not be discriminated against for what they wear or how they act. They both need to be safe. They both need somewhere safe to pee legally. The same basic needs dictate the similarities and arguments. The ideas of gender that are used as theoretical explanations for the phenomenon are not essential to the needs and the rights required from philosophical obligation and justification and from practical reality where proportionatly transgender people are even more victimised than women born women by our currently conformist and hierachical society.

Whether MtF Crossdresser or FtM Crossdresser, Drag Queen or Drag King, MtF Transexual or FtM Transexual, Gender Queer right in the middle and any other catagory.

All deserve the same basic human rights, priveleges, responsibilites, opportunities and all the rest as every other man woman or child in existance.

There is no remotely valid argument I have ever heard that counters that simple statement.
Niss

“I guess I need to repeat what I’ve said before. I don’t believe in gender, therefore I do not support the idea of transgendered people. If I don’t support that concept, I not responding to claims of “needs” of a people whose framework I don’t believe. I’ll go further with that. There is a conflict between the the people you call trangendered and my needs. In places they are mutually exclusive and that’s what I am confronting. I have no intention of ever supporting “rights” for people with penises.””

Firstly, this goes to what I had said before, I don’t understand why you’re posting here if you’re not interested in transgender issues.

Secondly majority of your posts seem filled with misandry.
Niss

“I guess I need to repeat what I’ve said before. I don’t believe in gender, therefore I do not support the idea of transgendered people. If I don’t support that concept, I not responding to claims of “needs” of a people whose framework I don’t believe. I’ll go further with that. There is a conflict between the the people you call trangendered and my needs. In places they are mutually exclusive and that’s what I am confronting. I have no intention of ever supporting “rights” for people with penises.””

Firstly, this goes to what I had said before, I don’t understand why you’re posting here if you’re not interested in transgender issues.

Secondly majority of your posts seem filled with misandry.
Marti Abernathey

I created this site for dialogue, how funny is it that I don’t want to participate in it? Reason being, that Sandy isn’t engaged in a search for the truth, but on crusade. There is no amount of discussion that will turn the tide. No amount of logic, statistics, or data. Radical feminism is a religion. It is based on belief, not empirical data, or any kind of statistical data. Sandy is obviously a devout follower.

I’m tired of arguments that lead to nothing but more arguments. So, I just kinda sit back, watch, and make sure it doesn’t get too out of hand (ie. personal attacks). I’m not making any judgment about those that are in the discussion, I’m just sayin’.
Marti Abernathey

I created this site for dialogue, how funny is it that I don’t want to participate in it? Reason being, that Sandy isn’t engaged in a search for the truth, but on crusade. There is no amount of discussion that will turn the tide. No amount of logic, statistics, or data. Radical feminism is a religion. It is based on belief, not empirical data, or any kind of statistical data. Sandy is obviously a devout follower.

I’m tired of arguments that lead to nothing but more arguments. So, I just kinda sit back, watch, and make sure it doesn’t get too out of hand (ie. personal attacks). I’m not making any judgment about those that are in the discussion, I’m just sayin’.
Niss

Good to hear from you about it, and yes I pretty much came to the same conclusion myself.

It’s just very frustrating to see majority of the posts get derailed by some devout follower of some ideology or another time after time. Which is why I asked if Sandy is not interested in dialogue why is she posting here… doesn’t seem like theres many directions for this conversation to go does it?
Niss

Good to hear from you about it, and yes I pretty much came to the same conclusion myself.

It’s just very frustrating to see majority of the posts get derailed by some devout follower of some ideology or another time after time. Which is why I asked if Sandy is not interested in dialogue why is she posting here… doesn’t seem like theres many directions for this conversation to go does it?
Battybattybats

Yes Sandy, why?
You aren’t structuring your arguments in an attempt to convince us either by intellectual argument or by empathic rhetoric.
You aren’t here to learn, your closed minded attitudes, feeble rationalisations and crude justifications and use of words like ‘never’ make that clear.
You aren’t even here for a good honest debate or to test the strength of your own arguments as your cop-out dismissals and refusal to answer to the weaknesses of your arguments demonstartes elegantly.
You aren’t here to just express your opinion either as you could have commented and left long ago yet you keep coming back to make the same points while ducking and weaving, dismissing and ignoring the problems with your arguments or points raised aginst them.

So what exactly are you getting out of this?

Could you be someone who can’t step away from an argument? I’ve known many of those. Occassionally I’m like that myself, not for antagonisms sake in my case but the chance to get deep down into the depths of a conundrum, learn about it, understand it and take wisdom from it and where possible find solutions to it. But that’s not what your doing as your dismissals and dodging makes plain. Are you the kind of person who needs to win, who will keep at an argument no matter how tenuous, no matter how dishonest the tactics might be required to keep the argument going until they can step away with some sort of victory even if it’s just that they’ve argued until they chase everyone else away and claim victory by default? I’ve seen whole forums destroyed by people like that.

That one seems possible I suppose.

So why Sandy, what do you get out of it?
Perhaps I’m giving you too much credit and you are trying to convince, in which case you are failing so badly as to actually be strengthening the cases of those you argue against while displaying the flaws in your own.
Certainly I’d expect a better understanding of moral and ethical reasoning and quality of argument from 1st year philosophy students, nay actually from high school students seeing as Australia has started teaching philosophy in some high school at last.

I expect of course you’ll spout another ‘I don’t have to answer to you, your just a crossdresser, a male crossdresser!’ in response to this. Unfortunatly your every such comment displays intellectual dishonesty, cowardice, anti-male anti-crossdresser bias and the utter vacuity and defenselessness of your arguments.

Your every post remains here as a guide to the flaws and holes in your reasoning and others you may talk to in the future here or elsewhere may, regardless of their antomy be able to use that to tear down and destroy your points to the detriment of your main cause and alas possibly to those other causes you claim to support but insist on using arguments that run counter to or logically challenge them.

You do yourself incalculable damage in that.
It is good for blowing out the cobwebs between my ears though, being a physically, and more embarrassingly for you, intellectually disabled person who didn’t even finish high school running on 40 IQ points down from what it was before I was disabled I am enjoying pointing out the inconsistencies, dischordancies, logical fallacies and total disasters in moral and ethical reasoning in your arguments.

Still I personally find that the toilet argument is fatally flawed on both sides. After hearing about the many abuses of children in communal public toilets it seems clear to me that all people have to be willing to give up the ideological battle and accept substantial changes to all public facilities to make them safer for everyone. You lose in defending womens space, those transexual and/or transgender people who consider getting into womens spaces an important recognition of their womanhood lose and those in need of safe toilet space no matter who they are win.

I challenge anyone on each side of the debate to justify letting children remain at risk in toilets where a parent of the opposite sex/gender may not enter. I don’t care what the ideology is, it’s not as important as protecting everyone your personal victory would exclude no matter who or what they are!
Battybattybats

Yes Sandy, why?
You aren’t structuring your arguments in an attempt to convince us either by intellectual argument or by empathic rhetoric.
You aren’t here to learn, your closed minded attitudes, feeble rationalisations and crude justifications and use of words like ‘never’ make that clear.
You aren’t even here for a good honest debate or to test the strength of your own arguments as your cop-out dismissals and refusal to answer to the weaknesses of your arguments demonstartes elegantly.
You aren’t here to just express your opinion either as you could have commented and left long ago yet you keep coming back to make the same points while ducking and weaving, dismissing and ignoring the problems with your arguments or points raised aginst them.

So what exactly are you getting out of this?

Could you be someone who can’t step away from an argument? I’ve known many of those. Occassionally I’m like that myself, not for antagonisms sake in my case but the chance to get deep down into the depths of a conundrum, learn about it, understand it and take wisdom from it and where possible find solutions to it. But that’s not what your doing as your dismissals and dodging makes plain. Are you the kind of person who needs to win, who will keep at an argument no matter how tenuous, no matter how dishonest the tactics might be required to keep the argument going until they can step away with some sort of victory even if it’s just that they’ve argued until they chase everyone else away and claim victory by default? I’ve seen whole forums destroyed by people like that.

That one seems possible I suppose.

So why Sandy, what do you get out of it?
Perhaps I’m giving you too much credit and you are trying to convince, in which case you are failing so badly as to actually be strengthening the cases of those you argue against while displaying the flaws in your own.
Certainly I’d expect a better understanding of moral and ethical reasoning and quality of argument from 1st year philosophy students, nay actually from high school students seeing as Australia has started teaching philosophy in some high school at last.

I expect of course you’ll spout another ‘I don’t have to answer to you, your just a crossdresser, a male crossdresser!’ in response to this. Unfortunatly your every such comment displays intellectual dishonesty, cowardice, anti-male anti-crossdresser bias and the utter vacuity and defenselessness of your arguments.

Your every post remains here as a guide to the flaws and holes in your reasoning and others you may talk to in the future here or elsewhere may, regardless of their antomy be able to use that to tear down and destroy your points to the detriment of your main cause and alas possibly to those other causes you claim to support but insist on using arguments that run counter to or logically challenge them.

You do yourself incalculable damage in that.
It is good for blowing out the cobwebs between my ears though, being a physically, and more embarrassingly for you, intellectually disabled person who didn’t even finish high school running on 40 IQ points down from what it was before I was disabled I am enjoying pointing out the inconsistencies, dischordancies, logical fallacies and total disasters in moral and ethical reasoning in your arguments.

Still I personally find that the toilet argument is fatally flawed on both sides. After hearing about the many abuses of children in communal public toilets it seems clear to me that all people have to be willing to give up the ideological battle and accept substantial changes to all public facilities to make them safer for everyone. You lose in defending womens space, those transexual and/or transgender people who consider getting into womens spaces an important recognition of their womanhood lose and those in need of safe toilet space no matter who they are win.

I challenge anyone on each side of the debate to justify letting children remain at risk in toilets where a parent of the opposite sex/gender may not enter. I don’t care what the ideology is, it’s not as important as protecting everyone your personal victory would exclude no matter who or what they are!
http://gorgonqueen.wordpress.com/ Val

I think that at this point I’ll join Abernathey on the back bench.

This is how I see the exchange between Sandy and Batty:

Sandy: assertion.
Batty: counterpoint.
Sandy: I don’t need to listen to you because you’re a man.

It’s not so much a weak position as surreal… and ultimately self-defeating since the method has currency only in a separatist epistemology which, by definition, is entirely self-referential. One gets the impression that, if she felt she could get away with it, Sandy would reject the entire progress of reason, simply because so much of it is associated with male figures.

I think a couple of my own interactions with her have been marginally more productive, and I sincerely thank her for those exchanges, but the circularity of her own arguments quickly limits my own responses and prompts me toward a repetition I’d just as soon not bother with.

Sandy emits many variations on a single position which, if it were reversed, would rightly be considered misogynistic. Prejudice of that quality really can’t be persuaded or even reasonably addressed… and the subsequent lack of investment on my part in such an effort is compounded by my earlier observation of her own ideological insularity.

And thank you, Marti, for keeping this thread open. It really has been very useful and interesting… not in the sense of advancing any particular arguments (though I am glad of the opportunity to read so much of Batty’s thinking on these topics) but from the standpoint of engaged observation of a certain kind of dynamic.
http://gorgonqueen.wordpress.com Val

I think that at this point I’ll join Abernathey on the back bench.

This is how I see the exchange between Sandy and Batty:

Sandy: assertion.
Batty: counterpoint.
Sandy: I don’t need to listen to you because you’re a man.

It’s not so much a weak position as surreal… and ultimately self-defeating since the method has currency only in a separatist epistemology which, by definition, is entirely self-referential. One gets the impression that, if she felt she could get away with it, Sandy would reject the entire progress of reason, simply because so much of it is associated with male figures.

I think a couple of my own interactions with her have been marginally more productive, and I sincerely thank her for those exchanges, but the circularity of her own arguments quickly limits my own responses and prompts me toward a repetition I’d just as soon not bother with.

Sandy emits many variations on a single position which, if it were reversed, would rightly be considered misogynistic. Prejudice of that quality really can’t be persuaded or even reasonably addressed… and the subsequent lack of investment on my part in such an effort is compounded by my earlier observation of her own ideological insularity.

And thank you, Marti, for keeping this thread open. It really has been very useful and interesting… not in the sense of advancing any particular arguments (though I am glad of the opportunity to read so much of Batty’s thinking on these topics) but from the standpoint of engaged observation of a certain kind of dynamic.
Sandy

“Sandy: assertion.
Batty: counterpoint.
Sandy: I don’t need to listen to you because you’re a man.”

It’s largely useless to talk to men because of their hegemony. He has not made counterpoints, he has simply dismissed with white male hegemonies. Men insist on thier logic from their social standpoint.

Why must one employ white male logic to counter white males? That system has been made for them for their benefit. It shaves off and removes all feeling which are also quite valid. So where is what the interaction looks like to me:

Sandy: assertion.
Batty: Dismissal. Counterpoint based in white male hegemony.
Sandy: I don’t need to listen to you because you’re a man.

I think my response is quite valid.
Sandy

“Sandy: assertion.
Batty: counterpoint.
Sandy: I don’t need to listen to you because you’re a man.”

It’s largely useless to talk to men because of their hegemony. He has not made counterpoints, he has simply dismissed with white male hegemonies. Men insist on thier logic from their social standpoint.

Why must one employ white male logic to counter white males? That system has been made for them for their benefit. It shaves off and removes all feeling which are also quite valid. So where is what the interaction looks like to me:

Sandy: assertion.
Batty: Dismissal. Counterpoint based in white male hegemony.
Sandy: I don’t need to listen to you because you’re a man.

I think my response is quite valid.
Battybattybats

Val. You make a good deal of sense with what you say, and much more succinctly than I manage with my writers excess verbiage.

I’d like to hear what you might have to say about the various issues that have come up in this thread. If arguing Sandy’s sometimes pointless irrational and warped (in the context of the use of the term in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) thinking is too tiresome for you (and I quite understand that, I only manage so easilly because of my repeated experiences with carrying on protracted arguments with some people with bad borderline personality disorder) then just post around her posts and perhaps you and I could have a sensible, constructive and intelligent discussion. Some of the things Sandy has said could make a good subject for discussion if only it weren’t chained down with the rest of her statements and behaviour.

If you would indulge me Val, we could first take on the notion of denial of services/control of space.

Freedom of association does suggest that any group of private individuals should always be able to choose who they do or do not associate with no matter how racist sexist or phobic their motivation yes? So should this extend to public facilities and commercial services or is there a social contract involved that requires that services not be denied comercially and/or publicly for such reasons?

If yes or no please state the why’s of your reasoning.
Battybattybats

Val. You make a good deal of sense with what you say, and much more succinctly than I manage with my writers excess verbiage.

I’d like to hear what you might have to say about the various issues that have come up in this thread. If arguing Sandy’s sometimes pointless irrational and warped (in the context of the use of the term in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) thinking is too tiresome for you (and I quite understand that, I only manage so easilly because of my repeated experiences with carrying on protracted arguments with some people with bad borderline personality disorder) then just post around her posts and perhaps you and I could have a sensible, constructive and intelligent discussion. Some of the things Sandy has said could make a good subject for discussion if only it weren’t chained down with the rest of her statements and behaviour.

If you would indulge me Val, we could first take on the notion of denial of services/control of space.

Freedom of association does suggest that any group of private individuals should always be able to choose who they do or do not associate with no matter how racist sexist or phobic their motivation yes? So should this extend to public facilities and commercial services or is there a social contract involved that requires that services not be denied comercially and/or publicly for such reasons?

If yes or no please state the why’s of your reasoning.
Sandy

“Your every post remains here as a guide to the flaws and holes in your reasoning and others you may talk to in the future here or elsewhere may, regardless of their antomy be able to use that to tear down and destroy your points to the detriment of your main cause and alas possibly to those other causes you claim to support but insist on using arguments that run counter to or logically challenge them.”

This happens in patriarchy. Women are dismissed. We are told we aren’t logical. If we don’t hold to white male logic, we are told we are supercilious. You want to talk about dynamics? I’ve said that the trans movement is a men’s movement. The standpoints, tools and rationales are identical.

I have adopted white male logic because it’s true, I cannot dismantle the master’s house with his tools. The absolute unswerving insistence has been that I conform to his hegemonies in order to interact with him which I have refused to do.

The outcome is the same that it has been for women which is the assertion that women are illogical. We are quite logical only from a set of experiences that no one here has had and which is not in your experience.

That’s why it is useless to talk to men. They do not question themselves, they question feminist women who do not buy into their framing to begin with.
Sandy

“Your every post remains here as a guide to the flaws and holes in your reasoning and others you may talk to in the future here or elsewhere may, regardless of their antomy be able to use that to tear down and destroy your points to the detriment of your main cause and alas possibly to those other causes you claim to support but insist on using arguments that run counter to or logically challenge them.”

This happens in patriarchy. Women are dismissed. We are told we aren’t logical. If we don’t hold to white male logic, we are told we are supercilious. You want to talk about dynamics? I’ve said that the trans movement is a men’s movement. The standpoints, tools and rationales are identical.

I have adopted white male logic because it’s true, I cannot dismantle the master’s house with his tools. The absolute unswerving insistence has been that I conform to his hegemonies in order to interact with him which I have refused to do.

The outcome is the same that it has been for women which is the assertion that women are illogical. We are quite logical only from a set of experiences that no one here has had and which is not in your experience.

That’s why it is useless to talk to men. They do not question themselves, they question feminist women who do not buy into their framing to begin with.
Battybattybats

Sandy, logic isn’t white.
The Muslim philosophers whose copies of the greek philosophers are the reason we have many of their writings still today were mostly brown and black and only rarely white.

Logic isn’t male. Many women philosophers have found logic served their thinking quite satisfactorily. I was taught logic by women philosophers.

Now if there is something wrong with the foundation points of each of my lines of logic you can demonstrate that logicly and show them to be wrong neatly and I’ll definatly concede any point that does so. The logic itself, like mathematics, is not social or white or male. The prseumptions precepts etc of a line of logic can be and that line of logic can be shown to be false on account of that.

No matter who makes a logical statement that does not have one iota of bearing on the truth and untruth of that statement unless it relates directly and specifically to the state of that speaker.

The same logical sentence from anyone of any sex ethnicity age or other arbitrary factor has no bearing on the thought, the words, the truth or untruth.

So therefore Sandy your response is invalid. My dismissals are based on logical principles that have passed through Greece, Egypt, Rome, Persia, China.. I could go on for ages with the list. They are not white nor male nor hegemonic.

They are simply true or untrue and if you can disprove any of the classical logical fallacies and show them to be true rather than false or add new arguments in favour or agaisnt any of them you will become famous. Your name will be reknowned in the annals of philosophical history! So be my guest.

If on the other hand you can show that any one of my statements or more is logicaly invalid or based on a demonstrably false premise then please do. I will accept it if I cannot defend or refute it, adjust my opinions arguments and discussion accordingly like anyone should and we can continue on.

The laws of physics are not male, gravity is not male, chemistry is not male, biology is not male, science is not male, mathematics is not male, logic is not male. Men have dominated each of these fields and have indeed made mysogynisitic statements or ignored womens issues, some have even deliberatly tried to keep women out of these fields. That invalidates their sexist views not the fields they worked in nor discoveries made by those people that were independant of their sexism. That does not make these things male. Madame Curie was not male. Hypatia of Alexandria might have been a crossdresser but she was born a woman. There have been women who had to fight for their right to knowledge and the power it brings and yet you simply disregard logic as male? The logic that informed and defined all of these sciences and all of the great victories of these women who broke through patriarchal oppression to make their marks on these fields and discover demonstrable evidential truths whose ramifications are stil being felt today!

Post modernisim and all it’s ilk might be trendy and somewhat useful when considering art, writing and culture (including academic culture) but it’s rather shoddy as metaphysics.

Sandy, perhaps metaphysics is a subject you might find really interesting. Maybe existentialism while you are at it. These could be really useful subjects for you in your arguments.

I think it important for us to understand your argument that you define why you say some of the things you refer to as male are male because I do not see how many can be, just that they have been dominated by males which is not the same thing at all.
Battybattybats

Sandy, logic isn’t white.
The Muslim philosophers whose copies of the greek philosophers are the reason we have many of their writings still today were mostly brown and black and only rarely white.

Logic isn’t male. Many women philosophers have found logic served their thinking quite satisfactorily. I was taught logic by women philosophers.

Now if there is something wrong with the foundation points of each of my lines of logic you can demonstrate that logicly and show them to be wrong neatly and I’ll definatly concede any point that does so. The logic itself, like mathematics, is not social or white or male. The prseumptions precepts etc of a line of logic can be and that line of logic can be shown to be false on account of that.

No matter who makes a logical statement that does not have one iota of bearing on the truth and untruth of that statement unless it relates directly and specifically to the state of that speaker.

The same logical sentence from anyone of any sex ethnicity age or other arbitrary factor has no bearing on the thought, the words, the truth or untruth.

So therefore Sandy your response is invalid. My dismissals are based on logical principles that have passed through Greece, Egypt, Rome, Persia, China.. I could go on for ages with the list. They are not white nor male nor hegemonic.

They are simply true or untrue and if you can disprove any of the classical logical fallacies and show them to be true rather than false or add new arguments in favour or agaisnt any of them you will become famous. Your name will be reknowned in the annals of philosophical history! So be my guest.

If on the other hand you can show that any one of my statements or more is logicaly invalid or based on a demonstrably false premise then please do. I will accept it if I cannot defend or refute it, adjust my opinions arguments and discussion accordingly like anyone should and we can continue on.

The laws of physics are not male, gravity is not male, chemistry is not male, biology is not male, science is not male, mathematics is not male, logic is not male. Men have dominated each of these fields and have indeed made mysogynisitic statements or ignored womens issues, some have even deliberatly tried to keep women out of these fields. That invalidates their sexist views not the fields they worked in nor discoveries made by those people that were independant of their sexism. That does not make these things male. Madame Curie was not male. Hypatia of Alexandria might have been a crossdresser but she was born a woman. There have been women who had to fight for their right to knowledge and the power it brings and yet you simply disregard logic as male? The logic that informed and defined all of these sciences and all of the great victories of these women who broke through patriarchal oppression to make their marks on these fields and discover demonstrable evidential truths whose ramifications are stil being felt today!

Post modernisim and all it’s ilk might be trendy and somewhat useful when considering art, writing and culture (including academic culture) but it’s rather shoddy as metaphysics.

Sandy, perhaps metaphysics is a subject you might find really interesting. Maybe existentialism while you are at it. These could be really useful subjects for you in your arguments.

I think it important for us to understand your argument that you define why you say some of the things you refer to as male are male because I do not see how many can be, just that they have been dominated by males which is not the same thing at all.
Sandy

“Freedom of association does suggest that any group of private individuals should always be able to choose who they do or do not associate with no matter how racist sexist or phobic their motivation yes? So should this extend to public facilities and commercial services or is there a social contract involved that requires that services not be denied comercially and/or publicly for such reasons?”

How about spaces which are reserved based on sex – which of course you feel entitled to?

You are a male. Use the bathroom reserved for males. Stay out of bathrooms reserved for females. That’s pretty logical isn’t is?

Maybe not… what in this society is really reserved for females when men want to take?

Very little.
Sandy

“Freedom of association does suggest that any group of private individuals should always be able to choose who they do or do not associate with no matter how racist sexist or phobic their motivation yes? So should this extend to public facilities and commercial services or is there a social contract involved that requires that services not be denied comercially and/or publicly for such reasons?”

How about spaces which are reserved based on sex – which of course you feel entitled to?

You are a male. Use the bathroom reserved for males. Stay out of bathrooms reserved for females. That’s pretty logical isn’t is?

Maybe not… what in this society is really reserved for females when men want to take?

Very little.
Battybattybats

Sandy I’m not dismissing your statements because you are a woman. I am not dismissing them at all. I am refutting them because they are incorrect and I say why they are incorrect and if I am wrong I can be shown to be wrong.

All the feminists I’ve personally known, all the minorities I’ve known, have used the same standpoints tools and rationales. this is beause they shared the notions of equality, freedom, rationality and logic. Notions that work.

I don’t insist you conform to the standards of rational thought because they are male, I do so because they accurately define the difference between the sane and rational and the meaningless arbitrary contradicitons of nonsense.

“The outcome is the same that it has been for women which is the assertion that women are illogical. We are quite logical only from a set of experiences that no one here has had and which is not in your experience.”

I agree that women have often been called illogical. Without evidence or cause (beyond the repression of womens education and attempts to keep them from thinking)! Moronic pseudoscience abounded through the ages with the likes of leeching, phrenology, hysteria and the miasmic theories of disease. One by one these have been torn apart by the scientific method. The premises they were based on shown to be false.

The idea that women are less intelligent and less capable of logic is also one of these now thoroughly falsified ideas. However it is in the interests of those comercial enterprises that make vast sums of money from women to continue to decry science, logic and critical thinking as not appropriate for women and insisting they make all their decisions using unconcious intuitive reflexive and reactive emotionalism, all valid experiences as of course emotions and feelings and intuition are important, but these are the states of thinking that, in men or women, are most manipulable.

By buying into the notion that such thinking is male you have bought into advocating for being susceptible to the very tool of oppression most successfully used to control and manipulate women, and increasingly also men, in this commerce based society (check out neurolinguistic programming and the interelations between military intel/propaganda and psy-ops with advertising for how this all works).

These are well explored fields of research.

By decrying logic and analytic thinking you abandon the most powerful tools for uncovering truth and demonstrating untruth. These aren’t male or female ideas. The notion that they are is part of the oppression of women! You need not abandon other modes of discovery, but intuition and lateral thinking while very useful are less measurable, quantifiable and most importantly less reliable and hence it is important that their results be double-checked by rational analysis!

“That’s why it is useless to talk to men. They do not question themselves, they question feminist women who do not buy into their framing to begin with.”

Not every male fits your generalisation you know. In fact many women also do not question themselves but instead rationalise and justify their feelings instead of questioning them. On the other hand many women do question themselves.

As a writer and an artist I question myself aplenty. It’s part of the essential process.

As a student of science and philosophy I recognise and acknowledge that everything must be questioned. Every cherished belief and opinion regularly re-analysed and scrutinised to see if it was never true, was partially true or seemed to be true but is better explained by other more accurate truths.

Try me, we can cut as deep into the founding principles of western or eastern philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Lao Tzu and the various schools of bhuddism as you like. I’ve studied lots, am always willing to learn more and am absolutely ready to reappraise every single principle of any of them.
Battybattybats

Sandy I’m not dismissing your statements because you are a woman. I am not dismissing them at all. I am refutting them because they are incorrect and I say why they are incorrect and if I am wrong I can be shown to be wrong.

All the feminists I’ve personally known, all the minorities I’ve known, have used the same standpoints tools and rationales. this is beause they shared the notions of equality, freedom, rationality and logic. Notions that work.

I don’t insist you conform to the standards of rational thought because they are male, I do so because they accurately define the difference between the sane and rational and the meaningless arbitrary contradicitons of nonsense.

“The outcome is the same that it has been for women which is the assertion that women are illogical. We are quite logical only from a set of experiences that no one here has had and which is not in your experience.”

I agree that women have often been called illogical. Without evidence or cause (beyond the repression of womens education and attempts to keep them from thinking)! Moronic pseudoscience abounded through the ages with the likes of leeching, phrenology, hysteria and the miasmic theories of disease. One by one these have been torn apart by the scientific method. The premises they were based on shown to be false.

The idea that women are less intelligent and less capable of logic is also one of these now thoroughly falsified ideas. However it is in the interests of those comercial enterprises that make vast sums of money from women to continue to decry science, logic and critical thinking as not appropriate for women and insisting they make all their decisions using unconcious intuitive reflexive and reactive emotionalism, all valid experiences as of course emotions and feelings and intuition are important, but these are the states of thinking that, in men or women, are most manipulable.

By buying into the notion that such thinking is male you have bought into advocating for being susceptible to the very tool of oppression most successfully used to control and manipulate women, and increasingly also men, in this commerce based society (check out neurolinguistic programming and the interelations between military intel/propaganda and psy-ops with advertising for how this all works).

These are well explored fields of research.

By decrying logic and analytic thinking you abandon the most powerful tools for uncovering truth and demonstrating untruth. These aren’t male or female ideas. The notion that they are is part of the oppression of women! You need not abandon other modes of discovery, but intuition and lateral thinking while very useful are less measurable, quantifiable and most importantly less reliable and hence it is important that their results be double-checked by rational analysis!

“That’s why it is useless to talk to men. They do not question themselves, they question feminist women who do not buy into their framing to begin with.”

Not every male fits your generalisation you know. In fact many women also do not question themselves but instead rationalise and justify their feelings instead of questioning them. On the other hand many women do question themselves.

As a writer and an artist I question myself aplenty. It’s part of the essential process.

As a student of science and philosophy I recognise and acknowledge that everything must be questioned. Every cherished belief and opinion regularly re-analysed and scrutinised to see if it was never true, was partially true or seemed to be true but is better explained by other more accurate truths.

Try me, we can cut as deep into the founding principles of western or eastern philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Lao Tzu and the various schools of bhuddism as you like. I’ve studied lots, am always willing to learn more and am absolutely ready to reappraise every single principle of any of them.
Battybattybats

Actually Sandy i asked Val the question and most specifically worded so we could discuss opperative principles of philosophy without begining in the specifics of arbitrary factors. allowing the principle to inform the example rather than the other way round. Give it a try sometime. You might learn something.

“How about spaces which are reserved based on sex – which of course you feel entitled to?”

And black people should have stayed in the black peoples bathrooms too shouldn’t they Sandy?

Only I don’t agree with the premise. I don’t agree that public facilities should be reserved based on sex or race or any other arbitrary factor do I, making your argument and your admonition pointless and meaningless. How can you argue that I feel entitled to something I say shouldn’t exist?

And don’t give me any bull on safety as a reason for sex segregated toilets because you know that I advocate for spaces safer and more secure for children, the disabled and everyone else than the sex segregated communal facilities you argue in protetion of so give me ANOTHER reason why public spaces should be reserved based on sex?
Battybattybats

Actually Sandy i asked Val the question and most specifically worded so we could discuss opperative principles of philosophy without begining in the specifics of arbitrary factors. allowing the principle to inform the example rather than the other way round. Give it a try sometime. You might learn something.

“How about spaces which are reserved based on sex – which of course you feel entitled to?”

And black people should have stayed in the black peoples bathrooms too shouldn’t they Sandy?

Only I don’t agree with the premise. I don’t agree that public facilities should be reserved based on sex or race or any other arbitrary factor do I, making your argument and your admonition pointless and meaningless. How can you argue that I feel entitled to something I say shouldn’t exist?

And don’t give me any bull on safety as a reason for sex segregated toilets because you know that I advocate for spaces safer and more secure for children, the disabled and everyone else than the sex segregated communal facilities you argue in protetion of so give me ANOTHER reason why public spaces should be reserved based on sex?
Sandy

When you say “reason”, that means what’s reasonable to you.

When I oppose you, if I don’t agree with you, then you say, I am not reasonable” setting yourself up as the standard of reason itself.

You are not the standard of reason. You don’t believe restrooms should be sexually segregated? I do.

Is safety a reason? Emprically a female is raped by males every four minutes. Yes, safety is a reason.

Is that garbage? No, it’s not garbage. It’s just an empiraical fact of life for women that inconvenient to you.
Sandy

When you say “reason”, that means what’s reasonable to you.

When I oppose you, if I don’t agree with you, then you say, I am not reasonable” setting yourself up as the standard of reason itself.

You are not the standard of reason. You don’t believe restrooms should be sexually segregated? I do.

Is safety a reason? Emprically a female is raped by males every four minutes. Yes, safety is a reason.

Is that garbage? No, it’s not garbage. It’s just an empiraical fact of life for women that inconvenient to you.
Marti Abernathey

How many of those women that are raped, are raped by a transsexual/transgender person in a bathroom.

ZERO.

Empirical my ass.
Marti Abernathey

How many of those women that are raped, are raped by a transsexual/transgender person in a bathroom.

ZERO.

Empirical my ass.
Battybattybats

No, when I say ‘reason’ I mean cogent thought consistent with logical principles and devoid of logical inconsistancies and fallacies. A viewpoint I disagree with can still be reason. In fact i can argue plenty of viewpoints I don’t personally agree with because they can still be reason. That’s one of the useful skills that you can pick up from formal debating.

I am not setting myself up as the standard of reason. i am not perfect and sometimes my arguments too include logical fallacies and I’ll hapilly acknowledge and modify any accordingly.

I know you agre with sex segregated bathrooms. I think you might have mentioned that before.

“Is safety a reason? Emprically a female is raped by males every four minutes. Yes, safety is a reason.”

And males are raped in lower but still significant numbers. 1 in 3 Australian female children have been abused. 1 in 7 males have.

Women also rape women and molest children though less frequently than men.

So the bathroom types I am calling for will protect both sexes esecially for children making them safer than the bathrooms you are calling for.

“Is that garbage? No, it’s not garbage. It’s just an empiraical fact of life for women that inconvenient to you.”

No I acknowledge the problem of womens safety absolutely! Rape is wrong and needs to be prevented! Both natal men and natal women and a transexual woman who are dear friends of mine and my gender non-conformist cousin have been raped. I want that not to be repeated to any more people.

What is inconvenient for you is that I am calling for a safer space than you are.
Battybattybats

No, when I say ‘reason’ I mean cogent thought consistent with logical principles and devoid of logical inconsistancies and fallacies. A viewpoint I disagree with can still be reason. In fact i can argue plenty of viewpoints I don’t personally agree with because they can still be reason. That’s one of the useful skills that you can pick up from formal debating.

I am not setting myself up as the standard of reason. i am not perfect and sometimes my arguments too include logical fallacies and I’ll hapilly acknowledge and modify any accordingly.

I know you agre with sex segregated bathrooms. I think you might have mentioned that before.

“Is safety a reason? Emprically a female is raped by males every four minutes. Yes, safety is a reason.”

And males are raped in lower but still significant numbers. 1 in 3 Australian female children have been abused. 1 in 7 males have.

Women also rape women and molest children though less frequently than men.

So the bathroom types I am calling for will protect both sexes esecially for children making them safer than the bathrooms you are calling for.

“Is that garbage? No, it’s not garbage. It’s just an empiraical fact of life for women that inconvenient to you.”

No I acknowledge the problem of womens safety absolutely! Rape is wrong and needs to be prevented! Both natal men and natal women and a transexual woman who are dear friends of mine and my gender non-conformist cousin have been raped. I want that not to be repeated to any more people.

What is inconvenient for you is that I am calling for a safer space than you are.
Niss

Yes because the magical restroom sign is gonna stop a rapist who is really concerned about the law.
Niss

Yes because the magical restroom sign is gonna stop a rapist who is really concerned about the law.
Danae of the Sun

Sandy said:
I am a woman born woman.

Not by anyone’s definition but your own. You are Rainsong self hating transexual second wave feminist extraordinaire.
Danae of the Sun

Sandy said:
I am a woman born woman.

Not by anyone’s definition but your own. You are Rainsong self hating transexual second wave feminist extraordinaire.
Battybattybats

Having enough room for just one wheelchair with one or more cameras right near the door to ensure only one person enters at a time and that anyone breaking this rule will be recorded and identified would have identified and maybe even have prevented the attacks of the rapist/murderers of children in several horrible cases in Australian superkarket and sporting events toilets. The same with the teenage girl gangraped in a toilet in Sydney.

Sex segregation did not provide one iota of protection for these innocents. What I’m calling for would provide a quality detterant and vastly help in the arrest and prosecution of these people.

So Sandy, why don’t you join me in calling for safe toilets and showers without private communal space protected by cctv cameras and really protect women and children?
Battybattybats

Having enough room for just one wheelchair with one or more cameras right near the door to ensure only one person enters at a time and that anyone breaking this rule will be recorded and identified would have identified and maybe even have prevented the attacks of the rapist/murderers of children in several horrible cases in Australian superkarket and sporting events toilets. The same with the teenage girl gangraped in a toilet in Sydney.

Sex segregation did not provide one iota of protection for these innocents. What I’m calling for would provide a quality detterant and vastly help in the arrest and prosecution of these people.

So Sandy, why don’t you join me in calling for safe toilets and showers without private communal space protected by cctv cameras and really protect women and children?
http://www.morf.org.uk Felix

These sort of toilets are starting to be a regular sight in new public buildings in the UK.
http://www.morf.org.uk/ Felix

These sort of toilets are starting to be a regular sight in new public buildings in the UK.
Sandy

“I know you agre with sex segregated bathrooms. I think you might have mentioned that before. “

It’s only taken several thousand words to impart that.

“And males are raped in lower but still significant numbers. 1 in 3 Australian female children have been abused. 1 in 7 males have.”

This is a problem that men have to sort out.

“Women also rape women and molest children though less frequently than men.”

WDIT – MRA argument warning.

“So the bathroom types I am calling for will protect both sexes esecially for children making them safer than the bathrooms you are calling for.”

Total non-sequitor there.

“Is that garbage? No, it’s not garbage. It’s just an empiraical fact of life for women that inconvenient to you.”

????

No I acknowledge the problem of womens safety absolutely! Rape is wrong and needs to be prevented!

Both natal men and natal women and a transexual woman who are dear friends of mine and my gender non-conformist cousin have been raped. I want that not to be repeated to any more people.
What is inconvenient for you is that I am calling for a safer space than you are.

I just don’t want penises in women’s rooms. People with penises aren’t women. They don’t belong there.
You are man, you live as a man. I don’t want to share a bathroom with you.

“So Sandy, why don’t you join me in calling for safe toilets and showers without private communal space protected by cctv cameras and really protect women and children?”

I’ll NEVER join you in anything. I promise.

Penises out of women’s room.

I will happily call the police on your if I ever see you in the women’s room. They are not there for your hobbies.
Sandy

“I know you agre with sex segregated bathrooms. I think you might have mentioned that before. “

It’s only taken several thousand words to impart that.

“And males are raped in lower but still significant numbers. 1 in 3 Australian female children have been abused. 1 in 7 males have.”

This is a problem that men have to sort out.

“Women also rape women and molest children though less frequently than men.”

WDIT – MRA argument warning.

“So the bathroom types I am calling for will protect both sexes esecially for children making them safer than the bathrooms you are calling for.”

Total non-sequitor there.

“Is that garbage? No, it’s not garbage. It’s just an empiraical fact of life for women that inconvenient to you.”

????

No I acknowledge the problem of womens safety absolutely! Rape is wrong and needs to be prevented!

Both natal men and natal women and a transexual woman who are dear friends of mine and my gender non-conformist cousin have been raped. I want that not to be repeated to any more people.
What is inconvenient for you is that I am calling for a safer space than you are.

I just don’t want penises in women’s rooms. People with penises aren’t women. They don’t belong there.
You are man, you live as a man. I don’t want to share a bathroom with you.

“So Sandy, why don’t you join me in calling for safe toilets and showers without private communal space protected by cctv cameras and really protect women and children?”

I’ll NEVER join you in anything. I promise.

Penises out of women’s room.

I will happily call the police on your if I ever see you in the women’s room. They are not there for your hobbies.
Niss

What does WDIT – MRA argument mean? Curious.
Niss

What does WDIT – MRA argument mean? Curious.
Battybattybats

“It’s only taken several thousand words to impart that.”

No Sandy, we all got it the first time. We all just disagree with you and think your reasons and reasoning on the subject are totally wrong.

“This is a problem that men have to sort out.”

No it is a problem for everyone. No one gets an out on this.

“WDIT – MRA argument warning.”

I don’t know what those initials stand for at this moment, please elucidate.

Well according to the women on the psychology radio program All In The Mind on australias state owned national broadcaster ABC Radio National who did a program recently on women who kill their children and women who are sex offenders it is, despite the taboo and much smaller proportion of assaults still an important and concerning issue. Apparently many of the treatment options used successfully with male sex offenders do not owrk with female sex offenders. A comment was also made, and it is one I have to look into, along the lines that some male offenders were abused sexually by women as children. That would seem to coincide with the fact that many abusers of children were themselves abused as children, functioning in effect as a comunicable pyschological illness.

“Total non-sequitor there.”

Maybe you better explain that cause it doesn’t seem to me to be a non-sequitor. A non sequiter is where an associated but not causal premise in a statement is taken to be a causal premise by incorrect association http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29

My premise is that the bathroom type that I call for is the safest one for everyone including women. The one you call for, the current type, has been proven to be unsafe and would appear to be vastly less safe than the one that I propose. Now if you could prove that the bathroom type I call for is not safer I would be wrong, but it still wouldn’t be a non-sequiter! Just a statement based on an incorrect premise.

“I just don’t want penises in women’s rooms. People with penises aren’t women. They don’t belong there.
You are man, you live as a man. I don’t want to share a bathroom with you.”

We know what you want, but that doesn’t mean that it would be right for you to get what you want.
Some people didn’t want black people in white’s rooms. People with black skin aren’t white. Some people said they didn’t belong there.
The blacks were black, they lived as blacks, some whites didn’t want to share a bathroom with them.

See the problem is that the argument is precisely the same.

“I’ll NEVER join you in anything. I promise.”

Wow so what will happen if I agree’d with everything you said? Would you have to oppose all your own values, beliefs and arguments just because you need to oppose me? WoW! Talk about handing me your power! In that case I could totally define you because you could only be what opposes me! That doesn’t sound very smart or stable to me.

“I will happily call the police on your if I ever see you in the women’s room.”

Well if you ever travel to my continent, to my state, to my region, to my small rural town and find me in a public womens toilets rather than the unisex disabled toilets in the shopping centre that I normally use (one of only a couple in the town) which I am legally entitled to use on account of my legally recognised disabled status then by all means call the police on me. I won’t be terribly upset.

“A transgender who has a birth certificate or recognition certificate in their preferred gender must be treated at all times as their new gender. It would be discrimination and against the law to do anything else.

All other transgenders should be allowed to use the toilets or change rooms of their choice unless this would be “unreasonable in all the circumstances”. In the vast majority of cases this means that transgenders should be allowed to use the toilets and change rooms of their preferred gender. It is not necessary, and in most cases would be insulting and against the anti-discrimination law, to either instal a special set of toilets/change rooms or make transgenders use a different set than people who are not transgender.

Once again, don’t make assumptions. Some transgenders may wish to use the toilets of their birth gender, while others may wish to use the toilets of their preferred gender.”

Hahahahahahahahaaaaaaa
Hahahaahahahahahahaaaaaa

Sandy go right ahead. This particular battle has already been won here!
Your side lost.

“They are not there for your hobbies.”

And for the record crossdressing is not for me a hobby. I have lots of hobbies so I can tel the difference. It is a deep and neccessary part of my self expression and self identity no matter how ignorant you are about that nor how much your polarised mind fails to understand.

The toilets are there as receptacles for human metabolic waste products. that is their function. They are provided as an essential service for the community by the community.

And all women and all children and the disabled and effeminate men and openly gay men and elderly men just less strong than other men will all be vastly safer with single use 0 communal private space disabled access unisex toilets protected at their entrance by quality cctv camera.
Battybattybats

“It’s only taken several thousand words to impart that.”

No Sandy, we all got it the first time. We all just disagree with you and think your reasons and reasoning on the subject are totally wrong.

“This is a problem that men have to sort out.”

No it is a problem for everyone. No one gets an out on this.

“WDIT – MRA argument warning.”

I don’t know what those initials stand for at this moment, please elucidate.

Well according to the women on the psychology radio program All In The Mind on australias state owned national broadcaster ABC Radio National who did a program recently on women who kill their children and women who are sex offenders it is, despite the taboo and much smaller proportion of assaults still an important and concerning issue. Apparently many of the treatment options used successfully with male sex offenders do not owrk with female sex offenders. A comment was also made, and it is one I have to look into, along the lines that some male offenders were abused sexually by women as children. That would seem to coincide with the fact that many abusers of children were themselves abused as children, functioning in effect as a comunicable pyschological illness.

“Total non-sequitor there.”

Maybe you better explain that cause it doesn’t seem to me to be a non-sequitor. A non sequiter is where an associated but not causal premise in a statement is taken to be a causal premise by incorrect association http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29

My premise is that the bathroom type that I call for is the safest one for everyone including women. The one you call for, the current type, has been proven to be unsafe and would appear to be vastly less safe than the one that I propose. Now if you could prove that the bathroom type I call for is not safer I would be wrong, but it still wouldn’t be a non-sequiter! Just a statement based on an incorrect premise.

“I just don’t want penises in women’s rooms. People with penises aren’t women. They don’t belong there.
You are man, you live as a man. I don’t want to share a bathroom with you.”

We know what you want, but that doesn’t mean that it would be right for you to get what you want.
Some people didn’t want black people in white’s rooms. People with black skin aren’t white. Some people said they didn’t belong there.
The blacks were black, they lived as blacks, some whites didn’t want to share a bathroom with them.

See the problem is that the argument is precisely the same.

“I’ll NEVER join you in anything. I promise.”

Wow so what will happen if I agree’d with everything you said? Would you have to oppose all your own values, beliefs and arguments just because you need to oppose me? WoW! Talk about handing me your power! In that case I could totally define you because you could only be what opposes me! That doesn’t sound very smart or stable to me.

“I will happily call the police on your if I ever see you in the women’s room.”

Well if you ever travel to my continent, to my state, to my region, to my small rural town and find me in a public womens toilets rather than the unisex disabled toilets in the shopping centre that I normally use (one of only a couple in the town) which I am legally entitled to use on account of my legally recognised disabled status then by all means call the police on me. I won’t be terribly upset.

“A transgender who has a birth certificate or recognition certificate in their preferred gender must be treated at all times as their new gender. It would be discrimination and against the law to do anything else.

All other transgenders should be allowed to use the toilets or change rooms of their choice unless this would be “unreasonable in all the circumstances”. In the vast majority of cases this means that transgenders should be allowed to use the toilets and change rooms of their preferred gender. It is not necessary, and in most cases would be insulting and against the anti-discrimination law, to either instal a special set of toilets/change rooms or make transgenders use a different set than people who are not transgender.

Once again, don’t make assumptions. Some transgenders may wish to use the toilets of their birth gender, while others may wish to use the toilets of their preferred gender.”

Hahahahahahahahaaaaaaa
Hahahaahahahahahahaaaaaa

Sandy go right ahead. This particular battle has already been won here!
Your side lost.

“They are not there for your hobbies.”

And for the record crossdressing is not for me a hobby. I have lots of hobbies so I can tel the difference. It is a deep and neccessary part of my self expression and self identity no matter how ignorant you are about that nor how much your polarised mind fails to understand.

The toilets are there as receptacles for human metabolic waste products. that is their function. They are provided as an essential service for the community by the community.

And all women and all children and the disabled and effeminate men and openly gay men and elderly men just less strong than other men will all be vastly safer with single use 0 communal private space disabled access unisex toilets protected at their entrance by quality cctv camera.
Polar Bear

Sandy wrote:
“If there is a penis under the skirt, the skirt belongs to a him, not a her.
I want anatomical males out of the women’s room.”

People in hell want ice water. Ralph Nader wants to be President. I want a 12-karat diamond ring for my wonderful wife (with matching earrings), and a black Lamborghini Murcielago for myself. Each of these is equally unlikely to occur.

You might be surprised to learn that, in most places, there are no laws in place regarding who may use what restroom. In fact, if the people of Monty County MD are stupid and bigoted enough to repeal the law in question, it would remain legal for a T person, with or without penis, to use the ladies room. Outlawing penises in the restroom would be another law altogether, and would probably be challenged in court, since there are conflicting court rulings defining what a man and woman are, exactly.

You also never mentioned how you’d ascertain whether the person in the stall next to you, or the person applying lipstick at the next mirror, has or doesn’t have a penis. Neither my wife, nor myself, are willing to lift our skirts to prove to some creep with a badge that we have the right to relieve ourselves behind a closed stall door. You planning to peek in the stalls to see how people are equipped? Maybe you can hire the cop that busted Larry Craig to do that. Personally, I’d be more scared of the sick individuals who’d consent to being bathroom cops, than of the occasional T person.

Just as you don’t buy “transgender” as a valid descriptive term, I don’t buy any of the dogma of feminist theory, beyond the thought that all people are created equal and should enjoy equal rights. Just as you don’t want peni in restrooms, I don’t want Janice Raymond and Germaine Greer books in my sight.
I suppose each of us may fire up our respective grills and barbecue, now.

Before you say “there oughta be a law that no penises may be in the ladies room”, you ought to think of how that could be enforced in the real world. For instance, ya gonna bust a mom with preschool kids who takes all of them – especially the little boys – in the ladies with them, so that she can rediaper them safely? Or you see a 6′ tall, heavy-set woman that might be a T – you gonna make her lift her skirt and prove herself? Most such women I know would slap you upside the head at the very suggestion.

As stated before, you don’t want peni in the restroom. Jerry Falwell and Mao Zedong want ice water. Ralph Nader wants to write an inaugural address. I want to put that ring on my wife’s finger, and I crave the feel of driving that Lamborghini. We have equal chances of getting what we want – zilch.
Polar Bear

Sandy wrote:
“If there is a penis under the skirt, the skirt belongs to a him, not a her.
I want anatomical males out of the women’s room.”

People in hell want ice water. Ralph Nader wants to be President. I want a 12-karat diamond ring for my wonderful wife (with matching earrings), and a black Lamborghini Murcielago for myself. Each of these is equally unlikely to occur.

You might be surprised to learn that, in most places, there are no laws in place regarding who may use what restroom. In fact, if the people of Monty County MD are stupid and bigoted enough to repeal the law in question, it would remain legal for a T person, with or without penis, to use the ladies room. Outlawing penises in the restroom would be another law altogether, and would probably be challenged in court, since there are conflicting court rulings defining what a man and woman are, exactly.

You also never mentioned how you’d ascertain whether the person in the stall next to you, or the person applying lipstick at the next mirror, has or doesn’t have a penis. Neither my wife, nor myself, are willing to lift our skirts to prove to some creep with a badge that we have the right to relieve ourselves behind a closed stall door. You planning to peek in the stalls to see how people are equipped? Maybe you can hire the cop that busted Larry Craig to do that. Personally, I’d be more scared of the sick individuals who’d consent to being bathroom cops, than of the occasional T person.

Just as you don’t buy “transgender” as a valid descriptive term, I don’t buy any of the dogma of feminist theory, beyond the thought that all people are created equal and should enjoy equal rights. Just as you don’t want peni in restrooms, I don’t want Janice Raymond and Germaine Greer books in my sight.
I suppose each of us may fire up our respective grills and barbecue, now.

Before you say “there oughta be a law that no penises may be in the ladies room”, you ought to think of how that could be enforced in the real world. For instance, ya gonna bust a mom with preschool kids who takes all of them – especially the little boys – in the ladies with them, so that she can rediaper them safely? Or you see a 6′ tall, heavy-set woman that might be a T – you gonna make her lift her skirt and prove herself? Most such women I know would slap you upside the head at the very suggestion.

As stated before, you don’t want peni in the restroom. Jerry Falwell and Mao Zedong want ice water. Ralph Nader wants to write an inaugural address. I want to put that ring on my wife’s finger, and I crave the feel of driving that Lamborghini. We have equal chances of getting what we want – zilch.

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