After the Alabama supreme court ruled that embryos are children and deserve all the protections that children are entitled to, IVF clinics in the state began to stop providing IVF services because of fears that if any embryo were to be destroyed (which is done routinely with embryos that are no longer needed), they could be culpable.
The ruling has caused an uproar because IVF treatments have broad support. So the state legislature rushed to pass a law to protect IVF doctors and parents from any legal repercussions. But apparently the law is pretty tortured in its reasoning.
The enacted legislation doesn’t define or clarify whether under state law frozen embryos created via IVF have the same rights as children. Rather, the narrowly tailored bill is designed to protect doctors, clinics and other health care personnel who provide IVF treatment and services by offering such workers civil and criminal “immunity.”
The new law will “provide civil and criminal immunity for death or damage to an embryo to any individual or entity when providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.”
It says that “no action, suit, or criminal prosecution for the damage to or death of an embryo shall be brought or maintained against any individual or entity when providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.”
So basically, Alabama says that embryos are people but that you can kill them anyway without any repercussions.
Anti-abortion groups rightly saw this as contradictory to the stated GOP position that life begins at conception and that they were now saying that some children’s lives (i.e., those created using IVF treatments) were expendable.They also claim that the new law provides civil and criminal immunity for any doctor who:
> Secretly uses his own sperm to create embryos
> Deliberately implants someone else’s child into a different IVF mother’s womb
> Intentionally destroys the embryos he creates against the wishes of the parents
I do not know if all those fears are well-founded or not but the group pleaded with the governor to veto the law. She signed it anyway.
This will not be the end of the story. I do not know what will happen if this group sues the state over this law and it goes back up to the same supreme court that made the ruling about IVF treatments
What is happening in Alabama is the precursor to what will happen elsewhere as GOP politicians tie themselves into knots trying to say that embryos are just like children while at the same time saying that they support IVF treatments, knowing that that will lead to the deliberate destruction of some of them.
It is hypocrisy.
The christofascists claim that embyos are children.
With that as a premise, abortion is first degree murder.
Destroying unneeded embryos is also murder.
OTOH, IVF is very popular with the GOP base.
The vast majority of IVF users are white women with a lot of money.
It’s 85% white women.
The average cost of a live birth IVF baby is $60,000, rarely covered by insurance and not covered by Medicare or Medicaid.
The fundies couldn’t function without hypocrisy.
The abortion rate for a lot of fundie xian demographic groups is actually higher than the national average in part because they are less likely to use birth control.
The three main sacraments of fundie xianity are lies, hate, and hypocrisy.
That Alabama Supreme Court ruling needs to be scrapped in its entirety. It’s not even based on legal reasoning at all; it’s nothing more than religious raving about what “God’s law” allegedly says, with no regard for secular law, precedent, custom, real-world consequences or basic common sense. The Republicans know this, and now they’re desperately trying to walk it all back, but without admitting they know it’s wrong. This new law is just another bit of “No, no, we didn’t REALLY mean it THAT way, y’all are taking this too literally…”
You could say that about the bits of the Bible they can’t be bothered with, too…
The Bible thumpers see which way the winds are blowing (young people increasingly irreligious), and in their desperation are saying the quiet parts out loud: we don’t care about the law, we care only about power, and we need to exercise it as much as possible while we still can.
They try to apply an Iron Age mindset to a 21st century society.
The doctor secretly using his own sperm thing has happened already. It’s been in cases where the doctor was supposed to be using the sperm from donors for artificial insemination rather than IVF, and has happened in the USA and in the Netherlands that I know of. There should be protocols in place to stop it happening in IVF clinics, but given that we know a patient was able to wander into the room embryos were stored who knows?
@4 Matt G: Among the actually religious there is also a large element of belief that if they get things to align with God’s will* then somehow everything will work out. God will make it obvious they are right and everything will flourish and more people will become faithful and so on. For the real believers as the portion of the population they represent falls the situation seems more and more desperate. They become even less concerned with representing the population and more with pushing their religious beliefs, even if unpopular.
* Ignore inconsistencies in what they believe God’s will is.
I don’t think there is much argument against the “life begins at conception” idea. Of course it does -- new genetic life has been created at that time. The real sticking point is if that life is as valuable and worthy of protection as a full, birthed human being. The fundies have been going on for decades in the affirmative, but finally, taking their position to its logical conclusion, Alabama has prompted a reckoning. Only the most insane, wingnuttiest Catholics (and a few evangelicals) are anti-IVF -- the procedure is broadly supported by a strong majority of Americans. So unfortunately for the anti-choice crowd, they’re going to have to do what they’ve been avoiding for decades -- they’re going to have to admit that the line at which life becomes valuable enough to protect as you would a baby is NOT conception. Any other way that they might justify protecting IVF but also keeping to their existing dogma would be like saying “murder is wrong, but sometimes it’s okay to kill another innocent person.” The kind of tortured reasoning that they’re trying to use to protect IVF in Alabama now is, frankly, not going to cut it long-term, because either embryos are functionally equivalent to children, or they’re not, and if they are, then allowing them to be destroyed is a crime equivalent to murder.
So really, this court decision and associated fallout is likely to create an extremely messy situation where everyone is trying to decide on where the new line should be drawn. But I do think this could ultimately benefit the pro-choice crowd, because there is nothing about a 20-day old embryo that is functionally more human than a 19-day old embryo…and 90 days is not more obviously human than 89 days. The only logical point where one could argue that a fetus might deserve protection is the one that already existed in the pre-Dobbs abortion landscape -- viability. That has always made the most sense, and is already the target of laws in many Blue states that explicitly protect abortion rights. Whether we get a national ruling that FINALLY enshrines abortion rights into American law on the basis of actual logic, and not the twisted expedient of “privacy” concerns that Roe v. Wade came down to (even RBG recognized the fundamental insufficiency of Roe, but protected it due to her unfailing pragmatism) depends on the makeup of the US Supreme Court in the next few years, but I do think that this is what will eventually come of all this nonsense, be it 5 years down the road or 50.
@Matt G, 4:
See also the dead-man-walking that is the current Conservative government in the UK.
I was thinking about it yesterday, having watched George Galloway -- not a man for whom I have any respect, it must be said upfront -- making mincemeat of a journalist trying to put him on the spot with stuff the PM had said in the wake of his election in Rochdale. I was thinking that, right now, Galloway is right -- nobody should give two shits what Sunak says about anything. He’s toast, and everyone knows it, even in his own party. The few remaining Tories who aren’t spending ALL their time looking for other jobs for after the winnowing are either jockeying for the leadership, or just trying to do as much damage as possible while they’ve still got the power (these two activities are not mutually exclusive of course).
My point of reference was John Major’s position in late 1996/early 1997. Everyone knew what was about to happen. The difference -- the huge difference -- was that even Major’s opponents (including myself) considered him basically a decent bloke charged with the almost impossible task of leading a bunch of worthless no-marks and trying to do his best, given his background as a state-educated working-class non-graduate. The comparison with Winchester-and-Oxford billionaire Sunak could not be more stark. “Despise” is a strong word, but it does fit. And he’s not even the worst of them.
What you (and nearly everyone else) miss here is the matter of the “soul,” that mythological essence believed to separate humans from all other life. (Yes, I know that there are people who believe that animals have souls too, but they’re a fringe of the fringe.) If someone believes that souls are eternal—see Jeremiah 1:5—then human life begins the instant that a preexisting “soul” enters a fertilized egg. For the record, while Jeremiah is part of the Hebrew scriptures, Jews count the drawing of a first breath as the beginning of life and traditionally children were not named until weeks after the drawing of their first breath.
So, all this nonsense rests on particular mythologies that are not subject to scientific scrutiny. The former president, and his purported support for, and by, christianity in general (and evangelical christianity in particular) has given the irrational a hold on our political and judicial institutions that we will be fighting for years to eradicate.
The first and most vital action now is for everyone who values rational thought to do all they are able to ensure that the former president, and all those who support him, never see the inside of a political office again.
Sorry, the “you” in my first sentence is meant to refer to commenter No. 8, VolcanoMan.
@8, Volcano Man: when sperm meets egg, fertilization occurs…but that is absolutely no guarantee of a baby in 40 weeks’ time. Some fertilized eggs never implant--that’s true whether through traditional methods or IVF. Once an egg has implanted, it might implant in a Fallopian tube (ectopic pregnancy), miscarry naturally, or form a molar pregnancy (when the embryo simply stops developing for no obvious reason). One statistic is that half of all traditionally fertilized eggs never result in a baby, and for IVF embryos, it’s even worse odds.
That’s why many religions consider personhood to occur at first breath after birth (or in some cultures, 30 days after birth). In civilized cultures, it’s after viability.
Alabama is clearly not civilized. This also gives them another passel of reasons to punish women--get pregnant and it goes horribly wrong and you die? TOO BAD. Want to get pregnant and can’t? TOO BAD. Were happily pregnant and miscarry? TRIAL FOR MURDER.
@8, Volcano Man:
There is a definitive argument against that idea:
Both gametes were alive to start with, the egg and the spermatozoon.
If either or neither were not alive, fertilisation could not occur.
Therefore, it’s a continuation of existing life, not the beginning of a new life.
What begins is a new proto-organism, not a new life.
Okay, perhaps the word “begins” is a bit of a mushy concept. “Continues into a new, distinct organism” might be the more appropriate term. And yes, there is no guarantee of a baby in 40 weeks’ time. Just 30-50% of embryos make it to blastocyst, and after that, something like 10-20% spontaneously abort anyway (meaning well over half of fertilized embryos will not make it to term). But this is all semantics. Regardless of the “alive-ness” of the sperm and oocyte, regardless of the chances that it survives 40 weeks in the womb, the embryo is a separate life to those who created it, as unique and distinct as any human who does make it to birth (and beyond). The argument shouldn’t be that it’s not “life,” it should be that the interests of the person in whom that life is incubating FAR outweigh the interests of the organism within them. They should have ultimate control over what happens in, and to, their body.
This is why I don’t support ANY legal restrictions on abortion. Any law that governs what someone can do with their body is, in my opinion, fundamentally immoral. I trust women to make the decisions that are right for them. Nobody goes 35 weeks through pregnancy before finally deciding to end said pregnancy, at least not without a REALLY good reason (i.e. learning that the child is already deceased, will be horribly disabled and die a lingering and painful death within days or weeks of birth, or that the pregnancy significantly threatens their own life). Proper maternal healthcare would see pregnancies identified early, and women given the choice to carry-to-term or terminate. Why does the legal system need to step in? Incidentally, this is exactly the system that we have in Canada…and it works fine. Sure, we could use more doctors who perform abortions in rural areas (more doctors, period, actually), but evidence does not show that a lack of legal guidance has led to a whole slew of abortions past 30-weeks LMP. Anyone arguing otherwise is slandering women of childbearing age everywhere. This is not a difficult moral issue. Your body is your own, to do with what you wish. Period.
From Parker’s decision:
VolcanoMan, excellent retort.
Mind you, the topic is IVF, not abortion.
Pierce, one can’t simultaneously have a right to life and a death penalty and still be consistent, unless that right is not inalienable.
Yes, the topic is IVF. But the whole reason Alabama had this court decision was because of a constitutional amendment they approved in like 2018 (iirc), defining life as beginning at conception, as a way to quickly and easily ban abortion if and when Roe v. Wade was overturned. Furthermore, I would argue the topics of banning IVF and banning abortion are basically the same thing, because the people arguing for them are using essentially the same rationale to do so, and have essentially the same covert motivations (which lately have been far less covert…gods, they can’t even dogwhistle anymore). But embryos and fetuses aren’t people, and they certainly should not enjoy the same rights as people. I would even argue against those laws that call murdering a pregnant person double-homicide. Not that I’m pro-murderer, just that I don’t agree that killing a fetus could ever be called murder.
I’m not about to try to gainsay you, VolcanoMan.
(I also approve of the way you don’t mince words!)
@ 14 VolcanoMan
Um… no. Not to pile on you but this is a metaphysical spiritualist position, not a rational one. This embryo is not a separate “life” until birth -- ingesting nutrients on it’s own, inhaling oxygen on it’s own, etc. Prior to that it may be a proto-person, but it is not a distinct thing from the pregnant person in any physical sense.
Everything else you say about the pregnant person being the sole arbiter of whether they remain pregnant -- 100% agreed. I’m nitpicking (well spank my arse and call me Morales).
#20,
Pregnant person? I think ‘woman’ is the word you were looking for.
@ 21
Hey misogynist fuckwit, I hate to break it to you but, WOMEN ARE PEOPLE.
Get it through your fucking noggin. All pregnant humans are people whether they identify as women or not.
Like seriously, what happened to you that rendered you incapable of thinking of women as people? Were you raised in some misogynist training camp or what? What the fuck is wrong with you?
You’re erasing women from the equation but I’m the misogynist? Like seriously (fuck it, let’s all speak like teenagers), what happened to you that rendered you incapable of thinking of women as women?
Get this through your noggin; all pregnant humans are women, regardless of how they identify.
I see. All pregnant people must be denied a right to deny themselves. Because they’re just vessels. Not like men who have minds. Just vessels.
Fuck off misogynist shithead -- you’re not welcome here. I recognize all pregnant people who are women as being as fully human as anyone else, regardless of their identity or reproductive ability.
Why do you hate pregnant trans men to much, misogynist? Because you think it demeans a man to be pregnant? Because that’s lowly breeding stock business only suitable for women?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/20/the-dad-who-gave-birth-pregnant-trans-freddy-mcconnell
[denied a right to define themselves]
Sorry, for tyops but misogynists drive my up the wall.
Again with the ‘hate’ hyperbole and putting words into my mouth.
It isn’t hate or misogyny to know that pregnancy is a physical process that is unique to women because only women have the required physiology to become pregnant. It has nothing at all to do about how I feel or think about anything. I don’t think it demeans men to be pregnant any more than I think it demeans fish to not be able to sing opera; it’s just something they cannot physically do.
You can’t actually be so stupid as to think AoS thinks women are not people… right? Please tell me this is just an argument of convenience and not an actual belief of yours.
Wow. You don’t even have abstract thought.
That first quoted part is standard practice, Holms. They can’t plausibly deny the actual words of the argument so instead rephrase it with the most bad-faith, agenda-confirming interpretation and then argue with the resulting fictional version of what was said.
The second quoted part: well, ‘projection’ leaps to mind; sort of like saying the quiet part out loud, or letting the cat out of the bag, if you will.
I deliberately said “pregnant person” because men can possess uteri, and they can get pregnant. Please take your TERF shit somewhere else.
If you use Old Testament law, it is easy.
If the husband suspects his wife became pregnant by cheating on him, he has the right to make her drink a potion that induces miscarriage.
Life does not begin until the first breath, according to Jewish beliefs. Nor did Jesus ever contradict them on this issue.
So day-after pills are OK. So are surgical abortions.
The rest is made up BS by Christian charlatans.
@SilentBob
Just because something can’t exist on its own doesn’t make it not a separate, distinct life. When sperm and egg meet, chromosomal cross-over (the genetic lottery mix-n-match) means that the resultant embryo is genetically distinct from its parents. Yes it is dependant on someone for approximately 34-36 weeks, unable to survive on its own, but by your account, should that fetus be born extremely premature (say, 22-24 weeks), and placed into one of those incubators until it is strong enough to survive on its own (i.e. it is still not able to exist as a separate entity, not ingesting nutrients on its own and probably not inhaling oxygen on its own either), it is not a separate life until it can survive independently from the machines that sustain it. And (to indulge in a minor form of reductio ad absurdum) does an adult human who gets into a serious accident and has to have their heart and lungs controlled by a machine return to “proto-person” status?
As I said before, this is all semantics. The argument over whether an embryo or fetus is its own unique life form is a distraction from the larger issue at hand. Something can be alive and (at least somewhat) separate and distinct from the beings that created it, without being as valuable, or possessing the same rights as those beings. We don’t have to convince people that life doesn’t begin at conception (which, to me, seems like an argument that can never be fully settled, not least because so many people, unlike me, are not arguing in good faith); we only have to convince them that whatever is created at conception should not be given equal or greater rights and protections as those given to the person on whom that life form is dependant.
#30,
You also said in your comment #14:
Why ‘women’ rather than ‘people? Is it because you forget to use the approved terminology sometimes? Whatever the reason, you show that you are clearly aware that it is women who get pregnant regardless of how they identify, so don’t come at me with your ‘TERF’ accusations when it’s obvious that we both know that only women get pregnant; the only difference between us is that I’m prepared to say so openly while you say it only by accident. And no, men do not have uteri: trans-men, maybe, but trans is a gender identity, not a sex.
@33
Yes. I am not perfect. But at least I’m trying to avoid gendered language, now that we are aware of the fact that gender is not a binary. Sometimes I slip up. Sorry about that.
Gender has nothing to do with who can or cannot get pregnant because gender is an abstract concept of masculine and feminine. It doesn’t matter one iota where people identify on the so-called gender spectrum; if they are pregnant they are women by definition because, while not all women can or will get pregnant, only women can get pregnant.
You are apologising for knowing this basic fact and forgetting to hide it behind gender neutral language.
Acolyte of Sagan, your #21 and subsequent posts indicate you have a real problem with the concept of a pregnant person.
I suppose you’d get all twitchy at the concept of a pregnant child on exactly the same basis, no?
Pregnancy entails womanhood, in your worldview. Regardless of who is pregnant.
(That it conveniently aligns with transphobic rhetoric is purely a coincidence, right?)
VolcanoMan, are you a 12-year-old boy who’s never had sex ed, or are you just a troll?
An embryo may or may not develop into a baby; up to 3/4 of all fertilized eggs never become a living, breathing baby through ectopic pregnancy, natural miscarriage, molar pregnancies (that’s when the embryo simply stops developing--likely because of genetic issues, or stillbirth.
Also, pregnancy lasts 40 weeks. A 22-week fetus has very little chance of survival, and it’s not much greater for a 24-week-old fetus. Heroic efforts to save a fetus that young usually results in profound neurological, physical, and mental deficits. It’s not until 30 weeks that the odds of survival are greater than not surviving.
Even the Republicans--in their backpeddling over IVF--tacitly admit that embryos aren’t human beings. For every successful IVF pregnancy, there are several embryos that never develop.
On the other hand, a human being who’s born and living their life who suffers an accident absolutely deserves health care to save their lives.
I have to wonder what you think of the no-doubt-about-it living and thinking human children who are gunned down in their classrooms. Why do their lives deserve less fanatic simpering-over than mindless, insensate proto-humans? Do you rant on this much if someone drops a bag of flour, since that’s obvious a cake to you?
I merely made the point that if a prerequisite for being called “a life” is to be not dependent on others, then preemies (and I made the extreme example of those in the 22-24 week range, because they are the MOST dependent on medical intervention, while still having a decent chance of survival into adulthood, albeit with likely disabilities) and those adults on ventilators are not lives (I did say it was a reductio ad absurdum). To me, the idea that an embryo or fetus is both alive, and a life, seems relatively obvious, even though the odds of the fetus being carried to term are not 100% (for an actual fetus, that number is 80%…maybe slightly less, as a lot of people miscarry before they know they’re pregnant…for an embryo, the odds are well under 50%), and the fetus is dependent on another life for its own survival. And it does not, to me, seem to be trolling to point out that this terminological BS can muddy the waters and makes it easier to justify passing horrible laws. So I say again, who cares what a fetus is, as long as we can agree that it should not be given the same rights and protections as the person in whom it is incubating?
I really don’t think you’re going to convince everybody that a fetus isn’t a human life, separate and distinct from any other human life, but convincing them that, being dependent on another individual, someone who has a right to bodily autonomy irrespective of their status as a pregnant person, means that the fetus’ continued survival (barring spontaneous miscarriage, of course) is entirely the prerogative of the pregnant person’s own intentions with respect to their own body. That is the issue at hand, and it makes no difference what exactly one believes the fetus to be to take this position. Potential people shouldn’t get more rights (or even equal rights) to actual people.
#36,
Don’t be an idiot, man, you know exactly what I mean. If it makes it easier for you to understand the concept; only women (and girls who are beyond a certain stage of sexual maturity) can get pregnant. Bit clumsy, that, but needs must.
And, again, facts are not transphobic, they’re just facts. Inconvenient facts if they don’t suit your ideology, maybe, but that’s life. When the facts contradict religious ideology, well that’s too bad for the religion: when they contradict a rhetoric, too bad for the politician, so why, when the facts contradict trans ideology, are we supposed to pretend the facts don’t exist? I’m not a hypocrite and facts are facts whoever they upset.
Also, I’m not sure how it became intimated that I was in any way supportive of the ridiculous 2nd Amendment rights that Americans “enjoy.” Or, for that matter, that flour would be the same as cake. A fetus is not flour becoming cake. It is a human life that may or may not become a human person. Generally, no action, apart from the pregnant person continuing to live and remain relatively healthy, is necessary for that fetus to gestate and perhaps get to the point of being born and thus becoming a person with human rights. Flour requires all kinds of things to become cake. As I said, this is all semantics. I agree with you -- fetuses are not equivalent to children. They are lesser beings, and not deserving of the human rights that actual people, having been born, deserve. Where did I ever imply otherwise?
My ASD allows me to be exceptionally precise in my language, and so I don’t think I have been unclear here. So please, don’t ascribe motivations or beliefs to me that I find ludicrous or abhorrent.
Acolyte of Sagan:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ohio-abortion-heartbeat-bill-pregnant-11-year-old-rape-victim-barred-abortion-after-new-ohio-abortion-bill-2019-05-13/
“An 11-year-old girl in Ohio was allegedly raped by a 26-year-old multiple times, leaving her pregnant, according to police reports.”
A woman, according to you. An 11-year old woman, since, to you, “all pregnant humans are women”.
Strangely, pregnant person works 100% of the time, and is not at all clumsy.
Indeed… the are only two things worse than being labelled a TERF, and one of those is “paedophile” -- can’t be seen suggesting that if you can get pregnant, then you’re automatically a “woman”. (The other one is anti-semite, btw), so well done realising you needed to dodge that bullet.
Reading this thread -- watching people who ideologically agree to several decimal places but are visibly enjoying tearing each other down for their miniscule differences -- is simultaneously depressingly absolutely typical of what’s wrong with the liberal left, and hilarious. Thanks for the chuckles.
Ideology is for other people, sonofrojblake.
I notice how ideologues imagine everyone else is also an ideologue, just as the religious imagine everyone is religious.
(And you’re not really reading this thread, you made sure of that 😉
@Volcano Man: you might believe you’re being precise, but you are not. You can’t seem to tell the difference between a zygote, an embryo, or a fetus--they are different in development and timeframe. You are unclear about gestation and how long it takes. You’re also seemingly not aware that just because an embryo exists is no guarantee that it will thrive and develop. Your arguments come across as typical anti-choice ones--the same arguments that have been argued for decades now. The same thinking that’s now killing women, even women who desperately want to have a baby but the pregnancy goes desperately awry. Can you imagine the living hell of a woman raped, impregnated, the pregnancy turns septic…and there’s no doctor who will help her? That’s also happening now.
Also, regarding your insistence that embryos are life: eggs and sperm are also alive before they meet up. Is your next argument to be that a loss of any egg or sperm is therefore a loss of life? The average woman has 2 or fewer children but releases on average 12 eggs a year for all the years she’s fertile--if they’re not fertilized, they’re just gone. A man may lose thousands of sperm in one non-procreative session. Is he now a mass-murderer? After all, those sperm are alive.
For that matter, cancer is alive, it is human and it has DNA. What are your feelings about cancer treatment that kills the cancer?
Do you see how your insistence is non-sensical?
I do appreciate your bolded words that make your position clear.
@John Morales, thanks for that example. There are many children who are raped--so much so that one Mississippi lawmaker who seems as unclear on reproduction as Volcano Man--is worried about one-year-olds having abortions: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bill-eigel-missouri-abortion-1-year-olds_n_65cbbaefe4b065628a610405 . Sadly, preteens can and do get pregnant and then under Republican hellscapes, have to risk dying from the pregnancy or fleeing to a blue state for lifesaving treatment.
[Katydid, I think you are misjudging VolcanoMan, and I think you’ve read #14 uncharitably, since that’s how it came across to you]
#45,
Uncharitable reading of other people’s comments on FTB? Oh, say it isn’t so!
And you make this observation after saying
in response to my comment that
😂😂😂
It ain’t so, by me to you.
Now, if you want to get all excited because you ostensibly imagine that directly quoting you (emphasis and all) is reading you uncharitably, then sure. Be as cringey as you want to be.
A woman, according to you. An 11-year old woman, since, to you, “all pregnant humans are women”.
A direct quotation. With your own emphasis.
“all pregnant humans are women” is not something I am reading uncharitably, but rather, literally.
(When taking you at your own word is supposedly uncharitable, you have jumped the shark)
“😂😂😂”
The irony is strong with you.
Well I’m not sure how I could be clearer. Calling something life doesn’t mean that I think it should have rights. You rightly point out that cancerous tumors are indeed alive and possessing DNA, but we don’t grant them rights. I think embryos, being new…things…with unique genetics, are life…they’re just not people. But ultimately, while I find the philosophical discussion of this fascinating (as my previous posts may indicate), I do not believe it is in any way relevant to the issue at hand. Reasonable minds can disagree on what those things which are gestating in a womb actually are, but one’s conclusion in this discussion need not have anything to do with one’s support for the right for a person to choose an abortion.
I’m really not sure where this discussion got derailed (John seems to think it’s #14, but I’ve re-read that post several times and I thought I was extremely clear), but I’d like to figure it out. Somehow, people have interpreted that my saying that a fetus is a new life (or to be more precise, a genetically-unique continuation of an unbroken chain of 3.7 billion years of life), means that I believe in state forced pregnancy….and I’m not sure why. The philosophical position one takes on this issue is entirely separate to the position on whether pregnant people own their own bodies, being able to do with them what they wish. And like sonofrajblake said, is it not apparent that we agree on what matters -- that pregnant people should be able to terminate their pregnancies at any time and for any reason, and that the law really shouldn’t care one way or the other whether people choose abortions?
Those who would deny abortion rights to pregnant people are doing so because they don’t believe we own our own bodies. I am in vehement opposition to that claim.
John, you seem to understand the roots of this back-and-forth better than I…am I not being clear?
You are clear and precise, but obviously not perceived to be so by others.
Relax, I get that a lot.
And #14 was when I got you, thanks for the clarification BTW.
I saw you as raising the ontological status of a blastocyst as an individual life in a rather abstract manner, not reliant on distinctions such as whether in vitro or in utero.
—
You wrote:
“The argument shouldn’t be that it’s not “life,” it should be that the interests of the person in whom that life is incubating FAR outweigh the interests of the organism within them. They should have ultimate control over what happens in, and to, their body.
This is why I don’t support ANY legal restrictions on abortion. Any law that governs what someone can do with their body is, in my opinion, fundamentally immoral. I trust women to make the decisions that are right for them.”
Very clear indeed. As I already noted, I like it you don’t mince words.
My best guess.
Acolyte Of Sagan, before many people were aware of transgender folks it was possible to make the claim that only women and girls could get pregnant, and make that claim definitional. Now we know better. My son can get pregnant, but nobody who sees him or hears him can mistake him for a woman. Telling a transgender man that he is ‘really’ a woman is as wrong as telling an adoptee that the people who cared for them since early childhood and with whom they have a very close bond are not their ‘real parents’. Transgender men are a subset of men, transgender women are a subset of women, non-binary folks can be either or neither, as the individual case may be.
Thanks John. I read your latest post after I had already written a point-by-point response to Katydid though, and on balance, I still think it’s probably better to let that response out into the world, lest anyone be anything less than 100% certain of my beliefs on this matter. But I could be wrong 🙂 So feel free to not read the following!
“You can’t seem to tell the difference between a zygote, an embryo, or a fetus--they are different in development and timeframe.”
Sorry, I misspoke with respect to the differences between embryo and blastocyst earlier, but I do have a source for my statement: https://rmanetwork.com/blog/blastocyst-how-many-embryos-stage/ (this site says: “Nearly a day after a single sperm is injected into a single egg through a process called Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), embryologists check for fertilization of that egg. If it has occurred, this is considered day 1. Your egg is no longer an egg; it’s an embryo, and two cells can be seen inside a circular shell.”)
However, I do believe that it is scientifically-improper to call the new life form an embryo until 12 days or so (after the amniotic sac is formed). That’s my mistake for not verifying that a source was correct. But it is, I think, also irrelevant to the issue at hand. What you name this life form does not matter…what matters is that some people believe that it should have rights, and I disagree with those people.
“You are unclear about gestation and how long it takes.”
No I am not. Complete gestation officially takes a minimum of 37 weeks (a baby born at 37 weeks is considered full-term). I said “Yes it is dependant on someone for approximately 34-36 weeks, unable to survive on its own, but by your account….”
A child born at 34-36 weeks is considered “late pre-term,” but it does not technically require a human body to thrive and become a healthy child. Pregnancies can be safely induced at this gestational stage, and indeed, depending on their weight at birth, many do not even require a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). I know all of this because I have worked in and around NICUs in my profession, and sometimes you see a 34 or 35-weeks’ gestation baby there (if they are tiny enough), but it’s far more common to see babies born before 34 weeks’ gestation. And a baby who leaves the womb at 22 weeks has little chance at survival, but if there is to be any chance, it requires full-time human intervention for many months, if not years. That’s why I picked 22 weeks as an example -- there is no way for such a being to survive independent of some fairly extreme measures, and even then, permanent disability is virtually guaranteed.
“You’re also seemingly not aware that just because an embryo exists is no guarantee that it will thrive and develop.”
You are also seemingly not reading what I have written, because I said in #14: “And yes, there is no guarantee of a baby in 40 weeks’ time. Just 30-50% of embryos [should have said zygotes] make it to blastocyst, and after that, something like 10-20% spontaneously abort anyway (meaning well over half of fertilized embryos will not make it to term).” I am pretty certain of my percentages there (seen them in various places), however the overall point is clear -- I KNOW that just because an embryo exists does not mean that it will thrive and develop.
“Your arguments come across as typical anti-choice ones--the same arguments that have been argued for decades now. The same thinking that’s now killing women, even women who desperately want to have a baby but the pregnancy goes desperately awry. Can you imagine the living hell of a woman raped, impregnated, the pregnancy turns septic…and there’s no doctor who will help her? That’s also happening now.”
I know that’s happening now, and if you’d actually read anything I actually WROTE, you would know that I support pregnant people, and want them to have the full ability to make decisions with respect to their body, even if those decisions end the life gestating within them. That is their right. No anti-choice person would argue that peoples’ bodily autonomy trumps the value of the being growing within them. That is a firmly pro-choice argument. I am firmly pro-choice.
“Also, regarding your insistence that embryos are life: eggs and sperm are also alive before they meet up. Is your next argument to be that a loss of any egg or sperm is therefore a loss of life? The average woman has 2 or fewer children but releases on average 12 eggs a year for all the years she’s fertile--if they’re not fertilized, they’re just gone. A man may lose thousands of sperm in one non-procreative session. Is he now a mass-murderer? After all, those sperm are alive.”
This blog is not a biology class, but even if it were, this is a distraction from my actual points. Eggs and sperm are haploid beings, being produced by meiosis to each get a unique set of DNA, different from each other and from the parent organism -- but they cannot develop into an actual person on their own. I would not consider them distinct life forms, as they do not have a life cycle of growth and maturity into multicellular beings that eventually are birthed by the person in whose body they were created. They are made by a sexually-mature body, and statistically speaking, every single one of them is eventually trashed by the body (or by a person’s choice to pleasure themself, at least in the case of those of us with the dangly bits). Once an egg is fertilized though, it will start to develop into a larger being. Sure, this life form may not survive until birth, but it often does. So there is a fairly substantial difference between a gamete and a zygote.
There…my only mistake was calling a zygote an embryo, but as I said, it’s been years since I studied these concepts, and I had a medical source (an IVF clinic) that made the same mistake. So maybe, just maybe, we can put this to rest with an agreement that potential humans should not be given rights, and that the law should not be concerned with the abortion procedure at all. Please?
#51,
That is not a claim, it’s a statement of fact, and what you believe can’t change that fact. You are confusing sex with identity. And no, transgender people are not a subset of the sex they identify as, they are members of one sex who identify as the other.
I’m done here. I’m off to find some people with a grip on reality to talk with.
@45, John Morales: I did say I appreciated Volcano Man’s clarified opinion. Let me be clear: his posts started out straight out of the anti-choice playbook where sperm meets egg and therefore the insentient, unformed embryo trumps any rights (including to life, how ironic) of the sentient human being it’s embedded in.
In Mano’s post he’s talking about frozen embryos in a lab, and how the GOP overstepped when they first insisted those embryos--with zero ability to progress to a baby because they’re frozen in a lab and not embedded in a womb--were the equivalent to an actual child…like the ones that get assassinated by gun and that’s perfectly fine with them. But when that decision affected their wealthy-and-older base, they quickly backtracked.
@ Volcano Man: your posts are getting exponentially longer and longer. Pro-tip: most people are not going to wade through super-long posts.
@Acolyte of Satan: if you were indeed flouncing off, may I suggest Pharyngula? He’s spoken very clearly and a number of times about how male/female is not a binary option, but instead a continuum.
He’s been wrong every time, but then, you’ve supped the same kool-aid he has so I don’t suppose that will impress you.
Acolyte of Sagan, if you happen to be peeking in: No, I am not ‘confusing sex with identity’, I am saying that the word ‘woman’ refers to a social rather than biological category. The way to tell that is that the boundary between ‘girl’ and ‘woman’ isn’t some biological milestone such as a certain stage of puberty but an age that was chosen by society as the age of majority (and can vary among societies, or within a society at different time points). So why shouldn’t the boundary between ‘man’ and ‘woman’ be a social one as well?
Is your argument really that woman and man don’t reference sex because the start of adulthood is vague? Or in other words, one aspect of a word’s meaning is not rigorous because a different thing is not rigorous? There is no need for all aspects of a word to be vague just because one is.
@ Holms
The argument you’re addressing is that the boundary between girl/woman is social not biological.
So it is unsurprising that other boundaries on the concept ‘woman’ should be social not biological.
In reality of course no one ever uses “women” as a medical term in real life. It’s always a social term. Even you and Acolyte of Sexism don’t actually go around checking for ovaries. You judge people to be women (or not) entirely on the basis of social (not medical) information: Names, pronouns, presentation, etc. the same as everyone else.
The claim “women” is a medical term is motivated entirely by transphobia and misogyny. You notice no one ever claims men are machines for ejaculating sperm. This dehumanizing reductionism is only ever done to women.
It’s misogyny all the way down.
I mean seriously -- when was the last time Acolyte of Sexism parachuted into a thread to complain about men being called people?
Wake up and smell the misogyny Holms.
Silentbob, I really cannot decide whether you are being disingenuous or if you really are as dumb as you sound.
It is actually both. In the strictest sense they are terms for human females based on sexual maturity -- the biological aspect -- and in a social and legal sense there are two general distinctions which define who is a girl and who is a woman. One is based on the age of consent (although in practise this more properly makes the distinction between child/minor and adult) and the other concerns the age of majority, generally the age when one is treated by law as an adult, and neither the age of consent or the age of majority is dependant upon sexual maturity. and both vary from country to country. I fully accept that they are arbitrary labels but given the process of development as one ages they are arbitrary by necessity, and that brings me to your claim that
which totally misses the point that both ‘girl’ and ‘woman’, while arbitrarily applied dependant on age, development, geophysical location, etc., are nonetheless sex-specific terms applied only to females. Males have their own arbitrary terms of ‘boy’ and ‘man’. Those terms may indeed cross certain social boundaries separating minor from adult but it doesn’t follow that they should cross the biological boundaries between male and female, and I have yet to see a remotely convincing argument to the contrary.
Now, as for
the answer is ‘never’, because for some odd reason men still seem to be referred to as men. It appears that it is only women (and girls: must cover the bases) who must be saddled with the neutral terms, and that is the real misogyny here: the eradication of women as a class in the name of transgender ideology.
Now, I think that’s clear enough, but feel free to misinterpret and distort what I’ve said…not that you’ve ever needed an invitation to do so.
VolcanoMan @ various
I understood what you were saying too, and think that Katydid simply didn’t take the care to read what you wrote, that you took in writing it, evidenced by their statement that “most people are not going to wade through super-long posts.”. That is why they attributed to you views that you did not address, and is very much their problem not yours. Oh and yours were not particularly long post by the standards of several regular commenters here, including on occasion John Morales 😉
I think I can help you with that. It’s the second one. It’s just always the second one.
… as usual.
#60 Sbob
But it is also not strictly necessary, as both you and anat seem to believe, that if one is loosely defined, the other is too.
You have forgotten that sex is very often externally visible, even with clothing.
#61
Hm. I guess you are so stupid as to believe AoS thinks women are not people.
Close, Holms.
AoS ostensibly thinks people are not women: “Pregnant person?”
(No persons can be pregnant, only women! Which is as loud a transphobic whistle as one can get)
[BTW, you, Holms, are approaching the line. You know it will be noted if you go beyond the pale]
You exceed yourself in the ridiculousness of that statement.
All women are people: not all people are women. How is that so hard for you to understand?
What I understand is this:
Your own emphasis. You jumped in to be all pearl-clutching and flabbergasted at the very term.
Whatever makes you imagine I don’t understand that?
I also understand why you get so very excited when someone writes ‘pregnant person’.
Thing is, if all women are persons, then no woman is excluded by that qualified term, are they?
It works perfectly fine whether or not one adds the additional premise that the only people that can get pregnant are women. Right?
Do you get that if only women can truly get pregnant, ‘pregnant person’ must perforce only refer to women?
It works for you, it also works for people who have no issue with transgender people existing.’
Works for everyone, but gets you rather excited.
—
PS “You exceed yourself in the ridiculousness of that statement.”
I give 110%, right? 😉
Don’t give up your day job, John, because you’ll never make a living as a psychic. I’ve never clutched a pearl in my life, I can’t recall the last time my gast was flabbered, and it takes more than a nonsensical phrase to get me exited.
‘Pregnant people’: ‘people who menstruate’: ‘cervix-havers’: all phrases designed to remove the sex-specific nature of what they mean in order to maintain and promote the fiction that *smug voice* ‘ummm well men can do all that, too, actually’. Everybody knows they’re sex-specific terms; everybody knows which sex they refer to, but nobody is to actually admit to knowing it. Can you really not see why that is an insult to women?
I have no problem with transgender people existing, I have a problem with the metaphysical claims.
Acolyte of Sagan:
Perhaps you should be aware that I’m retired and self-funded, so I don’t need to work any more.
Your own emphasis.
But sure, now you claim it’s a perfectly normal, ordinary reaction.
But you felt you had to interject and express incredulity and mansplain, nonetheless.
Yes, every one is familiar with that transphobic trope. I know.
It’s obvious you subscribe to it.
(‘cervix-havers’, really?)
Didn’t take much to make it explicit what you’re all about, eh?
You can’t square the circle. If you truly had no problem, you’d perforce have no problem with ‘pregnant person’. Or women with testicular cancer.
This is so tedious. Unlike, say, Morales, who lives for this stuff, I’m not a fan of confrontation. However, one must not let bigotry go unanswered so, alas…
@ 28 Holms
Does a good ol’ boy down south who calls Black men “boy” think they are not people? Dehumanisation does not require literally thinking the person does not belong to the human race. Anyone who sincerely believes a woman (or man) is not defined by their identity and experience of the world, but by whether they can gestate babies or not, is dehumanising the woman. This is not some astonishing new idea I just invented Holms. Ask a feminist what “objectification” means.
If your question is, “do I believe Acolyte of Sexism really thinks the only important thing about a woman is her body, regardless of her mind or experience of the world?”. Well, duh. That’s the only reason the idiot is here. He came here to impose his misogynist biological essentialist ideology on people who don’t want a bar of it.
@ 39 Acolyte of Sagan
And these are people who accuse others of “ideology”! X-D
“It’s a just a fact we must impose gender on the basis of something as ridiculous as baby genitals! There’s no other way!”.
Mate, the “ideology” is that all people must be forced into boxes on the basis of baby genitals. This ideology only existed to oppress women. Feminists today are throwing off this ideology and saying it’s okay for people to decide their gender for themselves. And misogynists like you are having a hissy fit even though you can’t come up with one argument why the fraction of a percent of the population for whom we have overwhelming scientific evidence that they are happier and healthier living as a gender other than the one arbitrarily imposed on them at birth shouldn’t be free to do so. All you arguments are just recycled homophobia from 50 years ago. It’s just, “everyone must conform to arbitrary rules based on their baby genitals because I said so”.
Anyway, your metaphysical beliefs are not “facts”, anymore than, “sex is only between male and female”, is a “fact”. It’s authoritarian prescriptivism. And we don’t like it. So feel free to shove it where the sun don’t shine.
@ 53 Acolyte of Sagan
Just to emphasise, this a distinct difference between essentialists like Acolyte of Sexism and feminists: I would never be so idiotic as to claim it’s a “fact” trans men are men. This is an appeal to essentialism, and essences are no more real than souls. No one has, or lacks, “essence of man” because there’s no such thing. Man and woman are words we made up. We apply them in a way that has social utility because that’s the point of language; to communicate. Trans men aren’t men because it’s a “fact”. They’re men because we need a word to describe the social group within which they exist and the word we have is “men”. Acolyte of Sexism’s belief that it’s just a “fact” that trans men lack essence of man, or that it’s a “fact” that gender must be imposed on the basis of baby genitals, is a metaphysical belief akin to a belief that Jesus is the saviour. It’s not based on reason, just a dogmatic adherence to ideology.
@ 57 Holms
We’re totally impressed at your comprehensive takedown of a professor of biology. You don’t look at all like a creationist or some other form of utter buffoon.
Also the sheer irony of someone who thoughtlessly accepts patriarchal biological essentialism accusing others of drinking “kool-aid”. Lol. Dude, You’re allowed to throw off the misogynist beliefs of your great great great great grandpa. It’s okay.
@ 65 Holms
Sure, Jan. So what is the externally visible “sex” of this (trans) guy? Has it ever occurred to you that you never “saw” sex at all, but assumed it from gender? Golly gosh, maybe that’s possible right? Put you brain into gear Holms and give it a good think and see if just maybe that’s possible. (Feminists got there way before you and have been distinguishing “sex” (medical) from gender (social) for at least 70 years, btw. You’ve got some catching up to do.)
#72 Sbob
Good thing no one is doing that here. Keep yammering though, every utterance shows bad your grasp of the argument is. And there’s no point repeating it to you, it has been explained several times to no effect already, the exercise is pointless. You’re just… too stupid to realise how stupid you are.
Silentbob, #73.
Didn’t take too long for the false equivalences with racism and homophobia to enter the argument, did it? False equivalences: bad-faith interpretations: putting words into your opponents mouth [see below]: dishonesty: redefining words to make them mean whatever you want them to mean: it’s all you’ve got.
.
Show me where I wrote the part in quotation marks that you are clearly attributing to me, because that is what the quotation marks imply. So, here’s a direct quote from you:
And yet that is exactly what we are told that we must believe: that somebody with a transgender identity must be treated in all ways, socially and legally, as the sex they identify as. You accept that it’s an idiotic claim [your phrasing] that being transgender does not make one a member of the opposite sex and yet you defend everything that follows on from that claim. How do you cope with the cognitive dissonance that such opposing ideas must cause?
Also:
is not the knockdown argument you seem to think it is. People are happiest when they’re allowed to do what they want to do? Wow! Colour me surprised. But what they believe themselves to be does not alter the physical reality of what they are. Yes, a man might be happier living his life as what he thinks being a woman entails, but he is still a man and has the same biological, legal and to some extent social restrictions as any other man.
And, no, nobody is arbitrarily assigned a gender at birth. If they were, then leaving aside the fact that gender is not sex and so is not relevant to whether a baby is male or female, the logical outcome would be that ~50% of the population will have been assigned the wrong gender on the metaphorical toss of a coin that you seem to believe doctors use for every baby.
Making oneself look like something is not the same thing as being that something.
God’s death, the PRATTs never stop, do they…?
But what they believe themselves to be does not alter the physical reality of what they are.
Neither does what you or I believe them to be. Neither does the opinion of any scientist, however wise, who hasn’t actually met with and examined whichever trans person we’re judging on any given day. And neither does anyone’s refusal to understand that “the physical reality of what they are” is, in fact, far more complex than the physical attributes that you can easily see or consider relevant.
You can bang on ’til the cows come home about “physical reality,” but the fact is, ACTUAL BIOLOGISTS are now admitting that “the physical reality of what they are” is more complex than “innies or outies” (and even the innies and outies aren’t that simple in themselves). You do know that brains, hormones and nervous systems are part of “the physical reality of what they are,” right? They’re physical and they’re real and they’re part of what a person is. QEDuh.
And finally, “the physical reality of what they are” is not determined by scientists, or by abstract scientific reasoning, or by an automated algorithm. It’s determined both by “them” themselves and by medical and mental-health professionals who have actually met, examined and conferred with “them,” and are helping them to decide on a course of action. Those are the people at the ground level who are actually observing up close the physical reality of what their respective patients are.
I’m done here. I’m off to find some people with a grip on reality to talk with.
…followed by five more comments after that. Can’t stick a flounce, can you?
I didn’t say I wouldn’t come back to see if the snide children were trash talking me behind my back, did I? And sure enough….
Well that sure is definitive! The important thing is what they DON’T say, which is what I have been saying all along -- identifying as the other sex does not make one that sex.
Correct. ‘What’ they are is determined by the seventh week of gestation. What they think they are is another matter.
And the wheels are starting to wobble on that particular bus, but oddly there’s a reluctance in certain quarters to talk about the Cass report, the Tavistock clinic debacle and the exposé of the WPATH files. Funny, that.
Raging Bee just quoted you. You actually did.
Acolyte of Sagan:
That’s when you figure one can tell whether the embryo is a man or a woman, right?
(Source for that claim?)
Ah well, not an issue regarding IVF, right?
Obviously, not from you.
Me, I can’t say I’ve heard of any of it. Must be the reluctance, eh?
(Kinda recondite, given it’s obscure to me without a search)
There’s a reluctance amongst scholars to talk about the Cthäat Aquadingen, De Vermis Mysteriis, and the fragmentary Pnakotic Manuscripts.
(heh)
#80
Really, John. Did I ‘actually’ say I wasn’t coming back? Please do find my comment where I said exactly that, because RB quoted me saying ‘I’m done here’, which is not the same thing as saying ‘I’m permanently done here’, is it?
#82
Oh, I’m sorry; I wasn’t aware that I must only mention things that are familiar to you without putting you to the trouble of having to search for them. How terribly thoughtless of me.
#82
The difference being that the things I mentioned are relevant to the discussion, are well known to transgender activists, but are not being mentioned by them because they contain too much inconvenient, irrefutable evidence that runs counter to their claims.
…there’s a reluctance in certain quarters to talk about the Cass report, the Tavistock clinic debacle and the exposé of the WPATH files.
None of those three things really say what transphobes like you are trying to insinuate. Just like none of those “climategate” emails really say what the denialists want them to say. How do I know this? Because plenty of people are NOT AT ALL “reluctant” to talk about what a phony scandal you lot are trying to gin up. Go ahead and cite whatever you have to prove me wrong, if you can.
Bluff: called.
Correct. ‘What’ they are is determined by the seventh week of gestation. What they think they are is another matter.
And again, you don’t have the means to ascertain, up close, what’s actually determined in that period. Neither does any biologist. So your opinion is irrelevant, and whatever reasoning you think you have on your side is — to put it charitably — not sufficiently informed by the relevant facts of that particular person or their gestation process.
You know who IS more informed about what’s determined during gestation? The gestated person, and whichever medical and mental-health professionals they’re working with. So maybe STFU and let the involved and experienced parties do the talking. It’s your opinion that’s irrelevant, not theirs.
Also, “Acolyte,” were you posting the same stupid bullshit on OnlySky under the name “Arch Grouch?” Because that wanker tried to pull the same bluff over the same manufactroversies; and since I’ve already at least partially refuted that BS there, I should probably post a link to that thread here, to respond to your nearly-identical insinuations:
https://onlysky.media/jpearce/off-the-edge-of-the-map/
Just look for Arch Grouch’s uppermost comment and click “show responses”. I’m using the same name as I do here.
…RB quoted me saying ‘I’m done here’, which is not the same thing as saying ‘I’m permanently done here’, is it?
Right, you’re down to babyish weaselly word games. What a jucking foke.
#84
Then you’ll be aware that the Cass report contained enough evidence for the NHS to order the closure of the Tavistock clinic and, as of last week, to prohibit the use of puberty-blockers except for in cases of precocious puberty and in properly controlled medical trials, and that WPATH’s own files clearly show that its own so-called trans healthcare specialists not only deliberately ignored the physical and mental health and the family and social histories (among much more) of the children in their care: not only fast-tracked them onto transgender ‘care’ (read social and physical/pharmacological/surgical transition) paths: but also discussed amongst themselves the best ways of doing so in order to avoid malpractice suits further down the line. That is all from their own records, mind you, not made up or misinterpreted by ‘haters’. It is not a ‘phony’ scandal when it’s their own words reproduced in their entirety from their own records. Some of us actually bother to read the source material rather than listen to the distorted versions put about by those with an interest in the continuation of what amounts to a large-scale, uncontrolled social experiment on troubled, confused and often abused and/or mentally ill youngsters. All of which kind of answers your claim in #85:
When the supposed professionals have been so thoroughly discredited as noted above, and the ‘gestated people’ can only say how they feel about themselves, your argument is dead in the water.
As for #86, I had never even heard of OnlySky until a couple of days ago and have never visited the site, much less commented there. So, no, that wasn’t me.
And finally, #87.
I would point out the irony of that statement but you obviously lack the self-awareness to appreciate it.
…and that WPATH’s own files clearly show that its own so-called trans healthcare specialists not only deliberately ignored the physical and mental health and the family and social histories (among much more) of the children in their care: not only fast-tracked them onto transgender ‘care’ (read social and physical/pharmacological/surgical transition) paths: but also discussed amongst themselves the best ways of doing so in order to avoid malpractice suits further down the line.
Vague allegations, no specific events or alleged misdeeds. Citations and specifics required.
…not only fast-tracked them onto transgender ‘care’ (read social and physical/pharmacological/surgical transition) paths: but also discussed amongst themselves the best ways of doing so in order to avoid malpractice suits further down the line.
I’ve heard that “fast-tracking kids on a conveyor-belt to transition-mills” claim for many years now, but never have I seen any document specifying who was doing the “fast-tracking” or where all these transition treatments were allegedly being done. So, again, citations and specifics required.
#86
OK, I followed the link and found what you’re talking about (hidden under the fold in the replies to the comment by user ‘BensNewLogin’). You refuted nothing there. You can’t tell the difference between leaked records and public discussions.
You query whether the procedures discussed had been done when the leaked evidence shows that they are indeed referring to procedures carried out.
You suggest that the leaked info may be confidential doctor/client info (when it clearly isn’t and when no patient name is disclosed in the conversations), as if it wouldn’t be evidence of poor practice (at best) even if it was confidential.
You show no understanding of informed consent, seemingly believing that a 14-yr-old can consent to treatment without fully understanding the consequences. You show a callous disregard for the future of a child who could be rendered infertile because of a decision made at such a young age, and you also seem to have forgotten that the effects of blockers, etc, are claimed by trans advocates to be entirely reversible because you raise no issue with the part that says the treatment can render the patient infertile. You appear ignorant of he full effects of blockers, seemingly unaware that they don’t just put puberty on hold, they halt or severely slow a lot of normal development, including that of the brain. A 14-yr-old’s brain is far from fully developed -- which is why they cannot give informed medical consent except in very exceptional, limited circumstances -- and blockers will stop any further meaningful development. So, even if the child continues on blockers until the age at which they can give consent, they will still be doing so with a 14-yr-old’s brain with no more real understanding of long-term consequences. That is a part of the reasoning behind the NHS stopping their use in the UK.
You nit-pick over whether or not blockers alone reduce anxiety, an irrelevant quibble given everything else.
Then you jump on something described as having ‘very low certainty evidence’ and suggest that basically anything is better than nothing.
None of that is refuting anything: refutation requires evidence disproving claims, and all you’ve basically done is say it’s wrong with nothing to back you up.
You can’t tell the difference between leaked records and public discussions.
Because the article cited rather lazily conflated the two, claiming there was concern over “leaked conversations,” and not specifying where each specific snippet came from.
You query whether the procedures discussed had been done when the leaked evidence shows that they are indeed referring to procedures carried out.
The article cited only said certain procedures were “talked about,” not that that they were even “recommended,” let alone attempted. If any such procedures had actually been done, you’ll have to cite another source that says so — the source I’m disputing ain’t it. I have yet to see any news article or other document stating that such surgeries as are being questioned here had actually been done. And believe me, if they had actually been done, it’s be front-page news all over the West, if not the world.
You show a callous disregard for the future of a child who could be rendered infertile…
Since when was disputing dodgy unsupported allegations “callous disregard?” You sound like a Republican, spouting hysteria about kids being
harvested for organsmutilated to justify mindless transphobia. It’s not helping your credibility. (Also, you seem to be conflating “a child’s future” with “a child’s fertility” — they’re not the same thing.)…refutation requires evidence disproving claims…
And I am pointing out that certain transphobes’ claims are not supported by evidence. You can call it “refutation” or not, but it doesn’t change that fact.
And despite that long and vituperative comment, I still don’t see any actual citation to support any of the claims I’ve been hearing for many years about Tavistock and such. Put up or shut up.
#83 AoS
John might be a little sensitive on this point, given he has done the same thing you are accused of 🙂
___
#84 Raging Bee
…Bluff? Oh you sweet summer child. Here’s the dump itself, I recommend swinging by the ‘excerpts’ link for a list of the nastier revelations. Perhaps the most common being frank admissions that minors cannot really understand the long term implications of e.g. sterility while pressing ahead anyway.
P.S. a single google search found this, leading me to believe you’ve not found anything mostly due to not wanting to find anything.
#85
Really. And yet biologists are the people stating that very fact. Perhaps you can debunk their research for us? I see you are fond of “Put up or shut up”, so lead by example.
Holms:
Heh. Your fantasy has already been addressed.
But sure, recapitulate yet again, hammered down as the point has been.
It’s all you’ve got.
(We can see who is sensitive, no?)
—
Really. So, how about a citation? cf. my #81.
Go on, tell us about this biological fact about the magical 7th week.
You know, where ‘man’ or ‘woman’ become applicable.
(‘a drowning person will clutch even a straw’, as the wry adage goes)
PS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharyngula
@Holms: From the “Excerpts” PDF you mentioned:
1. Make clear they give cross-sex hormones and surgeries to people with limited or no capacity to consent, including people with major mental illnesses and minors
2. Acknowledge that minors do not understand the long-term consequences of “gender affirmation,” including sterility
3. Discuss extreme body-modification surgeries, such as removing genital organs entirely or creating a neovagina alongside a penis, with no medical justification
IANAL, but I’m pretty sure all of those things are serious crimes (with the exception of “gender affirmation,” which seems to be misused to mean something else entirely — “affirming” something doesn’t cause sterility), or at the very least tort offenses; so if anyone had actually attempted any of this, there would have been legal action and major headlines. Can you cite any such news from any reputable news source? Any court cases?
#72 Sbob
I think I’ll take a second shot at this one.
Dehumanising does not need the speaker to believe anything in particular, because it has nothing to do with belief. Rather, it is a term for when a person states, directly or say by analogy, that another person is less than human. Comparing Jewish people to cockroaches is a common one, as is calling a nation ‘infested’ due to an influx of migrants. Another I’ve seen is when a city with a mostly black population is compared to a rat warren.
Calling a black person ‘boy’… is not that. Because a boy is human. Perhaps you were thinking of ‘disparage’ or ‘disrespect’.
@ Holms
*sigh*
Don’t make me tap the sign.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2021/05/11/an-editorial-note-on-comments-on-transgender-issues/
#96 Raging
You wanted the source, I gave you the source -- to the extent that it is publicly available.
#98 Sbob
Just breezing past the correction to your silliness at #72 as if it didn’t happen, aye?
Transphobes say, “What does it mean to feel like woman? I don’t know what it means to feel like a woman, I feel like a person!”
Well, I feel like a woman…
… but where are you gonna get one at this time of night?
*Ba-dum tish*
Transphobes say, “A woman can’t have a penis!”
Well in my opinion a woman can have a penis…
… but no more than twice a day or she’s just being greedy”.
* Ba-dum tish*
(Thanks folks, you’ve been great.)
Transphobes say, “Who is a man and who is a woman is determined by gametes. A man’s body has small motile gametes. A woman’s body has large immotile gametes”.
I say that depends on how good a night she’s had.
*Ba-dum tish*
(Thanks folks, I’ll be here all night.)
I see you are fond of “Put up or shut up”, so lead by example.
I’m not the one parroting vague and unsupported accusations of gross medical malpractice and crimes against humanity; so it’s not my job to do the putting-up here. The burden of proof (or at least of specification and reliable sources) is on the accusers. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
You asked for support for the scandal claimed by AoS, calling it a bluff. You were given the publicly available documents. You then asked for the court cases.
Goal posts: mobile.
I asked for evidence to support — or at least clarify — certain claims, and you and your fellow transphobe Acolyte have still failed to provide it.
Goal posts: same place for all the years I’ve been hearing this transphobic horseshit.
So.
“After the Alabama supreme court ruled that embryos are children and deserve all the protections that children are entitled to, IVF clinics in the state began to stop providing IVF services because of fears that if any embryo were to be destroyed (which is done routinely with embryos that are no longer needed), they could be culpable.”
↓
“Yes, the topic is IVF. But the whole reason Alabama had this court decision was because of a constitutional amendment they approved in like 2018 (iirc), defining life as beginning at conception, as a way to quickly and easily ban abortion if and when Roe v. Wade was overturned.
[…]
I would even argue against those laws that call murdering a pregnant person double-homicide.”
↓
“Pregnant person? I think ‘woman’ is the word you were looking for.”
That was the moment of debouchment.
(The transphobic sea lion eruption)
“The Transphobic Sea-Lion Eruption” sounds like a title for an Emerson, Lake & Palmer album, if they ever sang about trans people and transphobia.
And no, I don’t want to see what sort of picture an AI might paint if prompted by that phrase…
I try to be an ally, I really do. I have trans friends. I have a relative who’s trans. But there comes a point… and that point is “pregnant person”.
I’ve said it many times -- trans women are women, trans men are men, and TERFs can do one. That’s my firmly held attitude. It is based on the understanding that there’s such a thing as gender dysphoria, the conviction that one’s inner life and impression of one’s self and specifically one’s gender is not in accordance with the outward manifestation of the organs one is born with, and that this dysphoria can be effectively treated by the application of hormones and surgery. My understanding is that even for people who transition later in life (e.g. the person I’m related to), the conviction was always there for as long as they can remember.
Crucially, it is repeatedly reported that the dysphoria -- the sense of unease and dissatisfaction with one’s own body, its appearance and functions -- is so strong, so overwhelming that suicide is a commonly employed method of dealing with it. Certainly the trans people I know had it that bad. I can only imagine the stress and pain it caused for the one of them who waited into their forties before they felt able to begin transitioning.
And then someone says “pregnant persons”, presumably because they want to be inclusive of people who are pregnant but identify as something other than a woman. Well… OK then. But I have to ask -- who are these people? They’re not trans men as I know and understand them, that’s for damn sure. Trans men are men. That they find themselves in a body that has breasts and periods and can get pregnant is something that they’re prepared to spend years and years, and endure painful and extensive surgery, to escape, and I sympathise with their predicament, acknowledging I can have no idea what it’s like. I certainly admire the commitment they have to overcoming it.
And then you hear of someone supposedly suffering that dysphoria, that suicidally intense unease and dissatisfaction with their female body, who nevertheless chooses to use that body to do literally the most definitively female thing it’s possible for it to do, and carry a pregnancy. That, to me, is someone who can’t reasonably be called a trans man -- they’ve certainly very little in common with any trans man I know. They seem to me to be confused and in need of help.
And they absolutely should get that help, and don’t think for a second I’m advocating discriminating against them. But equally, if you’re a trans woman, then to me, you’re a woman, end of, and if you’re a trans man, you’re a man. And if you’re pregnant -- you’re a woman.
Change my mind. It can be done -- I wasn’t always on the page I’m on now with trans people, or if you go back far enough, gay people. I’ve got a LOT more progressive as I’ve got older. “Pregnant persons” still sticks in my throat, though.
Some intersex people don’t identify as either male or female, but can still become pregnant, thus pregnant person includes all people who could become pregnant due to owning a uterus and functioning ovary.
There was a case in the US in the last decade where a person who identified as a gay man discovered that they were pregnant. They had a healthy baby boy, and later transitioned to female, despite being apparently unaware that they had a uterus until becoming pregnant.
And then someone says “pregnant persons”, presumably because they want to be inclusive of people who are pregnant but identify as something other than a woman. Well… OK then. But I have to ask — who are these people?
Do you really “have to ask” that question? I do understand your thinking here, because TBH the same question has popped up in my head too. But I don’t find myself thinking I really “have to ask” about it. This might change if I meet or hear about someone in that particular category, but for now, I don’t have much to ask about. If they’re pregnant, they need prenatal care, and if they want to abort it, they should be allowed to do so; and that’s the extent of my opinion about them.
@Tethys -- OK. We’re slicing down into tiny subsections of tiny subsections here, but fair enough. And your specific example sounds… unlikely. The physical mechanics of insemination seem improbable, to say the least. To be clear, what’s being suggested here is that a gay man (the biological father) had some form of sexual encounter with what he perceived to be another gay man (the biological mother), an encounter that somehow successfully fertilised an ovum despite the mother not realising they were capable of being made pregnant on account of being a man and everything. Taking you at your word that it’s true, you’d surely have to admit it’s one for the record books.
@RagingBee:
No. It’s something called a “figure of speech”.
Well, at least it’s not just me then. Great.
Here’s why I think about it: “pregnant persons” sticks in my throat for reasons even you -- someone who doesn’t typically agree with or support anything I say -- at the very least understand.
It’s also problematic because while I don’t honestly give that much of a monkey’s one way or the other (since I’m not a person who can become pregnant), really quite a lot of people who I know who can or could have become pregnant (which is to say, y’know… women) are offended by that circumlocution. And no, they’re not all Hogwarts-scarf-waving TERFs, they’re just women who’ve put up with men’s bullshit all their lives, and now feel erased and sidelined by phrases like “people with a cervix”, because for almost all their lives “women” was a perfectly reasonable term for these things and now talking about it in those terms gets them labelled bigots. It’s one of those things I feel on very sticky ground with.
I want to be an ally, like I said, but if being an ally means telling a rape victim that they’re a bigot for complaining about the penis they saw in the showers at their shelter then I’m going to have to admit defeat and say I don’t know how to deal with that. Obviously I’m never going to have to deal with that level of engagement in person -- but I do have to deal with women and trans people in person reasonably often, and walking the tightrope of offense in this specific area of terminology is hard.
https://www.who.int/tools/antiretrovirals-in-pregnancy-research-toolkit/ethical-considerations
#108 Tethys
I’m not sure if that is a fable, or a sad indictment of US sex ed.
#107:
What does ‘find themselves in’ even mean in that context? Born into the wrong body? Mind/body dualism?
So in your opinion a woman who has the potential to become pregnant and who identifies as a man is a man, right up to the point that, whether by accident or design, ‘he’ becomes pregnant, at which point ‘he’ is no longer a trans man but reverts back not only to being a woman, but to being a woman who is confused and needs help. That’s some muddled thinking right there. If you really believe that a trans man is a man then pregnancy shouldn’t change that belief -- he’s just a man who “found himself in the wrong body” that now has another body growing inside it. And why is pregnancy the ‘most definitively female thing possible’? Is it any more female than ovulation and menstruation? If a man can have periods then it would logically follow that a man can get pregnant.
I’d much rather be honest and accept that whatever a person’s reasons for identifying as trans, identifying does not literally make them the thing they identify as, and there is nothing, from wishful thinking to pharmaceuticals and surgery, that can change that.
#109:
Naughty, naughty! TMAM/TWAW aren’t supposed to be seen as subjective statements.
No doubt for the same reason that religionists who harbour doubts about the truth of religion don’t want to think too hard about it: they know that the conclusion will destroy the belief.
…identifying does not literally make them the thing they identify as, and there is nothing, from wishful thinking to pharmaceuticals and surgery, that can change that.
Even if what you say is true, that still doesn’t mean anyone else’s opinion of what other people “really are” caries any weight. If you yourself haven’t met a person and don’t know about their life, health or other relevant circumstances, then you’re not competent to rule on the validity of their own claims about theirself. And no, knowing this or that aspect of human biology in general does not mean you know anything about any particular person — that’s not how medical and psychiatric care works.
And to drive this home still further, let me refer you to another comment in response to another know-nothing-know-it-all like yourself: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/03/15/ignorance-and-hate-go-well-together/#comment-2215291
Bigoted non-experts like you aren’t helping anyone by mocking and dismissing other people’s experiences of which you know nothing and in which you have no stake. Nor are you lot helping anyone by consistently confusing real and imagined atrocities and ginning up indiscriminate ignorant hatred against people who have done no wrong.
No doubt for the same reason that religionists who harbour doubts about the truth of religion don’t want to think too hard about it…
Actually, no, it’s because I don’t find it that important to quibble about this particular word-choice issue. Not sure why you’re so desperate to pretend it’s a “religious doctrine” issue…
https://www.aihw.gov.au/family-domestic-and-sexual-violence/population-groups/pregnant-people
Some people can’t adapt to a changing world. Ah well.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7834417/
“Pregnant people deserve the protection offered by SARS-CoV-2 vaccines
Published online 2020 Dec 4. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.12.007
PMCID: PMC7834417 PMID: 33308888”
Etc.
@AoS, 113:
If you like. I find myself in a male body. I’m fine with that. I can contemplate what it would be like to be in a female body. My sense of self is not THAT wrapped up in gender that I’m unable to hold the thought. But all this is philosophical and theoretical for me, which makes me the wrong person to ask, really. You might as well ask my opinion on the legality or otherwise of abortion -- I can’t get pregnant, it’s really not any of my business. I mean, I can (and do) hold an opinion on it, it’s just that I don’t think my opinion is really worth anything in the debate. /shrug/
So, now let’s address the “so you think…” bit, or what I like to call the Cathy Newman argument technique:
All the evidence I have at that point says so, yes.
Right up to the point where confounding evidence is introduced, you mean? Because I’m going to (possibly controversially) leave aside the extreme edge case of rape. I’m also going to leave aside the case where a trans man manages to convince another man (one must assume, a gay man) to have sex with them, sex that results in successful fertilisation, and is so horrified by the experience and result that they immediately terminate the pregnancy. Which leaves…
It’s not that they “revert” to being a woman. If they are comfortable being pregnant, it would seem obvious to me that, regardless of what they told me or anyone else (or themself), they’re not in any sense I’d recognise a man and never were.
If you tell me you’re lethally allergic to peanuts, then common sense would suggest that if you come to me for food I make damn sure I do right by you and make sure I don’t feed you peanuts, because hey -- ally for the allergy. But if next day I see you chomping happily on a Snickers bar, have you been cured? Do I consider you to have “reverted” to being fine with peanuts? Clearly not. I just realise you were never allergic in the first place. And maybe are a little confused about what “being allergic to peanuts” even means.
It feels patronising to have to explain this, but here goes:
If you’re born into a reasonably healthy female body, then sooner or later it’s going to start ovulating and menstruating, regardless of whether you want it to or not. However, barring some fairly specific activity on your part, it is NOT going to become pregnant. Don’t tell me you don’t think there’s a distinction there that matters.
Raging Bee:
OK, let’s look at that response. It (the response) was specifically arguing against the following:
The argument against that, made by someone who is trans-identifying, begins:
Can you not see the problem with that response? You can’t tell somebody ‘You’re wrong about that because I’m transgender and I fit perfectly into that description you’ve just given.’ I get that people like to believe they’ve made their own choices, that they weren’t lied to and manipulated into following a certain course when at their most vulnerable, but that response was more like evidence for rather than against what it was supposed to be refuting.
Stupid culture wars with their strange attractors!
So.
IVF → abortion → trans people.
(Bah)
You can’t tell somebody ‘You’re wrong about that because I’m transgender and I fit perfectly into that description you’ve just given.’
That person DIDN’T fit your description: they were victimized, first by a rapist, then by ignorant bigots who talked over them and refused to allow them to describe their own experiences in their own words. They were NOT victimized by “ghouls” in the gender-affirming-care business, as liars like you allege. So no, you can’t use that person’s experience to “prove” your bigoted claims, and I find it dishonest and downright disgraceful that you tried.
118:
I don’t think there is a distinction there that matters. Whether it’s involuntary (ovulation, menstruation, accidental pregnancy) or voluntary (carrying a pregnancy to term), they are all things that only females can do: having a baby is not more definitively female than is having a period. It matters not which one happens, they are not processes achievable by men.
Raging Bee, it wasn’t MY description, it came from whoever the response was aimed at, and I wasn’t using that person’s experience to prove my point -- YOU were. You provided the link to the comment because you thought that it made your argument for you. I merely pointed out the obvious contradiction it contained.
And you know this how? Also, I said neither ‘victimised’ nor ‘ghouls’, so kindly stop putting words into my mouth. You have one Hell of a nerve calling me a liar.
Another thing I noticed about this anti-trans-healthcare hysteria, is that that “release” of “leaked conversations” from WPATH, mentioned earlier, was done by an astroturf environmental group called Environmental Progress, which was founded by pro-fossil-fuels hack — oops, I mean Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” — Michael Shellenberger. This fact alone doesn’t prove the WPATH leaks were false or fabrications, of course; but it does cast a bit of doubt on the credibility of that whole enterprise.
https://environmentalprogress.org/founder-president
Acolyte: No, you didn’t write that description yourself, but you did falsely claim that the commenter’s story matched the description.
Also, on the subject of whether a person who’s got pregnant gets to identify as something other than a woman, I should point out that the capacity to produce sperm has not prevented AMAB people/people with penises from identifying as trans women, even if they got a woman pregnant. So if we’re being consistent with “allowed” terminology and self-identification, a person who’s got pregnant should be able to identify as something other than a woman. The rules we’re going by would allow such a person to identify as such before they got pregnant, so why wouldn’t they allow them to do so afterword?
Gender dysphoria affects people who have the ability to produce sperm, and it also affects people who have the ability to produce eggs and get pregnant. This much, at least, is known.
@122:
You don’t understand the difference between involuntary and voluntary acts. Gotcha. I think I don’t need to spend any more time trying to change your mind, as I’ve run out of evidence that you’ve got one.
@Raging Bee, 125:
Ooh, massive failure to think things through, eh? That’s not like you. /sarcasm.
Think for a moment about dysphoria. Think about the difference to YOUR body between “getting pregnant” and “getting someone pregnant”. One of them requires you to do something gender-specifically abhorrent to your impression of yourself for… what? Five minutes? Ten? Less? The other requires you to do something gender-specifically abhorrent for MONTHS, possibly years if you’re going to (shudder) breastfeed.
(Imagine if a transwoman who wanted to be a mother got a straight woman pregnant. Not a paid surrogate -- a woman who hadn’t been told they were trans in advance. A woman, furthermore, who didn’t want kids of her own, but was convinced to have them by (ostensibly) a man who said he wanted to be a father. And then that person announces they’re trans, transitions, and tries to get the kids to call them “mum”. Do please offer your comments on this situation -- I’m genuinely interested in your impression .)
One thing men get used to pretty early is women fucking moaning on and on an on about how drastically horrible pregnancy is as a thing, how they have this huge burden of responsibility because only they can get pregnant, while a man has this luxury of being able to just bang and run with no further consequence unless the authorities come after him for child support. The massively disproportionate difference between men’s involvement in the process of producing a child compared to women is by now a cliche -- yet here YOU are telling me they’re the same thing.
Come on, think about it -- you can do better.
sonofrojblake fabulating:
“One thing men get used to pretty early is women fucking moaning on and on an on about how drastically horrible pregnancy is as a thing, how they have this huge burden of responsibility because only they can get pregnant, while a man has this luxury of being able to just bang and run with no further consequence unless the authorities come after him for child support.”
Um. A man, I am, and never have I heard this fucking moaning. Never.
—
Obs, only people who want to get pregnant are gonna go for IVF. It’s a whole hassle, and it’s expensive.
They’re sure not gonna moan about getting pregnant, are they, after all that trouble and expense.
Bah.
Err… How the hell does “As someone who- […] C.) was raped at age 3, and abused throughout their childhood / D.) and consequently lives with C-PTSD” not match “…children and young people who are […] very often traumatised in other ways often involving sexual abuse and violence, have a raft of other mental health problems and are some of the most vulnerable youngsters in society”?
Can you even English?
The massively disproportionate difference between men’s involvement in the process of producing a child compared to women is by now a cliche — yet here YOU are telling me they’re the same thing.
Quote me saying ‘they’re the same thing,’ or admit that you’re the one who ‘can’t even English.’ I was referring to ‘being consistent with “allowed” terminology and self-identification.’ That’s not even close to saying ‘they’re the same thing.’
^ Psst, you just mixed my comment up with sonof’s while getting frosty about his English skill.
Also, sonof, you started out saying how much you are, and want to be, an ally to trans people; and I don’t doubt you, and that’s a good thing. But I think part of really being an ally to others consists of remembering that old saying “don’t sweat the small stuff.” And being asked to say “pregnant persons” instead of “pregnant women” once in awhile seems, to me at least, pretty small stuff compared to the issues trans people and their allies, families, caregivers and advocates face every damn day.
If I’m in an informal conversation that touches on pregnancy and related subjects, I’ll very likely say “pregnant women,” just because that’s what I’m used to saying. If no one objects, then no harm no foul. If someone does object, then I’ll say “pregnant persons” instead, unless there’s a specific reason to refer only to women in that particular context (in which case an objection would be less likely); and again, no harm no foul.
Seriously, this is small stuff.
One more thing, sonof: you asked this question @107:
And then someone says “pregnant persons”, presumably because they want to be inclusive of people who are pregnant but identify as something other than a woman. Well… OK then. But I have to ask — who are these people?
And Tethys gave you an immediate answer: “Some intersex people don’t identify as either male or female, but can still become pregnant…”
To which I might add that there are people who identify as genderqueer, genderfluid or agender, some of whom have both the ability and the desire to get pregnant.
So there’s some answers to that question you had to ask. Time to move on…?
Raging Bee, please stop arguing with me about things I haven’t said.
I think you’ll find that it’s sonofjblake who’s setting arbitrary limits on who counts as trans and who’s just confused. My position is clear and has never changed: trans women are men who identify as women but are not women: trans men are women who identify as men but are not men. You even responded to my comment where I stated that identifying as X is not the same thing as actually being X (your comment #115). My asking sonofjblake why he set his limit where he did rather than on any other sex-specific process does not mean that I have a certain cut-off point between accepting the claims and rejecting them. I do not and never have believed that TMAM/TWAW. Also, just for the record, not believing the claims of trans people does not mean that I don’t think trans people exist; I know that they exist in the same way I know that Christians exist, and I don’t believe their metaphysical claims, either.
@Raging Bee, 131:
Check your privilege, as I believe the young people say. It might be “small stuff” to you. In my life, however, there are a tiny number of people who’d be offended by me using the word “woman” when what I actually mean is “person who can become pregnant” or “person with a cervix” or whatever. Conversely, there are a LOT of women in my life who absolutely are offended, seriously, by circumlocutions like that, circumlocutions that, to them, erase them and their identity… and I’m not about to tell them that they’re bigots for thinking that, because hey… it’s small stuff, right?
Thus, by your logic, the sensible, logical utilitarian path of least harm is to just say “woman” or “man”, and if a trans person is offended by that, well they can just fucking suck it up because it’s “small stuff”, right? Does that sound right?
(You’ve not commented on my parenthetical in 126 -- got nothing?)
sonof: So just use whichever phrase is inoffensive to whoever you’re talking with in each instance. (I’m kinda guessing you’re not likely to find both of those groups in one place together.) You don’t need to be linguistically consistent across all conversations — just polite. And if anyone asks why anyone would say “pregnant persons,” you can just pass on the answers you got here. You know as well as I do there’s no need to call anyone a bigot…unless of course they start acting like bigots when you answer their question…
“use whichever phrase is inoffensive to whoever you’re talking with”
Engaging mind-reading/precognitive powers in 3… 2…
You mean this parenthetical, sonof?
(Imagine if a transwoman who wanted to be a mother got a straight woman pregnant. Not a paid surrogate — a woman who hadn’t been told they were trans in advance. A woman, furthermore, who didn’t want kids of her own, but was convinced to have them by (ostensibly) a man who said he wanted to be a father. And then that person announces they’re trans, transitions, and tries to get the kids to call them “mum”. Do please offer your comments on this situation — I’m genuinely interested in your impression .)
Not sure what point you’re trying to reinforce with this. Also, which of those two hypothetical people is “Not a paid surrogate — a woman who hadn’t been told they were trans in advance?” Not sure what the point of that is either.
As for my opinion, it’s that the couple can either work together to resolve their differences, or get divorced if they decide they can’t or don’t want to. Couples have dealt with worse things together; and couples have also got divorced over smaller issues. Again, what’s your point here?
What the fuck do you need “mind-reading/precognitive powers” for? You just said these were people “in your life” — that kind of implies you know them, at least enough to have some clue about their respective dispositions.
I can’t believe this nonsense in still going on.
Claiming women are offended by being called people is like claiming men on a council of 11 men and one woman are offended by the group collectively being called “people of the council” rather than “councilmen”.
If they are, there is no other explanation than misogyny. If they are bleating about “men being erased” by the collective term that obviously includes (mostly) men, they are idiots.
Feminism: “The radical notion that women are people”. Anyone claiming women should not be referred to as people is indisputably anti-feminist.
[‘councillors’ rather than “councilmen” would have worked better]
@ 133 Acolyte of Sagan
Yes, dude, we get it. You’re no different to a white supremacist who says they never have believed non-whites are really citizens. We’ve seen xenophobia before.
Fortunately, irrational prejudices like yours tend to die off over time. Trans people have always been a part of society, always will be, will still be here long after you’re dead, and are fully deserving of the same rights, recognition, dignity and acceptance as anyone else. The idea social categories have to be based on something as stupid as baby genitals is -- thanks to generations of feminists -- becoming a thing of the past. In a generation, people will look back on your transphobia with no less disgust than we look back on historical homophobia or racism.
FFS
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/councilman
Wrong word, Bobiferous. You picked the gendered one.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/councillor was what I wrote, instead of the clumsy locution “people of the council” you attempted, much as ‘women’ and ‘people’ are a single non-circumlocutory term.
Ah, I forgot how clueless you are, Bob. You fabulated that I somehow did not know to what the term ‘councilman’ refers, I get it now. So very, very hard not to overthink it where you are concerned.
When I wrote [‘councillors’ rather than “councilmen” would have worked better] I meant that, instead of using the clumsy “people of the council”, you could have used ‘councillors’ — the rest of your phrasing was not awful.
So, I try again (see if I can get through):
If, instead of
“Claiming women are offended by being called people is like claiming men on a council of 11 men and one woman are offended by the group collectively being called “people of the council” rather than “councilmen”.”
you had actually used language less poorly and written
“Claiming women are offended by being called people is like claiming men on a council of 11 men and one woman are offended by the group collectively being called “councillors” rather than “councilmen”.”
then it would have been both pithier and more apposite.
That’s it, really.
To quote radical feminist Catherine MacKinnon (actual radical feminist, not TERF pretend radical feminist)
You’ll never guess what my (secondary) source was for that, Acolyte of Sycophancy. X-D
Speaking of MacKinnon. It’s just come to my attention that she said this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharine_A._MacKinnon
See my above posts comparing Acolyte of Sexism claiming his metaphysical beliefs are “facts” vs. feminists and humanists who would never claim such a thing.
We say, “treating natural sex and gender diversity as equal is ethically desirable because of the overwhelming evidence it enhances human wellbeing”. They say, “cishet superiority is a ‘fact'”. You can tell who has power by who never feels the need to make arguments, but just impose their unevidenced metaphysics by fiat.
@ 134 sonofrojblake
Mate, the problem is that you hang out exclusively with bigots. (What a surprise.) Even in the repulsively transphobic UK, polls show most women recognise women who are transgender as their sisters. And are far more accepting of trans people than dinosaur blokes like you.
(Source)
When will you get it through your head that trans people are normal people who deserve the same recognition as anyone else?
In exactly the way we don’t need to impose sexual partners on gay people on the basis of reproductive ability, we don’t need to impose gender on the basis of reproductive ability. The entire edifice is just about oppressing women. If you don’t want to oppress women, you won’t give a fuck what type of sex another person is having, or with what genitals they were born.
Get over this nonsense that if another person is offended by someone else’s identity that is a rational argument. The correct response to such a person would be to tell them that their options are to accept sharing society with people who are different to them, or fuck off and live on a desert island. You cannot expel other people from society just because you don’t like them when they have always been there and have as much right to be there as you.
Acolyte @133:
My position is clear and has never changed: trans women are men who identify as women but are not women: trans men are women who identify as men but are not men.
And this never-changing “position” of yours is based on…what, exactly?
As Silentbob said, “treating natural sex and gender diversity as equal is ethically desirable because of the overwhelming evidence it enhances human wellbeing”. What does your “position” accomplish, Acolyte?
Transphobes -- as I write, this post is not only no longer on the first page of the blog, it’s not even on the second.
Do you think there comes a time when you realize you need therapy; when you are still arguing about trans people ON A POST THAT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH TRANS PEOPLE.
Like, seriously. Have it out with your psychiatrists. You have been swept up in a moral panic similar to the “satanic panic” or homophobia of the 80s and you need to get over it and get a hobby.
Trans people aren’t going anywhere and your attitudes to them will always be stuck inn the distant past.
Get a grip.
Modern day transphobia’s precursor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic
#149
You realise you are also arguing here, right? And now here I am, wondering if you are best summarised as a walking, talking fundamental attribution error or if you literally have no theory of mind.
Silentbob: Thanx for the quotes from MacKinnon. I remember her being trashed as an idiot during the big anti-porn crusade of the 1980s; so it’s good to get a bit of perspective about her (and also about Dworkin, who turned out not to be that much of a loony harpy either).
Also @149: It does look like a major threadjack/change of subject; but in a way, it kinda gets back to the original headline about the GQP tying itself in knots.
Silentbob:
False analogy. You’re talking about a mixed-sex group while pregnancy is sex-specific. And all of your McKinnon quotes count for nothing; I stopped accepting arguments from authority decades ago.
You clearly don’t understand what metaphysical means. What else would you call the belief that humans identifying as something they are not magically makes them that something?
Oh, and ‘Acolyte of Sycophancy’, ‘Acolyte of Sexism’? Grow up.
Raging Bee:
Human biology.
It might increase the wellbeing of a few men who identify as women but it does nothing for the wellbeing of the women forced to accommodate them. Lesbians harassed as bigots because they don’t think men can be lesbians: rape victims denied counselling if they won’t accept a male counsellor: women in prisons being sexually and physically assaulted by male prisoners with female identities: women and girls having to accept men into their changing rooms: the list is endless.
And all of your McKinnon quotes count for nothing; I stopped accepting arguments from authority decades ago.
You think MacKinnon is an “authority?” God’s death but you’re stoopid. I guess she’s enough of an authority to make it impossible for you to show where she’s wrong.
Human biology.
If you actually cared enough to LEARN about human biology, you’d very quickly see that it’s far more complex than the parts you can see with your unaided eyes. Human biolgists themselves have explicitly said this; so if you really think human biology is important, you’d have listened to them. We’ve already debunked this simpleminded argument, and repeating an already-debunked argument doesn’t un-debunk (rebunk?) it.
…women forced to accommodate them.
“Forced” how, exactly?
Lesbians harassed as bigots because they don’t think men can be lesbians.
Specific examples, please? And who’s doing the harassing?
rape victims denied counselling if they won’t accept a male counsellor
Again, specific examples, please?
women in prisons being sexually and physically assaulted by male prisoners with female identities
What, sexual assault in prisons was never a problem until “male prisoners with female identities” started getting locked up? Also, where else should a trans woman prisoner go? And who would be endangered there?
women and girls having to accept men into their changing rooms
Where is this happening? Examples are needed here too.
the list is endless.
The vague incendiary ALLEGATIONS are endless. Specifics and evidence are sparse.
All of your vague claims — and the very harmful consequences of acting on them — have been discussed at great length by other FTBloggers, by people who seem far more honest and knowledgeable then you are. We’ve been hearing this shrill shrieking shite from transphobes for a very long time, we’ve done enough fact-checking to know it’s not credible, and none of it justifies hatred or discrimination against trans people, or denial of gender-affirming care, or incitement of hate and violence against non-conforming people.
So an individual who was not born with a uterus, but has one implanted (perhaps donated by someone who did not want theirs), and brings at least one pregnancy to term — this would make the person a female; a woman? That’s the hoop that transwomen would have to jump through to get you to stop misgendering them?
And would you agree that the womb donor is now a man (regardless of what they consider themselves) because they can no longer gestate?
@ 155 Raging Bee
I love how I point out the obvious comparison to the satanic panic and the response is, “but what about this [unhinged hyperbolic nonsense with no basis in reality]”? X-D
“But what about all the reported cases of kids heads swiveling 360 degrees while projectile vomiting green slime?! Eh?! Checkmate feminists.”
As I said, I’m sick of these transphobic idiots, but just one case study to show how propaganda works:
The claim is, “lesbians harassed as bigots because they don’t think men can be lesbians”.
This comes from a notorious story from the BBC via some transphobic hate groups claiming “some” trans women are pressuring lesbians into sex. It consisted entirely of unverified claims by anonymous people about unnamed trans women. Can you imagine such a story being run about any other minority?
The irony was the only person in the story confirmed to have pressured anyone into sex was Lily Cade -- a cis woman and unhinged transphobe.
The reality is trans women especially have been bashed and murdered by people who are attracted to them and later find out they are trans. They’re the last people on Earth to ever go around “pressuring” people. They have to be extremely cautious.
And lesbians are the most trans friendly demographic. Like extremely trans friendly:
(That’s from the UK, where the “pressured lesbians” nonsense comes from.)
You see how “blood libel” works? Just make up some demonizing nonsense about a minority, repeat it enough, and you’ll have gullible idiots like Acolyte of Sexism and Holms and sonofroj jumping on board assuming it must be true if everyone’s saying it.
I’ll leave the last word to lesbians:
Raging Bee, I don’t think that McKinnon is an authority, that would be Silentbob’s belief as he supplied the quotes as though they were definitive arguments. The idea that ‘you’re wrong because this person said this which contradicts you’ is an argument from authority unless it comes with evidence that what is said is true. When the quotes come with phrases such as ”to me’, ‘I always thought’, ‘in my opinion’, they’re not evidence of anything, they’re one person’s opinion.
I suggest that you refrain from calling others ‘stoopid’ until you’ve learnt to read for comprehension.
And do you know what they haven’t said? That identifying as equals being what one identifies as.
Specific examples of my claims (as if you have no idea what I’m talking about). Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre refusing its services to victims of rape who don’t want male counsellors. Trans woman ‘Barbie Kardashian’, initially sent to a women’s prison but eventually transferred to a male facility after physically and/or sexually assaulting several women prisoners and warders (see also the Scottish prisons debacle). You ask where trans women prisoners should go: they’re men, you do the maths. Or would you rather put all women prisoners at risk to protect one man? Speaking of which, did you know that 1 in 50 male prisoners identify as transgender, the majority of whom only declared their trans identity during their incarceration? How would you explain that if it’s so dangerous to be a trans woman in a male prison? That figure is from official Ministry of Justice records, btw: https://archive.fo/o/LnXvb/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/29/record-numbers-transgender-prisoners-transition-men-women/
As for the rest, here, look for yourself. There’s plenty of links to the source material: https://forwomen.scot/did-you-know/
Owlmirror: yet another one extrapolating something entirely different from what I’ve actually said. If you’d bothered to read the thread you’ll have seen me state quite clearly that while not all women can menstruate’ or get pregnant, all people who can are women, so no, I don’t think that infertile women are not women. I have also clearly said that identifying, pharmaceuticals or surgery cannot turn a person of one sex into the other.
The idea that ‘you’re wrong because this person said this which contradicts you’ is an argument from authority unless it comes with evidence that what is said is true.
No, it’s not an argument from authority; it’s just a counterclaim from someone else with different perspective and experiences. And to the extent that it’s valid or true, it’s valid for that reason (and BTW because you still haven’t refuted it).
And do you know what [biologists] haven’t said? That identifying as equals being what one identifies as.
Trans people don’t say that either. A trans woman doesn’t assert that she’s a woman “because she sez so;” she sez so because she knows, at some level, that it already IS so. Horse, cart — get the sequence straight already. And again, what standing do you or I have to rule on such claims by other people we don’t know? (And don’t say “human biology” — that’s not an entity or authority that makes formal public rulings.)
Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre refusing its services to victims of rape who don’t want male counsellors.
WTF does that have to do with trans people’s rights, safety, healthcare, or equal access to public facilities?
Specific examples of my claims (as if you have no idea what I’m talking about)…
Trust me, I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about: you’re reciting examples of exceptional, weird, lurid and scary aberrant behavior in order to portray a group of people you hate as too scary and threatening to be allowed out in public (even though such behaviors are also observed outside the said hated group). I remember very similar things being said about gays and lesbians in the 1970s: i.e., “We can’t have lesbians in women’s sports ‘cuz what if they try to recruit our daughters in the women’s changing rooms? I know it happened somewhere once, so we can’t let all of our children be endangered just so a buncha perverts can have ‘rights!'” We’ve already heard this from right-wing bigots back then, as now, and we also heard it from German Nazis in the 1920s and ’30s. It never leads to improvement in anyone’s condition, in or out of whatever group is being demonized.
…you’ll have seen me state quite clearly that while not all women can menstruate’ or get pregnant, all people who can are women…
So the person in Owl’s hypothetical who gets a working set of female parts IS a woman, by your admission. Or at least you’d “officially” recognize her as one when she gets pregnant and carries it to term, right? Or is it some other guy who gets to bestow official recognition?
…so no, I don’t think that infertile women are not women. I have also clearly said that identifying, pharmaceuticals or surgery cannot turn a person of one sex into the other.
So now you just contradicted your own preceding sentence. A woman who can’t conceive IS still a woman, but a trans woman who CAN AND DOES conceive still ISN’T one? Yep, we’ve definitely come back around to the original topic of wingnuts tying theyselves up in knots.
Seriously, this has already been discussed, here and elsewhere, far more intelligently than you’re doing. You and your old fearmongering-points are late to the conversation. Do kindly fuck off, old chap.
Nothing, because that wasn’t what you asked for. Here, let me remind you what you did ask for:
See. Edinburgh is the specific example as per your request. Why did you move the goalposts?
As for the womb transplant, you seem to be confusing the reality of the present with a purely hypothetical future. Do you not understand the difference between ‘somebody who can’ (present tense) and ‘somebody in the future who hypothetically could if scientists could figure out a way to completely change the physiology of a man to that of a woman’ (future tense)? You also seem blissfully unaware that successfully carrying a foetus to full term involves a lot more than just the presence of a womb. How the Hell can I tie myself in knots over something that never has and in all likelihood never will happen? Will you believe a horse is a unicorn if scientists successfully splice the specific genes that enable a rhino to grow a horn into its genome?
So you didn’t bother following the links that show all the ‘old fear mongering (two words) points’ to be actual present-day concerns? Of course you didn’t.
How the Hell can I tie myself in knots over something that never has and in all likelihood never will happen?
You tell us…how’d you manage it?
This is another example of the dishonesty of your argument. Owlmirror came up with a ridiculous hypothetical about an impossible situation, you decided that I would agree that the hypothetical man was a woman and went on to claim that I had tied myself in knots. IF that could happen then of course I’d have to rethink because I follow the evidence, and a hypothetical is not evidence. As things stand it is ONLY women who can get pregnant. When the miracle of a man getting pregnant actually happens, come back and we’ll talk.
<clickety-click>
Ah, a beat-up by a trans-hating group. Of course.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/trans-scotland-mridul-wadhwa-for-women-scotland/
BTW, uterus transplantation is now a thing.
https://www.seslhd.health.nsw.gov.au/news/meet-henry-australia%E2%80%99s-first-uterus-transplant-baby
(Only for women, so far)
Silentbob, either your reading comprehension is somewhat lacking, your psychic skills aren’t what you think, or you’re being dishonest on purpose.
Yes, that’s the claim, which has nothing to do with..
Where did I mention being pressured into sex? I’m talking about lesbians being harassed as bigots because they know that lesbianism is a same-sex attraction and want to be able to hold events free from men who claim to be lesbians. Are you going to pretend that you’re not aware of the protests and on-line torrents of hate from the trans and their allies every time those lesbians organise such events or can you actually be honest for once? Everything you wrote after the quote above is moot, referring as it does to things I haven’t said.
Interestingly enough, the long-winded bigots on this thread have so far produced nothing but vicious rumors to support their great cause of maintaining rigid pigeonholes based gender essentialism. Such noble warriors!
It’s always a lark when cis-het dudes say things like
I have had three children, and no. It’s definitely not the most definitively female thing I can do with my body.
As to Holms. The couple was literally in multiple magazines at the time. Their son is in school by now.
I hope the family is very happy despite the efforts of transphobic asshats to erase their existence.
Also…XXY and XXXY are both well documented, though not commonplace.
“I have had three children, and no. It’s definitely not the most definitively female thing I can do with my body”
Then pray enlighten us -- what is?
#155 Raging
A very funny comment to see coming from a guy who learned his biology from internet articles.
___
#168 Tethys
Disagreement with someone’s self description is not erasure of existence. Catastrophise much?
Your ontology is weak, Holms. Or would be, were you not attempting to be disingenous.
Self-description is is ontologically dependent on existence, so you’d have got it got it backwards if that was your true claim.
Obviously, you are attempting to insinuate that trangender people don’t actually exist because the status of being trangender does not actually exist, it being mere self-description. I know damn well that’s what you have asserted ad nauseam, to the degree that you were put on probation.
Ah well. You are finally abrogating your commitment to avoid discussion of transgender issues.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2021/05/09/an-in-depth-look-at-the-trans-experience/#comment-4695556
Nothing to do with IVF, your comments, are they?
All about how trans men aren’t men and trans women aren’t women.
Your hobbyhorse.
John @166: “BTW, uterus transplantation is now a thing.”
The article doesn’t say whether the donor’s Feminine Essence carried over to the recipient with the lady-parts. So we still can’t ascertain whether the recipient is a real woman.
Then again, if the Feminine Essence was lost in the transplant, maybe the Original Sin of Eve was lost too. And that would mean that every baby conceived and born from transplanted lady-parts would be born free of Original Sin!
What a fascinating modern age we live in!
But existence is not dependent on self-description.
John Morales there, conflating transgender people with Tinkerbell.
Heh. That’s what I wrote.
“got it got it” 🙂
Nope. Adumbrating Holms’ views on the subject, which he most extensively repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Same as your views, but this time around he had to try to insinuate it, because of the stricture he sought to circumvent. To he and to you, being transgender is just a form of delusion when it’s not a form of roleplaying. They don’t exist, far as you are concerned, they only claim to exist.