It’s pretty much impossible to talk about trans inclusion without being labelled a transphobe. Are your thoughts on trans inclusion influenced by the fact that male patterns of violence and sexual aggression persist post-transition? You’re a transphobe. Do you recognise the differences between trans women and the class of people we’ve known as women since forever? You’re a transphobe. Do you think females have a right to spaces that males aren’t allowed to enter? You’re definitely a transphobe. So in my article, The Case Against Men, I decided to pick on another group that is cruelly denied access to female-only spaces; men.
"Attacks on young boys are naturally going to skew heavily towards gay men."
This is completely false. Homosexual men are attracted to men, men with adult male characteristics. We are not attracted to prepubscents because they lack the characteristics that arouse us.
It is facile (please note my restraint, Steve, because this really pisses me off) to make such a simplistic assumption as "men who molest young boys must be gay." In reality the pedophile population is much more heterosexual than the general population and the stimulus is not the gender of their victims, but their helplessness. A pedophile often lives a purely heterosexual life, married with children, but has a private life preying on children, usually without much discrimination based on gender.
This libel has been applied to gay men for generations and it's time to stop it.
Human nature is what it is. The drive to procreate is only a little less intense than the drive to survive. So we set up constructs to shield the vulnerable (females) from inadvertent and unwanted attention. T’was ever so. Keep males out of female spaces. Why is this even a debate? Keep females out of male spaces. Ah here’s the rub as we narrow and redefine what it means to be female. And what the roles are. The military is particularly fraught.
In two generations of my family, 2/4 females were attacked with intent to rape. By being outside in the middle of the day. As one of them who bears the scars, it’s kinda hard to see all this trans crap as anything other than an intrusion on hard fought privacy rights.
I have no accommodation for welcoming Lia Thomas’ penis into my locker room.
In response to Dan, what’s the rule? It’s that humans come in 2 sexes: male and female. We can alter our appearance, but we cannot change our sex no matter how much medical intervention we do. I know some will say but “wutabout”. Ok, there are exceptions. Exceptions like multiple chromosomes or ambiguous genitals. Just like some babies are born without all their fingers. But humans still are defined by having 10 fingers. So, that’s my rule. I’d love to hear people start affirming “you were not born in the wrong body” because, other than your sex “determined” at birth, anyone can be whatever they are or want to be. Humans can dress how they want, do sports or not, be religious or not, wear nail polish or not, long hair/short hair, sleep with who they want or abstain completely, marry who they want, etc. I don’t care. Unless the thing requires a penis or a vagina, you are free to be you! But I don’t want to walk into a bathroom with a undisguised man standing at the sink. I would walk back out. It used to be women’s bathrooms were shared with transwomen and we never knew about it. Because it was about appearance. 30 yrs ago I had an employee transitioning from male to female. For bathrooms, it wasn’t hard…use the unisex one until you look enough like a woman to pass. And it was never an issue. Today, with the move for men to just “feel” like a woman (no appearance change required), it changes everything for me, including even bathrooms. When men are allowed in women's spaces or sports, women will self-exclude. How can “inclusion” hurt us? That’s how. We aren’t going to stick around. I wish women prisoners could say the same. This was obvious and non controversial 5 minutes ago.
Hi Steve. I don't know if there is a more straightforward way to contact you. I enjoy your writing and agree with you often, but not always. I think that's the appropriate ratio. Have you ever commented on Hate Crime? The current story from the NYT
"Two of the men convicted in Ahmaud Arbery’s killing got additional life sentences for federal hate crimes. The third was sentenced to 35 years."
would be a good jumping off point. My view is that murder is bad, and that murder should be punished. Murder for money and murder for road rage and murder for dislike of a person's skin color or sexuality are equally heinous. Hate crime is thought crime. Should we prosecute a separate offence based on motive? Taking motive into account when sentencing seems to make sense to me, but why add a separate life sentence for what you THINK the person was thinking?
I'm sure you already have plenty to write about, but I'd be interested in your views.
What Plural seems to not understand is that keeping men out of women's bathrooms isn't keeping men out of bathrooms. They have access to their own bathrooms. Plural's argument would make sense if we were keeping men from public bathrooms. Why in God's name are we even arguing about this? I wonder what Plural thinks about keeping men out of women's prisons...
People often resort to name calling as argumentum. I've been called a sexist because of my view on women in combat roles in the military. Two things guide my view. Anyone reading this can tell me why it's sexist if they think so.
1. For a time I lived on a fire support base south of the Que Son Mountain range. A miserable place where we were frequently hit with mortars. That is not the reason. When I got there as advanced party there were no showers. We went to a stream just outside the fire base to bathe. When the higher ups figured out that some of the women there were not there to wash cloths, they decided that we needed a shower. In an open area in the compound, they put some wooden pallets and set up a pipe contraption with holes in it and pumped water from the stream for an hour every day. It was quickly a big mud puddle. We stripped, walked thru the mud, showered walked back thru the mud, dried ourselves and wiped the mud off our feet. The condition of my feet is another story. Women with rotten feet is not the reason either. Where in the hell was there going to be a woman's space?
2. I'm just one person, hardly a valid statistic, but every single woman who has talked about it with me who was in the military told me that they were raped at least once! The people you are supposed to have the tightest bond with raping you! Go back to number 1 and imagine being a young, fit, woman putting your naked body on display regularly in front of a bunch of young, horney jarheads. Splendid idea?
Women deploy now. I don't know how they deal with that, but we were certainly not ready to deal with it back then. I'm sure that the women on the medical staff at China Beach had women's spaces. I never had occasion to talk with them to see if it would change my every one of them metric. Maybe not, I don't know.
Yes, more extreme than in more civilized locations. That's my point, but I still get called a sexist. Men should behave themselves. Yeah right, sure they will.
Your restraint is truly impressive, Steve. However, I don't know of any other non-violent method to expunge bad ideas beyond airing them out, showing how empty they are, and providing better ones. I just wish the entire process wasn't so asymmetric (ie a slogan can be a brainworm for years, but good ideas need time to take root)
Like you, I’m sure, I have never knowingly gone through a door with a sign on it saying “Women”.
It doesn’t have to say “Women Only”; “Women” is enough. I also regularly step aside to allow women access to parts of the sidewalk that I would have felt entitled to use were they not there; my nose remains unskinned.
Why on Earth would any man want to be somewhere he is unwelcome? It must be so unpleasant.
I've been reading a lot about the growing controversy of "woke" employees. The charge of "transphobia" comes so readily that employers are becoming wary of hiring the "woke" at all; their demands are endless, forever changing, and they bring chaos to the workplace with disruptive conflicts with coworkers and with management for not being "inclusive" enough.
I think it is reasonable for Plural to ask you for your proposed "rule". And we should be suspicious if our rule does not seem to do the right things in all the right circumstances.
I like that you are aiming away from chances of bad actions since I think those rates with respect to bathrooms is very very low. That is not the center of this issue. As you point out, it seems at center is how women FEEL about folks being in their space.
I generally find myself on the same side of this issue as you are. But I am UNCOMFORTABLE. The kind of rule that I imagine us gravitating towards has something to do with many folks being uncomfortable with the situation. But white of the past (or maybe present) could LEGITIMATELY argue that they were uncomfortable in the close presents of blacks. Even as we accept the truth of that, we basically tell them to "get over it"
so I just find myself confused.
And @Mark Monday if this conflation hard to read (I am not happy with it either), then can you slice them apart in a morally strong way? I at least for the moment can't.
"Attacks on young boys are naturally going to skew heavily towards gay men."
This is completely false. Homosexual men are attracted to men, men with adult male characteristics. We are not attracted to prepubscents because they lack the characteristics that arouse us.
It is facile (please note my restraint, Steve, because this really pisses me off) to make such a simplistic assumption as "men who molest young boys must be gay." In reality the pedophile population is much more heterosexual than the general population and the stimulus is not the gender of their victims, but their helplessness. A pedophile often lives a purely heterosexual life, married with children, but has a private life preying on children, usually without much discrimination based on gender.
This libel has been applied to gay men for generations and it's time to stop it.
Human nature is what it is. The drive to procreate is only a little less intense than the drive to survive. So we set up constructs to shield the vulnerable (females) from inadvertent and unwanted attention. T’was ever so. Keep males out of female spaces. Why is this even a debate? Keep females out of male spaces. Ah here’s the rub as we narrow and redefine what it means to be female. And what the roles are. The military is particularly fraught.
In two generations of my family, 2/4 females were attacked with intent to rape. By being outside in the middle of the day. As one of them who bears the scars, it’s kinda hard to see all this trans crap as anything other than an intrusion on hard fought privacy rights.
I have no accommodation for welcoming Lia Thomas’ penis into my locker room.
In response to Dan, what’s the rule? It’s that humans come in 2 sexes: male and female. We can alter our appearance, but we cannot change our sex no matter how much medical intervention we do. I know some will say but “wutabout”. Ok, there are exceptions. Exceptions like multiple chromosomes or ambiguous genitals. Just like some babies are born without all their fingers. But humans still are defined by having 10 fingers. So, that’s my rule. I’d love to hear people start affirming “you were not born in the wrong body” because, other than your sex “determined” at birth, anyone can be whatever they are or want to be. Humans can dress how they want, do sports or not, be religious or not, wear nail polish or not, long hair/short hair, sleep with who they want or abstain completely, marry who they want, etc. I don’t care. Unless the thing requires a penis or a vagina, you are free to be you! But I don’t want to walk into a bathroom with a undisguised man standing at the sink. I would walk back out. It used to be women’s bathrooms were shared with transwomen and we never knew about it. Because it was about appearance. 30 yrs ago I had an employee transitioning from male to female. For bathrooms, it wasn’t hard…use the unisex one until you look enough like a woman to pass. And it was never an issue. Today, with the move for men to just “feel” like a woman (no appearance change required), it changes everything for me, including even bathrooms. When men are allowed in women's spaces or sports, women will self-exclude. How can “inclusion” hurt us? That’s how. We aren’t going to stick around. I wish women prisoners could say the same. This was obvious and non controversial 5 minutes ago.
Hi Steve. I don't know if there is a more straightforward way to contact you. I enjoy your writing and agree with you often, but not always. I think that's the appropriate ratio. Have you ever commented on Hate Crime? The current story from the NYT
"Two of the men convicted in Ahmaud Arbery’s killing got additional life sentences for federal hate crimes. The third was sentenced to 35 years."
would be a good jumping off point. My view is that murder is bad, and that murder should be punished. Murder for money and murder for road rage and murder for dislike of a person's skin color or sexuality are equally heinous. Hate crime is thought crime. Should we prosecute a separate offence based on motive? Taking motive into account when sentencing seems to make sense to me, but why add a separate life sentence for what you THINK the person was thinking?
I'm sure you already have plenty to write about, but I'd be interested in your views.
What Plural seems to not understand is that keeping men out of women's bathrooms isn't keeping men out of bathrooms. They have access to their own bathrooms. Plural's argument would make sense if we were keeping men from public bathrooms. Why in God's name are we even arguing about this? I wonder what Plural thinks about keeping men out of women's prisons...
People often resort to name calling as argumentum. I've been called a sexist because of my view on women in combat roles in the military. Two things guide my view. Anyone reading this can tell me why it's sexist if they think so.
1. For a time I lived on a fire support base south of the Que Son Mountain range. A miserable place where we were frequently hit with mortars. That is not the reason. When I got there as advanced party there were no showers. We went to a stream just outside the fire base to bathe. When the higher ups figured out that some of the women there were not there to wash cloths, they decided that we needed a shower. In an open area in the compound, they put some wooden pallets and set up a pipe contraption with holes in it and pumped water from the stream for an hour every day. It was quickly a big mud puddle. We stripped, walked thru the mud, showered walked back thru the mud, dried ourselves and wiped the mud off our feet. The condition of my feet is another story. Women with rotten feet is not the reason either. Where in the hell was there going to be a woman's space?
2. I'm just one person, hardly a valid statistic, but every single woman who has talked about it with me who was in the military told me that they were raped at least once! The people you are supposed to have the tightest bond with raping you! Go back to number 1 and imagine being a young, fit, woman putting your naked body on display regularly in front of a bunch of young, horney jarheads. Splendid idea?
Women deploy now. I don't know how they deal with that, but we were certainly not ready to deal with it back then. I'm sure that the women on the medical staff at China Beach had women's spaces. I never had occasion to talk with them to see if it would change my every one of them metric. Maybe not, I don't know.
Yes, more extreme than in more civilized locations. That's my point, but I still get called a sexist. Men should behave themselves. Yeah right, sure they will.
Women got killed too, but that is not the subject here, but I'll mention it because it matters to me. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/fact-check-why-are-so-few-womens-names-on-the-vietnam-memorial-wall
Plural's conflating of issues around men in women's spaces with black crime rates was.... very ugh to read.
Tell it Steve. Women and girls who enter spaces and places every day that may not feel safe thank you.
Your restraint is truly impressive, Steve. However, I don't know of any other non-violent method to expunge bad ideas beyond airing them out, showing how empty they are, and providing better ones. I just wish the entire process wasn't so asymmetric (ie a slogan can be a brainworm for years, but good ideas need time to take root)
Like you, I’m sure, I have never knowingly gone through a door with a sign on it saying “Women”.
It doesn’t have to say “Women Only”; “Women” is enough. I also regularly step aside to allow women access to parts of the sidewalk that I would have felt entitled to use were they not there; my nose remains unskinned.
Why on Earth would any man want to be somewhere he is unwelcome? It must be so unpleasant.
I've been reading a lot about the growing controversy of "woke" employees. The charge of "transphobia" comes so readily that employers are becoming wary of hiring the "woke" at all; their demands are endless, forever changing, and they bring chaos to the workplace with disruptive conflicts with coworkers and with management for not being "inclusive" enough.
Or whatever.
I really hope this fad burns out soon.
I think it is reasonable for Plural to ask you for your proposed "rule". And we should be suspicious if our rule does not seem to do the right things in all the right circumstances.
I like that you are aiming away from chances of bad actions since I think those rates with respect to bathrooms is very very low. That is not the center of this issue. As you point out, it seems at center is how women FEEL about folks being in their space.
I generally find myself on the same side of this issue as you are. But I am UNCOMFORTABLE. The kind of rule that I imagine us gravitating towards has something to do with many folks being uncomfortable with the situation. But white of the past (or maybe present) could LEGITIMATELY argue that they were uncomfortable in the close presents of blacks. Even as we accept the truth of that, we basically tell them to "get over it"
so I just find myself confused.
And @Mark Monday if this conflation hard to read (I am not happy with it either), then can you slice them apart in a morally strong way? I at least for the moment can't.