Representative Mormon opinion re transgender people?

[Fence Sitter]

Smac is a bigoted coward who would not last on this forum.

[Analytics]

I like giving credit where credit is due, and acknowledging when people change, grow, and learn new things.

This morning Smac97 posted the following on the thread about bathroom laws for transgender people:

@Analytics,

Your references, and the further articles I reviewed, have moved me away from my proposal and into an area of ambivalence between it and the approach taken in MA. I'm not quite persuaded, and I'd like to see more data, but for the time being I am retracting my proposal.

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/76 ... 1210204006

[Dr. Shades]

@Analytics,

Your references, and the further articles I reviewed, have moved me away from my proposal and into an area of ambivalence between it and the approach taken in MA. I'm not quite persuaded, and I'd like to see more data, but for the time being I am retracting my proposal.

Don't keep us in suspense. What was his original "proposal?"

[Physics Guy]

I'm astounded. Analytics got Smac—Smac!—to reconsider something.

If I ever need a lawyer in any jurisdiction where Analytics can operate, I know who I'm going to call.

[Analytics]

@Analytics,

Your references, and the further articles I reviewed, have moved me away from my proposal and into an area of ambivalence between it and the approach taken in MA. I'm not quite persuaded, and I'd like to see more data, but for the time being I am retracting my proposal.

Don't keep us in suspense. What was his original "proposal?"

His "original proposal" was a strict bathroom law based on biological sex. In his view, public restrooms are either men spaces or women spaces; you must be a biological man to use the men's room and a biological woman to use the women's room. If you are biologically inter-sex, a judge could decide which bathroom you should use. If anybody suspected that somebody in a public restroom was of the wrong sex, the police should be called to investigate. In his view, state ID's should strictly show biological sex and would be the primary evidence police used to determine whether or not a biological male was trespassing on women's space. I think this is basically what the law now is or is moving towards in Florida, Tennessee, and elsewhere.

My proposal was either not have bathroom laws and let sociological and psychological pressure be used to enforce whether or not somebody was in the correct restroom, or if there was really a problem in need of a solution, let people use the restroom that best corresponds to their gender or gender expression. He was originally quite confident that this wouldn't work because perverted men could easily claim to really be women on the inside in order to gain access to the lady's room. I suggested that if somebody goes into the restroom, pees, washes their hands, quickly touches up makeup, and then leaves, then they should be given the benefit of the doubt. However, if they were in the restroom loitering, intimating, harassing, spying, etc., then that is when laws are being broken and police intervention would be required.

It seemed that he provincially inferred the reason bathroom bills were being debated and enacted was because there was some sort of massive, nationwide infiltration of women's restrooms by men pretending to be women on the inside.

I originally debated him by showing him what some transgender men (i.e. biological women) look like, for example the professional boxer Patricio Manuel. Did he really want a law making it illegal for Patricio to use the men's room and granting him a license to use the women's?



While this line of reasoning was quite persuasive to almost everybody there who weighed in, Smac was unmoved and considered this arguing "from the margins."

I then said that since states had implemented laws like the one he was championing and like the one I was championing, we could look at their real-world impact to see whether or not they worked. Specifically, here is what I said that changed his mind:

My proposed solution is that Massachusetts' actual solution be implemented nationwide. Here is Massachusetts Gender Identity Guidance for Public Accommodations fact sheet, which explains laws that have been in effect for 8 years. It defines gender, explains how Massachusetts determines who may use which restrooms, etc. Real lawyers and real legislatures came up with these solutions, and they have been in effect for nearly a decade.

Since this has been in effect for over eight years now, it suggests that we can evaluate the real-world effects of this law by seeing what the results have been in Massachusetts. I googled that, and this is what came up.

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/ ... hatgpt.com

Do you have any evidence that the Massachusetts law doesn't work in the real world because of the concerns you repeat here?

Likewise, several states have enacted laws that are more to your liking. What have been the real-world results in those states?

I'll spare you a dump of links to research papers I've found. Suffice it to say the evidence on anti-transgender laws is pretty one-sided. On the negative side, studies show they lead to big problems for transgender youth—higher rates of suicide attempts, more anxiety, and less access to care that’s proven to improve mental health. I looked for evidence of anything positive, like better public safety or some other benefit that supporters claim, but there’s no solid research backing those up. So far, the data shows these laws do a lot of harm and don’t deliver on the supposed benefits.

Am I wrong? Rather than talk about hypotheticals, I'd be interested in whether you have any evidence that the laws in Massachusetts have caused actual harm to women and that the laws in, say, Tennessee have actually made women safer.

[Analytics]

I'm astounded. Analytics got Smac—Smac!—to reconsider something.

If I ever need a lawyer in any jurisdiction where Analytics can operate, I know who I'm going to call.

Unfortunately, I never went to law school. But if you are ever nowhere and need an attorney, give me a call!

[Marcus]

I like giving credit where credit is due, and acknowledging when people change, grow, and learn new things.

This morning Smac97 posted the following on the thread about bathroom laws for transgender people:

@Analytics,

Your references, and the further articles I reviewed, have moved me away from my proposal and into an area of ambivalence between it and the approach taken in MA. I'm not quite persuaded, and I'd like to see more data, but for the time being I am retracting my proposal.

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/76 ... 1210204006

Sadly, I don't think the change held. Smac's most recent posts are defaulting to his older, bad logic.

In response to this by bluebell:

I think that those kinds of policies are largely due to a lot of older people not realizing how far transitioning has come. I think most older people assume that a transwoman is going to look like a man in drag and a transman is going to look like a woman with some facial hair and so going to the class of the biological sex makes the most sense.

Smac responded:

Ghillie suits have come a long way in recent years, but that does not mean that a man actually becomes a bush or a shrub or a mound of grass, just that he has gotten better at looking like one.

So...looking like something isn't the same as being something? Ok, but then he demonstrates bluebell's point by posting a screenshot of two transwomen, followed by no less than EIGHT pictures and a discussion of the one he thinks doesn't "pass" in spite of his assertion that "passing" is not the issue:

I admit that Blaire passes quite well as a woman. Lilly does not. There is a broad spectrum (no pun intended) in terms of how proximate a biological male can pass himself off as a women, but the principle remains the same: A biological male cannot become a woman, regardless of how much surgery is done, how much makeup is applied, how many dresses he wears, how earnestly he "identifies," etc.
[insert 8 pics of Lilly]
...I don't think many people will look at these photos and come away with the notion that [pics of Lilly] depict a woman.

Blaire White is doing a considerably better job at passing as female. I readily acknowledge that...

It's hard to see how this long post fits in to his OP argument, but he put quite some effort into showing how "passing" as female requires stereotypical attention to the surface expression of "female" that he is comfortable with. All that emerges are his biases and stereotypical assumptions about appearance.

[Doctor Steuss]

I can 100% guarantee that I could post a series of cis-women, and ask him which ones were trans-women, and he'd pick at least one out. In fact, I could probably pick out several cis-men in his stake, put dresses, wigs, and make-up on them, and tell him that only one was a tans-woman and he'd probably try to pick only one out without knowing they were all cis-men.

Humans are incredibly diverse. We are likely the most diverse species on earth as far as physical characteristics go. There is a significant amount of outward signaling through grooming, clothes, mannerisms, etc. that act as gender cues. Simple phenotypical genetic aspects aren't enough for a lot of individuals. Not all women look like Beyonce, and not all men look like Chris Hemsworth. There's a whole lot of "gray" that's filled in by social norms.

[Physics Guy]

I'm a scientist who grew up in a military family and I'm more comfortable with hard facts than with mushy feelings. The hard fact that I see about gender identity is that if you are not currently in the act of begetting, conceiving, or bearing a child, then whatever it is about you that remains female or male or anything else, separate from those acts, is either individual psychology or social convention.

That doesn't make it unimportant or arbitrary or subjective or debatable. It's just not a matter of a few particular bodily parts performing particular biological functions. Nobody performs those reproductive functions for more than a handful of times nine months in their lives, and even during gestation women manage to do plenty of things besides growing that baby. Yet if you're a woman, or if you're a man, you're still a woman or man all your life.

So to me it's the possibility that gender identity and born biology can be different that is the plain, hard fact. Insisting that they cannot is the emotional bias that doesn't even make sense if you think clearly about it.