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Comment by QualityReboot | Hacker News Reader

I think you meant to say "You're not pro-LGBT if you think women aren't women."

Why are you segregating "trans women" as different than just "women"?

Because trans women are the people being discussed, duh.

If you were saying "tall women aren't women," the appropriate rejoinder is "yes, tall women are women," not the useless tautology "women are women."

My understanding is that most trans women don't want to be identified as such, and that "passing" is a really big deal.

"Tall" is an acceptable descriptor for a person, obvious to all and not usually very sensitive. "Trans" isn't like this and remarking on "how trans" someone is carries a very different meaning than remarking on "how tall" someone is.

Maybe it's still acceptable or useful to accept "trans women" as their own group, but eventually that will probably go away and "trans woman" will become a dated and bigoted term.

You may find yourself shocked that you ever used the term "trans" in the same way that it's now shocking that black people were once referred to as "colored".

Or alternatively, being trans might become an identity badge of honor, in the same way "gay" has in many places.

My point is that these things evolve over time, so either people are going to be allowed to make mistakes and have debates and figure things out in public, or we have to only use useless tautologies to describe people.

When you tell the GP (who claims to be pro-LGBT) that they're not pro-LGBT because they're struggling to speak correctly on the topic and they used the "wrong" language, you might not be having the effect you intended.

In this case, the GP mistakenly believes the dated idea that "gender" is a biological term, but enlightened folks are aware that gender is now a social construct. I think they simply meant "biologically male people are not female" instead of "trans women aren't women". The language is confusing because it's evolving, but getting everyone on the same page is going to require a lot of public errors that would be better met with debate than shaming.

I'm a trans woman, so I'm gonna go ahead and be gentle when I say that my understanding does not match yours.

Some trans women are as you describe, preoccupied with passing and going stealth, especially for safety reasons. Many aren't.

You can speculate on if the term is gonna go away, but right now it's the best adjective to describe trans people. It's not offensive or a slur, it's literally the community's chosen language.

And you're right, sometimes it's better to be nice and gentle to people who are wrong. I won't be mad if you pop back upthread and correct them gently. We can do one of those good cop bad cop things.

The elephant in the room is that "passing" is often little more than wishful thinking, and people are starting to understand this. Ultimately, a shared focus on full transparency about being 'trans' or 'cis' is quite helpful at de-escalating hostile attitudes and discrimination about the matter - one could admit of rare exceptions, but by and large, anyone who feels like they must hide themselves for "safety reasons" is likely better off leaving the unsafe environment entirely!

Unfortunately, even a lot of places that are generally trans-supportive won't admit refugees fleeing anti-trans violence - or when they do, they're not treated much better than the place they left.

https://www.hrc.org/blog/the-precarious-position-of-transgen...

I'm not sure what your first comment is meant to imply, but I suspect you might be suffering from confirmation bias if you think that passing isn't realistic.

I made my attempt to explain it upthread for cis folks who haven't got it sorted yet.

I'm surprised that my understanding is already out of date or was wrong in the first place. Maybe 5 years ago or so, the rule I learned was that cis people should make no distinction between trans or cis, so as not to separate people into groups. I figured that extended to everything, which is why we don't make a distinction between cis and trans in things like sports or bathrooms, because there should be no distinction to make.

It's all a bit confusing. I'd like to get it right, but there's a lot of change happening and it's hard to keep up.

Thanks, upvoted. :)

Because they are different. No transwoman can give birth or have a period. None of them has a womb. None of them are genetically female. Most of them have all the advantages of a man like higher bone density, more upper body strength.

Why are you so afraid of different groups of people being physically different? As long as you treat all groups as humans, it shouldn't be a problem. Denying basic biological facts is not a path to truth.

The distinction is supposed to be that "biological facts" no longer include gender. Gender is now fluid psychological term, not a biological one. In other words, you said "advantages of a man" instead of "advantages of a genetic male", which is now wrong.

But apparently I'm incorrect in thinking that you're not supposed to discuss "trans women" as a group, which is still confusing to me.

Sure, gender is different from sex. The point stands. There are major biological differences between females and trans women. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just a part of life. Pretending everyone is equal is just lying to yourself.

But of course, people should be treated equally (in most cases).

True, but you're not supposed to say trans women have biological traits of men, because trans men are also a thing, and they're still "men".

So really, trans women have biological traits of genetic males, which is fine.

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