You seem tense. Would you like to talk about it?

They could very well be truly transgender but that doesn't mean they get to compete with women in sports or go to women's prisons, even if their feeling get hurt due to this. As you said there's reason for debate and these are very pertinent reasons.

? I think being trans means being convinced you are of the opposite sex, semantically, consistently in time with no wavering.

I do accept people exist like that.

I don't say transgender women because I refuse radical leftist warping of words, you can't be a woman semantically without XY chromosomes , and the left doesn't decide semantics.

I think what you think you are should never have any meaning for others, others should never be forced to act differently depending on what you think you are.

We divide women from men in various cases because of average group characteristics being different enough among the 2 sexes, with women being weaker and needing protection from men in various cases, and being a sex or the other isn't a choice very simply.

I think this covers some of it.

One view is that some people have GD and that, up to a point, it is kind to go along with their preferences. Essentially as you would a convert to Islam who changes his name, diet, etc. These are like Protestants and wine. I.e. we all know it's actually wine, but we treat it as blood.

The Catholics in this analogy say a change has actually occurred. Trans women ARE women. Though the differences are right there in front of our face, easily observable, just as the wine shows every sign of being wine. It doesn't matter.

As 57 points out, there is also queer theory/gender theory etc. This is the view that gender norms are arbitrary and oppressive and must be destroyed for political purposes.

This is especially seductive to people like college kids and profs in the first world. The broader political narrative is that by being very "privileged"-as indeed they are--they are inherently bad. For example, their opinions should cary little to no weight.

By declaring themselves trans, non binary, etc. They become the good guys. Their opinions are automatically valuable. Rather than owing a debt to the oppressed, society owes them a debt. Rather than being at risk of saying the wrong thing, they can be the offended party, etc. This is attractive to people with particular mental health issues too.

Plus, even if you don’t go to the extremes of the politcal ideologies, it's obviously true that gender norms are somewhat capricious and a frequent source of stress. So people have often challenged them in the past.

Many movements, especially for young people, have been partly about challenging these norms. Maybe the prom king/queen aren't the platonic form to which we all must aspire. That must be a big part of the appeal here. I remember a HS teacher saying that since trans became popular, goths have vanished at his his school.

If you don’t have GD and are just superficially "non binary" during youth, it's a lot like being a goth, hippy, punk, etc. You don't have to adhere to mainstream standards of what is cool and create your own standards that allow you to feel cool within your cohort.

If you take out the crazy stuff, like the few dozen men who want to beat up on women in sports, and the targeting of minors for drugs and surgery, it wouldn't really be any big deal.

Part of the problem could be that. If we did that, the people on campuses in rich countries couldn't play at being oppressed, so they must demand crazy stuff to drive conflict.

It is a big deal in prison and it is even a bigger deal when you start counting men who think they are women as women for "gender income gap" purposes, or "pink quotas" under the law.

For ex in Italy we have a legal mandate of 40% women as board members for listed companies (yes really).

Women pay less car insurance in many countries.

There are "women entrepreneurship" fiscal advantages in many EU countries.

You cannot let being a woman be a subjective call under the law if you want to ever be allowed to legally discriminate in favor of women in ANY capacity.

It is not a small deal

You clearly don't want any of those discriminations forced by government to be allowed. So you are given a choice, use subjective definitions of sex and gender as arguments against something you are against in principle or go against your principles because it's more important to either signal your anti-trans religious fundamentalist extremism or the fascist need to punish people you consider deviant.

How about just arguing the government should treat people equally? That'd be the libertarian thing to do.

Board members quotas should obviously be unconstitutional.

But insurance companies should be allowed to discriminate on biological sex (and any other characteristic).

And unequal people should be treated unequally.

It wouldn't be equality to treat a 11y old as a 38y old legally right? Well it's not equality to dismiss having a penis or not when you are forced to sleep in the same small room for years with someone.

I not sure what your opposition to having women-only prison is and why you think that would be unequal treatment: each individual would have the same treatment, same sex prison for everyone.

I didn't say anything about what I opposed or not. Why in the world would you say this: "I not sure what your opposition to having women-only prison is "?

If you can't discuss things honestly, what's the point?

Aside from whether or not I oppose prisons generally, I do not oppose women only prisons. So, in addition to just making things up, you're wrong.

But, you call yourself a libertarian. I was completely correct when I said "You clearly don't want any of those discriminations forced by government to be allowed." And you'll notice I said "forced by government", so your comment about private insurance was completely irrelevant. I understand what you said and what you implied and what libertarianism is.

I don't think your commitment to things like not having laws about the percentage of women on corporate boards is very strong if you're going to use that as an argument about trans, unless you're either being disingenuous or your libertarian principles are just overwhelmed by religious fanaticism or a sadistic and depraved love of conformity and punishment.

The comment re private insurance is relevant because some countries do not allow companies to discriminate on the basis of biological sex, others allow pro women discrimination but then you have to accept trans as well lol

It's not relevant because I didn't say anything about it. Obviously I expect you would think that it's okay for a private companies to discriminate.

What do you mean, in the deepest sense, when you say “you”? Is it based on bio sex? For those people caught up in this trans reality, “you” at the core is gendered and disembodied.

Part of the reason why trans activists are so dug in is because they realize “you” and “I” transcend bio sex, and they’re right about that. When someone comes into the discussion associating gender with bio sex, they see it as regressive because they are interpreting it as associating “I” with bio sex.

At root, this is a disagreement about what “you” and “I” mean in the deepest sense. Only after this is sorted, can there be the possibility of coupling gender with bio sex for those in trans reality.

Until then, bringing up bio sex is counterproductive. If you do actually believe that “you” and “I” is based primarily on bio sex, then sorry to say, those stuck in trans reality are actually closer to the truth than you are, and you are actually ceding to them the moral high ground to dig their heels in.

I believe in this. But I guess I'm not fully libertarian, because I think businesses should have to treat people equally also. I don't want to go back to separate restrooms for negroes.

This doesn’t address the, I believe small minority, who operate in trans reality and believe gender is solely a social construct. These people are lightweights and ultimately non factors in this disagreement in my view.

In trans reality, I and you are gendered with one gender and not the other. Thus, the panic about a man being stuck in a female body.

To understand I and you in the deepest sense is to realize that I and you transcend gender altogether. That doesn’t mean we don’t identify with gender identities; we clearly do. It’s just not who you are in the truest sense.

Once this is realized and accepted, then it becomes unnecessary to discriminate against your bio-sex-gender. The pain and struggle can then be decoupled from gender politics altogether and treated properly through the lens of self + soul.

Me neither, but I'm not the one running around saying I'm a libertarian while constantly supporting government intervention.

I submit corporations or any organization where the government protects the owners by shielding them from liability don't have any rights at all and the rules made for them should just be whatever is best for society.

The concept that corporation=person is definitely one that has been shown to be very wrong IMO.

Do women get quoted better car insurance rates?

Shopping for it now and considering a transition.

---Ok older women pay higher rates but younger men pay more.

good friend of mine works in car insurance, says that the single best way to determine risk factors are age, sex, & race but they can only use age because it's be a pr nightmare if it came out that asian women were charged higher insurance

I guess it could have changed, but when I was in my teens to early 20s I know that young women definitely were offered lower rates than young men because they were considered lower risk drivers.

I'm not sure how their liability per mile compared, but I assume young women generally drive fewer miles than young men.

Historically, men drive drunk more often than women, not sure how you measure aggresive versus defensive driving. Women supoosedly text more than men in recent years the but data is a little blurry. Distracted driving defintiely has to be the key factor at play.

When I lived in New Jersey, a male had to be 28 (I think that's right) to be considered an adult for car insurance purposes.

Sounds about right.

Though I do like to semi-troll people with "you're not really an adult until you've raised children."

women are far less likely to be involved in fatal accidents but going to get in a lot more minor accidents

however, if you remove accidents caused by reckless or drunken driving then it flips - men are then considerably safer drivers in fatal accidents as well

this is because the outliers of repeat drunk drivers and people who will go 80 through a 35 zone are overwhelmingly men

so a new driver who's a male could be reckless or a drunk in the making but by 30 you have enough data on him to have a more accurate estimation of whether or not he engages in those dangerous activities