Analytics

As I type this, OpenAI is rolling out their latest/greatest model, Astra 6. It is hyped as being especially good at complex, multi-step problem solving. As a demo and FWIF: Prompt I want to design a policy governing access to publicly accessible, multi-user restrooms that minimizes harm to biological women and girls and protects their safety, privacy, dignity, and practical ability to use those facilities. Treat “women and girls” in that objective as biological females, so the analysis does not obtain its answer by silently expanding the defined population. Evaluate effects on transgender people, intersex people, caregivers, parents, businesses, employees, law enforcement, and other restroom users separately, because harms to those stakeholders still matter when evaluating the policy’s overall consequences. Compare at least these alternatives: 1. Access determined by sex assigned or recorded at birth. 2. Access determined by sincere gender identity. 3. Access determined primarily by gender presentation and ordinary social judgment. 4. A conduct-based or hybrid rule. 5. Continued informal discretion under existing laws against harassment, voyeurism, exposure, assault, and disorderly conduct. Consider foreseeable benefits and harms under each policy, including crime, harassment, unwanted exposure, subjective discomfort, mistaken challenges, compelled placement of masculine-presenting transgender men in women’s restrooms, bad-faith claims, enforcement errors, bathroom avoidance, vigilantism, administrative costs, lawsuits, and effects on social norms. Do not assume that the presence of a transgender woman is inherently harmful. Do not assume that objections to her presence are inherently irrational or big prejud. Distinguish discomfort from violations of privacy, and both from physical danger. Account for the frequency and severity of each outcome rather than relying on isolated anecdotes or theoretically possible abuses. Limit the primary analysis to ordinary public restrooms. Do not assume that the same rule must govern locker rooms, communal showers, competitive sports, shelters, or prisons. Discuss separately whether the restroom policy would create legal precedents affecting those settings. Use the best available empirical evidence, identify its limitations, and distinguish demonstrated effects from predictions and value judgments. Explain how bad-faith cases would be handled and who would have enforcement authority. State what evidence would cause you to choose a different policy. Define what you mean by “optimal,” then recommend the policy most likely to produce the best overall results, giving particular attention to its effects on biological women and girls. Steelman the strongest objection to your recommendation before answering it. Astra I recommend a hybrid policy for ordinary public restrooms: retain women’s and men’s facilities, permit access consistent with sincere gender identity, strengthen bodily privacy, and give staff clear authority to address threatening or intrusive conduct. Provide private facilities wherever reasonably feasible. This is a provisional judgment about expected consequences. Existing evidence does not establish that this policy uniquely minimizes harm to biological females. It also does not establish that birth-sex restrictions improve their safety enough to offset those restrictions’ foreseeable harms. “Optimal” means the feasible policy with the lowest expected harm, giving particular priority to biological females’ safety, privacy, dignity, and practical access while explicitly considering everyone else. Frequency, severity, duration, enforcement errors, and costs all matter. Assault, repeated intimidation, intrusive questioning, and momentary discomfort should not receive equal weight. Biological females remain the defined population. That includes transgender men and female nonbinary people, whose outcomes should also be reported separately. Transgender women’s outcomes belong in the other-stakeholder assessment. Overlapping categories should not produce double-counting. If exclusively female occupancy is an overriding requirement, birth-sex eligibility follows more directly. But that stipulates sex exclusivity as the objective rather than demonstrating that it best minimizes harm. The most directly relevant published study compared Massachusetts localities with and without gender-identity-inclusive public-accommodation laws. Using police reports involving assault, sex crimes, and voyeurism in restrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms, it found no statistically significant increase associated with those laws. Hasenbush, Flores, and Herman That finding is informative but limited. Police records miss unreported incidents and most discomfort or avoidance. Rare events limit statistical power. The study combined facility types, did not comprehensively measure female-specific outcomes, and examined legal changes that might not substantially change actual usage. Its observational design also limits causal inference. “No detected increase” does not mean zero additional risk. A 2025 Williams Institute review reports another analysis finding no increase in stranger violence following inclusive laws. However, the cited manuscript was unpublished, and its outcome was broader victimization, not specifically violence against females in restrooms. The review also documents transgender respondents’ reports of harassment, denied access, and bathroom avoidance. Those surveys establish relevant experiences but cannot isolate a law’s causal effects. Review A frequently cited school study associated restroom/locker-room restrictions with sexual assault among some transgender youth groups. It was cross-sectional, and assaults were not necessarily in restrooms. It does not prove that restrictions caused restroom assaults. Murchison and colleagues The central evidence gap is reliable comparison of biological females’ total experience under competing policies: victimization, exposure, mistaken challenges, discomfort, avoidance, and practical access. The five alternatives have different strengths and weaknesses. First, birth-sex eligibility preserves a female-only entitlement, reassures users who value sex separation, and permits intervention against an ineligible entrant before misconduct. However, it directs transgender men into women’s facilities unless alternatives exist. Enforcement based on appearance can target masculine females. Documentary verification creates practical burdens, while bodily verification would itself threaten privacy. Light enforcement relies heavily on appearance and honesty; intensive enforcement increases costs and mistakes. Second, sincere-gender-identity eligibility avoids directing transgender men into women’s rooms and accommodates transgender women’s ordinary use. Its weaknesses are unverifiable sincerity, dishonest claims, and some females’ discomfort or loss of confidence in sex exclusivity. It is an access principle, not a complete safety policy. Third, presentation and ordinary social judgment often permit unobtrusive use without formal verification. But as an official rule, this makes eligibility depend on stereotypes, “passing,” and the observer. It burdens masculine females and visibly transgender people while remaining vulnerable to convincing disguises. Fourth, a conduct-based hybrid targets threatening behavior and privacy intrusions while reducing identity investigations. Its weaknesses are concealed harmful intentions, inconsistent staff judgment, implementation costs, and unmet preferences for female-only occupancy. Fifth, continued informal discretion under existing laws offers flexibility and low transition costs. Where it works well, sweeping legislation may be unnecessary. However, unclear standards can produce arbitrary exclusion, neglected complaints, and uncertainty about preventive intervention. These comparisons are mostly operational predictions, not measured effect sizes. Each alternative should receive the same feasible privacy improvements and resources; otherwise, architecture gets confused with eligibility. Physical danger, bodily privacy, and discomfort must remain distinct. Assault and confinement concern danger. Peering, recording, and unwanted exposure concern bodily privacy. Unease can exist without either, but persistent distress causing bathroom avoidance is a consequential access problem. An interest in sex-exclusive space also deserves recognition. It may reflect modesty, religion, trauma, or a preference for female association. It is neither proof of danger nor inherently irrational. My value judgment is that it warrants meaningful accommodation without automatically overriding another person’s ordinary restroom access. Private facilities address much of this concern, though they do not reproduce female-only shared space. The recommended policy would operate as follows. Retain women’s and men’s designations and permit sincere identity-based access without medical treatment, prescribed clothing, or documentary proof. Clearly communicate eligibility, including a usable option for nonbinary people. Require working locks, effective stall screening, discreet menstrual-product disposal, and prompt repairs. Improve enclosure during renovations and provide accessible private facilities where feasible. Preserve capacity so improvements do not worsen women’s queues. Prohibit filming other users, peering into stalls, deliberate intrusive exposure, sexual harassment, threats, blocked exits, and unauthorized entry into occupied stalls. Accommodate legitimate assistance, disability-related needs, and ordinary bodily functions. Staff should act on specific observations or credible reports before injury occurs. Repeated attempts to look through a stall gap or following a particular child can justify intervention without waiting for assault. Appearance or transgender status alone should not. Permit necessary accompaniment by parents and caregivers, plus emergency and maintenance access. A private family facility is preferable when available, but its absence must not make essential assistance impossible. Anyone may report concerns and receive respectful assistance. A sincere complaint is not harassment. Patrons should not interrogate strangers, demand documents, photograph them, or obstruct them. Managers handle ordinary complaints and substantiated violations; security assists when necessary; police handle suspected crimes or immediate danger. Disputed exclusions should receive review. Authority must operate within applicable law. Identity supplies neither proof of safety nor immunity. A person credibly shown to be making a dishonest claim solely to bypass eligibility can be redirected. Massachusetts guidance illustrates that inclusive access can include an improper-purpose limitation. Guidance Nevertheless, a quiet liar displaying no concerning conduct may gain access. That is a real vulnerability. Presentation rules likewise admit convincing disguises, while birth-sex rules reduce this vulnerability only insofar as verification occurs. Stakeholder effects require separate accounting. Females gain better bodily privacy and fewer appearance-based challenges, but some lose confidence or avoid facilities. Girls and trauma survivors may particularly need private options. Transgender people gain usable access. Intersex people avoid public adjudication of anatomy or records. Caregivers gain clear assistance rules. Businesses bear training and renovation costs. Employees gain clearer standards, while police focus on conduct. Effects on other users, including displacement into men’s facilities, also matter. Social norms may change in either direction. Inclusive rules may normalize unobtrusive transgender use or weaken confidence in sex boundaries. Restrictive rules may reinforce boundaries or encourage surveillance of unfamiliar-looking women. These remain predictions. This recommendation does not determine policy for showers, locker rooms, sports, shelters, or prisons. Those involve different exposure, fairness, residential vulnerability, or confinement concerns. Legal spillover is possible but not automatic. A facility policy generally creates no judicial precedent; statutes and rulings can have broader implications. Bostock expressly reserved bathroom and locker-room questions. Narrow statutory scope and context-specific reasoning reduce spillover without preventing future litigation. Opinion The strongest objection is that female-only access supplies a preventive safeguard. Inclusive eligibility weakens that boundary, admits dishonest claims, and asks females to identify threatening conduct after entry. Small studies cannot establish that this trade is safe. That objection is substantial. The answer is that a boundary must be evaluated through actual enforcement. Birth-sex rules admit masculine-presenting transgender men, need assistance exceptions, and can expose females to intrusive scrutiny. The decisive question is how much additional protection they deliver relative to their consequences. Current evidence does not establish that balance in their favor. I would change the recommendation if credible comparative evidence showed that restrictions materially reduced serious harm to females after accounting for enforcement mistakes, avoidance, displacement, and costs. Substantial female avoidance despite privacy improvements, recurring exploitation of identity claims, or demonstrably effective and minimally intrusive verification would also warrant reconsideration. Evaluation should combine confidential surveys and incident records, separating discomfort, privacy violations, threats, assaults, denied access, queues, and costs. Serious incidents warrant immediate investigation and targeted correction; general policy changes should follow evidence about preventable mechanisms and comparative risk.

For the record: A: Toileting is a biological function we all must perform regularly. Locker rooms are used for planned activities that are not biologically necessary and often involve changing clothes or communal nudity. Sports are organized competitions with their own safety and fairness considerations. Prisons involve involuntary confinement by the state and require individualized security assessments. Those factual differences justify different legal rules. Different statutes apply, different governmental interests are involved, and courts decide the particular dispute before them. I am proposing that gender identity matter when deciding which public restroom someone should use. I am not asserting that gender identity replaces biological sex for every legal purpose. No legal principle requires a restroom rule to travel automatically to sports, prisons, or locker rooms. A: My proposal concerns ordinary public restrooms, not every facility designated for women. People should ordinarily use the restroom most appropriate to their identity, presentation, and circumstances, with the individual making that decision. Someone may be removed for voyeurism, harassment, lewd conduct, threats, or other behavior that would justify removing anyone else. Facility staff, security, or law enforcement may intervene based on credible evidence of such conduct. Mere suspicion about someone’s biological sex would not be enough. Yes, that line leaves room for judgment. That is intentional because people and circumstances vary. Calm and other women have explained that they do not want masculine-presenting transgender men required to use the women’s restroom. I am listening to them. Our disagreement is that you want the state to impose a universal biological-sex rule, while I think ordinary discretion and conduct-based laws usually produce better results. A: Sincere self-identification is a limiting principle. It excludes biological males who do not sincerely identify as women, including men who invoke gender identity merely as a pretext. I agree that under my proposal, a women’s restroom would not be exclusively limited to biological females. But that does not mean women’s restrooms cease to exist. They remain designated for women, and ordinary men remain excluded. You are treating any exception to biological-sex exclusivity as the eradication of the category itself. That conclusion does not follow. In practice, nearly everyone would make the same restroom choice under either rule. Most transgender people also try to avoid confrontation and use the facility where they attract the least attention. Your argument treats the possible harm from allowing transgender women to use public toilets as decisive while disregarding the harm caused by legally requiring masculine-presenting transgender men to enter women’s restrooms where they generally are neither expected nor wanted. Both consequences belong in the comparison. A: The premise of the question is disputed. You have identified possible effects, but you have not established that all of them follow from my restroom proposal. Employers should not discipline women merely for expressing a good-faith privacy concern or requesting an accommodation. They may discipline employees for harassment or for refusing to follow lawful workplace policies. Whether a particular disciplinary action is justified depends on what the employee did, not simply on the existence of a gender-identity access rule. My proposal does change the access line for public restrooms: biological sex would not be the sole criterion. It does not make biological sex unusable or abolish it as a category. Sex can remain relevant in medicine, sports, prisons, and other settings where different interests are involved. I do not support automatically applying the same rule to sports or prisons. Sports raise questions of competitive fairness and physical safety. Prisons require individualized decisions about safety, vulnerability, security, and confinement. Federal prison regulations already use case-by-case assessments rather than gender identity alone. Any actual adverse consequences count. So do the harms caused by your rule, including compelled mismatches, public scrutiny, mistaken challenges, and bathroom avoidance. The question is not whether consequences count. The question is which policy produces less total harm. A: Reported crime is not the only interest that matters, and I have never said it was. It matters because safety is repeatedly offered as a justification for a new coercive law. If the law is supposed to prevent a safety problem, asking for evidence that the problem exists is entirely appropriate. I also care about privacy, dignity, and comfort, including those of biological women and girls. That is why I oppose a law that requires masculine-presenting transgender men to use women’s restrooms and encourages people to scrutinize women who do not look sufficiently feminine. Privacy includes being left alone while using a toilet. I discard none of these interests. I disagree with your assumption that they can be protected only by categorically excluding every biological male. My proposal asks which rule protects privacy, dignity, and safety better in actual public restrooms, after counting the harms caused by both policies. A: It doesn’t answer Questions 1–5 by itself, and I have never claimed that it does. It addresses one important empirical issue: whether gender-identity access laws are associated with increased reported assaults, sex crimes, or voyeurism in restrooms and similar facilities. The study found that such incidents were rare and did not significantly increase after the laws were adopted. That does not prove that no incident ever occurred, measure every form of discomfort, decide sports or prison policy, or supply a complete legal rule. It does, however, bear directly on your repeated predictions that gender-identity access creates serious safety and privacy harms. Those predictions are factual claims, and the available evidence does not support them. The study is one part of the analysis, not an answer to every question. A: I am willing to set aside accusations about you personally and address the substance of your arguments. I will not promise never to describe an argument, policy, or pattern of conduct as bigoted if I believe that description is relevant and can explain why. But I agree that the label should not substitute for evidence or reasoning, and I will not use it that way.

Smac, I’m done. Your motte-and-bailey accusation goes well beyond saying my proposal would have harmful consequences. You are accusing me of knowingly pursuing a broader agenda, treating its harmful consequences as intended features, and concealing it behind a more defensible position. That is an accusation of both dishonesty and malicious intent. And a central piece of your evidence is that I’m a smart guy. Apparently, I’m too smart to honestly disagree with your predictions, so I must secretly know you’re right. As if your confidence in your conclusions is evidence of my dishonesty. I’ve explained why restrooms need not have the same rules as prisons, shelters, or sports. You treat those distinctions as camouflage. If I explain myself, I’m defending the motte. If I deny your accusation, I’m retreating to it. What could I possibly say that you wouldn’t interpret as further concealment? You said you were working to improve your conversations by following Steven Collis’s Habits of a Peacemaker. You specifically highlighted resisting the temptation to caricature another person’s position. How does assigning me a malicious agenda, then dismissing my stated beliefs as a cover story, put that into practice? That is an extraordinarily cynical way to treat someone who has spent weeks explaining himself to you. Your catastrophe analysis fails to engage with the Massachusetts evidence we’ve discussed. It doesn’t settle everything, but a long list of things that hypothetically could go wrong doesn't change the evidence about what actually happened when we allowed manly-looking people to use the women’s restroom rather than forcing them into the women’s as you want the law to do. I’ve been sincerely trying to explain my point of view. You’ve chosen to treat those explanations as concealment of something sinister. There’s no productive conversation left under those terms.

I'm not so sure, and that type of behavior isn’t exactly what I was talking about. Here is all of my personal experience. Once, my wife was having a birthday party at a busy bar/restaurant. This was about 15 years ago. One of our guests grabbed my arm and said, “Analytics! You’ve got to see this!” She then proceeded to try and drag me into the women’s restroom. I refused to go, but she absolutely insisted and refused to give up. Finally so as to not make a scene, I reluctantly followed her in. Everybody stopped what they were doing and look at me. My host said, “It’s all right everyone! He’s with me!” With that, everybody exhaled and ignored me. She showed me there was a whiteboard in the restroom, and somebody had drawn an extravagant birthday message for my wife. I spent a tenth of a second admiring it, and got the heck out. Perhaps 5 years ago, I was at a crowded downtown venue, and there was a very long line for the women’s room, and a very short line for the men’s. A woman who was an unambiguously cisgender woman got into the short line for the men’s room. She waited her turn, used the toilet, washed her hands, and got out. Everybody there felt quite uncomfortable, but everyone very deliberately ignored her. About a year after that, I was in exactly the same situation, but this time a woman asked me for permission to use the men’s room, because she had to go very badly and couldn’t wait in the women’s line. I gave her permission to use the toilet. She went in, took care of business, and got out. Again, everyone ignored her. Likewise, when Lily Contino used the women’s restroom in Disneyworld, everyone politely ignored her and nobody made a stink about it until her videos went viral, and even then, the main objection was her videoing other people in the restroom and not her presence there. Compare that to the videos Smac collects that show people whipping out there cellphones and recording themselves saying, “I just saw a tranny go into the women’s restroom, and I’m going to confront them on video when they come out!” One person in his collection actually flew across the Atlantic Ocean in order to generate this type of content, and when she got impatient waiting for the person she was stalking to use the restroom, decided to confront her in a hallway with the accusatory question, “You’re a man! What bathroom to you use???!!!!” That isn’t healthy.

Smac, I favor people ordinarily using the restroom corresponding to their gender identity and making that decision themselves. That includes transgender women who are biologically male, without requiring them to prove their sincerity or look sufficiently feminine. I prefer that approach because everyone needs to use the restroom, and people should ordinarily be able to do so without having their appearance or sex investigated. Someone could abuse that discretion. But the possibility of abuse doesn’t establish that policing eligibility would produce better outcomes, including for biological women and girls. Your rule would also direct transgender men, including people with beards and thoroughly masculine appearances, into the women’s restroom. So encountering someone who looks male wouldn’t even establish that your rule was being broken. That matters beyond the occasional mistaken complaint. I worry about encouraging a culture in which people scrutinize strangers, challenge their presence, and shame them for looking like they don’t belong. You say you don’t condone that behavior, but you also watch and circulate videos of self-righteous culture warriors policing bathrooms, including in this thread. Sharing a video isn’t necessarily endorsing everything in it. But how we frame and circulate these encounters matters. Are we discouraging intrusive scrutiny, or encouraging viewers to see it as protecting women? Women and girls deserve to be left alone. And I think we’re better off extending ordinary grace than looking for reasons to police each other. I understand that my approach doesn’t preserve an exclusively female admission rule. We disagree about whether preserving that boundary is a good thing in terms of how it would require masculine-looking people to use the lady’s room, to mention nothing of the costs of enforcing it. I favor leaving people quietly using the facilities alone, with intervention for specific evidence of harassment, intimidation, voyeurism, or other improper conduct. You say your rule can be enforced through rare, fact-specific complaints. Suppose a patron reports that someone washing her hands looks male. What additional evidence, if any, would justify intervention, and how would staff establish that person’s sex?

Biological women and girls is specifically what I asked asked Grok, Claude, and GPT to consider when comparing our policies. According to their analysis, your policy harms biological women and girls, and harms transgender women and girls. Their answers aren't proof, and you can challenge their reasoning. But interpreting the exercise as broadening “women and girls” misses the question I actually asked. You said, “I can weigh the same facts and think dissolving the criterion is the worse package. That is a policy fight.” Yes. But establishing that your rule excludes all males doesn't establish that it produces the better outcome for biological females. I understand that preserving that exclusion is itself something you value. We still need to consider what enforcing it does to the people you intend to protect. Women and girls have a right to be left alone. A woman shouldn't have to establish her sex to strangers simply because they think she looks masculine. Suppose someone reports her, she produces identification, and the encounter ends with an apology. She has nevertheless been scrutinized and made to justify her presence while simply using the restroom. What prevents that from happening again and again and again? Being left alone is a substantial part of the privacy we should be protecting. A policy that invites people to question whether somebody belongs can undermine that privacy, even when they meet your criterion for admission. And there is something to be said for extending ordinary grace from the other direction, too. I think we're better off letting other people go about their lives without making their appearance our business. Responding to harassment or threatening behavior is one thing. Looking around for someone whose presence we might object to isn't healthy. Finally, applying the same harm test to different situations (i.e. restrooms, changing rooms, sports, shelters, and prisons) does not require the same result. Exposure, competitive fairness, and confinement change the analysis. Someone can carry the basic framework of harm and cost into any other policy question without establishing that it warrants the same outcome. Which policy better protects biological women and girls, including their privacy and their ability to go about their business undisturbed? That is the comparison I think we should focus on.

My point is that this isn’t happening and despite your assertions to the contrary, there is no reason to believe that it will happen. Just as we don’t need laws to keep litter boxes out of elementary school bathrooms, we don’t need laws to keep men out of the women’s restroom. As I’ve made it very clear throughout this conversation, I believe we shouldn’t have laws unless there is a need for them, and that such laws should be crafted in a way that ensures they don’t do more harm than good. I don’t know why you think it would be bad to extend that same reasoning to women’s changing rooms, sports, or prisons. Sigh. I’m against the bathroom law you propose because it is bad for women and girls. Your insinuation that I have some sort of ideological master goal of crowding out women from women’s sports, defeating the purpose of women’s shelters, and causing the eradication of women’s-only spaces is both inaccurate and offensive. If being against laws that do more harm than good makes me an ideologue, then so be it.

Sigh. You are ignoring what I say, fighting against a straw man, and making wild proposals that will harm the people you say you want to protect (i.e. woman and girls--using your definitions). Or so it seems to me. I asked ChatGPT to look at every post in this thread and evaluate this. I’ll put the prompt in a quote box and GPT’s response below in blue. GPT: I read the supplied conversation from forum pages 10 through 23, including the later posts where Analytics and Smac clarify positions that were less precise earlier. I am using “women and girls” exactly as you requested: biological females, regardless of gender identity or expression. Answers 1. Has Analytics addressed the impact of the various bathroom policies on women and girls? How much? Yes, substantially and repeatedly. A recurring part of his argument is that a strict biological-sex rule itself harms females—particularly by requiring very male-presenting biological females to enter women’s facilities, thereby creating fear, confrontation, and privacy problems for other females. My read is broadly consistent with Calm’s later estimate that roughly one-quarter to one-third of Analytics’s posts contained explicit discussion of the impact on females, with the issue implicit in additional posts. 2. Has he argued that Smac’s proposed laws will do more harm than good to women and girls, and that this is one of the main reasons he opposes them? Yes. Analytics repeatedly frames the issue as a harm-benefit comparison, saying Smac’s laws create “real-world problems to solve a hypothetical problem,” questioning whether they do “more good than harm,” and eventually stating expressly that the biological-sex requirement “harms women and girls.” That is clearly one major reason for his opposition, although not the only one; he also emphasizes liberty, harms to transgender people, lack of demonstrated need, and legal/constitutional concerns. 3. Does his preferred bathroom policy require the formulation of a strict “limiting principle”? If not, should he be required to articulate one? No strict categorical limiting principle is logically required by his basic proposal, because his proposal is essentially “don’t enact a law assigning everyone to a restroom by sex.” He nevertheless eventually articulates a softer principle: use the restroom that minimizes discomfort, use it for its ordinary purpose, and obey laws against harassment, voyeurism, intimidation, etc. I would not require him to invent a bright-line sex/anatomy rule merely to defend not having a bathroom-assignment law—although if he were proposing an affirmative legal entitlement overriding property owners or institutional rules, a more administrable legal standard would be necessary. 4. Would expanding Analytics’s reasoning to other settings give men carte blanche to enter women’s changing rooms, shelters, prisons, and sports? No. That is not a fair description of his position. Analytics explicitly says those are “separate issues”; he supports allowing sports organizations to exclude biological males from female competition, and he says prisons and shelters should make context-specific decisions. His locker-room position is more permissive and less sharply defined, but even there he discusses conduct, nudity, and privacy separately rather than asserting an unrestricted right of entry. 5. Is Analytics arguing that the word “woman” be radically redefined? Not as a biological term. He explicitly says that when he calls a transgender woman a “woman,” he is using woman as a gender/social category, “rather than as a synonym for adult human biological female”; he simultaneously says that this does not require pretending biological sex has changed. Smac can reasonably object that this is a broadened social usageof “woman,” but Analytics is not claiming that biological males thereby become biological females. 6. In my opinion, is “the foreseeable effect of Analytics’s proposal the eradication of sex-segregated spaces”? Has Smac provided valid evidence for that view? No, if “eradication” means that men’s and women’s facilities disappear or cease functioning as distinct spaces.Analytics’s policy would admittedly make them less than perfectly sex-exclusive under your strict biological definition, because some biological males could use women’s rooms and some biological females could use men’s rooms; but that is very different from eradicating the two-space system. Smac has provided valid evidence that offenses and privacy conflicts sometimes occur in female facilities, but he has not provided evidence establishing the much stronger causal claim that Analytics’s policy foreseeably causes sex-segregated facilities to disappear; his strongest case for that proposition is conceptual rather than empirical. 7. Which proposal is more radical? Will Analytics’s proposal lead to the eradication of sex-segregated spaces? As a matter of government policy, I think Smac’s is more radical: it takes what historically operated largely through social convention and individual judgment and turns it into a categorical, legally enforced biological-sex rule. Analytics’s position is more revisionary if the baseline is strict biological exclusivity, but overall it leaves the familiar men’s/women’s restroom system intact and changes how difficult edge cases are handled; I do not think it foreseeably leads to the practical eradication of separate men’s and women’s spaces. Representative quotes Analytics: “What is your basis for thinking that the laws you support are doing more good than harm?” Analytics: “The laws you support are creating real-world problems to solve a hypothetical problem. The tradeoff isn't worth it.” Analytics: “The limiting principle should be this: if you need to go to the bathroom, go in to the one you think is most appropriate…” Analytics: “Do sex-distinct facilities have value? Sure. Nobody is arguing against that.” Analytics: “I'd love to hear a professional psychologist explain why requiring this individual to use women's restroom would be psychologically beneficial to women and girls.” Analytics: “Sex-distinct restrooms in free societies have thrived for generations without laws assigning every person to a restroom according to biological sex.” Analytics, on locker rooms/sports/prisons: “Those are separate issues. If we want to analyze them rationally, we should treat them as separate issues.” Analytics, on sports: “If you are transgender and want to swim, then swim with the boys. Or don’t swim.” Analytics: “I was using [‘woman’] as a gender category rather than as a synonym for adult human biological female.” Analytics: “Your preferred solution—requiring people to use the restroom that corresponds to their biological sex rather than their gender expression—harms women and girls.” Smac: “Bathrooms will not stay in their box… there is no principled line” preventing the reasoning from reaching changing rooms, shelters, prisons, and sports. Smac: “There are documented incidents of males accessing female facilities and committing offenses.” He then provides a list of examples. The biggest thing I think the full 14-page exchange establishes is that Smac’s characterization of Analytics as simply ignoring women and girls, opposing sex-separated spaces, refusing any limiting principle, and necessarily opening every female setting to every male is not a good description of Analytics’s actual position by the end of the discussion. Smac has serious substantive objections to Analytics’s position, some of which are legitimate policy questions, but several times he turns a disagreement with Analytics’s answer into a claim that Analytics has not answered the question at all.

Are you sure the real problem is you aren’t listening? Let me address this another way. I worked really hard to create an unbiased prompt that asks AI to address this issue. The prompt says to ignore the wellbeing of transgender individuals and focus only on the wellbeing of cisgender women and girls. I then fed the prompt to Grok, Claude, and ChatGPT. All three models gave the same answer: if the objective is to minimize the expected harm to (cisgender) women and girls, then people should be free to use the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity. Prompt: Grok's full answer: I agree with ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok on this: your preferred solution--requiring people to use the restroom that corresponds to their biological sex rather than their gender expression--harms women and girls. I then did a follow-up question: which group does your preferred solution harm more: transgender women and girls, or cisgender women and girls? The answer here was obvious: your policy harms both groups, but harms transgender women and girls much more.

Exactly. Fixed it.

I’ve been considering whether these are two of the most boring questions in the history of this board: Are trans women women? Are Mormons Christian? They are boring because, standing alone, they are arguments about definitions masquerading as arguments about reality. If Christian means someone whose religion centers on Jesus Christ, then Mormons are obviously Christians. If Christian means someone who accepts the historic creeds and orthodox doctrines of traditional Christianity, then Mormons are not Christians. Nothing about Mormonism changed when we switched definitions. We simply moved the boundary around the category Christian. The same problem infects the question, “What is a woman?” That question has become a political gotcha. If an educated person hesitates before answering it, some people take the hesitation as proof that higher education has rendered the person incapable of recognizing something a five-year-old understands. Either that, or the person has joined an ideological conspiracy to redefine woman and subvert Western civilization. There is a more mundane explanation: modern biology is considerably more complicated than the elementary-school model of male and female. Male and female are real and extraordinarily useful biological categories. Of course. But biological sex is manifested through a collection of characteristics: chromosomes, sex-determining genes, gonads, internal and external reproductive anatomy, hormones, secondary sex characteristics, and reproductive function. These characteristics cluster overwhelmingly into two patterns. Of course. But it is also true that they do not line up perfectly in every human being. That is why Nature publishes articles like “Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic,” and Scientific American publishes things like “Beyond XX and XY: The Extraordinary Complexity of Sex Determination,” and “Here’s Why Human Sex Is Not Binary.” Nobody involved has forgotten that ovaries and testes exist. They are describing the actual biology of sexual development. Human males and females are, at the genetic level, overwhelmingly alike. The dramatic differences between typical male and female bodies arise because a relatively small set of genetic signals initiates developmental cascades with enormous downstream consequences. Early in development, the embryonic gonad can develop along either an ovarian or testicular pathway. Signals within the sex-development network push development predominantly down one pathway or the other, after which genes, hormones, receptors, and other developmental processes produce the familiar primary and secondary sex characteristics of male and female bodies. That is a useful consciousness-raiser. Male and female bodies are not two unrelated biological designs. They are variations produced from overwhelmingly shared developmental machinery. Other vertebrates give us even stranger examples. Clownfish can change reproductive sex as adults. When the dominant female of a group disappears, a male can undergo coordinated changes in hormones, gonads, and reproductive function and literally becomes female. Biology is under no obligation to conform to the categories that seem intuitively obvious to us. Then human beings add another layer. We have elaborate psychological and social concepts of men and women: how people dress and wear their hair, how they speak and move, whether boys are encouraged to be tough and girls nurturing, which interests and occupations are coded masculine or feminine, how people present themselves to others, how others perceive them, and their own internal sense of themselves as men or women. Some of these patterns have biological influences. Some are cultural. Most probably involve both. All of them are real features of human psychology and social life. For most people, these dimensions line up so neatly that we never have to think about them separately. A person develops along the typical female reproductive pathway, develops female secondary sex characteristics, grows up thinking of herself as a girl and then a woman, presents herself as a woman, and is perceived and treated by everyone else as a woman. Everything points in the same direction. Intersex people and transgender people are both consciousness-raising for the same reason: they force us to notice that these dimensions are separable. And that is where the interesting questions begin. In a doctor’s office, chromosomes, anatomy, hormone exposure, reproductive history, and every other aspect of biological reality may matter enormously. In competitive sports, particular physiological characteristics may matter. In prisons, bathrooms, driver’s licenses, workplaces, marriages, cocktail parties, and ordinary conversation, we are dealing with different purposes, different interests, and different facts. There is no reason to expect one definition of woman to draw the optimal bright line across every one of these situations. When a person says “a trans-woman is a woman" they are not claiming that a trans woman has ovaries, produces ova, has XX chromosomes, or somehow rewrote her embryological history. Nor are they claiming that this creates an inalienable right to enter every women’s space, compete in every women’s sport, be housed in every women’s prison, or override whatever interests led society to create female-only categories in the first place. Those are separate policy questions, and each has to be argued on its own merits. Rather, they are using woman as a gender and social category rather than exclusively as a synonym for adult human biological female. They are saying that, for the ordinary purposes of relating to another human being, a person’s persistent identity, presentation, social role, and way of living matter more than the developmental history of their gonads. There is nothing scientifically incoherent about that. It is simply the judgment that, in ordinary social life, a person’s gender identity and gender expression are more relevant to how they understand themselves and relate to others than the biology of their gonads. It is a choice about which characteristics should define a psychological and social category when the purpose itself is psychological or social. You can find that definition unhelpful and choose not to use the word that way. You can believe biological sex should control medicine, sports, prisons, bathrooms, or any other context you can justify. You can make exceptions for people whose bodies do not fit the typical male or female pattern because of variations in sex development while refusing to make similar accommodations based on gender identity. Those are coherent positions. We can debate them. But when you refuse to make a serious effort to understand what other people are saying, insist on importing your own definitions into their conceptual framework, and repeatedly interpret their language in the least charitable way—for example, treating “assigned at birth” as carrying some subversive ideological implication rather than its well-defined medical definition—it becomes difficult to see any path toward a productive, good-faith conversation. Which brings us back to Mormons and Christians. We can spend another 200 pages arguing about which definition is the real one. Or we can define our terms, identify the actual interests at stake, look at the evidence, and argue about something interesting.

Exactly!!! The incongruity of an 18-year old kid from Utah being an old man or the leader of a tribe is incongruous with obvious reality, the completely normal thing to do is assume that isn’t what the speaker is trying to imply. The same heuristics are in play with the words we are talking about here. For example: ...therefore the speaker is almost certainly using definitions of these words other than the ones that lead to the factually incoherent, incoherent, and incongruous conclusions I originally came to, so I have to figure out what the speaker meant. Going through your examples: “Assigned at birth” is a well-defined medical term and means exactly what the National Academy says it means. the “factually and linguistically incoherent” part is what you (uncharitably) assume other imply. “Sex is a spectrum”. This is absolutely, positively, a coherent scientific view of sex. For example, Professor Augstin Fuentes of Princeton University wrote an article entitled Here’s Why Human Sex Is Not Binary in Scientific American, or Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic that was originally published in Nature and republished in in Scientific American. Fuentes wrote: So if we are going to make a good-faith effort to understand what people are saying, if they say “sex is binary” they are probably referring to gametes. If they say “sex is a spectrum” they are probably talking about the “range of biological and behavioral patterns related to sex biology that overlap and diverge." So while from a logical standpoint the statements “sex is binary” and “sex is a spectrum” contradict each other, this viewpoint is naive and scientifically illiterate. Both sentences are true because they use slightly different definitions of the word “sex.” If you insist on believing sex only refers to how organisms make gametes and that it cannot refer to the complexity inherent in sexual phenotypes, then you are being just as obstinate as the anti-Mormon who insists “elder” cannot refer to an 18-year old kid because referring to such a person as an “elder” is factually and linguistically incoherent. "Sex is a social construct.” I understand how this could sound nonsensical, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a serious, scientific, internally consist viewpoint. In a 2024 survey, 42% of biologists agree that yes, sex is socially constructed. What they mean by that isn’t that gonads aren’t real. Rather, they mean humans choose how to characterize and combine genomic, gonadal, hormonal, morphological, and other biological components when assigning sex categories. "A woman is anyone who 'identifies' as one.” A 2025 National Academies Consensus Study Report uses this definition: "Women: The terms “female” and “woman” are used differently according to context and perspective, which may cause confusion. In this report, the definition of women goes beyond the sex and gender binary and includes all people who identify as a woman or girl, solely or in addition to other gender identities and regardless of biological sex traits. This inclusive definition recognizes individuals who have been or may be affected by a set of biological and/or social variables that influence women differently than men across the life course." This isn’t a claim. It is a definition. Just because this definition contradicts another definition doesn't mean it is factually and linguistically incoherent, any more than the fact that 18 year-old elders not being old means that that definition is factually and linguistically incoherent. "Trans women are women.” Again, this is a definition, not a claim. This one is used repeatedly in mainstream science. For example, CDC Guidelines say, “transgender women are women who were assigned male sex at birth." Note that according to the dictionary, definition 1 of woman is “an adult female person,” and that the first definition of “female” is “having or relating to a gender identity that corresponds to a complex, variable set of social and cultural roles, traits, and behaviors assigned to people of the sex that typically produces egg cells." You seem to think that if somebody says “I am a woman because I identify as such” means that they are claiming that by identifying as a woman, the cells in their bodies magically transform into something else. That viewpoint is incoherent, and it isn’t what they are actually claiming.

Of the 20 load-bearing principles you listed, the following are false: 1,2,4,5,6,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20 The only ones that are basically true are 3 (your gender identity is valid on its own) and 7 (you should use people’s preferred pronouns). My basis for this was comparing your hostile anti-trans propaganda list to the web page “Supporting Transgender People" on the transequality.org website. It is striking how what they are actually asking for is so different than what you claim they are asking for. I asked GPT to compare your list to what is on that website and it came up with this: If we use Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE / transequality.org) as the benchmark, the redline is pretty dramatic. One caveat: A4TE itself says there is “no one way to be a ‘perfect’ ally”, so strictly speaking it does not present a doctrinal entrance exam. But its Supporting Transgender People page is explicitly a guide to allyship, so it gives us a reasonable test: does Grok’s proposition actually appear as something an ally is expected to believe or do?(Trans Equality) Here is Grok’s list with everything unsupported by that standard struck out. I’ve left unstruck only the portions that substantially correspond to A4TE’s actual guidance. Here is a descriptive list of claims that function as load-bearing principles in much of contemporary “trans” advocacy — especially the institutional/activist version that treats dissent as bigotry or “denial of existence.” Not every trans person holds all of them. The point is which ones are treated as non-negotiable in that framework. Core identity claims Gender identity is real, innate, and authoritative. A person’s stated identity is the primary fact about whether they are a man, woman, both, or neither. A4TE instead says: You do not have to understand someone’s identity to respect it. It does not require an ally to believe gender identity is innate or metaphysically authoritative. (Trans Equality) Identity is sex (or replaces sex for social/legal purposes). “Trans women are women” / “trans men are men” is treated as a literal truth, not a courtesy or a political slogan. Nothing resembling this appears as a requirement for allyship. Self-identification is sufficient. No medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation is required for the identity to be valid. This one contains a genuine A4TE principle. A4TE explicitly says there is no single right way to be transgender and that a transgender person’s identity does not depend upon medical transition, legal changes, or changes in appearance. (Trans Equality) Denial of the identity is a denial of the person. Disagreeing with the identity claim is framed as saying the person “doesn’t exist,” not as disputing a proposition. Nothing resembling this is required. Sex, biology, and language Sex is a spectrum, a social construct, or at least not a strict binary relevant to policy. Chromosomes, gametes, and reproductive anatomy are treated as crude, incomplete, or bigoted ways to classify people. None of this appears in A4TE’s allyship requirements. “Assigned sex at birth” is the preferred description of sex, implying a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category. Not an allyship requirement. Preferred pronouns and names are morally mandatory. Use the name, pronouns, and language a transgender person uses for themselves. Using sex-based pronouns is “misgendering”; using a prior name is “deadnaming.” Both are treated as harms comparable to slurs. This is one of the clearest things that actually survives. A4TE tells allies to follow the person’s lead regarding language, ask politely about pronouns when necessary, and apologize and move on after mistakes. It does not say pronoun mistakes are equivalent to slurs. (Trans Equality) There is no polite way to state the sex distinction. “Biological male/female,” “natal sex,” and similar terms are often classified as hate speech or dogwhistles. Not there. Medical and youth claims Gender dysphoria is validated by affirmation, not primarily explored as a possible misattribution of other distress. “Watchful waiting” or exploratory therapy is frequently labeled conversion therapy. Not part of this allyship standard. Medical transition (blockers, hormones, surgery) is healthcare, and withholding it is violence. Access is framed as lifesaving; gatekeeping is framed as cruelty. Not required. The page acknowledges that some transgender people medically transition and others do not; it does not require these medical propositions. (Trans Equality) Minors can have a stable, knowable transgender identity that justifies social and often medical transition. Parental or clinical caution is cast as abuse or bigotry. Not there. Desistance, detransition, and comorbidity (autism, trauma, same-sex attraction, social contagion) are minimized, treated as rare, or blamed on stigma rather than on the affirmation model. Not there. Social and institutional claims Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex. People should be allowed to use bathrooms and other gendered facilities consistent with their gender identity. Exclusion of males who identify as women is discrimination. There is a substantive policy position here, but Grok enormously broadens it. A4TE explicitly advocates restroom access according to gender identity. Its ally page does not establish a universal principle that sports, prisons, shelters, and every other sex-separated institution must therefore operate according to the identical rule. (Trans Equality) Any line among “trans women” is itself bigotry. Distinguishing social-only from medically transitioned, or pre-op from post-op, is “transmedicalism” or “dividing the community.” A4TE does say that medical transition is not a prerequisite for someone’s transgender identity. It does not say every distinction among transgender people is bigotry. (Trans Equality) Lived experience outranks data when studies, crime patterns, or fairness in sport cut against the identity rule. Nothing like this appears. Questions are a form of harm. Asking for definitions (“what is a woman?”), evidence, or tradeoffs is treated as bad-faith or as endangering trans people. In fact, A4TE explicitly distinguishes inappropriate intrusive questions from legitimate ones. Its advice is essentially to ask whether you actually need intimate information and whether you would consider the same question appropriate if directed at yourself. That is a rule of ordinary courtesy, not “questions are harmful.” (Trans Equality) Opposition is explained as animus. The admissible motives are hatred, disgust, or religion; safety, fairness, child protection, and definitional accuracy are discounted. Not there. Political enforcement Allies must affirm publicly. Neutrality (“I don’t care what adults do privately”) is often not enough; failure to repeat the slogans is coded as hostility. A4TE does encourage allies to speak publicly in support of transgender people, challenge anti-trans remarks and jokes, support people experiencing discrimination, and learn about policies affecting transgender people. But it does not impose a requirement to repeat ideological slogans or characterize failure to do so as hostility. Indeed, when discussing political advocacy, it says to help change policies “if you’re comfortable with it.” (Trans Equality) Conflicts with women’s rights and gay rights are denied or inverted. Sex-based rights are reframed as bigotry; same-sex attraction is pressured toward “attraction to gender identity.” Nothing remotely like this appears as a condition of allyship. The category must expand, not contract. Nonbinary, genderfluid, xenogender, and similar identities are folded into the same moral protection as transsexualism; limiting the category is betrayal. A4TE recognizes diversity within the transgender community and directs readers to resources about nonbinary people. It does not articulate Grok’s supposed principle that the category “must expand,” mention xenogenders here, or call limiting the category “betrayal.” (Trans Equality) After running Grok's twenty alleged “load-bearing principles” through an actual mainstream transgender advocacy organization's guide to how to be an ally, I think the result is revealing. What survives is basically: Respect transgender people's identities even if you don't fully understand them. Don't require medical transition or stereotypical appearance before recognizing someone as transgender. Use people's requested names, pronouns, and terminology. Respect their privacy. Oppose discrimination. Speak supportively when appropriate. Support gender-identity-based restroom access and some other inclusive policies. A4TE also encourages allies to educate themselves, avoid invasive questions about surgery or genitalia, protect people's privacy about their transgender status, reconsider unnecessary gender fields on forms, and advocate nondiscrimination protections. (Trans Equality) What emphatically doesn't survive is most of the supposedly “load-bearing ideology”: that sex is a social construct; reproductive biology is bigoted; identity literally is biological sex; disagreement denies somebody's existence; withholding transition is violence; questions are harmful; lived experience outranks data; opponents are motivated by animus; women's and gay rights must be subordinated; xenogender must be affirmed; and so forth. That comparison makes the problem with Grok's original answer unusually clear. It did not identify the minimum principles of trans allyship and then describe them charitably. It assembled maximalist claims, hostile interpretations, disputed policy positions, and accusations about activist behavior, and labeled the resulting package the “load-bearing principles” of trans advocacy. That is almost a textbook example of a strawman.

Let me get this straight. When you say an 18-year-old kid is an “Elder,” it is my job as the listener to figure out which definition you are using and understand what you mean. But if somebody else says, “I am a woman because that is my gender identity,” that’s totally different: you have no corresponding responsibility to understand what they mean. Instead, you can impose your definition onto their words and then criticize them for the nonsense that results. Do I have that right? Because if you aren’t willing even to acknowledge a responsibility to understand another person's conceptual framework before criticizing what they are saying, I’m not sure there is much point in continuing the conversation.

Hi @smac97, After I posted this, I realized it wouldn’t be clear what I was referring to, so I decided to flesh out my point. On a personal level, it irritates me that you went to a source with an obvious political bias on this topic (Grok), asked it to create a straw man version of “trans ideology”, and then use this to bait the people you are talking to and then criticizing them for not embracing the straw man. For my part, I asked ChatGPT to critique what Grok said on this matter, and replace its straw man with a steel man. Here is what GPT says: First, I would not call these the “fundamental tenets of trans ideology.” There is no catechism, governing body, or agreed philosophical system called trans ideology. More importantly, allyship is primarily a position about how transgender people should be treated, not a requirement that one accept a particular metaphysics of sex. If I were trying to steelman the minimum position, I would reduce it to something like this: A minimal trans-ally position Transgender people are describing a real human experience. Some people experience a persistent gender identity that does not correspond to the sex category in which they were born and raised. One need not settle whether this identity is innate, developmental, neurological, psychological, social, or some combination in order to take their experience seriously. Transgender people deserve the same dignity, liberty, and legal protection as everyone else. They should not be harassed, assaulted, fired, denied housing, or otherwise mistreated simply because they are transgender. In ordinary social interactions, people should generally accommodate another person's gender identity. If someone lives and presents socially as a woman, there is usually no reason not to call her a woman, use the name she asks to be called, and use female pronouns. That is ordinary interpersonal courtesy. It does not require believing that chromosomes, reproductive anatomy, or biological history have somehow changed. Sex and gender identity are distinguishable concepts. Biological sex is real. Gender identity and gender expression are also real phenomena. Which one matters depends upon what we are talking about. At a cocktail party, gender identity may be overwhelmingly relevant and chromosomes completely irrelevant. In some medical contexts, biological sex may be critically important. Public-policy questions should be decided individually rather than by slogans. Bathrooms, competitive sports, prisons, shelters, medical records, identification documents, and treatment of minors do not necessarily present the same problem. Being a trans ally does not require believing that gender identity must prevail over sex in every conceivable context. It requires taking the interests of transgender people seriously along with whatever competing interests actually exist. Medical questions are empirical questions. It is entirely consistent with trans allyship to ask about benefits, risks, diagnostic uncertainty, desistance, detransition, comorbidities, age, informed consent, and the quality of evidence supporting particular treatments. Compassion does not require knowing the answer before the research is done. That strikes me as a defensible minimum. Someone could go substantially further—believing, for example, that self-identification should control virtually every legal sex classification—without that stronger proposition becoming a prerequisite for treating transgender people decently. And this is where I think Grok's earlier answer went badly off the rails. Its 20-item list isn't a steelman of trans allyship. It is a hostile reconstruction of the most maximalist things one can associate with trans activism, sprinkled with assertions about activist motives and behavior, and then presented as though those constitute the movement's “fundamental tenets.” Look at what gets smuggled into the supposed creed. A trans ally allegedly must believe that sex is socially constructed; that chromosomes and reproductive anatomy are crude or bigoted classifications; that disagreement denies people's existence; that withholding medical treatment is “violence”; that lived experience outranks data; that asking questions is harmful; that opponents are motivated by animus; that conflicts with women's or gay rights must be denied; and even that xenogender identities must receive exactly the same conceptual treatment as classical transsexualism. Those aren't minimum propositions necessary for trans allyship. Several aren't propositions about transgender identity at all. They are accusations about how certain activists allegedly argue. That distinction matters. For example, compare: Steelman: “It is generally courteous to socially recognize a trans woman as a woman.” with: Strawman: “A person's subjective identity literally overrides biological sex, and anyone who disagrees is denying that person's existence.” Those are not equivalent claims. Or compare: Steelman: “Sex-associated biological traits do not always align perfectly, and scientists can therefore meaningfully discuss variation in sex characteristics.” with: Strawman: “Sex is a social construct and chromosomes, gametes, and reproductive anatomy are bigoted ways to classify people.” Again, not remotely the same proposition. And compare: Steelman: “Gender-affirming medical treatment can benefit some patients and should be evaluated using the ordinary standards of evidence-based medicine.” with: Strawman: “Medical transition is lifesaving, withholding it is violence, and clinical caution is cruelty.” A person can believe the first and emphatically reject the second. This is why I think Grok deserved considerably more skepticism than it received here. The giveaway isn't merely that individual statements are debatable. It is the construction of the list itself. Nearly every disputed question is phrased in the version least charitable to the trans side. Moderate propositions are replaced with absolutist ones; empirical controversies become alleged articles of faith; and the worst rhetoric one can find among activists is treated as constitutive of the entire worldview. If I asked an AI for “the fundamental tenets of conservative Christianity” and it returned twenty propositions about controlling women, suppressing gay people, rejecting science, imposing religion through government, and treating dissenters as sinners, nobody would mistake that for neutral analysis merely because examples could be found of Christians saying each of those things. The same standard should apply here. One can disagree profoundly with particular trans activists, reject self-ID as a universal legal rule, believe biological sex remains important, demand better evidence for pediatric medicine, and recognize genuine conflicts involving sports or privacy—and still hold the rather modest proposition at the center of trans allyship: Transgender people are real people describing a real experience, and in both our personal interactions and our laws we should try to treat them with dignity, courtesy, and fairness while dealing honestly with biological reality and legitimate competing interests. That is a considerably stronger steelman than Grok's partisan caricature—and, I think, a much more useful starting point for an actual discussion.

Asking Grok to summarize “the fundamental tenets of trans ideology” is like asking Walter Martin to summarize the fundamental tenets of Mormonism. That comparison isn’t perfect, though, because I don’t think there even is a uniform list of trans ideological doctrines that you must subscribe to in order to be considered an ally. When I have used the word “woman” that way, I was using it as a gender category rather than as a synonym for adult human biological female. If somebody has a female gender identity and female gender expression, the polite thing to do is socially categorize them as a woman. In my view, when you do this you are fervently refusing to understand their words, their conceptual framework, and the nuances of their point. “Gender identity” and “gender expression” are well-defined terms that represent real-world things, too. On my mission, on a few occasions people I was talking to were adamant that I wasn’t an “elder”. In their view, calling a 19-year old kid an “elder” was a radical “departure from empirical reality,” and they were willing to die on that hill. I disagree with you on this one. George Box said all models are wrong, but some are useful. The sexual binary is a model. In many contexts it is an extremely useful one, but when dealing with the biology of real-world people, it is less universally useful than many people imagine, and certainly isn’t the ultimate truth of what it means to be a human being. Empirical reality is that sex is "the biological components, including anatomical and physiological traits, largely related to sexual reproduction. Not all components align for all people." "Sex assigned at birth" means “sex recorded at birth.” It is in fact a term used by doctors in medical records when dealing with these issues, and was well-defined by the Academies. I don’t think it is my job to gate-keep the definition of words and to agree or disagree with definitions. I generally use the definitions the Academy provided, and try to understand what people are trying to communicate with the words they use. My sense is that much of trans advocacy is built less on redefining biological sex than on the idea that how we relate to other people matters. In ordinary social contexts, the polite and humane thing to do is generally to treat people in a way that aligns with their gender identity and presentation. That does not require pretending biological sex is unreal or different than what it really is. It means recognizing that social categories used in social situations don’t necessarily need to line up with the underlying biology you’d talk about with your doctor in medical situations. I'm not in a position to endorse anything on this. I’m a finance expert, not a doctor. I will note that the purpose of this glossary is to understand medical records, not describe the polite way to engage with others in all social interactions. Just because you think something is incoherent doesn't mean it really is. I’d give the benefit of the doubt to doctors and assume they speak coherently about medical and biological issues. If you think they are using the language incoherently, maybe you are the one with an ideology that is a little off. “Not all components align” is biological reality when we’re talking about real-world human beings. When scientists say “sex is a spectrum,” they do not mean that male and female are meaningless categories. They mean that the biological traits associated with sex: chromosomes, hormones, gonads, genital anatomy, secondary sex characteristics, and gene expression, do not always line up perfectly and often vary continuously in degree. From this coherent, reality-based point of view, sex is bimodal rather than perfectly binary in every biological feature: most people cluster strongly around typical male or female patterns, while some fall between or outside those typical combinations. This can be an insightful way of understanding human biology. As a thought experiment, imagine in a few years Elder Uchtdorf as prophet. Imagine at the same time a faithful member of the Church who deeply, deeply, feels their spirit is a woman and that somehow, their body looks, biologically, like a male. This person isn’t an activist or public agitator. Just a committed Latter-day Saint who feels like a woman trapped in a males body. They finds themself talking to the first presidency about it, and after a blessing and a prayer they receive a revelation: this person’s spirit really is a female spirt. In principle, this could happen, right? Mormons believe in spirits, and that spirits really do have genders. And they also believe genetic defects generally don’t reflect the essence of the body’s spirit. So what if the prophet had a revelation that a specific biological man had a female spirit? Would you object to this person claiming that on the inside, they really are a woman? Would you insist they be treated like a man, despite the prophet’s revelation that their spirit is female?

I honestly don’t know what you think I’m saying that "are empirically and obviously true, and which [I] nevertheless deny.” I’m squarely on the side of empirical reality. Let’s level set. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) is a private, nonprofit, non-governmental scientific institution chartered by Congress to provide independent, objective advice to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine. It is not an advocacy organization. Its consensus reports are prepared by expert committees and undergo independent peer review. Two years ago, they published a “consensus study report” that touches on some things we’ve been discussing. The Statement of Task of this report begins with: "An ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will review the latest published research and medical guidelines addressing the current status of sex-specific medical diagnosis, evaluation, and treatment for individuals who are transgender or who are undergoing gender affirming procedures. Based on the available evidence, the committee’s report will strive to: 1. Describe the current clinical conceptions of sex and gender accepted by the medical community, including: a. How sex and gender are medically defined ..." They offer the following definitions: Sex : The biological components, including anatomical and physiological traits, largely related to sexual reproduction. Not all components align for all people. (Alternatively Biological sex) Gender: A multidimensional construct that links language with social and cultural expectations about status, characteristics, and behavior that are supposedly associated with sex traits. Male: A term identifying individuals who are typically capable of producing sperm for fertilizing ova. Males typically have XY chromosomes. Not everyone who is male has all the traits (e.g., chromosomes, hormone prevalence, external and internal anatomy) that are typically defined as male. (Alternatively Male sex, Man, Boy) Female: A term identifying individuals who typically have ovaries and produce eggs. Females typically have XX chromosomes. Not everyone who is female has all the traits (e.g., chromosomes, hormone prevalence, external and internal anatomy) that are typically defined as female. (Alternatively Female sex, Woman, Girl) Sex recorded at birth: The sex recorded on the original birth certificate (based on appearance of external genitals observed at birth by physical exam). (Alternatively Sex assigned at birth, Sex designated at birth, Birth sex, Assigned female at birth, Assigned male at birth) Sex of rearing: The sex assigned to a child at birth, most often based on the appearance of the child’s external genital anatomy. Traditionally, sex of rearing is assigned as “male” or “female,” although in some geographic regions, there is the option of “X.” Assigned sex of rearing becomes the sex recorded on birth certificates and medical records. When a child is born with atypical genitalia, there may be a delay in assigning sex of rearing until the child’s condition or diagnosis is better understood. Through a shared decision-making process between a multidisciplinary care team and the child’s parents/guardians/caregivers, the goal is to select a sex of rearing that has the greatest likelihood of matching gender identity in adulthood.(Alternatively Sex assignment at birth, Gender of rearing, Assigned sex of rearing, Assigned gender of rearing) Gender marker: Designation of “male” (M) “female” (F) or other (X) on a document, including on the original birth certificate. Depending on the document, this marker may represent an individual’s sex recorded at birth or gender identity and a designation of “X,” where present on records, may be defined in different ways. (Alternatively Sex marker) Gender identity: Used by individuals to label themselves and their internal sense of themselves. One’s gender identity can be the same as or different from one’s sex recorded at birth. (Alternatively Affirmed gender, Gender) Gender expression: One’s mannerisms and appearance—including through behavior, clothing, body characteristics, or voice—that are, in a given culture, associated with masculinity or femininity. Gender attribution: The process through which others assign a gender to a person, with or without knowledge of that person’s sex recorded at birth or gender identity. Do you take issue with these definitions, or do you think this ad hoc committee of the National Academy largely succeeded in conveying how these terms are medically defined?

I think what’s really happening is that since these edge cases were so extremely rare, most people lived their whole lives never having to confront the issue. Now there are a few social influencers trying to get famous by publishing outrageous content, and an entire industry engineered to feed addictive rage in their viewership. That is indisputably going on. The outstanding question is whether the societal order is really breaking down. I’ve been asking for is some evidence that it is, and evidence that laws like that of Kansas will do more good than harm. It’s obvious to me that creating laws that REQUIRE “people who look like men” to use the women’s restroom undermines the very thing it is trying to prevent--uncomfortable confrontations in bathrooms with people who look like they don’t belong there. Rather than being given statistics about the societal order breaking down or even personal anecdotes, I’m just repeatedly told "Lily Tino is a man going into DisneyWorld bathrooms” over and over again. I can understand how somebody might feel that the societal order is breaking down if they are obsessed with videos featuring Lily Tino, Lia Thomas, and drag queens. I never heard of Lily Tino until Smac brought it up here. The reason those videos are shocking is because they are outrageous outliers that are so far afield from what we all see in our normal lives. The shock value is evidence that the societal code is doing fine, not that we are doomed. Maybe that is the biggest difference between Smac and me. Smac thinks the anecdotes of outrageous behavior he curates are impressive evidence. That is why he posts his lists over and over and over. In contrast, I’m a statistician and am not persuaded by anecdotes. Show me statistically significant evidence. Is there any? Or even give me some personal anecdotes. How often do you or the people around you bump into “people who look like men” in women restrooms?

The basic way you continue to misrepresent my position is by claiming I advocate for something new and radical. That just isn’t true. What I'm claiming is that there is zero evidence that the new 2026 law in Kansas was needed. It is incumbent upon you to show why this new law is needed and explain why this law does more good than harm. This is the kind of statement that makes it hard for me to take you seriously. When a child is born, a doctor quickly examines them and makes a call on whether to put an “F” or “M” on the birth certificate. Making that judgement call is what it means to “assign” a sex to somebody. I’m sure you’re aware of this. I don’t understand why you are adamant that it is impossible for a doctor to do what they do every single time they fill out a birth certificate. Furthermore, doctors sometimes get this wrong. Emily Quinn is an example. When he was born, his doctor thought the “observable fact” was that he is female. It turns out the doctor was mistaken--biologically, the baby was male, not female. He is a male who was assigned to the sex “female” at birth. First, note that earlier in this thread, you said that some men should use the women’s restroom. An example you gave is Emily Quinn. Emily Quinn is a man. That is the hard, cold, biological fact of the matter. Yet you are okay with him using the women’s restroom. So we both agree that there are cases when biological men should use the women’s restroom. What we disagree about is the edge cases: where the line should be drawn, and who should make those calls. These edge cases aren’t recent. What actually is recent is culture warriors deciding this is a winning issue and constantly throwing it in your face. The only reason you know who Lily Tino or Lily Thomas are is because the people who curate your news want this to be an issue. Just because Fox News only recently started publicizing this doesn’t mean it’s a new issue.

I’d like to summarize my thoughts on the issues we’ve been discussing. I’ll do so in Q&A format: Q: What is the purpose of public bathrooms? A: To provide a place for people to use the toilet and attend to ordinary sanitary needs while they are out in public. Q: Which restroom should an individual choose when they need to use one? A: The one that will minimize discomfort to themselves and to the people around them. Q: Do we need a law that mandates which restroom people must use? A: No. Society got along fine without such laws, and there is nothing happening now that demonstrates such a law is necessary, much less that it would do more good than harm. Q: Do we need a “limiting principle” governing which bathroom people may use? A: Yes. The limiting principle is that people should use the restroom that will minimize discomfort to themselves and to those around them. Q: But isn’t that functionally identical to giving people a license to use any restroom for any reason they want, or for no reason whatsoever? A: No. The ordinary purpose of a bathroom is to walk in, use the toilet, flush, wash your hands, and leave. If somebody is using a bathroom for some other purpose--harassment, loitering, intimidation, voyeurism, exhibitionism, solicitation, etc.--those acts can be, should be, and, where appropriate, already are illegal. The crime isn’t using the “wrong” restroom. The crime is the underlying conduct. Q: Who gets to decide which bathroom will minimize discomfort to themselves and to those around them? A: The person who needs to use the bathroom. Q: But if we treat people like adults living in a free society and allow them to choose which restroom is most appropriate, won’t that lead to the eradication of sex-distinct restrooms? A: No. Q: Do you have any evidence that it won’t? A: Yes. The evidence on this point is overwhelming. As an institution, sex-distinct restrooms in free societies have thrived for generations without laws assigning every person to a restroom according to biological sex. If allowing people to decide which toilet is most appropriate somehow caused the eradication of sex-distinct restrooms, they would have been eradicated long ago. If, despite that long and exceptionally clear history, somebody remains convinced that sex-distinct bathrooms are suddenly in mortal jeopardy without bathroom laws, I can’t help but wonder whether the real problem is them and involves something that rhymes with spigotry. Q: But somebody looking like a woman and feeling like a woman doesn’t override the underlying biology! The women’s restroom is for biological females and the men’s restroom is for biological males! It’s always been that way! A: That is manifestly false as a description of how public restrooms have actually operated. Public restrooms have never had gatekeepers examining chromosomes, gonads, reproductive anatomy, or developmental reproductive pathways before admitting people. In ordinary life, the social convention has overwhelmingly operated through appearance and ordinary social recognition. That is why most strangers would think nothing unusual about seeing biological males such as Valentina Sampaio, Carmen Carrera, Kim Petras, or Geena Rocero enter a women’s restroom, while biological females such as Aydian Dowling, Laith Ashley, Buck Angel, or Schuyler Bailar entering that same restroom would be far more likely to cause confusion or alarm. Q: But those are extreme cases: exceptionally feminine-looking biological males and exceptionally masculine-looking biological females! A: Exactly. They prove the point. Whatever abstract theory someone may now construct about the historical purpose of sex-distinct bathrooms, the system has never functioned by inspecting underlying reproductive biology. In practice, it has functioned through ordinary social perception. Q: But what about cases where people suspect, or even know, that someone choosing the women’s restroom is biologically male? A: First, such cases are rare. The social pressure against entering a restroom where you obviously are not wanted is enormous. Second, someone whose presence appears conspicuously out of place will already attract intense scrutiny. If an obviously male-presenting stranger walks down a hallway, nobody thinks much of it. If he walks into the women’s restroom, people immediately go on high alert. That makes the women’s restroom an extraordinarily poor place for a would-be criminal to operate unnoticed. If somebody behaves suspiciously, take whatever reasonable precautions are appropriate. But if somebody walks in, uses the toilet, washes their hands, and leaves, mind your own business. A public restroom is not a sanctuary in which you are guaranteed never to encounter anyone who makes you uncomfortable or whom you disapprove of. It is a place containing toilets. Go in, deal with the offensive sights, sounds, and smells that inevitably accompany public bathrooms, take care of your business, and get out. Q: But what about locker rooms! And sports! And prisons! And drag shows! A: Those are separate issues. If we want to analyze them rationally, we should treat them as separate issues. Whether there was an inappropriate children’s reading event in Houston in 2019 tells us precisely nothing about whether Kansas needed a bathroom law in 2026. If somebody insists on repeatedly conflating bathrooms, locker rooms, competitive athletics, prisons, drag shows, children’s events, and every other transgender-related controversy into one giant undifferentiated problem, I can’t help but wonder whether the common denominator they are actually objecting to is not any particular policy at all, but transgender people themselves.

The last time you said this about me, I corrected you and explained that is the opposite of my position. Clearly, you aren't interested in understanding my point of view. I'm out.

In this case it does. There wouldn't be an issue if the guys on your side didn't fabricate it. The WNBA was working fine on this, 100% of the time, for 30 years and counting. Buildings generally have a ton of stored chemical energy and exist in an oxygen rich environment. The energy of massive fires is always there. They need some activation energy to start burning and once they start, entire cities can burn down. We know all of this both from basic chemistry and from historical experience. The purpose of fire codes is to prevent this runaway process from happening. You seem to think that like a wooden house full of chemical energy that "wants" to burn, the world is brimming with cis-gender men who really, really, want to participate in women's sports. You seem to think that because of this overwhelming desire men have of going into the lady's room, we need heavy-handed laws with extremely sharp lines that are based on biological sex to keep them out. You seem to think there are so many guys who want to do this that they'd completely take over women sports if given half the chance. I'll refrain from speculating about why you think there are so many guys out there that want to play women's sports and hang out in women's locker rooms. However, the truth is there are very few transgender people. Of those, very few are interested in sports. Of those, very few are good enough or strong enough to make a difference in terms of competitiveness or safety. It's a tiny, marginal issue that rarely affects anybody. Not really. The default should be living in a free society with a minimum number of rules. Only create laws when doing so is absolutely necessary. That is a general principle. Nobody is arguing that girl's bathrooms should be wide open to anybody who says the right magic word before entering. That is a strawman. Even you concede that some biological males (e.g. Emily Quinn) may use the lady's room. The question is whether we need the government to create heavy-handed laws with bright, inflexible lines about who may and may not go into this or that bathroom. It's clear that giant swath of Fox's viewers want to be very, very upset about men entering women spaces. It's also clear that not enough men do that in order to keep the topic in the headlines. Thus, they are dispatching their own people into women's spaces and putting the resulting "controversy" on the front page.

A huge part of the problem is that that the "substance" is largely built on speculations, slippery slopes, strawmen, outlier anecdotes, and amplified hypotheticals. It doesn't address whether the proposed solutions (e.g. the Kansas bathroom law) cause more good or harm in the real world. I would suggest in general, as a society we should allow people the freedom to live their own lives: treat others the way you'd like to be treated, give people different than you some grace, recognize we live in a pluralistic society, and try to get along. If you think new laws are necessary (e.g. requiring all biological females to use the female restroom), it is incumbent upon you to explain why the cost of that law is worth it and explain why such a law would do more good than harm. The example you brought up to kick off this thread is the WNBA. If there were big scarry men who really wanted to play in the WNBA, and somehow the system was forcing the league to admit them as players, then that would be interesting news. But that has never happened. Not once. But apparently some activists got tired of waiting for this hypothetical to occur naturally and decided to manufacture the test case themselves. Today (August 24) if you go to FoxNews.com, top stories include: The lead story on the entire homepage: Enes Kanter Freedom discussing his confrontation at a WNBA game and his campaign to enter the WNBA. One of Fox’s four “Hot Topics”: “WNBA CONTROVERSY,” second only to the war with Iran. Another prominent story: “Fever coach urges press don’t ‘give it any gas’ as transgender firestorm rages.” The OutKick section promotes that story again, plus another about the Sky coach defending Natasha Cloud after her argument with Freedom. Notice what is missing: an actual transgender WNBA player (there have been ZERO in history). An actual displaced female player. An actual injury caused by the policy. None of the harm the controversy is supposedly about has actually occurred. It's a manufactured controversy built to push your buttons. And this is the specific story that you used to steer the discussion in this direction.

This topic?