Church's Policy on Surrogacy - Looking for Input

[Analytics]

On 9/26/2026 at 12:12 PM, smac97 said:

I do find the sentiment in the video you like difficult to reconcile with the well that folks like you and SU so frequently go to, namely, "The only plausible explanation for you disagreeing with me is that you are a bigot."  You seem to genuinely lack the capacity to allow reasonable minds to reach conclusions which diverge from your conclusions.  

Maybe I'm being unfair. You at least sometimes come across as being selective in your focus and outrage for these LGBTQ groups. It doesn't seem reasonable. It seems targeted.

I might be wrong. Let's test this. From your last post, you said that you really, really, hate using pronouns that correspond to somebody's gender identity rather than their biological sex, because using those pronouns would be dishonest. You hate the idea of an employer compelling the use of pronouns you disagree with. 

Is this principle based, or are you being selective against a particular group?

Let's test it with a hypothetical. Say there is a judge who you happen to know really isn't honorable. Are you morally outraged at court decorum requiring you to call a judge "your honor" when you know that particular judge isn't honorable? If so, how often to you go on the internet and complain about how awful this form of compelled speech is? 

You seem to be in favor of "free speech" laws that protect the use of "true" pronouns at work. Would you also be in favor of "free speech" laws that allow you to call a judge "your dishonor" if you really think he isn't honorable?

On 9/26/2026 at 12:12 PM, smac97 said:

I am working from the pages you quoted and I have seen elsewhere, not from a pretense of having read the whole book. Those pages say the particle content relevant to everyday matter is settled, and that a soul that made a difference the way extra particles would have made a difference should have been seen. That is a strong experimental claim. I am not disputing it.

I appreciate the effort you are making here.

On 9/26/2026 at 12:12 PM, smac97 said:

What I am disputing is the next step: treating that inventory as a complete list of everything that can exist or act, and then assigning an infinitesimal prior to revelation or a soul.

You aren't being precise here. The assertion isn't and never was about "a complete list of everything that can exist or act." The assertion is about whether unknown forces or particles can interact with normal matter with enough vigor to have any effect on our everyday lives. And in this context, this doesn't just mean bending spoons. It means subtly nudging an electrical impulse enough to change the probability that a neuron fires.

In this context, "spirit matter" (as conceived by Mormonism), "revelation" and other such things are all in the broad category of "new particles or fields".

The verdict is unambiguous: we’ve found all of the particles that our best current technology enables us to find. Crossing symmetry assures us that, if there were any particles lurking around us that interact with ordinary matter strongly enough to make a difference to the behavior of everyday stuff, those particles should have easily been produced in experiments. But there’s nothing there.

There are probably more particles yet to be found. They just won’t be relevant to our everyday world. The fact that we haven’t yet found such particles tells us a great deal about what properties they must have; that’s the power of quantum field theory. Any particle that we haven’t yet detected must have one of the following features:

1. It could be so very weakly interacting with ordinary matter that it is almost never produced; or—
2. It could be extremely massive, so that it takes collisions at energies even higher than what our best accelerators can achieve in order to make it; or—
3. It could be extremely short-lived, so that it gets made but then almost immediately decays away into other particles.

If any particle we haven’t yet found lasted long enough and interacted with ordinary matter with sufficient strength that it could possibly affect the physics of everyday goings-on, we would have produced it in experiments by now.

Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (pp. 182-183). (Function). Kindle Edition. 

In this context, "the physics of everyday goings-on" include having enough impact to even subtly affect your brain.

He addresses at least part of your point directly:

To imagine that the soul pushes around the electrons and protons and neutrons in our bodies in a way that we haven’t yet detected  is certainly conceivable, but it implies that modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed. How should we modify the Core Theory equation (shown in the Appendix) to allow for the soul to influence the particles in our body? It’s a substantial hurdle to leap.

Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (p. 212). (Function). Kindle Edition. 

Carroll published this 11 years ago, and unsurprisingly it still holds up. If your beliefs about spirit matter and revelation are true, then "modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed."

Here's the thing. If you want to expose your beliefs to the baloney detection kit, you can do so. If you don't want to, you don't have to. But arguing with people on the internet isn't the same thing as rigorously examining your beliefs the way Sagan recommends. From my perspective, it seems really internally inconsistent to say that you accept science, but selectively reject its implications on philosophical grounds when it contradicts your religious beliefs, and to say that you are in favor of applying the baloney detection kit to the silly beliefs of others, but don't think it is applicable to your beliefs for philosophical reasons.

Edited Sunday at 06:14 PM by Analytics

[california boy]

On 9/26/2026 at 8:46 AM, smac97 said:

Thank you for your comments.

The legal definition is not, I think, an argument. It is the thing we are arguing about.  

“Fortunately the law differs from your opinion” means: five Justices in 2015 wrote a companionate definition into the Fourteenth Amendment, so the discussion is over. Though that is what happened (and I acknowledge that it is the law of the land), that is not a reply to what marriage is for. It is an appeal to a recent judgment. Loving struck a racial bar on men and women marrying. Obergefell held that sex is idle in the definition. Those are not the same holding. Citing the second as if it were accumulated social consensus, or a vote, skips the work.

You are trying to define what you think marriage should be.  But not only does the Supreme Court disagree with you, but by far the majority of Americans also agree,  You are definitely an outliner trying to make a case that marriage is all about the plumbing and not the far more importance of establishing a strong legal foundation, committing to a life long relationship and providing a stable environment for raising children.  To the majority of Americans, these are the things that bring value to marriage.  

 

On 9/26/2026 at 8:46 AM, smac97 said:

“Denying citizens the right to marry is not a good decision for the country or the world” is a slogan that does not contain a limit. Incestuous pairs, group marriages, and polygamous households can say the same sentence: we are citizens, we want the license, we would benefit. If the only test is “someone is left out of the current definition,” every restriction fails. The live question is what the institution is, not whether some adults would like a marriage certificate.

Pretty ironic that you list polygamous households marriages as being somehow shameful and shouldn't be legalized either.  

On 9/26/2026 at 8:46 AM, smac97 said:

“Keeping a foundation of marriage for all is a strength” is asserted, not shown. I already granted private goods for some couples — hospital access, inheritance, companionship. You treated that grant as if I had said “zero benefit,” then ignored the costs I listed: the public meaning of the institution, children placed by design in a home with no mother or no father, and a documented pattern of explicit non-monogamy in a large share of male same-sex relationships. “The world is a better place for it” does not engage those points. It scores only the column you like.

A small share of gay and lesbian adults are in a same-sex marriage. That is not a reason to deny anyone a license. It is a reason to stop talking as if the license were a universal foundation “for all” that the holdouts are tearing down.

Really?  You don't view stable marriage relationships as an important foundation of American society?  Well I guess we will have to disagree with that world view.  

Do you believe gay couples relationship and society in general is better off if they just living together?

On 9/26/2026 at 8:46 AM, smac97 said:

 

“To argue against marriage for even part of the population is to devalue marriage” assumes the conclusion. It assumes marriage is a flexible status whose purpose is adult recognition, so that drawing a line at husband-and-wife is an insult to the institution. On the account I have been using, the line is the institution: the sexual pair that can generate children, and the household that can be a mother and a father. Two men can have a real, loyal, legally useful bond. That does not make the bond the same kind of union. Refusing to collapse the kinds is not “devaluing marriage.” It is refusing to make companionship the whole of it.

If you want to say the costs I listed are overstated, say that and point to the data. “The law already says otherwise” and “denying anyone a license devalues marriage” do not do much to advance the discussion.

Thanks,

-Smac

I am saying plumbing and whether a couple can reproduce are not the only criteria the majority of Americans judge the value of marriage to be.  I really don't know many people that share your radical defining reasons for marriage.  Maybe it is more of an Utah thing because of the Church's campaign against gay marriage among its members.  

Do you think there should be a questioner required to be signed stating each partner's sex and whether they will be able to reproduce?  

[Calm]

6 hours ago, Analytics said:

Do you like audio books? Most of the book is pretty conversational, so if that is a more accessible way for you to ingest information, you might want to consider listening to it.

That is even harder for me to track.   My own thoughts are too noisy, too easily distracted, lol.  I couldn’t even do those before fibro or chronic sleep deprivation or whatever it was got to me.  But thanks for the suggestion.  I am not entirely hopeless about this, several things have improved over the past two years with my latest drug.  And there’s much more research occurring.

Edited Sunday at 07:40 PM by Calm

[Calm]

7 hours ago, Analytics said:

Sure. We can't "prove" that when we aren't looking, the toys don't jump to life and have eventful, dramatic lives, but then run back to where they were and pretend they are dead when we aren't looking. There is no way to prove that. All we have is the evidence based on the experiments. The Core Theory has been "spectacularly successful at accounting for every experiment ever performed in a laboratory here on Earth." (p. 176)  

I haven’t eaten breakfast yet, so I am resorting to AI’s cleaning up of my draft comments at least for now, so if this sounds like not me in terms of language, it isn’t, even if definitely my ideas down to the details.  It is just prettier than my stuff.

I don’t know if this calls for quoting or not, lol.

Me polished up by AI, except for the last paragraph as it ignored that point.

I don’t think this comment actually deals with his assumption that a physical event has only physical causes.  And, in fact, I think our usual LDS interpretation of Joseph’s statements about spirit may be part of the problem rather than a solution.

We tend to read Joseph’s description of spirit as “matter, but more fine or pure” as though he were making a statement about physical matter in something close to the modern scientific sense. But Joseph didn’t define what he meant by matter, spirit, or refined with anything approaching the precision we would expect today. He also lived before two centuries of scientific discoveries that have radically changed what we mean by matter, energy, fields, particles, and physical reality. So I don’t think we can simply assume that Joseph was working with the same conceptual categories we are.

And there’s an even more fundamental reason I’m reluctant to treat his language as closing the question. We’re talking about an entity who, within the LDS conception, was a mortal human being trying to describe realities associated with beings and an existence that are supposed to be vastly beyond ordinary human experience. I have a hard time being confident that the conceptual and linguistic tools available to a short-lived mortal human are sufficient to tell us precisely what an eternal being is, what its constituent reality is, or even whether our categories of “physical” and “nonphysical” map onto that reality in the way we assume they do.

That doesn’t mean I believe Joseph was wrong, or that spirits exist, or that there must be some unknown form of matter or something more than matter. It means I don’t think we can take his relatively imprecise language and turn it into the much stronger proposition that everything that exists is ultimately physical in the modern sense of the word.  And this is both because we don’t know what Joseph truly meant and we don’t know if his understanding was even close to reality.

So I’m actually stepping away from the usual LDS conception of spirit matter here rather than defending it and dipping into the excuse that I see mortals as too limited to conceive of reality in a fundamental, encompassing way.  I may be making an inappropriate judgement based on what I see us doing with social knowledge…as if the experiences of thousands of years of recorded social interactions among at most hundred year entities can significantly inform our understanding of what the social life of immortal, remarkably advanced entities is like. (Think of how Star Trek is really about what we would do if transported into an advanced technological life, not what mortals that grew up in that life would do, so it’s not an actual glimpse at the future, it’s just a different setting for the here and now.)  I accept my extrapolation to all areas of knowledge may be wrong when it comes to the hard sciences because they deal with something different than the result of millions and more years of social development.

Hopefully this last paragraph made sense as well because I am not going to pop it into AI to be sure.  Too hungry.

[smac97]

9 hours ago, california boy said:

You are trying to define what you think marriage should be.  

I am reciting how marriage was defined until 2015, at which point five SCOTUS justices decided, on flimsy-bordering-on-pretextual legal grounds, to toss out what is - in my view - the sine qua non attribute of the institution: a male-female pairing.

9 hours ago, california boy said:

But not only does the Supreme Court disagree with you, but by far the majority of Americans also agree,  

Argumentum ad populum is a logical error that happens when you claim something is true just because a lot of people believe it.

If SCOTUS were to reverse Obergefell, and if the majority of Americans were to return to disagreeing with same-sex marriage, would you change your views?  

Popular opinion can be fickle.  From June 2026:

U.S. Support for LGBTQ+ Issues Remains Down From Peak

Quote

After two decades of rising support for LGBTQ+ issues, U.S. attitudes have plateaued and begun to slide back modestly. Approval of same-sex marriage, moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relations, and endorsement of gender changes are all down from peaks reached in the early 2020s.

While most Americans still favor legal same-sex marriages, the 65% who do so today is down six percentage points from the peak in 2022 and 2023. Similarly, the percentage viewing gay or lesbian relations as morally acceptable, 62%, has not been lower since 2016. And the share of Americans who consider changing one's gender morally acceptable has declined eight points over the past five years, to 38%.

Probably a few reasons for this. Regardless, my perspective on issues of morality, the Law of Chastity, marriage, etc. are not dictated by what is popular, but rather what I feel is right and reasoned.

9 hours ago, california boy said:

Quote

“Keeping a foundation of marriage for all is a strength” is asserted, not shown. I already granted private goods for some couples — hospital access, inheritance, companionship. You treated that grant as if I had said “zero benefit,” then ignored the costs I listed: the public meaning of the institution, children placed by design in a home with no mother or no father, and a documented pattern of explicit non-monogamy in a large share of male same-sex relationships. “The world is a better place for it” does not engage those points. It scores only the column you like.

A small share of gay and lesbian adults are in a same-sex marriage. That is not a reason to deny anyone a license. It is a reason to stop talking as if the license were a universal foundation “for all” that the holdouts are tearing down.

Really?  You don't view stable marriage relationships as an important foundation of American society?  

I have laid out my reasoning.  I look forward to a substantive critique of it.

9 hours ago, california boy said:

Well I guess we will have to disagree with that world view.  

I am glad of that.  We need to allow each other to room to disagree.

9 hours ago, california boy said:

Do you believe gay couples relationship and society in general is better off if they just living together?

The vast majority of them are "just living together" even 11 years after the legalization of same-sex marriage.

I do not think the typical committed couple is better off with no legal tools at all — no hospital access, no inheritance default, no next-of-kin status. I already said those private goods are real.  But they could have been achieved without radically re-defining marriage.  Moreover, that is not the same question as whether the civil institution of marriage should have been redefined so that it no longer publicly means a union ordered to the possibility of mother-and-father childrearing. A couple can be better off with a contract or a tailored status and still leave the older meaning of marriage intact.

‘Are these two adults happier with a license?’ can be yes for many pairs. ‘Is society better off once the institution no longer distinguishes the kind of union that can produce a child with both a mother and a father?’ is a different question. I have been answering the second one. Treating them as one question is how ‘private goods I already granted’ gets scored as if I said cohabitation with zero recognition is the ideal.

9 hours ago, california boy said:

I am saying plumbing and whether a couple can reproduce are not the only criteria the majority of Americans judge the value of marriage to be.  

Again, you are using the argumentum ad populum fallacy.  

Again, you were in favor of same-sex marriage when it was not the law of the land and most Americans were opposed to it, right?

9 hours ago, california boy said:

I really don't know many people that share your radical defining reasons for marriage.  

I have not defined marriage via number, gender, consanguinity, consent and age.  I have, instead, recited how the law previously treated marriage.

9 hours ago, california boy said:

Maybe it is more of an Utah thing because of the Church's campaign against gay marriage among its members.  

Do you think there should be a questioner required to be signed stating each partner's sex and whether they will be able to reproduce?  

Majority sentiment is evidence about what people now prize in a relationship. It is not a definition of the institution. Plenty of Americans now treat marriage as a diluted form of what it was previously (categorically linked with procreation and child-rearing), and now see it more or less as just some sort of prestige package for adult commitment, severed from that prior categorical link. That is exactly the shift I have been arguing against. Calling the older account ‘radical’ or ‘a Utah thing’ names where you have heard it. It does not show the account is wrong.

The criterion I have cited (among others) is not "this pair will in fact conceive." It is the kind of sexual union that is ordered to generating children and that can give a child a mother and a father. Infertile opposite-sex couples still enter that kind of union. Same-sex couples categorically do not. That is why the law never needed a fertility questionnaire for husband and wife, and why I would not add one. A sex-and-fertility form would treat a contingent medical fact as if it were the same issue as the structure of the pair. It is not.

Two men can have a loyal, legally useful bond. I have not denied that. I have denied that companionship-plus-license is now the whole public meaning of marriage. If most people now want that to be the whole meaning, I guess you can say so.  If you do, you will be tacitly admitting that marriage has been severed from procreation and child-rearing, and that you are on board with this.  That is a proposal to change what the institution is for, not proof that drawing the older line "devalues marriage."

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited yesterday at 02:08 AM by smac97

[smac97]

10 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

I do find the sentiment in the video you like difficult to reconcile with the well that folks like you and SU so frequently go to, namely, "The only plausible explanation for you disagreeing with me is that you are a bigot."  You seem to genuinely lack the capacity to allow reasonable minds to reach conclusions which diverge from your conclusions.  

Maybe I'm being unfair. You at least sometimes come across as being selective in your focus and outrage for these LGBTQ groups.

You are only further demonstrating my point.  To disagree with you is to be "bigoted."  To disagree with you is to be "outraged."  Again, you seem incapable of allowing for reasoned and principled disagreement.

10 hours ago, Analytics said:

I might be wrong. Let's test this. From your last post, you said that you really, really, hate using pronouns that correspond to somebody's gender identity rather than their biological sex, because using those pronouns would be dishonest.

You hate the idea of an employer compelling the use of pronouns you disagree with. 

You are here demonstrating why I don't see you as a reliable narrator.  You cannot be trusted to fairly characterize viewpoints which diverge from yours.  Here is what I have said, and which you characterize as "really, really hate":

Quote

Whether to call Caitlyn Jenner, a male who "identifies" as a woman, by "she/her" pronouns is not really a contest I want to address every day.
...
If using correct pronouns will cause a person afflicted with a mental condition some distress, I might as well.  It would be exhausting otherwise.  My reservations arise from this being presented as a requirement, not a request, and from the use of the coercive power of the State to compel use of incorrect pronouns, and so on.
...
If I had a "trans" co-worker, someone I had to interact with every day, I would probably concede the fight and go along with the falsehood.  Both because it would be exhausting to have the co-worker complaint every time someone uses a grammatically correct pronoun and because HR might get involved.  Gotta love compelled speech.

Nothing about "hate" here (as in "to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest").

I have strong principled disagreement with coerced and compelled speech, but you can't accommodate that, so you rebrand it as "hate."  

10 hours ago, Analytics said:

Is this principle based, or are you being selective against a particular group?

It is based on principle.  Coerced/compelled speech is a terrible idea.  

I am not selective about this.  It just so happens that the only substantive movement I can think of that incorporates coerced/compelled speech into its objectives and means is some parts of the LGBT movement.  I see this as a tacit acknowledgment of its vacuity.  You and yours can't persuade, so you coerce.  It's agree with you or else be branded a "bigot" driven by "hate."  It's agree with you and yours or else you will seek to use the coercive power of the State to compel me to say words I do not want to say, or else punish me for not saying them.

There is no real effort here to persuade hearts and minds.  

10 hours ago, Analytics said:

Let's test it with a hypothetical. Say there is a judge who you happen to know really isn't honorable. Are you morally outraged at court decorum requiring you to call a judge "your honor" when you know that particular judge isn't honorable?

"Bigot."

"Really, really hate."

"Morally outraged."'

You just can't help yourself.

To answer your question: No.  The same can be said when I rendered military courtesies to officers I found to be not really deserving of it.  A few reasons for this. 

First, I am in those circumstances effectively required to use titles, honorifics, and formalities.  I knew that was part of the gig when I joined the Army, and later when I joined the Bar. 

Second, these formalities are principally focused on the position and the system in which it functions more than the individual inhabiting it.  Band of Brothers got it right:

Third, to the extent military service or courtroom formalities by members of the Bar are seen as "compelled," they are very much exceptions to the rule.  I think that's a stretch, though.  Calling a judge "Your Honor" is legally classified as a regulation of conduct and decorum within a specialized government facility rather than unconstitutional compelled speech.   A servicemember being required to address a superior officer as "sir" or "ma'am" is not considered unconstitutional compelled speech because of the legally distinct nature of the U.S. military. While the First Amendment generally prevents the government from forcing citizens to say things they disagree with (like the Pledge of Allegiance), the rules are fundamentally different for active-duty personnel.

10 hours ago, Analytics said:

If so, how often to you go on the internet and complain about how awful this form of compelled speech is? 

"Bigot."

"Really, really hate."

"Morally outraged."'

"Awful."

You just can't help yourself.

10 hours ago, Analytics said:

You seem to be in favor of "free speech" laws that protect the use of "true" pronouns at work.

I am not sure what you are referencing here.  Most employers are private entities, and hence are not bound by the First Amendment, which regulates State behavior relative to speech.

10 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

What I am disputing is the next step: treating that inventory as a complete list of everything that can exist or act, and then assigning an infinitesimal prior to revelation or a soul.

You aren't being precise here. The assertion isn't and never was about "a complete list of everything that can exist or act." The assertion is about whether unknown forces or particles can interact with normal matter with enough vigor to have any effect on our everyday lives. And in this context, this doesn't just mean bending spoons. It means subtly nudging an electrical impulse enough to change the probability that a neuron fires.

In this context, "spirit matter" (as conceived by Mormonism), "revelation" and other such things are all in the broad category of "new particles or fields".

That is a fair correction on wording. The live claim is not "nothing else can exist." It is: nothing unknown can couple to ordinary matter strongly enough to change everyday outcomes, including the probability that a given neuron fires.

If a soul or an act of revelation had to be a new field or particle that continuously exchanges energy-momentum with charges and ions the way known forces do, then yes — a nudge at the synapse is exactly the kind of coupling experiments were built to find. I am not saying that coupling was missed.

What I am disputing, and have for years, is the requirement that revelation or a soul, if real, must be that kind of extra term in the effective theory. That is the step that turns ‘no fifth force in the neural energy range’ into ‘therefore an infinitesimal prior on God speaking.’ A cause that is not another particle species, or that does not act as a stable, law-like force across the board, is not constrained in the same way by crossing symmetry. You can reject those options. You cannot treat the rejection as if it were just the experimental bound on extra particles.

10 hours ago, Analytics said:

The verdict is unambiguous: we’ve found all of the particles that our best current technology enables us to find. Crossing symmetry assures us that, if there were any particles lurking around us that interact with ordinary matter strongly enough to make a difference to the behavior of everyday stuff, those particles should have easily been produced in experiments. But there’s nothing there.

There are probably more particles yet to be found. They just won’t be relevant to our everyday world. The fact that we haven’t yet found such particles tells us a great deal about what properties they must have; that’s the power of quantum field theory. Any particle that we haven’t yet detected must have one of the following features:

1. It could be so very weakly interacting with ordinary matter that it is almost never produced; or—
2. It could be extremely massive, so that it takes collisions at energies even higher than what our best accelerators can achieve in order to make it; or—
3. It could be extremely short-lived, so that it gets made but then almost immediately decays away into other particles.

If any particle we haven’t yet found lasted long enough and interacted with ordinary matter with sufficient strength that it could possibly affect the physics of everyday goings-on, we would have produced it in experiments by now.

Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (pp. 182-183). (Function). Kindle Edition. 

In this context, "the physics of everyday goings-on" include having enough impact to even subtly affect your brain.

He addresses at least part of your point directly:

To imagine that the soul pushes around the electrons and protons and neutrons in our bodies in a way that we haven’t yet detected  is certainly conceivable, but it implies that modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed. How should we modify the Core Theory equation (shown in the Appendix) to allow for the soul to influence the particles in our body? It’s a substantial hurdle to leap.

Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (p. 212). (Function). Kindle Edition. 

Carroll published this 11 years ago, and unsurprisingly it still holds up. If your beliefs about spirit matter and revelation are true, then "modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed."

Here's the thing. If you want to expose your beliefs to the baloney detection kit, you can do so. If you don't want to, you don't have to. But arguing with people on the internet isn't the same thing as rigorously examining your beliefs the way Sagan recommends. From my perspective, it seems really internally inconsistent to say that you accept science, but selectively reject its implications on philosophical grounds when it contradicts your religious beliefs, and to say that you are in favor of applying the baloney detection kit to the silly beliefs of others, but don't think it is applicable to your beliefs for philosophical reasons.

"Bigot."

"Really, really hate."

"Morally outraged."'

"Awful."

"Boloney Detection Kit."

I accept the particle-physics claim in those pages. If something is another quantum field that lives long enough and couples to ordinary matter strongly enough to change everyday processes — including whether a neuron is a little more or less likely to fire — then yes, we should have produced it. Carroll’s three options for missing particles are the right list for that kind of thing. I am not arguing that a hidden electron-like field was overlooked.

The religious claim I am defending is not "there is a fourth option: a long-lived, moderately coupled particle we somehow missed."  It is that God, or a soul, or revelation, need not be a term you add to the Core Theory equation the way you add a new force. Carroll is right that if you insist on modeling the soul as something that pushes protons and electrons around inside the existing Lagrangian, you have a serious problem. That ‘if’ is the whole dispute. Treating every influence on a brain as "must be a modification of this equation in a way colliders would have seen" is the physicalist rule. The experiments bound extra couplings. They do not by themselves prove that the only possible cause is an extra coupling.

On the kit: I have said from the start that Sagan’s tools are the right tools for candidate scientific mechanisms: ESP papers, medical miracles, sloppy history, fraud. I apply them there. I do not accept that the same protocol, with the same restriction on admissible causes, is a neutral test of whether God can speak. That is not "science for thee but not for me." It is refusing to let a method designed to police extra particles in the everyday domain also serve as the sole judge of a different kind of claim. You can call that selective. I call it not collapsing two hypotheses into one.

I can be wrong about God. What I will not grant is that Carroll’s bound on undiscovered particles is the demonstration that I am wrong, or that declining to treat revelation as a missing term in the Core Theory is a refusal to think.

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

It isn't telling me "what I want to hear." It is summarizing what I've already said in these conversations. 

I have limiting principles, but they are intentionally a little bit blurry so that people of good will have some discretion to make good decisions in complicated edge cases.

Okay.  The "intentionally a little bit blurry" comes across - quite strongly, in my view - as evasive and vague, as effectively impossible to apply, as motte-and-bailey.

I was in a hearing last week in which the judge was rendering a decision on a motion for summary judgment I had filed.  The opposing attorney, David, had filed an opposing memorandum that either dodged many of the points of law I was making or only addressed them vaguely and obliquely.

The most acute example was a question about David's first cause of action (I represent the defendant), seeking a judgment that my client, when he foreclosed on the plaintiff's house, violated the law by failing to send a "Notice of Default" to the plaintiff.  This is indisputably a requirement of the nonjudicial foreclosure process in Utah, but the obligation to send it rests with the foreclosure trustee (not my client).  In fact, my client is statutorily prohibited from doing what the trustee is obligated to do.  

At the hearing the judge asked David: "About that first cause of action, you aren't claiming that the defendant was the foreclosure trustee, correct?"  David didn't talk for about 15 seconds, but then said "No, we're not."  The judge then said "And the duty to send a Notice of Default to the property owner is the duty of the trustee, right?"  Another pregnant pause, even longer, then David said "That is correct."  The judge did not ask the next obvious question: "So the first cause of action necessarily fails, doesn't it?  The defendant can't be held liable for not sending a Notice of Default when he had no obligation to do so, right?"  The judge did, however, dismiss the first cause of action a few minutes later.

David did what you have been refusing to do for months now: answer questions directly and candidly.  Of course, he had an obligation to do so, and you do not.

I have been asking for weeks and weeks how you would propose to differentiate which men can legally access women's bathrooms and which cannot.  I have also been asking for "limiting principles" to your proposal.  I have also been asking you to acknowledge that your proposal, in enacted, would result in de facto and/or de jure eradication of sex-segregated spaces.

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

1. The reality and authority of gender identity

Source position — HRC: Gender identity is a person’s deeply felt internal understanding of themselves. That self-understanding should be respected when recognizing their gender. This does not, by itself, establish a particular scientific theory about how gender identity develops. Human Rights Campaign

Your position: You use gender identity to mean someone’s internal sense of themselves, distinct from sex recorded at birth. I found no specific commitment to a theory of its innateness. SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" …

Huh.  ChatGPT doesn't seem to actually address the propositions.

"Proposition 1: 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."

Do you agree or disagree with Proposition 1?  Is gender identity "real, innate and authoritative?"

Do you agree or disagree that "[a] person’s stated identity is the primary fact about whether they are a man, woman, both, or neither?"

What do you mean by "sex recorded at birth?"

If a person is a man by biological sex, but is a "woman" by "gender identity," is that person a man or a woman?

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

2. Recognition of transgender women as women and transgender men as men

Source position — HRC’s Alphonso David: Transgender women genuinely belong to the category women, rather than merely receiving an honorary designation. He defines womanhood through an adult’s understanding of herself as female; that is not a claim that identifying differently changes chromosomes. Senate Judiciary Committee

Your position: You recognize transgender people socially while distinguishing gender from biological sex. You explicitly reject making gender identity replace biological sex for every legal purpose. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

"Proposition 2:   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."

What does "recognize transgender people socially" mean?

Do you agree or disagree that "trans women are women" is a "literal truth?"

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

3. Recognition without mandatory medical transition

Source position — GLAAD: Being transgender does not depend on obtaining a diagnosis, hormones, or surgery. People should not lose recognition because they cannot or do not wish to undergo medical procedures. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

Your position: For ordinary restroom use, you favor individual judgment and sincere identity, not mandatory medical qualification. You exclude insincere claims made as a pretext. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

"Proposition 3:   Self-identification is sufficient. No medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation is required for the identity to be valid."

Do you agree or disagree that a man who "self-identifies" as a woman means he is a woman, regardless of "medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation?"

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

4. Identity denial as a personal harm

Source position — GLAAD: Deliberately invalidating someone’s gender identity can attack their dignity and social legitimacy, not merely dispute an abstract definition. GLAAD expressly connects targeted misgendering with denying who a person is and with broader stigmatization. GLAAD Brand Portal

Your position: You advocate empathy and respectful treatment. I found no statement equating every disagreement about gender classification with denying that a person exists. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

"Proposition 4:   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."

Do you agree that if Person A denies that Person B, a man who "identifies" as a woman, actually is a woman, Person A is denying the "existence" of Person B?

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

5. Biological sex and the limits of rigid classification

Source position — HRC: Intersex variation and medical transition demonstrate that sex characteristics are not perfectly uniform or immutable. HRC therefore rejects describing sex through rigid, exceptionless categories. Human Rights Campaign

Your position: You explicitly argue that sex results from biological processes rather than an immutable essence, and that a strict binary model does not fully describe all variations. You expressly say this need not imply a third sex. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

"Proposition 5:   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."

So is sex a "spectrum" or a "binary?"

How many sexes are there?

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

6. The meaning of “sex assigned at birth”

Source position — HRC/GLAAD: The phrase identifies the classification given to someone at birth, ordinarily based on observed anatomy, which may differ from their later gender identity. It does not inherently mean the classification was arbitrary. Human Rights Campaign

Your position: You introduced definitions explicitly tying the recorded classification to observed genital anatomy, while recognizing that atypical development can require a more involved assignment process. You have not claimed doctors invent biological sex. SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" …

"Proposition 6:   'Assigned sex at birth' is the preferred description of sex, implying a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category."

Do you agree or disagree that "assigned sex at birth" implies "a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category."

Do you think a doctor "assigns" a sex to a newborn or "observes" it?

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

7. Names and pronouns

Source position — HRC/GLAAD: Use people’s stated pronouns and current names, correct misgendering, and respect confidentiality concerning former names. These are expectations of respectful treatment, not merely optional linguistic preferences in the organizations’ accounts. Human Rights Campaign

Your position: You say you try to use requested pronouns as a courtesy. I found no blanket claim from you that every mistake is equivalent to a slur. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

"Proposition 7:   Preferred pronouns and names are morally mandatory. Using sex-based pronouns is 'misgendering'; using a prior name is 'deadnaming.' Both are treated as harms comparable to slurs."

Do you agree or disagree that using sex-based pronouns is "misgendering?"

Do you agree or disagree that using sex-based pronouns is "comparable to slurs?"

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

8. Language that distinguishes sex without delegitimizing people

Source position — HRC: Contrasting transgender people with supposedly “real” men or women treats transgender identities as inauthentic. Its objection is to that framing—not, in the quotation supplied, a comprehensive prohibition on describing anatomy or reproductive characteristics. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

Your position: You openly use biological-sex distinctions and have supplied definitions involving sperm, ovaries, chromosomes, and anatomy. You do not treat discussing those characteristics as inherently objectionable. SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" …

"Proposition 8:   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."

Do you agree or disagree that using terms like "biological male" or "natal sex" are "hate speech or dogwhistles?"

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

9. Affirmation, exploration, and conversion therapy

Source position — distinguish the organizations: HRC condemns the model called gender exploratory therapy as conversion therapy. WPATH, however, explicitly recommends open exploration without favoring a particular identity and distinguishes that from efforts predetermined to make someone identify with their birth-assigned sex. These are not adequately summarized as opposition to all exploration. Human Rights Campaign

Your position: No specific position found on affirmation versus exploratory therapy or watchful waiting.

"Proposition 9:   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.

Do you agree or disagree that "gender dysphoria is validated by affirmation?"

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

10. Medical transition as healthcare

Source position — HRC: Transition-related treatment can be medically necessary and lifesaving; access should not be categorically denied through legislation. That is a claim about access to indicated care, not proof that every requested intervention is appropriate. Human Rights Campaign

Your position: In October 2024, you explicitly said other people’s treatment belongs between them and their doctors, and whether an intervention is advisable must be assessed case by case. You did not endorse every intervention indiscriminately. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

"Proposition 10:   Medical transition (blockers, hormones, surgery) is healthcare, and withholding it is violence. Access is framed as lifesaving; gatekeeping is framed as cruelty."

Do you agree or disagree that withholding medical transition is "violence?"

Do you agree or disagree that medical transition is "lifesaving?"

Do you agree or disagree that "gatekeeping" medical transition is "cruelty?"

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

11. Treatment and recognition of transgender minors

Source position — WPATH: Some adolescents may appropriately receive transition-related treatment, subject to assessment of sustained gender incongruence, maturity, relevant mental-health concerns, and informed consent or assent. Parents ordinarily participate, with exceptions when involvement would be harmful or infeasible. NCBI

Your position: You opposed government micromanagement of these decisions and expressly favored decision-making by parents and children, alongside your case-specific medical approach. No specific age thresholds or detailed eligibility protocol found. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

"Proposition 11:   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."

Do you agree or disagree that "{m}inors {} have a stable, knowable transgender identity that justifies social and often medical transition?"

Do you agree or disagree that "{p}arental or clinical caution {regarding pediatric medical transition procedures} is ... abuse or bigotry?"

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

13. Restrooms, sports, prisons, and other facilities

Source position — distinguish the settings: GLAAD supports gender-identity-consistent restroom access. NWLC explicitly supports transgender women’s participation in women’s sports. WPATH’s institutional-housing guidance considers identity, preference, and safety—not identity alone. These are substantive inclusion positions, but not one identical rule covering every setting. GLAAD Brand Portal

Your position: You distinguish restroom discretion from sports eligibility and prison security. You favor leagues deciding sports rules and have explicitly objected to claims of an automatic right to women’s elite competition. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

"Proposition 13:   Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex. Exclusion of males who identify as women is discrimination."

Do you agree or disagree that "Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex?"

Do you agree or disagree that excluding males "who identify as women" from these spaces "discrimination?"

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

14. Distinguishing people by medical-transition status

Source position — GLAAD: Someone who has not undergone medical transition is not therefore less genuinely transgender or less deserving of recognition. This does not itself establish that every treatment-related eligibility distinction in every setting is forbidden. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

Your position: Your restroom rule requires no medical test, but you allow context-specific eligibility rules elsewhere. No explicit position found on “transmedicalism” as a doctrine about who counts as transgender. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

"Proposition 14:   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.'"

Do you agree or disagree that differentiating trans women in any way (medically-transitioned versus non-medically-transitioned, etc.) is "bigotry?"

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

16. Questions, debate, and harm

Source position — GLAAD: Policy discussion can be legitimate, but GLAAD regards challenges to transgender people’s identities and legitimacy, and targeted misgendering, as potentially dehumanizing rather than neutral debate. It expressly distinguishes legitimate discourse from harassment. GLAAD Brand Portal

Your position: You invite discussion of definitions and evidence. You explicitly oppose disciplining women merely for good-faith privacy concerns or accommodation requests. SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" … Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

"Proposition 16:   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."

Do you agree or disagree that "{a}sking for definitions ('what is a woman?')" is "bad-faith?"  As "endangering trans people?"

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

17. Explaining opposition

Source position — GLAAD: Prominent campaigns against transgender inclusion rely, in its account, on stigmatizing stereotypes and misinformation rather than the neutral concerns they profess. That is its characterization of those campaigns—not evidence that every possible disagreement has the same motive. GLAAD Brand Portal

Your position: You have attributed opposition to manufactured fear and political motives, sometimes broadly. But you also recognize good-faith concerns and explicitly say accusations of bigotry require explanation rather than substituting for argument. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

"Proposition 17:   Opposition is explained as animus. The admissible motives are hatred, disgust, or religion; safety, fairness, child protection, and definitional accuracy are discounted."

Hoo, boy.  This sure would be nice to see, as you have in my recollection been a non-stop member of the bucket brigade drawing water from the "Bigot!" well.

Haven't seen it.

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

19. Women’s rights, gay rights, and competing interests

Source position — NWLC: Including transgender women is part of advancing women’s rights, and exclusionary policies can harm both transgender and cisgender women. The supplied quotations do not establish an obligation for gay people or lesbians to change their attractions or accept particular partners. National Women's Law Center

Your position: You explicitly count biological women’s safety, privacy, dignity, and competitive interests, rather than dismissing them. No position found requiring anyone to alter their sexual attractions. Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board

"Proposition 19:   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.'"

Do you agree or disagree that "sex-based rights" are "bigotry?"

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited yesterday at 02:03 AM by smac97

[Analytics]

11 hours ago, smac97 said:

I have been asking for weeks and weeks how you would propose to differentiate which men can legally access women's bathrooms and which cannot.

And I've been telling you that I don't think we need bathroom laws for the same general reason that we don't need laws about litter boxes in public schools. I've said over and over that if you prove to me there is a need for a law, we can discuss what that law should look like. But I remain unconvinced there is a need. I'm not going to design a law until you demonstrate a law is needed. 

11 hours ago, smac97 said:

"Proposition 1: 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."

Do you agree or disagree with Proposition 1?  Is gender identity "real, innate and authoritative?"

Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence. The general pattern of your "propositions" is to start with a deliberately provocative quote, interpret it in the most hostile way possible, and then replace the nuances with dogmatism. e.g. "Parental caution is abuse or bigotry."

I asked ChatGPT to redline your proposed ideologies for accuracy and this is what it came up with.

Quote

1. Gender identity is real, innate and authoritative, and a person's stated identity is the primary fact determining whether they are a man, woman, both or neither an internal sense of gender that advocates say should generally be respected. HRC defines it as one's internal concept of self; that does not establish a particular theory of innateness. Human Rights Campaign
2. Identity is sex or replaces sex for social/legal purposes. Major advocacy organizations explicitly affirm that trans women are women and trans men are men as gender classifications. That does not mean they claim chromosomes, reproductive anatomy, etc. have changed or are irrelevant for every purpose.
3. Self-identification is sufficient for recognition of a transgender identity; medical treatment is not required for that identity to be valid. HRC Reports
4. Disagreement with gender identity is denial of someone's existence. Deliberate identity denial or misgendering may be stigmatizing and harmful.
5. Sex is a social construct/spectrum and therefore the binary is irrelevant to policy. Sex-associated biology includes atypical/intersex variation, while gender identity is a distinct concept.
6. “Assigned at birth” means biological sex is arbitrary describes the sex classification ordinarily recorded at birth, usually from observable anatomy, which may differ from later gender identity.
7. Names and pronouns are morally compulsory and misgendering is comparable to using a slur should, according to advocacy guidance, generally be respected; intentional misgendering can cause distress. Human Rights Campaign
8. There is no acceptable way to state biological-sex distinctions without committing transphobia. DELETE. Your sources do not establish this.
9. Exploration or caution concerning gender identity is conversion therapy. Advocates oppose therapy aimed at producing a predetermined cisgender outcome; clinical standards nevertheless contemplate assessment and exploration rather than simply performing requested interventions. WPATH
10. Gender-affirming medical treatment can constitute appropriate healthcare for some patients and withholding it is violence; medical gatekeeping is cruelty.
11. Children should simply be affirmed, and parental caution is abuse or bigotry. Some adolescents may appropriately receive gender-related treatment following clinical assessment; advocacy organizations oppose categorical bans.
12. Detransition, comorbidities and social influences are dismissed because acknowledging them threatens the ideology. DELETE as a purported core principle. Clinical standards explicitly address assessment, co-occurring conditions and individualized treatment. WPATH
13. Bathrooms, sports, prisons and shelters must all follow gender identity rather than sex. Many advocates support gender-identity-consistent restroom access, and some organizations explicitly support transgender participation in women's sports. Different institutions nevertheless have different policy considerations. NWLC, for example, really does advocate transgender inclusion in women's sports; that strong position should be represented accurately rather than watered down. National Women's Law Center
14. Any distinction among trans women is itself bigotry. Medical transition is not a prerequisite for being transgender, and some advocates object to treating medically transitioned people as more authentically transgender than others.
15. Lived experience overrides empirical evidence. DELETE. I don't see your cited sources establishing this principle.
16. Questioning transgender claims is itself a form of harm and therefore legitimate debate is impermissible. Targeted harassment or intentional identity denial can be considered harmful. That does not establish a prohibition on good-faith inquiry.
17. Opposition is explained by hatred, bigotry or transphobia rather than legitimate disagreement. Advocacy organizations characterize some particular policies and campaigns as discriminatory, transphobic or based on misinformation. That is a much narrower proposition.
18. Allies must accept and enforce transgender orthodoxy are encouraged to use respectful language, oppose mistreatment and support transgender inclusion.
19. Some women's-rights organizations argue that transgender inclusion is compatible with women's rights, including in athletics. Gay men and lesbians are therefore expected to redefine their sexual orientation or accept partners they are not attracted to. DELETE the latter claim; your citations don't establish it. NWLC's actual sports position is quite strong on its own. National Women's Law Center
20. Advocates recognize nonbinary and other gender-diverse identities and therefore must accept an indefinitely expanding collection of identities with no limiting principle. HRC really does recognize numerous nonbinary identities; that's sufficient to state the actual position.

But even with the redlines I question the accuracy, because these are still the issues that you curated and don't necessarily represent what is important to them.

I asked GPT 6 Pro to synthesis what transgender organizations actually want and what they actually believe. Here is what it came up with:

Quote

 

Articles of Transgender Dignity and Equal Participation

An annotated synthesis of prominent advocacy organizations’ published positions

I reviewed educational materials, policy agendas, legal priorities, healthcare-access guidance, and coalition statements from the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, the ACLU, Lambda Legal, Advocates for Trans Equality, Transgender Law Center, PFLAG, and The Trevor Project, with additional comparisons to Stonewall, TGEU—Trans Europe and Central Asia—and ILGA World.

I gave particular weight to official organizational positions and jointly endorsed statements. For example, a June 2026 school-inclusion letter brought together HRC, ACLU, Lambda Legal, PFLAG, Trevor, TLC, and numerous other organizations; an international sports statement similarly documents shared positions across HRC, TGEU, ILGA World, GLAAD, and others. These provide firmer evidence of common ground than isolated statements by individual activists. A4TE

The articles below are my synthesis, not quotations or a jointly adopted creed. They describe the standards these organizations seek, rather than what existing law necessarily guarantees. The emphasis is primarily American, with international comparisons. Where an organization advocates a more specific or expansive position, the annotation identifies it.

I. Identity, recognition, and personal autonomy

1. Transgender people possess the same dignity, freedom, and entitlement to a fulfilling life as everyone else.

The underlying objective is full membership in society: the ability to live openly, maintain relationships, work, obtain care, and pursue ordinary ambitions without exclusion because of transgender status. TLC emphasizes freedom to live safely and authentically; Lambda Legal describes the objective as full citizenship throughout everyday life. Transgender Law Center

2. Gender identity, bodily sex characteristics, gender expression, and sexual orientation should be understood as distinct concepts.

These organizations describe gender identity as a person’s internal understanding of their gender, which can differ from the classification made at birth. Expression concerns presentation and behavior; sexual orientation concerns attraction. Their explanations are not identical: A4TE emphasizes these distinctions, while Trevor explicitly describes both sex and gender as spectrums and discusses intersex variation. A4TE

3. Transgender women, transgender men, and nonbinary people should be recognized in their genders.

This is substantive recognition, not simply a request to overlook someone’s identity. Within this framework, transgender women are women, transgender men are men, and nonbinary people need not identify exclusively as either. Recognition is intended to guide social treatment and institutional practice, not just private self-description. A4TE also uses male and female for gender identity in some contexts. A4TE

4. There is no single required way to be transgender, express a gender, or transition.

Recognition should not depend on surgery, hormones, legal paperwork, conventional appearance, or conformity to masculine or feminine stereotypes. Some people want medical transition; others do not. Some cannot obtain desired treatment or safely disclose their identities. A4TE expressly says that identity does not depend on which transition steps someone has taken. A4TE

5. Being transgender is not, by itself, a mental illness or moral failing.

The organizations seek removal of classifications and social practices that treat transgender identity itself as something defective requiring correction. This does not mean rejecting psychological support or other healthcare. ILGA World, TGEU, and the East Africa Trans Health and Advocacy Network jointly advocate both depathologization and access to hormones, surgery, and psychosocial support. ILGA World

II. Everyday treatment and belonging

6. People’s names, pronouns, and respectful self-descriptions should be used.

The expectation is affirmative recognition in ordinary interaction. Trevor encourages learning and using a person’s pronouns, including nonbinary pronouns, while treating accidental mistakes as something to correct and move past. Institutional demands are stronger than voluntary courtesy alone: A4TE advocates protections against deliberate, repeated misgendering in workplaces and schools. The Trevor Project

7. Transgender people should control the disclosure of their identity and personal history.

Being told that someone is transgender is not permission to disclose that information to others. Former names, medical treatment, anatomy, and sexual history are private matters, not subjects to which acquaintances are automatically entitled. A4TE’s guidance distinguishes necessary information from curiosity and asks others to respect the person’s choices about disclosure. A4TE

8. Families should provide love, safety, and room for honest self-understanding.

PFLAG encourages listening, maintaining a welcoming home, respecting names and pronouns, and allowing a loved one to explore identity without fear of rejection. It recognizes that relatives may need time and support themselves. For children, it advises keeping options open and listening rather than assuming that every gender-diverse child will want the same social or medical path. PFLAG

9. Transgender people should be represented as complete human beings in media and public life.

GLAAD seeks accurate, inclusive representation across news, entertainment, and digital media, including transgender people telling their own stories. The objective includes depicting relationships, work, creativity, and ordinary life—not only controversy or suffering. Its programs also seek better protection of LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression on social-media platforms. GLAAD

III. Healthcare, bodily autonomy, and insurance

10. Transgender people should receive competent, respectful healthcare responsive to their actual medical needs.

This encompasses ordinary healthcare, not only transition-related treatment. A4TE opposes refusing care or insurance coverage because a service does not match a person’s recorded gender—for example, denying a transgender woman a medically indicated prostate examination because her records say female. Recognition of gender and attention to clinically relevant anatomy are both part of the requested standard. A4TE

11. People should have access to gender-affirming healthcare through informed, individualized decision-making.

The organizations generally regard appropriate transition-related treatment as legitimate healthcare that can be necessary for wellbeing, rather than inherently elective or illegitimate. Some articulate a particularly strong autonomy model: ILGA World and TGEU advocate informed-consent care without mandatory psychiatric approval. That model emphasizes the patient’s informed choices rather than requiring psychiatric certification of the identity itself. ILGA World

12. Transgender young people should have access to developmentally appropriate support and, when indicated, medical care.

This is not an adults-only platform. A4TE’s youth materials support social transition for younger children and individualized consideration of puberty blockers, hormones, and, for some adolescents, surgery. They describe decisions involving clinicians, young people, and supportive parents. PFLAG also stresses developmental appropriateness, expert guidance, and consideration of psychological and social circumstances. These organizations oppose categorical bans that remove those options. A4TE

13. Public and private insurance should cover medically necessary transgender healthcare without categorical discrimination.

The demand is for meaningful coverage through employer plans, private insurance, Medicaid, and other public programs—not merely access to a policy that excludes transition care. A4TE challenges blanket exclusions, procedure-specific exclusions, and restrictions it considers inconsistent with medical standards. Its stated priorities include facial surgery and chest surgery for transgender minors, so the requested coverage is not confined to hormones or genital surgery for adults. A4TE

14. Transgender people should be protected from conversion practices aimed at curing or suppressing their identities.

Organizations advocate legal restrictions on practices intended to change or suppress gender identity, not only public disapproval of them. Stonewall seeks a fully inclusive ban extending across medical, psychological, religious, and other settings. It expressly distinguishes conversion practices from healthy, exploratory conversations. The precise scope of legislation sought is an implementation question, not identical across jurisdictions. Stonewall UK

IV. Equal participation in institutions and public life

15. Gender identity and expression should receive explicit, enforceable nondiscrimination protection.

The central legal agenda covers employment, housing, education, credit, public accommodations, government programs, and other areas of civil participation. HRC’s longstanding Equality Act advocacy includes public spaces, federal funding, and jury service. The objective is protection that can be enforced, rather than relying entirely on individual goodwill or an institution’s voluntary statement of inclusion. Human Rights Campaign

16. Transgender status should not disqualify someone from employment, professional advancement, or public service.

Advocacy includes protection against discriminatory hiring, firing, promotion decisions, harassment, and retaliation. It also includes the ability to transition or be openly transgender while employed. ACLU advocacy extends this principle to military service by opposing categorical exclusion of openly transgender people. These are demands for access to institutions, not only respectful treatment outside them. A4TE

17. Legal names and gender markers should be accessible and consistent with the individual’s identity.

TGEU advocates quick, accessible, transparent procedures based on self-determination, without requirements for surgery, sterilization, divorce, or psychiatric diagnosis. Its approach includes nonbinary people, young people, migrants, and refugees. It also has a broader, formally adopted position favoring removal of gender markers from official identity documents and limiting unnecessary collection of sex and gender information. That latter position is specifically TGEU’s, not something to assume every organization has adopted. TGEU

18. Schools should provide safe, affirming education and equal opportunities for transgender students.

The requested practices include protection from bullying, respectful names and pronouns, participation in school activities, inclusive curricula and books, trained staff, and access to supportive adults. A4TE additionally supports confidentiality of transgender status and equal treatment of LGBTQ student clubs. The June 2026 coalition letter demonstrates substantial organizational agreement on these objectives; Stonewall similarly advocates LGBTQ-inclusive teaching. A4TE

19. Everyday gender-segregated facilities should be accessible consistently with gender identity, with voluntary privacy options.

The mainstream organizational demand includes restrooms and locker rooms, not simply an option to use a separate single-user toilet. A4TE’s school guidance opposes forcing transgender students into separate facilities, while supporting private alternatives when a person wants them. Its general guidance also supports gender-neutral facilities and identity-consistent access without making an identification document the controlling test. A4TE

20. Transgender athletes should have meaningful inclusion in sport, including gender-consistent participation.

This includes advocacy for transgender women and girls participating in women’s and girls’ sports—not merely permission to compete somewhere. The international statement signed by HRC, TGEU, ILGA World, GLAAD, and others opposes exclusionary approaches and invasive sex testing. It also favors case-by-case approaches balancing fairness and inclusion over one-size-fits-all arrangements that segregate athletes. It does not supply one technical eligibility rule for every sport and competitive level. TGEU

21. Transgender people should be free to form families and retain equal parental and reproductive rights.

This encompasses marriage, adoption, fostering, fertility services, and legal protection of parent–child relationships. TGEU also advocates recognizing transgender parents appropriately on family documents, including their children’s birth certificates, rather than using documents that disclose a parent’s former gender classification. Stonewall’s family-formation work includes reducing financial and practical barriers to assisted reproduction. Lambda Legal

22. Protection from violence, harassment, and discrimination should include effective remedies.

The organizations seek prevention, responsive institutions, accessible complaint processes, and protection from retaliation—not simply declarations that mistreatment is unfortunate. Depending on the setting, this means employer action, school intervention, legal assistance, administrative complaints, or court remedies. Lambda Legal also challenges discriminatory policing and abuse within the criminal legal system. A4TE

23. Religious disagreement should not eliminate equal access to public services and civil protections.

Lambda Legal explicitly supports religious freedom while opposing exemptions it regards as allowing discrimination against LGBTQ people in healthcare, child welfare, and other services. Thus the platform includes substantive limits on some claimed religious exemptions. Precisely where the boundary should fall remains a legal and policy question; the organizational position is that religious belief should not generally nullify another person’s civil equality. Lambda Legal

V. Safety, material security, and participation in decisions

24. People in custody should retain safety, dignity, appropriate care, and individualized consideration.

A4TE’s prison advocacy supports individual assessment of vulnerability and risk, serious consideration of a person’s own safety concerns, and housing decisions that are not determined solely by anatomy or birth classification. It also supports privacy in showering, respectful searches, reporting protections, and alternatives to involuntary isolation. This is a more individualized institutional framework than its everyday restroom-access guidance. A4TE

25. Transgender migrants and refugees should have fair access to protection and safe treatment.

TGEU advocates asylum procedures that recognize persecution connected to gender identity, adequately trained officials, and safe reception conditions. It opposes treating countries that criminalize transgender identities as automatically safe destinations. It also identifies barriers arising when applicants have not medically transitioned, cannot safely disclose their identities, or lack identity documents reflecting their gender. TGEU

26. Equality should include the material conditions needed to live safely throughout life.

The agenda includes stable housing, access to services, support for young and older people, and attention to poverty, disability, racism, migration status, and HIV. TLC gives these interconnections particular prominence. Its broader liberation agenda includes abolitionist goals concerning incarceration and rights for people in sex-work economies. Those are significant elements of TLC’s platform, but should not automatically be attributed to every organization sharing the narrower nondiscrimination agenda. Transgender Law Center

27. Transgender people should participate meaningfully in decisions affecting their lives.

Organizations seek a role in designing laws, healthcare services, research, education, and institutional practices—not merely consultation after decisions have been made. ILGA World’s joint statement explicitly calls for participation in health, legal, and human-rights decision-making. TLC emphasizes transgender leadership, particularly by communities whose needs have historically received less attention. ILGA World

 

 

For my part, I disagree with #14, presuming that the individual is the one choosing for themselves to pursue "conversion practices aimed at curing or suppressing their identities." If somebody wants to take the path for themselves, I think they should have that right. Otherwise, i pretty-much agree with all of this.

I realize this is merely what they are advocating for and doesn't represent the underlying "load bearing principles" that drive these things. So, here is my list of the underlying load bearing principles:

Quote

 

The foundation is a combination of moral values, substantive beliefs about gender, beliefs about what causes harm, and judgments about who should make decisions. “Dignity and equality” alone do not explain the whole agenda; the organizations also make particular claims about identity, recognition, healthcare, and exclusion.

The following is a synthesis of their published rationales—not a jointly adopted creed.

1. Equal standing: transgender people’s rights do not depend on other people’s approval.

The starting value is that transgender people belong to the same moral and civic community as everyone else. Their safety, relationships, opportunities, and wellbeing count equally. PFLAG describes its objective as an equitable, inclusive society in which LGBTQ people are safe, empowered, and loved; Lambda Legal frames its work around civil equality. This supplies the foundation for nondiscrimination protections independently of any detailed theory of gender. PFLAG

2. Gender diversity is a legitimate variation in human life, not something inherently defective.

Advocates reject the premise that a transgender identity is itself an illness, moral failure, or condition that society should eliminate. The 2025 joint statement from ILGA World, TGEU, and the East Africa Trans Health and Advocacy Network explicitly calls for removing classifications that treat transgender identities as mental disorders, while preserving access to healthcare. Their distinction is between treating a person’s healthcare needs and treating their identity as the disease. ILGA World

3. Gender identity is a meaningful feature of a person that is not reducible to anatomy or stereotypes.

Their conceptual framework distinguishes internal gender identity from bodily characteristics, sexual attraction, and conformity to masculine or feminine expectations. A4TE expressly distinguishes being transgender from being intersex and from being gender-nonconforming.

Some organizational materials go further: A4TE’s FAQ describes identity as “innate knowledge.” That language is part of its position, although the FAQ does not establish a detailed causal theory explaining how identity develops. The central commitment is to the reality and significance of the identity—not merely the existence of unusual clothing preferences. A4TE

4. Individuals should have primary authority over identifying their own gender.

This combines an epistemic claim—people know their internal experience in a way outsiders do not—with a normative claim—outsiders should not have general authority to decide whether their identity is legitimate.

TGEU makes the normative component especially explicit, describing transgender people as the “sole authority on their gender” and advocating legal recognition without third-party medical or psychological approval. This principle does substantial work in arguments for self-identification and against requiring surgery, diagnosis, or conventional appearance as proof of identity. TGEU

5. Transgender identities warrant actual social recognition, not merely permission to express a belief.

This is a distinct, substantive commitment. A4TE does not simply say that a transgender woman should be permitted to believe she is a woman. It says she should be treated according to her gender identity, and it uses man, woman, male, and female in that gender-identity sense.

Within this framework, recognition is part of equal treatment, rather than an honorary exception to an otherwise birth-sex-exclusive category. That helps explain why advocates connect pronouns, records, and institutional participation to dignity rather than treating them as unrelated requests. A4TE

6. People should have substantial control over their bodies, presentation, and personal information.

The underlying value is self-determination, not a requirement that everyone transition. It supports both obtaining desired care and declining unwanted procedures, as well as choosing how to present oneself and when to disclose transgender status.

The ILGA–TGEU joint statement advocates informed-consent healthcare and opposes medical prerequisites for legal recognition. A4TE’s interpersonal guidance treats medical history and transgender status as private information whose disclosure belongs to the individual. Recognition should not have to be purchased through bodily alteration or surrender of privacy. ILGA World

7. Much of the harm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion—and is therefore preventable.

This is an empirical and explanatory commitment, not merely a moral value. The Trevor Project explicitly attributes elevated suicide risk among LGBTQ young people to mistreatment and stigma rather than identity itself. It uses the minority-stress framework: rejection, discrimination, victimization, and insecure living conditions create additional burdens.

That understanding motivates interventions directed at families, schools, workplaces, and laws—not just at the individual experiencing distress. It is the organization’s explanatory framework; establishing the causal contribution of each factor remains a research question. The Trevor Project

8. Supporting an affirmed gender—and providing transition-related care when needed—can improve wellbeing.

This is another empirical commitment. A4TE argues that social and, for some people, medical transition can relieve dysphoria and enable fulfilling lives. It also says not everyone needs medical treatment and opposes attempts to change identity through conversion therapy.

The underlying therapeutic idea is that helping a person live more congruently with their identity can be appropriate care, rather than requiring the identity to conform to the original classification. The benefits, risks, eligibility criteria, and evidentiary certainty for a particular intervention are additional questions; the general premise does not determine them all. A4TE

9. Equality requires meaningful access, not only formally identical rules.

This is the distinction between formal equality and substantive equality. In the organizations’ approach, a rule can apply to everyone on paper yet deny transgender people effective access to an ordinary service.

A4TE’s insurance advocacy illustrates the reasoning: enrollment alone is insufficient when a plan categorically excludes the transition-related care a person needs. Conversely, a gender marker should not prevent coverage for care relevant to the person’s actual anatomy. The aim is to make the institution work for the person, rather than count nominal eligibility as sufficient. A4TE

10. The goal is belonging and flourishing, not merely the absence of violence.

The desired outcome is being able to live openly, form relationships, learn, work, and participate without treating one’s identity as a shameful secret or permanent exception. PFLAG emphasizes belonging, empowerment, and love. A4TE expressly urges support and inclusion beyond tolerance.

This explains why the agenda includes representation, school culture, everyday language, family acceptance, and participation in communal activities—not only criminal prohibitions or emergency protection. The value being pursued is an ordinary, fulfilling life, rather than bare survival. PFLAG

11. People affected by a policy should help define the problem and shape the response.

The epistemic insight is that people living with institutional barriers possess relevant knowledge that outsiders may overlook. The political principle is that they should participate in decisions affecting them, rather than appear only as subjects of other people’s decisions.

The ILGA–TGEU statement explicitly seeks participation in health, legal, and human-rights decision-making. Transgender Law Center goes further by centering leadership from communities affected by overlapping racial, economic, disability, and migration-related disadvantages. This is both a claim about whose knowledge matters and a commitment about how power should be shared. ILGA World

How those foundations generate the Articles

The connections become clearer when several premises are combined:

Names and pronouns: recognition of gender membership + individual authority over self-description + respect in everyday interaction → an expectation that others use the person’s stated name and pronouns. A4TE

Healthcare and insurance: bodily autonomy + the belief that transition-related treatment can address genuine health needs + substantive equality → access to appropriate care and opposition to categorical insurance exclusions. ILGA World

Schools and public institutions: equal membership + the belief that rejection and exclusion create preventable harm + the objective of meaningful participation → affirmative institutional protections, rather than reliance exclusively on private goodwill. The Trevor Project

Broader social reform: interconnected disadvantage + community leadership → attention to housing, poverty, disability, migration, and incarceration. This connection is particularly prominent in TLC’s agenda and should not be assumed to produce identical commitments in every organization. Transgender Law Center

The important qualification

These principles are not a deductive chain in which “equal dignity” proves every subsequent policy. They are a combination of independent commitments.

For example, believing that someone deserves equal dignity does not, by itself, settle which gender classification an institution should use. Believing that gender identity is real does not establish that it must control every eligibility decision. Believing that a treatment helps some patients does not establish that it is appropriate for every patient.

Those further conclusions require additional judgments about the institution’s purpose, competing interests, evidence, and implementation. The international sports statement endorsed by several advocacy organizations illustrates this: it combines a strong inclusion commitment with a call for approaches that balance inclusion and fairness, rather than supplying one eligibility formula for every sport. TGEU

The deepest shared structure is therefore: equal standing and legitimate gender diversity; self-determination and recognition; preventable harm and potentially beneficial care; meaningful access and participation. Those are the premises doing the work. Particular policies express combinations of them, with different organizations assigning different scope and weight to each.

 

I generally agree with those, too.

Edited 17 hours ago by Analytics

[Analytics]

 

14 hours ago, smac97 said:

I accept the particle-physics claim in those pages. If something is another quantum field that lives long enough and couples to ordinary matter strongly enough to change everyday processes — including whether a neuron is a little more or less likely to fire — then yes, we should have produced it. Carroll’s three options for missing particles are the right list for that kind of thing. I am not arguing that a hidden electron-like field was overlooked.

The religious claim I am defending is not "there is a fourth option: a long-lived, moderately coupled particle we somehow missed."  It is that God, or a soul, or revelation, need not be a term you add to the Core Theory equation the way you add a new force. Carroll is right that if you insist on modeling the soul as something that pushes protons and electrons around inside the existing Lagrangian, you have a serious problem. That ‘if’ is the whole dispute.

"Whether you are a physicalist who believes that there is nothing to us other than the particles of the Core Theory, or someone who thinks that there is some crucial nonphysical component to a human being, everyone admits that the particles are part of who we are. If you want to say there is something else, you have to explain how that something else interacts with the particles."

Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (p. 215). (Function). Kindle Edition. 

You agree with some of this, don't you? Do you agree that particles are at least part of who we are? If you think revelations/spirits interact with your body so that thoughts/impressions/feelings from the spirit somehow make it into your brain so that you can think about them, talk about them, and write about them, then there has to be some mechanism that causes the messages to make it from the immaterial (or "fine and pure" material, or however else you want to think of it), to the physical.

If you believe "God" and "spirits" are out there in a different dimension and don't interact with us, then physics has nothing to say about it. But if you claim that they interact with physical reality, then you are claiming that "modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed."

14 hours ago, smac97 said:

Treating every influence on a brain as "must be a modification of this equation in a way colliders would have seen" is the physicalist rule. The experiments bound extra couplings. They do not by themselves prove that the only possible cause is an extra coupling.

In principle anything could push around matter. The problem for your beliefs is that there is no evidence that anything is ever being pushed around in a way inconsistent with the Core Theory. 

You might quibble and say that there is some evidence--there is some evidence that Jesus walked on water or whatever. But if stuff like that happens, then "modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed." It's conceivable, but only in the same way that its conceivable that the toys come to life whenever we aren't looking. 

14 hours ago, smac97 said:

On the kit: I have said from the start that Sagan’s tools are the right tools for candidate scientific mechanisms: ESP papers, medical miracles, sloppy history, fraud. I apply them there. I do not accept that the same protocol, with the same restriction on admissible causes, is a neutral test of whether God can speak. That is not "science for thee but not for me." It is refusing to let a method designed to police extra particles in the everyday domain also serve as the sole judge of a different kind of claim. You can call that selective. I call it not collapsing two hypotheses into one.

The tool kit is about thinking clearly, overcoming biases, and figuring out what the totality of the evidence implies about the nature of reality. Whether you have some pet beliefs that you want to shield from this level of scrutiny is up to you.

Edited 16 hours ago by Analytics

[california boy]

13 hours ago, smac97 said:

I am reciting how marriage was defined until 2015, at which point five SCOTUS justices decided, on flimsy-bordering-on-pretextual legal grounds, to toss out what is - in my view - the sine qua non attribute of the institution: a male-female pairing.

Argumentum ad populum is a logical error that happens when you claim something is true just because a lot of people believe it.

If SCOTUS were to reverse Obergefell, and if the majority of Americans were to return to disagreeing with same-sex marriage, would you change your views?  

Popular opinion can be fickle.  From June 2026:

U.S. Support for LGBTQ+ Issues Remains Down From Peak

Probably a few reasons for this. Regardless, my perspective on issues of morality, the Law of Chastity, marriage, etc. are not dictated by what is popular, but rather what I feel is right and reasoned.

I have laid out my reasoning.  I look forward to a substantive critique of it.

I am glad of that.  We need to allow each other to room to disagree.

The vast majority of them are "just living together" even 11 years after the legalization of same-sex marriage.

I do not think the typical committed couple is better off with no legal tools at all — no hospital access, no inheritance default, no next-of-kin status. I already said those private goods are real.  But they could have been achieved without radically re-defining marriage.  Moreover, that is not the same question as whether the civil institution of marriage should have been redefined so that it no longer publicly means a union ordered to the possibility of mother-and-father childrearing. A couple can be better off with a contract or a tailored status and still leave the older meaning of marriage intact.

‘Are these two adults happier with a license?’ can be yes for many pairs. ‘Is society better off once the institution no longer distinguishes the kind of union that can produce a child with both a mother and a father?’ is a different question. I have been answering the second one. Treating them as one question is how ‘private goods I already granted’ gets scored as if I said cohabitation with zero recognition is the ideal.

Again, you are using the argumentum ad populum fallacy.  

Again, you were in favor of same-sex marriage when it was not the law of the land and most Americans were opposed to it, right?

I have not defined marriage via number, gender, consanguinity, consent and age.  I have, instead, recited how the law previously treated marriage.

Majority sentiment is evidence about what people now prize in a relationship. It is not a definition of the institution. Plenty of Americans now treat marriage as a diluted form of what it was previously (categorically linked with procreation and child-rearing), and now see it more or less as just some sort of prestige package for adult commitment, severed from that prior categorical link. That is exactly the shift I have been arguing against. Calling the older account ‘radical’ or ‘a Utah thing’ names where you have heard it. It does not show the account is wrong.

The criterion I have cited (among others) is not "this pair will in fact conceive." It is the kind of sexual union that is ordered to generating children and that can give a child a mother and a father. Infertile opposite-sex couples still enter that kind of union. Same-sex couples categorically do not. That is why the law never needed a fertility questionnaire for husband and wife, and why I would not add one. A sex-and-fertility form would treat a contingent medical fact as if it were the same issue as the structure of the pair. It is not.

Two men can have a loyal, legally useful bond. I have not denied that. I have denied that companionship-plus-license is now the whole public meaning of marriage. If most people now want that to be the whole meaning, I guess you can say so.  If you do, you will be tacitly admitting that marriage has been severed from procreation and child-rearing, and that you are on board with this.  That is a proposal to change what the institution is for, not proof that drawing the older line "devalues marriage."

Thanks,

 

13 hours ago, smac97 said:

  Since this is all about the legal definition of marriage that you feel has changed, could you point to where your concept of marriage is stated in the constitution. I’m unaware of any such paragraph affirming your position 

[smac97]

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

And I've been telling you that I don't think we need bathroom laws for the same general reason that we don't need laws about litter boxes in public schools.'

My Question: "{H}ow you would propose to differentiate which men can legally access women's bathrooms and which cannot{?}"

Your Answer: "I don't think we need bathroom laws."

Formulating public policy requires asking and answering difficult questions.  You have a formulation, but you refuse to explain it or clarify it or defend it with any effort at particularity, candor or rigor.

I can't compel you to answer questions.  But this all comes across as very evasive and motte-and-bailey-esque.  I find this very telling.  

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

I've said over and over that if you prove to me there is a need for a law, we can discuss what that law should look like. But I remain unconvinced there is a need. I'm not going to design a law until you demonstrate a law is needed. 

If men want to enter into spaces segregated for women and girls, and others do not want them to, then sooner or later the State needs to decide how to address that. This is not rocket science or actuarial statistics.  It is common sense.  Airy wave-offs like "We don't need such laws" just come across as evasive.  As motte-and-bailey.

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence. The general pattern of your "propositions" is to start with a deliberately provocative quote, interpret it in the most hostile way possible, and then replace the nuances with dogmatism. e.g. "Parental caution is abuse or bigotry."

Okay.  I'll see if I can break down my inquiries.  Some are repeats, since I can't find wording formulate them in a more clinical way. 

I have noticed that you enjoy framing some of your responses as evidentiary objections used in court.  Perhaps you could continue that line of thinking and pretend we are in a deposition.  In the venue, evidentiary objections are generally reserved for further review by the judge (who is not present), so all questions are answered except questions which elicit an answer which may intrude into "privilege" (like attorney-client privilege) or else is objectionable as to form (compound questions, for example).

I hope you'll humor me and just answer the questions as best you can.

• "Proposition 1: 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."

Question #1: Do you think that "gender identity" is "innate" (as in "existing in one from birth; inborn; native")?

Question #2: Do you think that "gender identity" is "authoritative" (as in "having due authority; having the sanction or weight of authority")?  For example, if a man "identifies" as a woman, are other people in society, and society itself, and society's laws, obligated to acquiesce to this "identity?"  To treat this man as if he were a woman in every respect?

Question #3: You have elsewhere differentiated between "gender identity" and biological sex.  Is it your position that a man can be a woman in some circumstances but not others?  For example, a man can be a woman for the purpose of participating in women's sports, but not for the purpose of getting screened for uterine cancer?

• "Proposition 2:   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."

Question #4: Do you agree that "trans women are women?"  

Question #5: Would you characterize "trans women" and "cis women" as co-equal subcategories of "woman?"

Question #6: Are there any circumstances in which a man who "identifies" as a "trans woman" is not a woman?  If so, what are those circumstances?

• "Proposition 3:   Self-identification is sufficient. No medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation is required for the identity to be valid."

Question #7: Do you agree or disagree that a man who "self-identifies" as a woman means he is a woman, regardless of "medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation?"

• "Proposition 4:   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."

Question #8: Do you agree that if Person A denies that Person B, a man who "identifies" as a woman, actually is a woman, Person A is denying the "existence" of Person B?

• "Proposition 5:   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."

Question #9: Is biological sex a "spectrum" or a "binary?"

Question #10: How many sexes are there?

• "Proposition 6:   'Assigned sex at birth' is the preferred description of sex, implying a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category."

Question #11: Do you agree or disagree that "assigned sex at birth" implies "a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category."

Question #12: Do you think a doctor "assigns" a sex to a newborn or "observes" it?

• "Proposition 7:   Preferred pronouns and names are morally mandatory. Using sex-based pronouns is 'misgendering'; using a prior name is 'deadnaming.' Both are treated as harms comparable to slurs."

Question #13: Do you agree or disagree that using sex-based pronouns is "misgendering?"

Question #14: Do you agree or disagree that using sex-based pronouns is "comparable to slurs?"

• "Proposition 8:   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."

Question #15: Do you agree or disagree that using terms like "biological male" or "natal sex" are "hate speech or dogwhistles?"

• "Proposition 10:   Medical transition (blockers, hormones, surgery) is healthcare, and withholding it is violence. Access is framed as lifesaving; gatekeeping is framed as cruelty."

Question #16: Do you agree or disagree that withholding medical transition is "violence?"

Question #17: Do you agree or disagree that medical transition is "lifesaving?"  Please explain what is "lifesaving" about such procedures.

• "Proposition 11:   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."

Question #18: Do you agree or disagree that "{m}inors {} have a stable, knowable transgender identity that justifies social and often medical transition?"

• "Proposition 13:   Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex. Exclusion of males who identify as women is discrimination."

Question #19: Do you agree or disagree that "Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex?"

Question #20: Do you agree or disagree that excluding males "who identify as women" from these spaces is "discrimination?"

• "Proposition 14:   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.'"

Question #21: Do you agree or disagree that differentiating trans women in any way (medically-transitioned versus non-medically-transitioned, etc.) is "bigotry?"

• "Proposition 16:   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."

Question #22: Do you agree or disagree that "{a}sking for definitions ('what is a woman?')" is "bad-faith?"  As "endangering trans people?"

• "Proposition 19:   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.'"

Question #23: Do you agree or disagree that "sex-based rights" are "bigotry?"

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

I realize this is merely what they are advocating for and doesn't represent the underlying "load bearing principles" that drive these things. So, here is my list of the underlying load bearing principles:

Quote

The foundation is a combination of moral values, substantive beliefs about gender, beliefs about what causes harm, and judgments about who should make decisions. “Dignity and equality” alone do not explain the whole agenda; the organizations also make particular claims about identity, recognition, healthcare, and exclusion.

The following is a synthesis of their published rationales—not a jointly adopted creed.

I'll go along with that.  My list was also a synthesis, and not a "jointly adopted creed."

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

1. Equal standing: transgender people’s rights do not depend on other people’s approval.

The starting value is that transgender people belong to the same moral and civic community as everyone else. Their safety, relationships, opportunities, and wellbeing count equally. PFLAG describes its objective as an equitable, inclusive society in which LGBTQ people are safe, empowered, and loved; Lambda Legal frames its work around civil equality. This supplies the foundation for nondiscrimination protections independently of any detailed theory of gender. PFLAG

Sounds grand, except that what "rights" are in view are left as undefined.  And candidly, this looks like this vagueness is intentional. 

And that intentionality looks like part of a motte-and-bailey strategy.  Who could, after all, object to "trans people" having "equal rights?"  Nobody but the bigots, right?  That's the motte.  The (unspoken) baileys, then, are things like "Great!  Now that we've established that trans folks have equal rights, and also that self-declared 'gender identity' and not biological sex is determinative, and also that 'trans women are women,' they cannot be excluded from women sports and bathrooms."

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

2. Gender diversity is a legitimate variation in human life, not something inherently defective.

Advocates reject the premise that a transgender identity is itself an illness, moral failure, or condition that society should eliminate. The 2025 joint statement from ILGA World, TGEU, and the East Africa Trans Health and Advocacy Network explicitly calls for removing classifications that treat transgender identities as mental disorders, while preserving access to healthcare. Their distinction is between treating a person’s healthcare needs and treating their identity as the disease. ILGA World

Again, vague.  What does "gender diversity" mean?

Is "transgender identity" congruent with reality? 

Is "transgender identity" immune from inquiry or critique or disagreement?

Can I declare that I "identify" as the son of Elon Musk, and can I then summarily declare that this identity is not a mental illness?  

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

3. Gender identity is a meaningful feature of a person that is not reducible to anatomy or stereotypes.

Their conceptual framework distinguishes internal gender identity from bodily characteristics, sexual attraction, and conformity to masculine or feminine expectations. A4TE expressly distinguishes being transgender from being intersex and from being gender-nonconforming.

Some organizational materials go further: A4TE’s FAQ describes identity as “innate knowledge.” That language is part of its position, although the FAQ does not establish a detailed causal theory explaining how identity develops. The central commitment is to the reality and significance of the identity—not merely the existence of unusual clothing preferences. A4TE

Again, vague. 

Again, motte-and-bailey.

How is "gender identity" congruent with reality?  

Is "gender identity" predicated on equivocation (about "gender," which can be a synonym for biological sex or a broad reference to stereotypes and assumptions (girls like dolls and pink, boys like trucks and blue, women wear dresses, etc.)?

If "gender identity" is not congruent with reality, why is society obligated to not only accommodate it, but to treat it as if it were congruent with reality?

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

4. Individuals should have primary authority over identifying their own gender.

This combines an epistemic claim—people know their internal experience in a way outsiders do not—with a normative claim—outsiders should not have general authority to decide whether their identity is legitimate.

TGEU makes the normative component especially explicit, describing transgender people as the “sole authority on their gender” and advocating legal recognition without third-party medical or psychological approval. This principle does substantial work in arguments for self-identification and against requiring surgery, diagnosis, or conventional appearance as proof of identity. TGEU

Wow.  Special pleading on steroids.

1. "If I, a biological male born in the early 70s, 'identify' as the son of Elon Musk, outsiders should not have general authority to decide whether that identity is legitimate."
2. "If I, an adult human male, 'identify' as a dragon, outsiders should not have general authority to decide whether that identity is legitimate."
3. "If I, an adult human male, 'identify' as a permanently six-year-old girl, outsiders should not have general authority to decide whether that identity is legitimate."
4. "If I, an adult human male, 'identify' as a woman, outsiders should not have general authority to decide whether that identity is legitimate."

I assume you disagree with items 1-3, but you accept 4.  How do you differentiate 4 from 1-3?

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

5. Transgender identities warrant actual social recognition, not merely permission to express a belief.

This is a distinct, substantive commitment. A4TE does not simply say that a transgender woman should be permitted to believe she is a woman. It says she should be treated according to her gender identity, and it uses man, woman, male, and female in that gender-identity sense.

Within this framework, recognition is part of equal treatment, rather than an honorary exception to an otherwise birth-sex-exclusive category. That helps explain why advocates connect pronouns, records, and institutional participation to dignity rather than treating them as unrelated requests. A4TE

This is the culmination of all the vagueness and motte-and-bailey equivocations and maneuverings.

"Man" now means "adult human male or female."

"Woman" now means "adult human female or male."

"Male" and "female" now refer to both biological sex and "gender identity."

This is the endgame dressed up as a proposition.  It is question begging of the highest order.

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

6. People should have substantial control over their bodies, presentation, and personal information.

The underlying value is self-determination, not a requirement that everyone transition. It supports both obtaining desired care and declining unwanted procedures, as well as choosing how to present oneself and when to disclose transgender status.

The ILGA–TGEU joint statement advocates informed-consent healthcare and opposes medical prerequisites for legal recognition. A4TE’s interpersonal guidance treats medical history and transgender status as private information whose disclosure belongs to the individual. Recognition should not have to be purchased through bodily alteration or surrender of privacy. ILGA World

Motte-and-bailey.  Vagueness and platitudes intended to obscure the actual objectives and meanings in play.

Motte: "People should have substantial control over their bodies"
Bailey: "Men have the right to go into women's bathrooms."

Motte: "People should have substantial control over their bodies"
Bailey: "Children can decide whether to undergo irreversible medical procedures involving the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on."

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

7. Much of the harm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion—and is therefore preventable.

This is an empirical and explanatory commitment, not merely a moral value. The Trevor Project explicitly attributes elevated suicide risk among LGBTQ young people to mistreatment and stigma rather than identity itself. It uses the minority-stress framework: rejection, discrimination, victimization, and insecure living conditions create additional burdens.

That understanding motivates interventions directed at families, schools, workplaces, and laws—not just at the individual experiencing distress. It is the organization’s explanatory framework; establishing the causal contribution of each factor remains a research question. The Trevor Project

Motte-and-bailey.  Vagueness and platitudes intended to obscure the actual objectives and meanings in play.

Motte: "{H}arm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion ... {is} preventable."
Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports."

Motte: "{H}arm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion ... {is} preventable."
Bailey: "Doctors should perform radical medical procedures on gender dysphoric children, procedures which are irreversible, which involve the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on."

Imagine if someone said "Much of the harm associated with being {anorexic} is produced by mistreatment and exclusion—and is therefore preventable."  Would you go along with that?  If not, why not?

What if much of the "harm associated with being transgender" is inherent?  See, e.g., here:

Study: Adolescents Who Received Gender Reassignment Have Worse Mental Health

Quote

A new medical study out of Finland has found that gender-dysphoric adolescents and young adults who were subjected to gender reassignment interventions had worse mental health outcomes than a control group that did not receive such bodily alterations.

 

The study tracked 2,083 people who had sought medical services for gender confusion between 1996 and 2019. The findings are quite specific. From, “Psychiatric Morbidity Among Adolescents and Young Adults Who Contacted Specialised Gender Identity Services in Finland in 1996–2019,” just published in Acta Paediatrica (my emphases, citations omitted):

Gender-referred adolescents showed significantly higher psychiatric morbidity than controls both before (45.7% vs. 15.0%) and ≥ 2 years after referral (61.7% vs. 14.6%). Those referred after 2010 had greater psychiatric needs than earlier cohorts, both before (47.9% vs. 15.3%) and ≥ 2 years after (61.3% vs. 14.2%) referral. Among adolescents who underwent medical gender reassignment, psychiatric morbidity increased markedly during follow-up — rising from 9.8% to 60.7% in feminising gender reassignment and from 21.6% to 54.5% in masculinising gender reassignment. After adjusting for prior psychiatric treatment, all gender-referred adolescents had similarly elevated risks of psychiatric morbidity, with hazard ratios approximately three times higher than female controls and five times higher than male controls.

But what about previous studies that gender ideologues often cite to justify puberty blockers and mastectomies for underage patients? They were inadequate to the task at hand:

Many of the studies in this field are cross-sectional and unsuitable for assessing developments. The few longitudinal studies have been of low quality and provided inconsistent results. The sample sizes have been small; there usually has been no control group, follow-up periods have been short, and the measures of assessing changes in mental health have varied. Loss to follow-up has often been substantial.

Gender reassignment interventions seem to have worsened many of the patients’ mental health:

Considerable increases in need for psychiatric treatment were seen among those adolescents who had undergone medical GR, particularly among those seeking change toward female. Oestrogen has been found to potentially cause depressive symptoms in both cisgender women and transwomen, which may partly explain the increases in psychiatric needs among those who underwent feminising GR. Masculinising hormones may temporarily improve mood, and testosterone-related bodily changes — typically emerging within a few months — could be expected to alleviate GD and subsequently psychiatric treatment needs. However, psychiatric treatment needs were also markedly increased among those who obtained masculinising GR. Subsequent morbidity burden may also arise from treatments not meeting the expectations placed on them.

Here are the “clinical implications”:

Regardless of gender, adolescents suffering from GD present with excessive psychiatric morbidity. Subsequent to medical GR, psychiatric treatment needs appear to increase. It should be noted that in some individuals, medical GR appears to be linked to deterioration in mental health. . . . The effects of medical GR and the expectations of the patient must be addressed before commencing the treatment. The considerable severe psychiatric morbidity prior to contacting the GIS, and its increase over time, suggest that for some of these adolescents, GD may be secondary to other mental health challenges. This underscores the need to thoroughly assess and appropriately treat mental disorders among those seeking GR before and after undergoing irreversible medical treatments. Psychiatric needs must be adequately met.

This study’s results are no surprise as they are consistent with other recent similar work. What should be a surprise — but, alas, isn’t — is much (not all) of the American medical establishment’s refusal to “follow the science” and choosing still to embrace gender ideology. Ditto, progressive lawmakers and officials who continue to propose and enforce laws essentially mandating so-called gender-affirming care.

Is the study a legitimate basis for concern about how we approach gender dysphoria?

Does this study give you pause at all in your advocacy for "trans" stuff?  If not, why not?

When people like me see studies like this, and when we then observe people like you, with your reflexive "Bigot!"-style responses and boy-that-sure-comes-across-as-a-motte-and-bailey-tactic axioms, it ought not surprise you to see us make assessments like this: "Huh, these guys seem really quite bereft of substantive evidence and reasoning as to their advocacy of this ideology.  Their stated claims are, frankly, audacious in their claims, which reflect a fairly patent incongruence with reality and common sense ('trans women are women,' a man can 'become' a woman by 'identifying' as one,' etc.), and yet they act as if disputing or critiquing their basic presuppositions is a profound moral affront ('Bigot!').  It seems like they cannot defend their assertions on their merits, so they must resort to logical fallacies and insults."

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

8. Supporting an affirmed gender—and providing transition-related care when needed—can improve wellbeing.

This is another empirical commitment. A4TE argues that social and, for some people, medical transition can relieve dysphoria and enable fulfilling lives. It also says not everyone needs medical treatment and opposes attempts to change identity through conversion therapy.

The underlying therapeutic idea is that helping a person live more congruently with their identity can be appropriate care, rather than requiring the identity to conform to the original classification. The benefits, risks, eligibility criteria, and evidentiary certainty for a particular intervention are additional questions; the general premise does not determine them all. A4TE

Anecdotally and provisionally and temporarily, perhaps.  Sure would like to see the data.

But supporting incongruent-with-reality notions may also create some real negative effects.  Again, see the Finnish study.  It seems like you guys never given these sorts of things due consideration, and you also attempt to shame others for doing so (boy, that "Bigot!" schtick sure has wide-ranging applications).

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

 

9. Equality requires meaningful access, not only formally identical rules.

This is the distinction between formal equality and substantive equality. In the organizations’ approach, a rule can apply to everyone on paper yet deny transgender people effective access to an ordinary service.

A4TE’s insurance advocacy illustrates the reasoning: enrollment alone is insufficient when a plan categorically excludes the transition-related care a person needs. Conversely, a gender marker should not prevent coverage for care relevant to the person’s actual anatomy. The aim is to make the institution work for the person, rather than count nominal eligibility as sufficient. A4TE

Motte-and-bailey.

Motte: "{D}eny transgender people effective access to an ordinary service."
Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms."

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

10. The goal is belonging and flourishing, not merely the absence of violence.

The desired outcome is being able to live openly, form relationships, learn, work, and participate without treating one’s identity as a shameful secret or permanent exception. PFLAG emphasizes belonging, empowerment, and love. A4TE expressly urges support and inclusion beyond tolerance.

This explains why the agenda includes representation, school culture, everyday language, family acceptance, and participation in communal activities—not only criminal prohibitions or emergency protection. The value being pursued is an ordinary, fulfilling life, rather than bare survival. PFLAG

Motte-and-bailey.

Motte: "The goal is belonging and flourishing."
Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms."

Motte: "The goal is belonging and flourishing."
Bailey: "Doctors should perform radical medical procedures on gender dysphoric children, procedures which are irreversible, which involve the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on."

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited 12 hours ago by smac97

[Analytics]

Since you seem to care so much about this, I'll go into deposition mode and answer your questions. However, the broader context is that as soon as you ask each question, the attorney that hired me will state an objection and would then tell me I could answer the question. 

In this whole thing, I'm just one piece on the chess board. The real argument happens between the two lawyers and the judge. If you asked these questions in a deposition, the lawyers that hired me would vigorously argue about how defective and biased the questions are, and about how they are based on a concocted view of transideology that is based on conflating their words with your definitions so that it means something other than what they intended, and that all of this is then extrapolated in the least charitable way imaginable, sometimes leading to accusations that "trans ideology" is the exact opposite of what your references actually say. 

But heck. For the record, I'll answer your questions, but I will also point out some of the defects in these alleged propositions. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 1: 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."

Question #1: Do you think that "gender identity" is "innate" (as in "existing in one from birth; inborn; native")?

I believe that to be consistent with your source, proposition 1 should read, "Gender identity is an internal sense of gender that advocates say should generally be respected."

I'm agnostic about whether it is innate. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Question #2: Do you think that "gender identity" is "authoritative" (as in "having due authority; having the sanction or weight of authority")?  For example, if a man "identifies" as a woman, are other people in society, and society itself, and society's laws, obligated to acquiesce to this "identity?"  To treat this man as if he were a woman in every respect?

No, I don't think it is "authoritative."

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Question #3: You have elsewhere differentiated between "gender identity" and biological sex.  Is it your position that a man can be a woman in some circumstances but not others?  For example, a man can be a woman for the purpose of participating in women's sports, but not for the purpose of getting screened for uterine cancer?

I believe a person is exactly who they are and what they are in all circumstances. They can be classified one way or the other using different systems, but they don't somehow change from being one thing to the other based on the circumstance. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 2:   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."

Question #4: Do you agree that "trans women are women?"  

To be consistent with your source, Proposition 2 should read, "Major transgender-rights organizations affirm that transgender women are women and transgender men are men as gender classifications. That does not mean they claim chromosomes or anatomy have changed, or are irrelevant for every purpose."

I don't really care about this. Arguing that somebody isn't really a woman is like arguing with somebody isn't really a child of God. But if somebody feels like a woman, I have no problem classifying them that way for general purposes.

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Question #5: Would you characterize "trans women" and "cis women" as co-equal subcategories of "woman?"

Using the definition that gender means how you see yourself on the inside, then a cis woman and a trans woman are both equally valid applications of that system.

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Question #6: Are there any circumstances in which a man who "identifies" as a "trans woman" is not a woman?  If so, what are those circumstances?

People are exactly who and what they are in all circumstances. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 3:   Self-identification is sufficient. No medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation is required for the identity to be valid."

Question #7: Do you agree or disagree that a man who "self-identifies" as a woman means he is a woman, regardless of "medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation?"

To be consistent with your source, proposition 3 should say, "Self-identification is sufficient for recognition as transgender; medical treatment is not required for that identity to be valid."

I generally agree that if somebody self-identifies as transgender, they really are. This doesn't cause them to be something that they aren't. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 4:   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."

Question #8: Do you agree that if Person A denies that Person B, a man who "identifies" as a woman, actually is a woman, Person A is denying the "existence" of Person B?

To be consistent with your source, proposition 4 should say, "Deliberately invalidating someone’s gender identity or targeting them with misgendering can be stigmatizing and harmful. This does not make every disagreement about classification a denial that the person exists."

No, if somebody invalidates somebody's gender identity maybe they are being an obstinate ***, but that doesn't mean they are denying anybody's existence. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 5:   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."

Question #9: Is biological sex a "spectrum" or a "binary?"

To be consistent with your source, Proposition 5 should read, "Sex-associated biology includes atypical and intersex variations, while gender identity is a distinct concept."

Biological sex is both a spectrum and binary (embrace the healing power of and!). Both ways of looking at it are valid, depending upon the context. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Question #10: How many sexes are there?

Two.

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 6:   'Assigned sex at birth' is the preferred description of sex, implying a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category."

Question #11: Do you agree or disagree that "assigned sex at birth" implies "a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category."

To be consistent with your sources, Proposition 6 should read, "“Sex assigned at birth” describes the classification recorded at birth, ordinarily based on observable anatomy. The phrase does not inherently mean biological sex was arbitrary."

I disagree that "assigned sex at birth" implies a bureaucratic label.

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Question #12: Do you think a doctor "assigns" a sex to a newborn or "observes" it?

Doctors classify newborn's sex according to their observations. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 7:   Preferred pronouns and names are morally mandatory. Using sex-based pronouns is 'misgendering'; using a prior name is 'deadnaming.' Both are treated as harms comparable to slurs."

Question #13: Do you agree or disagree that using sex-based pronouns is "misgendering?"

To be consistent with your sources, proposition 7 should read, "People’s names and pronouns should generally be respected; intentional misgendering can cause distress."

Misgendering is defined as using gendered words that don't refer to the person's gender. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Question #14: Do you agree or disagree that using sex-based pronouns is "comparable to slurs?"

It depends upon why somebody does it.

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 8:   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."

Question #15: Do you agree or disagree that using terms like "biological male" or "natal sex" are "hate speech or dogwhistles?"

Your source for 8 neither says nor implies this. 

No, those terms are not hate speech or dogwhistles. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 10:   Medical transition (blockers, hormones, surgery) is healthcare, and withholding it is violence. Access is framed as lifesaving; gatekeeping is framed as cruelty."

Question #16: Do you agree or disagree that withholding medical transition is "violence?"

To be consistent with your sources, Proposition 10 should read, "Some adolescents may appropriately receive gender-related treatment following clinical assessment; advocacy organizations oppose categorical bans."

I believe that medical decisions should be made carefully with conscientious patients, parents (if the child is a minor), and healthcare providers. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Question #17: Do you agree or disagree that medical transition is "lifesaving?"  Please explain what is "lifesaving" about such procedures.

Whether or not any given procedure is lifesaving depends upon the specific situation of the patient. I have no expertise in this; I am not a doctor.

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 11:   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."

Question #18: Do you agree or disagree that "{m}inors {} have a stable, knowable transgender identity that justifies social and often medical transition?"

One of your sources in support of your claim that "Parental or clinical caution is cast as abuse or bigotry" is an article from Equality magazine that has in its bolded summary at the top: "Parents, young people and medical professionals – including mental health providers – make decisions together, and no medical interventions with permanent consequences happen until a transgender person is old enough to give truly informed consent. Gender-affirming care is not provided without heavy consideration and consultation with all involved parties."

It is dishonest to construe this as implying "Parental or clinical caution is cast as abuse or bigorry."

That said, my answer to your question is I don't know.

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 13:   Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex. Exclusion of males who identify as women is discrimination."

Question #19: Do you agree or disagree that "Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex?"

I disagree that there needs to be hard-and-fast laws about such things either way.

Over 200 organizations signed a statement about sports which I agree with. It says, "Sport is a space of empowerment, joy, community, and friendship,...Ensuring the health, safety, privacy, bodily autonomy and integrity of all women and girls in sports is crucial...We call for inclusive approaches that foreground the positive role that sports play in society and ensure that all people, regardless of their gender identity and sex characteristics, can participate in sports safely and equitably. We caution against implementing one-size-fits-all approaches like open categories that risk segregating trans, gender diverse and intersex athletes over case-by-case approaches that seek to balance fairness and inclusion."

Likewise, I'm in favor of case-by-case decisions for prisons and shelters. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Question #20: Do you agree or disagree that excluding males "who identify as women" from these spaces is "discrimination?"

It's discrimination by definition. Whether it is justified depends upon the specifics of the case.

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 14:   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.'"

Question #21: Do you agree or disagree that differentiating trans women in any way (medically-transitioned versus non-medically-transitioned, etc.) is "bigotry?"

I'd have to hear the particulars to know. This is too abstract to mean anything to me without context.

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 16:   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."

Question #22: Do you agree or disagree that "{a}sking for definitions ('what is a woman?')" is "bad-faith?"  As "endangering trans people?"

It depends on the situation. Asking "what is a woman" is often asked in bad faith to make intelligent and nuanced people look stupid to the target audience of people with simplistic world views. 

Does it "endanger" people? Maybe, but that seems like an exaggeration. But such questions generally aren't asked to increase understanding, tolerance, love, and mutual respect. 

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• "Proposition 19:   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.'"

Question #23: Do you agree or disagree that "sex-based rights" are "bigotry?"

I have no idea. I don't know what "sex-based rights" are. 

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Motte-and-bailey.

Motte: "{D}eny transgender people effective access to an ordinary service."
Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms."

Motte-and-bailey.

Motte: "The goal is belonging and flourishing."
Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms."

Pro tip: if you want to avoid looking like a bigot, you should assume that when somebody says their goal is human belonging and flourishing that really is their goal. Assuming the targets of your obsessions have these ulteriour "bailey" motives isn't a good look for you.

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

My Question: "{H}ow you would propose to differentiate which men can legally access women's bathrooms and which cannot{?}"

Your Answer: "I don't think we need bathroom laws."

Formulating public policy requires asking and answering difficult questions.  You have a formulation, but you refuse to explain it or clarify it or defend it with any effort at particularity, candor or rigor....

For your consideration:

Model Public Restroom Access Act

Proposed state legislation

Purpose of this draft. This model keeps sex-designated restrooms available and sets a default rule for people whose gender identity corresponds to their sex. It gives a person whose sincerely held gender identity differs from their sex an individual choice between the designated restrooms, guided by that person’s judgment about what is most appropriate in the circumstances. It also sets conduct-based rules for privacy and safety and limits intrusive inquiries.

An Act Governing Access to Sex Designated Public Restrooms

Be it enacted by the Legislature of this State:

Section 1 Short title

This Act may be cited as the “Public Restroom Access and Dignity Act.”

Section 2 Purpose and scope

(a) The purposes of this Act are to preserve the availability of sex-designated public restrooms; establish a clear ordinary rule for their use; permit a person whose sincerely held gender identity differs from the person’s sex to make an individualized choice; protect the privacy, dignity, and safety of every user; and address misconduct through rules that apply equally to all persons.

(b) This Act applies to a public entity, public accommodation, school, employer, or other operator that provides a multiuser restroom designated for men or women to members of the public, customers, patients, students, employees, members, or invited guests.

(c) This Act governs toilet rooms. It does not establish access rules for showers, locker rooms, changing rooms, sleeping quarters, shelters, correctional facilities, sports participation, or medical treatment. Those settings remain subject to other applicable law and may require separate rules suited to their use and privacy conditions.

(d) Nothing in this Act requires an operator to remove a sex designation, construct a single-user or all-gender restroom, or provide a private restroom. An operator may provide a single-user restroom voluntarily, subject to Section 6.

Section 3 Definitions

As used in this Act:

(1) “Sex” means the male or female classification assigned to a person at birth. This definition is used only to apply the ordinary access rule in Section 4 and does not authorize an operator to collect or demand a birth certificate or other record.

(2) “Gender identity” means a person’s sincerely held internal sense of gender. It may correspond to or differ from the person’s sex and may be expressed as a man, a woman, both, neither, or another gender. Gender identity does not depend on a person’s appearance, clothing, name, pronouns, medical history, treatment, surgery, or identity documents.

(3) “Gender-incongruent person” means a person whose sincerely held gender identity differs from the person’s sex, including a transgender or nonbinary person.

(4) “Sex-designated restroom” means a multiuser toilet room identified for use by men or women.

(5) “Operator” means a person or entity that owns, leases, manages, or controls a place covered by Section 2(b).

(6) “Improper purpose” means knowingly and falsely claiming a gender identity different from one’s sex for the purpose of gaining access to a restroom to commit unlawful conduct, invade another person’s privacy, or harass, intimidate, threaten, or harm another person.

Section 4 Access to sex designated restrooms

(a) An operator may maintain separate restrooms designated for men and women and may post signs identifying them.

(b) Except as provided in subsection (d), a person whose gender identity corresponds to the person’s sex shall use the restroom designated for that sex. A person’s preference or convenience, standing alone, does not make the person eligible to use the restroom designated for the other sex.

(c) A gender-incongruent person may use either sex-designated restroom. The person shall choose, in good faith and according to the person’s sincere judgment, the restroom that is most appropriate in the individual circumstances. Relevant circumstances may include the person’s gender identity, privacy, dignity, comfort, safety, the facility’s design and occupancy, and the practical ability to use the restroom without confrontation. The operator shall not substitute its judgment for the individual’s solely because of the person’s sex, appearance, gender expression, medical history, or another user’s discomfort.

(d) A person may use a restroom different from the one associated with the person’s sex when reasonably necessary to assist a child, dependent, or person with a disability; obtain necessary medical assistance; respond to an emergency; or use a restroom that is otherwise unavailable or inaccessible. This subsection creates a limited practical accommodation and does not expand the choice in subsection (c) to a person whose gender identity corresponds to the person’s sex.

(e) A person may not claim eligibility under subsection (c) for an improper purpose. A person’s choice under subsection (c), when based on a bona fide gender identity that differs from the person’s sex, is authorized by law even if the person has not changed identity documents, undergone medical treatment, or adopted any particular appearance or manner of dress.

(f) An operator shall not require a gender-incongruent person to use a single-user restroom, a separate facility, or a restroom designated for the person’s sex as a condition of access to the restroom selected under subsection (c).

Section 5 Conduct and safety

(a) Every person using a restroom shall respect the privacy and safety of others. This Act does not limit generally applicable laws against assault, voyeurism, stalking, harassment, threats, indecent exposure, recording or photographing another person in a private area, or other unlawful conduct.

(b) A person may not enter or remain in a restroom to observe, follow, intimidate, threaten, expose themself to, photograph, record, or harass another person, or to commit another unlawful act. This prohibition applies regardless of the person’s sex or gender identity.

(c) An operator may privately inquire, direct a person to use a restroom authorized by Section 4, or contact security or law enforcement when specific, articulable facts provide an objectively reasonable basis to believe that the person’s use is not authorized under Section 4, that the person is engaging in conduct prohibited by this section, or that the person is asserting a gender identity for an improper purpose. A report describing specific conduct may be considered. A person’s sex, transgender status, gender expression, appearance, voice, clothing, body, lack of medical transition, or another user’s discomfort, without more, is not a sufficient basis for intervention.

(d) When an inquiry is warranted under subsection (c), an employee should, when practicable, speak privately and discreetly with the person. The inquiry must be limited to the specific facts giving rise to the concern. The employee may accept the person’s good-faith statement that the person is eligible under Section 4, absent specific facts indicating deliberate falsehood or misconduct; no document is required. An operator shall not detain a person or refer the person to law enforcement solely because of a restroom choice authorized by this Act.

Section 6 Privacy and administration

(a) An operator shall not require a person to show identification, medical records, a diagnosis, or proof of treatment or surgery to use a sex-designated restroom. An operator shall not inspect a person’s body or make access depend on a person’s name, pronouns, clothing, or appearance.

(b) An operator that offers a private, single-user restroom or other privacy accommodation shall make it available on the same voluntary terms to users regardless of sex or gender identity. The operator shall not direct or pressure a person to use a separate facility because that person is transgender or gender nonconforming.

(c) An operator may adopt neutral rules to protect privacy and safety, including rules against photography, loitering, harassment, or interference with another person’s use of the facility. The rules must apply equally to all users.

(d) A person may make a good-faith report of specific conduct that raises a privacy or safety concern. The operator shall not treat the report alone, or another user’s discomfort with a person’s presence, as proof of misconduct or as a basis to deny access under Section 4(c). No person may harass, threaten, or intimidate another user because of that user’s sex, gender identity, restroom choice, or good-faith report.

Section 7 Enforcement

(a) The state agency responsible for enforcing public accommodation civil rights laws shall enforce this Act under the procedures and remedies available for those laws. The agency may issue rules or guidance consistent with this Act, including guidance for discreet, conduct-based responses to specific privacy or safety concerns.

(b) A person aggrieved by a violation of this Act may file a complaint with the agency within 300 days after the alleged violation. The agency may investigate, seek conciliation, and order appropriate injunctive relief, restoration of access, compensatory damages, and other remedies authorized by state civil rights law.

(c) A person aggrieved by a violation may bring a civil action within two years after the alleged violation. A court may award declaratory or injunctive relief, actual damages, reasonable attorney’s fees and costs, and any other relief authorized by law. Punitive damages may be awarded only upon proof of willful or malicious conduct and as permitted by law.

(d) A person is not subject to arrest, detention, or a criminal fine solely for a good-faith restroom choice permitted by Section 4(c), a person’s appearance or perceived gender identity, or a refusal to produce identity or medical documents that this Act does not require. This subsection does not limit enforcement of a generally applicable law against independently unlawful conduct.

Section 8 Construction

(a) This Act does not require a person to disclose a gender identity to the public or to another restroom user.

(b) This Act does not determine access to a facility or activity excluded by Section 2(c), and it does not displace a more protective right provided by federal, state, or local law.

(c) If any provision or application of this Act is held invalid, the remaining provisions and applications shall remain in effect to the extent they can be given effect.

Section 9 Effective date

This Act takes effect 90 days after enactment. The state civil rights agency may issue implementing guidance before that date.

Drafting note

How the rule works. The default rule applies when a person’s sex and gender identity correspond: that person uses the corresponding sex-designated restroom. The individual choice applies only to a person with a bona fide, sincerely held gender identity that differs from the person’s sex. For example, a transgender man assigned female at birth may use the men’s room when he sincerely judges it most appropriate in the circumstances; he may also choose the women’s room if he sincerely judges that more appropriate. A cisgender person does not receive that choice merely by preferring the other room.

Administration. The draft uses a sincerity standard without requiring medical or documentary proof. Operators may respond to specific conduct or objective facts, but may not police access based on appearance, sex stereotypes, or discomfort alone. This makes the eligibility rule narrower than unrestricted access while keeping ordinary enforcement private and conduct based.

Relation to comparison laws. Massachusetts provides that users may access sex-segregated facilities consistent with sincerely held gender identity and its Attorney General’s guidance recommends presuming appropriate use, avoiding appearance-only challenges, and responding to misconduct under neutral rules. This model preserves those implementation safeguards but uses a different access rule: it sets a sex-and-gender-congruent default and gives a case-specific choice only to a person whose gender identity differs from sex. Canada’s federal human rights law and Argentina’s Gender Identity Law offer broader civil-rights language on gender identity in services and dignified treatment; neither is treated here as an identical restroom-access statute.

Sources informing the draft

• Massachusetts Acts of 2016 Chapter 134, Transgender Anti-Discrimination Act

• Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 4 Section 7, clause 59, definition of gender identity

• Massachusetts Attorney General, Gender Identity Guidance for Public Accommodations, September 1, 2016

• Canadian Human Rights Act, sections 3 and 5

• Argentina Law 26.743, Gender Identity, articles 1, 2, and 12

[smac97]

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Since you seem to care so much about this, I'll go into deposition mode and answer your questions. However, the broader context is that as soon as you ask each question, the attorney that hired me will state an objection and would then tell me I could answer the question. 

Right.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

In this whole thing, I'm just one piece on the chess board.

And I am interested in what you have to say, and your reasoning and evidence for what you have to say.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

But heck. For the record, I'll answer your questions, but I will also point out some of the defects in these alleged propositions. 

Okay.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Question #1: Do you think that "gender identity" is "innate" (as in "existing in one from birth; inborn; native")?

I believe that to be consistent with your source, proposition 1 should read, "Gender identity is an internal sense of gender that advocates say should generally be respected."

I'm agnostic about whether it is innate. 

Could you elaborate about your agnosticism?  This seems like a fairly important consideration.  There are some real repercussions if "gender identity" is not innate.  And if you think it is innate, then I would like to see evidence for it.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Question #2: Do you think that "gender identity" is "authoritative" (as in "having due authority; having the sanction or weight of authority")?  For example, if a man "identifies" as a woman, are other people in society, and society itself, and society's laws, obligated to acquiesce to this "identity?"  To treat this man as if he were a woman in every respect?

No, I don't think it is "authoritative."

Okay.  If self-declared "gender identity" is not authoritative, then what is "authoritative" in terms of men going into women's spaces?

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Question #3: You have elsewhere differentiated between "gender identity" and biological sex.  Is it your position that a man can be a woman in some circumstances but not others?  For example, a man can be a woman for the purpose of participating in women's sports, but not for the purpose of getting screened for uterine cancer?

I believe a person is exactly who they are and what they are in all circumstances. They can be classified one way or the other using different systems, but they don't somehow change from being one thing to the other based on the circumstance. 

Okay.  Could you walk me through this?

Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is a "woman" for purposes of entering into women's bathrooms and participating in women's sports.

• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of going to a medical clinic and being screened for uterine cancer (because he does not have a uterus).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of pregnancy tests, prenatal care, abortion, ectopic-pregnancy workups (because he does not have a uterus).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of bone-density norms, cardiac risk scores, drug dosing, and reference ranges that differ by sex (creatinine, hemoglobin, iron, liver enzymes).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of prostate exams (because women do not have prostates).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of fertility, contraception, and menopause management. He does not ovulate, menstruate, or undergo female menopause.
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of sex-development disorders and fertility workups (which still start from male or female developmental pathways, not "identity").
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of intimate medical exams, hospital wards, and rape-crisis services organized around female patients
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of forensic examination of skeletal remains, DNA, and blood (which are sexed as male or female).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of epidemiological and crime statistics (collapsing sex into identity hides male-pattern crime and female-pattern disease).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of statements like “She is having a period / is pregnant / needs a hysterectomy” (which are necessarily false when referencing a male).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of producing ova.
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of being a biological mother to a child.

Do you agree or disagree with the bullet list above?

Does this mesh with your "a person is exactly who they are and what they are in all circumstances" position?

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 2:   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."

Question #4: Do you agree that "trans women are women?"  

To be consistent with your source, Proposition 2 should read, "Major transgender-rights organizations affirm that transgender women are women and transgender men are men as gender classifications. That does not mean they claim chromosomes or anatomy have changed, or are irrelevant for every purpose."

I don't really care about this. Arguing that somebody isn't really a woman is like arguing with somebody isn't really a child of God. But if somebody feels like a woman, I have no problem classifying them that way for general purposes.

Quote

Question #5: Would you characterize "trans women" and "cis women" as co-equal subcategories of "woman?"

Using the definition that gender means how you see yourself on the inside, then a cis woman and a trans woman are both equally valid applications of that system.

Quote

Question #6: Are there any circumstances in which a man who "identifies" as a "trans woman" is not a woman?  If so, what are those circumstances?

People are exactly who and what they are in all circumstances. 

That sentence is true, and empty, and not responsive to my question. Of course a person is who he is in every circumstance. The question is whether that person is a woman in every circumstance.

A man who identifies as a woman is still that man when you screen for a uterus, when you ask who can get pregnant, when you set a women’s race, when you sex a skeleton, and when you record who committed a rape. In those settings he is not a woman. He is a male with gender dysphoria.  Do you agree or disagree?

If your view is that ‘woman’ just means ‘whoever says so,’ say that. Then we are arguing about a word (and industrial-scale equivocation about it at that), not about the body. If ‘woman’ still means adult human female, then identification does not travel into medicine, sports, or single-sex spaces. ‘People are exactly who they are’ does not decide which of those two uses you are using.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 3:   Self-identification is sufficient. No medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation is required for the identity to be valid."

Question #7: Do you agree or disagree that a man who "self-identifies" as a woman means he is a woman, regardless of "medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation?"

To be consistent with your source, proposition 3 should say, "Self-identification is sufficient for recognition as transgender; medical treatment is not required for that identity to be valid."

I generally agree that if somebody self-identifies as transgender, they really are. This doesn't cause them to be something that they aren't. 

Again, this is not responsive.  I was asking about "a man who 'self-identifies' as a woman."

Those two sentences point different ways.

‘If somebody self-identifies as transgender, they really are’ can mean only: they really do have that identity or dysphoria. Fine. That is a fact about feelings in their mind.  Do you agree or disagree?

‘This doesn’t cause them to be something that they aren’t’ is the important one. A man is not a woman. Consequently, barring equivocation and/or re-defining what "woman" means, identifying as transgender does not make him female, does not give him a uterus, and does not put him in the women’s category.

So I am asking you to pick one:

1. Self-identification makes him a woman, with or without diagnosis, hormones, surgery, or consistent presentation; or
2. He can be transgender and still not be a woman.

If you mean (2), we agree on the only point I asked. If you mean (1), then ‘doesn’t cause them to be something that they aren’t’ is false.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 4:   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."

Question #8: Do you agree that if Person A denies that Person B, a man who "identifies" as a woman, actually is a woman, Person A is denying the "existence" of Person B?

To be consistent with your source, proposition 4 should say, "Deliberately invalidating someone’s gender identity or targeting them with misgendering can be stigmatizing and harmful. This does not make every disagreement about classification a denial that the person exists."

No, if somebody invalidates somebody's gender identity maybe they are being an obstinate ***, but that doesn't mean they are denying anybody's existence. 

Good. Then we agree on this: saying ‘he is a man, not a woman’ is not a denial that he exists. It is a denial that he is female.

If that is all ‘invalidating an identity’ means, it is not existential. It is a disagreement about a category. Obstinate or not is a separate question from whether the category claim is true.

Phrases like ‘denying trans people’s existence’ or ‘erasing’ them do not fit this case. Person B exists. What is denied is the claim that he is a woman. Those are not the same thing.  

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 5:   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."

Question #9: Is biological sex a "spectrum" or a "binary?"

To be consistent with your source, Proposition 5 should read, "Sex-associated biology includes atypical and intersex variations, while gender identity is a distinct concept."

Biological sex is both a spectrum and binary (embrace the healing power of and!). Both ways of looking at it are valid, depending upon the context. 

You rewrote Proposition 5 so it no longer says what I asked. I did not ask whether atypical development exists, or whether gender identity is a different concept. I asked whether biological sex is a spectrum or a binary.

In sexually reproducing animals, including humans, sex is binary at the level that matters for classification: two gamete types, two reproductive roles. Small and large gametes. Male and female. That is the binary.

Disorders of sex development are disorders of development toward one of those two roles. They are not a third sex and they are not evidence that sex is a continuum like height. Atypical cases do not turn a binary system into a spectrum any more than people born with six fingers turn ‘number of fingers’ into a spectrum of species.

‘Both, depending on context’ is only coherent if you name the context. For policy that tracks reproduction, medicine, sports, crime, and single-sex spaces, the operative fact is male or female, not a sliding scale of traits. If you have a policy context in which ‘spectrum’ does real work and still means sex rather than identity or personality, state it. Otherwise you have agreed that the binary is the one that classifies bodies, and ‘spectrum’ is doing rhetorical work.

So, is the only "context" you have in mind DSDs?  If there are other contexts in which sex is not binary, please explain them.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Question #10: How many sexes are there?

Two.

Then how is sex a "spectrum?"  Are you saying DSDs = third sex?

We agree on the count: two sexes.

As I see it, a binary with two sexes is not also a spectrum of sexes. Variation in height, hormones, or developmental disorders is variation within male and female. It does not add sexes and it does not smear the two into a continuum.

So the earlier line — ‘biological sex is both a spectrum and binary’ — needs a translation. If ‘two’ is your answer, ‘spectrum’ cannot mean ‘more than two sexes’ or ‘sex is not male/female.’ If it only means ‘traits vary,’ say that. Traits varying is not a third sex and it is not a reason to treat a man who identifies as a woman as female

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 6:   'Assigned sex at birth' is the preferred description of sex, implying a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category."

Question #11: Do you agree or disagree that "assigned sex at birth" implies "a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category."

To be consistent with your sources, Proposition 6 should read, "“Sex assigned at birth” describes the classification recorded at birth, ordinarily based on observable anatomy. The phrase does not inherently mean biological sex was arbitrary."

I disagree that "assigned sex at birth" implies a bureaucratic label.

Doctors classify newborn's sex according to their observations. 

The equivocation, it seems, extends beyond "gender" and "woman."  Now we are equivocating about "assign."

Doctors do not assign sex the way a clerk assigns a case number. They observe the reproductive category the child already is — almost always from external anatomy, which tracks the binary of male and female. That is a recording of a fact, not a conferral of a status.

So if ‘sex assigned at birth’ is only a clumsy way to say ‘sex observed and recorded at birth,’ we agree, and the word ‘assigned’ is doing no honest work. We should say ‘sex’ or ‘sex recorded at birth.’

The reason the slogan exists is, I think, the stronger claim: that the classification is a label that can come apart from the body, so a later identity can override it. That is the implication I was asking about. If you reject that implication, you disagree with how the phrase is actually used in the debates over sports, medicine, and single-sex spaces — not merely with my wording of Proposition 6.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 7:   Preferred pronouns and names are morally mandatory. Using sex-based pronouns is 'misgendering'; using a prior name is 'deadnaming.' Both are treated as harms comparable to slurs."

Question #13: Do you agree or disagree that using sex-based pronouns is "misgendering?"

To be consistent with your sources, proposition 7 should read, "People’s names and pronouns should generally be respected; intentional misgendering can cause distress."

Misgendering is defined as using gendered words that don't refer to the person's gender. 

It depends upon why somebody does it.

This folds back to equivocating about "gender."  

Your definition assumes the thing in dispute. If ‘gender’ means identity, then using sex-based pronouns is ‘misgendering’ by stipulation. If ‘gender’ here is just another word for sex, then calling a man ‘he’ is accurate, not a mistype.  This is the utility of the equivocation.  

I am asking the second question: is using sex-based pronouns a wrong — ‘misgendering’ as a harm — or is it ordinary description of sex?

‘It depends why somebody does it’ already gives up Proposition 7 as I wrote it. A slur is a slur even if you were sloppy rather than cruel. If motive matters, then sex-based pronouns are not in that class. They are a disagreement about which fact the pronoun tracks.

I can be polite about a requested name without conceding that ‘she’ is true of a male, and without treating ‘he’ as comparable to a slur.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 8:   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."

Question #15: Do you agree or disagree that using terms like "biological male" or "natal sex" are "hate speech or dogwhistles?"

Your source for 8 neither says nor implies this. 

No, those terms are not hate speech or dogwhistles. 

Then we agree: ‘biological male,’ ‘biological female,’ and ‘natal sex’ are ordinary descriptive terms, not hate speech and not dogwhistles.

Proposition 8 was about a common enforcement move — treating those phrases as if they were slurs so the sex distinction cannot be stated politely. You reject that move. That is good, or else you deny that it exists.  Either way, there is a polite way to state the distinction: the person is male or female.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 10:   Medical transition (blockers, hormones, surgery) is healthcare, and withholding it is violence. Access is framed as lifesaving; gatekeeping is framed as cruelty."

Question #16: Do you agree or disagree that withholding medical transition is "violence?"

To be consistent with your sources, Proposition 10 should read, "Some adolescents may appropriately receive gender-related treatment following clinical assessment; advocacy organizations oppose categorical bans."

I believe that medical decisions should be made carefully with conscientious patients, parents (if the child is a minor), and healthcare providers. 

I asked whether withholding medical transition is violence. You described how you think decisions should be made. Those are different.

A careful no from a clinician, a parent, or a legislature is not an assault. Calling that ‘violence’ is what Proposition 10 is about: turning a medical disagreement into a moral crime so gatekeeping looks like cruelty.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Question #17: Do you agree or disagree that medical transition is "lifesaving?"  Please explain what is "lifesaving" about such procedures.

Whether or not any given procedure is lifesaving depends upon the specific situation of the patient. I have no expertise in this; I am not a doctor.

Please explain what sorts of "specific situation{s}" render medical transition "lifesaving."  

‘Depends on the patient’ and ‘I am not a doctor’ do not tell me whether you accept the public claim: that blockers, hormones, and surgeries are lifesaving care as a class, so that delaying or refusing them is like withholding insulin or a liver or a blood transfusion.  Some interventions are "lifesaving" because they stop an imminent bodily process that would kill the patient.

In my view, transition is not that. It is elective modification of healthy sexed tissue, offered for distress.

As I see it, "lifesaving" is often code for "A gender dysphoric person is threatening suicide unless he gets this procedure" or "Failure to give this person this medical transition procedure will cause him to kill himself."

So it suicidal ideation the "specific situation" you are referencing?  Or are there other situations?

Suicide risk in this population is real. That does not make every requested surgery a life-saving procedure.  I can't think of any other medical procedure that is characterized as "lifesaving" because withholding it will or may drive the patient to suicide.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 11:   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."

Question #18: Do you agree or disagree that "{m}inors {} have a stable, knowable transgender identity that justifies social and often medical transition?"

One of your sources in support of your claim that "Parental or clinical caution is cast as abuse or bigotry" is an article from Equality magazine that has in its bolded summary at the top: "Parents, young people and medical professionals – including mental health providers – make decisions together, and no medical interventions with permanent consequences happen until a transgender person is old enough to give truly informed consent. Gender-affirming care is not provided without heavy consideration and consultation with all involved parties."

It is dishonest to construe this as implying "Parental or clinical caution is cast as abuse or bigorry."

That said, my answer to your question is I don't know.

I don’t know’ is, in my view, enough to reject Proposition 11 as policy. The proposition says minors can have a stable, knowable identity that justifies social and often medical transition. If you do not know that, you do not know enough to treat caution as abuse or to treat blockers and hormones as the default.

Childhood and adolescent identity is plastic. Same-sex attraction, trauma, autism, and social contagion show up at high rates in this group. High levels of desistance is documented when medicalization is not rushed. That is why parental and clinical caution exists. You do not need to call anyone a bigot to say: we do not permanently medicalize a minor on an identity we cannot know is stable.

One of the reasons this proposition exists is because it undermines the notion that "gender identity" is 

On the source: whether one magazine article used the word ‘bigotry’ is a separate fight from the question I asked you. You answered the question. You don’t know. 

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 13:   Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex. Exclusion of males who identify as women is discrimination."

Question #19: Do you agree or disagree that "Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex?"

I disagree that there needs to be hard-and-fast laws about such things either way.

Over 200 organizations signed a statement about sports which I agree with. It says, "Sport is a space of empowerment, joy, community, and friendship,...Ensuring the health, safety, privacy, bodily autonomy and integrity of all women and girls in sports is crucial...We call for inclusive approaches that foreground the positive role that sports play in society and ensure that all people, regardless of their gender identity and sex characteristics, can participate in sports safely and equitably. We caution against implementing one-size-fits-all approaches like open categories that risk segregating trans, gender diverse and intersex athletes over case-by-case approaches that seek to balance fairness and inclusion."

Likewise, I'm in favor of case-by-case decisions for prisons and shelters. 

Then you disagree with Proposition 13 as written. Single-sex spaces need not follow identity as a blanket rule. Good.

Barring people with DSDs, I think the muddled middle of "yes for some males, no for others" is unworkable.  ‘No hard-and-fast laws either way’ plus ‘case-by-case’ still needs a criterion. In sports the relevant facts are not individualized mysteries: male puberty produces a durable performance advantage. A case-by-case panel that cannot say ‘this athlete is male, therefore not in the female category’ is identity policy with extra meetings.

In prisons and shelters the relevant facts are also not mysterious: male-pattern offending and female vulnerability. A case-by-case system that places a male in a women’s unit because he identifies as a woman has already chosen identity. A system that keeps him out of the women’s unit because he is male has chosen sex.

The statement you quote wants safety, privacy, and bodily autonomy for women and girls and also participation ‘regardless of gender identity.’ Those collide when the participant is male. ‘Equitable’ does not tell us who yields.

So the question is not whether you like flexibility. It is: when fairness or safety and identity conflict, which fact controls — sex or identity? If you will not say sex, case-by-case will resolve as identity whenever the male objects.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Question #20: Do you agree or disagree that excluding males "who identify as women" from these spaces is "discrimination?"

It's discrimination by definition. Whether it is justified depends upon the specifics of the case.

If ‘discrimination’ only means ‘drawing a distinction,’ then every single-sex rule is discrimination: women’s sports, women’s prisons, women’s changing rooms. That is not an argument. It is a synonym for ‘classification.’

In ordinary moral and legal use, ‘discrimination’ means an unjustified distinction — usually also an unlawful one. That is the sting in Proposition 13. Exclusion of males from female spaces is then supposed to be the same kind of wrong as excluding people from a restaurant because of race.

I am asking about that sting. Is keeping males out of women’s sports, prisons, shelters, and bathrooms unjust or unlawful as such — or is it a justified sex classification?

You already said justification depends on the case. Then it is not ‘discrimination’ in the condemnatory sense as a rule. It is sex discrimination in the thin sense, which we already knew: the category is sex. The question is whether that category is allowed to do its job.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 14:   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.'"

Question #21: Do you agree or disagree that differentiating trans women in any way (medically-transitioned versus non-medically-transitioned, etc.) is "bigotry?"

I'd have to hear the particulars to know. This is too abstract to mean anything to me without context.

Then you disagree with Proposition 14 as a principle. Distinguishing a male who has had genital surgery from one who has not, or a social-only identification from a medical pathway, is not automatically bigotry. It depends on why the line is drawn.

I acknowledge that there are people who harbor bigoted views of trans people.  The challenge I see is that folks like you seem to characterize all people who disagree with the basic propositions of the trans movement (that sex is mutable, that sex is a "spectrum," that a man can "become" a woman by "identifying" as one, that "trans women are women," and so on).  

That is the whole point of the proposition: some advocates treat any internal line as betrayal and bigotry. You are saying you do not, and I am glad to hear it. Context can include prisons, sports, locker rooms, and medicine — places where the body, not the label, is the issue. If a distinction tracks a real fact, it is classification, not hatred.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 16:   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."

Question #22: Do you agree or disagree that "{a}sking for definitions ('what is a woman?')" is "bad-faith?"  As "endangering trans people?"

It depends on the situation. Asking "what is a woman" is often asked in bad faith to make intelligent and nuanced people look stupid to the target audience of people with simplistic world views. 

Does it "endanger" people? Maybe, but that seems like an exaggeration. But such questions generally aren't asked to increase understanding, tolerance, love, and mutual respect. 

We are making some progress.

"What is a woman?" has become a controversial question.  Imagine that.  Imagine a movement that says audacious things like "trans women are women," and then attribute effrontery to anyone who asks "Okay, then what do you mean by 'woman?'"  How is it that a movement about men becoming women can exist without being able to define its most basic terms?

A request for a definition is not bad faith because the answer is simple. ‘What is a woman?’ is how you find out whether the speaker means adult human female or ‘whoever identifies as one.’ If that makes a ‘nuanced’ view look unstable, the instability is in the view.

Bad faith would be refusing to use the answer, or asking only to humiliate. Asking because prisons, sports, medicine, and language depend on the answer is the opposite. You do not need the question to increase warmth. You need it to know what rule is being proposed.

You already said people are not denied existence when someone denies they are women, that there are two sexes, and that ‘biological male’ is not a slur. Those answers are why the question is asked. If the definition is ‘adult human female,’ a male is not one. If the definition is identity, say that and own the consequences. Neither reply is too stupid to speak.

17 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• "Proposition 19:   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.'"

Question #23: Do you agree or disagree that "sex-based rights" are "bigotry?"

I have no idea. I don't know what "sex-based rights" are. 

Sex-based rights are legal and social rules that use sex — male or female — as the criterion.

Examples: Selective Service; women’s sports and scholarships; women’s prisons, shelters, and changing rooms; the right of a lesbian to date only females; medical and research categories by sex; the right to assemble or organize as women, meaning adult human females.

Proposition 19 says that when those rules exclude males who identify as women, the exclusion is called bigotry. I am asking whether you agree with that accusation.

Is a women’s category that is limited to females bigotry? If you need it narrower: is it bigotry for a women’s prison or a women’s race to categorically exclude males?

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

6 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Motte-and-bailey.

Motte: "{D}eny transgender people effective access to an ordinary service."
Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms."

Motte-and-bailey.

Motte: "The goal is belonging and flourishing."
Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms."

Pro tip: if you want to avoid looking like a bigot, you should assume that when somebody says their goal is human belonging and flourishing that really is their goal. Assuming the targets of your obsessions have these ulteriour "bailey" motives isn't a good look for you.

Again with the "Bigot!" schtick.  You are only proving my point.  

If I say things like "'intentionally a little bit blurry' comes across - quite strongly, in my view - as evasive and vague, as effectively impossible to apply, as motte-and-bailey,'" that is not "bigotry" because I am not expressing an irrational fear or hatred of you.  I just think your reasoning is poor.  Very poor.  And your heavy reliance on logical fallacies and emotionalisms and insults is, in my view, emblematic of something.  Pairing it, as I have, with your obvious intellectual gifts, I have provisionally concluded something, which I have repeated a number of times:

Quote

 I think the "Bigot!" schtick is so frequently utilized because it's all you've got.  I can articulate a reasoned basis for my position.  I don't think you can, either that or you are so immersed in your own worldview that you cannot accommodate the possibility that viewpoints divergent from yours might be reasonable.  So you retreat to name-calling.

You and your compatriots endlessly impute evil motives.  Evidence-free, or even in the presence of reasoned and civil commentary.

My motte-and-bailey assessment is based on fairly extensive interactions with you.

Thanks,

-Smac

 

Edited 5 hours ago by smac97

[Calm]

59 minutes ago, smac97 said:

There are some real repercussions if "gender identity" is not innate.  And if you think it is innate, then I would like to see evidence for it.

There are somethings that are not innate that are still impossible for us to choose to acquire or learn or unlearn, much like how we learn much of our native language before we are conscious of learning it and couldn’t explain why we know you say things a certain way.  And just because we might hate our native tongue for some reason, we can’t somehow erase it from our awareness.  We have no choice but to use it to think generally speaking.

Edited 9 hours ago by Calm

[Calm]

31 minutes ago, smac97 said:

My motte-and-bailey assessment is based on fairly extensive interactions with you.

You could always set a good example and choose not to speculate even if this is true…especially since even extensive interactions don’t always mean we understand the thought behind the words.  I am discovering after 40+ years with my husband, I have been dramatically wrong about some of his thoughts.  He doesn’t talk about his internal experience at all, so it’s been me basing my ideas on his external behavior and behaviors of his siblings.  Turned out even if I could predict his behavior pretty well, I was fundamentally wrong about the drive of those behaviors as he has ADHD. It’s not a lack of caring for what isn’t important to him personally, but the way his brain pays attention.

Edited 9 hours ago by Calm

[smac97]

2 hours ago, Analytics said:

For your consideration:

Model Public Restroom Access Act

Proposed state legislation

Purpose of this draft. This model keeps sex-designated restrooms available and sets a default rule for people whose gender identity corresponds to their sex. It gives a person whose sincerely held gender identity differs from their sex an individual choice between the designated restrooms, guided by that person’s judgment about what is most appropriate in the circumstances. It also sets conduct-based rules for privacy and safety and limits intrusive inquiries.

An Act Governing Access to Sex Designated Public Restrooms

Be it enacted by the Legislature of this State:

Section 1 Short title

This Act may be cited as the “Public Restroom Access and Dignity Act.”

Section 2 Purpose and scope

(a) The purposes of this Act are to preserve the availability of sex-designated public restrooms; establish a clear ordinary rule for their use; permit a person whose sincerely held gender identity differs from the person’s sex to make an individualized choice; protect the privacy, dignity, and safety of every user; and address misconduct through rules that apply equally to all persons.

(b) This Act applies to a public entity, public accommodation, school, employer, or other operator that provides a multiuser restroom designated for men or women to members of the public, customers, patients, students, employees, members, or invited guests.

(c) This Act governs toilet rooms. It does not establish access rules for showers, locker rooms, changing rooms, sleeping quarters, shelters, correctional facilities, sports participation, or medical treatment. Those settings remain subject to other applicable law and may require separate rules suited to their use and privacy conditions.

(d) Nothing in this Act requires an operator to remove a sex designation, construct a single-user or all-gender restroom, or provide a private restroom. An operator may provide a single-user restroom voluntarily, subject to Section 6.

Section 3 Definitions

As used in this Act:

(1) “Sex” means the male or female classification assigned to a person at birth. This definition is used only to apply the ordinary access rule in Section 4 and does not authorize an operator to collect or demand a birth certificate or other record.

(2) “Gender identity” means a person’s sincerely held internal sense of gender. It may correspond to or differ from the person’s sex and may be expressed as a man, a woman, both, neither, or another gender. Gender identity does not depend on a person’s appearance, clothing, name, pronouns, medical history, treatment, surgery, or identity documents.

(3) “Gender-incongruent person” means a person whose sincerely held gender identity differs from the person’s sex, including a transgender or nonbinary person.

(4) “Sex-designated restroom” means a multiuser toilet room identified for use by men or women.

(5) “Operator” means a person or entity that owns, leases, manages, or controls a place covered by Section 2(b).

(6) “Improper purpose” means knowingly and falsely claiming a gender identity different from one’s sex for the purpose of gaining access to a restroom to commit unlawful conduct, invade another person’s privacy, or harass, intimidate, threaten, or harm another person.

Section 4 Access to sex designated restrooms

(a) An operator may maintain separate restrooms designated for men and women and may post signs identifying them.

(b) Except as provided in subsection (d), a person whose gender identity corresponds to the person’s sex shall use the restroom designated for that sex. A person’s preference or convenience, standing alone, does not make the person eligible to use the restroom designated for the other sex.

(c) A gender-incongruent person may use either sex-designated restroom. The person shall choose, in good faith and according to the person’s sincere judgment, the restroom that is most appropriate in the individual circumstances. Relevant circumstances may include the person’s gender identity, privacy, dignity, comfort, safety, the facility’s design and occupancy, and the practical ability to use the restroom without confrontation. The operator shall not substitute its judgment for the individual’s solely because of the person’s sex, appearance, gender expression, medical history, or another user’s discomfort.

(d) A person may use a restroom different from the one associated with the person’s sex when reasonably necessary to assist a child, dependent, or person with a disability; obtain necessary medical assistance; respond to an emergency; or use a restroom that is otherwise unavailable or inaccessible. This subsection creates a limited practical accommodation and does not expand the choice in subsection (c) to a person whose gender identity corresponds to the person’s sex.

(e) A person may not claim eligibility under subsection (c) for an improper purpose. A person’s choice under subsection (c), when based on a bona fide gender identity that differs from the person’s sex, is authorized by law even if the person has not changed identity documents, undergone medical treatment, or adopted any particular appearance or manner of dress.

(f) An operator shall not require a gender-incongruent person to use a single-user restroom, a separate facility, or a restroom designated for the person’s sex as a condition of access to the restroom selected under subsection (c).

Section 5 Conduct and safety

(a) Every person using a restroom shall respect the privacy and safety of others. This Act does not limit generally applicable laws against assault, voyeurism, stalking, harassment, threats, indecent exposure, recording or photographing another person in a private area, or other unlawful conduct.

(b) A person may not enter or remain in a restroom to observe, follow, intimidate, threaten, expose themself to, photograph, record, or harass another person, or to commit another unlawful act. This prohibition applies regardless of the person’s sex or gender identity.

(c) An operator may privately inquire, direct a person to use a restroom authorized by Section 4, or contact security or law enforcement when specific, articulable facts provide an objectively reasonable basis to believe that the person’s use is not authorized under Section 4, that the person is engaging in conduct prohibited by this section, or that the person is asserting a gender identity for an improper purpose. A report describing specific conduct may be considered. A person’s sex, transgender status, gender expression, appearance, voice, clothing, body, lack of medical transition, or another user’s discomfort, without more, is not a sufficient basis for intervention.

(d) When an inquiry is warranted under subsection (c), an employee should, when practicable, speak privately and discreetly with the person. The inquiry must be limited to the specific facts giving rise to the concern. The employee may accept the person’s good-faith statement that the person is eligible under Section 4, absent specific facts indicating deliberate falsehood or misconduct; no document is required. An operator shall not detain a person or refer the person to law enforcement solely because of a restroom choice authorized by this Act.

Section 6 Privacy and administration

(a) An operator shall not require a person to show identification, medical records, a diagnosis, or proof of treatment or surgery to use a sex-designated restroom. An operator shall not inspect a person’s body or make access depend on a person’s name, pronouns, clothing, or appearance.

(b) An operator that offers a private, single-user restroom or other privacy accommodation shall make it available on the same voluntary terms to users regardless of sex or gender identity. The operator shall not direct or pressure a person to use a separate facility because that person is transgender or gender nonconforming.

(c) An operator may adopt neutral rules to protect privacy and safety, including rules against photography, loitering, harassment, or interference with another person’s use of the facility. The rules must apply equally to all users.

(d) A person may make a good-faith report of specific conduct that raises a privacy or safety concern. The operator shall not treat the report alone, or another user’s discomfort with a person’s presence, as proof of misconduct or as a basis to deny access under Section 4(c). No person may harass, threaten, or intimidate another user because of that user’s sex, gender identity, restroom choice, or good-faith report.

Section 7 Enforcement

(a) The state agency responsible for enforcing public accommodation civil rights laws shall enforce this Act under the procedures and remedies available for those laws. The agency may issue rules or guidance consistent with this Act, including guidance for discreet, conduct-based responses to specific privacy or safety concerns.

(b) A person aggrieved by a violation of this Act may file a complaint with the agency within 300 days after the alleged violation. The agency may investigate, seek conciliation, and order appropriate injunctive relief, restoration of access, compensatory damages, and other remedies authorized by state civil rights law.

(c) A person aggrieved by a violation may bring a civil action within two years after the alleged violation. A court may award declaratory or injunctive relief, actual damages, reasonable attorney’s fees and costs, and any other relief authorized by law. Punitive damages may be awarded only upon proof of willful or malicious conduct and as permitted by law.

(d) A person is not subject to arrest, detention, or a criminal fine solely for a good-faith restroom choice permitted by Section 4(c), a person’s appearance or perceived gender identity, or a refusal to produce identity or medical documents that this Act does not require. This subsection does not limit enforcement of a generally applicable law against independently unlawful conduct.

Section 8 Construction

(a) This Act does not require a person to disclose a gender identity to the public or to another restroom user.

(b) This Act does not determine access to a facility or activity excluded by Section 2(c), and it does not displace a more protective right provided by federal, state, or local law.

(c) If any provision or application of this Act is held invalid, the remaining provisions and applications shall remain in effect to the extent they can be given effect.

Section 9 Effective date

This Act takes effect 90 days after enactment. The state civil rights agency may issue implementing guidance before that date.

Drafting note

How the rule works. The default rule applies when a person’s sex and gender identity correspond: that person uses the corresponding sex-designated restroom. The individual choice applies only to a person with a bona fide, sincerely held gender identity that differs from the person’s sex. For example, a transgender man assigned female at birth may use the men’s room when he sincerely judges it most appropriate in the circumstances; he may also choose the women’s room if he sincerely judges that more appropriate. A cisgender person does not receive that choice merely by preferring the other room.

Administration. The draft uses a sincerity standard without requiring medical or documentary proof. Operators may respond to specific conduct or objective facts, but may not police access based on appearance, sex stereotypes, or discomfort alone. This makes the eligibility rule narrower than unrestricted access while keeping ordinary enforcement private and conduct based.

Relation to comparison laws. Massachusetts provides that users may access sex-segregated facilities consistent with sincerely held gender identity and its Attorney General’s guidance recommends presuming appropriate use, avoiding appearance-only challenges, and responding to misconduct under neutral rules. This model preserves those implementation safeguards but uses a different access rule: it sets a sex-and-gender-congruent default and gives a case-specific choice only to a person whose gender identity differs from sex. Canada’s federal human rights law and Argentina’s Gender Identity Law offer broader civil-rights language on gender identity in services and dignified treatment; neither is treated here as an identical restroom-access statute.

Sources informing the draft

• Massachusetts Acts of 2016 Chapter 134, Transgender Anti-Discrimination Act

• Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 4 Section 7, clause 59, definition of gender identity

• Massachusetts Attorney General, Gender Identity Guidance for Public Accommodations, September 1, 2016

• Canadian Human Rights Act, sections 3 and 5

• Argentina Law 26.743, Gender Identity, articles 1, 2, and 12

Hmm.  Where to begin.

1. Sections 4(b) and 4(c)

4(b) and 4(c) do not contradict on paper. They contradict in a bathroom.

• 4(b): If identity matches sex, you use that sex’s room. Preference is not enough.
• 4(c): If identity does not match sex, you may use either room, and the operator may not override you because of sex, appearance, or another user’s discomfort.

The statute therefore has two classes of people and two rules. The problem is that the statute also forbids the only cheap ways to tell which class someone is in.

2. How “sincerely held” would actually be administered

Section 3(2)–(3) and 4(c), (e) make eligibility turn on an internal fact: a bona fide "gender identity" different from sex. It does not require diagnosis, hormones, surgery, consistent presentation, or papers.

Section 5(c)–(d) and 6(a) then strip the usual checks:

• Appearance, voice, clothing, body, lack of transition, and other users’ discomfort are not enough to intervene.
• No ID, no medical records, no inspection.
• If you ask at all, you must accept a good-faith statement unless you have specific facts of “deliberate falsehood or misconduct.”
• Detaining or calling police solely because of a 4(c) choice is forbidden.

So “sincerely held” is administered as:

1. The person says so, or
2. You already have independent evidence of an improper purpose (voyeurism, assault, etc.) — which is a different crime, not a restroom-status hearing.

There is no mid-level process: no board, no card, no “has lived as for 12 months,” no clinician letter. A male who prefers the women’s room and is willing to say “I am gender-incongruent” is, for operational purposes, a 4(c) person. A male who says “the line is shorter” is a 4(b) violator. The difference is the sentence he is willing to utter.

The "improper purpose" stuff (3(6), 4(e)) does not close that gap. It requires knowing falsity plus intent to commit a crime or invade privacy. A male who sincerely (or opportunistically) claims identity and then behaves “normally” in the stall is inside the statute. You cannot treat “I don’t believe you” as enforcement.

Massachusetts-style guidance that this draft cites works the same way: presume appropriate use; don’t police appearance. This draft adds a sex-congruent default that staff cannot apply without doing what the draft bans.

3. The 4(b) / 4(c) tension in practice

Sections is not a drafting glitch. It is a verification glitch.

Staff must apply 4(b) to ordinary males and 4(c) to “gender-incongruent” males. They are told not to use the information they actually have (who looks male, who has a male voice, who other women just reported).

The legal test is "sincerity."

The factual test available in 20 seconds is appearance plus a statement.

Results:

• 4(b) is unenforceable except against someone who admits “I’m a man, I just wanted this room.”  Every opportunist and miscreant will obviously avoid this admission.
• 4(c) is the real rule for any male willing to claim incongruence.  And anyone can claim incongruence.
• Women who object are told discomfort is legally insufficient (5(c), 6(d)).  They have no voice, no say in the administration of the spaces which were designed for them.  Men get to override women on this point for any reason or no reason at all.
• Operators who guess wrong face 4(f) and Section 7 (civil rights complaint, damages, fees).  Huge downsides for impositioning men trying to get into women's bathrooms.  Zero upsides for attempting to keep sex-segregated spaces as sex-segregated spaces.  

That is why “I don’t think we need bathroom laws” and this draft are closer than they look. The draft keeps men’s/women’s signs and then makes the women’s room available to any male who makes the sincerity claim, with liability if staff say no.

4. Civil, not criminal — what that does

Section 7 puts this in the public-accommodation / civil-rights machine: agency, 300-day charge, two-year lawsuit, injunction, compensatory damages, fees; punitive only for willful/malicious. No arrest for a good-faith 4(c) choice (7(d)).

That is a policy choice with predictable effects, all in favor of men and against women who don't want men in women's spaces and anyone who would act to maintain sex-segregated spaces:

• Males denied the women’s room have a clean statutory claim: 4(c) + 4(f) + 5(d). The operator’s defense is “we had specific articulable facts of improper purpose.” Appearance and women’s fear are carved out. Many denials will look like “you look male,” which the Act says is not enough. Expect charges and fee-shifting suits.
• Women denied a female-only space have a much worse claim under this Act. The Act’s purpose includes their privacy, but the operative sections say discomfort is not grounds to exclude a 4(c) user. A woman who wants the operator to keep males out is asking the operator to violate 4(c)/4(f). Her “civil rights” theory has to come from some other law (or a constitutional claim this statute tries to preempt in spirit).
• Operators are the defendant either way. Let him in: women complain, possible separate tort/hostile-environment theories, political cost. Keep him out: this Act’s Section 7. Rational operators will default to access, because the statute’s private right of action is built for the excluded 4(c) claimant, not for the woman who lost sex-separation.
• No criminal backstop for the line itself. Voyeurism and assault remain crimes. Crossing the threshold as a male does not. Enforcement of the category is a civil-rights fight after the fact, not a door policy.

You will not get criminal prosecutions of confused teenagers. You will get agency dockets and fee petitions aimed at schools, gyms, stores, and cities that try to honor 4(b) by eye.

5. Practical failures

1. Unworkable duty at the door. A clerk cannot hold a "sincerity" hearing. The Act pretends they can apply 4(b) without stereotyping. They cannot.

2. Self-ID with extra vocabulary. “Gender-incongruent person” + sincerity + no documents = self-ID for bathrooms. The “default” is for people who do not claim the exception.

3. Asymmetric litigation. The statute creates a right to choose rooms if you claim incongruence, and a right not to be questioned about it. It does not create a right to a room that contains only the other sex. Women who “do not want men in women’s spaces” are not the protected class this bill arms.  Men are, and at the expense of women.

4. Schools and employment. Same text applies to schools and employers (2(b)). A 14-year-old male who states incongruence gets 4(c). Staff who send him to the boys’ room because of sex violate 4(f). That is where most of the conflict will likely be, not airports.

5. “Improper purpose” is too late. It is useful after a camera or an assault. It does not sort the "sincere" dysphoric male from the opportunistic male before entry. The Act forbids using the information that would sort them earlier.

6. Single-user rooms. Section 2(d) and 6(b): you need not build them, and you may not steer the incongruent person into them. The compromise people actually use in buildings (a lockable third room) is legally the optional extra, not the required off-ramp.

7. Scope dodge. 2(c) excludes lockers, showers, prisons, shelters, sports. Those are the harder cases. Leaving them out does not make the restroom rule coherent; it admits the same person is male for a locker and “either room” for a toilet twenty feet away.

8. Conflict with sex-discrimination law. If state or federal law still treats “women” as female, this Act tells operators to do the opposite for restrooms. If identity is already a protected class, this Act is mostly a specification of that. Either way, “case-by-case” in his earlier sports/prison answer is not this bill. This bill is a rule: incongruent → choice; staff → hands off unless a crime is afoot.

9. Eradication dodge: The language pays lip service to designating spaces for women, but then eviscerates - literally de jure - any practical means of maintaining them as such.  Sex-segregated spaces are effectively eradicated.

10. "Reasons for sex-segregated spaces" dodge: All this utterly disregards additional reasons why sex-segregated spaces were created in the first place.  The primary practical function of a restroom is, of course, to allow people to relieve themselves. But the reason public restrooms in this country (and most of the world) have long been separated by sex is not that society was indifferent to who else was present. Sex separation exists precisely because these are spaces that involve partial undress, vulnerability, and physical proximity. The design choice reflects a judgment that safety and privacy and comfort interests differ systematically by sex, especially for women and girls.

Bottom line

The draft answers your question — “which men may use the women’s room?” — with: those who sincerely identify as not matching their sex, as proven by their say-so.

Most telling, it answers “which men may not?” with: those who openly admit they are entering for convenience or opportunism.  Practically speaking, this means everyone can go in.

That is particular enough to critique. It is not a system that preserves women’s rooms as female rooms. It preserves the signs, relocates enforcement into civil-rights litigation, and makes the legally safe move for every operator not to differentiate. That is why it still fails the question you asked him, just with more sections.

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

2 minutes ago, Calm said:

Quote

My motte-and-bailey assessment is based on fairly extensive interactions with you.

You could always set a good example and choose not to speculate.

I think the motte-and-bailey assessment is well-reasoned.  It's not just airy conjecture.  

"I don't think we need bathroom laws" sounds a lot like motte-and-bailey.  It evades and refuses to address the dispute.

Again: Who could, after all, object to "trans people" having "equal rights?"  Nobody but the bigots, right?  That's the motte.  The (unspoken) baileys, then, are things like "Great!  Now that we've established that trans folks have equal rights, and also that self-declared 'gender identity' and not biological sex is determinative, and also that 'trans women are women,' they cannot be excluded from women sports and bathrooms."

Again:

Quote

Quote

5. Transgender identities warrant actual social recognition, not merely permission to express a belief.

This is a distinct, substantive commitment. A4TE does not simply say that a transgender woman should be permitted to believe she is a woman. It says she should be treated according to her gender identity, and it uses man, woman, male, and female in that gender-identity sense.

Within this framework, recognition is part of equal treatment, rather than an honorary exception to an otherwise birth-sex-exclusive category. That helps explain why advocates connect pronouns, records, and institutional participation to dignity rather than treating them as unrelated requests. A4TE

This is the culmination of all the vagueness and motte-and-bailey equivocations and maneuverings.

"Man" now means "adult human male or female."

"Woman" now means "adult human female or male."

"Male" and "female" now refer to both biological sex and "gender identity."

This is the endgame dressed up as a proposition.  It is question begging of the highest order.

Again:

Quote

Quote

6. People should have substantial control over their bodies, presentation, and personal information.

The underlying value is self-determination, not a requirement that everyone transition. It supports both obtaining desired care and declining unwanted procedures, as well as choosing how to present oneself and when to disclose transgender status.

The ILGA–TGEU joint statement advocates informed-consent healthcare and opposes medical prerequisites for legal recognition. A4TE’s interpersonal guidance treats medical history and transgender status as private information whose disclosure belongs to the individual. Recognition should not have to be purchased through bodily alteration or surrender of privacy. ILGA World

Motte-and-bailey.  Vagueness and platitudes intended to obscure the actual objectives and meanings in play.

Motte: "People should have substantial control over their bodies"
Bailey: "Men have the right to go into women's bathrooms."

Motte: "People should have substantial control over their bodies"
Bailey: "Children can decide whether to undergo irreversible medical procedures involving the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on."

Again:

Quote

 

Quote

 

7. Much of the harm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion—and is therefore preventable.

This is an empirical and explanatory commitment, not merely a moral value. The Trevor Project explicitly attributes elevated suicide risk among LGBTQ young people to mistreatment and stigma rather than identity itself. It uses the minority-stress framework: rejection, discrimination, victimization, and insecure living conditions create additional burdens.

That understanding motivates interventions directed at families, schools, workplaces, and laws—not just at the individual experiencing distress. It is the organization’s explanatory framework; establishing the causal contribution of each factor remains a research question. The Trevor Project

 

 

Motte-and-bailey.  Vagueness and platitudes intended to obscure the actual objectives and meanings in play.

Motte: "{H}arm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion ... {is} preventable."
Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports."

Motte: "{H}arm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion ... {is} preventable."
Bailey: "Doctors should perform radical medical procedures on gender dysphoric children, procedures which are irreversible, which involve the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on."

Again:

Quote

 

Quote

 

9. Equality requires meaningful access, not only formally identical rules.

This is the distinction between formal equality and substantive equality. In the organizations’ approach, a rule can apply to everyone on paper yet deny transgender people effective access to an ordinary service.

A4TE’s insurance advocacy illustrates the reasoning: enrollment alone is insufficient when a plan categorically excludes the transition-related care a person needs. Conversely, a gender marker should not prevent coverage for care relevant to the person’s actual anatomy. The aim is to make the institution work for the person, rather than count nominal eligibility as sufficient. A4TE

Motte-and-bailey.

Motte: "{D}eny transgender people effective access to an ordinary service."
Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms."

Again:

Quote

Quote

10. The goal is belonging and flourishing, not merely the absence of violence.

The desired outcome is being able to live openly, form relationships, learn, work, and participate without treating one’s identity as a shameful secret or permanent exception. PFLAG emphasizes belonging, empowerment, and love. A4TE expressly urges support and inclusion beyond tolerance.

This explains why the agenda includes representation, school culture, everyday language, family acceptance, and participation in communal activities—not only criminal prohibitions or emergency protection. The value being pursued is an ordinary, fulfilling life, rather than bare survival. PFLAG

Motte-and-bailey.

Motte: "The goal is belonging and flourishing."
Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms."

Motte: "The goal is belonging and flourishing."
Bailey: "Doctors should perform radical medical procedures on gender dysphoric children, procedures which are irreversible, which involve the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on."

The mottes are all broad and vague generalizations, most of which do not even appear to be in dispute.

• Motte: "People should have substantial control over their bodies."
• Bailey: "Men have the right to go into women's bathrooms."
• Bailey: "Children can decide whether to undergo irreversible medical procedures involving the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on."

Who has said that people should not have substantial control over their bodies?

But then the baileys come along.

And is are the two baileys here not going to be advanced?  Sure seems like they are.

• Motte: "{H}arm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion ... {is} preventable."
• Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports."
• Bailey: "Doctors should perform radical medical procedures on gender dysphoric children, procedures which are irreversible, which involve the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on."

Who has endorsed "mistreatment and exclusion" of trans persons?  Nobody.  

But then the baileys come along.

• Motte: "{D}eny transgender people effective access to an ordinary service."
• Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms."

Who has said that trans persons should be denied "effective access" to anywhere?  Nobody.

But then the baileys come along.

 

• Motte: "The goal is belonging and flourishing."
• Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms."
• Bailey: "Doctors should perform radical medical procedures on gender dysphoric children, procedures which are irreversible, which involve the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on."

Who has disputed the idea that trans persons should "belong" and "flourish?"  Nobody.

But then the baileys come along.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Could you elaborate about your agnosticism? 

Elaborate on my agnosticism about whether gender identity is innate? I don't know how I would know whether it is innate or not. I'm not an expert in this. Why would you expect me to have a well-formed opinion on the specific causes of gender identity?

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Okay.  If self-declared "gender identity" is not authoritative, then what is "authoritative" in terms of men going into women's spaces?

I reject the premise of the question. Being a "woman" isn't a license to go into a "women's spaces" and not being a "woman" doesn't mean you can't ever go there.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Okay.  Could you walk me through this?

Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is a "woman" for purposes of entering into women's bathrooms and participating in women's sports.

• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of going to a medical clinic and being screened for uterine cancer (because he does not have a uterus).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of pregnancy tests, prenatal care, abortion, ectopic-pregnancy workups (because he does not have a uterus).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of bone-density norms, cardiac risk scores, drug dosing, and reference ranges that differ by sex (creatinine, hemoglobin, iron, liver enzymes).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of prostate exams (because women do not have prostates).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of fertility, contraception, and menopause management. He does not ovulate, menstruate, or undergo female menopause.
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of sex-development disorders and fertility workups (which still start from male or female developmental pathways, not "identity").
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of intimate medical exams, hospital wards, and rape-crisis services organized around female patients
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of forensic examination of skeletal remains, DNA, and blood (which are sexed as male or female).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of epidemiological and crime statistics (collapsing sex into identity hides male-pattern crime and female-pattern disease).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of statements like “She is having a period / is pregnant / needs a hysterectomy” (which are necessarily false when referencing a male).
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of producing ova.
• Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of being a biological mother to a child.

For purposes of going to a medical clinic and being screened for uterine cancer, whether somebody "is a woman" is the wrong question. The right question is whether they have a uterus.

For purposes of taking a pregnancy test, whether somebody "is a woman" is the wrong question. What matters is whether the person can get pregnant. 

For purposes of getting a prostate exam, whether somebody "is a woman" is the wrong question. What matters is whether they have a prostate.

etc.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Do you agree or disagree with the bullet list above?

I think the list illustrates why whether or not somebody "is a woman" is a lot less informative than understanding the details of who a person is.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Does this mesh with your "a person is exactly who they are and what they are in all circumstances" position?

The inanity of those questions illustrates my point of how it is better to deal with the specific details of a person rather than whether they "are a woman" according to any definition.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

If your view is that ‘woman’ just means ‘whoever says so,’ say that.

I believe "woman" has multiple definitions. How many definitions do you think it has? I think we should try to understand what somebody means by what they say, even if they choose to use words differently than we do. Do you think we should try to understand others, or should we thrust our definitions onto them?

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Then we are arguing about a word (and industrial-scale equivocation about it at that), not about the body.

Of course we are talking about semantics. Do you really think a medical journal says that declaring sex causes the molecules of your body to rearrange themselves? 

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

So I am asking you to pick one:

1. Self-identification makes him a woman, with or without diagnosis, hormones, surgery, or consistent presentation; or
2. He can be transgender and still not be a woman.

I am choosing the healing power of choosing both. It depends on what the speaker means by the word "woman."

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

‘Both, depending on context’ is only coherent if you name the context.

Both is the only correct answer if you don't name the context.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Then how is sex a "spectrum?"  Are you saying DSDs = third sex?

I’m not saying DSDs represent a third sex. I’m saying sex involves several traits including chromosomes, gonads, reproductive anatomy, hormones, and secondary sex characteristics such as breast development, body hair, voice pitch, muscle mass, fat distribution, and hip and shoulder shape. Gender also involves cultural norms around clothing, grooming, family roles, emotions, and mannerisms. Those traits and expectations vary and overlap: a woman can have traits commonly seen as masculine, and a man can have traits commonly seen as feminine. Men and women both produce testosterone and estrogen, though typical levels and patterns differ, and those hormones influence some of our traits. 

In many contexts, these other things are more important than whether somebody's gonads do or would produce large or small gametes. 

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

So the question is not whether you like flexibility. It is: when fairness or safety and identity conflict, which fact controls — sex or identity?

If you really care about fairness and safety, a case-by-case approach is the best way to attain that--not a rigid rule about "sex".

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

I am asking about that sting. Is keeping males out of women’s sports, prisons, shelters, and bathrooms unjust or unlawful as such — or is it a justified sex classification?

If we really care about privacy, safety, and the wellbeing of people then in general, we should give flexibility to the decision makers on the scene to use their discretion to achieve those goals. Creating rigid rules that take away that flexibility isn't justified. 

What's really clear is that you really, really like rules, and it seems that you are okay chalking up hurting people as collateral damage for the sake of the rules. It seems like you are especially okay if the collateral damage happens to somebody in the LGBTQ community. 

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Is a women’s category that is limited to females bigotry? If you need it narrower: is it bigotry for a women’s prison or a women’s race to categorically exclude males?

To me, it's obvious that creating strict rules around these categories is harmful, and it's hard not to speculate about why certain people want to inflict harm on people in the LGBTQ community.

It's obvious to me you really, really, want rules and are really, really focused on the wrong things.

 

 

 

 

[smac97]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Elaborate on my agnosticism about whether gender identity is innate? I don't know how I would know whether it is innate or not. I'm not an expert in this. Why would you expect me to have a well-formed opinion on the specific causes of gender identity?

I reject the premise of the question. Being a "woman" isn't a license to go into a "women's spaces" and not being a "woman" doesn't mean you can't ever go there.

For purposes of going to a medical clinic and being screened for uterine cancer, whether somebody "is a woman" is the wrong question. The right question is whether they have a uterus.

For purposes of taking a pregnancy test, whether somebody "is a woman" is the wrong question. What matters is whether the person can get pregnant. 

For purposes of getting a prostate exam, whether somebody "is a woman" is the wrong question. What matters is whether they have a prostate.

etc.

I think the list illustrates why whether or not somebody "is a woman" is a lot less informative than understanding the details of who a person is.

The inanity of those questions illustrates my point of how it is better to deal with the specific details of a person rather than whether they "are a woman" according to any definition.

Then we seemingly agree on the list. Uterus, pregnancy, prostate, ova, bone norms, and a female skeleton do not follow identity. They follow sex.

If ‘is she a woman?’ is the wrong question in every one of those settings, then ‘woman’ is not doing biological work. It is a label you apply for other reasons. A person does not become female in a bathroom and male in an oncology clinic. He is male in all of them. That is what ‘exactly who and what they are in all circumstances’ actually means.

So the remaining question is not medicine. It is why the word ‘woman’ should control bathrooms and sports when you have just said it is the "wrong question" wherever the body matters (particularly access to women's bathrooms, women's sports, etc.). If the right question is always the sexed fact — uterus, prostate, male puberty, male pattern — then the bathroom and the race are the same kind of question. The occupant is male. The competitor is male.

Either ‘woman’ means adult human female, in which case he is not one in any of those bullets, including sports and toilets; or ‘woman’ means identity, in which case you have two systems and you have not shown why the identity system wins in the locker room when you admit it loses in the clinic.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

I believe "woman" has multiple definitions.

Aye, there's the rub.  "Woman" includes, amongst your other "multiple definitions," "man."

This is too fundamental a thing to try to sort out here, particularly since you honestly believe it.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

How many definitions do you think it has?

Well, the interesting thing about "definition" is its definition: "the formal statement of the meaning or significance of a word, phrase, idiom, etc., as found in dictionaries."

Also interesting is the etymology of the word:

Quote

late 14c., diffinicioun, definicion, "decision, setting of boundaries, determination and stating of the limits and distinctive nature of a thing," also "limitations," also "a statement of the meaning of a word or phrase," from Old French definicion, from Latin definitionem (nominative definitio) "a bounding, a boundary; a limiting, prescribing; a definition, explanation," the last sense most often in Cicero, noun of action from past-participle stem of definire "to limit, determine, explain," from de "completely" (see de-) + finire "to bound, limit," from finis "boundary, end" (see finish (v.)). In logic, meaning "act of stating what something means" is from 1640s. Meaning "degree of distinctness of the details in a picture" is from 1889.

I can understand that someone is using ‘woman’ to mean identity. Understanding the usage is not the same as accepting it as the rule.

When folks like you re-define "woman" to include its antonym ("man"), we no longer have a common vocabulary.  For you, there are no "boundaries," no "limits and distinctive nature of a thing." 

How many definitions? In ordinary English, and in medicine, sports, and law until yesterday, it had one that mattered: adult human female.

Some people use it resignedly in relation to "trans" folks, as a courtesy title for a male who identifies as female because they don't want to deal with melodrama and emotionalisms, or because they want to avoid the "Bigot!" schtick that you and yours so regularly trot out.  I find this usage to be generally unfortunate, as it amounts to pandering and demeaning behavior.  They don't actually mean it, but acquiescence is better than conflict.

Still other people, including people of genuine intelligence and learning, use it to refer to men who "identify" as women.  Not ironically.  Not resignedly.  Rather, because they have well and truly bought into the notion that a man can "become" a woman.  I ascribe this to "the thrall of ideological capture and obligation."  I honestly cannot fathom how folks like you reconcile yourself to this usage.  

So I acknowledge this sort of secondary use, but not a secondary definition.  It does not make the first use bigotry, and it does not make the second use coherent.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

I think we should try to understand what somebody means by what they say, even if they choose to use words differently than we do. Do you think we should try to understand others, or should we thrust our definitions onto them?

‘Don’t thrust your definition onto them’ is doing the thrusting. Sports categories, prisons, clinics, and pronouns have to pick a criterion: biological sex or "gender identity" or both. If the criterion is self-description, you have already imposed that definition on every female in the room. Asking which fact the word tracks is not a failure of empathy. It is how you decide who is in the category.

So: when you say a man who identifies as a woman is a woman in the bathroom, which definition are you using — adult human female, or whoever says so? I understand both sentences. Only one of them is about sex.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Then we are arguing about a word (and industrial-scale equivocation about it at that), not about the body.

Of course we are talking about semantics. Do you really think a medical journal says that declaring sex causes the molecules of your body to rearrange themselves? 

No. Declaring a sex does not rearrange molecules. That is my point, not yours.

If the body does not change, then calling a man a woman does not make him female. Semantics is what is left: whether we will use ‘woman’ for the unchanged male body in bathrooms, sports, and prisons. A journal that records sex as male while using preferred pronouns has not discovered a new organism. It has split the word from the fact.

So we are not arguing about alchemy. We are arguing about whether the word, ideologically re-defined, gets to override the fact wherever someone wants it to. You already said the clinic should follow the organ, not the label. The molecules stayed put. The label is what you are asking institutions to rearrange.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

So I am asking you to pick one:

1. Self-identification makes him a woman, with or without diagnosis, hormones, surgery, or consistent presentation; or
2. He can be transgender and still not be a woman.

I am choosing the healing power of choosing both. It depends on what the speaker means by the word "woman."

‘It depends what the speaker means’ is how you avoid picking. If Speaker A means adult human female, he is not a woman. If Speaker B means identity, he is. Those are not both true of the same fact. They are two different claims using one word.

You cannot run a bathroom, a steeplechase, or a prison ward on ‘whichever meaning is in the speaker’s head.’ Someone has to choose the criterion. ‘Healing power of both’ means: identity when you want him in the bathroom, sex when a uterus is required. This is entirely ad hoc.  It is equivocation. The body did not change between sentences.

I am not asking what a given speaker might mean. I am asking what you mean when the rule has to be applied. Is he a woman in the sense that excludes him from male and includes him in female — yes or no? If the answer is ‘only if we are using definition B,’ then you have already chosen (1) for policy and (2) for medicine. Say that plainly. ‘Both’ is the dodge.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Then how is sex a "spectrum?"  Are you saying DSDs = third sex?

I’m not saying DSDs represent a third sex. I’m saying sex involves several traits including chromosomes, gonads, reproductive anatomy, hormones, and secondary sex characteristics such as breast development, body hair, voice pitch, muscle mass, fat distribution, and hip and shoulder shape. Gender also involves cultural norms around clothing, grooming, family roles, emotions, and mannerisms. Those traits and expectations vary and overlap: a woman can have traits commonly seen as masculine, and a man can have traits commonly seen as feminine. Men and women both produce testosterone and estrogen, though typical levels and patterns differ, and those hormones influence some of our traits. 

In many contexts, these other things are more important than whether somebody's gonads do or would produce large or small gametes.

Then we agree again: DSDs are not a third sex. There are two sexes.

Chromosomes, gonads, anatomy, hormones, and secondary characteristics are how those two sexes typically develop. They vary. Overlap on hair, voice, or fat distribution does not create extra sexes any more than a short man and a tall woman create a third height-sex. The classification is still which of the two reproductive roles the body is organized toward — large gametes or small.

‘Gender’ as clothing and manners is not sex. Mixing those lists is how ‘spectrum’ gets smuggled back in after you denied a third sex.  Again, equivocation.

‘In many contexts these other things are more important than gametes’ is not a fact about biology. It is a preference about which criterion a rule should use. A women’s race is not scored on voice pitch. A cervix screen is not scored on manners. If you want a policy that ignores sex and uses presentation instead, say that. Do not call the ignored thing a "spectrum."

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

So the question is not whether you like flexibility. It is: when fairness or safety and identity conflict, which fact controls — sex or identity?

If you really care about fairness and safety, a case-by-case approach is the best way to attain that--not a rigid rule about "sex".

"Case-by-case" is a procedure, not a criterion. A panel still has to decide the case. If identity can beat sex whenever the male objects, you have a rigid rule about identity. If sex wins when fairness or safety is the issue, you have a sex rule with a hearing attached.

Fairness in the female category is not mysterious case by case. Male puberty is the relevant fact, and it is not rare or subtle. Safety in a prison or shelter is not mysterious either: the occupant is male. A ‘case-by-case’ process that cannot say that out loud will resolve as inclusion.

If you have a case in which a male should be in the female category because of sex-based fairness or safety, describe it. Flexibility that never produces a "no" is not flexibility. It is the identity rule with more paperwork.  And motte-and-bailey.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

I am asking about that sting. Is keeping males out of women’s sports, prisons, shelters, and bathrooms unjust or unlawful as such — or is it a justified sex classification?

If we really care about privacy, safety, and the wellbeing of people then in general, we should give flexibility to the decision makers on the scene to use their discretion to achieve those goals. Creating rigid rules that take away that flexibility isn't justified. 

What's really clear is that you really, really like rules, and it seems that you are okay chalking up hurting people as collateral damage for the sake of the rules. It seems like you are especially okay if the collateral damage happens to somebody in the LGBTQ community. 

Again: I think the "Bigot!" schtick is so frequently utilized because it's all you've got.  I can articulate a reasoned basis for my position.  I don't think you can, either that or you are so immersed in your own worldview that you cannot accommodate the possibility that viewpoints divergent from yours might be reasonable.  So you retreat to name-calling.

Discretion on the scene still uses a rule. ‘Do what seems kind’ is, I suppose, a rule. ‘Believe the identity claim’ is a rule. ‘Keep the space female’ is a rule. I am asking which fact the person on the scene is allowed to use when those collide.

Keeping males out of women’s sports, prisons, shelters, and bathrooms is a sex classification. It is justified by the same facts you already accepted in the clinic: the body is male. That is not ‘hurting people for the sake of rules’ or because they are 'somebody in the LGBTQ community.'  It is refusing to treat female privacy and a fair female category as collateral.

If a male with dysphoria is harmed by not entering a female space, that is a real cost to him. If females lose a locked room or a protected category, that is a real cost to them. Pointing only at one pile of costs is not compassion. It is picking a side and calling the other side collateral.

I am not asking for a rule because I like rules. I am asking because someone will be decided against. Name the criterion. If it is not sex, it is identity. Discretion that cannot say no to a male is identity.  And it's not "discretion."

As for "collateral damage happens to somebody," I openly acknowledge that I think questions about spaces created to benefit women and girls should predominantly and ultimately be answered by addressing the needs and preferences of women and girls, more so than the men who want to go into those spaces. 

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Is a women’s category that is limited to females bigotry? If you need it narrower: is it bigotry for a women’s prison or a women’s race to categorically exclude males?

To me, it's obvious that creating strict rules around these categories is harmful, and it's hard not to speculate about why certain people want to inflict harm on people in the LGBTQ community.

It's obvious to me you really, really, want rules and are really, really focused on the wrong things.

Non-responsive.  I asked whether a women’s prison or a women’s race limited to females is bigotry. You answered that I like rules and want to harm people. That is not an answer.

A category limited to females excludes males. That is the point of the category. Calling that ‘inflicted harm on the LGBTQ community’ assumes that a male is entitled to the female category. That is the claim under discussion, not a fact you get to by speculating about my motives.

I will not litigate why you think I enjoy hurting people. I will repeat the question, which is about the rule, not my soul:

Is it bigotry — yes or no — for a women’s prison or a women’s race to exclude males?

If yes, say so and own that female-only spaces are unjust (you're already there, right?). If no, then ‘strict rules are harmful’ is just a complaint that sex is being used as the criterion. Those are different statements.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited 6 hours ago by smac97

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Then we seemingly agree on the list. Uterus, pregnancy, prostate, ova, bone norms, and a female skeleton do not follow identity. They follow sex.

Not exactly. They follow the unique anatomy of each individual. There are lots of women who don't have uteruses, which is why my frame is better.

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

When folks like you re-define "woman" to include its antonym ("man"), we no longer have a common vocabulary....

It's flattering that you think I have enough influence to redefine words.

I'll use the definitions found in modern dictionaries. If you refuse to use those definitions then yes, we no longer have a common vocabulary and communcation will be impossible.

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

For you, there are no "boundaries," no "limits and distinctive nature of a thing." 

Straw man.

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

No. Declaring a sex does not rearrange molecules. That is my point, not yours.

You are really claiming that my position is that "declaring sex rearranges molecules"?

You are either stupid, blinded by bigotry, or aren't trying to have a good-faith discussion. 

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

A category limited to females excludes males. That is the point of the category. Calling that ‘inflicted harm on the LGBTQ community’ assumes that a male is entitled to the female category. That is the claim under discussion...

To the extent that is the claim under discussion, it is because you refuse to let transgender advocates speak for themselves and instead want to debate the straw men in the "propositions" you invented.

I'm done talking about your straw men. Just because you see the world in a black-and-white way doesn't mean that trans-advocates do. 

For the record, here is my best effort at summarizing what transgender activists really are asking for in these different settings. 

---

There does not appear to be one authoritative manifesto that speaks for every transgender-rights organization on bathrooms, locker rooms, shelters, prisons, and sports. But if the question is what prominent advocacy organizations actually ask for across these different settings, the answer is more nuanced than either “gender identity always controls” or “they merely oppose blanket bans.”

The closest thing I found to a broad overview is Lambda Legal’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the Equality Act, because it discusses restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, prisons, and sports in the same document. The more detailed operational guidance from A4TE, Lambda Legal, GLSEN, domestic-violence organizations, and international LGBTQ organizations makes clear that the requested rules differ substantially by setting.

• Bathrooms: The advocacy position is fairly strong. Transgender people should ordinarily be permitted to use the restroom corresponding to their gender identity. Private or single-user facilities should also be available to people who want additional privacy, but transgender people generally should not be forced to use them merely because they are transgender. Ordinary rules against harassment, voyeurism, assault, etc. remain applicable.

• Locker rooms/changing rooms: Again, the general rule sought is access corresponding to gender identity, but privacy gets considerably more attention. Model policies recommend curtains, partitions, private changing areas, separate changing schedules, and similar accommodations for people who want additional privacy. The idea is to accommodate privacy concerns without automatically excluding or segregating the transgender person.

• Homeless and domestic-violence shelters: The general position favors placement and access consistent with gender identity, but expressly takes account of safety, privacy, vulnerability, and conflicts among residents. Guidance discusses private sleeping or shower areas, placement near staff, and other individualized accommodations. Some advocacy guidance also emphasizes allowing the transgender resident to identify which available arrangement they consider safest. The position is not simply “identity overrides everyone else's safety concerns.”

• Prisons and jails: This is the clearest counterexample to the claim that transgender advocacy demands an automatic identity-only rule everywhere. Advocacy organizations endorse individualized, case-by-case placement. The person's gender identity and own assessment of safety should receive serious consideration, but so should vulnerability, history of abuse, institutional security, disciplinary history, medical considerations, and the characteristics of the available facilities. Anatomy or birth sex should not automatically decide the placement, but neither should gender identity automatically decide it.

• Sports: The major international coalition statement I found explicitly rejects blanket exclusion and one-size-fits-all rules. It calls for case-by-case approaches that balance fairness and inclusion while protecting the health, safety, privacy, bodily integrity, and dignity of all athletes, including women and girls. Some American advocacy organizations take a stronger inclusion-oriented position, particularly concerning school sports, but the broader coalition statement does not say that gender identity automatically overrides every fairness or safety consideration.

So I think the fairest short summary is:

Bathrooms: presumptive gender-identity access.

Locker rooms: presumptive gender-identity access, with meaningful privacy accommodations.

Shelters: identity-consistent access plus individualized safety, privacy, and vulnerability considerations.

Prisons: individualized placement balancing identity, safety, vulnerability, and institutional security.

Sports: strong preference for inclusion, but with explicit case-by-case consideration of fairness, safety, privacy, dignity, and the circumstances of the particular sport.

That distinction seems important. It would be inaccurate to characterize mainstream transgender advocacy as saying:

“Self-identification automatically determines access to every sex-separated setting, regardless of safety, privacy, dignity, fairness, or any other consideration.”

The prison and sports guidance explicitly contradict that characterization.

But the opposite characterization would also be inaccurate. These organizations are generally asking for more than simply “don't enact blanket bans.” In ordinary bathrooms and locker rooms especially, they are asserting a meaningful presumption or right of gender-identity-consistent access.

The recurring principle seems to be something closer to:

Do not categorically exclude transgender people merely because their biological sex differs from their gender identity; begin from inclusion, then address legitimate privacy, safety, dignity, fairness, and security concerns in ways appropriate to the particular setting.

That produces different answers in a bathroom, a locker room, a domestic-violence shelter, a maximum-security prison, and an elite sporting competition—which is precisely why treating all of those settings as though transgender advocates demand one identical “identity always wins” rule badly oversimplifies their actual position.