A Person Uses Transgender Law To Expose Gender Discrimination

[Worgen]

This puts me in mind of someone that decides to point out how corrupt politics is by becoming as corrupt as possible.

 

[The Lunatic]

That's a gross oversimplification of the situation.
Male and female brains are very similar. Why? Because we are all human.

Yes, there are some statistically significant variations between males and females and those have a statistical correlation with a person's gender identity, but to imply that means it's possible to test for someone's gender-identity by scanning their brain is utter nonsense.

Yeah, I always get a chuckle when I hear that one trotted about.

It's based on a really sensationalized interpretation of a study done a while back.

 

[Areloch]

As @altnameJag said, this could be done perfectly reasonably to bring attention to what is, at it's core, a form of discrimination.

However, that would involve research, going undercover, and only then pulling back the curtain on the experiment, showing what information you've uncovered.

If your master plan is to straight up announce you plan to abuse the system to prove a point, it contaminates your point. And it certainly doesn't help when you already act like a dick.

 

[KissingSunlight]

I want to thank everyone who have posted so far. This story does touch on a few hot button issues. I want to thank everyone for keeping the discussion civil.

The reason I had a strong reaction to the article is that it does expose some hypocrisy regarding social justice. They are constantly outraged and engage in harassment campaigns against the slightest offense against women. At the same time, they actively deny or down play that there is any discrimination against men. Some social justice activists claim, you can't discriminate against men. (Some makes that statement about white people as well.) Personally, that doesn't fly with me. If you are so passionate about social justice and equality, then you need to be as vocal about discrimination against men as you do about women. When you don't, it shows that you are guilty as being sexist as the misogynists are.

As for my answer to the question in the OP, he's both. He is an insensitive jerk(and worse after I read the whole online article), but he does have a point. I can't imagine any other pricing disparity (by gender, race, etc.) would be accepted by our society. Like we accept pricing disparity when it comes to ladies' night.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

The reason I had a strong reaction to the article is that it does expose some hypocrisy regarding social justice. They are constantly outraged and engage in harassment campaigns against the slightest offense against women. At the same time, they actively deny or down play that there is any discrimination against men. Some social justice activists claim, you can't discriminate against men. (Some makes that statement about white people as well.) Personally, that doesn't fly with me. If you are so passionate about social justice and equality, then you need to be as vocal about discrimination against men as you do about women. When you don't, it shows that you are guilty as being sexist as the misogynists are.

The thing is, ladies' night is chiefly for men. It wouldn't pay for itself if it wasn't that case, it's intended to get more women in because guys want there to be attractive women present. Sure, you can abolish ladies' night and fewer women will go out, bars will make less, and guys will have far fewer women to hit on. If you took it away, I imagine there'd be more men complaining than women.

Really, a lot of people in this thread think that it's scummy, and that's towards women. I don't really have an issue with it, but I can certainly understand why people think that.

 

[shrekfan246]

The reason I had a strong reaction to the article is that it does expose some hypocrisy regarding social justice. They are constantly outraged and engage in harassment campaigns against the slightest offense against women.

I've spent the past two years pretty deeply involved in "social justice" spaces. You know what I've never seen? People being "constantly outraged and [engaging] in harassment campaigns against the slightest offense against women." At least, that doesn't come from "social justice advocates".

At the same time, they actively deny or down play that there is any discrimination against men.

[Citation needed]

Some social justice activists claim, you can't discriminate against men. (Some makes that statement about white people as well.)

Mansplain mode on: Actually, what gets said is that you can't be sexist toward men or racist toward white people. Not that you can't be prejudiced against them, or can't discriminate against them. The reason this gets said is because sexism/racism are defined in these contexts as societal constructs built and enforced by years of cultural backing -- you don't necessarily need to agree with that definition, but at least understand how it's being used. White men are disproportionately favored by modern Western society, and typically as a group do not suffer from extreme hostility simply due to their race or gender. And no, people getting mad at you on Twitter or Tumblr do not count.

That is obviously not going to be a catch-all statement that is true of everyone, because yes, men will suffer in society as well based on where they grew up, what their family is like, what their education/employment opportunities have been, and many other factors, but even still, nobody who actually advocates for social justice claims that men can't be discriminated against.

If you are so passionate about social justice and equality, then you need to be as vocal about discrimination against men as you do about women. When you don't, it shows that you are guilty as being sexist as the misogynists are.

Now, as for the actual content of this post -

Ladies' Night isn't discriminatory against men.

On a ladies' night, in the few places that even still do them, men aren't being excluded or told they aren't welcome. They're not being treated worse in favor of "special treatment" for women. The only way you could come to the conclusion that discrimination is happening is if you took a very shallow, literal surface reading of the term "Ladies' Night" in the first place and decided to completely gloss over the fact that its purpose is to draw customers.

The reason women get free/cheap drinks? So that a bar can say, "hey dudes, check out all these chicks! Come here and you might get lucky!" It's exploitative of men, but it's exploitative of women as well, because the bar is essentially selling its female customers (which, let's be honest, also carries a lot of unfortunate implications vis-a-vis a woman's bodily autonomy and ability to say "no" without fearing a man's reaction).

 

[Helter Skelter]

"Person uses wildly inaccurate title to try and score political points."

I mean, really. I don't know what I expected from that title, but this is so far from it.

He's being an insensitive jerk because he's not actually trans... Does he also claim to be Benjamin Button because kids get cheaper bus tickets? Do senior discounts just burn his biscuits? Or is this just because "Fuck feminism"?

It seems you are ignoring the very real issues that he is attempting to address. You are mocking him for trying to expose privilege and biases. If there is no discrimination then he won't enjoy any privileges from this exercise. If he does then it shows a form of discrimination that exists.

Were you that offended when Eddie Murphy dressed up in whiteface or is it only offensive when one group (which you deemed as more privileged) poses as another. Unfortunately, youtube doesn't have the clip so its on hulu or nbc (or look up "White Like Me" by Eddie Murphy) This is actually a great sketch on race relations.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/10356


Also, how do you know he isn't really trans and this is the only way he is comfortable coming to terms with it? It honestly feels very insensitive to judge him like that.

The fact that you've decided I'm offended tells me all I need to know about how this conversation would pls out.

I made that assumption because you called him an insensitive jerk. If you are in the habit of saying disparaging things about those that do not offend you then I apologize for that assumption but it brings up the issue of why you were disparaging someone then if they caused no offense.

Both genders have privileges: men commit suicide more, are more likely to lose custody of their own children because the person they loved decided to sleep with someone new and take the kids with them, pay alimony more often and die years earlier than women. Men are twice as likely to be found guilty for the same crime as a woman and men get longer sentences for the same crimes. Then there's the issue of 71% of nonreciprocal domestic violence is perpetrated by women yet there are hardly any resources for male victims of domestic violence and people have received death threats for simply trying to champion male victims. Men are also way more likely to die on the job.
It is more than just free drinks. There are many perks and many drawbacks.

There are better discrepancies to point out than cheap drinks, though. I think the clean bathrooms that don't smell like bridge underpasses is a better perk.

I can think a person's an asshole even if they don't offend me. He says himself he hates women. I'm not offended, just objectively that makes him a garbage person. I wouldn't call you anything disparaging despite you believing that ladies night is sexist because that's fine if you believe that, you're not expressing hatred of women.

Also I used to work as a cleaner, I'd clean the ladies' and the mens' rooms. The mens' rooms are literally always the more pleasant of the two. Believe me, as a gender we win on that front.

You're trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn't even know that 'the grass is always greener..."? Someone who thinks that "ladies night" is presumably some kind of social justice movement, and not the sad attempt to get ANY women into a bar/club (and thereby draw men who will try to buy them drinks) that it is. All in relation to an article which is presenting people choosing to buy drinks for someone (almost always in the hopes of fucking them) as a societal problem.

When the argument from someone is that they're under the terrible burden of not enough free drinks, in a space that's normally occupied with one side talking about rape and money, and the other suicide and risky jobs, this is a fucking joke.

 

[RaikuFA]

Hey, if he says he's a woman then he's a woman. I thought that was the whole point. If it doesn't matter what your DNA says, what your biology says you are, or what you have lived your life as for decades, if you say you're suddenly a woman, you must be treated as such and anyone who says differently is transphobic, right? Besides, who are any of you to judge? You should all check your privilege.

I'm trans so I can say with quite a bit of authority that's not how being trans works in the real world. In support groups and close inter personal situations the claim might be enough, but in general practice if you claim to be trans, but aren't presenting as the sex opposite the one you were assigned at birth. If you just claim to be trans to get "special benefits of trans status", without doing anything else to show it, you're rightly going to get called out on that shit. Claiming to be trans when you're not trans is a transphobic tactic of invalidating trans identites after all. Also trans people don't switch pronouns, or expect to be treated as they wish, until they start transition and present as the gender they identify as at least part time. Further more unless that person is full time, they don't expect to be respected as the gender they identify as, unless they're presenting as the gender they identify as at the time.

I think they were joking. Anyone who says privilege like that has to be joking.

... right?

 

[the December King]

Also I used to work as a cleaner, I'd clean the ladies' and the mens' rooms. The mens' rooms are literally always the more pleasant of the two. Believe me, as a gender we win on that front.

I don't mean to derail, but that is fascinating! I always just assumed that we (men) were naturally baboons in the loo, and that women in fact never did anything disgusting ever, and instead just go into a room next to the men's room to pick roses and meditate.

I kid, but it was something I really did take for granted- that lads' bogs were the slop, and just way grosser.

 

[Schadrach]

But that's irrelevant to his argument. His argument is completely correct, such pricing is completely sexist. If it went the other way, where women had to pay more, you can bet that feminists would be campaigning hugely against it, and rightly so. (Hell, lets take if further: Imagine that black people had to pay $35 while white people could enter for $20.)

They would, because they would consider that sexist. The problem is that you aren't using the "social justice" definition of sexism, where if it benefits women or penalizes men it simply doesn't count.

Yet, because this is discrimination against men the issue is being trivialised and he's being told to "man up".

Which is what more or less always happens. There's a group in CA that get all manner of unpleasant treatment because they look for cases where someone discriminates against men and sue under the Unruh Civil Rights Act (the CA state nondiscrimination law which is one of the broadest in the country).

(Note that the law he's fighting explicitly says it's okay to discriminate based on sex, that's a law that should be fought.)

So does US federal domestic violence law (VAWA) which states the standard nondiscrimination requirements for federal programs apply to programs funded by VAWA but then that such programs may discriminate on actual or perceived sex or gender if they feel it's important to do so, and that doing so does not violate the bit in literally the immediately previous paragraph that says they aren't allowed to discriminate with respect to sex or gender. Also, any program funded by VAWA must serve women (if it must serve women, but may discriminate with respect to sex or gender, who do *you* think it is discriminating against?).

The Affordable Care Act (sometimes called "Obamacare") does a fair bit of this too. There's dozens of places the law refers to programs for women, but men are only referred to in the phrase "men and women." There's a requirement that contraceptives approved by the FDA be fully covered with a prescription (including several different barrier methods as well as IUDs, the pill, and sterilization surgery), but only those contraceptive drugs and devices used by women -- when Vasalgel finally gets approved (which seems to be held to a much higher testing standard than the pill was) there will be lawsuits testing the constitutionality of the ACA on equal protection grounds as soon as insurance refuses it to some guy (or demands a copay) because they aren't required to cover it fully because it's not for a woman. The only reason that hasn't happened already is that most insurance covers vasectomy because it's comparatively cheap and no doctor will write a prescription for condoms, and those are the only options that currently apply to men.

Then there's Selective Service, but that's low hanging fruit... Admittedly, it's a far reaching low hanging fruit, since failing to register cuts you off from a bunch of things, but only if you are male, as women are not required to register.

Strangely, I always have trouble finding examples in law, policy, or the execution of the same where women are discriminated against relative to men. There seem to be more than a few examples in the other direction.

an entire wing of American politics wants to use them as little more than breeding stock

Which one is this, again? Might that be quite a lot of hyperbole? They have quite enough shitty ideas without the need to exaggerate...

You know what I've never seen? People being "constantly outraged and [engaging] in harassment campaigns against the slightest offense against women." At least, that doesn't come from "social justice advocates".

To quote an artist for Larian:

A bare belly was for some enough a trigger to send our company enough hate and threatening mails to persuade my boss to ask me to change the cover...In the world of journalism there are channels that take an aggressive stance against everything they judge even remotely sexistic and in many instances denying the word of opposition by disabling criticism and reactions on their articles or blogs. Also blackmails in the form of "change your game art or we won't publish a single word about you." is a common behavior found among those.

Wait, that never happens. The digital paint fumes must be going to his head.

 

[EvilRoy]

"Person uses wildly inaccurate title to try and score political points."

I mean, really. I don't know what I expected from that title, but this is so far from it.

What? You knew exactly what to expect from the title. You've already commented on this thread.

 

[K12]

You don't understand. It's actually about ethics in leisure and tourism.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

I find this story funny and ironic. He is using something that social justice advocates are for to expose something that the very same people refuse to admit is discrimination.

painting with some pretty broad strokes aint you there chief?

EDIT: I discovered this story in a newspaper. I didn't completely read the whole online article when I posted the link. The bottom third of the article wasn't in the newspaper version. Now that I had read the whole online article, Yikes! This guy is an obnoxious sexist.

I'm glad you added the edit before I commented

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Well considering how transgenderism is physically identifiable in the brain, by a person having physical neurological structures of the gender they identify as, not the sex they physically are.

That's a gross oversimplification of the situation.
Male and female brains are very similar. Why? Because we are all human.

Yes, there are some statistically significant variations between males and females and those have a statistical correlation with a person's gender identity, but to imply that means it's possible to test for someone's gender-identity by scanning their brain is utter nonsense.

We have very similar brains, but there is also rather significant sexual dimorphism in human brains too.

I'm not saying it's to test gender identity, but it can be used for a conformation.... That's an important distinction, as it's not a conclusive means of testing, but it is a good method for helping confirm when someone is transgender.

 

[Maze1125]

Well considering how transgenderism is physically identifiable in the brain, by a person having physical neurological structures of the gender they identify as, not the sex they physically are.

That's a gross oversimplification of the situation.
Male and female brains are very similar. Why? Because we are all human.

Yes, there are some statistically significant variations between males and females and those have a statistical correlation with a person's gender identity, but to imply that means it's possible to test for someone's gender-identity by scanning their brain is utter nonsense.

We have very similar brains, but there is also rather significant sexual dimorphism in human brains too.

I'm not saying it's to test gender identity, but it can be used for a conformation.... That's an important distinction, as it's not a conclusive means of testing, but it is a good method for helping confirm when someone is transgender.

No it can't. Not every male matches with the "male brain" equally not every female matches with the "female brain".
Trying to confirm a person's gender identity by scanning their brain is just as discriminatory as trying to confirm it by looking in their pants. Both situations correlate with gender identity but neither are consistent enough to to make a valid test either way.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Well considering how transgenderism is physically identifiable in the brain, by a person having physical neurological structures of the gender they identify as, not the sex they physically are.

That's a gross oversimplification of the situation.
Male and female brains are very similar. Why? Because we are all human.

Yes, there are some statistically significant variations between males and females and those have a statistical correlation with a person's gender identity, but to imply that means it's possible to test for someone's gender-identity by scanning their brain is utter nonsense.

We have very similar brains, but there is also rather significant sexual dimorphism in human brains too.

I'm not saying it's to test gender identity, but it can be used for a conformation.... That's an important distinction, as it's not a conclusive means of testing, but it is a good method for helping confirm when someone is transgender.

No it can't. Not every male matches with the "male brain" equally not every female matches with the "female brain".
Trying to confirm a person's gender identity by scanning their brain is just as discriminatory as trying to confirm it by looking in their pants. Both situations correlate with gender identity but neither are consistent enough to to make a valid test either way.

You do realize that when I say "help confirm", it means as a general sentiment that obviously not every person will fit, as it's just one factor we can identify to back up someone's identity. Although proof positive will be when we can identify synaptic pathways that define how a person's gender works, which is a spectrum, not a binary, or a line. Either way there is enough consistency in the brain structures of cis and trans people to actually identify either a majority of the time. Having a supporting identifiable trait and actually working to identify it in people isn't discriminatory, unless it's used specifically to invalidate people's gender identities.

 

[KissingSunlight]

I can't imagine any other pricing disparity (by gender, race, etc.) would be accepted by our society. Like we accept pricing disparity when it comes to ladies' night.

Age. My country has laws against discriminating based on age, yet we still have senior discounts and child ticket prices for transport, events etc. Nobody cares.

That's a good catch. I didn't think of that one. My only excuse for neglecting that would be that hardly anyone complain about ageism. Well, nobody complain about ageism as much as sexism or racism.

Come to think about it, someone would have to be a hard-core jerk to complain about senior or children discounts.

 

[KissingSunlight]

Some social justice activists claim, you can't discriminate against men. (Some makes that statement about white people as well.)

Mansplain mode on: Actually, what gets said is that you can't be sexist toward men or racist toward white people. Not that you can't be prejudiced against them, or can't discriminate against them. The reason this gets said is because sexism/racism are defined in these contexts as societal constructs built and enforced by years of cultural backing -- you don't necessarily need to agree with that definition, but at least understand how it's being used. White men are disproportionately favored by modern Western society, and typically as a group do not suffer from extreme hostility simply due to their race or gender. And no, people getting mad at you on Twitter or Tumblr do not count.

That is obviously not going to be a catch-all statement that is true of everyone, because yes, men will suffer in society as well based on where they grew up, what their family is like, what their education/employment opportunities have been, and many other factors, but even still, nobody who actually advocates for social justice claims that men can't be discriminated against.

Your "mansplaination"(Gee, that term isn't sexist.) is just double-speak for: "We are not saying you can't discriminate against men or white people. We think it's fair to discriminate against them, because of history." That explanation and other actions are what make people who are pro-equality frustrated with people who claim they are concerned about social justice. When you break down what they say and do, you realize what people mean by "social justice" is to tear one group down to elevate another group in it's place.

 

[Maze1125]

unless it's used specifically to invalidate people's gender identities.

Which either this will be or it will be useless.

If this test is ever used, and if it's positive the person is considered transgender while if it's negative the person is not considered transgender, then it has been used in a situation where it could invalidate someone's gender.
If, on the other hand, that never ever happens, then the test is pointless.

 

[Erttheking]

So everytime I bring up sexism towards women and get shut down, it turns out I should've been talking about how men are discriminated against for not saving money on drinks? That's where the real issue was? *Sigh*

Also this man is a ****. What's his next plan? Proving that white men get picked after black men when forming basketball teams by using blackface?

Oh. And the title shouldn't say "Used trangender law" it should say "Abuses transgender law." Because this man is a **** who's willing to abuse laws made to protect arguably the most persecuted minority in America to satisfy his misogynistic world view. Fuck him.