Gender
Can't we all get along?
When I was a kid (long ago) there were only 2 genders - male and female.
I know now that that was an illusion - it was that those outside those norms were invisible - they had no voice and nobody looked at them.
Saint John at the time had a pretty large black population and maybe 1/3 of people were francophone but they were invisible too and way more prominent in the actual community. LeBlanc was almost as common a surname as Smith but in public everyone spoke English.
I remember my Mom warning me to be careful of Mr LaRue who was the music teacher when I was in highschool. He coached an award winning madrigal choir and I was a member. He would give parties for the choir at his house. She told me to be careful of him. The words 'gay' or 'homosexual' weren't in our vocabulary then.
I was a teenager and within a few years homosexuality was seen as another form of normal among the people I knew. I knew gay people and it really didn't matter. Like, when I was selling film in a camera store neither I or my customer took gender as germane to the transaction.
As I once pointed out to a college president, at home we don't have separate toilets for the males and females. There is etiquette involved. Simple things like 'knock on a closed door'. But if I really needed to pee and sister was in the shower she'd call out 'come in and I'd go pee and depart. It was all normal
Over the years I learned to my dismay that there were people who would abuse that sort of situation. That's why public toilets need to be segregated by gender, it was thought. I thought that the proper thing was to just remove urinals and have cubicles with toilets that could accommodate both genders equally
(Aside: That might be a technical problem - to make a toilet that accommodates both standing and sitting - an opportunity for inventors.)
Now, I accept that there are many genders. we have now an alphabet list of gender and I admit that I have no idea what most of the genders listed refer to. It goes LGT......+
I understand the LGT bit. And accepting trans people is like accepting lesbians and gays. Sex doesn't have to be all important.
Trans people face an issue distinct from which toilet is polite to use in sports. Is it fair that people who are physically men to compete against women?
I admit that I don't like big sport. I had a lot of fun with sandlot baseball and football when I was a kid. We just played. There was no champion. Our teams had teenager and toddlers and everyone cheered the toddlers
Big sport needs champions. They need to promote rivalry to fill a stadium.
Trans people are seem to be a problem in that context of champions. The idea that men are stronger than women. This is why men and women are kept apart in sport. Males who trans to women are thought to still have a male body and that it's unfair for them to compete with women.
I don't know the facts of the matter - whether transwomen are in fact significantly stronger than ciswomen. Trans people are such a small proportion of all people that I'd be surprised if there was any information about that.
Gender dysphoria a hard row to hoe in any case I think. I don't really know why people would want to make it harder
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.