Saying that being cis-gender – i.e. having a gender identity that corresponds with the sex/gender one was assigned at birth – comes with privileges need not mean erasing the lived experiences, real challenges, and specific struggles of cis-gendered people (and especially of those cis-gender people who are otherwise disadvantaged and marginalised in other dimensions). It can even be compatible with recognising that there are specific areas where some cis people can face distinctly harsher challenges. Indeed, it can be compatible with recognising that certain struggles are rooted in one’s biological sex (or at least in the way in which certain biological factors are treated within a given social system). For cis women and other people who can get pregnant this is true, for instance, with respect to their reproductive rights and autonomy. In a nutshell: saying that cis privilege is real does not mean that all cis people are overall privileged – far from it.
It also need not come with a fetishization, or over-emphasis, on what being cis means. Many people (gender critical feminists most vocally, of course, but not only them) feel that they just do not have a gender identity, period – and thus reject the idea that not being trans automatically means being cis. One can, they would say, not be trans and not care or think about one’s gender identity at all, or indeed not have one. The cis/trans distinction, however, can be read in a less polarising way – you can be cis without having any thoughts about what your gender identity is. Being cis might mean simply not needing to make a point that your gender is different from the one you were assigned at birth – which includes not having a gender at all. It can be read, quite literally, as the being “on this side”: you don’t need to thematise your gender much, and that might include not caring about it. You are cis because you can afford that, whether the topic of gender identity is a big thing for you at all (under this understanding, being non-binary, genderqueer or agender requires a much more pro-active and vocal rejection of the gender you were assigned at birth – not caring about your gender idnetity, in other words, is not enough to make you agender).
With all that aside, can we please say that cis privilege is real – that it is a thing? Let me just share with you two ways in which I have recently experienced it (there are more, of course)
- When the Imane Khelif drama exploded last Summer during the Paris Olympic Games, JK Rowling was among the public figures jumping on the bandwagon of those who questioned Khelif’s biological sex. After matters were clarified, Rowling doubled down, posting on X that “‘Someone with a DSD cannot help the way they were born but they can choose not to cheat; they can choose not to take medals from women; they can choose not to cause injury.” In other words: we allow you to exist, but don’t you dare demanding to fulfil your ambitions, to excel at something. That is not unlike a male society telling cis women, “we allow you to have equal civil rights; we might even allow you to have a job; but don’t you dare demanding full equality of opportunities to excel, especially if that requires a readjustment of caring obligations, or a readjustment of the labour market to accommodate the fact that workers have such caring obligations.” Now, I am of course not saying that this kind of attitude is never displayed towards cis women – but when it is, it usually causes pretty universal outrage. Most of the time, I can exist secure in the knowledge that most people around me will not think that, by expecting to fulfil my potential just like men, I am asking for too much. If you are not cis – or even, in Khelif’s case, if you are perceived as not being cis – that is apparently not automatically the case. Of course, Rowling’s language was not quite as crass – but the message, I think, it’s pretty clear: if you are different, it is your job to reduce your ambitions so as not to create trouble for others. This does not mean that we should not have a conversation about fairness in sport, and that this can lead to tough choices and exclusions in some cases. But the presumption should be that a woman like Khelif should have the right to fulfil her aspiration to excel, in a sport she loves and is good at – just like the aspiration of an ambitious woman to have a successful career. The language in that tweet, instead, delivered the message that the burden to not make a fuss was entirely on her. Well, if the trope of the “difficult woman” is sexist and misogynistic, then this kind of message should be seen as something similar.
- Cis people routinely experience being turned on by the sheer fact of feeling attractive, sexy, and comfortable in their own skin. In a society where attractiveness is often connected to thinness, people who successfully lose weight and feel more attractive as a result routinely report feeling sexy, and feeling more sexual as a result – indeed, they experience being turned on by their own bodies, because they finally feel at home in them (I am not thereby suggesting that it is only natural for thin people, or for people who have lost weight, to feel this way). It can go as far as buying seductive lingerie, putting it on when alone, and fantasising in front of a mirror. This, or something like this, is a common experience for many cis women – nobody call this phenomenon autogynephilia and say that these women have a weird fetish.
{ 80 comments }
MisterMr 12.11.24 at 7:07 pm
So, there are various things I do not agree with, but they are unrelated:
First, and I made this observation also in other contexts, “privilege” implies that there is a just desert and someone, in this instance cis people, are getting more than they deserve. This is not what is happening, rather there is a just desert and cis people are getting it (or less), the problem is that non-cis people are threated far worse. The correct word would be that non cis are persecuted or, if this word is too strong, mistreated. From other contexts where I said this I expect to be accused of whataboutery but the term “privilege” is a form of guilt tripping, and I’m not going to be guilt tripped for being straight, and many other people who would agree that non cis are mistreated also could resent this language.
Second, sex and gender are not the same thing and thus “gender assigned by birth” makes a lot of sense, “sex assigned by birth” less so.
Third, Imane Khelif is a ciswoman so the whole argument about her makes no sense, people who are anti-trans in sports should be pro Khelif and instead the opposite happened, this is so stupid. But for the same reason this isn’t a very good pro-trans argument: if the rules are that you cannot assume hormones, and Khelif didn’t, then how does it mean that transwomen can compete in female sports, since they did in fact assume hormones? And if hormones yes, then why no to other forms of doping?
Aardvark Cheeselog 12.11.24 at 7:13 pm
There is much to agree with here and also some points that make me want to say “Whoa, there partner! Not so fast!” Like for example especially at the end,
definitely assumes facts not in evidence.
I find myself wondering, can we? Is it real, in the same sense that say “white privilege” is real, in our white-supremacist society? I mean, “privilege” feels like a description of an intended feature of the system, and white privilege is definitely an intended product of white supremacy. But what is under discussion here feels possibly different, perhaps more like an unintended consequence.
What I mean to say is yes, life must definitely be systematically, unfairly harder for non-cis people in a default-cis world. But is that the same as saying that they are disadvantaged by cis privilege?
Is unfairness enough to make privilege for the advantaged? Or does there have to be some intent to deprive the disadvantaged? Does historic generic tendency to enforce conformity generally constitute intent to deprive directed at any specific group?
The recent anti-trans activism in the Engish-speaking world feels very opportunistic and instrumental, I am suggesting. Ginned up out of a general human weakness to dislike people who are different, as opposed to the elaborate rationales of white supremacy for example.
Hmm... 12.11.24 at 9:01 pm
I agree there is cis privilege. But many of us would also liked it acknowledged that it is equally obvious, if not more so, that there is the privilege of having been socialized as/socially recognised as male, which is a common factor shared by cis men and trans women but not cis women. So should we quibble about whose privilege is greater, the trans man’s or the cis women’s? Probably not, since different groups are privileged and disadvantaged in different ways. However, for many of us, these are the more salient contrast classes to focus on. Also, 2 is obviously a hasty generalisation, as another commentator remarked, while 1 contains empirically disputed claims.
Tim H. 12.11.24 at 9:02 pm
I look at this from a different direction, as a CIS boomer, I feel more secure if non-CIS and the others the usual suspects dislike, have essential rights and a fair shake. Morality enforcers eventually run short of obvious victims and invent new categories, rather than retire to useful work.
Hmm... 12.11.24 at 9:03 pm
*shared by cis men and trans women, pre transition, that should be.
oldster 12.11.24 at 10:33 pm
“With all that aside, can we please say that cis privilege is real”
We can say all manner of things. But what follows from it? What are the consequences of saying this? What political or social actions or programs? What laws?
You’ll find more people willing to say it if it has no consequences. Of course, then it’s just empty verbiage.
But if there are practical consequences to saying it, then some people will be very happy to say it, because they support those consequences. And will be less willing to say it. Because they have objections to the practical consequences.
So, instead of arguing over whether we should say this or that, why not just advocate directly for the practical consequences, and let people state their opposition to those practical consequences? It seems more economical to skip the middle step, especially when that middle step is just an invitation to empty verbiage or pointless ambiguity.
engels 12.11.24 at 10:36 pm
“Cis people routinely experience being turned on by the sheer fact of feeling attractive, sexy, and comfortable in their own skin” Right Said Fred being the most iconic example.
Adam Hammond 12.11.24 at 10:37 pm
I am fine with saying that cis-privilege is real. I doubt my reasons are worth going through. (Although, the statement that “privilege is a form of guilt tripping,” seems ludicrous. Reference please, or get over yourself)
I would like to address a topic relevant to any cis/trans gender discussion: There is no Biological binary! The misunderstanding that there is remains common, and that is hardly surprising. The damage is the fault of scientists, so (I believe) we now need to go around trying to undo it. If you already know this, then you can just skip. There is nothing new here.
Scientists began with an enormous bias that there were exactly two categories of biological sex for all the species that reproduced sexually. We set aside anything we couldn’t categorize that way as an abnormality, a disease state. And we certainly turned our collective backs on the human suffering of intersex people.
We were absolutely wrong, and the majority of scientists admit that. There is no well-defined set of criteria that completely divides the natural diversity of structure and genetics found in any species into just TWO categories. There are always individuals who fall outside of whatever definition scheme you set up.
There is a deeper, subtle, and more important fact also. If you have the binary bias internalized, you might be thinking that the “uncategorized” flies, mice, flowers, etc. do have mutations and you can just exclude those individuals from your studies on that basis. You would be wrong, as scientists were. You will not capture the actual evolutionary processes of a population if you exclude the intersex category. Here is a paper that might help: Collet et al PMCID: PMC5069644. There are many examples, and growing fast now that we don’t have our heads up our asses. It is the case that individuals lie along a spectrum related to sex. Not evenly. There are more individuals at some places and fewer at others. But the points we pick on that spectrum, are ultimately just categorization exercises.
“Intersex” individuals are a natural and proper part of healthy populations. That is Biology. I regret that we clung to the fallacy of binary sex for so long. We failed (again) to see our biases at play.
Aubergine 12.12.24 at 3:00 am
It’s public knowledge that Khelif is male (XY) with a DSD. If women’s sport is going to mean anything there’ll be a line drawn somewhere (even many genderists agree with this; they just think the line should depend on “gender identity” rather than sex) and if your sport involves punching and being punched, both of which male bodies tend to be much, much better at than female bodies, it’s very reasonable to draw that line tightly.
But athletes with DSDs and unambiguously male athletes who want to compete with women are very different. People with DSDs shouldn’t be used as a trojan horse for the male colonisation of every space for women.
Fortunately there’s a solution that gives everyone the opportunity to excel – have a female division for female athletes and an open division for everyone! This is already the way many sports work (not sure about boxing) and more seem to be adopting it as the best way to let everyone play.
Suzanne 12.12.24 at 4:06 am
‘In other words: we allow you to exist, but don’t you dare demanding to fulfil your ambitions, to excel at something. That is not unlike a male society telling cis women, “we allow you to have equal civil rights; we might even allow you to have a job; but don’t you dare demanding full equality of opportunities to excel, especially if that requires a readjustment of caring obligations, or a readjustment of the labour market to accommodate the fact that workers have such caring obligations.”’
The labor market is full of jobs that aren’t tied to biological sex. Women’s sports and games are. In some cases, not all, it’s going to be necessary to weigh the interest of a trans woman who has gone through male puberty, for example, against the interests of her cis competitors who cannot hope to match the muscle mass, lung capacity, and other advantages she enjoys as a result. In some sports, as in boxing, the cis women may be at a physical risk they simply don’t face against other cis women no matter how powerful.
Imame Khelif is something different. I expect that by the next Olympics the current problems with organized boxing will be resolved, updated rules and testing will be in place, and she will probably be disqualified from participation.
I should note I have no use for the weaponizing of the women’s sports question by right-wingers. But there are genuine issues for debate here even if the wrong people say so.
Kim 12.12.24 at 5:48 am
Where do, for example, butch or butch-looking lesbians fit in, in your mind? People who aren’t “gender conforming” by appearance (and also not by sexual orientation, to those people who subsume it under “gender conformity/nonconformity/queerness”) but who don’t self-identify as male, men, trans, etc? We’re “cis women” to you, if I’m understanding correctly? And blithely enjoy the attendant privileges?
Miriam Ronzoni 12.12.24 at 9:47 am
Hi Kim, I think absolutely nothing is enjoyed “blithely” by people who experience oppression in some important dimensions – I’d really hoped that my long introduction had clarified that. Gender-compliance – or perceived gender compliance – is itself a source of privilege, so all people are not gender-conforming is some real or perceived way do suffer marginalisation and oppression as a result by all means. Also, as I thought I had clarified (albeit briefly) with respect to Khelif, cis privilege is largely (though not entirely) about being perceived as cis, so some trans people might enjoy it in some cases and some cis people might fail to enjoy it. Hope this helps.
Miriam Ronzoni 12.12.24 at 9:48 am
Suzanne, I agree (with the general spirit, though we might still disagree on where to draw the line etc.).
Miriam Ronzoni 12.12.24 at 9:52 am
Aardvark Cheeselog I am not sure I fully understand everything you say, but to the extent that you take issue with the term “privilege”, I understand some of your concerns (not all, it really depends on what makes something “intended” and who are the actors that have capacity to “intend”) but I just decided to go for the commonly used term in these debates, for my purposes here.
Miriam Ronzoni 12.12.24 at 9:53 am
Mister Mr – I said, albeit very briefly I’ll admit, that cis privilege is largely about being perceived as cis (some applies to white privilege, for instance).
Miriam Ronzoni 12.12.24 at 9:56 am
Hmm, not sure which other commentator remarked this (might be my fault) but what exactly is generalised in my second point? I don’t see myself as making any generalisations. A generalisation starts from the observation that something happens a lot and makes the invalid inference that that something might happen all the time. I am not claiming all cis people are turned on by their own gender-coded bodies when they feel attractive – I am saying that it is a common experience, and one that is usually not pathologised the way it is for trans women.
Chris Bertram 12.12.24 at 10:15 am
@Aubergine “It’s public knowledge that Khelif is male (XY) with a DSD.”
It is clearly something you believe, but it is not “public knowledge”.
Chris Bertram 12.12.24 at 10:25 am
“Many people (gender critical feminists most vocally, of course, but not only them) feel that they just do not have a gender identity, period”
Well “gender identity” may be a tricky idea, but GCFs, like everyone else, inhabit a social world where we are all subject to the normative and disciplinary pressures to conform to gender expectation, pressures that usually align to the type of body a person has or is perceived to have. It used to be the case that GCFs claimed to reject those disciplinary norms and many of them probably officially still do, but that’s hard to square with the mockery and bullying lots of them engage in online when trans people they perceive as male fail, in their eyes, adequately to conform to female gender norms. Such mockery and bullying is, after all, a standard form of gender norm enforcement.
Miriam Ronzoni 12.12.24 at 10:48 am
Chris, that’s why I would say that it is more plausible to say that people who just “don’t care” about their gender identity are better described as cis people for whom gender doesn’t matter much, whereas being agender, non-binary or genderqueer requires a much higher level of discomfort with the way one is coded, and a drive to take pro-active steps about it (these need not be medical or physical in anyway).
Hidari 12.12.24 at 12:55 pm
‘We were absolutely wrong , and the majority of scientists admit that.’
Would be sort of good to have some kind of citation for that, preferably from a biology (or a related field) textbook published by a prestigious academic publisher, or a precent peer-reviewed journal article published by a respected journal, written by an expert in the field.
Aubergine 12.12.24 at 1:50 pm
One can believe what one chooses to believe, I suppose. In any case, JKR’s comment was clearly about male athletes with DSDs (whether or not Khelif falls into that category) and it seems a little odd to criticise her for something she didn’t say, but might have meant if she had in fact been talking about something quite different. Especially alongside:
Which is exactly what she is doing. Is the real problem… her tone?
Back to the main post:
This actually works well as an analogy for mixed-sex sport – “we allow women to compete, but you will compete against male athletes; and don’t you dare complain that they have any kind of advantage, or that competing with them puts you in physical danger!”. Both pretend to be fair, but ignore the real underlying differences that mean that superficial equality is not real equality.
The problem here, I think, is that you’re trying to sit on the fence. On the one hand you use genderist language:
and on the other you talk like a sex realist:
If sex is just a nominal category, “assigned” by a doctor in a hospital (or whoever) as a kind of error-prone bureaucratic process that reflects no underlying reality, the second statement makes no sense. There is no “biological sex” to appeal to, there is no class of people whose general tendency to be the ones who bear and care for children mean that they have common interests not shared by those in the other class. There are only “certain biological factors” that (we are supposed to pretend) are just sprinkled around, like confetti that settles on everyone in a completely random configuration. But I don’t think you really believe all that.
engels 12.12.24 at 2:23 pm
Perhaps the solution to the trans women in sport problem is to go full luck egalitarian: abolish gender categories and instead give all athletes a handicap based on their individual biological endowments.
hiero5ant 12.12.24 at 2:32 pm
“After matters were clarified…”
I’m not a sports obsessive, but is it actually true that the presence or absence of a Y chromosome has been “clarified” (in the sense of “beyond a reasonable doubt”), and if so, where was this clarified?
My admittedly superficial understanding is that Imane has refused to publicly release any chromosomal tests, her trainer has confirmed a DSD diagnosis and (in a source I as a non-Francophone cannot evaluate for credibility), this diagnosis was leaked.
Reason 12.12.24 at 2:49 pm
I wish people would leave sports out of this. It is not really about gender or even sex. Sports have performance categories for reason of inclusion. If they had no women’s category only an open category then women would be totally excluded from most elite sports. This shouldn’t concern governments at all. It should be up to the sports to decide themselves, and is really only a major issue at elite level.
engels 12.12.24 at 2:55 pm
Alternatively we could recognise that sport (geneologically and as we know it now) is principally a weapon in the ideological armoury of capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy and hoping to make it consistent with human emancipation (however one defines that) is probably delusional.
hiero5ant 12.12.24 at 4:11 pm
@ Reason #24, while sports in general and youth sports in particular are very, very far down on my list of personal or political priorities, in the US at least, Title IX regulations make it legally impossible for “sports to decide themselves” or for this issue to “not concern governments at all”.
While keeping our eyes fixed on the pole star of the is/ought distinction, any analysis of this topic needs to acknowledge the facts that 1) there will always be a top-down government policy position on this, and 2) according to polling, natal male participation in girls’ sports doesn’t even command majority support among Democrats.
That said, I wholeheartedly agree that genderwars in sports is not the issue any of us would have chosen to consume so much of our intellectual and cultural bandwidth.
Reason 12.12.24 at 5:17 pm
Hiero5ant @26
Your point 1 – why? And it is definitely true that deferent make different eligability rules (and given different impacts of things like body development and hormones arguably should). Maybe the US is odd in this regard
Reason 12.12.24 at 5:41 pm
Oops – different sports make different…
P.S. sports have divisions by weight, divisions by handicap tupe and degree. Why not have divisions by chromosomes and testosterone levels? Calling it women’s sports just brings in a lot of mixed up ideas that are not the essence of the rules purpose.
MisterMr 12.12.24 at 6:15 pm
@Adam Hammond 8
“(Although, the statement that “privilege is a form of guilt tripping,” seems ludicrous. Reference please, or get over yourself)”
My actual sentence was: ” the term “privilege” is a form of guilt tripping”, which is quite different from your citation. Personally I think it is quite evident: If I say something like “the poor have the privilege of paying no taxes” everybody would see this as an attempt to guilt-trip the poor, or bleme them for some reason (e.g. becaue I myself don’t want to pay taxes). Do you really mean that the term “privilege” doesn’t imply that the ones who are supposedly “privileged” have an unfair advantage? It is obviously a form of guilt tripping.
Also, other commenters have already noted this, but according to wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif
“Khelif was born female,[5][6] and no medical evidence that she has XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone has been published.[7][8][9]”
Finally, hey people we are speaking of boxe, people who boxe know that they can get injuried, male or female. The gender stereotyping starts with the idea of the damoiselle in distress who apparently tought that she was going to play badmingtom but, with her surprise, find herself on the olympic ring of boxe.
Woman who pratice combat sports punch each other, kick each other, throw each other, choke each other and armlock each other, depending on the combat sport.
Speaking of the Italian boxer who surrendered shortly against Khelif, and who started the controversy, she said:
“Carini later apologised to Khelif, stating: “I want to apologize to her and everyone else. I was angry because my Olympics had gone up in smoke. I don’t have anything against Khelif. If I were to meet her again, I would embrace her.”[8][9]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Carini
Shelby 12.12.24 at 6:29 pm
That said, I wholeheartedly agree that genderwars in sports is not the issue any of us would have chosen to consume so much of our intellectual and cultural bandwidth.
MisterMr 12.12.24 at 6:49 pm
@Miriam Ronzoni 15
I agree that cis people are socially better off than non-cis, my point is that I wouldn’t call it “privilege”.
Let’s put it this way: in an ideal world, everyone should be in the position of cis people. It is not cis people who should be brought down to the same problems of non-cis people, nor should they get to an average between the two.
Compare this to economic inequality: in an ideal world, most people should have more income and wealth but some should have less. Or think to something like old times aristocracy: in a democracy, most people have more rights than they would have in an arsitocracy, but some (the aristocrats) have less.
The situation between cis and non-cis is different, because cis peole are not in a situation where they have “too much”, as opposed to, in my example, very rich people or aristocrats.
The same, IMHO, applies to “white privilege”, although in this case it is arguable that some white do have some advantages from “white privilege”, although IMHO in most cases not that much (as many whites are still at the bottom of the social pyramid).
Suzanne 12.12.24 at 6:53 pm
@24: It’s an issue for sport below elite level as well. There’s a lot on the line for girls and women in high school and college as well – scholarships, for example, and of course the matter of physical risk exists at all levels in certain games and disciplines.
@25: The advances that girls and women in sports have made at all levels since the late 20th century are a triumph for female autonomy and equality, if far from an unqualified one.
CHETAN R MURTHY 12.12.24 at 9:17 pm
Chris Bertram @ 17: I read Aubergine’s comment with dismay, until (haha) I (half-)remembered their commenting history, and then, well, what can you say?
Aubergine wants to have it both ways: to both stick with regressive (and oppressive) attitudes about gender and sexuality, but ALSO use the most modern definitions of sexuality. In any time prior to DNA analysis, Ms. Khelif would be judged a female, right? [maybe I should include “invasive exploration of internal organs”] To desire to use a completely modern definition of male/female, AND use an antediluvian definition of gender ….. well, it’s like wanting to be a doctor, but deciding that evolution is for the birds.
Sigh.
ech 12.12.24 at 10:12 pm
As an actual trans person, let me tell you about a real manifestation of cis-privilege which too many of the commenters here seem hell-bent on denying.
I live in the Bay Area, where there are thousands of homeless people. These folks are subject to punitive policing, the theft of their possessions under color of authority, harassment from neighbors, and a too-early demise from lack of care and shelter. There are few, if any, privileges they benefit from.
Aubergine @ 9: please sit with what you wrote and understand why it is such trash.
Except their transphobia.
They still can yell “dress like a man like you’re supposed to” and worse, without rebuff from neighbors. If I make the mistake of calling the police to report harassment, the police will also decide that my trans neighbors and I are “wrong” and “an affront to $god.”
That is cisgender privilege.
ech 12.12.24 at 10:14 pm
I’m not sure how my use of the at symbol broke the editor, but my reply to Aubergine should had have been at the end of my comment.
hiero5ant 12.12.24 at 10:41 pm
@ MisterMr #29
The wiki article gives two citations for the claim “Khelif was born female”.
The first one is to an NBC article announcing her win, and supplies the following evidence:
“Her victory came just hours after International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach defended its decision to allow her and fellow boxer Lin Yu-ting to compete, saying concerns over their gender identity are ‘totally unacceptable.'”
and
“Khelif appeared to fight back tears and had an Algerian flag wrapping around her back as she spoke. ‘I want to tell the entire world that I am a female, and I will remain a female,’ she said.”
So… not exactly a slam dunk.
The second link is to a USA Today article which supplies the following evidence:
“’I send a message to all the people of the world to uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic Charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects, massive effects,’ Khelif said in an interview with SNTV, according to The Associated Press. ‘It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying.’”
and also:
“The IOC and others have raised concerns about the veracity of those tests. Thomas Bach, president of the IOC, said this week there’s never been any doubt that Lin and Khelif are cisgender women and he urged ‘really everyone to respect these women, to respect them as women, as human beings.’ The IOC also said the two boxers are victims of an arbitrary decision by the IBA.”
I mean… is that it? The evidence for the claim is several people repeating the claim?
A cogent argument here is that women who don’t meet traditional cis-het beauty standards shouldn’t be subject to public humiliation or demands that they prove themselves with DNA tests.
But this is an entirely separate argument from the claim that “Khelif was born female” has been demonstrated as established fact.
engels 12.12.24 at 10:53 pm
The advances that girls and women in sports have made at all levels since the late 20th century are a triumph for female autonomy and equality
It’s a triumph for women fitting themselves into cultural forms that were built by and for men and whose purpose is to inculcate the values of a system (capitalism) that oppresses women along with many other people. Some equality:
“England Lionesses captain Leah Williamson is reported to have earned £200,000 last season… Cristiano Ronaldo [is] reported to be on £400,000 a week.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62378095
Sports have performance categories for reason of inclusion. If they had no women’s category only an open category then women would be totally excluded from most elite sports.
This is just the lived experience of Fat people.
engels 12.12.24 at 11:17 pm
Btw 30 years ago I had female American friends who played “soccer”. It wasn’t seen as gender egalitarian then but as a women’s sport (because almost no American men played it and women couldn’t play American football).
J-D 12.13.24 at 12:30 am
I describe myself as highly privileged in a number of respects. When I do that, am I trying to make MisterMr (or anybody else) feel guilty, or feel bad in any other way? No, I am not. If MisterMr (or anybody else) feels guilty when I use the term, or bad in any other way, or even if MisterMr feels not guilty but as if I am trying to make people feel guilty, then I can understand that is a problem for MisterMr, but that is not my fault.
No, not everybody would interpret it that way. Now that you mention it, it’s clear to me that some tone-deaf people might interpret it that way, but I am not the only person who would take a statement like ‘the poor have the privilege of paying no taxes’ as being obviously ironical. (It’s not, as a matter of plain fact, a true statement: the poor pay taxes.)
You don’t have to call it that. The fact that you don’t want to call it ‘privilege’ is not a good reason why other people shouldn’t use the word if they find it useful.
For what it’s worth, I don’t actually use the term frequently. I use it when I am confident that it will help me to communicate my meaning (which, sometimes, it does); if I think it more likely to hinder communication, I will avoid it. If the point MisterMr is trying to make is that sometimes using the term hinders communication, then I agree, that’s true, sometimes it does. Sometimes. Miriam Ronzoni’s use of it in this post, however, assists in making the meaning clear to me and, I am confident, other readers as well. If MisterMr, or anybody else, thinks they could rewrite the post in a way which makes its meaning clearer without using the term ‘privilege’, I’d like to see them try it.
MisterMr 12.13.24 at 11:14 am
@hiero5ant 36
Yes, but the second part of the sentence says “and no medical evidence that she has XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone has been published.[7][8][9]”.
So if someone says she is born female, and there is no medical evidence that this is false, I say that the burden of proof is on those who say she was not born female.
Then if later some proof surfaces that she wasn’t born female, this would change everything, but this didn’t actually happen.
MisterMr 12.13.24 at 11:27 am
@ech 34
“They still can yell “dress like a man like you’re supposed to” and worse, without rebuff from neighbors. If I make the mistake of calling the police to report harassment, the police will also decide that my trans neighbors and I are “wrong” and “an affront to $god.”
That is cisgender privilege.”
No that is not. You could say “no YOU should dress XY” and the police wouldn’t rebuff you.
What is happening is that they are harassing or mistreating you, but it has nothing to do with privilege.
Another example of why the word “privilege” sucks.
Also this is another example where the world “privilege” implies some form of guilt.
Matt 12.13.24 at 12:20 pm
Engels, all of your comments here about sports have been… odd… as if sports and competition only came about, or were practiced in capitalist countries, but I’ll leave that aside and not that this, “Btw 30 years ago I had female American friends who played “soccer”. It wasn’t seen as gender egalitarian then but as a women’s sport (because almost no American men played it ”
Is just obviously false. How do I know? Well, because I, and many other males, played soccer in the US then. It’s true that it wasn’t as popular as other sports, but the idea that “almost no men” played it in the US at the time is just obviously wrong.
(Also, why the quotes around “soccer”? That’s the original name, the one that was used in England for most of the history of the sport, and [unsurprisingly] is still used in Australia and NZ. It’s a weird, fairly recent affectation for English speakers to call it “football”.) You’d do a a lot better to stick to topics you know something about. Sports isn’t one of them.
Cora Diamond 12.13.24 at 1:18 pm
There is a long discussion of the issues concerning Imane Khelif at Jerry Coyne’s blog, Why Evolution Is True, with detail about the relevant possible sexual development disorder, on the blog post for August 2, 2024. The issue is not whether Khelif was “born female”. If in fact she has the sexual development disorder 5-ARD, she would appear female at birth. If she has 5-ARD, the developmental changes at puberty would reflect the presence of the XY chromosome. The fact that she appeared female at birth does not imply that she is not biologically a male.
J, not that one 12.13.24 at 2:27 pm
“Most of the time, I can exist secure in the knowledge that most people around me will not think that, by expecting to fulfil my potential just like men, I am asking for too much. . . . – but the message, I think, it’s pretty clear: if you are different, it is your job to reduce your ambitions so as not to create trouble for others.”
Off the printed page, it seems increasingly the case that one should no longer feel confident that this can be taken for granted.
hiero5ant 12.13.24 at 4:15 pm
@MisterMr #40
1) Footnotes 7, 8 and 9 in the wiki predate both the interview with Khelif’s trainer in Le Point (allegedly) confirming DSD and the (alleged) leaked medical report in Le Correspondant. Once again, while I can neither confirm nor verify these specific claims, it is simply inaccurate as of today to claim that “no evidence has been published”.
Crucially, even if you want to read this as “no credible evidence has been published, and these reports turn out to be spurious, it still remains the case that the claim in OP — that JK Rowling “doubled down” after “matters had been clarified” — is unsupported by any of the five links I followed. No evidence whatsoever has been put forward suggesting this matter has been “clarified”.
2) It is a reasonable and cogent argument that the Burden of Proof isn’t or shouldn’t be on female athletes to scientifically demonstrate their chromosome counts. But again, this is a logically separate argument from the claim in OP, that her XX chromosome status has been affirmatively “clarified”, and Rowling dishonestly persisted anyway.
3) Despite all of those links I checked from wikipedia quoting the official from the IOC, it remains the case that their criterion for gender verification is simply what it says on the person’s passport. Setting aside the fact that multiple countries explicitly allow a person to have a gender marker on their passport that does not match their birth sex, in the case of the (alleged) DSD of someone raised their entire life as a female, this would not in the least be dispositive evidence against the allegation.
4) Before I finish this, I have to re-emphasize how completely reasonable it is to say that women who do not conform to western cis-het beauty standards might decide they don’t need to “prove themselves” to an online mob. But not only is this logically distinct from the apparently incorrect claim in OP that this matter has been “clarified”, it remains the case that a simple cheek swab could and would put this decisively to rest. But between all the press releases and legal threats, this is the one course of action she has refrained from taking.
One very plausible inference to this Argument from Silence is that she feels it is simply dumb to dignify her haters with even pretending this is something up for debate. But the presence of an XY karyotype is also at least a reasonable (but hardly airtight!) inference that a non-transphobic, non-misogynist person could make from this silence.
Both inferences are plausible. Which is just to say, I dispute the empirical claim in OP that this issue has been “clarified”. And for the record, yes, I also dispute @Aubergine #9’s claim that it is “public knowledge” that it has been clarified in the opposite direction, too.
engels 12.13.24 at 5:13 pm
Tony Collins’ Sport in Capitalist Society has the detail but simply put there is a world of difference between pre-capitalist games (which may originally have been non-competitive, non-physical and intertwined with religious ceremonies) and modern sport, which started to emerge in Britain in the 1700s and was later exported worldwide by Empire: codified, time-limited, ruthlessly competitive and geared towards the generation of profit.
But yes I’m not a sports fan: I’ll go back to cooking dinner.
LFC 12.13.24 at 6:45 pm
As Matt @42 notes, males have been playing soccer in the U.S. for a long time. My brother tried out for a men’s soccer team as a freshman in college, way back in the fall of 1977. Though most of my pre-college schooling was in public schools (in the American not the British sense of that phrase), for a few years (approx. 1966 to ’69, when I was in 4th, 5th, and 6th grades) I went to a private school where soccer was the thing as far as sports went. I’m not a particularly good athlete (though I eventually became a semi-decent tennis player) but I spent a fair amount of time on the soccer field (football pitch, as engels would say) in those years because everyone at the school had to, and I still vividly remember a number of the players.
bekabot 12.13.24 at 7:18 pm
“something like this…is a common experience for many cis women…nobody…say(s) that these women have a weird fetish”
Louise Kaplan does, in Female Perversions. She calls it ‘homovestism’ — the case of a woman masquerading as a ‘woman’, or of a biological woman playing the part of a cultural woman, to her own approval and that of other people.
“People with DSDs shouldn’t be used as a trojan horse for the male colonisation of every space for women.”
For ‘people with DSDs’ read ‘fill in the blank’. Have said before (so many times) and will say again — if women had spaces of their own, those spaces might be worth fighting for and defending, but since we don’t, the point is 100% moot, and can only be introduced as a time-waster. People who talk about ‘female spaces’ are just wrong, the way people who think Donald Trump won the 2020 election are wrong and the way people who think Anthony Fauci is a ringleader in an international conspiracy to eat babies are wrong. JK Rowling talks as if there’s some secret line of priestess-empresses out there just waiting to reassume their lost birthright, which is indeed a flattering self-assessment for white women, but which overlooks the fact that there is no such birthright, so there’s nothing to inherit. Women have only their slender purchase on contemporary life, and that, in itself, is fragile, and might be easily upset. (Since Donald Trump is going to be the President of the USA — again — it might be upset in any case.) I look with disfavor on attempts to trade that slender purchase in for pots of shimmering woo, because it’s a bargain which is bound to prove detrimental to the interests of the people who make it, and because it might not prove revocable at will.
Suzanne 12.13.24 at 8:54 pm
@37: Not all sports and games are played in a commercial context, although as long as they are I’m glad to see women getting a piece of the action even if the piece should by rights be a larger one.
I’m thinking more of Kathrine Switzer, who was physically attacked by a Boston Marathon official when she became the first woman to run as a numbered entrant in 1967. Today women run marathons all over the world. I’m thinking of girls and women who now get to participate in expansive physical education programs in schools and higher education that previously didn’t exist. I could go on, but you get the idea.
Hern 12.13.24 at 9:24 pm
Dawkins says it far better than I could. https://open.substack.com/pub/richarddawkins/p/replying-to-jordan-peterson?r=3ixhs&utm_medium=ios
engels 12.14.24 at 12:57 am
I’m thinking more of Kathrine Switzer, who was physically attacked by a Boston Marathon official when she became the first woman to run as a numbered entrant in 1967. Today women run marathons all over the world.
Ok but you described advances “since the late 20th century” as the “triumph”. Plenty of women were running marathons and taking PE in the 90s. What they weren’t doing was playing all the men’s sports in segregated competitions for less money. I’m fine with them doing that, just don’t see why it’s better. Girls at my school were playing netball, hockey, rounders, all of which now seem to have been retrospectively denigrated (despite the last being essentially the same as baseball afaics).
bekabot 12.14.24 at 2:25 am
“Dawkins says it far better” etc.
Dawkins is in the minority in his cohort, and JK Rowling and Jordan Peterson aren’t. If you are a Dawkins fan, and if you follow the Dawkins doctrine with sincerity, then you too are in the minority, while you will find that the TERFs and the Lobsters aren’t. They outnumber you. They all subscribe — maybe not to the same gaudy dreams — but to comparable ones. The goddess-empresses of TERFdom are a kind of late, faint reply to the Grand Inquisitors and Knight-Paladins cooked up by the Lobster pot. Once again, the girls don’t want to be left out, and once again they make themselves beautiful images with which they identify and which they defend. (Dolls, in other words.) The problem with these images is that though they solve the short-range issue, which is one of alienation, they don’t represent anything real. They will never change anything, not in ten thousand times ten thousand years. That’s why men like them so much.
The ideologies of the Lobster pot and the TERF world differ from the Dawkins cosmology in one persistent respect, which is that Dawkins cosmology pretends to be based on observable facts (whether it is or not is another dispute, which I’m not going to tackle at this time) whereas the TERFy and Petersonite dogmas make no such claim. They are all about appearances, and at a certain level in either of them, anything goes. At the back of them both, of course, and not very much obscured by the curtain, one can glimpse the workings of politics as usual, and if anything is certain it’s that things get harder and drier and more defined and less swoony the further you go behind the scenes. The Dawkins doctrine pretends to have overleapt all these distinctions, like an open-plan house which boasts fewer but bigger rooms. (Whether or not it has actually done so is, again, a question I’m not prepared to answer.) Even more, the Dawkins doctrine makes motions in the direction the type of absolute truth which the Lobster pot and the TERF world don’t aspire to handle. In the universe according to Dawkins, gravity works on everybody, light doesn’t speed up or slow down of its own accord, evolution works on everybody, and both the just and the unjust get wet when they venture outside on a stormy day without an umbrella. To the TERFs and Petersonites (in their separate ways) this is terribly unfair, because some persons are so manifestly superior to (or merely different from) other persons that they should be protected by special rules. (If physics can’t be made to do the right thing by the exceptional individual, surely society can be.) They think the idea of one rule which applies to all people is a terribly leveling notion and destructive of the natural distinctions which ought to exist among men, and even more threatening toward the distinctions which should obtain between men and women. And the thing is — they’re right. It is a leveling notion. It does work to bring all men (even all people) down to a common plane. It does not respect the distinction between a commoner and a prince. And you, if you subscribe seriously to the doctrine propounded by Dawkins — you believe in it. That’s the difference between them and you. They don’t.
Chris Bertram 12.14.24 at 8:49 am
I don’t know whether or not Khelif has a DSD or not, nor do I think it obvious what sporting category someone with a DSD should compete in (or whether the answer is the same for everyone with a DSD). But I am able to read the interview in Le Point pointed to above. The claim that Khelif’s trainer confirmed a DSD is not explicitly supported by the text of the interview. First, the person interviewed is not her trainer, but a sports scientist who worked with her team, second in the interview this scientist says that a Parisian endocrinologist confirmed her to be a woman, albeit one with raised levels of testosterone and an unusual caryotype. The scientist supports her right to compete.
The text pointed to by Cora Diamond is really pretty vile. Coyne basically assumes the conclusion he wants (that Khelif is male with a DSD) and then wheels out experts to support that conclusion. Coyne then refers to Khelif as “he” at several points. Now it is uncontroversial that Khelif is, from a social perspective, a woman, who was identified as such at birth and who has been socialized as such (and has been subject to female gender norms within her society). Such a person would have been accepted as a woman in all social contexts until the unfortunate conjunction of elite sport, modern science and culture war transphobia. Referring to her as “he” is just sadistic bigotry.
Colin R 12.14.24 at 5:20 pm
I don’t disagree that cis-gender offers privilege (being a cis man, and for all purposes ‘white’, it would be hard to disagree.) Given how much heat is generated by discussion of transgender individuals (a fairly small percentage of the population) and Olympic tier athletes (a very small percentage of the population), it would be tempting to think this is a pretty niche concern for people.
But it’s not really about athletics, is it? It’s about policing everybody’s gender boundaries, but women and female-ness in particular. Vitriol against transgender women is focused on the perception that they are liars or predators; vitriol against transgender men tends to take the more subtle form of concern trolling that they aren’t going to fulfill their biological destiny.
Sports are simply a useful sphere of battle, where the rules are arbitrary and arcane, but there are actual referees and judges to appeal to. And the weapons are wielded most openly and viciously against openly transgender individuals, but anyone who is not perfectly in performance with their gender is open for attack.
RobinM 12.15.24 at 12:21 am
LFC @ 47
I hope you’ll take it as kindly meant, but you err in distinguishing American public schools from British public schools. In Scotland, public schools are taken in the American sense. Or given history, perhaps I should say that Americans use public school in the Scottish sense.
It’s also, by the way, at least somewhat relevant that the Scottish discussion of transgender has focussed on much more substantial matters than sport.
J-D 12.15.24 at 5:33 am
This is a grotesquely overconfident prediction of the likely behaviour of police in the US.
Well, it’s not ‘another’ example, because we don’t have a first one to begin with, but it’s not even a first example. In a situation as described by ech, where there is a group of people who have the privilege of not being subjected by the police to a form of harassment which another group of people are being subjected to by the same police, there is a word in the description which implies a form of guilt, but it’s not ‘privilege’, it’s ‘harassment’. When I had a boss who subjected (some of) my colleagues to a form of harassment which I was not subjected to, I felt bad about it. There was no good reason for them to be treated worse than me (they were, if anything, better at their jobs than I was at mine) and there was nothing I had done to merit the privilege of not being harassed in the same way. Saying that our boss was granting me a privilege or treating me as privileged would have been one of the reasonable ways of describing the situation. That privilege, however, didn’t mean that I was the one who was (in a way) guilty in this situation; it was the boss who was (in a way) guilty, not of being privileged but of being a bully.
LFC 12.15.24 at 6:47 am
RobinM @55
Yes, I should have said the English sense, not the British sense.
wacko 12.15.24 at 9:35 am
I thought that the technique of declaring these kinds of demographics “privileged” and “victimized” (“wokness”) has been analyzed and found to be a tool of our crafty capitalist overlords. Am I ahead of time, or are you fighting rearguard battles here?
bekabot 12.16.24 at 2:00 pm
“I thought that the technique of declaring these kinds of demographics ‘privileged’ and ‘victimized’ (‘wokness’) has been analyzed and found to be a tool of our crafty capitalist overlords.”
By whom?
Asking for information (I must have missed that meeting).
wacko 12.16.24 at 2:42 pm
To bekabot,
Here’s the Taibbi’s piece I read a couple of days ago:
https://www.racket.news/p/fine-woke-cannibals
I don’t know how much of it you can see; I’m a subscriber myself.
engels 12.16.24 at 3:24 pm
Anyone else find it at all odd that women turned out to be at least as good as men at most the activities that actually matter for society, and more than capable of holding their own in academic and cultural competitions and so on, but all the most prestigious sports are based around things men seem to be naturally better at, which requires women to be siloed in astronomically lower paid leagues whose boundaries have to be patrolled by pseudo-scientific bureaucrats?
Move along, nothing to see here… or to quote from one of my namesake’s books: “And yet there is a great deal of money made here: good morning sir!”
bekabot 12.16.24 at 5:55 pm
@ wacko
I don’t find this article to be revelatory.
First, Taibbi is a conservative. He’s been conservative for a long time, and everyone has known it for a long time.
Second, everybody hates college kids, including other college kids. This has been true for a long time and it’s been generally acknowledged since the days of Socrates.
@ engels
Men can have sports as long as they leave us everything else. (Joking!). {hastily}
engels 12.16.24 at 7:37 pm
Review of Collins’s book, in case anyone’s interested:
https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/7949_sport-in-capitalist-society-review-by-adrian-budd/
J-D 12.17.24 at 10:19 am
Did you find it to be anything other than a load of rubbish?
MisterMr 12.17.24 at 12:04 pm
@J-D 56
According to the way you use the term, if I beat my wife twice a week, but them I beat my lover thrice a week, my wife is “privileged”.
I don’t think it is the way the term is usually understood, in particular not for the emotional values associated to the term, and while it is difficult to argue about connotations I think that the use of privilege strongly connotates something good but undeserved (so in my example of the beaten wife that is not a privilege because she is not in a good situation).
More generally IMHO the problem is that we use “privilege” because the left has a general idea of “injustices” but has problems to define them (as opposed to the more straightforward economic injustices).
But this is a problem because then one can come out with the idea that, say, an atheist or agnostic is “privileged” when they go to uni because their worldview is not challnged by darwinism, whereas a strict christian is challenged: if we cannot pinpoint what can be considered harassment, to what point it should be prevented by law, up to what point e.g. insults are allowed because of freedom of speech and so on (insults against e.g. transexuals but also insults against Israel or similar), we are bound to use this strongly emotional language for “cases that we dislike”, but then the same language can be weaponized agains “cases that we like”.
So in my view, apart from my personal feelings, a clearer definiton of what is “privilege”, what are “rights that everyone should have”, and what is “harassment/trumping someone’s else’s right” is needed.
engels 12.17.24 at 1:24 pm
Late 2010s era wokeism was Clintonite Democrats concern-trolling the Sanders/class struggle left. Now Sanders have been vanquished they’ve dumped it and are trying to blame it on us.
somebody who remembers that "trans sports" is probably less than thirty people nationwide 12.17.24 at 8:58 pm
the whole conversation is wild – the primary form of cis privilege is, naturally, that where you are allowed to go to school, walk down the sidewalk, purchase food and drink, obtain health care, wear clothes of your choosing, express yourself, and have a family isn’t presently the obsessive focus of a group of realtors and car dealers’ sons grunting and moaning about you in every state legislature in the country, writing hundreds and hundreds of increasingly vicious laws targeting your life and handing them over to a policing force addicted to steroids and truncheons to brutally enforce on you.
M Caswell 12.18.24 at 3:51 pm
“something good but undeserved” not quite narrow enough, I don’t think. Lots of good things are unearned, but aren’t thereby being unjustly denied anyone, either.
CJColucci 12.18.24 at 4:57 pm
Many years ago, in the 1970’s, I attended a powerlifting meet in central New York, graced by “celebrity” judges, powerlifters Don and Cindy Reinhoudt, both credible candidates at the time for the title of world’s strongest man and world’s strongest woman. Don’s feats were well beyond any capabilities I could dream of, but I thought it possible that even with my roughly average genetic endowment I could become as strong as the world’s strongest woman. That would have been a very respectable accomplishment, but I was too lazy to attain it.
Had I managed it, I would not have been tempted to transgenderism so I could compete for women’s powerlifting titles. The material and reputational rewards that accrue to men’s powerlifting champions were and remain unimpressive. Being recognized as the world’s strongest (trans) woman would have been even less rewarding. The incentives to change genders to compete in women’s sports just aren’t enough to tempt any significant number of biological males to lop their d***s off.
To be sure, there are difficult issues involved in determining who should or shouldn’t compete with whom on the frontiers of gender uncertainty. They should be examined calmly by competent people and the results presented soberly to the appropriate authorities. If I had to guess, I would guess that things would eventually shake out into something like the traditional status quo, but I do not insist on it and await what serious people have to say.
But not everyone is willing to proceed calmly.
bekabot 12.18.24 at 6:58 pm
“Did you find it to be anything other than a load of rubbish?”
I’m not saying that it’s rubbish (‘rubbish’ is a strong word). What I’m saying is that there isn’t much in it that everybody doesn’t already know. I’m also saying that the viewpoint it evinces is a POV everyone is already familiar with, either because they share it or because they don’t. The few material points it makes have to do with deficits in human psychology (meaning human psychology as a whole as opposed to the psychology of any specific human group) which tend to go unaddressed throughout the centuries and millennia because nobody can figure out how to fix them. (Why do we find it so much easier to cancel racists personally than to tussle with racism as a system or structure? Well, it’s because we interact with other human beings immediately and with systems at second hand, so the former is easier than the latter, and always will be — that’s why.)
Finally, I’m saying that as symbolic capitalism becomes more and more prevalent and as its tools and tricks become more and more widespread (and unavoidable), symbolic capitalists, of whom Mr. Taibbi is one, will find the world better and better stocked with competitors they don’t trust, and will be less and less able to contemplate the realm of people who don’t have college degrees as a safe haven. Mr. Taibbi has already made this observation with reference to his political opposition, but my guess is that it won’t stop there and that he’ll have to look to his own laurels. In other words I got out of the article more or less what I brought to it — which wasn’t much. That’s all.
J-D 12.18.24 at 11:13 pm
I responded to comments asserting that ‘privilege’ implies ‘guilt’, making the case that this is not true (because it isn’t).
I am not sure I understand clearly how this most recent comment is supposed to relate to that earlier disagreement. It seems to me to be related in some way (though I’m not sure exactly how) to discussion of some general issues with evaluative assessment.
If somebody were to tell me that they lack any capacity to evaluate what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, truth and falsehood, guilt and innocence, fairness and unfairness or other similar concepts, I should not believe them. Everybody does evaluations of this kind.
It is true that people disagree about evaluations of this kind. It is so obvious that it’s almost not worth mentioning. If I say ‘That’s not right’, somebody else may respond ‘No, you’re wrong, there’s nothing wrong with it’. I expect everybody has had some experience of disagreements like this. But so what? Even if I wanted to abandon evaluation and assessment like this because other people might disagree, it’s not actually possible for anybody to do so.
It can be sensible to work for improvements in how people deal with evaluative disagreements, but it’s a catastrophic (although tempting) mistake to think of these in general terms. There’s no general answer to questions like ‘What are better ways of defining our terms?’ but there are specific answers to questions about how to make specific improvements. For example, courts making determinations about whether people’s legal rights have been violated is something that actually happens in practice, and for precisely this reason it would be ludicrously false to say something like ‘We have no way of determining what a person’s rights are or whether they have been violated’. We do have ways of determining this! That’s exactly what courts are doing! It is reasonable to suggest that the way courts do this could be improved, but in order to do that it is indispensable to begin by investigating how they are doing this now, nobt by pretending that their actual operations are impossible or unknowable.
ech 12.19.24 at 2:22 am
somebody @67: this.
Too many of the people on this thread really don’t give a damn about transliberation and we’re an annoyance to whatever neoliberal nonsense world they dream of.
noone1 12.19.24 at 8:52 am
Everyone is obsessed with me, which makes everybody who is not me privileged.
engels 12.19.24 at 4:34 pm
the primary form of cis privilege is, naturally, that where you are allowed to… obtain health care
Without in any way minimising the oppression trans people suffer it very obviously isn’t generally true that the majority of Americans are “privileged” in this way (and to echo MrMr, if they were then “privilege” wouldn’t be the right term for it). You can kind of see this from the recent reaction to another thing I’m sure we don’t want to talk about.
MisterMr 12.19.24 at 5:55 pm
@J-D 71
Ok, I’ll go with a different example:
Suppose that in a certain school, all students do their math test, but Student A gets a test that is easier than the one the other students get, because he is the nephew of the very tyrannical principal.
I would say that in this case “student A” is privileged, however the other students are not “disadvantaged”, because they are still getting a normal math test.
One year later, all students get again a normal math test, but because the tyrannical principal was fired, the math teacher has a personal vendetta against Student A, and gives him a test that is more difficult than the others.
I would say that in this case “Student A” is “disadvantaged”, but I would not say that other students are “privileged”, because they are still getting the normal test.
This logic applies on the assumption that there is something like a “fair” test, so people who get a test that is easier than this fair one are “privileged”, those who get one which is more difficult are “disadvantaged”.
The way you and the OP are using the term is different: it seems to me that you are using the term only in a relative way, so for you it is interchangeable to say that, in the fist case, Student A is privileged or the other are disadvantaged, or in the second case, Student A is disadvantaged and the others are privileged.
In fact the way the OP uses the term is the equivalent of saying, in my second example, that the other students are “privileged” for receiving a fair math test.
This is a problem because the way you use the term, there is no more a reference to a “fair” situation, but only to relative positions, so if someone is mistreated less than another he is privileged, or if a CEO receives a slighly less fabulous income than another she is disadvantaged (this is an example of the problem applied to the “glass ceiling” logic).
Because there is no more a reference to a “fair” level, anyone can look privileged or disadvantaged, just choosing an appropriate point of reference: this makes the whole argument meaningless.
On the “guilt trip” thing, this comes from the idea that “privilege” means “something above a fair level”. I believe that this is indeed the way most people would process the word, and therefore it entails a bit of guilt tripping. If you think that “privilege” does not entail (generally) an idea of “more advantaged than what is fair”, then you will not perceive it this way, but then there is the question how do you call someone who is more advantaged than what is fair?
J-D 12.20.24 at 3:26 am
Yes, I know. I used it advisedly. However, if you tell me it’s not rubbish I’ll accept your word. What else you have to say about it doesn’t encourage me to read it for myself to double-check.
Miriam Ronzoni 12.20.24 at 10:39 am
@J-D
Thanks!
J-D 12.21.24 at 2:04 am
@Miriam Ronzoni
You’re welcome!
(I’m not sure exactly what I’m being thanked for, but in any case, you’re welcome!)
J-D 12.21.24 at 7:06 am
I’d be interested in seeing an attempt at explaining how accusing people of ‘guilt-tripping’ is not itself a form of guilt-tripping. I don’t believe it can be done.
MisterMr 12.22.24 at 7:53 am
Yes, when I use the term “guilt tripping” it has a negative connotation so I’m also guilt tripping.
But, there is a new shiny thread for this now so we should move the discussion there.
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