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Comment by caeril | Hacker News Reader

There's a large segment of the population that feels actively threatened by trans rights. The two primary components are:

1. Parents and sexual violence victims concerned about the non-falsifiability of trans-identification and the related concerns of sexual predators claiming an identity they don't actually have to gain access to private spaces of women and girls.

2. Feminists (TERFs) who believe being a woman is a fundamental, biological identity and cannot be coopted by males.

Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. These groups exclusively concern themselves with trans-women.

Mormons are probably another group due to the reliance of their theology on binary gender, but I don't see them as being particularly vocal on this topic.

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> Feminists (TERFs)

One note: Nobody self-identifies as a TERF. Or at least not originally (I'm sure in Internet ire people do it ironically by now.) It's mostly a label used to crush nuanced conversation.

> Or at least not originally

I've heard it was the other way around, i.e. it started off as a self identification for a niche group which people started to reject once it begun to be used pejoratively.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/29/im-cre...

Interesting, thanks! Although I supposed it doesn't really speak to whether it was initially embraced (by the identified niche group) before being rejected.

Interesting to compare that with WASP.

> Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men.

One of the interesting things about spending the last few years studying Western European post-Roman history has been the discovery that, in the West, there has historically been relatively little resistance to AFAB folks "presenting" (speaking of the interpretation at the time--the dichotomy between "presenting" and "being" is one I am thoroughly not qualified to negotiate) as male unless tied into homophobia. There are historical examples of folks who outwardly identify as women taking on male roles in monastic life, and it's often portrayed as a good and pious thing.

The reverse, it seems, is generally not true, though not exclusively so. I've read of, but don't have offhand, accounts of Church investigation into "male nuns" that ruled that the erstwhile offender, a male who had suffered prepubescent genital damage, had committed no crime being raised by a particular convent as a woman. But cases going the other way round are much more common.

In terms of today's relations, however, my intuition is that the fear regarding transwomen is that it's largely a performative flavor of misogyny and the fear of those of the "superior" set somehow damaging all men, much as the performative flavor of homophobia does the same with regards to gay men but shockingly much rarely with regards to bisexual or homosexual women. But, of course, that is just an intuition.

>2. Feminists (TERFs) who believe being a woman is a fundamental, biological identity and cannot be coopted by males.

I'd wager that most people believe this. Not just feminists.

Unless I have wildly misunderstood you, I believe you would lose that wager: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Pu...

Polling suggests otherwise:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-women-supp...

https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/548775-new-poll...

There are a lot of shades of trans support, If you asked the most extreme questions you would probably get different answers.

It is one thing to ask people should be able can use a bathroom, and another to ask questions about personal sexlife and behavior. i.e. if you asked people if you consider transwomen equally with women at birth as sexual partners, I bet the numbers fall through the floor.

Well, sure. If you ask people whether they consider Black and Asian men equally as sex partners, the numbers would also fall through the floor. This doesn't mean Black or Asian men are less of men, or even that they're necessarily against either of those groups, it just means people have preferences in what their partners' bodies are like. My point is just that "trans women are women and trans men are men" is actually a common opinion, contrary to the claim in the comment I was replying to.

I think you may have missed the point in GP’s post. “Trans-women are women” is a common opinion in a casual context (like when greeting a colleague in an office), but in contexts where the stakes are higher (like when choosing a sexual partner), very few will treat trans-women as women.

Exactly my point. Many hold the philosophy that discriminating between the two in any context is an attack.

Most heterosexual men identify as being attracted to women, and don't hold trans women in that category.

I don't think this conclusion is justified by the data, though. If this were just a matter of "they'll humor trans people, but everyone secretly knows trans women are men and treats them accordingly," you'd expect gay men to generally be attracted to trans women. But by all accounts I've heard, the people who are attracted to trans women tend to be straight men, just like any other woman. It's true that straight men are generally less likely to be attracted to trans women than cis women, but this just shows that being transgender is unattractive to them. Gay men are even less likely to be attracted to trans women, so it's clearly not as simple as "people actually perceive them as male and treat them accordingly."

Here’s some actual data that suggests “trans women are women for dating purposes” is the opinion of only a small minority:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026540751877913...

This data supports my point. It does not say "trans women are treated as men for purposes of dating," it says "trans women are not broadly considered attractive." They specifically call out that few people of any sexual orientation want to date trans women. But those who are interested in dating trans women tend to be people who date women.

This paper article cites that 3% of strait people would consider dating a hypothetical trans person of the gender they are attracted to.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog...

The question is not "would you consider a trans person as a sexual partner" -- the question is, "do you consider a trans person to be the gender they identify as".

There are a lot of women I would not want to sleep with. Does not mean I question their gender.

It shows that most people don't consider them equivalent to women as sexual partners. We were discussing how in some demands trans people are considered and are not considered as their gender of choice. If you ask would you date a woman and someone says yes, then ask would you date a trans woman and they say no, that shows that they are differentiated for the purposes of this question

I don't think that passes the smell test. What study would you cite to support that assertion?

You could ask whether there is a study to assert parent poster's assertion, too. All I could say is that the burden of proof seems to fall on you with your statement, but most would take parent's at face value.

54 percent of Americans believe "whether a person is a man or a woman is determined at birth". There is a wide partisan divide with 80 percent of Republicans agreeing (so probably not radical feminists) and only 34 percent of democrats agreeing.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/11/08/transgender...

Polls have a way of shifting rapidly. People put down what they think they're supposed to put down. See how fast support for gay rights tilted as more people came out. Most people weren't really committed to homophobia, but they thought they were expected to seem to believe certain things.

There's a name for the phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance

you think universities focusing on gender are affected by this?

I'm not sure what this means. Universities are big, sprawling things. Even universities known for one thing have a wide range of majors.

The scientific community, specifically the community that conducts science on this topic, currently has a distinction on the terms sex and gender. I’d posit the possible consensus position that the term sex refers to physical anatomy whereas gender refers to one’s gender role in interaction with others.

For details on that distinction and attempts at consensus-building for the terminology, see https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...

In software development terms, this topic has no ubiquitous language.

In relation to your comment, their belief is not based in a shared reality.

> Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men.

While it's true there's little animosity directed at them, there is a lot of stuff Shrier's view that "gender ideology" is seducing lesbian women into thinking they're not actually women. Which, honestly, as someone who lived through lots of the dumb gay panic in the 80s and 90s sounds exactly like what people thought about homosexuals (eg: gay people can seduce/recruit straight people and turn them gay). So trans men get treated like dupes or victims of some social phenomena, rather than treated like actual human beings with agency of their own.

In fact, pretty much every anti-trans viewpoint I see, even from otherwise highbrow publicans like the Economist, are really just rehashes of what we heard about gays in the 80s and 90s, before we realized they were, in fact, not a threat to society.

> ” sexual predators claiming an identity they don't actually have”

This is such a bizarre leap of logic. Trans women are the pariahs of contemporary Western society. Yet the same people who uphold this subhuman status also assume that rapists are nefariously claiming trans female identity.

That’s not how rapists operate! They seek positions of power. Trans women are downtrodden and powerless — the least attractive position for a sexual predator.

I think your terminology is a bit backwards. A trans man is someone assigned female at birth but who later identifies as male. From context you seem to be talking about the hypothetical of male rapists professing they identify as trans women. A person born male who later identifies as a woman is a trans woman.

Thanks, that’s what I meant. (You write an agitated comment on the phone and make a basic mistake. The usual.)

I thought that was the idea being sold by Republicans in the US, though, that a woman who is trans is going to be lurking in the bathroom to rape your daughter after beating her in tennis?

Yes. Republicans are trying to pass bills under the guise of protecting against trans women. Trans women are people who were assigned male at birth, and now present as women.

You are of course right factually, but fear of sexual predators is not based in stats and facts, but in feelings. When people think about rape, they imagine a stranger in a dark alley, whereas ~90% of rapists are somebody the victim knows.

>That’s not how rapists operate! They seek positions of power.

This frames rape as some thing people plot out and rationalize over a long time.

Rape is like any other crime. Some people think about it critically and finds ways to commit it for their own amusement. Oftentimes it's just people taking an opportunity. Sometimes it's people finding ways to make opportunities and not thinking about freshman psychology power dynamics. A lot of rape involves hormones and alcohol flowing freely without consideration of the consequences or harm.

There are also people who actively enjoy feeling weak or inferior as part of a sexual fetish.

Trying to rationalize it into one group or mindset doesn't work.

Wow - I don't think so, unless by;

"2. Feminists (TERFs) who believe being a"

... you mean the groups they represent i.e. 'a lot of women' frankly many of them who are not 'radical feminist' or even 'feminist'.

Huge numbers of women are uncomfortable with at least some parts of 'trans women' from 'changerooms' to 'sports' etc..

I don't think the very notion of 'trans' really upsets very many people at all, and that's the funny paradox.

But as soon as it crosses paths with others, then it's an entirely different issue and there's a lot of dust raised by pluralities.

> Mormons are probably another group due to the reliance of their theology on binary gender, but I don't see them as being particularly vocal on this topic.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints doesn't appear to feel threatened by transgender rights. At least, not according to official stances here: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/topics/transgender

I'm sorry to be so frank, but this is more of the same mormon bullshit.

"Love the sinner, hate the sin" is the typical line. The problem is our actions and identity are often intrinsically linked.

They have the same stance for gay people. "It's ok to be gay, god still loves you! The only catch is you can't ever have a romantic relationship with the person you love. If you do you'll be excommunicated and ostracized from your family. No biggy! God bless!"

Nobody wants this sort of faux compassion.

From that link:

> Gender is an essential characteristic of Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness. The intended meaning of gender in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” is biological sex at birth.

> Church leaders counsel against elective medical or surgical intervention for the purpose of attempting to transition to the opposite gender of a person’s birth sex (“sex reassignment”). Leaders advise that taking these actions will be cause for Church membership restrictions.

> Leaders also counsel against social transitioning. A social transition includes changing dress or grooming, or changing a name or pronouns, to present oneself as other than his or her birth sex. Leaders advise that those who socially transition will experience some Church membership restrictions for the duration of this transition.

Their advice on what treatments they support for transgender people is kind of vague and circumspect, but the gist seems to be "A therapist should at least be open to conversion therapy," which is generally considered harmful.

Given the LDS Church's open campaign against gay rights based on the "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" (the same document referenced above), it seems reasonable to interpret this as stating opposition to transgender rights. Though as the parent noted, they are much less vocal on this topic.

> 2. Feminists (TERFs)

I worry that this can be read as "all feminists are terfs", which is not accurate.

I think the difference between treatment of mtf and ftm can be mostly boiled down to difference how males being female spaces VS females being in male spaces is perceived.

For trans exclusionary feminists one is the patriarchy coming to female protective places and females claiming their place and undermining the patriarchy. As for parents males being less susceptible to forceful sexual exploitation is true but there is also a huge societal double standard when it comes women forcing themselves on men or abusing their male partner which is also reflected in parents being less worried about something happening to their children. Possibly also because of pregnancies onesidedness.

The protection of female virtue is also an enormously successful political tactic, from the "yellow peril" in the late 1890s in Europe and the US to the "white slavery" panic (specifically referring to the cultural phenomenon in the US that gave rise to the 1910 Mann Act; check out the contrasting commentary of Emma Goldman and Rose Livingston) to the murder of Emmett Till and the burning down of Black Wall Street in Tulsa -- all of these are really responses to larger questions of opportunity and freedom of movement for folks that crystalize in the threat to a white woman's sexual virtue and the justification of violent response to crush the threat.

The bathroom bills, the panic over sports, the violence trans and gender-nonconforming people encounter (especially on racialized lines) -- it's all part of a larger political narrative. As you can see from the comments on this HN thread, you get a daddy all worked up about his daughter's virtue/place in life and you can move political mountains because it is an Existential Threat that Must Be Removed. That's weaponizable in a way that talking about military spending or tax law or gerrymandering is not.

Interesting I wasn't aware of all of these patriarchic laws.

I’ve always regarded transitioning gender — and how it is focused so much on men moving away from being a man — being equivalent to someone saying I am uncomfortable and I want off this ride, where the rollercoaster is testosterone. That’s what I’ve picked up anyway, from my friends who have transitioned.

I think that might be why it’s more common than transitioning in the other direction?

TERF is a pejorative term, I wouldn’t use it unless you are trying to attack feminists.

In academic discourse, there is no consensus on whether or not TERF constitutes a slur.

But if we want to be accommodating to those who take offense with the term, we can use the term Gender Critical.

“Trans-exclusionary radical feminist” sounds pretty pejorative, most especially the “radical” part.

"Radical feminism" is a branch of feminism. It is not used as a pejorative in the acronym.

"Radical Feminist" is the only part of the term that everyone agrees is not pejorative.

It is a real branch inside feminism, which lots of women identify with, and it doesn't mean what most people think it does.

Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_feminism

For some reason I cannot recall, a friend of mine had me read a bunch of proper radfem terf blogs back in like, 2010. I remember being impressed with the coherence of their worldview, even if it, uh, was not flattering.

Men were all inherently bad, penis-in-vagina sex was inherently rape, lesbians were good, trans-women were infiltrators and trans-men deserters.

You can say "gender essentialist" if you feel that TERF is too loaded, but it boils down to the same thing; it's a position that denies identity rather than accepting it.

It's only pejorative in the sense that it attempts to accurately describe the motives of a set of individuals who aren't comfortable with the way those motives are widely regarded. In that sense it's about as pejorative as "racist".

That is the danger of interpreting technical jargon without having the technical background. It will get you in trouble when you are talking about software just the same as when talking about science.

It might be loaded with denotation outside of the scientific community, but the word “radical” has some various scientific meanings, as other commenters have noted.

I think "trans-exclusionary conservative feminist" would be way more pejorative to the feminists in question.

>In academic discourse, there is no consensus on whether or not TERF constitutes a slur.

All you have to do is look at how the term is used in the wild to determine if its a slur. Anyone who can claim it isn't is being disingenuous.

> All you have to do is look at how the term is used

By that logic, is "white supremacist" (or racist) a slur? I see it used in just about the same way.

It's tricky. They are certainly used in slur-like ways these days. I would say the difference is that white supremacist and racist are pre-existing terms that are widely considered to be neutral descriptive terms. You can use neutral terms in non-neutral ways and over time they may start to take on the slur connotation. But I don't think we are there yet with the established terms.

Is there a way to express distaste for racists that doesn't use the word like a slur?

I'm wondering to what extent statements like "racist is a slur" is equivalent to "people frequently express distaste for racists"

You can certainly be explicit about the negative evaluation, e.g. "racism sucks", "being a racist is not cool". The issue with language is that context imbues words with meaning. So when you use a term in such a way that the dynamics between the term and the context leads to associating the negative connotation of the context to the word itself, further usages of the word then carries that negative connotation with it. In the case of slurs, they no longer (or never did) carry any neutral meaning. So the difference between expressing distaste and using a slur is how the negative connotation is expressed.

Citation?

Those who are called TERFs are feminists in name only. The vast majority of self-described feminists don't agree with the TERF platform.

This seems like a “No true scotsman” argument.

Feminism covers a range of thoughts or beliefs, to promote advocacy.

Its not an attack on feminists though?

I read the original comment by @caeril as saying that Feminists are TERFs, which would not be accurate as the expansion of the acronym is “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists”.

From what I’ve seen reported, cis women are on average more relaxed than cis men about trans women.

Aren't a majority of the TERFs specifically 2nd wave Feminists who who do not like the idea of 'passing' as a female being reinforced. This as because they spent their lives fighting so that women did not have to abide by social norms enforced on them. From their POV, since gender is social, a trans-gender person reinforcing the need for transition to enjoy social aspects of being a woman is actively hostile to their goal of making social norms around gender be deemphasized.

The criticisms of transgenderism by TERFs have being a Feminist (in this case 2nd wave) at its very core. Removing it loses a lot of nuance of their specific criticisms.

I am unfamiliar with any survey specifically focusing with that much depth on people who exclude trans people, do you have a link?

How do you define a TERF without calling them a TERF (and distinguishing them from other Radical Feminists or mainstream 4th wave feminists)?

If we can't call a spade a spade, what shall we call it?

FARTs is better, since it doesn't allow transphobia to co-opt feminism.

To say nothing of the issue itself, the methods of "trans rights activists" frequently involve intimidation or vigilantism and generally cause a lot of resentment against trans people. People are afraid.

>Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. These ground exclusively concern themselves with trans-women.

I second this. Maybe it's some echo chamber effect or a minority stirring shit up, but I've hardly heard anything over the years about transmen-as-men vs men-as-men. It seems like most of the focus is on transwomen-as-women vs women-as-women. Maybe we're not as vocal? Maybe we care less? I don't think we have much of a dog in this race so I'm often confused as to why this topic comes up on HN considering most of us here are men. Boring day at work?

I do feel bad for the women's Olympics, but I'd like to ask the Olympics committee what the hell were they thinking long before I start any kind of anti-trans crusade. This is one discussion that doesn't seem to be happening much. The diatribe is as always directed among the proles and the decisionmakers get a free pass. Someone must have said, "Yes, lets allow a 35 year-old recently transitioned man to compete with early 20 year-old women," and some approval process must have happened. Those are the people you want to start asking the hard questions, not look at LH and blame her for participating in the Olympics that she's allowed to participate in.

Or as someone else put it: "A female POC just lost her spot to a white, middle-aged, male-born son of a billionaire. This is supposed to be progressive?"

I think it is the same reason no one has ever cared much about lesbians compared to gay men. [1] But I am not sure why that is.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lesbians-more-accept...

I was thinking exactly the same thing. A man with a vagina is much less sodomy-y than a woman with a penis.

> I'm often confused as to why this topic comes up on HN

Take a look around, I think you'll find transmen comprise a much larger proportion of this community (and tech communities in general) than the general population.

There's also a lot of desire on HN to comment on political topics while pretending not to comment on political topics. Things like gender identity, women in tech, genetic differences, etc are all wonderful smokescreens to allow us to post politically but maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest.

> Things like gender identity, women in tech, genetic differences, etc are all wonderful smokescreens to allow us to post politically but maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest.

Especially when it comes to these topics, I imagine it's very easy for people who aren't affected by these issues to "debate" them *because* they aren't the ones directly affected by it.

>maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest.

That's a good point.

My guess is that practically everyone knows what side they are on as things get more sporty. The rest is just weaving arguments for the fun of it.

> The rest is just weaving arguments for the fun of it.

Interesting discussion is the HN way!

Some enterprising scientists may have some cutting edge insights reviewing HN comments on technology topics, no reason to suspect otherwise for social sciences.

> maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest

Some of us have an academic interest in biology, genetics, neuroscience, psychology, etc. while still aligning with the overall origin of this site as a place to discuss the latest in news as relates to technology startups.

It is unfortunate that this politically charged topic is so misunderstood and that ignorance of the basic science behind it is so prevalent, but here we are.

TERFs primarily don't focus on trans men because they see them as misguided women. You can find many TERFs blaming trans women and "gender ideology" for convincing butch-identified lesbians that they're actually straight men. Personally I think this denies trans men the dignity and autonomy to define themselves as they see fit, but then again, I would say that, I'm trans.

It's ironic that this transphobe fantasizing has led to non-conforming cis women being harassed in the bathroom. Whatever minimal problem there was with women being harassed or assaulted in the bathroom by men or AMAB people has been completely surpassed by these fantasies sparking a witch hunt.

Seems like a reasonable hypothesis to build a psychological study out of, but there’d be a lot of work to do on operationalizing your definitions.

Not sure what part you're referring to but it's more or less overt that many of them think trans men are basically women. This combined with what they say about trans women is most of where the accusations of essentialism come from.

> TERFs primarily don't focus on trans men because they see them as misguided women.

Not well versed in feminist theory, but I’m curious whether anyone has formally documented in the scientific literature these sorts of psychological attitudes.

Probably a cross-disciplinary masters thesis worthy topic if no one has done that research yet.

I suspect it has much to do with the idea that trans-men are transitioning into a gender "in power." That is, adopting masculine social behavior and lifestyle allow transmen to enter the patriarchal fold and slip quite seamlessly into a male dominant society, as long as they remain unknown. Once they are known, the idea that they must be excommunicated or "proven" as female becomes imperative. Transmen are subject to inordinate degrees of violence like transwomen. This is all to say that cis men aren't as afraid, be it in washrooms or on a sports field, of transmen as much as transwomen.

Transwomen, on the other hand, are much more defined, in the eyes of a patriarchal society, by their rejection of masculinity in favor of femininity. To some cis-men, they appear as aberrations or duplicitous (hence the nickname "trap"), to some cis-women they appear as potential unfalsifiable unknowns, and a potential thing to be feared for sexual violence. Transwomen are thus caught in the crossfires of fear from both genders.

I don't think so, that's a work of fantasy and quite the leap.

It's probably more that in the grand scheme of things trans-men don't pose any sort of threat to other males. I don't recall ever discussing trans-men with my peers.

I think it stems from privilege.

Trans women are seen as seeking female privileges (like the ability to compete against women in sports, which is easier than competing against men). Which enrages some people.

Trans men are seen as giving up their female privileges, to which everyone shrugs and says "you want less privilege? Fine by me!"

Are there no privileges afforded to men?

I can think of at least one -- working in tech.

I've met quite a few trans women working in tech!

Of course men have privileges too, but I think many of men's privileges come from confounding variables. Like men are on average taller, and people are biased to view taller people as having more authority, so taller people are more likely to become CEOs etc.

Whereas women's privileges come from society compensating for men's privileges. So society sees women on average are smaller and physically weaker, and thus decides they need privileges like separate sports to compensate.

Trans women who went through male puberty often have the size advantage of men, so them also have the social privileges of women is seen as double dipping.

While for trans men it's the opposite, they're often small like women, but not afforded social protection for it.

Anyway that's just my theory why some people hate trans women more than trans men. I myself have sympathy for both cases, dysphoria sounds pretty awful.

The Olympics has been dealing with the question of womanhood for a very long time. For a while they were literally stripping and groping female athletes. Later they did chromosome testing, until they discovered intersex individuals who confound that theory.

Even their current testosterone-levels theory is imperfect, since some people have obviously female bodies but inordinately high testosterone levels.

So they seem to be muddling along about as well as they can. If they want to have a separate women's category, it's a question they're going to have to answer.

I've basically had a thought recently about this.

The Olympics will eventually become a contest of the best humans, regardless of sex / gender. This is already how it is more or less today: people born with the right body types, into the right families, etc, will make it to the top.

Thank for you attending my TED talk.

This is the most elegant solution, but it's also functionally equivalent to "women can't do high level sports anymore"

I feel like women's sports is extremely cursed - a sporting competition with a handicap, except the handicap is not specified in the rules but is instead a randomly distributed quirk of biology, meaning that people have to judge who does or does not have it, except that the handicap is also an integral part of a person's identity...

(no I don't mean to say being female is a disability, the context is sports)

They're already in an arms race about performance enhancing drugs. And even without those, there are artificial limitations like age in women's gymnastics, because of the damage it does. Football players are grappling with decades of head injuries.

If you want to know the very best a human can do, you will destroy them. It's just not a question we can safely know the answer to.

So it's never really going to be fair, and we need to ask a different question. Exactly what that question is remains to be seen.

That would be the end of females in the Olympics. Male High School Athletes beat Female Olympians in most events:

https://boysvswomen.com

Wow that website is incredible!

Yeah it definitely destroys my little thought :D.

" "A female POC just lost her spot to a white, middle-aged, male-born son of a billionaire. This is supposed to be progressive?" "

Perhaps it's simply a way to more firmly define the progressive stack.

We need an ISO standard in this area.

>I've hardly heard anything over the years about transmen-as-men vs men-as-men. It seems like most of the focus is on transwomen-as-women vs women-as-women. Maybe we're not as vocal? Maybe we care less?

It's really not that hard to understand. It's the same sort of thinking that motivates the slogan "don't punch down". Males aren't threatened by females identifying as men. But females are threatened by males identifying as women for many obvious reasons. For example, with self-id as the only criteria keeping men out of women's prisons, it undermines the protection women have against abuse from men while in forced proximity. A female in a male prison or male changeroom is a novelty, not a threat.

Seeing as how the historical perspective is almost directly reversed from what you claim, I'm going to have to be skeptical about this. The European-historical aversion to largely one-way nonconforming to gender and sexual roles (men acting as women being a problem, ditto male homosexual behavior) is pretty explicitly due to a rejection of (heterosexual) masculinity translating as a threat to that (heterosexual) masculinity.

Those currents run deep, and run through to today. And that's not to say that "but a guy might go in the girls' bathroom!" is not what bigots say, because as a prima facie claim that's certainly common--but I very much doubt, were we to see some unvarnished honesty, that bathroom fears are actually a primary motivator rather than a convenient battleground.

There is certainly a longstanding cultural thread of defending traditional manhood through explicit castigation of male deviants, but notably the source of the explicit castigation is largely from other males. The pushback against trans-women's acceptance as women isn't largely driven by men. It is pretty evenly distributed, or perhaps even more driven by women. The point is that these seem to be distinct phenomena driven by distinct concerns.

> perhaps even more driven by women

Can you substantiate this? It doesn't match my understanding of the situation either from a cultural or an interpersonal perspective.

I don't have any hard numbers, but it is the impression I get from various organizations and legal challenges to trans legislation in the UK. The organized opposition seems to be largely driven by women.

It's because there is no reason to have animosity toward a woman becoming a man. The main objections to MtF are about safety (a MtF will always be stronger and bigger than a woman on average) and fairness (should male born people get female scholarships, compete in women's sports?). A FtM is not hurting anything or taking any opportunities away from anyone really.

You are making broad statements about the prevalence of psychological attitudes in the general public.

Do you have an academic citation to back up your assertions?

No.

Here’s some interesting research on the prevalence and varieties of reasons why people have negative attitudes towards transgender individuals.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C50&q=att...

The scientific community may not yet have crafted any research on the specific question of attitudes towards transgender athletes, but it shouldn’t be hard to find the research if it exists.

> fairness (should male born people get female scholarships, compete in women's sports?). A FtM is not hurting anything or taking any opportunities away from anyone really

fairness is an issue when considering MtF, but not FtM? why exactly?

Transitioning female to male doesn't make you more likely to win Olympic weightlifting competitions in your new gender, so you'd be vanishingly unlikely to do it for the sake of gaining an advantage.

Ah. We are only considering physical advantages then. There can be many other advantages that are not physical.

Keep in mind that transgender individuals are almost certainly, in general, and by regulation if they are transgender and an athlete, undergoing hormone therapies. In the case of estrogen treatment, that implies a reduction in muscle strength in addition to the other physical changes caused by the addition of estrogen and the removal of testosterone.

This is a factor in why there are regulations requiring testosterone levels below a certain amount in order to qualify in the women’s section of certain sporting programs.

There are no zero sum advantages to being a man that can be harmed by a FtM entering the pool.

>There's a large segment of the population that feels actively threatened by trans rights.

I'd say that's a vast overreach. It isn't like the Trans Army is going to come burn down your house.

If anything, it's a general notion that transsexuals are mentally ill and that there is something odd about normalizing it. In a sense, that it's not different than people who want their limbs amputated or wear animal costumes at all times.

> a general notion that transsexuals are mentally ill and that there is something odd about normalizing it.

That seems like a defensible position to take. At least as plausible as the common alternative -- that it is a physical illness (thus we 'fix' the body to match the mind).

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