Social media app just for 'females' intentionally excludes trans women(businessinsider.com)
businessinsider.com
Social media app just for 'females' intentionally excludes trans women
https://www.businessinsider.com/giggle-app-uses-ai-to-exclude-trans-women-ceo-says-2022-1
81 comments
“Once we’re all at the bottom, then we’re all on equal footing. And effectively, relatively, socially, there no longer is a bottom or top.”
- A Smirking Philosopher
- A Smirking Philosopher
Ending discrimination is great, but that's not happening today. And today, people need to cope with discrimination. Which sometimes means singling out people who are discriminated against, using the same criteria that the discriminators use.
Trans women face discrimination in many of the same ways that cis women do, and in most circumstances it's best to simply treat them as women. There are a somewhat-nebulous set of cases that should be restricted to cis women, but much of the time those cases are more about anti-trans-discrimination than actually protecting cis women in particular.
Any case of discrimination for the benefit of marginalized groups is going to invite scrutiny, and sometimes legitimate disagreement. It sounds to me like this case is reasonable to exclude men, but not to exclude trans women. The fact that they don't menstruate, for example, doesn't mark them as non-women: lots of women don't menstruate (young, old, ill, athletes, anorexics, etc.) It's true that many lacked girlhoods, but increasingly many have transitioned at a young age.
That's my cursory opinion. It could change if I were exposed to more details.
But I don't consider it helpful to say "to end discrimination we should stop letting people self-segregate". That attitude fosters abuse by people who discriminate, and forbids people from protecting themselves against it. Maybe in the future it will be helpful, but today it harms a lot of people.
Trans women face discrimination in many of the same ways that cis women do, and in most circumstances it's best to simply treat them as women. There are a somewhat-nebulous set of cases that should be restricted to cis women, but much of the time those cases are more about anti-trans-discrimination than actually protecting cis women in particular.
Any case of discrimination for the benefit of marginalized groups is going to invite scrutiny, and sometimes legitimate disagreement. It sounds to me like this case is reasonable to exclude men, but not to exclude trans women. The fact that they don't menstruate, for example, doesn't mark them as non-women: lots of women don't menstruate (young, old, ill, athletes, anorexics, etc.) It's true that many lacked girlhoods, but increasingly many have transitioned at a young age.
That's my cursory opinion. It could change if I were exposed to more details.
But I don't consider it helpful to say "to end discrimination we should stop letting people self-segregate". That attitude fosters abuse by people who discriminate, and forbids people from protecting themselves against it. Maybe in the future it will be helpful, but today it harms a lot of people.
This app has several dog-whistles for TERF hate groups, that are designed to fall just below the threshold of deniability until considered as a whole by someone familiar with TERF hate speech markers:
- Dedication to the color "pink" representing women (classical pre-birth gender roles)
- Defining the gender "women" as exclusively people who were sexed female-only at birth (assumption-by-framing discrimination vs. transgender, intersex)
- Implying that gender is permanently affixed through bone structures to each human body at birth (classical definition that gender == sex)
- Declaring that only binary genders "male" and "female" exist (inflexible binary gender roles)
So I expect that this app will end up banned for promoting hate speech as a result — not because they're attempting to create a women-only space, but because they're attempting to create a social space where TERF hate speech is welcomed and encouraged.
- Dedication to the color "pink" representing women (classical pre-birth gender roles)
- Defining the gender "women" as exclusively people who were sexed female-only at birth (assumption-by-framing discrimination vs. transgender, intersex)
- Implying that gender is permanently affixed through bone structures to each human body at birth (classical definition that gender == sex)
- Declaring that only binary genders "male" and "female" exist (inflexible binary gender roles)
So I expect that this app will end up banned for promoting hate speech as a result — not because they're attempting to create a women-only space, but because they're attempting to create a social space where TERF hate speech is welcomed and encouraged.
[deleted]
Just use this until you get in: https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/
Kind of strange that this is news. Women should be allowed to have spaces for themselves.
Please don't start flamewars on HN.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If I knew that people were going to have such a negative reaction, I wouldn't have posted.
Edit: Seeing the state of the comment section for this submission, why not remove the article?
Edit: Seeing the state of the comment section for this submission, why not remove the article?
You co-created the state of the comment section. The solution is not to remove articles, it's to raise the level of discussion.
It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose facial bone structures are unacceptable to the app.
It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose skin color is unacceptable to the app.
It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose biological sex at birth is unacceptable to the app.
None of these criteria have any bearing whatsoever on gender. They’re saying “women” out loud, but what they’re trying to filter for in practice is “people who were sexed female-only at birth and meet a restrictive set of facial characteristics”. Women have a variety of biological sexes at birth (male, female, both, neither). Women have a variety of facial characteristics (feminine, masculine, androgynous, mixed). So it’s news that they’re trying to discriminate by redefining “women” to exclude some women.
It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose skin color is unacceptable to the app.
It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose biological sex at birth is unacceptable to the app.
None of these criteria have any bearing whatsoever on gender. They’re saying “women” out loud, but what they’re trying to filter for in practice is “people who were sexed female-only at birth and meet a restrictive set of facial characteristics”. Women have a variety of biological sexes at birth (male, female, both, neither). Women have a variety of facial characteristics (feminine, masculine, androgynous, mixed). So it’s news that they’re trying to discriminate by redefining “women” to exclude some women.
No, that's not the story. The story is that there is a social network for women who have excluded non-women. They have done this because on many occasions, biological males have joined their platform and have threatened their users.
They have chosen an imperfect solution to validate that their users are who they say they are, sure, but they have resorted to this measure to try to keep this space as their own.
They have chosen an imperfect solution to validate that their users are who they say they are, sure, but they have resorted to this measure to try to keep this space as their own.
We’ll see. The imperfection of their solution is certainly the surface story, but I suspect it’s meant to be a haven for TERF hate speech (not just a haven for all women) and won’t survive.
To flip in on its head. Would it be okay to have. A space for trans women only?
If that space defined “trans women” as only those who have completed both facial feminization surgery (with AI evaluation of their face bones) and required that they have completed vaginoplasty or vulvoplasty so that their genitals are sexed female, then no, it would be just as discriminatory to trans women as the app under discussion here is being to all women.
If this imaginary trans women space accepted all serious forms of presurgical or partial-surgical proof, such as a doctor’s letter or a hormone prescription or an orchiectomy or etc, then that would not be discriminatory and would be fine.
The core issue here is that this app is trying to enforce gender as purely a function of physical characteristics, denying altogether that gender is more complicated than that and is not guaranteed to be linked to any physical characteristics whatsoever. Their ”women only” definitions fail the transgender women test, the intersex test, and the “born female-sex athletes with high testosterone and masculine facial features” test.
Either they are blithely unaware of these complications, or they are unconcerned with them. That is, itself, newsworthy.
If this imaginary trans women space accepted all serious forms of presurgical or partial-surgical proof, such as a doctor’s letter or a hormone prescription or an orchiectomy or etc, then that would not be discriminatory and would be fine.
The core issue here is that this app is trying to enforce gender as purely a function of physical characteristics, denying altogether that gender is more complicated than that and is not guaranteed to be linked to any physical characteristics whatsoever. Their ”women only” definitions fail the transgender women test, the intersex test, and the “born female-sex athletes with high testosterone and masculine facial features” test.
Either they are blithely unaware of these complications, or they are unconcerned with them. That is, itself, newsworthy.
For-profit ventures aren't allowed to deny service based on immutable characteristics in any country with these anti-discrimination laws, except for very narrow exceptions. This is doubly so for a service that provides networking opportunities to find contacts for businesses and jobs.
Saying you can't discriminate against trans women because of their "immutable characteristics" is the height of irony.
Could be easier to ensure that any space is safe to any human being instead of creating new ones to women? I'm not asking rhetorically. I genuinely don't know what kind of spaces are not safe only for women and what could make those space safer for them.
No worries about it excluding women of color, either?
> No worries about it excluding women of color, either? Racism and transphobia are just political opinions, right? Human rights are so last millenium.
Free association is about being able to decide (which is to say, make a choice by discrimination) about who to associate with. Conflating the legal concept of discrimination and the right to discriminate via the biological function of the senses, does not help things.
Free association is about being able to decide (which is to say, make a choice by discrimination) about who to associate with. Conflating the legal concept of discrimination and the right to discriminate via the biological function of the senses, does not help things.
It seems clear to me that this platform would have no problem letting on women of color. They unfortunately chose an imperfect solution to validate new members which they had to resort to due to the women on their site being threatened.
Right. Women of color are merely an overlooked, but totally acceptable casualty. Business as usual.
bushbaba(8)
leephillips(3)
coolso(1)
While I'm sympathetic to transwomen in general, cases like this really bother me. It just feels like this person is not mentally well. I am sympathetic to the concerns of women as well, as we all should be.
EXCLUSIVE: 'We're uncomfortable in our own locker room.' Lia Thomas' UPenn teammate tells how the trans swimmer doesn't always cover up her male genitals when changing and their concerns go ignored by their coach
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10445679/Lia-Thomas...
EXCLUSIVE: 'We're uncomfortable in our own locker room.' Lia Thomas' UPenn teammate tells how the trans swimmer doesn't always cover up her male genitals when changing and their concerns go ignored by their coach
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10445679/Lia-Thomas...
> "We wanted a place where women could go to help each other," she said in an email. "A female space, in the palm of their hand. Where women could find support, connection and a refuge amongst other women no matter where they were or what they were doing."
And yet the reaction to the two seems to be divergent. We've clearly stopped caring for eliminating discrimination and now are hellbent on fostering discrimination, so long as its discriminating against the "right" groups. Hard to keep up with what groups are "right" to discriminate against on any particular day, though. Seems like a race to the bottom to me.