It changed my mind because what I thought was a strawman is actually what some large group turned out to be arguing.
Initially, I thought people were arguing that despite biological sex, there is a subset of people that feel like they should be the opposite gender (or a lot of variance within that) and work towards making that a reality. They still recognized the biological distinction though and that the groups were different.
To me the Lia case showed a lot of people arguing more than that. That sex itself is a social construction and Lia is a woman just like a biological woman is and there is ultimately no substantive difference (this is sometimes argued in a more obfuscated way, but this tends to be the core of it). It ends up being a lot of disputing definitions to shoehorn trans women in under the same word and group (which in the Lia case directly affects non-trans women's ability to compete with other non-trans women). With that axiom in place then it's easy to argue there's no reason she shouldn't compete alongside non-trans women. I think this is wrong. It also leads to weird language things like "men can be pregnant", referring to the class of biological women as "uterus havers" etc. (and then making pedantic arguments about this)[0]
JK Rowling seems to have made this her entire thing (probably partially in response to the blow back she receives from it), but I thought her writing here was reasonable: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-... and her comments about social contagion are definitely heretical but seem to also be true? Risks around this are real and I'd be worried about a young person regretting transition surgery - this is also a heretical view, but seems to happen.
"Cancel culture" and "heresy" is definitely when some dude refuses to debate your giant rational brain on a forum run by a party who agrees with your side.
It can be true that some benefit from transitioning and should be be able to carry that out and also true that some are persuaded to for social reasons and regret it. When people pretend it's all or nothing either way is when I get worried about bad outcomes.
Initially, I thought people were arguing that despite biological sex, there is a subset of people that feel like they should be the opposite gender (or a lot of variance within that) and work towards making that a reality. They still recognized the biological distinction though and that the groups were different.
To me the Lia case showed a lot of people arguing more than that. That sex itself is a social construction and Lia is a woman just like a biological woman is and there is ultimately no substantive difference (this is sometimes argued in a more obfuscated way, but this tends to be the core of it). It ends up being a lot of disputing definitions to shoehorn trans women in under the same word and group (which in the Lia case directly affects non-trans women's ability to compete with other non-trans women). With that axiom in place then it's easy to argue there's no reason she shouldn't compete alongside non-trans women. I think this is wrong. It also leads to weird language things like "men can be pregnant", referring to the class of biological women as "uterus havers" etc. (and then making pedantic arguments about this)[0]
JK Rowling seems to have made this her entire thing (probably partially in response to the blow back she receives from it), but I thought her writing here was reasonable: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-... and her comments about social contagion are definitely heretical but seem to also be true? Risks around this are real and I'd be worried about a young person regretting transition surgery - this is also a heretical view, but seems to happen.
[0]: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watching-lia-thomas-wi...