Gender swap situation

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because someone dresses in some way doesn't mean something else.

We have Shakespearean Actors dressing as women. Oh so there were transwomen in Shakespeare's time? Nope we had an exclusion of women from public life - due to sexism. The only way you could represent women as part of life was to have men dress as women.

We had WWII prisoners dressing up as women. Again because women were excluded from the camps as they weren't servicemen. And they acted to relieve boredom but wanted to represent women as part of normal life.

Both are examples of men dressing as women because of the exclusion of women for very different reasons. These are not men becoming women, but a reflection of power dynamics within society.

So it's really important we don't go around making massive assumptions that relate to modern times for many reasons.

We should perhaps, at this point, talk about types of porn around today that are about power dynamics between men and women and the sexualisation of this - that involves men dressing as women. Thats one of those interpretations that perhaps isn't going to go down so well in pro trans circles too. It's not one that has such positive vibes in modern society but is definitely a reflection of modern life.

In the modern day context I can well see why it's preferable to make a nice comparison with 'innocent transness' rather than start talking about male sexuality and male power and dominance over women and exclusion from public life which is ingrained in multiple ways into sexism and sexualisation.

There's some huge assumption making going on here in saying 'there must be some truth'.

The reality is a) there may be no truth b) it might be about sex and power not identity c) it might be really rather unpleasant in the context of modern understanding.

Instead we have this very sanitised and one dimensional packaging which is a world away from a decent academic standard of historical analysis.

Wow. For a start you know that OP DD is a daughter so the correct pronoun for a girl is ‘she’.

Then you suggest that she is ‘immature and uptight’ or ND for not wanting to be bullied by her ‘friend’ into pretending said friend has turned into a boy and changing her whole way of speaking (using wrong sex pronouns in front of her - highly rude to normal people) to suit friends demands?

Could you be any more wrong?

She is trying her best to be this child's friend. Including trying to go along with her demands. It's the other child who is not being accepting, because she is punishing the OPs DD for forgetting on occasion to call her Ron and use male pronouns, which all the rest of the group do too. There is nothing whatsoever to suggest the DD is uptight or immature. The thread is about anxiety she is feeling because her friend is angry with her. The mention of the word trans is causing you to be biased, and you are unfairly maligning the character of a child.

Absolutely classic gender critical logic

You might have a hope of understanding gender critical logic if you actually read and responded to what was posted rather than making stuff up and misrepresenting and losing track of the words we are discussing.

You have used three separate terms as if they were interchangeable in your post - trans, transgender variance and trans variance. Each of these terms should have a meaning (although Lord knows what, we seem to have abandoned the whole concept of meanings) otherwise that would be ridiculously inefficient and confusing.

The question ACTUALLY asked didn’t claim that ‘trans’ can’t be real, it was this:

Marshmallow
In that case, do you want to engage with my post on the history of homosexuality?

Is it your contention that in the past, lots of people were transgender in the modern sense (despite leaving absolutely no trace of this at all, in any writing or personal self-expression or in the millions and millions of diaries, books, records etc.), but only now and since around the 1970s have we understood this phenomenon exists that there’s no evidence of in the first place?
Or were the people in the past wrong in thinking that they were same-sex attracted/frustrated by not having the vote or any education or power, and actually they were secretly “trans”, a concept they had no knowledge of?

Then you acknowledged that there was a difference between your concept of ‘trans’ and Marshmallow's point about historical drivers of reported mismatch between sex and social behaviour but produced a huge list of examples that demonstrate a great selection of those drivers which entirely backs @marshmallowpuff s point.

Tandora
I don't understand this at all. Being trans is separate to being frustrated about not having the vote, education or power, and it's also separate to sexual attraction.

It’s not ‘circular’ - you have used terms and concepts interchangeably and ended up in a completely different place to where you thought you were.

Could I suggest that you decide on a term you want to use for specific groups of people and then stick to it. Then consider how your claims of a biological basis (as opposed to social drivers of different historical periods) for ‘trans’ fits for each of the different groups that all lay a claim to be ‘trans’?

I’m looking forward to actually getting somewhere with this.

You are making all kinds of unsafe assumptions after 2000 years.

There's much arguing over the character and actions of Richard III. Despite it being a much closer era. For similar types of reasons.

You also have not addressed the previous points raised by another poster about Roman sexuality and ideas of sexuality and how they are massively different from today. You are not contextualising. You are assuming.

At best we can speculate at what is going on - that's a good long essay talking about sources, weaknesses of sources and the wider context of what we know about the role of women, sexual relations and power within Roman Society. And even then, even if you could present a case for behaviour you would not necessarily be able to make a direct comparison between present day trans and what was going on in the head of an ancient Roman. What if he had some sort of brain injury and was a particular outlier that wasn't at all representative of the era in any way? You'd need a pattern of evidence, with several examples, in context.

Given what we know of Roman Society and sexualisation, if there is some truth in it, it's more likely to be an example of fetishism rather than innate trans identity. That opens up a whole different bunch of conversations. Nor does this necessarily legitimise trans for today given we know that sexual use of children and slaves was totally acceptable and that concepts of equality certainly did not extend to women. Those conversations are potentially difficult and actually this might be an attempt to deflect from those less pleasant aspects of Roman society (or conversely to try to pave the way to legitimise the return of less pleasant aspects of Roman society) depending on your sexual politics. Either way = Massive.Can.Of.Worms.

Reducing all this to a single like that 'transwomen existed in Roman times' therefore is fundamentally a dishonest and deliberately misleading concept.

And one you make by saying 'least someone of it must have some basis in truth' which is piss poor historical analysis and skills.

As I say, massive assumptions and jumping to wild conclusions to fit modern understanding rather than a serious attempt to help us understand the Roman world.

But yeah it sounds intellectual, cool and as if it has credibility because it's those educated type people finding this stuff. But scratch it a tiny bit and it falls apart.

The one dimensional repeating of the idea that transwomen existed in Roman times just isn't 'Good History'. In the same way that transactivism is riddled with 'Bad Science' and poor journalistic standards.

It needs to be pulled up on. Hard.

She's 14. Surely she can just be this person's friend, why does it matter what she/they/he wants to be called. That's what I like about this generation, they're so accepting, non judgemental and just go with the flow. Tell your DD to just be a friend. Your DD sounds quite immature and uptight. Are they neurodiverse?

I understand that the only accounts of this person are written by his enemies so the evidence has to be examined in that context. (The article I posted said exactly this.)
it doesn’t of course mean they aren’t true, and these are the accounts we have. the accounts are there and suggest that this emperor used female pronouns, wore female dress, called himself a woman and expressed a desire for genital modifications. At least one of the accounts was written for contemporaries which is thought to present evidence that at least someone of it must have some basis in truth.
regardless of this particular figure there are vast literatures containing similar stories across history and cultures. Yes you can find arguments/ ways of dismissing, offering a different interpretation , or undermining the “proof” of each one , that’s the nature of historical interpretation and engaging with historical sources, but to insist that there is no evidence of transness in history, compared to other axes of human diversity, and that therefore trans experience is not real in the same way that eg autism and sexuality is , just exposes an absurd degree of bias

For the lurkers at the back...

....we need to debunk nonsense.

Yes this is how you like to engage with me on every thread. By attacking my person instead of having a substantive conversation.

Tandora’s like this, Tandora’s like that…

Transactivism is dishonesty personified.

If your argument is that there was transpeople in Roman times, then you need to understand how anyone might have come to that conclusion and how sources are important.

The running theme through trans advocacy is the inability to understand bias.

The entire circus that was practice at the Tavistock was about the runaway train of bias to the exclusion of all over possible explanations and the complete dismissal of harms.

God must be real and ghosts must be real because believers in that sort of thing has existed throughout history

Breaking news! Forum user responds to post using WORDS! 😂🙄

If it helps your comprehension a little, I'll break it down for you. 'Are you suggesting that asserting that there are only two sexes and no one can change between the two is ‘blind arrogance’??' were your exact words in response to my post stating that people are entitled to call out blind arrogance. My point in asking you to show me where I'd brought up the sexes or changing sex, seeing as you appear to need it simplifying, was that I wasn't interested in debating that on this specific thread. My 'empty', 'wordy' posts made that abundantly clear in the first place, but hopefully I've now cleared up the confusion for you.

And for you to accuse me of policing, well... 🤷‍♀️

Oh give over!
People get accused of contempt just for not pretending to believe in it. Even here, youre picking up on her thoughtcrime arent you.

I didn’t. Maybe they have made other remarks that have been misunderstood and that’s why they think trans allies are so agressive to them

Tandora has a history or deliberately missing the point.

Tandora is not demonstrating that they understand sourcing and bias in history.

There is little point in having an argument with Tandora for this reason.

Its fairly critical to the substance of the argument.

Lolllll the only person personally attacking anyone is you.

I read that comment as a play on ‘ciao’.

It’s not calling anything ‘chow’.

That’s hardly a fair representation of the conversation 😆.

A pp insisted that being trans can’t be real, as if it were there would be evidence of it before the “90s” (which btw was long after contemporary medical/ scientific terminology for describing transgender variance was invented, but never mind) .

So I provided accounts from history that provide evidence of individuals who expressed a powerful desire or took extraordinary action to change their social, legal or anatomical sex.

Then it was declared that these can’t be true examples of trans variance as they existed in a different context and therefore the same ideas / terminologies can’t possibly be applied! I’m imposing labels on people / assuming categories. Oh and btw , fyi , these people are almost all in fact “gay”.

See how completely circular this is?

Oh and now this is all my fault and I’m stupid and DARVO.

😄.

Absolutely classic gender critical logic

Aaactually I was saying that I felt your reply to Tandora was a personal attack and that it made me wonder if the experiences you mentioned were perhaps reactions to behaving similarly in real life

Nice.

When all else fails, resort to the personal attack.

If yr going about calling peoples polite representations of their own thoughts ‘chow’ in real life I can see how that could be presenting you with some interpersonal problems

Sinnerboy I love the constant

"You don't know any trans people"

We live with them. They are colleagues and sometimes friends.

"But they are nice people"

We know. But sometimes misguided and sometimes still unreasonable in demands as a side effect of brainwashing

"But you can't know any bad ones"

Except the ones who have hurled abuse at us, tried to get family members ostracised from us, have used various forms of unacceptable behaviour towards us. Not to mention all the threats etc we've personally received online and ignoring all the ones we've seen directed at public facing women who have challenged this insanity.

Yep apart from all this, we've never come across a transperson and live in a bubble detached from the rest of the world.

It's ridiculous.

You are obviously a stranger to the internet and the varied news media. Honestly, you must have been living in a cave, if you've missed all the threats screen shotted from Twitter etc, assaults at women's gathering, frequently with the Police standing idly by.

The disgusting videos posted by men in Mark's & Spencers changing rooms, the ones in women's toilets, where they piss and worse on the seats.

Their confident bragging about it. MN is full of examples of these.

No, you have reported on recent interpretations which look at the past with trans tinted spectacles and miraculously change everything to ‘transgenderism’ which as a pp observed was invented somewhere between the 1960s and 90s.

There is a vast difference between the current situation, the Romans and men like Sylvia. None of them demanded society cater to their every whim or they would pour bottles of piss over themselves in public.