What has JK Rowling said or done that’s transphobic

Sure, but at this point you have moved the thing that you call "recognising oneself as female" so far away from the at least as true fact that about half of humanity have the physical sex we also call female that you are basically talking about two totally separate things.

At which point any justification to the demands for access to female-only provisions and female-bodies people based on "recognising oneself as female" collapses because there is no basis on which the latter can be related to the former, and since it was for the needs of the former these things were set up, the claim of the latter is of no signficance.

You can, I'm afraid, never win here. The only way to make the name "woman" or as I see you are now trying to do, "female" work for physically male people is to make it no longer work for phyiscally female people. And since phsyical sex is a fact, people will continue to notice this and continue to excluding trans women from the group that is physically female humans.

So either what trans women experience is being a woman, in which case "being a woman" has noting to do with being of the female sex so there is no reason those of us who are of the female sex should have to include trans women in our resources, or what trans women experience is not being a woman, in which case again there is no reason those of us who are of the female sex should have to include trans women in our resources.

And at which point the use the same words to label these two very different things must also be roundly challenged.

Thank you for the ongoing sunlight!

Pretty binary really.
Oh.
😀

So when people say "trans doesn't exist" - they aren't denying the exietnce of people who claim, many entirely genuinely, that they experience themselves as trans. They are simply saying since there is no basis on which one sex can physically transition to being the other sex, whatever the experience of "trans" is, because it is not actually becoming or in some metaphysical way being the opposite physical sex

^ Rhinos clarified that in the post above

People are female because they have female anatomy. Easy. There is no universal female feeling. So that’s sorted. No male cannot know what it’s like to be female because they are not female.

My sexed body is my material reality. My brain is part of my body, influenced by the complex relationship between the body’s hormones, brain chemistry etc etc. People cannot “perceive” themselves into a different material reality. What does “recognising one’s sex” even mean? You are either a sex or you are not.

No — because you are still assuming that recognising oneself as female must either be reducible to anatomy, or else it must depend on access to some universal “female feeling”. But those are not the only possibilities, and both models fail to account for what trans people actually report experiencing.

The existence of no single, universal way to “feel female” does not mean that a person cannot have a stable internal recognition of themselves as female. Nor does that recognition have to be based on either sexist stereotypes or physical anatomy.

You are treating the absence of a simple external frame of reference as proof that the experience cannot be real. But that conclusion does not follow at all. That's not how mental/ cognitive processes work. You can have a stable sense of something without possessing an external measuring stick for it. For example, you can recognise that a particular body part feels like “yours”, that a movement feels natural or alien, or that you are anxious, without comparing yourself against some universal template of how everyone else experiences those things.

You do, however, need there to be no verifiable evidence that it doesn't exist.

For example, my friend in America and I can easily prove the island of Atlantis does not exist halfway between us by taking a boat towards each other and failing to find Atlantis before we find each other.

The belief that the Gods lived on Mount Olympus was easily disproved by climbing Olympus and not finding gods. ("Ah! But what we meant was they exist in a spiritual way that while very very real, is not usually perceived by mankind..." - sound familiar 😂?)

And the belief that something in trans people's sense of self is a thing also experienced by "cis" members of the opposite sex but not by "cis" members of their own sex or "trans" members of the opposite sex is easily disproved by finding members of the first group who say "uh, no, that doesn;t sound like how I feel at all", or members of the second who say "hang on though, I feel that as well!"

All of which have already been found in abundance even on this very thread, it's just that the people who have invested so much of their own emotional and social capital in supporting the concept of "real" trans identties don't want to hear it.

Well then they’re delulu aren’t they? I mean, how can a male perceive himself as female? What frame of reference is he using? No male cannot know what it is like to feel female? There is no one way to feel female so how does he know? Unless of course he’s using the outdated, offensive, sexist stereotypes known as gender.

Yes but just because someone perceives themselves as fat doesn’t mean they are fat

if others see that person is not fat their will assume have anorexia or they are drama queens looking for compliments. The last thing we should do is give such people weight loss drugs to support their self image

so if you recognise yourself as female when. You are objectively male … what is the difference please ?

The act of recognising or being aware of one’s sex does not take place within ones sexual anatomy - it's a neurobiological, cognitive psychological process that is carried out by the brain.

Anatomy is one source of information about the body; the brain is what perceives, integrates and interprets that information as part of a person’s recognition/ awareness of self.

So it does not follow that someone who recognises themselves as female despite having male anatomy is simply mistaken about what anatomy they have. They may understand their anatomy perfectly well, and yet they still perceive themselves as the opposite sex.

Falsifiable does not mean "can be proved to be true", it means "can be proved to be false"

I agree, since trans and gay are both self-reported feelings we can never know if someone is telling the truth about how they feel or just going through the motions by their actions when in fact they do not feel it at all.

However, as I mentioned earlier, trans can be proved to be false simply by finding (and apologies for the word here but it's purely being used within a Genderist category system) a so-called "cis" person of the target sex who does not feel the thing the trans person describes themself to feel as the fundamental truth of their gender.

Now, you could dance on the head of a pin here and say "ah, but maybe the cis person is lying". Which makes me laugh, because of course when the cis person is oneself, one knows.

Which is kind of why the women here get so frustrated. It's like arguing with someone who has never been to your house but insists they know better than you where you keep the teabags!

I’m surprised by your viewpoint here because it seems you are suggesting that sex is not a biological fact that gender is not relevant to this conversation at all? Are there 3 sexes: M, F & T?

I would have thought by this point it is obvious to anyone with a pulse that sex is determined at birth and reflects the biological reality, while gender can be something different entirely (if you accept that gender exists which I know is a thing in itself)?

Honestly, I thought that was generally common ground among most people, with the argument being around whether sex or gender should be determinative when classing someone as either a woman or a man.

FWIW my own view is that trans people are worthy of respect and support. I will use any pronoun or name asked of me within reasonable limits. I have great sympathy for their struggles to feel seen and accepted. I reject tropes that they are in some way fetishising themselves, or are inherently deviant or other derisory comments. I think the mocking, general distain and hostility towards trans people is transphobic.

The difficulty arises for me where there are competing needs. We know that biological males present a risk to women (and other males tbh). I have not seen any evidence to clearly demonstrate that trans women are less of a risk to women than cis men (sorry to throw out cis here I know that’s a point of conflict). Where we know that biological men pose a risk to women, we cannot in good conscience allow them into certain spaces (women’s prisons, refuges, changing rooms etc) whether they identify as men or transwomen.

I appreciate that it is hurtful to transpeople to be excluded from spaces that they genuinely feel they belong in, and I hope that as a society we can find a way to accommodate the needs of everyone without compromising their safety.

It seems there are three quite distinct types of people being clustered under the current trans debate.

1. Very rarely children who believe they are the opposite gender from a very early age. Tend to not grow out of it and quietly transition. Mainly just want to fit in.

1. Massive number of teenagers who are generally struggling with multiple issues at once which often includes mental illness, neurodivergence, abuse, being in care etc. Being encouraged down trans route despite massive safeguarding risks. Generally very angry and unhappy.

3.Old men who decide to play around with being 'trans' for problematic reasons.

I'm sure there's the odd other person who doesn't come under these categories. But the ones where safeguarding is an issue (for self or others) far outweighs these. Funnily enough I was far more pro trans rights until a child in my life started transitioning at an early age and I saw how little safeguarding was worried about.

Did you read my post? I literally addressed that.

Ok, so you think the subjective expereince of being "male" or "female" rests outside the anatomy.

Fine.

But the body nevertheless exists.

The reality of the body and the consequences that it brings still exist, and are still entirely separate from whatever is being mentally recognised.

Other people still experience us in our embodied form.

So all you've actually done here is move a label from one thing to another.

You need to make the argument for why this mental recognition has to supercede the phsyical reality of sex for everyone else as well, and you have not done so.

Indeed I do not think it can be done.

But I would certainly welcome any honest attempt to try, because that is sorely lacking to date.

As many times as @Lacksie replies.

@Lacksie

It’s ok. I found it

Being trans is to recognise oneself as being a sex other than is suggested by one's reproductive anatomy.

I was under the impression that being trans was about gender, not sex. You seem to be saying otherwise

You've been told several times that being gay can be externally measured, therefore it can be verified. Why are you choosing to ignore this?

You can see attraction via certain parts
of the brain In brain scans so yet being gay can be independently verified if needed. But it's really not a relevant comparison.

"mumsnetters ridicule, belittle, deride and attack trans people on masse on these threads"

No they don't.

Sometimes some posts by some individuals about some trans people are IMO over-personal or ad hominem. I personally would not make them. I have sometimes reported, and I've also posted to publicly say something is out of line and I don't agree.

More common is posts pointing out problematic behaviour or statements by trans individuals that belie the conceit that trans women behave just like female people do or betray some very sexist ideas about men and women, or pointing out that whatever a trans identifying man may feel he should be entitled to, overriding women's desire for single sex provisions to get it shows a concerning basic disrespect for women.

I myself have made the blanket statement that trans people are by definition sexist because adopting a trans identity (or supporting such) is saying there are ways of thinking, feeing or being that are right for one sex and wrong for the other, so is in itself a sexist act, and I will stand by that. If you consider that to be ridiculing, belittling, deriding and attacking trans people en masse, I would kindly ask why I should give people who promote sexism any more respect that I give people who promote racism, agism or ablism.

But this is still mild compared to the unceasing accusations of hartred, bigotry and the latest, irrationality, that are thrown at the women here en masse.

Unless you think women simply refusing to subjugate our own self knowledge and our own self identities by saying a transwomen is somehow more a woman than any other man is in itself ridiculing, belittling, deriding and attacking trans people en masse?

Of course, the whole "oh I don't need to denounce the rape and death threats because they are obviously bad, so I'll concentrate on the much milder thing being said by gender critical feminists" is itself a bad faith position, because it creates a misleading impression of where the hate and agression is actually sitting.

So delusional. We got it yes. They believe they are something they are not. Just like anorexics believe they are fat or someone mentally ill can believe they can fly.

Female means having female anatomy- nothing more.

they recognise that they have female anatomy even though they don’t …

That's not what I said. I don't think trans people are delusional, I also don't agree with your understanding of "what they really are".

A trans woman is a person who recognises themselves as female despite having male anatomy.

A trans man is a person who recognises themselves as male despite having female anatomy.

I wonder how many times the fact that there is an objective test that identifies homosexuality/sexual orientation and which cannot be faked is going to be ignored in order to claim that trans and gay are the same as each other because neither can be objectively identified?

So you are saying that there is some as yet missing piece of science that will prove that transgender women are women and that I am a man in denial ?

edit even though I act like a female ( the result of decade of training ) and most transgender males don’t ?