can somebody please explain "trans" to me??

Doesn't matter how far back you go, devilin, feminism has never eschewed the "notion of binary discrete biological sexes." That there are two sexes has never been even faintly controversial, in fact they're important because sex/reproductive roles are the basis on which women are oppressed. FGM, abortion and reproductive health, maternity rights, rape, forced marriage: many feminist issues are directly related to sex and the rest have a tangential link. Equal pay, for example.

What, perhaps, you may mean is that feminism eschews the idea of there being two intrinsic genders or, as they used to be known, sex stereotypes. Gender claims that, for example, men are bold, adventurous and decisive, while women are frivolous, nurturing and passive. Feminists hold that the primary purpose of gender is to raise the male sex class above the female one and we would like to eradicate it.

In a feminist utopia there wouldn't be gendered expressions of "femininity" and "masculinity" because gender would cease to exist. Sex, otoh, will always exist. It's just a fact, like people having eyes or legs.

As for trans activism, feminism includes FtTs because they are women but not MtTs, because they aren't. Because the whole trans agenda relies on a belief in gender, it's intrinsically anti-feminist. The positions taken by many male transactivists are frequently not only anti-feminist but misogynist.

etta it's a penis on a trans woman. The logic being that if being female is primarily to do with gender identity rather than biology, then female bodies are those belonging to people with female gender identity. Hence a penis can be female if it belongs to a transwoman.

I have pcos I am most definitely not a transsexual! I mean WTAF?! I was born a female with female genitals, I am a woman and have no desire to identify as anything but a woman!

I am ill treated and suffer discrimination because I am a woman, I was born to inevitable suffer the consequenses of possessing a vagina and ovaries, but none the less, despite this I have always been, and always will be a woman

I'd just like to know what a female penis is because it baffles me.

"(Incidentally, I would also take the 1 in 100 figure with more than a pinch of salt - transactivists have started including genetically male individuals with hypospadias - i.e a mild birth defect of the penis, and genetically female individuals with PCOS, in the way they count "intersex" to give an entirely spurious impression that the condition is more common than it actually is.)"

I remember the first time I read a TA trying to claim that women with PCOS were intersex. I was so so angry, not in the slightest bit impressed that a medical condition that I do struggle with was being used to score cheap (and inaccurate) points.

Yes exactly matilda. To me sex =biology and boils down to undeniable differences like periods, boobs, men being taller and stronger as a class. Gender = load of pink and blue brain bollocks about why girls/boys can't do stuff they want to. Get rid of gender, not sex. I don't understand how someone can call themselves a feminist and support the notion of gender. But each to their own

Nooooooooo! Not another Trans thread.

Has feminism ever eschewed the notion of binary sexes? Eschewed the notion of binary gender roles (not identities), in the sense of arguing that all of us are individual people in our own right, full human beings with a range of interests and abilities, not constrained by our chromosomes to be good at nurturing and bad at parking cars (or whatever set of gender stereotypes you pick).

Biological sex does not determine interests, or personhood, or moral or political worth - that certainly is a central tenet of feminism. But you can't render biological sex invisible - we have children, and pregnancy makes us vulnerable, we are smaller and less muscular, which makes us vulnerable, and it is this vulnerability which forms the background to our oppression. If we were all hermaphrodites who reproduced by, say, spraying gametes on the ground, then taking fair turns to look after the resulting frog spawn or whatever happened in this sci fi world, there would be no sexism.

Feminism argues that gender stereotypes and gender roles - the social expectations that are tacked onto biology by culture - are oppressive. But very few feminists I know deny biology!

I'm stuck some time back in the past when feminism was supposed to eschew the notion of binary discrete biological sexes and I certainly can't get behind any kind of feminism that doesn't embody trans activism. But it's still very interesting thread so thanks Op.

Cross-post with Felas - that's very interesting. Looks like there's a bit of disagreement in the field about this, though: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cen.12531/full It seems (I am a physical scientist, not a biologist) to centre round resting levels of testosterone versus levels immediately after exercise (which are elevated in both men and women).

Also tranwomen did compete in the 2016 Olympics.

One of the other issues of the trans movement at the moment, is the transitioning of teens, plus children of 4 or 5 being told they are in the wrong body.

As I understand it, the reason transactivists want to coopt hyperandrogism into their cause is because they think that by casting doubt on the idea that there is a clear cut distinction between male and female in the biological sense, this means that they can argue that an internal sense of gender identity is more important than biology when it comes to talking about what makes for a man or a woman. Which is why it's in their interests to "inflate" the numbers.

(Incidentally on some definitions of "intersex", phenotype matters as well as genotype, and you could, I suppose, include "hypospadias" in this - but men with hypospadias are capable of having sex and fathering children, so it's a bit of a stretch I think.)

Incidentally, hyperandrogism in intersex individuals is very interesting -in individuals brought up as women it can be coupled to complete androgen insensitivity, in which case the person has high testosterone levels but lacks any receptors, so the testosterone has no effect on musculature or performance, or it can be coupled to partial androgen insensitivity, in which case the individual may have higher-than-normal testosterone for a woman, and more developed musculature (it is speculated in the press that the Indian sprinter Duttee Chand suffers from complete androgen insensivity, whereas Caster Semenya suffers from partial androgen insensitivity).

I'm happy to be told when I'm talking nonsense!

matilda to be fair to devil the study itself isn't clear. Here's the abstract, I can't get to the full text to figure out what the "complete overlap" actually means .

^Hormone profiles showed significant differences in 19 of the 24 measured variables between sexes and between all of the 15 sporting disciplines in men and 11 out of 24 in women. 16.5% of men had low testosterone levels, whereas 13.7% of women had high levels with complete overlap between the sexes. Women had a lean body mass 85% that of men - sufficient to account for sex differences in performance. There were highly significant correlations between many of the measured hormones.
CONCLUSIONS:
Hormone profiles from elite athletes differ from usual reference ranges. Individual results are dependent on a number of factors including age, gender and physique. Differences in profiles between sports suggest that an individual's profile may contribute to his/her proficiency in a particular sport. The IOC definition of a woman as one who has a 'normal' testosterone level is untenable.^

Endocrine profiles in 693 elite athletes in the postcompetition setting.
Healy ML1, Gibney J, Pentecost C, Wheeler MJ, Sonksen PH.

Is hyperandrogenism a trans issue?

Therein lies the problem with wikipedia, and its effectively "crowd sourced" approach to knowledge - it's okay for things that are "politically neutral", but anything that is politicised, basically activists get in there and edit things to their own advantage. It's not a good source for anything to do with trans issues, sadly .

I was just quoting something from the Wikipedia entry on hyperandrogenism there, I wonder what they meant by overlapping then.

Incidentally 5 sigma is the 1 in 3 and a half million level, if you want numbers!

Devil, I'm afraid you're talking nonsense about testosterone levels. They do not overlap. This article, an interview with Joanna Harper (who is trans herself, but that's by the by, she describes herself as a scientist first, athlete second and trans third, and she is one of the scientists who advises the IOC) is very informative.

Basically, testosterone levels for several thousand female Olympic athletes were used as a baseline to determine the range of levels - including women with PCOS who have elevated testosterone. They were found to lie between 0.5 and 3.0 nM/l. They then added 3 standard deviations "for luck" if you want to put it that way, not to the mean (which would have taken you to the 1 in a 1000 level in the population, but to that upper limit. So more like 5 standard deviations from the mean - that's the level they use in particle physics to establish the existence of new particles, it's incredibly rare - that gave them an upper limit of 10nM/l. The normal male range is between 10 and 30. So no, the populations really do not overlap, not on any sane understanding of "overlap". It's simply not true to assert that.

(Incidentally, I would also take the 1 in 100 figure with more than a pinch of salt - transactivists have started including genetically male individuals with hypospadias - i.e a mild birth defect of the penis, and genetically female individuals with PCOS, in the way they count "intersex" to give an entirely spurious impression that the condition is more common than it actually is.)

devil well given the percentages of high/low quoted I think it means the top end of normal for women overlaps with the bottom level of normal for men. Which is why I want to see the whole study as the overlap statement makes no sense yet is very important when considering the potential impact of testosterone on performance. Anyway I'm derailing LEMS thread so I'm not posting more about the finer points of sports performance. Enough to say that including transgender women in female sporting events solely on the basis of testosterone levels is a concern to some.

Is there? For the purposes of who competes in which sports? it doesn't seem like it otherwise people like Caster Semenya and others before her wouldn't have been humiliated.

"levels were more alike than different between women and men so it wasn't a useful way of determining male/female."

There is already a perfectly good way of determining who is male and who is female. Reinventing it is not at all necessary, except if one is desperate to include some males within the female group.

I think it means the levels were more alike than different between women and men so it wasn't a useful way of determining male/female.

I don't really know what transgenderism is but I did enjoy that book some years ago when it first appeared, until then I had no idea how difficult it is to decide what makes someone male or female or even if it's desirable to do so.