I don't want to be a TERF

Yes, Miranda is called both truscum and terf. Bonkers really.

This is why the ideology is so warped and so successful - because you literally cannot raise entirely reasonable concerns without being branded a bigot.

I read an incredibly eloquent serious of tweets earlier from a guy about why women are considered inscrutable, and that it's because women are right afraid of men. When people agreed and said this is why they're concerned about self identification and the erosion of female only spaces, he blocked them for being TERFs.

We need a debate on this and cannot have one. I have no issue with trans people whatsoever. I have serious issues with those appropriating the trans banner to centre their rights yet again over women's.

Womb - can I ask - is it possible to be both 'truscum' and 'TERF'? In other words are the former those who genuinely believe they are in the 'wrong body' and the latter are those who think bodies can't be wrong (but minds can)?
Would Miranda Yardley, for example be bashed with both sticks?

The concept is that humans created the terms 'male and female' and decide on their uses. Im nitpicking your numbers because those animals that do not mate could be not mating for any number of reasons. Some of which may be that they are not actually the sex they are assumed to be.

People who breed animals will tell you their behaviour is congruous with their biological sex. Stallions always behave like stallions and never like mares, and vice versa.
You can tell which horse is a stallion and which is a mare by their behaviour, their stance, their body language and how they react in specific situations.

Behaviour is congruous and predictable. The definition of mental unwellness is unpredictable behaviour, or behaviour which is out of context.

The idea that you don't have to have dysphoria to be trans is NOT, by ANY means, just a small branch of trans activism, it's all of the current go-to activists online and all the major online trans communities. Activists pushing the "Wrong body" narrative are being actively pushed out, told to check their privilege, and derided as being hopelessly behind the times.

See:
www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/expert-qa

www.lambdalegal.org/know-your-rights/article/trans-related-care-faq

genderanalysis.net/2017/03/do-you-need-to-have-gender-dysphoria-to-be-transgender/

everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/not-all-trans-folks-dysphoria/

transequality.org/issues/resources/frequently-asked-questions-about-transgender-people

www.quora.com/Do-people-have-to-experience-gender-dysphoria-in-order-to-be-transsexual-or-transgender (note here that 2 replies saying "yes, you really should have to have dysphoria to be diagnosed, it should be a requirement" are downvoted until they're in the "answer needs improvement" category, while all "no, you can be trans if you say you are, no dysphoria needed!" answers are upvoted.)

Here's an FTM posting all her reasons for getting a double mastectomy and she notes that none of her reasons were dysphoria: www.pinterest.com/pin/523895369142712025/

www.asexuality.org/en/topic/158672-nonbinary-question/

www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/5upsj2/if_you_dont_experience_dysphoria_what_makes_you/

genderterror.com/2014/04/15/dysphoria-not-required/

I could go on. These are many respected organizations, this is not some small number of activists. Today, you will be shouted down if you have these backwards, truscum ideas about trans issues.

Your choice isn't between allyship and TERFhood. It's truscum or TERFhood. That's all you've got, unless you're willing to go all the way and say that a woman is anyone who says they're a woman, period, no other qualification. Every trans resource now says transition in any medical or physical way is not necessary for transgender status, and all "gatekeeping" i.e. psych evals and differential diagnosis is transphobic.

The lengths you will have to go to in order to appease the developing orthodoxies will eventually be lengths you won't want to go to.

Thank you so much Sophocles

"I sided with women, with lesbians, with gender non conforming young boys who might grow up to be gay. Also with traumatised young girls who want to opt out of being over -sexualised or abused, and the autistic kids, and the vulnerable people being swept up...these are the collateral damage of transactivism. So these are the people I side with, want to protect, want to use my voice in defence of. I'm still an ally"

This is perfect.

OP I think a lot of us have been where you are. For me what I am most concerned about is teenage girls. They are so disrespected by society. A 'peak trans' moment for me was Eddie Izzard and assorted right on types on Loose Ends on Radio 4, chuckling away at how amusing it was that he shouted at a group of teenage girls who were questioning him being in the women's toilet (while changing back into 'male' clothes). I was appalled at the total lack of empathy for teenager girls, presenting them as screaming harridans out to intimidate a poor famous 6 foot marathon man. I know you are worried about supporting the 'wrong' side, but Ifyou are considering siding with teenage girls over entitled middle aged men you are most certainly NOT siding with the oppressor.

I also knew some teen girls who were transitioning through my work. They were deeply unhappy being forced to wear skirts to school. No butch lesbian role models to lookup to (all were lesbian, now straight I guess). They suffered from homophobic bullying. They hated their bodies but then so do many if not the majority of 'cis' teenage girls. The way I see it they changed themselves to escape the judgment of society. We should be changing society not teen girls' bodies. I hope these boys are now happy, and I hope they don't regret it later or wish for bio children, but I worry. A quote from a detransitioner which has stuck with me:

'Transition was never the answer when you were never the problem'

"Thats like saying that feminists who say all sex is rape and we should live without men represent the whole of the feminist community!!"

You might at least have the courtesy to quote correctly! It was Andrea Dworkin in her book Intercourse, and she never said that all sex was rape, or that even all penetrative sex was rape -- although various feminists have had quite a lot to say about the meaning of PIV sex (not all sex, how homophobic to think that!)................

Glad if what I said made sense, pullup. a lot of what you say resonates with my thought processes, so I get where you're coming from I think.

Just did a search on truscum and this video came up

So it seems there has been tension in the trans community between those who say you need to be dysphoric to be 'trully' trans leading to their being labelled 'truscum' by those who consider non-binary and agender, also trans. The Ftt in the video says the term has be reclaimed by the dysphoric trans...

As regards biology (as a scientist, but not a biological scientist).

Humans (and many other species) just are bisexual. As are many other species. The exact process of which sex you get to be may be reasonably straight forward (XX, XY), there may be various complications (XYY, etc), or like crocodiles which don't have sex chromosomes and where sex is determined by temperature during incubation. You can have species that change sex (fish, Blue Planet 2), one sex when small/younger, another when older/bigger. But despite all these shenanigans, humans are still a species with two sexes. That just is the way human reproduction works. We're not like sex-changing fish, we're not like some species of all-female unisexual whip-tailed lizards. There may be more complications within each sex than we thought, more richness and variation, but still two sexes, and we're not somehow evolving into a species that needs 3 or 4 (or even 1) sex for reproduction. Pretending we are, or conflating intersex with trans, is just a lie. It's an attempted sleight of hand that we've seen many times before, saying it's all complicated, then trying to slip that complication in to explain why a male, for example, as Bruce Jenner was when he fathered his various children, should instead be considered complicated and somehow not quite male, or in some biological sense female.

"So that adds weight to the argument that maybe we do have more than two sexes." Except there isn't such an argument, from a reproductive point of view. That's the things with genes, they tend to be (almost totally) binary, X or Y, that's yer lot! Birds, snakes etc have a different ZW system, with male being ZZ and females ZW.
The platypus (who would have thought it!), apparently delights in a XYXYXYXYXY or XXXXXXXXXX system! But as regards evolution and all these lovely complications, we still have species with basically TWO sexes on our branch of the evolutionary tree for the past hundreds of millions of years, and all the way back to the origin of sexual reproduction about 1.2 billion years ago.

From my point of view, might as well try and argue that we are going to evolve out of needing oxygen, as try and argue there aren't actually two human sexes!

Although I did like this quite from Wikipedia: "A third theory is that sex evolved as a form of cannibalism."...............

womb that is just a certain branch of trans activism that does not represent the whole trans community. Thats like saying that feminists who say all sex is rape and we should live without men represent the whole of the feminist community!! It just happens that sometimes the most extreme people are the loudest and get the most press attention. They are also used by anti trans groups to stir up fear.

Re the desert island example, I was thinking of it from the p.o.v. of an external observer, so how the people saw themselves would be irrelevant.

Lol at "vibrancy". Not.

Just so you know, OP, today's leading edge of transactivism calls all the "born in the wrong body" and dysphoria stuff being "truscum." Thinking a trans person should have any of these distinct "wish I had a different body" feelings before declaring themselves the opposite sex is now anathema in mainstream trans circles.

In other words, even your extremely considerate way of viewing dysphoric conditions and feelings of being born in the wrong body are now outre, and described as "scummy," and roundly denounced as "transmedicalist" by modern activists. So even if you're not a TERF, you're probably truscum according to them. Isn't it nice what our options are when we don't go along with the furthest fringe of narcissistic males 100%?

pullup what helped me with easing the cognitive dissonance of seeing myself as an ally of the marginalised while also being gender critical was to understand the quite profound misogyny and homophobia that lies at the heart of much of transactivism.

I sided with women, with lesbians, with gender non conforming young boys who might grow up to be gay. Also with traumatised young girls who want to opt out of being over -sexualised or abused, and the autistic kids, and the vulnerable people being swept up...these are the collateral damage of transactivism. So these are the people I side with, want to protect, want to use my voice in defence of. I'm still an ally.

Additionally - I believe the majority of people with intersex conditions are actually infertile - so these conditions don't count as a different reproductive 'sex' per se, they are disorders of sex development.

A leading scientist, researcher, campaigner and advocate for people with intersex conditions (also someone who I think coined the term 'disorders of sex development) had this blog to write when the early transactivists started harassing and intimidating her colleagues: alicedreger.com/in_fear

I know I already posted it, but I think tiptop you might find it enlightening..

What has intersex got to do with trans? Your trans friend is not intersex, they are biologically male and now present as feminine.

I don't think that article supports what you're saying at all, tiptopteepe.

And in any event, many if not most intersex people are quite distressed at their conditions being co-opted in support of trans issues, which are completely separate. It's pretty disrespectful to them to try to conflate the two. Intersex charities campaign for children to be left alone until they're old enough to make decisions for themselves. Trans activists do the opposite.